Scripture Introduction
Their grandmother lived in a slower time. So her visit to California from a small town in middle America included her first plane flight. She was anxious about trusting her life to this newfangled contraption! When the family met her at the airport, they teased her by asking, “Well, grandma, did the plane hold you up okay?”
She grudgingly admitted it did; then quickly added, “But I never did put my full weight down on it!”
Maybe we have feared putting our full weight down on God, and anxiety results. It does not really make a difference to the airplane, but it determines whether we enjoy the flight. So let me read Philippians 4.4-9, and see if we can trust God for the flight of faith.
[Read Philippians 4.4-9. Pray.]
Introduction
The letter read: “Dear Abby, I have found the secret to inner peace and I want to share it will all your readers. The secret is to finish the things you start. Today alone I finished two bags of potato chips, a chocolate pie, and a bottle of wine. I feel better already.” People want inner peace.
When I counsel couples, I usually ask what they really want for their marriage. Many, many husbands and wives say, “I just want peace.” The home should be a place of peace, but sometimes it is not.
But is there peace anywhere? Wars rage across the globe. Nearly 2 million people are incarcerated in the US. Someone commits murder about every thirty minutes, and a crime of some sort almost every second. We live in a violent world, with violent people, who commit violent crimes. Can we have peace in the midst of such chaos?
Jesus seemed to think we could. Near the end of his life he said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you….” (John 14.27). That’s encouraging. But even Jesus’ words are uniformly positive. Matthew 10.34: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” And in John 16, Jesus specifically says that, “In the world you will have tribulation….” So how does that work? To answer that, first…
1. We Must Know What Peace Is
There are different kinds of peace. One is horizontal—the absence of human conflict. Our President seeks this in his Bilateral Mideast Peace Meetings. Certainly, God commends to us prayer and labor for peace between people.
Additionally, there is vertical peace, one which concerns our relationship with God. This has two parts: 1st, an objective aspect, which the Bible calls “peace with God,” (in which we are declared no longer his enemies); and 2nd, a subjective aspect, the “peace of God,” which is promised in Philippians 4. Let me give you a definition, and then we will see if we can explain and apply it: Peace (in our text) is: The confidence in your soul which results from faith that there is a sovereign and all powerful God who is both good to you and present with you through all circumstances.
Three observations:
1.1. Biblical Peace Does Not Come by Changing Circumstances
Every day people seek to control their chaos by changing people and escaping conflicts. The angry wife yells, “I just want some peace and quiet”; the bitter husband clams up when his feelings are hurt; the hopeless flight attendant grabs a beer and slides down the escape chute. But even if we could control our world (and we cannot), storms in the soul wreck internal peace. Biblical peace does not result from changed circumstances.
1.2. Biblical Peace Is Not Possible Without Reconciliation with God
Most people I meet want the peace of God; they want to be comforted and cared for by the Almighty, to feel his presence and be certain of his love. Fewer, however, are interested in making peace with God the Conqueror. We do well to remember that until and unless we surrender to the Almighty, we remain his enemy. Have you admitted that you made yourself God’s enemy? Are you willing to sue for peace on his terms, since he is the Victor, the Conqueror?
Two issues seem to keep people from this commitment. First, presumption: most Americans assume they follow Jesus because they are not Muslims (or admitted atheists). Their profession changes nothing, but assume they are Christians because most everyone claims to be. But Romans 2.4 warns: “Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” Is your repentance genuine? Have you turned from trust in your own will, to run to the Father for both forgiveness and correction? Can mature Christians see your progress in the faith? Is the peace with God which you claim, real, or mere presumption? Do we have the courage to seek the answer to these questions?
Pride is the second factor which keeps people from God. We think far too well of ourselves to confess that we rebel and fight against the God who is known for love, compassion, mercy, and grace. Yet until we own our enmity, and receive Christ’s peace with God, we cannot experience the peace of God. Will we humble ourselves before God and his Christ?
1.3. Biblical Peace May Not Eliminate External Chaos
Before we come to Christ, we really only have one great enemy: God, and he loves us! But when you flee to Christ’s camp, you suddenly make many enemies who hate you and seek to make your life and circumstances miserable. This means that a Christian may have less outward peace even while she knows the peace of God in her life.
Many reject the true faith precisely here. People bargain with God every day: “I will join your team if and only if you will deliver me from trouble today.” Yes, God promises the final victory and end of all hostilities. But today the battle with sin, self, and Satan remains, and the peace promised is the Lord’s “own dear presence to cheer and to guide.” Great is his faithfulness; will we kneel before the God who offers only this definition of peace?
2. We Must Deny Ourselves Anxiety (Worry)
Verse 6: “do not be anxious about anything….” We read in the worship service similar words from Jesus: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on…. Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life…? O you of little faith! Do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried.” The law is clear.
Yet even Pastor John Piper, in an article on “eating the bread of anxiety,” admits that he wakes almost every day anxious about many things. Worry is a heart sin which each of us knows personally and intimately. How do we find victory?
There are two stages: first, know and name the enemy, then, second, wage war correctly against him. Here are four steps to know and name the enemy.
2.1. Recognize the Battle Against Anxiety
Galatians 5 tells us that peace is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, not of pleasant circumstances. Thus, the struggle for peace is a spiritual battle. You cannot win on your own, and you cannot lose if you appeal to Jesus. God gives his peace to all who believe that he rewards those who seek it in him. Will we recognize the true nature of this fight of faith and seek the victory in him?
2.2. Recognize the Allure of Anxiety
That’s silly, pastor! No one wants to worry and fret. Let me ask it a different way: are there benefits to the flesh (sinful nature) from worry?
Doesn’t anxiety give a feeling of control? To pray and receive the Spirit’s peace is to give over control and responsibility to another. The sinful self hates that.
Doesn’t anxiety allow us to manipulate others? If I am afraid to tell my teenager, “You may not go to that party,” I may instead try to guilt them into skipping it or coming home early by reminding them how much their mother will worry.
Doesn’t anxiety make us feel we care more than we really do, or salve a guilty conscious? If I should have prevented my friend from driving drunk, I may worry to cover the guilty I feel for not stopping her.
Anxiety tempts sinful hearts with many temporary pleasures.
2.3. Recognize the Anxieties
About what are you anxious? Illness? (Cancer? Alzheimer’s?) Guilt? (Someone may find out about the sin?) Divorce? Never getting married? Your children? Retirement? An unconverted family member?
Instead of allowing our minds to churn over unspecified anxieties, naming them begins applying God’s promises and peace. You will notice that there are a finite number. There are some things about I am anxious, but it is not everything, is it? Until we recognize the precise worries, we cannot fight them.
2.4. Recognize the Reasons for Anxiety
Once you make your list, you will notice that you have good reason to be anxious. The Bible never trivializes trouble. If Jesus looked over your shoulder as you write, I think he would say, “Wow, you have every reason to worry. The world is broken, human nature is bent, and there is a devil that would destroy you and all that is good and godly. You have every reason to worry (feel better yet?).” [Biblical counseling differs from the bumper sticker philosophy that says, “No Worries.”]
Jesus would says, “You have every reason to worry, after all, I told you that in this world you would have tribulation.” Then he would pause while we fret. Finally he would say, “You have every reason to worry; God insists that you have better reasons to not. Take heart! I have overcome the world!”
Peace does not come from pretending our troubles are slight, but from the God who sustains us in the storms.
3. We Must Fight for Peace
I see six commitments to claim God’s peace.
3.1. Rejoice (Philippians 4.4-5a)
We have many reasons to worry; we have many greater ones to rejoice. Let’s take as an example the anxiety we might have over losing your job.
• Rejoice you will depend and pray more
• Rejoice that you will draw closer to your spouse
• Rejoice that you will get a better job because your Father in heaven loves you more than you do yourself
• Rejoice that you live in a country with the freedom to look for work
• Rejoice that your God is sovereign over job loss and loves you whether you have a job or not
• Rejoice at the empathy which you will learn for others who have difficult circumstances
When you try to sincerely rejoice in the midst of your circumstances, you will discover how the flesh hates true faith. Then you can rejoice that this work is so clearly of God!
3.2. Lean (Philippians 4.5b-6a)
When anxiety reigns, God feels distant and weak, as if we were all alone with our problems. But that is not true, is it?
A Baby Blues cartoon shows Daryl waking up in the morning and picking up his pillow only to have Zoe fall out. He says, “Did we have a thunderstorm last night?”
When my kids were little and frightened, they clung to me. I do not think they really believed I could control the world. Why? Because they want someone to hold them during the storm. Children are humble; they are not ashamed to cling to their Father when troubles surround them. The same is true for the humble Christians: lean on the Lord who is right at your hand to hear and to help.
3.3. Pray with Thanksgiving (Philippians 4.6b)
When godly men and women are in the midst of chaos, they cry to God. The Spirit gives peace when we plead passionately for help in times of trouble.
We can expend energy winding our stomachs into knots, fretting and figuring ways of escape from our chaos—and end up full of anxiety. Or we can use the same energy to beg God to be with us and provide—and end up filled with the Spirit.
I do not want to be formulaic, but it seems likely that silent prayers formed only in our minds will not suffice. I think anxiety is fought with loud prayers and pleadings! Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns so that the other prisoners could hear (Acts 16.25). And we know from Hebrews that Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears….”
3.4. Desire (Philippians 4.7)
Paul’s faith did not melt the bars of the prison cell. The guard keeps Paul in jail. So what does God do? The Spirit sits with Paul in jail to guard his heart and keep anxiety out. But what wants that?
It is easy to love a god who makes all things easy; we all want to find the genie in the bottle who
grants us our wishes. This is why we redefine peace to be the absence of problems. But how do we feel when God gives us something better? How do we feel when God gives us himself? Will we desire him, or reject him because he fails to meet our demands?
3.5. Think Differently (Philippians 4.8)
Someone described anxiety as “a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
Each of these is worthy of a sermon in itself. All we have time for today is to remind you that we can chose to think about what is true, rejecting the lies of the Deceiver. If anxiety cuts a channel, meditating on the truth of God’s Word boards it up, which is critical to overcoming anxiety.
3.6. Believe (Philippians 4.9)
True faith acts. God is with those who accept a Biblical definition of peace, who deny themselves the pleasures of worry, and who fight for peace with the weapons which God provides. Will we believe the promise of his victory over every anxiety and act as a believer?
4. Conclusion
The story is told of a time when Death was walking toward a city when a man stopped him and asked, “What are you going to do?”
Death said, “I am going to that city to kill 10,000 people.”
The man said, “That is horrible!”
Death responded: “That’s the way it is; that is what I do.”
So the man ran all over the city, warning everyone of Death’s plan. At the end of the day he again met Death and complained to him: “You said you were going to kill 10,000 people, and yet 70,000 died.” Death said, “I killed only ten thousand. Worry and fear killed the others.”
My experience in Biblical counseling is this: many Christians worry; few are willing to fight against it God’s way. You think about that.
