Philippians 4, verse 4, is where
we'll start as we talked before. And when you look at these words,
most of us in the room today would come to a place that would
cause us trouble. We hear the phrase rejoice. We hear the command. It's not
just a suggestion. It's not written in such a way
that it says you should rejoice or I believe you should rejoice
or I'd like for you to rejoice or try to rejoice. There is a
command there by Paul that says rejoice in the Lord. He is so
emphatic in this command that he actually uses the the identifier
here of, when shall we rejoice in the Lord? Always. And he repeats
himself in such a way so that he says, again, I will say, rejoice. Now, a lot of times in preaching,
in church services, it can be on the speaker, I won't even
say preacher, it can be anyone. It can be anyone standing up
in front and they can read this text with such emphasis. Rejoice
in the Lord! Heck, you know, we can get excited. People go, amen, amen, amen.
We'll say amen, we'll start to feel chills run up our spine.
No matter what, we're going to rejoice, amen. And we're going
to have bad times, we're going to have good times. Bad times,
we're going to rejoice. We get so excited, we spit on ourselves. But we get through with that
little rant of excitement and then we get out in the car and
we go, now how are we going to do that? It sounded good. So I guess what
then people do is they come to the place where the only time
they can feel the quote rejoicing is when they're in some type
of service pumping them up for rejoicing. But friends, there is prescription
in the New Testament even where we ought to lament. There's times
when we ought to weep. Especially when our brothers
and sisters weep. Of any nationality, of any place, of any tribe, of
any tongue. When the church of Jesus Christ
suffers, friends, if your pinky toe is being pulled off, you
are suffering. And if the pinky toe of the body
of Christ happens to be a German Christian, or a Redneck Christian,
or a Syrian Christian, or a Greek Christian, then we hurt. The problem is that in our world,
in our society, in our culture, our suffering is usually self-inflicted,
culturally, materialistically expounded. What do I mean by
that? In other words, we suffer because
we want, we don't get or we don't keep, so we suffer. And then also our physical bodies
suffer. But all in all, few of us are suffering for our faith.
Few of us are suffering imprisonment, exile. Do you know that when
we see Peter writing his epistles, he was writing to a dispersed
people, an exiled people, a people who were at that very time running
for their very physical lives. because all that they had had
been taken from them by force. All that they knew, they had
no more. Their culture, their community,
their money, there was no economy any longer for these people.
They were in the middle of nowhere, going wherever nowhere led them
for no reason. And Peter says to them, rejoice. Peter says to them, to remember
the words that Paul wrote to you. when he said, you have a
greater reward. Peter said to them, though you
do not see Christ, you love him, and though you do not now see
him, you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible, resulting in
the outcome of the salvation of your soul. And those things
sound so good, church, but let me tell you something. As a Christian,
I measure my spiritual health, listen, by the joy in my heart
in suffering. I measure. And it may not be
the best of measurements, but it is the best of tests. And
as a shepherd of God's people, I look in your eyes, and I look
in your hearts, and I look in your lives. Now, I can't peer
in there. I'm not saying I see visions. But you know what I'm
saying. I look, I watch, I listen, and I see. And when you share
your life with me and with others, and they share with me, I look
and I can tell who has joy and who does not. There's a difference
in brokenness and joylessness. There's a difference in sadness
and joylessness. Because Peter even says that
the joy is inexpressible. Sometimes we can't muster a smile.
Sometimes we can't laugh. Sometimes we can't explain why
we even are not defeated, but we're not defeated. But friends,
as a shepherd of the church, as an under-shepherd, I look
at your joy as a measure of your faith. I look at your joy as
a measure of your comprehension of the gospel. I look at your
joy as a measure of your walk with Christ, as a measure of
your ability to minister to others. I've never been I've never been
encouraged by anyone who wanted to share their misery with me.
Now I'm not talking about share their burdens that we partner,
we weep with those who weep, we rejoice with those who rejoice.
I'm talking about share their misery. That they do all things
with complaining. That they do all things with
strife. against the teaching of Paul to this letter to the
Philippians, to do all things without grumbling or complaining.
Do you see how this is coming together? Do you see how Paul
now at the final breath of this letter, he's trying to give them
the fullness of God's gospel and the power of His grace in
such a small little text. And he did it. Better yet, God
did it. And He's doing it for you, and
He's doing it for me, and God is continually speaking through
the writing of Paul for us this day, and we either will hear
it with the ears of faith that have been given to us by our
Savior, or we will ignore it with the ears of flesh because
it doesn't fit our fancy. So my heart for you this morning
is that you would hear it. that you would see Christ, that
you would understand joy as the Scripture teaches it, not as
the world demands it. The world demands joy as a temporary
fix, as whatever makes you feel good about you, as a place to
provide esteem for your own self, as a circle of influence that
you might obtain through the local church, per se. then you
feel good about who you are and what you do and who you belong
to in that circle. Friends, these are not the things
that Scripture teaches. Scripture teaches that the sufficiency
of joy is found in the affection of Christ alone. And that Christ
Himself is our joy. And that Christ Himself is our
Lord. And there is no making Him such.
There is no committing to Christ, thus then working for His Lordship. He is Lord and He is Savior or
He is Judge. And He is Condemner. There is
no other option. And friends, when we consider
Christ as not our condemnation, but our freedom, what else do
we have? Do you know as this world dies,
as this world fades away, as our health, as our age leaves
us, as our material goods leave this world, as things come and
go. Friends, there is one sure thing
that no one in this world can take from you and no one out
of this world like the devil and his demons can take from
you. And that is Christ. No one can take Christ from you,
and no one can take you from Christ. Jesus says in John, that
all that the Father give me come to me, and that all who come
to me I will never cast out. No one can take them from me.
No one can snatch them out of my hand. No one, no one, no one
whom the Father has given me will depart from me. And in the
fact that we are in the hand of Christ, He has purchased us
with His life, we are eternally joyful in that truth. We are
eternally joyful in Christ. There is no separation between
us and Jesus. None whatsoever, when we are
His. And so this command to rejoice
cannot be taken lightly. For if we understand it as it
is written, as a command, then we must understand that not rejoicing
is disobedience. I want you to just think about
this for a minute. So when I walk around moping, sad, hissy, whatever
mood I might be in, when I'm not rejoicing, I'm sinning, yes,
we are. When we're walking around pitying
ourselves, lacking the faith, lacking the expression of joy
in our souls, we are walking in a disobedience and walking
in a rebellion and walking in a powerlessness and walking in
spite of what Christ has said and what the Word teaches that
Christ is our joy and we will have His mind. You see that? And then we cry
to God in our wicked, unrejoicing state, complaining and bickering
and arguing with ourselves. Unloved, unloving, unkind, unkept. And we walk around and we pray
to God and then we blame God for not listening to our prayers
when He says very well that when we walk in rebellion, He will
not listen. God won't answer my prayer because
you're not rejoicing. We long for that which we long
for and we think that it's God's provision for us, but until we're
willing to live without it, there is no gift coming from God's
hand for that which we desire most. And when we find that that
which we did desire so much, whether it be material, whether
it be person, whether it be place, whether it be peace, When we're
content without it, we find we didn't need it after all. Friends, this is the text that,
in my opinion, according to this argument, puts feet to the pavement
on application. Are we truly seeking the joy
of Christ? You see, because as we look at
rejoicing here, As we look at this command, this is not just
some obscure, oh, Paul's decided to talk about joy. Isn't that
neat? Toward the end, to remind us
of the good nature of our joyful attitudes. No, this is a command
that has already been given several times. Paul in chapter 1 verse
18 says that they ought to rejoice, though people are preaching under
false pretenses, they are preaching Christ. So rejoice, command to
rejoice. In chapter 2 verse 2, he says,
make my joy complete by being of one mind. That's a command. In chapter 2 verse 17 through
18, He says there is rejoicing when we are working together
in service and sacrifice. We are to rejoice in these things
because the joy that is ours is Christ. Verse twenty nine
of chapter two. If we continue to look and then we see chapter
three, verse one final line, my brothers rejoice in the Lord. It's not the first time. And
it's not going to be the last. We're going to see it here in
chapter 4. We're going to see it in chapter 4, verse 4. We're
going to see it over in verse 10. I rejoiced in the Lord greatly
that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You notice
each time that Paul expressly commands or expresses joy, he
does it in this context with these words. Rejoice in the Lord. Now, you might think to yourself,
of course, we rejoice in the Lord, but stop for a minute and
stop paving over these little phrases as though they're not
important. We use the word Lord for everything. As a matter of
fact, it's a title given to people in Europe who serve in their
government. Lord. But there are no lords
in this world. There are no true lords of this
earth. They may hold the title, they
may hold an earthly office, but the Scripture says that Jesus
is the Lord of lords, the King of kings, and that Christ Himself
sets all people on every throne in every nation in this globe. That there is not president,
king, tyrant, dictator, government, parliament, etc. That He has
not set upon that throne. And there is not one of them
throughout all of history. And when He returns, no matter
if there are a billion kingdoms, they all shall become no kingdom.
And there shall be no earthly king. And there shall be no earthly
Lord. And there shall be no earthly
authority. For He is the sovereign God of it all. And now he says,
rejoice in me. Let's take Paul's words for what
they are. This is God speaking to us. God commanding us. This isn't
Paul's polite suggestion. This is God's grand demand. That'll preach. This is God coming
and saying, you will rejoice in Me. Christ saying, your joy
is forever in Me. Therefore, see it, live it, be
it, rejoice in the Lord, the Lord, not any Lord. Not the Lord
of our idols. Not the Lord of our flesh. Not
the Lord of our church. Not the Lord of our religion.
Not the Lord of our missions. Not the Lord of our community.
Not the Lord of our job. Failures or successes or martyrdom
or pride. Not the Lord of anything except
the Lord of Lords. Rejoice in the Lord. There ought
to be some refreshing to our minds to understand that when
we see this command, it is absolutely explicit. It is very narrow. It is very extremely myopic. There's no room for interpretation.
There's no room for common interpretation. There's no room for us to just
decide how we want to deal with it relatively. Oh, this means
this to me. No, this means this, period.
And it means this. That we are to rejoice in Christ
Jesus alone. That means that our joy is found
in Christ. That means that our hope is found
in Christ. That means that every longing
of our soul is found in Christ. That means that there is nothing
else in this world that gives us satisfaction, really, but
Christ. Christ alone. Christ, period. Christ and nothing else. Remember
this, church, that Christ plus anything is nothing. We cannot add to Christ. Paul
tells the people of Galatia that if they add one speck to Jesus
Christ, that they have no gospel. And that the result of that is
damnation, to be cut off, anathemas. So that means that if our joy
is fuller or added to with anything else except by Christ or in Christ
alone, that it's not a true joy at all, is it? Hear that? So that looks like this. If we
come to the table of joy and we say, I'm rejoicing in the
Lord Jesus the Christ, but this little tiny, teensy little thing
over here on my life, this little thing here, I have Christ and
that's my joy, but this really does add to it. You have no joy. It's idolatry and it is going
to fall. It is going to fail. It is going
to leave us wanting. We have nothing if we add anything
to our joy except Christ our Lord. Now that's a tall order,
isn't it? That's one of those things where
we all just preach that, pray and go home and be depressed
all week trying to figure out how we do it. And that's really the wrong question. How do we rejoice in Christ?
I think better questions would be why am I not rejoicing in
Christ? What is wrong with my worship?
What is wrong with my discipline? What is wrong with my face that
I am not looking at the face of Christ? Friends, do you know
why our joy wanes so much? Because we will spend more time
in conversation with others about our joyless situations, and we
will spend more time wringing our hands wondering, what shall
I do when there is nothing to be done? We will spend more time
seeking to find temporal answers to nothing than we will seeking
the face of Jesus Christ through His Word and through relationship
with each other and in prayer and in thanksgiving. And Paul
explains that perfectly in this very text. And we think that
something else is going to come out of that practice, out of
that discipline. Well, I'm in the Word. You've
been reading Leviticus for six months, for Pete's sake. Nothing
wrong with Leviticus. Read it. But read it in light
of what it means. Like maybe John. Maybe Hebrews. Maybe Philippians. Where is your Christ? Read the gospel of Jesus. It
is for your soul. It is for your power. It is for
your joy. The good news of Jesus Christ
was given to you, beloved. But the problem is that we, in
our culture, have been inundated with this lie. That the gospel
is what we use to reach lost people and that's the end of
it. God didn't use the gospel to reach you. God's gospel saved
you. Christ reached you through the
hearing of His gospel. Rejoice in the Lord. And I say,
okay, well, I can do that. I see it. And we'll explain what
that looks like in a minute. But let's get through the rest of
this text. But when? You know, when things are good,
I can rejoice. When things are not so good, I can rejoice. But
when things are really heavy, I have a hard time. How am I
to rejoice when my neighbor cursed me out and killed my dog because
it dug under her flower bed? God will understand, I don't
have to rejoice in that. How am I to rejoice when I lose my
job and I can't pay my light bill and I'm sitting in the dark?
How am I to rejoice when my husband leaves or my wife leaves and
they won't come back? How am I to rejoice when my child just
got killed in a car accident? How am I to rejoice when I get
the news that I'm dying of cancer? See, God understands these things.
So I know about rejoicing in the Lord and I'm going to find
it one day. But in these circumstances, He understands, some people would
say. No. Paul, let's just put it this
way. God says rejoice in the Lord
always. Always. We don't get to pick
and choose when we rejoice. And you know what happens when
we don't rejoice? Because our mind is set on earthly
things. Paul has already come, or the
reason we find ourselves joyless, is most of the time because we've
set our mind on earthly things. Right before this text, he has
said that People ought to imitate Him as He's followed Christ.
To imitate the disciples or the apostles, keep their eyes. So let's put it in perspective.
When you're suffering as I'm suffering, Paul would say, I
want you to put your eyes on people who are walking with Christ
with the completeness of joy. So as I'm suffering, worse than
you're suffering, and just like you're suffering, some of you
aren't suffering as bad as I am, some of you are suffering just
as bad as I am. Talk to the Philippians. Watch me. Listen to what I say. Look at where I'm putting my
focus. Pay attention to what's important to me. When have I
complained? When have I said, oh, I want
to get out of prison? When have I said, they treated me wrongly?
When have I said, they've exercised, they've taken away my rights?
When have I put my fist in the face of Rome? I'm thankful to
be here. Jesus Christ put me in jail.
I'm going to stay here, He didn't know, for two years that I might
preach the gospel to the emperor. to Caesar and tell him he is
not God. But Jesus Christ, the One they
crucified and has now raised to life, is God. And if you,
Caesar, do not put your faith in Jesus, you will stand before
Him and He will judge you and you will forever be in condemnation.
Forever. Forever and ever. That is why
I'm in jail. So celebrate this. It is for
the purpose of God's righteousness that I'm here, that your joy
may be full. So watch me as I suffer well
with the joy of Christ, not giving attention to my circumstances,
but doing all that I can to pray for you, to pray for others,
to teach the gospel, to share the joy of Christ, and to hope
that one day I will see your joy as full as mine is, that
I may rejoice even more. We think that our joy comes through
the absence of our circumstances when that is a dumb response. I say dumb because it is. Because
it's dumb to ask God to do that which He promised would not happen.
It is dumb to ask God to take away that which He guaranteed
for us. Oh God, take away my suffering. Oh God, take away
the problems. Well, you know what? I like to
share with people, and some of you have even heard this in the
last few weeks, I'm looking forward to a different season of suffering,
but I'm never going to be looking forward to a season without suffering.
It is not going to happen. It is a guarantee that we will
all suffer whether we are in Christ or not, but if we are
to live for Christ, we will be persecuted, we will suffer, and
it will cost us, some of us, everything. You can't have your
cake and eat it too. You can't have the kingdom of
the world and the kingdom of Christ. You can't have a Lord
of your flesh and the Lord of light. You can't have the world
and save your soul. It's impossible. Watch me. He says people that are enemies
of the cross, their bellies are their gods. Remember that? That's
what we're talking about. their fleshly desires, the things
that they are concerned the most with. Keep our eyes on that which
is eternal. Keep our eyes on the coming of
our Lord who comes from heaven, from where we are citizens, not
of this world. And when we start focusing on
ourselves and our problems and all of these things, apart from
rejoicing in Christ, we have nothing else to expect but misery. Nothing. How is it that the martyrs
of history, as their beards caught aflame on the pyre, they would
sing praises to God? How is it that in this very hour,
people are dying for Christ? Having their bodies tortured
and their loved ones put to death in front of them, that they would
just say three little words, I reject Jesus. And they don't
because they can't. You won't throw away the greatest
treasure you ever received. You won't throw away the greatest
prize of the world for lesser prizes. You will find the treasure
of the gospel hidden in a field, and you will cover it, and you
will go with joy, as Jesus says, and sell everything you have,
almost tripping over yourself, so that you can get rid of everything
you own, so that you may have the field, because the treasure
is of great worth. That is Jesus. That is the gospel. That is the sufficiency of the
joy of our Lord and Savior. In all things, rejoice. And look what He says then. I
will say it again. He wants you to understand this
is not just a passing suggestion. I want you to know that this
is vital to your joy. This is vital to your life. This
is vital to the gospel. This is vital. Let's just take
Paul's language from the other texts, or from this text, previous
portions of it, and let's put it this way. For you to glory
in Christ, for you to honor Christ in your life, you must rejoice
in Him fully. in all things. So therefore,
I'm going to say it again. No matter what you're doing with
your mouth, or your feet, or your hands, or your presence
in ministry, if you have no joy, you are not honoring Christ. I heard a preacher back in 1988.
I don't necessarily know if he was orthodox, heretical, or whatever,
but this stuck with me. And he said, the problem sometimes
with people when they share their faith is that they're sharing
a faith that has not produced any change. And I'm paraphrasing
to get to the point. And people come and they talk
about how awesome Jesus is and how awesome God is and how awesome
eternal life is and all this kind of stuff. But the person
listening to them, all they ever hear from this person is complain
after complain after misery after misery after complain after complain.
And he does it in a funny way. He says, you know what? You need
to come and you need to trust Jesus have as much misery as I'm having.
Really, that's not good news. Good news is, is that you deserve
much more misery than you get. That's good news. No, but it's
coming. Because you deserve the judgment
of God's holy wrath forever, because you, beloved, were a
sinner. separated from Him. And some
of you may still be separated from Him today. And no matter
how good you act, no matter how much you love, no matter how
awesome you are, no matter how honest you are, no matter how
moral you are, no matter how much church you do, no matter
how much Bible you read, you cannot please God with any of
those efforts. You will still stand condemned
as a sinner and you will be justly condemned forever. The damnation
of God's holy wrath is eternal. There is no escape. But the good
news is this, that God, in His mercy, because of the great love
with which He loved you, came to earth, sent His Son, born
through a woman whom He created, so that He would live this life
as an example of what holiness looked like, and then die a death
He did not deserve, to pay for the penalty of your sin, and
that you can be forgiven by faith. Believe in Jesus alone. It's not faith plus works. It's
not faith with a little bit of this. And friends, a lot of times
people like to say, well, what is it? Show me what to do to
be doing this work of faith. Jesus was asked the same question.
And He answered them very succinctly. And it angered Him so much that
they hauled tail. 20,000 people left this sermon when
He said, this is the work of God that you put everything you've
got in Me. And you throw it all away from
Me. And you flush your life down the toilet from Me. And don't
even eat food and don't even drink water, but eat of Me and
drink of Me. That's in a nutshell, in a paraphrase,
Jesus says this is the work of God that you believe in the Son
whom He has sent. And belief is not some cognitive
realization of truth. Belief is an unreserved, absolutely
eternal, supernatural commitment that's exercised at the beginning
of life and every moment thereafter, even in the darkest of doubts.
You exercise faith. You believe in Christ. You believe
in Christ when there's nothing but pity in your soul. And you
look to the cross and you say, if nothing else, I gain Christ.
That's what Paul argued. I gain it all when I die. Oh, hallelujah! You see, we get
excited about that. I give it all. One of my mentors
talked about years of street preaching and open air evangelism.
And he's a big guy. Played semi-pro football for
Florida State. Roomed with some people like
Jim Kelly and others back in the day. And he talks about having a gang
member come up there because he was praying and ministering
in the neighborhood. And you know, when people get
saved, they stop sinning. Their lifestyle changes. And
someone came up and said, hey, you're messing up. You're messing
with my guys. And he put a knife on him. Stuck it right there
to his sternum. And my friend said, I just looked
at the knife and I said, hallelujah! And I leaned into it. He goes,
you're going to threaten me with death when I know Jesus Christ
and the only thing that's keeping me from Him is this body? Kill
me, kill me, kill me! And the guy backed up and said,
man, you are crazy. And he preached the gospel to half a dozen people
standing there. Ooh, heaven, he would always
say. Ooh, scare me. Jesus Christ, ooh, I'm horrified. Send me now. You see that? Whether I live or die, What have
we got to lose? Nothing. Nothing. Everything we have is nothing.
This world is nothing. These relationships are important
in the context of the gospel, but they're eternal, so we won't
lose them if you're in Christ. But these worldly, earthly relationships,
nothing but a glimpse, a shadow. We celebrate them as we have
them. We long for that day when they will be forever. My wife
will always be my sister, but she will not always be my wife. No more taking out the trash. I don't know why that came in
there. There's much more to eternity than that. All things. So let's look at now. He says
in verse 5, let your reasonableness, what does that mean? Let your
gentleness, let you be known as reasonable. Do you know the
difference in reasonable and unreasonable? And the reason
some translations use the word gentleness, Because if someone
is reasonable, they're gentle, they're patient, they're kind,
they're easy to talk to, they think before they speak, they
deal with each other in a kind and gentle way. Even when they're
wrong, they're just slow to speak, slow to anger. Versus the other
person. Which is what? Don't look at
each other. Don't point. No fingers. Which
is what? Quick-tempered, frustrated, loud,
angry. Let your gentleness be known
to everyone. Now why is this all of a sudden
here, right after rejoice? Because I think in the attitude,
the mind of Christ, which creates an attitude of joy in the midst
of the cross, Jesus looked past the cross to the joy that was
set before Him. You see that? He wasn't going,
yeah, I'm going to be crucified. I've always wanted to do that.
No, he did not want to die. He did not want to suffer, but
he wanted the joy of what it would bring. So if the mind of Christ is gentle,
what is Christ's attitude? What should His mind be? Let's
just put it in direct relationship. What should the mind of Christ
be toward us? What should the mind of God be
toward people who rebel against Him, are deserving of death?
Should it be, let me come down here and live like them and die
for them? See, Hollywood could do a good
What If Jesus movie. Because in today's economy, with
the flesh of humanity, Jesus would come, He would be born,
He would put up with it for 30 years. After His baptism, He
would go, bang! He'd burn everybody. That would
be a Hollywood version of it. And He would be right in doing
so. Zap! Zap! Zap! And after He got
through zapping all the people who were deserving of judgment,
He'd be by Himself. And He would be right. But the
mind of Christ was not that the mind of Christ was. Let me love
those who are my enemy. Let me rejoice, knowing that
the very people that I created for joy in me hate me. that I might provide for them
an effectual salvation through my body, through my life, satisfy
the wrath of God the Father against them. That's the mind of Christ.
So our gentleness, our reasonableness should match Jesus' reasonableness,
should match Paul. Paul never fussed and barked
about his captors. He preached the gospel to them,
and many in the guard came to faith. Paul did not demand a
hearing so that he could be freed. He used his Roman citizenship
so that he could spend two years in jail so that he could preach
the gospel to Caesar and not be released from prison. So we are to rejoice, and I believe
that it's evident in these mindsets of being gentle. And it's not
just a gentleness, but it's a gentleness that's seen. It says, let it
be evident to all. In other words, be known. as
this type of person. Be known not just as this type
of person, listen church, be known as this type of people.
Do you realize that you being gathered together with us, if
you go out that door and you go to the restaurant next door,
how you act, speak, behave, look and live is how people will see
me as living and each of us as living and vice versa. That's
the point. And most importantly, it's how
people see Christ. And there's no wonder why so
many people who are in the churches today, in the churches, institutions
of churches or whatever, believe that Christian faith is such
a work of self-discipline. because the people that they
know who are kind and reasonable and that it's evident, they're
so rare. They're so rare. They're nowhere
to be found. And so everybody knows the two or three, you know?
A church of 500 and there's the three or four guys and the 25
or 30 ladies. It's usually more women who are
reasonable than men, too. You found that with the disciples.
They weren't even checking to see if Jesus was alive. Let's
go fishing. Here, the Bible is teaching us,
God is teaching us that our joy is a command and that it's in
Christ, it is certain for us, and that it ought to be evidenced
by our reasonableness, our gentleness, that people can see us and see
Christ in us. And listen, that's not the gospel,
by the way. That's not evangelism, by the
way. Paul's already said that there are people who are charlatans,
crooks, liars, and thieves who are preaching the right gospel.
Let them preach it. They're doing it because they want to hurt
me. Let them preach it because the gospel that they preach is
true. I'm beginning to think these people, and we've come
back in two on this, may be enemies of the cross. But, what does Paul say? Let them do it. So living out
a life of Christianity is not going to save anybody. Only the
explicit gospel will save. Hearing the gospel of Jesus.
There's no such thing as relational evangelism. There's no such thing
as friendship evangelism. I can fish with you all day for
20 years and you can go straight to hell. And you can see how
I don't cuss, and I don't get angry, and I pray before I cast
my line, and I give glory to God every time a fish comes in,
and I read Bible verses to the fish before I cut it. And you
can see all that stuff, but you're not going to be saved because
of it. You're only going to be saved if I turn to you and say,
did you hear what I just said to this fish to whom it doesn't
matter? And if he were to die in his sins and he would go to
hell, it doesn't really apply to him because he's not a sinner,
you are. In the gospel. Only then can
someone be saved. In explicit, verbal, heard gospel. What must I do to be saved? Believe. Believe in Christ. Trust in Christ. Alone. You've got to have gentleness
that can be seen because it's evident. Friends, if we're not
full of joy, what happens? Why would he put that next in
this list? Because when we have no joy, there's something about
the flesh. And maybe I'm just a freak of
nature. But when my joy is waning, when I am not responding in belief
to the gospel because of my circumstances, or my hunger, physical hunger,
my children say, Daddy, have you eaten? And I know that's
a sign that I'm being a little edgy, or maybe even a little
cruel, or short. And when I start hitting them
with frying pans, they know I'm playing. Just make sure you're
all awake. But the reason that it says be
reasonable because if I'm bitter and frustrated, you think I'm
going to be nice to people? You think I'm going to be kind?
Somebody pulled out in front of me? Oh, wow, that was a close
call. Or... Or like one friend of mine
did 17 years ago, chased him down the road and nearly killed
everybody. That's not reasonable. That's not gentle. Our spouses,
we get on each other's nerves two or three times in a decade. Our children, you know, once
a month, disobey. Preachers lie. You know, exaggerate. We have that liberty. And we're just reasonable. We're
gentle when we have joy, because no matter what people stick in
our face, when we have the joy of Christ, we're just smiling
at it. We're laughing at it. We're looking at it. We're going.
I see that's OK. Christ has. And let's see what else policy.
He says, let your gentleness be evident to all. Let your reasonableness
be evident to all, to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Look at
that. Now some texts put a period there. Some texts put a semicolon there.
Some texts put that there. I don't care where it goes. It
works for both sides of this language. The Lord is near. Be gentle. The Lord is near to
your heart. The Lord is near to you. The
Lord is in you. The Holy Spirit is in you. God is there. Christ
is here. Listen! He's here! He's with you! Why
are you worried? Why are you frustrated? Why are
you angry? Rejoice! The Lord is near. Isn't that
the way it goes in the darkest parts of our life? If there's
just sometimes someone walking with us, it makes it better,
doesn't it? Nothing changes. But it's sort
of like the deathbed type situations. You've got people there. You've
got someone dying. And they're in misery and they're
in misery. And the family calls you and you go. And you walk
into this awful scene. Weeping and wailing and just
depression. The blinds are closed. And you
walk in here. You take people by the hand, you pray for them,
you say, listen, in death you see Christ. Woe not to you, but
to us who sit there and watch you slip into where we want to
be. And you share the faith. And nothing's changed when you
leave. But everybody's happy. Because the Lord is near. Sometimes
just having companionship, and in our worldly way, companionship
isn't sufficient, because I may die, you may die, and we may
not be together, we may not be available, we may not be spiritually
sound, we may not be emotionally able to help each other at a
point in our season, but Christ is there. Christ is there. And don't forget
that. We don't need mojo and magic
and spiritual things and trinkets and oils. We need Christ. But sometimes we say, where is
Christ? Where is Christ? I don't see
Christ. Look at Him. Look at Him. Here He is. You
see him through the pages of Scripture. You see the face of
God through the pages of Scripture because the Scripture is the
living Word. The Logos, who came to dwell among us and who stands
at the right side of the Father, sits, finished the work of redemption. And one of my favorite passages
of Scripture in the entire world that's not in John is 2 Corinthians
4, 6. For God who said, let light shine
out of darkness, has shone in our hearts, listen, to give us
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. The Lord is near. So what must
we be doing? In verse 6 he says, do not be
anxious about anything. What does that mean? It's really
tricky in the Greek. Let me break it down for you.
Anxious, do not be about anything. In English, do not be anxious
about anything. I know it's hard, and sometimes language is difficult,
so I thought I'd just share that with you. So, he's saying don't
be anxious. That's correct. Don't worry,
don't fret, don't fear. About what? The fact I'm dying? Okay, I get that. What about
ISIS? Anything. What about tornadoes? Anything. Don't be anxious about anything. Why? Because it's not evidence
of joy. It's not evidence of faith. And
in some sense, he's also saying you don't have to be, because
the Lord is near. See how we don't know where to
put that? It works both places. The Lord is near, so do not be
anxious about anything. How are we to be anxious when
Christ is there? The God who spoke and the universe
that we see so intricately before us became. And we don't think
He can handle our problems. We don't think He can handle
our finances. We don't think He can handle our health. We don't think
He can handle our emotions, our mind, our property, our marriage,
our children. He can. He is near. So don't be anxious about anything.
But instead of being anxious, look, he gives this incredible
formula. Instead of being anxious in nothing, do not be anxious
about anything, but in everything, you see that? In everything,
by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, Let your requests
be known to God." Now let's look at that. The Lord is at hand,
therefore, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything,
let your requests be made known to God. Alright, that's the command. In everything, let your requests
be known to God. God, I have a need, here it is. God, I have a fear, here it is.
God, I have anxiety, here it is. God, I need healing, here
it is. Take it. I'm sharing this with
you. How do we let it be known to
God? Through prayer and petition or
supplication. What's that mean? We're praying,
we're talking to God, and we're saying to God who we are honestly. You can't hide. Don't pray King
James's prayers like God's impressed. Get on the floor, clean up the
tears and snot when you're done, kick and scream and swirl around
like Shep if that's what you feel like doing. If you're in
that bad of shape, cry out to the Lord, pray, no matter where
you are, no matter what you do. In everything, we're praying
to God. We're also supplicating for others. We're praying that God would
intervene in the lives of others. Friends, the Spirit of God empowers
us and purposes us and presses in us to pray for each other. Especially us hard-headed people
who think it's a burden to share our burdens. Friends, there's
nothing greater than to know how to pray for you. But even those of us who are
hard-headed and want to disobey that command to share our burdens
with each other, just in sharing them, the Spirit of God still
presses us to pray for us, don't He? He does. And so we do it. We pray, we supplicate, and we
do it. How? With thanksgiving. This
is the mindset. How does that work? Everybody's
always argued with me. I don't see how I can have joy
in this situation. How am I to walk around being
happy? Well, see, that's our mistake. We think joy and earthly
happiness relate to each other. They do not. Let me tell you,
I know happy people who are miserable, happy people who are lost, happy
people who live in darkness. Friends, The one way to find
out, the one way to practice, the one way to live out joy in
the Lord is that no matter how we're praying or what we're having
to pray for, we can thank God through it. Even if it is just
thank you, God, for being God. I don't know how this is going
to work for me. Thank you. How do we know God though? How
do we know who He is? How do we know how to thank Him
for who He is? Through the Word. We see Jesus. We see Jesus in
the Garden of Gethsemane. We see Him just hours before
His arrest, just hours before Him hanging on the cross, and
we see Him praying. We see Him praising the Father
and thanking the Father. We see Him asking and praying,
I have anxiety. Jesus had anxiety. Physical anxiety. So much so that the capillaries
in His face burst and He bled out of His pores. But He gave it to the Father.
You see that? The sin doesn't come because
our flesh becomes anxious. The sin comes when we take it.
And when we keep it and we fail to respond to the faithfulness
of God by faith, you can't help it. If something is scaring you,
something is fearful in your life, you'd be a zombie, a robot
not to feel the fear, not to feel the emotions. But it's when
those emotions rule us, when those emotions freeze us, when
those emotions control us, we are not giving those things to
the One who is over them all. And so we pray with thanksgiving. We praise God for the problem. We thank God for His sufficiency. Even if we can't muster the reality
of praising God for the suffering, we can praise God that He's with
us because He's near in the suffering. You see? And so there's different
levels of how we, as we mature, we can pray. I, in some seasons
of my life, have been able to say, thank you God for this death.
Thank you God for this disease. Thank you God for this trauma.
It's a gift from you. How in the world? Because I can
see God's providence in it. I can see how He's growing me
and taking away my affections for the world and putting trust
in Him instead of other people. But if you can't see that, you
can at least see God's face. You can at least thank Him that
He's there with you. And friends, this isn't some
formula. I can't give you an outline to write down and put
on your refrigerator and say, OK, now I'm going to learn how
to be joyful. You've just got to be in the face of God. You've
got to be with His Word. You've got to be with His people.
You've got to communicate and be sharpening one another. You've
got to continually be disciplined to be who God has created you
to be. And that in itself is of the
Lord. It is the Lord's work, it is the Lord's doing that comes
continually through the Holy Spirit and the Word as He presses
in us. When we find ourselves weak and
frail, then God brings, if we have seen it, if we are there,
God brings to mind His Word and it tells us to stand strong in
the power of His mind. It tells us to endure the sufferings
of one another. It tells us to supplicate and
pray with thanksgiving. It tells us to rejoice. It tells
us that there is never a time when God is not near. And so then we rejoice because
we know that which is coming is greatly more valuable than
that which is here. And you might see the outcome
of that. Look at verse seven. I could
preach a sermon on this and may. But in everything, by prayer,
supplication with thanksgiving that goes with it, let your requests
be made known to God and the peace of God, the outcome of
this is the peace of God. Chapter 1, verse 2, grace to
you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Friends,
it is what salvation does. What is peace with God? Being
sanctified in Christ. Being justified in Christ. Being
whole in Christ. Let the peace of God Not let. And the peace of God. What does
it do? Will guard your hearts. The peace
of God will guard your minds. So let's unpack that in just
a few seconds. This peace of God will guard
your heart. In other words, your anxiety,
your fear, your troubles, your emotions, all these uncertainties
will be guarded. When you give them to God, He
guards you. His peace guards you. When you
are in Christ, Christ guards your heart from falling into
fleshly wickedness, from falling into fleshly despair. So that
you could go back into 2 Corinthians chapter 4 where Paul would say
they were crushed and struck down. All these things were not
destroyed, were not driven to despair. that we're put to death every
day, that we're seeing death more and more in the flesh, we're
made more and more alive in the Spirit. The peace of God will guard your
heart. It will keep you there. and not just your heart, it will
guard your mind, that you might continue in the mind of Christ,
that you would have that unity, that peace, that knowledge, that
wisdom, that understanding, that discernment, that affection,
that joy. All of these things would continue
in you in such a way that God Himself is guarding you. Peter
says the same thing when he says these words. He says that Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has caused
us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead, and who, you, who, listen, by
God's power are being kept, are being guarded for an eternity,
for a life, for a better reward, for an inheritance that is unfaded,
undefiled, That's what he means. The peace of God will guard your
heart, will keep your heart, will keep your mind in Christ.
You may say, well, I'm trying to put my mind around this peace
of God. I can't get it. I can't get it. And that's a good
thing because look at this introduction here in the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding. will guard your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus. This is not a peace that we can
comprehend in the sense of the world. It is a sovereign peace. Let me paint this picture for
you in closing. What does God worry over? Nothing. There has never been a time in
eternity where God has ever fretted, worried, contemplated, doubted. There's never a time where God
has ever learned, peered to discover, looked into. He is supreme. And so a supreme peace means
that the universe and all the cosmos could just poof away and
God would not flinch. That's the peace we have in Christ.
Unshakable, unmovable, immortal peace. Hear this. There is no greater peace. And
our minds cannot comprehend that piece. And so I just picture it. I picture
it and I feel it in some sense. There's no theological premise
for this because it surpasses all understanding. So to try
to explain that which surpasses understanding is a fool's errand. It's impossible. But I would
think that in the midst of death, in the midst of torture, in the
midst of depression, in the midst of it all, I envision, if I will,
that this type of peace means that I'm able to ignore it and
to be fine with it and to be at peace with it and to rest
in the sufficiency of God's sovereignty as if as much as I'm concerned about
the dirt that might be blowing down the sidewalk right now. Or that small, microscopic piece
of skin that fell from our bodies when we walked in here. We don't
notice it. In our flesh we see, but in our
spirit, in the sovereignty of God, we don't notice. In other words, we don't pay
attention or give attention. We don't ignore them. But we're
at such peace, we don't have to give focus on these things.
That's just stupid. No, it's what Paul argues several
times. Here's the proof of it. forgetting
what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on
toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ." You know what that did not include? His imprisonment
and suffering. I'm pressing to that. Let us
hold to what we have attained. And it says here, but our citizenship
is in heaven. And from it we await a Savior,
a Lord, the Lord Jesus, who will transform our lowly body to be
like His glorious body by the power that enables Him even to
subject all things to Himself. That's that peace that surpasses
all understanding. He has supremacy over all things. And with a word, He puts every
evil under His feet. And beloved, you are part of
the body on which those feet sit. So, if I'm to understand this argument
that Paul gives just here, I am able to then say that I can have
the same sovereign peace in me that God has, because I'm His. And that I will sit where Christ
is sitting, because He is my Head. He is my Lord. He is my Savior. He is my King. Don't read into what I'm about
to say, but in some sense I can I can close it with this is that
the peace that I have in Christ Jesus is this is if I have authority
over these things. Because I do. Greater is he who
is in me than he who is in the world. We are victorious. And how is
it that we are victorious? It is our faith in whom? Jesus. It all goes back to Christ. And that's it. If you find your
joy waning today, that's the end game. That's the resting
place. That's the pit stop that's eternal.
That's the end. That's it. That's what we strive
for. And friends, if nothing else, I want you to know that
this is the recipe for such joy. And if we had time, we'd go on
into chapter 8, but next week we'll see. how to really focus
our minds. We see the discipline, the theology,
the doctrine, the teaching. Now we see how we focus, if we
will, our minds on those things which are eternal, as we look
to those things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely,
commendable, and we'll explain those. And I'll just let the
cat out of the bag. Friends, we look to Christ for
all of them. And anything that is honorable
to Christ, anything that is not, should be leaned away from. Let's
pray. Oh, great God, I thank you so. Thank you that we have such a
great peace, a great reward, a great savior, a great lamb
who died and paid our debt to you. Father, help us to rejoice in
Christ. Help us to take note of how we feel in the midst of
our lowliness and to have the discipline to come to your throne
of grace, to the throne of Jesus, to the cross of Christ. That even though you show us
in your word that you will shake the universe once again, but
there are things that cannot be shaken. Father, no one can
take us from you. Your kingdom is forever. And
Christ is the king. Lord, would you give us satisfaction
in him? Would you help correct a lot
of the unbelief that goes on in our lives on a daily basis?
Would you press into us the discipline of being in your word and being
in prayer with thanksgiving and sharing our burdens with each
other that we might labor to you? The faithful God. The faithful
father. Who hears and answers. And father, there may be some
who hear these words and who desperately now have been turned
to desire Christ. Father, bring them all the way
home. Let their faith begin. And never
end. In Jesus name, we pray.