10-20-13 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 you 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!

Now I hope you don’t misunderstand me here.

I’m a fierce 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

that 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 was 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 of other New Testament writers.

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 our 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, let’s 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’s right and good for us to rejoice

in the things God does for us,

and to express our gratitude to Him.

But that’s 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 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’s like

on the basis of how we think He’s handling

the external circumstances of our lives.

I saw a quotation on the internet a while back

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 weeks or 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 the 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 eternally and absolutely GOOD,

and because He is absolutely GOOD,

anything we choose to place into His hands

He will turn to absolute good in our lives,

not like some kind of magic trick

in which the evil instantly disappears,

but more like a child in deep pain

reaching out to his daddy

and finding his daddy picking him up in his arms

and holding him close through the pain

as step-by-step

He carries his child through whatever they need to go through,

breaking the power of the evil that wars against them

through the absolute certainty and reality

of the Father’s love for His child

and presence with Him every step of the way.