How many of you have memorized that passage, at some point maybe even have quoted it? Good. You know what they say about familiarity though, don’t you? Familiarity can breed a lot of contempt and this particular passage is a familiar one. You’ve heard it many times. And sometimes the familiarity we have with certain verses in Scripture can really breed contempt. "We’ve already got that verse down." We understand what it means. It’s not a particularly controversial passage. Scholars aren’t wrangling over it. There it is. I’m going to tell you that this passage, or God has used this passage this week to, frankly, knock me on the seat of my pants. This familiar passage. Because God has shown me through these few verses some really powerful principles for victorious and effective Christian living. If we will deny these principles that are found in this passage, we will live an ineffective, defeated Christian life. We will. It is so foundational. There is a potential found in these few verses, four little verses, for great failure. But, of course, wherever there is potential for great failure, there’s also potential for great success.
I’ve been preaching for twenty-five years. I don’t think I’ve ever preached a more critical sermon in my life; not critical in terms of I’m going to criticize, but critical in terms of important. Our Christian life rests on the principles that God is showing us through this passage. If we reject them, if we live our lives in rejection of them, we will live ineffective, fruitless Christian lives. But, if we will take God at His word, then we will live a victorious and fruitful Christian life. At the end of this sermon, you may agree with me or you may reject it. You may want to ride me out of town on a rail. Well, I’ll take that chance.
This passage answers three questions that are vital to the effectiveness of every believer. The first question is this: "How can God expect me to always rejoice? How can God expect me to put verse 4 of Philippians 4 into practice in my life? I mean, after all, there’s all kinds of bad things happening to me all the time. How does anyone in their right mind tell me to rejoice in the Lord always? Isn’t there a chance that I can get out of this? Wasn’t Paul smoking crack or something when he wrote this?" Well, Paul was in jail. He was in a Roman prison on trial for his life when he wrote this and he was there because he had been preaching the Gospel unashamedly. So, this is not a person who is writing this from some kind of a scholarly ivory tower. This is the Apostle Paul on trial for his life, sitting in a very fearful situation, where we all would have said, "Paul, you’ve got every reason to whine, every reason to complain and the last thing that we would expect you to do is rejoice." And he’s writing to people who were basically in the same boat. The Philippians were not rich people. They were in a thriving commercial metropolis, but they were not rich themselves.
Where do we rejoice? "Rejoice…" Those next three words are awfully important, aren’t they? Because it gives the foundation of where that joy comes from. "Rejoice in the Lord." That’s important. The Bible does not answer a lot of the why questions that we like to ask. "Why does this happen to me? Why didn’t I get that raise? Why are my finances in a struggle? Why am I ill? Why did my house burn down?" And the Bible is silent. But instead, the Bible gives us this constant repetition about the nature and character of God. In the middle of all the whys, in answer to all the whys, God says, "You know what? I’m infinitely powerful. I’m infinitely responsible. I’m infinitely dependable. I’m infinitely loving. And on the basis of those things that I keep telling you about Myself, I call on you to rejoice." We are in the arms, if we are believers and we’ve put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we are in the arms of the great God who has chosen us to be His children and who is, as that Godly Parent, the very essence of responsibility. Do you know someone who when you ask them to do something and when they say okay, you can forget about it because it’s going to be done. Do you know people like that? Don’t you love people like that? "Okay, I’ll do it." And you just forget about it, you take it off your list. It’s going to be done. That’s how God presents Himself. And we don’t even have to necessarily ask Him to do something. He is there waiting to do things. He is ahead of us doing things.
This infinitely responsible God is also infinitely powerful, undeterred by those barriers that stop us in our tracks. "We can’t do that. I can’t do that. I can’t overcome that." And God says, "Piece of cake." Or I guess, as some people call a routine fly ball to the outfield, "Can of corn." "No sweat. I can do that." This is God. This is how God presents Himself. In that light then, "Rejoice in the Lord" means this: God has in His infinite mercy has chosen me to be His child. I have responded to His regeneration in my life by accepting Jesus Christ as my Savior. I have now a reconciled relationship with God and in that reconciled relationship of God is going to turn out. I know for a fact because the Bible has told me and because I experience this in my life on a regular basis, I know for a fact that I have made (if we want to put it in a human sense) I have made the right choice and I rejoice because it’s clear that I have put my eggs into the right basket, all of them in spite of what they tell me not to do. God did not ask us to diversify our portfolio. We invest everything we have in God. Sometimes we make choices. Sometimes we make choices, let’s say in terms of a car. "I’m going to buy this particular car." And six months later we say, "You know what? That was really a dumb idea. That was a poor choice. I’m not rejoicing because I put my transportation vehicular eggs into that particular basket and now the eggs are breaking one by one." Or "I put my money into a particular stock and watched it nosedive." Or "I put my faith in a particular politician, only to find that he drops the ball." You see why Paul can tell us to rejoice in the Lord always? Because God is an unchangeably perfect and infinitely loving Father and we are convinced more and more every day that putting our faith and trust in His plan is cause for great rejoicing.
This joy is undefeatable. No person can steal it. No event can deflate it. It is so powerful that in verse 5 Paul says, "Let your gentleness be evident to all." Now those two verses go together. Do not separate them like they’re two different ideas. "Let your gentleness be evident to all." This word ’gentleness’ is a powerful one. Greek is a funny language. Sometimes the best we can do to come up with an English word to try to translate a particular Greek word just doesn’t really cut the mustard. This word ’gentleness’ means this – ’a patient, humble steadfastness which is able to submit to injustice, disgrace, and maltreatment without hatred or malice, trusting God in spite of it all.’ That means that when I’m being mistreated by someone or abused by someone, I would actually respond to them not in natural revenge or anger or malice or hatred, but calmly. Why? Because I know I don’t have to fight this battle. This is a battle that God will fight for me. It’s like being in a room with an assailant knowing that the Army Ranger Battalion is right outside the door. "I’m not worried. I’ve got protection." And because I’ve got protection and because I’ve put all my trust in this Protector, I can afford to be gentle, not to be defensive, not to be malicious, not to be vengeful against anyone. "Let your gentleness be evident to everybody who treats you nicely?" No. "Let your gentleness be evident to all." We were talking about this in Sunday School. We’re going through a very difficult passage in the Sermon on the Mount about turning the other cheek and letting someone take your cloak and your tunic and walking two miles instead of one. That’s gentleness. That’s a calm assurance that what God is doing is right. Joy is an inner contentment and is a barometer of our faith in any and every circumstance.
Here’s the principle. Our ability to rejoice is directly related to our trust in God and His plan. The more we trust God, the more joy we have. Pretty simple. The more we trust God, the more joy we have. The less we trust God, and therefore trust ourselves or our own plan, the less joy we have because those plans fail. God doesn’t fail. Our joy is not circumstantial. Our joy is relational. "I have a love relationship with the Creator of the universe. Nothing happens without His say so. This has not happened without His say so. He is right there. He is doing exactly what He wants to do through it. And because I know that, I can rejoice."
Second question, and this is a big one: What’s wrong with a little anxiety? What’s wrong with a little anxiety? Verse 6, "Do not be anxious about anything." Talk about a universal statement. There’s no outs in that statement. There’s no loopholes. There’s no caveats. There’s no conditionality. "Do not be anxious about anything." Seems like a very, very unrealistic verse. Amen? Maybe you guys know better. There must be a statement somewhere in the Bill of Rights that we are, as Americans, allowed to be worried and be anxious. It’s interesting that Paul makes the same statement that Jesus made back in Matthew 6:25, "Therefore, I tell you, do not worry [same word] about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not your life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?" Same word. It’s an interesting word. It means ’to be torn in two different directions.’ It means ’to be divided.’
Have you ever been there? I have; where you want to trust God, but man, the circumstances just dictate that "I need to worry. I need to be anxious. I need to get stewed about it." What’s so wrong about it, though? Why does Jesus and Paul say, "Don’t worry"? Someone has told me this week that worrying (quoting someone, I think Mark Twain), "Worrying is like rocking in a rocking chair. You’re doing something, but you’re not getting anywhere." Back and forth. Worrying makes the situation worse. Have you ever noticed in your life, as I have in mine, that when you worry you don’t sleep so well? That your stomach gets tied in knots. I tell you, worry is one of the great diets of our time. I’ve lost lots of weight in my life worrying. But it always comes back on. Worrying elevates your stress level, because it isn’t really accomplishing anything. It is an activity into which we pour huge amounts of energy and get nothing in return. And yet we keep on doing it.
When worry, when concern, does not lead us to prayer, it puts all the emphasis on the power of man and none on the power of God. If we really believe those songs that we sang earlier, if we really believe that God is the Protector of our soul, that He made everything, that there’s nothing too difficult for Him; then if we worry, we are saying, "I guess God is not interested in this, so it’s all up to me. Therefore, I need to get busy with anxiety." Worry is a response of fear, not of faith, and therefore cannot, I repeat cannot, be the godly response to any situation. This is what it says (if you have the NIV Study Bible, you’ll notice the notes on Philippians 4:6), "Anxiety and prayer are two great opposing forces in the Christian experience." They are mutually exclusive. If you are worrying, you won’t pray. If you are praying, you won’t worry.
Here’s what makes worry so wrong. It is one of what I would call one of those "Christian" sins. Gossip is a "Christian" sin. Backbiting is a "Christian" sin. These sins that are so prevalent, that we’ve decided that they’re not quite so bad. And worry is another one of those. We do it so much, it’s so natural, that we have decided it’s okay. Here’s the problem with it, though. Prayerless worry can only happen when God has been removed from the equation. When we have removed God from the equation and His powerful intervention on our behalf has been disregarded, we have chosen to worry instead of to seek God (And, remember those two are mutually exclusive), we are now on secular ground. We have left God’s ballpark and are playing on a different field. And the only options that we have … well, we have three options. One is to go back to God. But, barring that, we have two options when we have left God behind and we have written Him out of the equation. We are now seriously worrying. We have two options: do the wrong thing or do nothing. We cannot, if we have removed God from the process, we cannot do the right thing. We can do the right thing in our mind, but we cannot do the right thing. The wrong thing and nothing have one thing in common: they are both outside the revealed will of God.
Romans 14:23, "The man who has doubts is condemned if he eats because his eating is not from faith. [Now, listen to this.] Everything [This is a principle.] Everything that does not come from faith is sin." "Paul, aren’t you being a little harsh here?" Well, take it up with God. Everything that does not come from faith… faith in the benevolent powerful character of God, anything that does not come from faith is sin. And the worst thing is that when a person has made the decision, having left God out of the equation and is now making a wrong decision, he is now not only not under the blessing of God, but the biblical principle is that he is now under the active resistance of God.
There are so many examples of this from the Bible. The first one, I’m just going to look at a couple, but they are throughout Scripture. Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve ate the fruit, saw they were naked, made coverings… Verse 9, "The Lord came looking for Adam and said, ’Where are you?’" Adam’s response, "He answered, ’I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid.’" You see what sin did to the relationship we have with God? It injected fear, not fear of God in terms of awe at His being, but fear in terms of, "Let me get away from this guy." "I was afraid."
Israel, the children of Israel, having come out of slavery in Egypt, having seen God’s hand again and again and again, comes and stands on the border of the promised land at a town called Kadesh Barnea, send in twelve spies. They come back all with a common report, "It’s a great land, flowing with milk and honey." Ten of them say, "We go in there and we’re toast." Two of them say, "We can do it with God’s help." Ten of them had written God out of the equation and they’re automatic response was fear. Two of them, Joshua and Caleb, say, "We can do this, with God’s help." What did the people do all night? They moan and wail and in the morning wanted to stone Moses and Aaron.
Haggai, chapter 1, the exiles from Jerusalem had returned to the land. Their first priority should have been to build a temple. Their first priority was, instead, themselves. So much so, that they stole the paneling that had been laid aside for the temple and used it to panel their own houses. Their response to the call of God to build a temple was, "It’s not time to do that yet. It’s on the list. It’s down a ways. We’ll get to it after we take care of other priorities." What were they afraid of? They were afraid that they wouldn’t survive, so they worked on survival. Haggai 1 is a very interesting chapter because they were afraid they wouldn’t survive, and God made sure that they barely did. He says, "What happened to all your grain? What happened to all your money? You’re putting into pockets with holes in them. And I’m blowing your wheat away. Why? Because you’ve chosen the path of fear instead of the path of faith."
Matthew 25, last example, "Then one man who had received the one talent came." (After God/the Master had given out a ten and a five and a one.) "Master, I knew that you were a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed, so I was afraid." And on the basis of that fear, "I hid your money."
It’s an interesting principle that’s derived from these examples. If we choose the path of fear and worry, the decisions that we make based on that fear increase the likelihood that what we are afraid of will take place. What were the people of Israel afraid of at Kadesh Barnea? "We’re gonna die!" And you know what happened the next forty years? They died, one by one except for Joshua and Caleb. What was the fear of the people in Haggai 1? "We’re not gonna survive!" And only by the grace of God did they survive. What happened to the man who was so afraid of his Master’s disapproval that he hid the money? He received his Master’s disapproval. If we choose the path of fear and worry, the decisions we make (and there will be decisions we make) based on that fear, increase the likelihood that what we are afraid of will take place. And you know what I’d add to this? And God will make sure of it. God will make sure of it.
When we choose a path of fear that removes God from the equation, we take ourselves out of the potential of God’s richest blessing and place ourselves in the line, sometimes, of His active resistance. There’s no worse place in the world to be than under the active resistance of God. Isn’t it great, isn’t it great that God has provided a way out of this terrible dilemma? Isn’t it great? And God does this all the time. He says, "Don’t do this. Don’t go on this path. Don’t go down this way. But instead, I’m going to give you a different path to take." "Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."
Third question: What possible good can prayer accomplish? What possible good can prayer accomplish? You know when we are surrounded by challenges to our health, to employment, to our financial security; prayer seems to be a very simplistic, and frankly foolish, thing to do. "You know, I’m broke, so I’m going to go into my closet and pray. I’m going to talk to what people around me would think was the walls. I’m going to take a walk. I’m going to pray." But let’s at least hope, the least hope, that when we pray, God is going to give us something we can sink our teeth into, here in verse 7. Okay? When we pray, what’s going to be the response? "Let’s see the bells and whistles. Let’s see the fire. Let’s see the lightning." "And the peace of God which transcends all understanding with guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Do you find yourself a little disappointed with that? "I want a miracle!" (I woke some people up with that one.) "I want a miracle! Where’s the miracle? I want healing right now." And God says, "I’m going to give you peace." "I don’t want peace. I want money. I don’t want peace. I want health. I want a job. I want my kid to get better grades. Don’t give me this peace stuff."
But, wait a second. This verse is what knocked my socks off on this passage. Asking myself a question. Why does God give us peace and promise to guard our hearts and minds when we would like Him to give us a bona fide, thunder and lightning, earthquake miracle? What’s the peace from? What is He guarding our hearts from? Here’s the deal. Here’s what opened up this passage for me. What He’s guarding us from is fear and the terribly destructive effects of fear in our lives. It is one of the most prevalent themes in the Bible. Read it from start to finish, you’ll see it again and again. Every situation in our lives, every event in our lives, is a choice to be afraid or to trust God. When God had the Israelites gathered there on the shores of Jordan after their forty years of wandering, what did He say to Joshua? "Be strong and courageous." God doesn’t need our help and yet He has invited us to exercise faith in Him. "Perfect love," the Bible says, "casts out fear."
We’ve already established that to go down the path of fear is to limit ourselves to sinful choices, since we have removed God from the equation. And this is the worst of all possible worlds for a believer. A person who is living in fear and making decisions based on fear rather than faith may be a believer, but he is not at that moment, he cannot be at that moment walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. "God did not give us a Spirit of timidity," that word means ’cowardice, "but a Spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline." And God gives us an out. God gives us an out. Prayer is the positive, faithful actions of a person whose trust is in God. That’s how we manifest it, two ways. When I was a kid, we sang that old song. You sang it, too. "When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, what a glory He sheds on our way. While we do His good will, He abides with us still and with all who will trust and obey." Isn’t that what prayer is? God says, "Pray." God says, "Come to me." God says, "Manifest faith by coming to me in prayer."
Here’s the principle: Prayer is the positive, faithful action of a person who trusts in God. It is rewarded with God’s peace, which protects him from the effectiveness destroying, joy stealing force of fear. There’s a lot of young people here this morning, some young people. Don’t be afraid. Don’t give in to fear. Don’t look at your own resources and say, "Well, this is all I’ve got to work with." It isn’t. We have the resources of Almighty God, Maker of heaven and earth who has revealed His character to us through the person of Jesus Christ, who has revealed His character to us by giving us Jesus Christ. What’s to be afraid of? Where does fear come from? We must first set aside faith. We must first set aside faith to embrace fear. Churchill said it, "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself." No? Someone said that. Prayer is our shelter because God is our shelter. Run to the Shelter. Running to fear, running from a problem to a worrisome, anxious, fear-based decision is a huge, huge mistake.
There may be somebody here this morning who has decided in order to be righteous, they’ll have to be good. "If I’m good enough, God will accept me. I hope He does. I hope He does. I’m a little afraid that He might not, but I’ll work harder." You know what? Back to principle two, that fear will make sure that what you fear, the disapproval of God, will happen. He has, however, given you another choice. The choice of faith. Put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s plan, and say, "Yes. I’ll embrace that." Give away your fear and embrace in faith. The Christian life, in order to be effective, must be a life of faith. It cannot be a life of fear. Fear will take us down the road of one bad life-destroying decision after another. The worst sin we can possibly commit is to act as if God doesn’t exist.
