html>
2/6/99 Rejoice In The Lord Always
©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
|
2/6/99
|
Rejoice In The Lord Always
|
Philippians 4:4,9
|
2/7/99 Rejoice In The Lord Always
Phil. 4:4 ¶ Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I will say, rejoice!
Our study of the book of Philippians
has brought us to
Paul's concluding remarks
to his friends at Philipi.
The verses we are going to encounter
during this part of our study
are verses that many of your will recognize.
They are bumper-sticker statements,
wall-hanging slogans,
Christian song chorus themes,
the type of things we find
plastered to the walls
of Christian book stores
and Sunday School rooms.
Let me read them for you
and you'll see what I mean.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will
say, rejoice!
Let your gentle spirit be known to all men.
The Lord is near.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything
by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made
known to God.
...the peace of God, which surpasses all
comprehension, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus.
...whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is right, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is of good
repute, if there is any excellence and if
anything worthy of praise, dwell on these
things.
And yet, with all of this familiarity,
or rather very likely because of it,
it is perhaps the most difficult section
in the entire letter
for us to study.
It is difficult BECAUSE it is so familiar.
Rather than relating to what Paul is saying
we find ourselves either
switching to the "Christian Chorus" section
of our brain,
or else saying to ourselves,
"Oh yea! I know that verse..."
When I read that first verse in the section a few
minutes ago,
how many of you
found yourself mentally humming,
Rejoice in the Lord always
And again I say rejoice!
Rejoice in the Lord always
And again I say rejoice!
Rejoice! Rejoice! And again I say rejoice!
Rejoice! Rejoice! And again I say rejoice!
Now I hope you don't misunderstand me here.
I am a strong believer in the value
of putting Scripture to music.
It is often a powerful tool
in helping us to cling to the promises
our God has made to us.
The problem, though,
is that when we learn to sing a truth
before we have first understood it
intellectually,
sometimes it can make it harder
for us to hear what God is actually saying to
us.
So, with that as background
let's see if we can bring our minds to this
passage
so that it can than feed
our hearts and our spirits.
This section of Paul's letter
begins with verse 4:4
and actually runs all the way through
verse 9.
It is the most concentrated passage
of the entire letter,
presenting us with a series
of mostly one-line summary statements
of the central principles
Paul has been seeking to communicate
throughout the whole letter.
It's as if Paul were saying,
"In case you missed what I've been saying,
let me pull it all together
in a series of concise statements
you can hang onto."
And remember what Paul was seeking to accomplish
through this letter -
this is Paul offering us the tools we need
in order to survive the prisons
and the winters of our lives.
This letter is Paul's response to the question,
"Where is God when it hurts?"
And this section is his summery statement
of the truths he has been offering us.
A few minutes ago I read you most of this section to
show how familiar it is to us.
But I left off the last verse of the passage,
verse 4:9.
As we study this passage together
we actually need to start
with that last verse because it reveals to us
why Paul is saying what he's saying here.
So here's what's going on -
Paul offers us 5 concise statements
that summarize the truths
he wants to communicate to us through
this letter,
and then he concludes by saying this:
Phil. 4:9 The things you have learned and
received and heard and seen in me, practice
these things, and the God of peace will be
with you.
It is impossible for us to read the book of Philippians
with our minds in gear
without our wondering
how in the world Paul has been able to not
only survive
but to actually thrive in his Roman prison.
With most of us
we have one hard day
and we're wondering if God cares
or if He's even there.
Paul has gone through several years of hard days,
and then writes this letter in which
NINE TIMES he talks about REJOICING.
Is this man in touch with the real world?
Has the pressure of fighting for survival
pushed him over the edge?
Do you know one of the things
I love so much about the lives of the men and
women
God chose to record in His Word?
Every one of them are real people.
Not one of them was a "Christian Professional",
a person who chose to make his or her living in
the world of religion.
None of them looked over the spectrum
of possible career options
and chose to "prepare for the ministry"
so that they could then "go into full time
Christian service".
Many of them did spend
at least part of their life
investing their efforts full time
into their teaching and preaching,
but they ended up there
not because it seemed like a wise career move,
but rather because what was happening
between themselves
and their Creator
demanded that they do
what He had for them to do.
Paul told the Corinthians,
1 Cor. 9:16... for woe is me if I do not
preach the gospel.
... I have a stewardship entrusted to me.
I love real people
living real lives,
honestly seeking to understand
who our God is
and how He relates to us.
I love having the freedom
to be a real person.
It's a freedom that I often personally have to forfeit
because of our society's attitudes toward religion
and especially toward preachers.
I would not trade the high honor
of being your Bible teacher
for anything in the world.
I have to tell you, though, that it has some liabilities,
one of which is the fact that
whenever anyone outside of our group
finds out I'm a "Pastor"
any hope of my ever being able to be
a real person to them,
or of them being able to be a real person in my
presence is ended forever.
I instantly inherit all of the liabilities
of all of their past preacher experiences.
I can see their minds
frantically searching for something,
anything they think might be appropriate to
say in the presence of "a man of the cloth"
and their obvious assumption is that
there is no way
my world
and their world
could ever share anything in common.
I have never been able to find anything
that can quickly turn those situations around.
I bring this up because
I don't ever want us to do that to Paul
or to any other New Testament writer.
True Christianity never has
and never will make any human being religious.
True Christianity makes us real,
more real than we have ever been before,
because it allows us to crawl out of our
hiding places,
and peak around the edge
of those barriers we've constructed
between ourselves and our world.
Our God makes us free to be ourselves.
There is certainly a religious world in our society,
a religious subculture in which people
learn to talk in religious terms,
and do religious things
and play religious games.
Don't ever confuse that world
with the world of our God,
or with the life He offers us
in His Son, Jesus Christ.
If what we do here together on Sunday mornings
does not have a direct effect on our lives
throughout the week,
if it doesn't help equip us
to cope with the real world in which we
live,
then we have failed.
And if what we read in God's Word
does not seem to have any practical application
to our daily lives,
then one thing we know with certainty -
we have not yet correctly understood
what we have read.
The principles Paul offers us in this passage
are principles tested by Paul
in some of the worst circumstances of life.
And then, having tested them and found them true,
he says to us,
Phil. 4:9 The things you have learned and
received and heard and seen in me,
practice these things; and the God of peace
shall be with you.
And that last phrase is crucial
to everything he is saying here.
...and the God of peace shall be with you.
He gives God a special title: The God Of Peace,
and in that title he is telling us that
as we follow his example
we will discover that the presence of
God in our life
will also bring the PEACE of God in our life.
I have a theory, my friends,
one that, to be honest,
I'm a little bit afraid to research too closely.
I think perhaps we are all frantically striving for the
wrong goal.
We are trying very hard to eliminate turmoil from our
lives
because we believe that
if we can get rid of the turmoil
we can then be at peace.
We believe the absence of inner peace
is caused by the turmoil
intruding into our lives,
and the path to inner peace
will be found in removing that turmoil.
But in this statement here in Philippians 4:9
Paul is telling us that true inner peace
does not come from the absence of turmoil in
a Christian's life,
but rather from the presence of God in
his life,
and from the awareness of what His
presence really means.
In other words,
as we practice the things
we learn,
and receive,
and hear,
and see in Paul,
our God will become not just our God,
but our God of Peace,
who's presence with us
brings us stability,
and security,
and rest
even when our circumstances
may be in turmoil.
Now, lets back up a few verses
and begin to look at these 5 statements.
And the first one on the list
we have seen before in this letter.
Paul begins by saying,
Phil. 4:4 ¶ Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I will say, rejoice!
I mentioned a few minutes ago
that Paul uses this word "rejoice"
a total of 9 times in these 4 chapters,
more than in any other New Testament
Epistle.
We heard him use it back in chapter 2 when he said,
Phil. 2:17 But even if I am being poured
out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice
and service of your faith, I rejoice and
share my joy with you all.
Phil. 2:18 You too, I urge you, rejoice in
the same way and share your joy with me.
We heard him say it again in the first verse of
chapter 3 when he said,
Phil. 3:1 Finally, my brethren, rejoice in
the Lord. To write the same things again is
no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for
you.
And now, once again,
as Paul concentrates his letter
into 5 summary statements,
the first one he offers us is this:
Phil. 4:4 ¶ Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I will say, rejoice!
There is no other statement
that Paul makes anywhere else in this letter
that seems at first glance
to be more inconsistent with real life-
both his life and ours,
than does this call for us to rejoice in the
Lord.
The word really does mean
what it appears to mean -
it means simply, "rejoice" or "be glad".
Clearly Paul presents it to us as a choice
he wants us to make.
He wants us to choose to rejoice in the Lord.
And this is not the same thing
as praising or worshiping the Lord.
Praise and worship are things we can
and often will do corporately, together.
But rejoicing in the Lord
is a strictly personal matter.
Now, to help us to get a hold of this a little better
I want to offer you 4 statements that I think may
help.
#1. Rejoicing in the Lord
is not the same thing as rejoicing
in what the Lord has done.
It is right and good for us to rejoice
in the things God does for us,
and to express our gratitude to Him.
But that is not what Paul is talking about here.
This is not the same thing as saying,
"Thank you, Lord, for meeting my needs,
thank you, Lord, for healing me,
thank you, Lord, for giving me my wife,
my daughter."
Paul is not calling us to express gratitude
for what God has done,
he is calling us to express gratitude
for God Himself,
for the who He is.
#2. Rejoicing in the Lord can only be done in the
present tense.
It is choosing to live
with a minute by minute affirmation
that our God is good.
And right here is where most of us get into trouble,
because most of us attempt to evaluate
who God is
and what He is like
on the basis of how we think He is handling
the external circumstances of our lives.
I saw a quotation on the internet a few weeks ago
that powerfully states
the exact opposite of what Paul
is attempting to say to us here.
The quotation was from Woody Allen.
He said, "If it turns out that there is a God, I don't
think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say
about him is that basically he's an underachiever."
You see what he's saying, don't you?
Woody Allen looks out over his world
and over his own life,
and he sees so many things
that need fixing,
things that need changing,
and then he sees God not fixing them,
not changing them,
not doing what Woody Allen thinks
God should do."
This is Woody Allen's way of saying,
"If God was really there,
and if He was really good,
how could He allow this or that to happen?"
If Paul were to take that same technique
in evaluating who God was,
he would look at the chains on his wrists,
and the guard next to him,
and his fellow Christians being martyred,
and his own rapidly approaching
execution,
and he, too, would say, "God! I have some real
reservations about who you are,
and about the way you do business."
But Paul understood the truth.
He saw two things most of us don't.
First of all,
he knew this is not the world God created,
this is a world in rebellion against God,
the domain of Satan,
operating by his principles.
The great wonder of it all
is not that there is so much evil in the world,
but rather that even after so many thousands of
years
of satanic domination
and human rebellion against God,
there are still so many incredible evidences
of God's goodness shining through.
And second, Paul understood
that the only accurate way
to understand the true nature of God
is for us to focus on the one point
and the one Person in human history
where God clothed Himself in human flesh
and walked among us
so that we could see exactly
what He is like.
And what we saw
was a God who feels our pain
more deeply than we feel it ourselves,
a God who loves us
even when we hate Him back,
a God who is willing to die in our place
for our sin
so that, (1 Pet. 1:6) ... even though
now for a little while, if necessary, we are
distressed by various trials,
we can and we will live forever
in the presence of His eternal goodness.
3. The third statement I would share with you
about Paul's call for us to rejoice in the Lord
I believe is the most crucial advice
I could ever offer you.
Don't ever go anywhere God has not already taken
you.
HUH?
That's just my way of saying,
leave no room for "what if's"
in your relationship with God.
What if this happened?
What if that happened?
The only faith,
the only strength God can ever give us
is the faith and the strength
to handle what He has already placed in
our hands.
That's what our Lord was saying
when He said,
Matt. 6:34 "Therefore do not be anxious for
tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.
If evil touches you tomorrow
then tomorrow you will find your God
and His love,
and His strength
sufficient for that evil.
But don't go there today.
4. And then my final statement:
There is nothing we can ever do
that will more powerfully
proclaim and affirm
the true nature of our God
than for us to choose to rejoice in
Him.
Some of you will listen to me teach for years,
some of you will hear me for only a few
months,
and for some of you
today is the only time you will ever hear
me.
If I could choose just one thing
I wanted to communicate
more than anything else in world
it would be this:
I want you to know
that the God who really is,
the God who does exist
and who has created us
and our physical world,
THAT God is eternal and absolute GOOD,
and because He is absolute GOOD,
anything we choose to place into His hands
He will turn to absolute good in our lives.