11-24-13The Lord is Near

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.

If you are God’s child

you know far more truth

than you think you know.

There are two very different forms of communication

that take place between God

and His people.

The type of communication

we are most aware of

is the conscious, intellectual communication of ideas,

a communication in which we expose ourselves

to the concepts

and the truths

and the history

and the life examples presented to us by God in His Word.

This is the heart of that learning process

in which we slowly,

gradually restructure our thinking

and reasoning patterns

so that they increasingly align themselves more accurately

with the way things really are.

This is the process Paul talks about

in Romans 12:2

when he says:

Rom. 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

It’s that process Paul urged Timothy

to give himself to wholeheartedly,

challenging him to:

2 Tim. 2:15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.

It’s this same learning process

Peter called all Christians to

in that remarkable passage

in II Peter 1 where he outlined

the progressive steps of growth

God leads us through in our Christian lives...

2 Pet. 1:5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge;

2 Pet. 1:6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness;

2 Pet. 1:7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

2 Pet. 1:8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

...and to your moral excellence add knowledge...

This learning process -

this process of mind-to-mind,

the mind of God to the mind of Man,

is the process with which we are most familiar,

and most comfortable,

the one we understand the best.

But it is not the only one presented in Scripture,

nor is it the one that may have

the most significant impact

on the child of God.

There is another form of communication

between God and man

that serves a vital role

in the life of the Christian.

It is not the mind-to-mind communication,

but rather the Spirit-to-spirit communication.

It is that special means of communication

in which God tells our spirit

things our mind may not yet have heard

or may have heard

but not yet understood

or believed.

Paul talks about this kind of communication in Rom. 8:16

when he says,

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God...

He also talks about this Spirit-to-spirit communication

earlier in the book of Romans

in Rom. 5:5

when tells us that “...the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

In his first letter

John refers to this special Spirit-to-spirit learning process

with a rather remarkable statement

when he says in 1 John 2:20-21

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know.

I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

He tells us that

because we each possess

an anointing from God

we ALL KNOW.

Know what?

Well, we just know...in our spirit we know the truth of the reality of our God.

And then he goes on to say

that it is because we already

know the truth in our spirit

that he now writes to communicate that truth to our minds.

In other words,

his goal is to communicate to our minds

truths that our spirits already know.

Have you ever noticed

the way in which some apparently simple truth from Scripture

can suddenly touch you in a way

that just seems to transform your whole outlook on life?

It deeply affects your emotions

as well as your thinking and reasoning processes.

You find yourself saying to yourself,

“WOW! How could I not have seen this before?

This is incredible!

This is fantastic!

This changes everything!”

And then you try to share

what you’ve just discovered

with someone else

and it doesn’t seem to affect them at all.

I believe those learning experiences

that have such power in our lives

happen when our mind

suddenly grasps some important truth

that our spirit already knows.

Our thinking, reasoning processes

finally line up with a piece of truth

God’s Spirit has already told our spirit,

and the effect is like

getting the two lenses

of a pair of binoculars

the right distance apart

and suddenly we SEE!

Suddenly what was all just a fuzzy blur

comes into razor sharp focus

and both our mind and our spirit cries out WOW!

Would you like some examples

of things I believe

God has already told the spirits

of every one of His children?

1. Your spirit knows that you have peace with God.

Through Christ the battle is over.

Your mind may very likely

still be wrestling with fear

or anxiety

or apprehension,

not at all sure whether or not

you’re really on solid footing with your Creator,

but your spirit knows the truth.

2. Your spirit knows that righteousness is your friend,

and moral integrity and purity

is your strong and solid footing in life.

Your mind and your emotions

are very likely still fighting lies

about whether or not your needs

can truly be met within God’s protective moral framework,

but your spirit knows the truth.

3. Your spirit knows that God holds you

and your future secure

in the palm of His hand,

and that nothing and no one

can ever remove you from His love or from His care.

Your mind is very likely

still living in a world of fear,

and anxiety,

and stress,

and confusion,

grateful for what God has done in the past,

but unsure as to whether

He fully understands the world economic turmoil

or whether He cares about your little tiny life enough to be involved.

But your spirit knows the truth.

4. Your spirit knows that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Your spirit knows that now,

in Christ,

God is not after you,

He’s for you,

with you,

beside you,

in you.

Your mind, on the other hand,

may very likely still be playing hide and seek with God,

assuming He’s mad at you,

expecting His irritated slap

if you get Him ticked.

And the heart of Christian growth

is the process of allowing our Lord

to lead us through the sometimes painful process

of bringing our minds

and our emotions more in line

with the truth our spirits already know.

I brought all of this up

because we are returning today

to our study of a passage in which

Paul lists for us

a number of truths our spirits already know.

But they may sound strange to our minds

given the nature of the context

in which Paul presents these truths.

You see, we have been studying

the New Testament book of Philippians,

a book,

or really a letter written by Paul

to help equip Christians

for the hard times in our lives.

It was written by Paul

when he himself was in prison in Rome.

He’d been in prison

for several years,

waiting for his trial

that could easily result in his own immediate execution.

He’d lost his freedom,

he’d lost contact with nearly all of his friends,

he’d lost the illusion of control

over his own life,

and his own future.

Throughout our study of this book

we have called it the book

for the winters

and the prisons of our lives.

A book for the times when we hurt.

Those times in our lives

have some special risks to them.

The voice of PAIN

can be a very loud voice,

so loud that it becomes more difficult

to close that gap

between what our spirits know

and what our minds believe.

You see,

our spirits know the truth,

they know a God of infinite compassion,

and love,

and kindness,

and strength.

But when PAIN intrudes into our world

at first it can make it difficult

for us to hear with our minds

those things our spirits already know.

But here is the truly amazing thing,

the thing Paul has been illustrating

with every word he’s written

in this remarkable little letter,

the thing he wants us to understand

about the pain in our own lives -

when properly understood

the pain and suffering we encounter in this life

will provide us

with the highest platform

we will ever possess

for proclaiming to our world the love

and the kindness

and the faithfulness of our God.

And that’s the message we have seen

the Apostle Paul illustrating

throughout this whole letter to the Philippians.

He himself is suffering in prison

and yet this letter contains

the clearest, most powerful affirmation

and celebration of God’s goodness

found anywhere in Paul’s writings.

The single verse

that summarizes everything Paul is saying here,

the one that contains the phrase

he has repeated again and again

throughout the letter,

is the first verse

in the passage we have been studying most recently,

Phil. 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!

In this passage

Paul is taking the heart of all he has been saying through this letter

and distilling it down into a series

of short, powerful statements.

He wants to make sure

we understand the message

he’s been presenting throughout the letter.

So far in our study of this section

we’ve looked at the first two

of those summery statements.

The first one I just read for us:

Phil. 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!

The second one we looked at last week:

Phil. 4:5 Let your gentle (or forbearing) spirit be known to all men.

And in our closing few minutes today

I want to share with you the third statement

in this remarkable list

of survival tools for hard times in our lives.

It takes up just four words

in the New American Standard translation,

found at the end of verse 4:5.

It says simply,

The Lord is near.

If this verse were to appear on the TV game show, Jeopardy,

I can tell you what the correct question would be.

The question would be,

“Where is God when it hurts?”

The Lord is near.

It will help if you know

that the Greek word Paul selected

for that word we translate as “near”

has a double meaning in Greek.

It means both near in place

and near in time.

And as Paul has used the word

here in Philippians

it is impossible to tell

which meaning he intended.

I believe that was by design,

because I believe he had both of them in mind.

First of all He wanted our minds to know

that the entrance of pain into our lives

does not mean

we have been abandoned by our God.

Far from it!

In fact, Paul just states the truth

right up front -

your Lord is right here,

going through this with you,

right now and forever.

Wherever you’re going in the future,

whatever darkness you will need to face,

your God is already there.

He can and He will

be both your strength and your hope

for whatever you face.

I have been near more than a little pain in my 66 years on this earth,

some of it my own,

some of it in the lives of those close to me.

And it has never ceased to amaze and encourage me

to see the way the spirit of the Christian responds to suffering.

Rather than driving us away from God,

it creates within us

an intense awareness of our need for Him

and a deep longing to be close to Him

and to draw strength from Him.

When Sandee and I returned from our aborted vacation in Hawaii this past winter

I shared a little with you

some of the events that led to our early return.

Sandee was not feeling great before we left,

but two days after we got to Kona

she grew so weak that it took all of her strength

just to move from the bed to the couch.

I have such a vivid memory of the worst of those days.

I remember sitting in the late afternoon

at the end of the couch where Sandee was sleeping,

watching her, listening to her breath as she slept,

with absolutely no idea what to do.

I sat there for the next several hours,

and the room grew darker and darker as the sun droped below the horizon

until I realized that I was sitting in near darkness.

I was immersed in pain, and fear, and helplessness,

and yet even in that darkness

I knew with absolute certainty

that my Lord was there with me,

and my spirit held on to Him as my only hope.

He got us out of there,

He got us home,

and He rebuilt health and stability into our lives,

but we both came through that darkness

knowing as we’ve never known before

that wherever we are,

our God is there with us,

and wherever we’re going

our God is already there, making a way, preparing for our arrival.

Where is God when it hurts?

Where is God when we cannot control

the things going on around us

or the things going on inside of us?

Well, the Lord is near...

He’s right there with us

in the darkness,

and when the sun sets in our world

it doesn’t set in our spirit

and He will always give us the light we need

to see the next step we need to take.

We can and often do ask the question,

“WHY?”

Why did this happen?

It’s a question for which we occasionally find an answer,

or a piece of one.

But there is another question

for which the Christian always finds an answer.

“Lord, where are you in all of this?”

The Lord is near.

In fact, I noticed something when I was getting ready for this morning

that I’d never seen before.

As you know,

the New Testament is filled

with hundreds of promises

God has made to His people,

promises that touch every aspect of our lives.

But do you know what the very first promise was

that the risen Christ made to His Church?

His first promise is recorded for us

in Matthew 28:20,

He said, “... and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The Lord is near.

But there is a second meaning to that sentence as well.

For not only is His presence near,

but so is His deliverance.

And here again Paul is seeking to disarm

one of the weapons Satan uses against us when we hurt.

It’s a lie,

but one that we are especially vulnerable to during hard times.

It’s the lie that nothing will ever change.

It is a lie designed to destroy our hope.

And Paul wants that lie defeated.

He wants us to know

that not only is our God with us,

but He is also fighting for us,

making for us a way in the wilderness.

The Word of God

is filled with this truth.

Ps. 109:31 For He stands at the right hand of the needy, To save him from those who judge his soul.

Ps. 138:7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies, And Your right hand will save me.

Is. 59:1 Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear.

And in the New Testament

Peter said it so well.

1 Pet. 5:6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,

1 Pet. 5:7 casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.

1 Pet. 5:8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

1 Pet. 5:9 But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.

1 Pet. 5:10 After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.

1 Pet. 5:11 To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.

The Lord is near.