©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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8/2299
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All Your Needs Pt. 5
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Philippians 4:19
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8/22/99 All Your Needs Pt. 5
Phil. 4:19 And my God will supply all your
needs according to His riches in glory in
Christ Jesus.
We have spent the past four weeks
getting a running start at this single statement
made by Paul in his closing comments
in the letter he wrote
to his friends at Philippi.
Mostly what we've done so far
is to look at some of the reasons why
we have trouble understanding this statement
correctly.
Throughout the past few weeks
I shared with you the first five difficulties
that occurred to me
as soon as I began preparing for our
study of this verse together.
#1. When we come to Christ
we bring with us a need framework
based upon our flesh-trained
mental and emotional operating
systems.
#2. We also bring with us
a basic distrust of God and His intentions
toward us.
#3. We bring our fears
based upon all those areas
where we have seen other people fail us in
the past.
#4. We all carry with us
a personal list of "non-negotiables",
things that we believe
God cannot be allowed to mess with
if we are to be truly happy.
#5. And then the last problem area I mentioned
in our attempts to understand this statement in
Phil. 4:19
is the fact that when we come to Christ
we all bring with us
our external-based techniques
for establishing and maintaining
our self-identity.
We have certain things in our lives
we are using to tell us who we are,
things that we use to make us feel
significant,
important,
valuable.
Many of those voices are helpful tools
used by our Lord
to confirm the truth
He Himself is telling us about
ourselves.
But Some of those voices
are destructive hiding places
that our Lord must silence
before we can hear His voice.
Now all five of those issues
exert tremendous pressure
on our needs agenda.
By that I mean that
when we hear Paul saying:
... my God will supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ
Jesus...
our concept of what those needs are
and what we believe
God is committing Himself to
is determined by all of those factors
we have been looking at
during the past few weeks.
In that mix
we have some things
we are frantically clinging to,
absolutely convinced
that we MUST have them
in order for our lives to be livable at any level.
We also have goals we are pursuing,
believing that when we achieve them
we will find the kind and quality of life
that will bring us happiness
and security
and inner peace.
We rarely think about these things consciously.
But they are the unquestioned
fundamental assumptions of our lives.
Years ago I saw a cartoon somewhere
of a Boy Scout Master
preparing a young scout
for his first overnight hike.
The Scout Master was saying to the boy,
"When we hit the trail
we carry everything we need on our backs,
and we just take with us
the bare essentials for life."
Then the cartoonist showed a picture
of the mental image that statement created in the
boy's mind.
And in his mind,
strapped to his back he saw
a refrigerator,
and a big screen TV,
and a computer,
and a telephone,
and all kinds of electronic games and
food.
Now I am in no way suggesting
that God's commitment to us
to meet our needs
is a commitment that limits itself
to the bare essentials of life.
Far from it.
He Himself is the one who said,
John 10:10 "...I came that they might have
life, and might have it abundantly."
It is impossible for Him
to love us perfectly as He does
without that love motivating Him
to seek for us the life
that He knows will bring about
within us
a deep sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.
But I mention that cartoon
because I know that the same kind of
miscommunication
takes place between us and our God
when He commits Himself
to meeting our needs.
The absolute,
bottom-line essentials for our happiness
that we come up with
are so far from what we really need
that it's like we and our Lord are
talking different languages.
Now, to help us find some solid ground with this
remarkable statement
here in Philippians 4:19
I want to offer you the conclusions I have
reached at this point in my life
about what I believe God is saying.
And maybe it will help
if I number each statement
so that you can better keep track
of what I'm trying to say.
#1. The first thing I would mention
is to restate something we got into
during our discussion
following the teaching last week,
and that is to point out
that there are no qualifying limitations
placed on the word "needs" in this verse.
In other words,
it doesn't matter why those needs
exist within our lives.
Some of the needs we face
are ours simply because we are human beings.
We have physical needs -
food, water, shelter, warmth.
We have emotional and psychological needs -
love,
friendship,
a sense of security, and so forth.
But we also have a whole bunch of needs
that exist within us
as a direct result of our own sins and wrong
choices.
Every one of us have at times
made ourselves more needy
because our own wrong choices
have complicated our lives.
The source of our needs
is simply not an issue to God.
His commitment is to US,
just as we are.
He makes no distinction between
needs we brought on ourselves
because of our sinfulness,
and "legitimate" needs
that are simply ours
because of our humanness.
The truth is
every single need we have
has in some way been affected,
and corrupted,
and distorted by our sinfulness
or the sinfulness of others.
The world God originally designed for us
met man's needs perfectly and flawlessly.
It provided Adam and Eve
with everything they needed
for a perfect life.
Even the weather
was so perfectly regulated
that they didn't even need clothing.
They had perfect love relationships
both with God
and with one another,
uncomplicated by sin.
But when man sinned
it affected not just man
but our entire world environment.
Part of the curse brought upon us
as a result of our sin
was a tension between us
and the physical world.
Thorns and thistles,
cold and heat,
hurricanes and tornados,
pain in childbirth,
fear,
anger,
and resentment in human relationships -
all of that and much more
are a direct result of man's sin.
My point is simply this -
God's commitment to us
assumes a heritage of sin
and all that comes with it,
and in fact
it is because of that sin
that Christ has done what He has done for
us.
By removing from us
our personal liability for our sin
He made it possible for us to enter into the
beginning of a recreation process
in which He will eventually
restore all things back to the
perfection we lost when we sinned.
He doesn't just forgive us,
He recreates us in Christ.
Let me make it clear and simple:
even the needs you have caused within yourself
through your own sin
are included in Philippians 4:19.
#2. The beginning of understanding
what God is saying when He says
"I will supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ
Jesus..."
is understanding that what we need
most
is God Himself.
If we were not "in church" right now,
and we were not studying THE BIBLE!
and I were to ask you
what you thought you needed most right
now
in order to be truly happy,
what would you say?
We would probably get as many different answers
as we have people here.
"I need to be popular in school."
"I need to make the starting team this year."
"I need a girlfriend."
"I need a boyfriend."
"I need a husband."
"I need a wife."
"I need a child."
"I need to get these bills paid."
"I need a job."
"I need a different job."
"I need to retire."
"I need to win the lottery."
"I need to conquer this addiction."
"I need forgiveness."
"I need freedom from this physical problem."
"I need to be healed."
What I am going to tell you right now
I believe to be the beginning
of all true understanding
both of this verse,
and of ourselves.
It doesn't make any difference
how old you are,
whether you're 12 years old
and starting Jr. High School next week,
or 15 years old
and feeling lost and alone in High School,
or 18 and wondering
what in the world you're going to do
with the future stretching out before you.
You can be male or female,
married or single,
25 or 45 or 65 or 80.
The one thing we need
more than anything else
for true fulfillment in life
is God Himself.
Did I lose you with what I just said?
Did a little voice inside you just say,
"Yea! That's just the type of thing
some old, grey, balding guy would say.
When I'm that near the grave
I'll start looking for God too."
Well, let me just say that
no matter what age you are,
if you don't think Jesus Christ
is what you're really looking for,
then you don't know Jesus Christ.
And let me qualify this a little more
by saying that I am not talking about
any religious system,
I'm talking about
the personal presence of Christ Himself.
Nor am I talking about
what Christ can do for us,
or what we think He might be able to do for
us.
I'm not saying we need Christ
because He can heal us.
Or we need Christ
because He can deliver us
from this pain we're in.
Or we need Christ
because He will then
fix what's broken in our lives.
What I'm saying here
is the simple fact of human existence,
that what we long for the most,
and what our spirit truly hungers for
more than everything else combined
is the personal presence
and loving, living reality of our
Creator in our lives
on a minute by minute basis.
The greatest need we will ever have
is our need for our Lord Jesus Christ.
And much of what God does
when He commits Himself to supplying all
our needs according to His riches in glory
in Christ Jesus,
is to restructure
the lives of His people
is such a way as to bring us into that
understanding.
There are times when it will appear as though
God is failing miserably
in His commitment to meet
what we believe to be our needs.
But He will be doing it
because of what He knows
will take place between us and Him
as a result.
EX. I spent the summer of 1968
on the Caribbean Island of Trinidad
with an evangelistic team
made up mostly of college students.
At the time
I had been a Christian
for a little over a year and a half.
The eight weeks I spent on Trinidad that summer
were in many respects
the most difficult,
painful eight weeks
I'd ever lived up to that point in my life.
I existed in an almost total emotional isolation
during the whole time I was there.
Of the eight members on our team
I was the only one
who was not from a pentecostal church
background.
When my fellow teammates found this out
several of them took me on
as their supreme missions challenge for the
summer,
fervently hoping to pray,
and debate,
and discuss me into their doctrinal bent.
But it's very hard to be good friends
with someone you're trying to conquer,
or someone
who's trying to conquer you,
and the end result
was that I spent the entire two months as an
emotional outcast.
Then the organization I went out with
failed to allow enough money
for sufficient food for us.
I lost nearly 20 pounds
in eight weeks
simply because I wasn't getting enough to
eat.
Have you ever seen those movies
about prisoners in isolation
who develop friendships
with the rats
and the insects in their cells?
At one place we stayed that summer
there was a huge cockroach
that lived behind the sink.
I can remember waiting for him to come out when I
was shaving in the morning.
To my credit
I never actually viewed the roach as a friend,
but I never had any desire to kill him either.
Now tell me,
how could a God
who says that He will supply all my
needs according to His riches in glory in
Christ Jesus
place me into that kind of situation?
No friends...
not enough food...
half sick from the heat and the water most of
the time...
But, you know,
something else happened that summer too.
My God became real to me
in ways He had never been real before.
Each morning when I opened my eyes
I would plead with Him to give me the strength
to get up and go through another day.
And each day He did just exactly that.
And throughout the summer
He found ways
of communicating His deep personal love
for me as His child.
He was with me
and He was enough.
Now, He did not leave me in that pain for long.
During most of my life since then
He has met both my physical and emotional
needs
in tremendous abundance.
But I know with absolute certainty
that there was a time in my life
when God intentionally withheld
everything I thought I needed for
happiness
so that I could discover
that what I needed most of all was Him,
and that if all I had was Him,
then it was enough.
The beginning of all true understanding
of God's assurance that He will supply all
our needs according to His riches in glory
in Christ Jesus
is understanding that
what we need more than everything else
is God Himself.
Now, we aren't done with this verse yet.
I have one more step I want to take us through
before we finish.
But we'll save that for next week.