A Benediction For 2025... And 2026

Good morning. Today's last sermon of the year

and we want to go out with a bang.

We want to go out with a bang. It's also the first sermon as we

lead towards the new year, the 2026, and we want to start off

with a bang. The idea of starting with a bang

and ending with a bang are both ideas that come from the idea of

a race or a competition or something like that.

So you've got a large field or something along those lines and

you want to get people going started at the same time.

You want to end at the same time.

So you have a starter gun or a beat, a drum or something like

that. You have a Big Bang at the

beginning, a Big Bang at the end.

In order to get going, we do that same kind of an imagery

with the benediction, which is what comes at the end of every

worship service. At the end of every worship

service, we try to do a benediction.

That is, we try to end with a Big Bang, try to send things off

in that regard. Over the past seven years, while

I've been pastor here, I have ended each year with a

benediction sermon. I believe I haven't missed one

of them. And I've, what I've done is I've

taken the benediction that we've used throughout the year as

closing out our worship service and use it time to close out the

year and also to launch us into the next year.

And so we're about to look at a benediction.

And then the point of this is to say, Hey, how do we understand

what God has done in 2025? Just like the benediction at the

end of a worship service is supposed to summarize the

worship service. It's supposed to be God's last

good word to us as we go out into the day.

So what, what have we done during this worship service?

Well, the benediction kind of summarizes that for us.

And then also at the start of the new year, at the start as we

go out into this world after the worship service, well, what's

the, what are we supposed to do in the upcoming week?

We have in being launched into the world, we are launched with

this benediction. Well, we are going to do the

same thing here today, but kind of encapsulate the whole year.

What is the year 2025 been like? How do we close out 25 with a

bang? And especially then, how do we

start 26 with a bang? And we are going to look at a

familiar benediction. It should be somewhat familiar

to those of you who worship frequently with us because I

have attempted over the past number of months here to close

each worship service that we've had with this particular

benediction. And as always, I like the

imagery of standing when the Lord speaks to us.

So if you are able, please stand for the word of the Lord from

Philippians chapter 4, verse 7. And the peace of God, which

Philippians 4:7

surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your

minds in Christ Jesus. Once again, the peace of God,

which surpasses all understanding will guard your

hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

My friends, this is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Dear Lord and Father, we do pray

that You would bless us with the ability to understand these

words, not just intellectually, but to understand them deep in

our hearts so that we might be transformed by it.

Lord, You have given Your word to us so that we might be made

new, more and more shaped into the image of Your Son.

So make it so, we pray through Christ our Lord, we ask, Amen.

Please be seated. So the benediction, the peace of

God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your

hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I hope you can see the appropriateness of the song that

Brendan LED us through right here right before the sermon.

It fits very well with this. As a matter of fact, it's it

fits so well that at the end of the sermon, I'm going to ask

Brendan to do it again. Sorry, I had to check to make

sure he was OK with that. He stuck his thumb in the air.

So here's the reason why this benediction, I think fits so

well for us today. Some of it is context.

If you have your Bibles or your phones available, you can find

out in verse 6 that the verse immediately preceding this verse

which talks about the peace of God, which surpasses all

understanding, which guards our hearts and our minds in Christ

Jesus. The immediate verse before that

talks about do not be anxious, do not be anxious about anything

but in prayer and petition. Bring your request anything.

Make your request made known to God.

Do not be anxious about anything because and then the point of

verse 7. The peace of God will guard your

hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

And So what we want to do is check to make sure that

everybody here has had and they can identify a moment of anxiety

in their life, perhaps sometime over this past year, if maybe

you can expect or anticipate that there will be a moment of

anxiety in the year 2026. And how does God speak to us in

light of such a persistent concern that so many of us

experience rather frequently these momentary bouts of

anxiety? Well, this benediction, and now

a benediction is a good word. That's a Latin for good word.

And the idea is it's the last good word of the year.

So what what I'm trying to accomplish here with this

benediction is to say, look, regardless of what happened in

your past year and if your year was like mine, it had some ups

and it had some downs. It was chaos.

It was filled with trauma. It's filled filled with

difficulties. It was also filled with joys and

blessings. What's the best way to look at

it? Well, what I'm suggesting is

that this benediction wrapping up the year is the way in which

I hope God allows you to think about this past year.

Not only that, how do you look at the year ahead as we are sent

forth into this world, As we're sent forth into this upcoming

year, how do we anticipate or think through what God has had

planned for us? I think wrapping yourself and

starting your idea with this benediction is a great way to do

it. Now Why so do not be anxious

about anything in light of the struggles and and of course

there are levels of anxiety there can rise to a significant

mental issue. It can be a temporary issue for

us. It can be an acute, it can be

chronic. All of these different ideas,

but certainly all of us have some experience with what it

means to be anxious in light of that here.

This promise, the peace of God, which surpasses all

understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ

Jesus, the peace of God. Now, whenever we talk about

peace in church settings, you always have to warn against the

marshmallow spirituality. A marshmallow spirituality is

one of those things that, Gee, it kind of looks good and it's

there and it's look nice and fluffy and it's all, you know,

kind of sugary and stuff like that.

But let's face it, there's very little substance there.

And that's, I think a lot of times when we talk about peace

of God, when we talk about peace of God as believers, we can be

slipped, we can slip into this idea of this marshmallow

spirituality where what are we talking about?

Well, we're talking about something cute and sweet and and

nice, but really lacks any serious substance.

It lacks any concrete idea. Well, this verse plays out a

concrete idea of the peace of God for us in such a way that I

hope that it will serve as a way for you to think about your past

year and also for how you think about this upcoming year, the

peace of God. Now, if you've been around

church for very frequently, we have at this church commented a

couple of times over this past year and before that about what

we're talking about when we when we talk about peace.

Peace is a very loaded biblical term.

For most of us, especially coming out of the Christmas

season, peace is the absence of conflict.

If you got through your Christmas Day without fighting

with your siblings or something along those lines, that was a

peaceful time. So it's peace is measured by the

fact that, you know, there wasn't too much chaos going on.

Good. That's a peaceful moment.

That's the way in which we tend to use peace as a contrast to

conflict. So you've got war and you've got

peace, you've got the, you know, difficulties, you've got a

peaceful time, etcetera, etcetera.

So we tend to think of peace just in that format.

So if you think of the peace of God in that regard, you're

thinking in terms of, well, things are peaceful, they're

steady, they're non conflictual, but it biblically peace means so

much more than that. Peace is caught is tied to the

Hebrew concept of Shalom. The Hebrew concept of Shalom is

1 where we talk about a wholeness or a completeness or a

fullness. It's a satisfying your, your

purpose in creation. What did God create for you?

When you are satisfying that purpose, then you are at peace.

It doesn't mean the absence of conflict because conflict

actually can happen in the midst or can be swirling around you.

Chaos can't happen around you. And it's something I think we're

going to see in a few minutes here.

Conflict can be happening, and yet the peace of God can be

present because there can be that sense of a wholeness, A

satisfaction, A completeness that takes place across the

board with a person. And here I think you see it.

But notice that we're not talking about peace.

We're talking about the peace of God, Peace of God.

Now, I think that there's a number of different ways you can

understand that phrase. We can understand it, I think,

in in two ways that both make some sense to us.

It's the peace from God. It's the peace that God gives.

And so when we're talking about a wholeness, completeness,

satisfaction, a way of being true to what God has created you

to be, the peace from God is that sense and awareness that

you are completely fitting into God's purpose for your life at

this particular moment. It's a satisfaction.

It's a sense and awareness that, hey, I am doing that which God

has created me to do. That's the kind of peace that

comes from God. But the peace of God is also the

peace that belongs to God. It's the peace that he has.

Now picture for a second anxiety, because again, this is

happening within the context of being anxious.

And God, God is utterly and completely devoid of anxiety.

He is so because he holds the future.

He there, there is no doubt in our Lord, there is no confusion

in our God. And so we have the peace of God,

the peace that belongs to God, that certainty, assurance of the

God's own purpose and intent in this world that is being

communicated to us. That is what comes to us.

The peace of God is both what he has, but also what he gives to

us. So when we're talking about the

peace of God here in the midst of an anxious situation or a

troubled time, we are talking about the peace that God himself

has and possesses, that inner certainty of our Lord himself

that he communicates to his children, to his people, the

peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.

Now, just in a knee jerk sense, my guess is that both of you,

that everybody here kind of has a sense of what that means.

It's a, it's a piece of God that surpasses our understanding.

It's marvelous, it's majestic, it's wonderful.

It's beyond our understanding. And that's what the phrase

intends. But we can shorten it.

We can confuse it a little bit. I used to love going into

bookstores. I love going into bookstores

because I'd walk down all the aisles and I'd sit there and you

know, here's a military history aisle, here's a business aisle,

here's a psychology aisle and all.

And you're walking down the aisles of the bookstores and I'm

sitting there thinking, wow, all of this stuff I get to learn.

All of this stuff I get to learn because there's lots that I'm

not that I don't know, and I get to learn all this stuff.

Now I go through a bookstore. I'm depressed because I go

through, I think all this stuff that I'll never get to learn,

you know, because I'm getting too old now I won't be able to

learn all these things. We have a there, there's a

possibility that you sit and think that the peace of God,

which surpasses all understanding means that it's

that it's that it's unknown. It's a piece of God that is

unknown to our understanding that we that we don't understand

it. You know, it's like physics or

psychology or something, or intimate relations.

You know, it's, it's stuff that you can't put your finger on.

You just can't know it. It's out there, but you just

can't know it. I don't think that's what Paul's

getting at when he says here that the peace of God is beyond

surpasses our understanding. It's not that it's unknown, it's

that it's unknowable. It is far beyond what we can put

our fingers on. It's far beyond what we can

understand because it's beyond human comprehension.

We are not designed to comprehend this peace that God

gives. We are designed simply to live

in it and to experience it and to acknowledge.

Have you ever had somebody who's in the been with somebody, a

believer who's in the midst of a traumatic situation?

They're in the midst of a horrid situation and yet there is that

peace. They're exuding that peace of

God, and you sense it as a fellow believer.

You're walking with them and you're just as stunned by the

peace in which they are exuding that they're communicating.

They could be in turmoil, but they have this peace that is

communicated. If you ask them about it, I

guarantee you they'll stumble around.

They'll go well, you know, just something that God gives,

etcetera, etcetera. Why?

Because it's beyond understanding.

It's outside of our human ability to grasp, because it's a

picture of God's divine work in our lives.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard,

will guard. Now I have, if anybody's been

paying attention, my guess is nobody has.

I have shifted throughout the whole year.

I've shifted when we've delivered this benediction at

the end of every worship service.

I've shifted the modality of the verb.

All right, what does that mean? The text says that the peace of

God will guard your hearts and your minds.

At the end of every benediction. I shifted it into a benediction,

into a into a blessing to go forward.

May the Lord guard our hearts and our may the peace of the

Lord guard our hearts and our minds.

I've shifted it to a possibility, to a hope, to an

expectation of what God will do. That's not what the text says.

The text doesn't say may the peace of Lord guard your hearts

and minds. It says the peace of the Lord

will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

It is a promise that the Lord is making.

This is not something that is optional.

This is not something that we hope for.

This is not something that if I'm a good enough Christian, God

will satisfy. This is not something.

This is something that rests completely and totally with the

giver of the gift, God himself and the promises for every

believer in this room that for the past 2025 and for moving

into 2026, not that made God. Boy, I really hope God, the

peace of God, guards my heart and mind.

It is a promise that God, that the peace of God, will guard

your heart and your mind. It's not a possibility.

It is a promise from the Lord Himself.

The modality of the verb, the way in which the verb is

structured in the text, makes it clear that this is not a wish, a

hopeful expectation. This is a reality for the

believer. What's the reality that the

peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard

your hearts and your mind? Now, guarding is a military

term. Guarding.

Here we can think of guarding and somebody guarding somebody

else or something. Guarding something.

We can think of it a lot of different ways, but the text is

fairly clear that it's a military term across the board.

What we're talking about now, Philippi was a city on the top

northern Greece, and in northern Greece was close enough to the

frontier that in order to protect the city, you built a

big strong wall and then you garrisoned it with soldiers who

were responsible for guarding the population.

They guarded and protected the population by walking the

perimeter of the wall and the wall itself was this guard or

this protection for the population that lived inside.

We live in a time period where our military experiences such

with bombs and with explosives and stuff like that, that we no

longer really appreciate the impenetrability of a good stout

wall. The city would be surrounded.

So think in terms of a castle or a fortress or something like

that. Today, in today's weapons, a

castle or a fortress doesn't stand much chance.

You launch a couple bombs at it and blows the walls down and

that's it. But before the coming of bombs

and stuff like that, even with catapults and those kind of

things, a strong wall would defend the city and make it

basically impenetrable. And what God is saying here is

the peace of God will surround you, will guard you, will

protect you in such a way that nothing will penetrate it.

And this is a protection, a fortress that God is providing

around you. This is not something that you

are doing. This is not something that the

that you do because you really hope that you're capable and

strong enough to do. This is something that God

himself does, builds this hedge of protection around his people.

And it is an impenetrable hedge. And that hedge is the peace of

God itself. And so the peace of God will

guard our hearts and our minds, hearts and minds.

Again, it's a small shift, but it's an important enough one.

When we think in terms of hearts and minds, we tend to think of

the heart is the seed of the emotions.

That's where we do our emoting and our, and our feeling and

stuff like that. And our heads, our minds are, is

the seed of our intellect. It's where we we think things

through and stuff like that. And so you can read the passages

saying, you know, God's peace is guarding our and our feeling.

It's guarding our hearts and our minds and stuff like that.

But in reality, back in in the day in which the text was

written for us, hearts and minds were basically synonyms.

They largely meant the same thing.

They were talking about the inner life of the person.

What is your, what's your inner life?

Not just their feelings. That's part of it, but also

your, your will, your volition, your, your awareness, your sense

of of, of your own personality, your consciousness, your will,

your desire to do different things, your understanding of

different ideas, your wisdom. All of that is seated in the

heart. When the scriptures talk about

the heart of a man or something like that, they're not talking

about the the emotional center. They're talking about that inner

core of everything in what you're doing.

Now, Paul makes a big deal, I hear out of separating the heart

and the mind uses the different keywords that that make sure

that we realize that he's not using them as synonyms, but they

kind of function the same way. When we're talking about our

hearts being guarded, we're talking about the inner life of

the human being being guarded by God's peace.

When we're talking about the mind being guarded, that's kind

of the outworking of that inner life.

The inner life is being protected, but also the

outworkings, the way in which we are operating in light of the

inner being being at peace. And So what Paul is identifying

here is he's saying, look, because of the work of God,

because of the peace of God which surrounds your heart and

surrounds your mind, not only are you at peace inside, but

also the way in which you express, the way in which you

engage with the world around you is also at peace.

That's what it means that God's peace guards our surrounds,

protects, puts a hedge of protection around our hearts and

our minds, both who we are. Sometimes you will experience

you will interact with somebody that is showing peace on the

outside but is not peaceful on the inside.

Sometimes we. Know people that are peaceful on

the outside but may not demonstrate it on the outside.

Did I say that right? You know what, I OK, switch it

around. You know what I meant.

In any case, the point is here that Paul is saying, look,

because of the power of the peace of God, because it deals

with something that is God himself, because it is something

that he has, and he gives this inner sense of Shalom,

completeness, totality. And because he is protecting you

from that, not only is your inner being protected, but also

the way in which you present, the way in which you manifest

that on the outside that is being protected by our God.

Now doesn't that sound glorious? If that doesn't.

Sound glorious. What are you doing here?

No, that sounds glorious. That sounds wonderful.

Why in the world don't we see this?

Why are we? Not a people that this world

yearns to be like because they look and they sit and they see

us in the midst of our family turmoil and are, by the way,

when we are being guarded, when God guards us, he guards us

because there are opponents that are coming.

There is an enemy that is attacking.

There is anxiety that is coming for each of us.

There is no promise in this text, by the way, that the peace

of God will make sure that you don't experience anything

negative. It's just the opposite.

God is saying because the negative is out there because of

the trauma is coming, because of the struggles that are present,

God's peace will guard your heart and your mind.

It's not that God takes the Christian out of the troubles of

this world. God enables a Christian to live

faithfully in the midst of the troubles of this world.

So we have the troubles of the world that are coming.

And when we see the troubles of the world crashing in upon us,

why is it that the whole world doesn't sit there and think,

Man, I want to be like a Christian that is so guarded and

protected by that peace. Because the peace of God, which

surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and our

minds in Christ Jesus. In Christ.

Jesus. This is not a.

Cutesy Christian phrase that Paul just attaches to things.

This is Paul's intimate understanding of what it means

to be united with Christ, to be bonded to him, to be one with

Christ, to be so tied up with the Lord Jesus Christ that we

are understood to be at one with him, to be linked together in

such a way meaningfully that we are united with Christ.

All of that is subsumed under his little phrase in Christ

Jesus. So the in Christ Jesus is

articulating the way in which as Christians we are intended to

live. So many of us deny the length

that we are born that we are blessed with through our union

with Jesus Christ. That is, we are connected to

Him, we are united with Him, and as such, we experience this

blessed union with the Lord that needs to show itself in the way

in which He works in our lives. So often we are given a gift.

And we turn it. Away we are given the blessing,

the promise of peace, of this protective peace, and because we

do not know how to live united with Christ, in union with him,

we lose sight of that blessing that the Lord has built around

us, that protection of His goodness and His grace.

When? I read over this weekend a

series of essays over this past week, a series of essays trying

to evaluate 2025. And some of the authors were

trying to say that it was the worst year that has ever lived

in existence. And other people were arguing

that it was the best year in all existence.

And the point was to read the two articles next to each other

and see what you think. When?

You look at 2025, what do you see?

I suggest. That if you're a follower of

Jesus Christ and you are united with him, what you see is the

peace of God building that hedge of protection around your life.

You may not have lived faithfully into it.

You may not admit it, You may not embrace that hedge of

protection, but my guess is it won't take long before you see

that hedge at work when you look forward to 2026 and 2026 is

going to have all the chaos and more of 2025.

It's going to have all the joys and more as 2020, five, 2026 is

going to be a glorious mess for all of us, I guarantee it.

How do we evaluate it? How do we see it?

I think we see it within the framework of God building a

hedge of protection, this hedge of blessing around us where He

guards our hearts and our minds by his peace.

And so may the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ flow through him

into each one of us, now and forever.

Let's pray together. Gracious.

Lord, grant to us your blessing, the blessing that is

communicated here in this promise.

That the peace of. God, which surpasses all

understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ

Jesus. It is so.

Easy. So tempting for us to pursue

life on our own instead of granting that surrender that

Brendan talked about earlier, that surrender of being united

with Christ and experiencing that protection that you give.

Lord, I know for sure that each one of us will experience

moments of anxiety or anxiety producing moments throughout

this coming year. At each and every.

Moment help us to turn in prayer to you and then to witness and

experience again the fulfillment of this promise of your

protection. Now and forevermore we pray

through Christ our Lord. Amen.