Philippians 4:1-9

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel.

And we're going to be looking at chapter four of Philippians, first nine verses.

So you're going to want a copy to follow along with.

So if you just raise your hand, somebody will bring one to you.

It's good service here at the village chapel.

I'm also, I have one Lassinger left.

I've had um two cough drops.

I feel sick from having had two cough drops.

Not I'm sick, but you know how that is?

So I have a little mint, but I've got a cough, so I don't want to cough through it.

But as I said in the last service, um, I've put this in my mouth.

And I'm gonna hope that I don't choke.

My friend um had this great idea to make snacks out of frozen grapes.

Have you ever had frozen grapes?

So she would put them in the freezer, and then every once in a while pop one out as a little snack, and she did that.

And they were living in an apartment complex, brand new apartment complex, and she didn't know any of the neighbors.

And her husband was at a meeting.

So she popped a grape, and then just a couple of minutes and the grape was lodged in her throat, and she couldn't breathe.

So she began to run around the house, throwing herself over chairs to try and do the Heimlich maneuver to try and, you know, free dislodge this frozen grape.

This is very important, I'm getting to the point.

So she eventually ran upstairs to the neighbor that she had not meet yet and knocked on the door, and the neighbor came to the door and she went, so hopefully I'll be okay with this little uh lifesaver, but if not, those of you who are first responders, we did pray for you this morning.

Okay, so chapter four, verses one through nine.

Um, there's a few things that we want to talk about from this passage.

It's one of my favorites, and you know, you have muscle memory for certain passages in the scripture, and this is one of those for me.

You know, there'll be different times in my life, and amazingly, this passage is right exactly what I need, and it comes back to me.

So I am excited to get to teach on it.

I've taught on it several times, and as I prayed for freshness this week, the Lord was faithful.

And he also reminded me that I need to be reminded of this.

In fact, maybe later today, again, and maybe tomorrow, and maybe the day after, because these are the essentials involved in living a life as a believer.

So let's take a look, chapter 4, verse 1.

We'll start reading there.

Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm, thus, in the Lord, my beloved.

In that first verse, I did want to have us notice a couple of things.

One is the five terms of affection that Paul has for this church that he loves so much.

In one verse, my brothers, my family, whom I love, whom I long for.

I want to be with you.

My joy and my crown.

How wonderful to have someone say that about you.

My beloved.

This is Pastor Paul, and this is an affectionate letter that he is writing because he loves these people and because they're special to him.

Also notice that in verse one we see the phrase, in the Lord, in Christ.

This is what we call an indicative, and um it's a statement, uh, it lays out for us who we are.

We are in the Lord.

And Paul will be good about this through the epistles if you read through them before he gets to what we call imperatives, which are the do this and do this and do this.

Or, yes, shouldn't I ought to have done that.

Um before he gets to that, he always gives an indicative, an indicative, the good news.

He starts with that, you are found in Christ.

Now, let me tell you a couple things that we need to talk about.

So let's continue.

Um, verse 2, I entreat you, Odia, and I entreat Syntachy to agree in the Lord.

Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of our fellow workers whose names are written in the book of life.

Notice how he's addressing a problem within the church with people that he is in relationship with.

These aren't names that he's calling out of people that he hasn't walked with, or people that he doesn't have a pastoral authority in their lives.

He's calling them out with great respect.

I entreat you.

And he says, I entreat you, Eulodia.

I entreat you, Sinti.

So in that we have no idea which one was wrong, and we also don't even know what they were disagreeing about, which I think is fantastic because it makes it so much easier to apply to our lives today.

Where are the places that we have conflict?

And Paul, being this loving pastor, having a way to call them out without shaming them, putting them in timeout, um, bringing it to the light.

And yet also note that because it is people he's in relationship with, he's not saying, First Church of Philippi, I have heard of Ted and Greg, and you've had a disagreement, and I entreat you, he doesn't know them.

So he's not calling them out.

He's speaking to people that he is in relationship with.

Verse 4, rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I'll say, rejoice.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

The Lord is at hand.

Do not be anxious about anything.

But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, whatever is true, honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable.

If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Notice in that last verse that Paul's calling them to not only follow their mentor and to do what he has done, but it's a reminder to have good leaders.

Who are your leaders?

Who are you following?

Because you're following or being influenced by someone.

This passage from uh chapter four, we've discussed week after week, Jim has brought out that this church was established by Paul.

I believe it was his second missionary journey in um 50 AD, 52 A.D.

52 A.D.

to be exact.

And um, this first church in Europe was established with a businesswoman and um an ex-demon-possessed slave girl and a prison, a Roman prison guard.

Very unlikely collection of people who probably had their own context to deal with.

Um speaking of context, Philippi was a Roman colony of the Roman Empire.

Um the Republic, the Roman Republic had fallen several years before, a little over a hundred, and that was the government that was set up that had more representation by the people.

The empire was no longer like that, and the emperors were put in position often by the military, and wealthy people would sometimes bribe their way into those positions.

So there was a great deal of political corruption during this time.

In fact, over a period of a hundred years, 37 emperors, 25 of them were assassinated.

Thinking that was probably not a successful sort of system for governing back then.

To say the morals were declining then is a grotesque understatement.

Some have said that there were 30,000 prostitutes in Rome at the time that the gladiators in the Coliseum, this form of entertainment, was to often use slaves or prisoners and put them in the Colosseum where they would fight to the death as sport and entertainment, with crowds cheering and yelling.

Sometimes the Colosseum would be so saturated with blood, they would have to bring in dirt and lay it out so they could continue with their entertainment.

Not only this, but the emperor of the time was Nero, and he was midway through his horrific uh terror, his reign, and Nero there is very little to say that was good.

He uh committed matricide, murdered his mother, then murdered his first wife, then kicked his second wife to death, and then his third wife was a man who he had castrated and called him by his second wife's name and forced him to wear her clothing and appear in public as his empress.

Now, I've told you these things, not so that when you leave here you go, hey, Nero was a guy, and that's all you remember.

I hope not.

But I'm telling you about this because of the context of the time.

And so many times we think about our own context culturally speaking, and how horrific it is, and that it's never been this bad.

It's been this bad.

It's been horrific and even worse in many, many ways.

That said, why is that important?

Well, because 62 A.D., enter the Apostle Paul's epistle to the church at Philippi with great affection.

He enters into this letter, begins to speak with them, and rather than calling Nero out and what he's doing, or the gladiators and what a horrible practice that is, or the temple prostitutes that were such an abasement, or the other horrific things that were going on, what does he do?

He addresses them to remind them of who they are, how they should live, and the hope of joy.

That's because Paul was a pastor.

In the last chapter, verse 20, he reminded us our citizenship is in heaven.

I'm very grateful for that.

It doesn't mean we don't live amongst a culture now, but it means that our higher calling is one in heaven.

And that's what Paul wants to focus on.

He knew that even like the Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, Caesar can't give us security from earthquakes, from lightning, sorrow, envy, anger, or compulsion?

Only in the peace proclaimed by God are we safe.

No ill can overtake us, or promised.

Paul had written four years earlier in Romans 8, who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Will tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?

Those weren't poetic metaphors.

Those were realities of his time.

But no, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If this is a message you need to hear, welcome.

Because you are among friends.

I need to hear this.

I need to be reminded of who I am, who I am in Christ and whose I am.

We see in these nine verses that Paul gives us, there's three clear points that we could pull out.

You could study this on your own and see this very clearly.

This is one of the things we'll talk about at our women's day treat this weekend, how to study the word and how to see what the passage is talking about.

In these nine verses, Paul gives us a call, a response, and a promise.

And that's what I wanted us to take a look at today.

The first thing, the call.

In verse one, he says, agree in the Lord.

I'm sorry, in verse one, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.

So the call is to be in Christ, to be in the Lord.

It's a pastoral exhortation and a compelling invitation.

It's sort of like those paperless post things.

Do you get those invitations in your email inviting you to come to something which I think is lovely and charming until the 16th reminder?

Have you responded?

Are you coming?

We'd love to see you.

And at that point, it feels a bit like an annoyance to me.

However, sometimes we need to be reminded of things over and over and over.

And Paul reminds us of the ever-essential indicative about our union with Christ and being in Christ.

Note the 19 times alone in these four chapters where the phrase in Christ or in the Lord is used.

That's a lot of times.

In fact, just in this chapter alone, repeated, repeated.

Go home and highlight with your highlighter all the times in this book that the words in Christ or in the Lord, a phrase similar to that, are used.

Of these 19, here's a couple of the highlights from chapter 2.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours, in Christ Jesus.

Chapter 3, we glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

Chapter 4, and my God will supply all needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

Jim gets to teach on that goodie next week.

Here in chapter 4, verse 1, though, we see Paul saying, Stand firm thus in the Lord.

It is a call to be in Christ.

And that being in Christ, it sounds kind of nebulous.

What does that mean?

Well, being found in Christ, it says in Corinthians, we are a new creature.

Our entire ontology has changed our being, our way of functioning and relating and being in relationship and in a contextual culture.

Being in Christ is about our identity, our ontology.

It's not that our circumstances get changed, but it's that who we are in the context of those circumstances is changed.

We don't have to bear the unbearable weight of discovering who we are.

I think about when I was a kid and every adult, when they would first meet you, the question, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And I'm thinking at that point I'm doing good to tie my shoes.

I'm learning the alphabet, and I might like to have some macaroni and cheese for dinner.

After that, I'm not really sure about what I want to be when I grow up, but that pressure begins early on.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Who are you?

When you meet people out, what do you do?

As if that defines who you are.

Paul wants us to be relieved of this difficult burden of selfhood and creating an identity.

Because Christian selfhood is not identified or defined by how we feel about ourselves.

It's the absolute effect of God's sovereign call on our lives.

Who we are must be grounded on what Christ has done in and for us.

This is in fact how to be completely who he designed us to be, to be fully human as he intended.

We find the language of our identity in the excellencies of Christ.

And then our most fulfilled place of expressing that identity is found in making the goodness of God known among our culture and among our friends and families.

I don't know about you, but there are some distractions to that for me.

It's not quite as easy as it sounds to be found in Christ.

Some of the distractions, um, saying this for a friend, you know, not necessarily me.

What are distractions?

Who I used to be.

How can I be in Christ when I was that?

Who I want to be.

How can I be in Christ and still be that?

Will it work out?

Who she is, jobs, success, trauma, misplaced expectations, looking elsewhere for our decisive validators.

These are all things that can be eliminated by finding our identity in Christ, by being found in Christ.

Woo, what a great thing.

If we were a different church by now, I probably would have heard five hallelujahs.

But it's okay because we're quiet.

Thank you, honey.

Thank you for that decisive validator.

Paul says, stand firm in Christ.

And Stott spells out the benefits of being in Christ.

He says, to be in Christ is to find personal fulfillment, that being all of who God intended you to be, to enjoy brotherly unity, being able to get along on what we have in common, and to experience a radical transformation.

That's the ontology.

Only then can we become the world's salt and light, sharing the good news with others, making an impact on society, and above everything else, seeking to bring honor and glory to his wonderful name.

I want to be found in Christ.

I want to live in Christ.

This is the point that often my dad would say, So how do we make it real?

My mom would always say, The sovereignty of God, honey.

It's all the sovereignty of God.

And dad would say, But how do we make it real?

Dad has a perfect view from heaven now, and so he knows exactly how all that works.

But today, for us, we're gonna look at some of the ways that we can make it real to be found in Christ.

This is the response part of these nine verses, where we discover and are reminded it's in fact because both our salvation and our sanctification has been fully complete and accomplished for us by and in Christ, that we can respond in faithful obedience with these things in this list.

It's almost a um, if there ever was a self-help list in the scripture, this is a good one.

I don't think of the scripture that way, but once in a while there's a to-do list.

Don't get me wrong, this is not the um, this is not earning being in Christ.

We don't do this so that we can be in Christ.

We're in Christ and then we do this.

It's sort of like uh when I go to the swimming pool, I don't swim so that I can get in the pool.

I get in the pool and then I swim because I'm in the pool.

We don't do these things to be in Christ, but when we are in Christ, we do these things because we are in Christ.

So let's look at the practical responses to the call.

Number one, found in verse one, it says, stand firm.

Stand firm.

I want to tell you that this morning.

The winds blow.

Trees that have deep roots, their branches will only sway, but they'll not be knocked over.

Stand firm, resolute in the face of enemies of the cross of Christ.

In chapter 3, Paul said, with tears, I tell you, there are enemies of the cross of Christ.

Um, I tell you the same today.

There are enemies of the cross of Christ.

It may not be bold and brash, but it may not be supportive, or it may not be those who will stand with you.

A steadfast stand is grounded on the Lord Jesus.

A pilgrim's progress begins with a firm stand on solid ground, firmly planted.

We gotta know what we believe, we've got to know who.

We can trust.

We got to know what truth looks like.

That's how we stand firm.

Is there anything or something or someone that perhaps is becoming an idol and keeping you from standing firm, keeping you from finding your feet on a steady place?

I don't know what that looks like for you, but I do know this.

God doesn't expect that we're never gonna fall.

When he says stand firm in Christ, he knows that we're gonna fall.

And that the grace that he provides, his grace is sufficient and efficient to help us get up again.

And then when we fall to get up again, and then when we fall to get up again, his grace is sufficient, his mercies are new every morning.

Our solid ground is the rock of Christ, and that's where we need to stand firm.

Verse 2 reminds us of unity.

That's kind of the context of this section he's writing.

Is uh there was a conflict, as I said, Euodia and Sintki.

Um their unity was important to Paul because what we do in our culture alone, it looks a whole lot different than what we can do in the context of a corporate body of Christ.

Unity is essential.

It's something God has accomplished, it's a given fact about us as believers, that we live in a world that is sometimes hostile to our faith.

And so we often wonder about our ability to make a difference, to actually bring something good to the context.

Paul counsels remember what God has done for you.

Live and grow together in the good things which are your common possession in Christ.

He calls them to be in Christ.

You don't have to agree about the color of the carpet, or whether you're gonna put curtains on the wall, or whether you're going to eat here or eat there, but he says, in Christ, you must find a way to find things in common.

The original word for unity here is harmony.

And harmony is the perfect word for this because when we sing in unison, that means that we all have to agree about the melody and the same notes.

And we all have to sing those same notes.

That's not what Paul's saying here.

He doesn't say have everything be the same.

He says, live in harmony.

The beauty of harmony is that when I find a note, and in relationship to your note, when we sing the two of them, both of them become more beautiful.

That's what harmony is about.

That's what we're called to in the body of Christ.

It's not just can't we get along?

No, it's how to have harmony in Christ.

What are the things that we share that are a higher value than anything else?

As the world perhaps tempts us to be not in unity, to separate us or cause division.

What are the things in our life that enter that make it easier for us to be separate or that bring conflict natural?

The shrill shrieking of dissonance in disunity is neither becoming of a believer nor honoring to God.

Unity is incredibly important.

The God had modeled it, the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit in perfect unity.

And Paul has called us to this same kind of unity.

A little note here, excuse me, from no more cough drop.

This week I caught a TED talk, and it was by a millennial who was discussing whether or not social media is an essential for your life.

And let me start by saying I'm not a hater.

I think there are wonderful things that happen on social media.

We inform each other, we stay connected.

I love to see your baby pictures and your dog pictures and your sassy cat videos and what you ate at a restaurant that I may want to go eat at sometime.

But there's a whole lot of other stuff that is not for my good that happens on social media.

Ten minutes on social media, and I can find myself dealing with envy, jealousy, what the kids today call FOMO, fear of missing out, for those of you my age, fear of missing out, F-O-M-A, FOMO.

Just filling in.

Isolation, depression, comparison thinking.

How come my life doesn't look like that?

And then even the mic drop inciting statements that lead to frustrating disagreements where we just can't seem to get our mind spoken efficiently in those 50 or 80 or 100 words.

I'm prayerfully taking cautious heed as it comes to my involvement in social media.

It's just not me making a stand, and I'm not going to go on my Facebook page and say, I am leaving Facebook because I know you care.

I'm just saying, I think there's something to be learned about stepping back quietly and looking.

What am I getting?

What am I gaining?

And what is it costing me?

Verse three brings up our next part of our response.

Help each other.

When it comes to this disunity in the church that he was speaking about, Paul says, Hey, the rest of you that are in relationship here, help them.

Don't let it just continue to happen and fester and get worse.

He's talking to people who are in relationship, who have co-labored in the gospel together.

These are not just acquaintances.

This is not Paul's call for you to get in people's business.

This is a call to help each other in the body of Christ.

If there's a disagreement going on and you think there is a way to help bring the gospel to life, how can the gospel come to life in this situation?

How can we perhaps have you thought of it this way?

And this is with your close friends that you can do this.

I know that you and so-and-so are arguing over which movie to go to.

Really?

The things that get under our skin that build into mountains.

If there's a way that we can help each other for this to not happen, Paul says, help each other.

I saw a meme this week of a young woman trying to cross the street, and she her leg was bandaged and she had crutches.

So she's trying to make her way, and the traffic's starting to come, and you can see things are getting kind of tense, and she's still walking along.

A couple comes beside her, a young couple and looks and ooh, and then they start running because the light is changing and the traffic is getting intense.

So then you keep seeing this girl trying to make her way across the street.

Next comes a woman, and I'm thinking probably she was about my age, you know, one of the older folk coming along.

She sees her and she walks over, gets in front of her and kneels down and lifts her onto her shoulders and then walks her to the other side of the street.

But before she gets to the other side, while horns are blaring and lights are flashing, she stops long enough to stick out a mom finger and shakes it at the traffic and scolds them and takes her friend across the road.

Help them.

Don't just walk by.

Help each other.

Again, this is not a call to get in each other's business.

The Holy Spirit will tell you when it's right.

But there are times when we must be courageous and intercede in front of the oncoming traffic that could make this a much worse situation and say, dear friend, how can we come together and see the gospel in our situation?

And how can we glorify God together?

Help each other.

Rejoice, verse 4.

Rejoice and rejoice.

He says it twice.

I love that.

Say it with me.

Rejoice.

Say it again.

Rejoice.

Aren't you happier already?

Just saying that word, there's endorphins that are released.

When we even say that, the psalmist had to tell his own soul to rejoice.

There's times when you just, you have to do it because it's the right thing to do.

Rejoice.

I promise you, if you intentionally rejoice, your situation will look different.

Everything will have a different timbre and a different hue.

To rejoice is to celebrate the goodness that God declared on creation in the very beginning.

To be living in the shadows of bitterness, anxiousness, fractiousness, touchiness, trigger, anger.

This misses the invitation to receive the good news over and over.

Joy to the world.

The Lord has come.

This isn't a sappy kind of, let's all be cheery and put a happy face on.

That's not what this is a call to.

But it's a soulful awareness of a need for awakeness.

That can we can either choose to live life in such a way where we desire to rejoice or we can block ourselves off, close ourselves off from the possibility of it.

In self-embitterment, we do violence to life and to God.

We must never let this happen.

Rejoice.

Slide seven from A.

B.

Simpson.

He says about this thing of rejoicing.

Begin to rejoice in the Lord, and your bones will flourish like an herb, and your cheeks will glow with the bloom of health and freshness.

Worry, fear, distrust, care, all are poisonous.

Joy is balm and healing.

If you will but rejoice, God will give you power.

This is not just the right thing to do.

It's good for us.

The endorphins that are released for free when we rejoice are also contagious.

Rejoice, my friends.

Verse 5.

Be reasonable.

Be known by your reasonableness.

I would love that people would say when they think of me, oh Kim, that that Kim, she's a reasonable woman.

What do you mean by that laughter?

Just wondering if not that I'm concerned about what you think about me, but reasonableness.

It's so easy to get stuck in a spiral of no or crankiness or disagreeableness, or my way is better than your way, or no, we cannot do this.

It cannot be done.

What if we were to be known instead for easy to get along with other-centered reasonableness?

How many times is it really essential that our opinion needs to be heard or that our way needs to be enforced?

Reasonableness.

Such a simple thing and yet so powerful.

Verse six, don't be anxious.

Okay, now every once in a while when Jim will say that to me, honey, don't be anxious.

I kind of want to ball my little fists up and go, but there's reasons.

What about this and this and this and this?

And we'll say, don't be anxious.

Don't be anxious.

And mom would say, honey, trust the sovereignty of God.

Paul says, don't be anxious.

He's the greatest barrier you see for our peace, our inner contentment, our sense of peace is our minds.

Overthinking, overprocessing, worrying, stressing, anxiety, mulling, pondering, obsessing over what is out of our control, undue fear and fretfulness.

8% of the things we worry about are legitimate matters of concern, it is said.

Or they involve things that we don't have any control over anyway.

What are you tied up in knots over?

What are you so anxious about that you can't sleep at night?

What keeps you awake makes you keep thinking on things.

What is keeping you anxious?

Paul says, don't be anxious, instead, pray.

Aha.

There is a little bit of a path here.

Don't be anxious but pray in verse 6.

Rather than anxiety and obsession and emotional OCD and fretfulness.

Rather than fear motivating everything, that thought of um, what if the test results come back and show something bad that they can't treat?

What if what if I lose my job when they bring in the new boss?

What if I have relational failure?

I cannot make it work between this person and I.

Nothing to do with us.

Most of the time, these fretful things really are not worth the time we spend on them.

So he says, pray.

If instead of thinking about things and working out those narratives, if instead we prayed, I guarantee you, we would sigh less and breathe more.

Jim says prayer is the antidote to anxiety.

He's pretty smart.

Paul says, pray with thankfulness.

An even better perspective setting way of praying.

Pray with thankfulness.

When you're thinking of things you're thankful for, it's very difficult to be bitter.

So Paul has said, thank in prayer, and then think on these things.

If you're a southerner, you'd say, thank and thank.

Thank in prayer and then think on this.

This is from verse 7.

Carefully curate your input.

Man, this is a good one.

This is a good one.

Guard your hearts and minds.

Our heart is where our emotions are, where our feelings and our will and our conscience.

And then guard your minds.

Your minds are the place that takes all that emotion and feeling and decides what it's going to do with it.

Might make a plan or imaginate something, write those narratives.

This is for me the core verse that has been so helpful throughout my life.

And uh I call it affectionately therpal.

T-H-R-P-L.

Sometimes you know if you memorize the first letter of a list of things, you can remember it better.

So for me, in the translation that I memorized it, um, it was whatever things are true or honorable or right or pure or lovely, if there's anything commendable or excellent or worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.

Curate the input.

A long time ago there was this thing called film, and you would put it into a camera.

And when the aperture was opened, whatever image was exposed is what was on to the film then.

That's the way we are.

Whatever input we are taking, that's what will be birthed in our heart.

That's the image that will rest in our mind.

So let's look at this list.

True, honorable, right, pure, lovely, true.

Does scripture support this thought or idea?

Honorable.

Does it have honest value or the dignity of holiness?

Right.

Does this thought conform to God's standards?

Pure.

Will it defile or corrupt my thoughts to dwell on this?

Lovely.

Will this call forth love or strife if I dwell on it?

Am I focusing on the good or the false and the shortcomings?

Um we have the option for what we put in ourselves, what images we take in.

I can remember my friend Jody one time talking about a movie, saying, Why would I want that in my head?

Curate your input.

Slide nine says from Warren Wearsby, Pastor Warren, he's so amazing.

Wrong thinking leads to wrong feeling.

Before long, the heart and the mind are pulled apart, and we are strangled by worry.

We must realize that thoughts are real and powerful, even though they cannot be seen or weighed or measured.

We must bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

Friends, it's not that there aren't some serious things to think about.

I'm not saying put your head in the sand or be in denial or live a Pollyanna existence.

What I'm saying is we have some control over the things that we think about and the things that are in our minds.

Slide 10, the last thing, there's a promise here.

Paul gives us a call, a response, and praise be to God, a promise.

And the promise is the peace of the Lord.

The promises of God are to be given the highest value from the measureless benevolence that God has lavished upon us in Christ.

That is the core certainty of where our peace is birthed.

And that peace is the bedrock of joy that we're talking about throughout this book.

It's sometimes philosophical and undefinable.

What is peace?

It looks different for different people.

And the scripture even understands that because it says sometimes uh it goes beyond understanding.

But regardless of the particularities of it and what the descriptive words are for what peace looks like, it has to be more than the absence of conflict or the resigned tolerance of each other.

The deep shalom that we long for.

That's what this peace is.

That sense of things being right.

We need this more than anything else.

And it's promised in verses 7 and 9, where he says, the peace of God and the God of peace will be with you.

This peace accompanies being in Christ and responding in ways that make it real.

I'm grateful for the lists and for the way that Paul spells it out so clearly for me to look and go, oh yeah, that.

Yeah.

I hope it's helpful for you.

The ultimate thing that we see through this, the peace of God with us, the peace of God in us, being in Christ, being in the Lord.

Psalm 7328, the nearness of God is my good.

In all of these things, there is nothing better than being in the presence of God, whether it's to pray, to curate our minds, to serve each other, to find a way out of conflict.

The nearness of God is our good.

Has the gospel become your source of identity, or are you finding it somewhere else?

Are you finding in the Christ who saves you?

Are you living in response to that?

Are we living in response to that?

And then what keeps your heart from being peaceful?

What are those things?

Perhaps it's worth a Sunday afternoon to think about.

Let's pray together.

Lord, I thank you that your word continues to speak to us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I pray that you would build these things in our hearts, that we would understand the reality of what it means to live in Christ, to not be distracted by things that will woo our hearts and minds, to respond in faithful obedience because of being in Christ, and then Lord, to rest in your peace.

I'm grateful that with Paul I'm confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in us will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen.