©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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2/14/99
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Choosing Our War
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2/14/99 Choosing Our War
Phil. 4:4 ¶ Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I will say, rejoice!
Phil. 4:5 Let your gentle spirit be known to
all men. The Lord is near.
Phil. 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in
everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made
known to God.
Phil. 4:7 And the peace of God, which
surpasses all comprehension, will guard
your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Phil. 4:8 ¶ Finally, brethren, 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.
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.
If you were with us last week
you know that these six verses
in the 4th chapter of Philippians
contain Paul's attempt to
distill what he has been saying
throughout this whole letter
into a few concise statements.
You also know that this letter
was written by Paul
as a sort of survival manual
for the hard times in our lives.
Through his comments to the Philippians
he offers the principles
that equip us to survive those times
when we feel imprisoned,
when we feel as though
the winter will never end,
when we wonder
if we will ever see another spring.
It is a short, practical letter,
written to real people
fighting real battles,
with real fears,
and real pain in their lives.
Paul was in prison when he wrote the letter,
looking at the very real possibility
of his own execution,
writing what would very likely be
his final words
to a group of Christian friends
he loved deeply.
And our study of this letter
has brought us to the place where
Paul is pointing out
the solid places
in a world of chaos.
I mentioned last week
how crucial it is for us to understand
the intensely practical nature
of everything Paul says to us here.
He has tested
each of the principles he offers us
in the real world
and found them true.
And now he offers them to us.
And I want to offer just one more observation
before we return to Paul's comments
because I think it will help us
keep this passage in perspective.
Whether we recognize it or not,
everyone of us will spend our entire adult lives
involved in some sort of internal warfare.
That warfare is going on this very minute
inside every one of us here this morning.
There is a warfare surrounding our weaknesses.
There is a warfare surrounding our areas of pain.
There is a warfare surrounding our fears.
The warfare itself is a given,
a nonnegotiable part of life.
None of us have the option of choosing
whether or not we fight.
But all of us are given the choice
of deciding what we will fight for.
And let me see if I can explain
what I'm trying to say
and then I'll bring it back to our study of
Philippians.
I'll take the area of our weaknesses as an example.
Every one of us
have certain areas in our lives
where we are especially vulnerable
to moral failure...to sin.
The specific areas that afflict each of us
differ from person to person.
With one person its anger,
with another bitterness,
with others its some form of addictive
behavior -
alcoholism
sexual addictions
drug addictions
and on and on.
We could spend hours debating
why those areas exist,
whether they have a genetic base,
or whether they are a product of our home
environment,
or whether they come from some other
source or cause.
But when all those debates are finished
the fact still remains
that each of us possess some area of
weakness.
Those weaknesses create areas of warfare
in each of our lives.
Because they are inconsistent
with the person God designed us to be
they create within us tremendous tension,
tension that demands some kind of resolution
within us.
We have to do something with it.
That's warfare.
That's a given in each of our lives.
EX
When I was in my mid 20's
I was living in Seattle
and I found what I though was
a great buy on a house on Queen Ann
Hill.
I bought it without researching it very well,
and after I got into it
I noticed that the dinning room floor had a
definite down hill slope to it.
When I looked into it
I discovered that
the foundation in that corner of the house
was gradually sinking
because the hill itself was gradually eroding,
and the house had already been jacked
up and rebraced several times.
I also discovered that the wiring was ancient
and the water main into the house was broken.
It was an exciting 1st time introduction
into home ownership.
The foundation,
the wiring,
and the plumbing were "givens" -
they were facts about my house
I had to accept and deal with somehow.
Each of us have in our lives
some areas of bad wiring,
some broken pipes,
some parts of our foundation
that are really weak.
We do not have the option
of choosing whether or not we fight.
But we do have a choice
about what we fight for.
And I think we have three possible options:
1. We can choose to invest our efforts
into hiding from our weaknesses.
If we choose that route
that then becomes our battle of choice.
The potential hiding places are endless,
but they all require effort
and determination.
We can hide in a frantic work schedule
that just doesn't allow any time
for troublesome relationships
or difficult issues,
or we can hide in some form of entertainment,
or recreation,
and so forth.
2. Or we can choose to rationalize
and justify our areas of weakness.
We may talk confidently
about our right to choose
any lifestyle we want.
We may boldly proclaim the distinctions
between our public and private lives.
We may tell ourselves and others that
as long as our actions don't hurt any one else
there is nothing wrong with them.
But the bottom line is that
we have chosen to invest our efforts
into some form of justifying
or rationalizing
or defending our areas of weakness.
That is the battle we choose to fight.
That is what absorbs our efforts
and our energies
and our mental and emotional powers.
3. And then there are those
who choose to fight for health
and for freedom -
not the freedom to do whatever we want,
but the freedom
that can only come
from breaking the power
of the weaknesses in their lives.
These are the ones
who invest their efforts
and their energies
and their learning
and their churning
into facing their areas of
weakness honestly,
and then turning to God
for strength
and courage
and insight
into how to bring healing
where once there was only
sickness and disease.
I've brought all of this up
because I have recently discovered in myself
another misconception
and it helps me to put it into words.
In the past I have always thought
that there were those who fought
moral battles,
and those who chose not to fight.
But the truth is every one of us fights.
It's just that most people invest their efforts into
defending
and justifying
and rationalizing their sin,
telling themselves
and their world over and over again
why it doesn't matter,
or why they have every right
to live any way that want to live.
Such battles
take a tremendous amount of energy,
but outside of the healing power of Christ,
there are no other options.
But once Christ enters our lives
and we begin to yield
leadership into His hands,
He offers us the hope of change.
He loves us far too much
to allow us to continue living in our
bondage,
and under His leadership
He shows us how to invest that same effort
into fighting for righteousness in our lives.
When Paul writes his letter to the Philippians
he is writing to those who have chosen to fight
for health,
offering them powerful weapons for the
warfare.
And last week we looked at the first weapon Paul
offers us in this section of his letter:
Phil. 4:4 ¶ Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I will say, rejoice!
In that study we saw the first great choice
our Lord calls us to make -
the choice to affirm the absolute goodness of
our God.
He words it carefully
so that we understand
he is not calling us to rejoice in what our God
has done.
We are to rejoice in HIM,
in who He is.
True Biblical faith
is choosing to forfeit my desire
to pass judgement of the goodness of God on
the basis of the circumstances around me.
True faith begins with my affirmation
of the absolute goodness of God
and then seeks to recognize that goodness
in the circumstances of my life.
If Paul would have based his evaluation of the
goodness of God
on how the circumstances of his life were going
he would have seen a God
who allowed him to be imprisoned,
who permitted him to suffer loneliness,
who failed to deliver him
from those who accused him falsely.
But Paul began not with his circumstances
but with his knowledge
of who God was
as a result of what God had revealed
about Himself through Christ.
And from there he understood
that the question was not
"what are my circumstances?",
but rather, "Is my God adequate for my needs
no matter what those circumstances may be?"
And on that basis
Paul proclaims YES!
Rom. 8:31 ¶ What then shall we say to
these things? If God is for us, who is
against us?
Rom. 8:32 He who did not spare His own
Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how
will He not also with Him freely give us all
things?
Rom. 8:33 Who will bring a charge against
God's elect? God is the one who justifies;
Rom. 8:34 who is the one who condemns?
Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather
who was raised, who is at the right hand
of God, who also intercedes for us.
Rom. 8:35 Who will separate us from the
love of Christ? Will tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Rom. 8:36 Just as it is written, " For Your
sake we are being put to death all day
long; We were considered as sheep to be
slaughtered."
Rom. 8:37 But in all these things we
overwhelmingly conquer through Him who
loved us.
Rom. 8:38 For I am convinced that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor powers,
Rom. 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor any
other created thing, will be able to separate
us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul rejoiced in his Lord
not because his circumstances
were going the way he wanted them to go,
but rather because
he knew no circumstances
could ever separate him from God's
love,
or from God's presence with him.
Let me see if I can simplify it.
The first step in surviving the hard times in our
lives
is beginning each day
by reminding ourselves once again
that our God is good,
and that our God loves us,
and that our God is adequate for
whatever we face this day.
Which, of course, is exactly the opposite
of what satan will be saying to you.
You see, there are certain types of lies
that we are especially vulnerable to
during the winters
and the prisons of our lives.
They are lies that are aimed
directly at the character of our God
and His heart attitude toward us.
And the lies go like this.
We wake up in the morning
and before we even have our eyes
fully opened
we feel that dread,
or that fear,
or that loneliness,
or that anxiety inside us.
And then once again
we remember why.
We remember the circumstances in our lives
that are creating that dread,
or that fear,
or that pain.
And it is at that point
that we are most vulnerable to the lie.
That's when Satan comes along side us
and says,
"If God really loved you,
He would never have allowed you
to be in this prison.
If He had really forgiven you
He would not inflict this pain on you.
If He was really pleased with you,
if He truly delighted in you as His child,
He would not let this storm continue on in
your life,
He would not let this winter,
this frozen, endless nothingness go on and on and
on.
If you'd behaved better,
if you hadn't sinned
this would not be happening to you."
In other words,
during the hard times in life
Satan will try to get us to evaluate
what our God is like
or what His true attitude toward us
really is
by getting us to look at our circumstances,
and then reaching our conclusions about God
on the basis of what we see.
The day I was writing up these notes
I took my truck out in the morning
and turned my lights on.
When I got home
I forgot to turn them off.
A few hours later I went out and found my battery
was absolutely dead.
If I followed Satan's logic
I would look at that and think to myself,
"Well, God must be irritated with me today.
I wonder which of my failures
has ticked Him off."
But when Paul offers us these survival tools for the
hard times in our lives,
the very first thing he says is don't begin by
looking at your circumstances,
begin by looking at your God.
Look at His love for you.
Look at His kindness to you in Christ.
Look at the way He has removed forever
your debt of sin
so that it would never again separate
you from His love.
Look at His commitment to work all things together
for good in your life.
Look at His promise that He will never leave
you,
and never ever forsake you.
Satan's goal is obvious -
during the hard times in our lives,
he wants us to begin our day
by looking at our circumstances
so that we will then hide from our God
in fear.
Paul presents the alternative.
Paul offers us the truth.
He says, don't begin the day
by looking at your circumstances,
begin by looking at your God,
and keep looking until you once again
see Him correctly,
and then Rejoice in the Lord,
knowing He loves you,
He's with you,
and He will carry you through the
day ahead.
The first and most crucial tool for survival
during the hard times in our lives
is to Rejoice in the Lord always,
and again I will say, rejoice!
I want you to know I really had planned
to take us into verse 5 today,
but we have next week for that.