"Conflict and Joy" - Philippians 4:2-9

All right, if you've got a Bible, we're going to be in Philippians 4.

Let's start by reading you a little

poem. To live above with the saints we love, oh, that will be glory.

But to live below with the saints we know, well, that's another story.

I'm sure you found this to be true, that even the people you enjoy being around

at times have the ability to make you not happy that they are there.

I remember one time I was meeting with a younger guy who was probably in his, I don't know, mid-20s.

I realized for some of you, you look at me and you're like, yeah, that's you.

I'm not in my mid-20s. But I was just talking to him and he was going through

all these different things.

He kind of became a Christian a couple of years before and he was finally getting

to a place where he realized, like, Hey, I really need to get involved in a

church. Like I can't just go to Bible studies and kind of do my own thing.

I need to commit somewhere.

And he was going through all these different things that he was working through

at different churches and people he knew.

And he goes, you know, man, my Christian life would be a whole lot easier if

it wasn't for other Christians.

I thought, man, that doesn't feel like a good thing to say out loud,

but it feels like an honest thing to say out loud.

You know, like he was expressing what maybe a lot of people have felt where

at times, even the other Christians in our life can be one of the reasons that

we have the most strife or the most conflict.

And so this morning, as we get into chapter four, really what Paul's going to

do is what he does in every letter.

He's going to get extremely practical. And so he's laid down a ton of kind of

theological foundation for this church.

He's laid down who Christ is and what salvation is and what that looks like to follow him.

And so now that he's getting to the end of the letter, he's going to get really personal.

And he's going to start naming specific things that like, hey,

these are things that you guys need to take care of.

You guys need to do this. And there's two big things. There's two points this morning.

Handle your conflicts and rejoice in the Lord. Handle your conflicts and rejoice in the Lord.

When I was about 11, I got into a fight at school.

I know that's shocking, it wasn't really a big fight like I say it was a fight

we kind of just like shoved and I shoved him and he fell and hit his head on

a urinal and it's a subtle way

of saying the only fight I've ever really been in I won 1-0 not bragging.

But we had this program at our school that was called peer mediation. Anybody else have this?

So we both went to the office and we both kind of sat in a corner for a while

of the same room, which was awkward.

And then we went to our peer mediation room.

What this was is someone in your class had been trained as a peer mediator.

And so we had two 11-year-old boys that just got in a fight.

And then another 11-year-old boy that was supposed to mediate our fight.

And then the counselor was in the corner.

And so, you know, he's got this sheet of paper and he's going through,

so how do you guys feel? And we're like, terrible.

Like, you know, well, what do you think would have made the situation different?

You know, just asking these canned questions and the counselor's behind him

doing like, hey, you're doing a great job, but nothing's getting done.

Like we walked into that room disliking each other and we walked out of that

room disliking each other.

But I think the goal was a good goal.

I think there was some good things that the school was trying to do there.

And they had a big sign over the peer mediation room that said,

joy after chaos, joy after chaos.

And I don't know that it was super effective. In fact, I know it wasn't.

I don't think I ever liked that person.

But it's hard to have peace and joy in your life when conflicts invade the places

they are not supposed to be.

It's hard to have peace and joy in your life when conflict invades the places

they're not supposed to be.

Because I think we all understand that in our life, we're going to have conflicts,

especially outside of the church, outside of our families. Like the world is the world.

We don't live in a nice, neat world. We don't live in a place where everything's

going to go our way. There's going to be conflict. But that's not really the issue.

That Paul's facing here, Paul's going to say, listen, there's some conflict

going on in your church and you need to handle it.

You need to handle it because when conflict is present in the places it's not

supposed to be, it's going to be really hard for you to find peace and joy in that.

So let me read Philippians 4, 2 through 9.

Paul says, I entreat Euidea and Synthica 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 my fellow

workers whose names are in the book of life.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will 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 known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts

and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is 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.

So what does Paul do? Well, he starts by saying, listen, there's two ladies

in this church and they've got a conflict. They've got an issue.

So he's going to kind of give them two things to do, two things to look for

when you have a conflict in a church.

Number one, he's going to look for a true companion, a true companion.

We don't know exactly who this is. It could easily be Timothy.

It could easily be someone else, another leader in the church.

It could be Epaphroditus. He's a member at that church. We know that.

But he looks to a mature believer and he says, hey, this is your fight too.

When there's two people that are having a disagreement in the church, that's your problem.

And we love to say, listen, that's none of my business. They need to handle that on their own.

And Paul kind of says, it kind of is your business, but it kind of is your church.

This is your family. This is the people you've committed to.

And in the same way that if you have a family situation, which I'm sure we've

all been in, always on a road trip, because that's where these things tend to happen, right?

Where two members of the family are going at each other's throats.

They're having a disagreement.

That doesn't just affect the two people. And if everyone else,

especially the parents in the car go, you know what?

That's their business. They need to handle it. It rarely gets better.

It rarely gets better. So what Paul's saying is we need to have some mature

believers in this church, whoever this true companion is, and say,

listen, I'm going to bring these ladies together and we're going to have this conversation.

We're going to hash this thing out. Now, Paul is assuming something here.

He's assuming that this is an honest disagreement.

Paul's not discussing division in the church. He's discussing disagreement.

And there is a massive difference between those things.

He says that these women are co-laborers with him, that he thinks of these to

him and he says, man, these women have labored beside me.

They've done things alongside us as a church.

They've both come to this place where they love the Lord and they love the church.

They're just having a disagreement.

They're not trying to be divisive because Paul's advice for a divisive person

is much different. Listen to Titus 3.10.

As for a person who stirs up division after warning them once and then twice,

have nothing more to do with them, knowing that such a person is warped and

sinful and they are self-condemned.

That sounds a little different than, hey, get somebody to help them work it out.

And if someone's being divisive, if someone is trying to come into a church

and say, listen, my goal is to split this thing because I care more about myself.

I care more about what I want and what I desire than what anybody else wants.

And if I'm not going to get my way, then I would rather no one get their way.

Paul says, as plain as he can, have nothing more to do with them.

So when Paul looks at these ladies, he doesn't look at ladies who are being

divisive. He looks at ladies that are having a disagreement.

A disagreement should be resolved while division should be rejected.

What's the second thing he does? He appeals to their identity.

He says this phrase that's common to us, but uncommon to Paul.

Paul doesn't use this phrase.

I don't think anywhere else I couldn't find it. Somebody wants to fact check

me and they can, by all means, do that.

But when he says, whose names are in the book of life, whose names are in the

book of life, the one time that I know of that Paul appeals to the book of life,

that John speaks about in Revelation quite a bit, is to say,

listen, if people are having a disagreement,

then someone needs to come in and help arbitrate that disagreement,

but they need to do it in a way that always points them to the fact that,

hey, your names are written in the Lamb's book of life. You're going to be together forever.

Nothing's going to change that. My dad used to tell me and my siblings this

all the time. We would get mad at each other and start screaming and yelling.

He would go, hey, do you think getting mad at each other is going to change

the fact that you have to live in the same house? That you have to eat at the same table?

That you have to go to the same places and do the same things?

You being mad at each other doesn't change who you are.

Just like we were a member of that family, Paul says, you're a member of this family.

You need to remind yourself of that as you're figuring out this disagreement.

Paul says you're arguing over things that have very little effect,

if any, in comparison to who you are in Christ.

So this isn't obviously a disagreement over a first or probably even a second tier issue.

I don't know what they're arguing over. I don't know if it's carpet.

I don't know if it's drapes. I don't know if it's children. I don't know if

it's, you know, it could be anything.

If you've been in churches very long, you know, people will find a way to disagree

over things. And by people, I mean, every single one of us.

But again, two things, Paul says, listen, number one, someone in the church

who is mature needs to come alongside these two sisters or two brothers,

if that's who is fighting, and say, hey, we need to nip this in the bud.

This is going to be a problem for the family, and we need to figure this thing out.

Number two, he appeals to their identity. So that's number one.

Number one, we handle our conflicts.

Don't let them fester. We don't nitpick. We don't go to other people and say,

man, you can't believe what they did or why they think this way.

We handle our conflicts.

Number two, we rejoice in the Lord. We rejoice in the Lord.

The Bible is a book about joy, right? The Bible is a book about joy and joy has an address.

He doesn't just say, hey, you go to church and people need to know that people

who go to church are happy.

So you guys need to put on happy faces because who's going to want to go to

church if nobody's happy.

He doesn't make it about them. He says that you rejoice in the Lord.

Just listen to these examples. Speaking about the gospel, Luke 2 says that it's

the good news of great joy.

Speaking about death in Matthew 25, Jesus says, enter into the joy of your master.

John 16, speaking about prayer, he says, ask and you shall receive and your joy will be complete.

Speaking about fellowship, 2 John, I hope to visit with you face-to-face so

that our joy may be complete.

Speaking about the word itself, Jeremiah 15, 16, a verse that I would encourage

you, if you want to kind of memorize an obscure one that people will be impressed

by, this is a great one to remember, Jeremiah 15, 16.

Lord, when your words came to me, I ate them and they were my joy and my heart's delight.

And contrary to what the world would have you believe, and contrary to what

plenty of people in the church think, real joy is not found in listening to yourself.

Real joy is not found even in trying to figure out every single thing that's going on inside of you.

I've said this before, and I'm a big fan of Christian counselors.

I was going to be one and then realized I wasn't cut out for that.

I have massive respect for people who do that. But at the same time,

we need to be careful that every single thing that's wrong with us,

that we're not trying to self-diagnose and figure it all out.

And why do I feel that way? And why is that going on? And why is that happening?

Because the truth is, that's an endless pursuit.

You will never be able to completely understand every single thing that's going on inside of you.

Real joy is not found, again, in listening to yourself, and real joy is not

found in talking to yourself.

It's not found in you sitting down and trying to figure out,

well, what can I convince myself of?

What can I talk myself into? How can I figure this out myself?

Real joy is found in listening and talking to the God of the universe.

Real joy is found when your happiness is not found in circumstances, but in promises.

Real joy is found when your happiness is dependent upon not circumstances, but promises.

When we consider our lives, we consider our state in life.

Again, it's so tempting to look around and to go, well, I got to find some reason to be happy.

And if my job's not going to do it, my family's not going to do it,

my kids aren't going to do it, money's not going to do it, I'm going to go find it somewhere else.

One way or another, I'm going to find a way to be happy.

I would even tell you that that's not necessarily a bad thing,

that your desire to be happy, your desire to be a joyful person is a God-given desire.

That's a good thing for you to want to be happy.

There's a reason it's a problem if we meet people that want to be sad. That's an issue.

Again, the issue is when we try and fill that joy, fill that need with something other than Christ.

So our joy is found on what other people think of us or what the world thinks

of us, or maybe even most importantly, what we think of ourselves.

When that's where our joy is found, the problem is other people change.

What the world thinks of you is going to change because the world's going to

change. What they think is important, what they think matters.

There's a reason all of us, when I say flame out Hollywood star, you can think of one.

Somebody that peaked super early. Everybody loved them.

They thought they were the best thing in the world. And out of nowhere,

you never saw them again because the world was like, you know,

that was cool for five seconds.

And I just don't think that's cool anymore.

That's not what we want anymore. And again, what you think of yourself,

you know, we want joy that's grounded in God because God does not change.

You know exactly who God is. You know exactly what he's asked of.

You know exactly what he's done for you. You know exactly what his promises

are, and his promises don't change.

Your life does not have to be a rollercoaster of emotions.

It doesn't. Your life does not have to be a rollercoaster, even if you're in

high school or junior high.

I promise you, your life does not have to be this rollercoaster of day-to-day

figuring out how you're going to feel about things and what's going to affect

you and how you're going to treat people.

On and on and on. It can be, as Jesus says, like a house built on granite.

Regardless of what the day throws at you, it's not that you won't have bad days.

It's not that you won't ever be sad.

It's not that you won't have seasons in life where you feel better than others.

It just isn't to say when Paul says, rejoice in the Lord always,

he doesn't say that ignorantly as if to say, try the best you can,

and if you can't, you can't. Again, Paul's writing from prison.

He's in prison 365 days a year at the time. He doesn't even know if he's going to get out.

He's been shipwrecked. He's been beaten within an inch of his life multiple

times. He's lost friends. He's lost family.

Yet he says rejoice in what? Rejoice in the Lord.

So the first thing we do is rejoice. And the question is, what happens when

you are a rejoicing person?

What happens when you rejoice in the Lord always? What's that look like?

Well, Paul's going to give us three things.

Number one, he says, be gentle. The ESV says, let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

I think this is one place where I really prefer the word gentleness.

I think that's a better translation. I know why they did it that way.

But use reasonableness, use gentleness, whichever one you want.

But let your, I'm going to say gentleness be known to everyone.

Listen, the most immediate outward expression of a rejoicing heart is Christ-like

gentleness towards other people.

Let's say that again. The most immediate outward expression of a rejoicing heart

is Christ-like gentleness towards other people.

To be gentle is to reflect Christ himself.

Because no matter how you're treated, no matter how the world thinks of you

or what you think of yourself or what you're going through, the person who says,

I can rejoice because of what the Lord has done for me means I can treat people

the way that God wants me to treat them, because I'm not looking for them to fulfill...

I'm not looking for them to fulfill anything in my life. I'm not looking for

anyone in this room, or I shouldn't be looking for anyone in this room.

I'm not looking for my wife or my kids to fulfill something in my life.

Christ has done all of that for me. I rejoice in the Lord.

And because of that, when I meet people, when people come to me,

when people meet me, I can say, I can be gentle and kind and gracious because

I don't need them to do anything for me.

That's why Jesus says in Matthew 11, 29, a verse that you probably have heard,

or many of you probably memorized, he says,

take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart,

and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Listen, gentleness is a great litmus test for joy, a great litmus test for your joy.

If you're rejoicing in the Lord, people should know you as a gentle person.

A kind person. Now, not a pushover, right? And not fake, not fake happy,

not just I got a smile on because that's how everybody thinks I should act.

Gentle and kind while being honest and strong.

I just know this about myself. I'm the least gentle when I'm the least joyful.

When my mind has stayed on Christ and when I'm thinking about Him,

when I've got Him in view, I'm pretty easy to be around.

My kids would probably be a good barometer. They could probably tell you,

even though they wouldn't maybe put the pieces together, they could probably

tell you, hey, dad's not being very joyful today, right? He's having a rough day.

And then I come home and because I'm not stayed on Christ, I'm expecting my

kids or my wife or somebody around me to do something for me so that my day

would get better, so that everything would fall my way because my day's been

so bad. I need you guys to fix it for me.

Instead of saying, man, regardless of what my day's been like,

I can rejoice in the Lord and what he's done for me. And I don't need these

people to do anything for me.

And I'm free to serve them and love them and care for them the way I'm supposed to.

When I was in college, there was a guy, and I've talked about him before,

named Dr. Daner, Dr. Jan Daner.

Everyone thought he was a girl before they had his class, Jan Daner.

You get in there and it's this older guy and he's quirky and weird.

And the first couple of classes, you're not real sure what you're getting into,

but every single person you talked to that had him at DBU would tell you He

was the most gentle person that they've probably ever known, just patient and kind.

We just assume that everything in his life was great. And we come to find out

that he had been through all kinds of things, all kinds of things.

He'd lost two spouses in kind of freak accidents.

He had four kids and lost two of them in the same plane crash,

on and on. I mean, it was just a crazy life.

When you learn that thing about someone, you kind of wonder like,

what's the world are you smiling about?

Why are you so happy? Why are you putting up with all of us?

Having lunch with a bunch of us?

It's because his joy was found outside of what was around him,

outside of what happened. And he had a joy in Christ.

And so the simple question, the first question we ask is, are you known for your gentleness?

Are you known for your gentleness? And I realize there are times when you need

to be tough and you need to be firm. Jesus understood that.

I doubt when he was flipping tables that any one of those people sitting behind

the tables was like, this is the most gentle guy I've ever known.

Like this just seems like the kindest man.

Just remind yourself that what Paul is talking about here is mainly he's talking

to a church and he says, listen, the people in your church should know you as

gentle and kind because the people that came to Christ, the people that came

to know and love him knew Christ as gentle and kind.

Second thing that is a good litmus test is trust and pray.

Trust and pray. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer

and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God.

Love this quote by Roger Ellsworth. May not be a name you know,

I'm just telling you, the guy writes great books, okay?

An ungrateful child always seeks more from his parents without giving thanks

for what he has already received.

All right, one more time. An ungrateful child always seeks more from his parents

without giving thanks for what he has received.

You could rephrase that this way. An ungrateful Christian always seeks more

from God without giving him thanks for anything he's received.

When anxiety takes over our lives and we're stressed out and we don't know what

to do, it's often a symptom that we've lost sight of all the things that God's

already done for us. That's not always true.

There are times in your life where anxiety is real, stress is real, Things are crazy.

Again, Paul's not saying to every single person there, listen,

if you have any anxiety whatsoever, there's something wrong in your life, you've got a problem.

He's already said in chapter two that he has anxiety over this church, that he thinks about it.

He's nervous about some things going on in this church.

He's nervous about Epaphroditus getting sick.

He's got anxiety about him passing away. He's concerned.

Is not what Paul is talking about when he says, if you've got some, it's a problem.

What he says is when you have some, when you have some, it's assumed.

So if anyone's in here and they're trying to play the brick wall card,

I'm never nervous. I never have anxiety. Nothing gets me off kilter.

You're lying or Paul's lying, and I don't trust you, right? I just don't.

He says, when it happens, go to the Lord through prayer and supplication. Pray, talk, listen.

I don't at all pretend to be a master at this. If I was going to let somebody

talk to you about prayer, honestly, it just wouldn't be me.

I'm not saying I don't pray. I do. But a lot of the people that I know,

including my wife, is a much better prayer than I am. It just doesn't come as naturally to me.

It's way more natural for me to sit down and read a book and study something

and listen to some theology and study a Greek word. That really resonates with me.

When somebody's like, hey, just be still for 30 minutes and pray,

it's like, how about two? Two seems good, right? Two's a step in the right direction.

Prayer is something that I have to work at, something I really have to try hard at.

Whereas you might say, listen, sit down and reading those books seems like a

waste of time. I feel sometimes the same way about just slowing down.

Also don't want to be a ungrateful child.

That every time that I have a problem, I look and say, God, I need you to solve

this. And if you don't solve this, I don't know what I'm going to do.

And you need to figure this out. And if you don't figure this out,

I don't know what's going to happen.

And what am I supposed to do? If you can't help me out here,

if you can't fix this problem, why would I ever trust you? Why are you even there? What's going on?

But I would hope that I can remind myself of verses like Matthew 6, 28 through 30.

It says, Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow

is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

This is not something where if you meet someone who's stressed out about something,

your tactic should be like, dude, just pray about it.

Straight about it, and then walk away like, glad I could fix that for you.

You know, it's like, man, aren't you glad that you talked to me about your major

issues and I fixed it in five seconds?

No, but I think John Bunyan gets to the heart of this when he says,

you can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than

pray until you have prayed.

Pray often for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan.

You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than

pray until you have prayed.

It's not to say that you just tell someone, hey, pray about it.

Say, hey, before we do anything, before we move forward on anything else,

let's stop and pray about it.

We may have a lot of work to do after we pray about it. We may have a lot of

things to get done after we pray about it, but let's pray about it first.

Let's go to the Lord first and be reminded that he takes care of the lilies in the field.

We're gentle. We trust the Lord and we pray. The last thing he gives us is we

think rightly. We think rightly.

Verses 8 and 9, he says, Finally, brothers, whatever is true,

whatever is honorable, whatever is just and pure and lovely and commendable,

if there's anything in excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise,

think about these things. What's Paul saying?

He's saying the exact same thing that Isaiah said about a thousand years prior.

Isaiah 26, 3 and 4, For you keep him, that's the Lord, you keep him in perfect

peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.

Trust in the Lord forever for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Says the Lord keeps the person whose mind is stayed on him in perfect peace.

Really, Isaiah is just quoting the Psalms. This is Psalm 1.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers, nor stands in the way of sinners,

but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on it he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by a stream.

That's the message of the Bible over and over again, is would you set your mind

on the things above? Would you set your mind on God and his word and what he's

saying to you and what he's done for you?

Joy you find in Christ, the more joy you will find in the same things that Christ

does. And this is just a truth of life.

This isn't just a biblical truth. This is a universal truth.

You enjoy what brings you joy. You think about what makes you happy.

That's just the way life works. That's why if you ever want to get to know someone,

just sit down and talk to them for about 30 minutes, you'll find out real quick

what brings them the most joy.

It's what they talk about. It's what they think about. It's what they're concerned with.

So Paul says, hey, are you rejoicing in the Lord?

Then think about the things of the Lord. Think about Him. Consider Him.

I like, and most of y'all know, I love church history.

One of the things that I realized in the first church history class I took,

you have an aha moment of like, oh, so most people didn't have Bibles for 1,500 years.

I don't know why I thought that. I don't know why I thought that everyone had Bibles.

I thought there was a first century Lifeway or Marnel's. They could just go

down, get a scroll and have it printed with their name on it. Every kid had one.

I just assumed that was how Christians worked. And I thought,

well, how did that work? Not having a Bible, what do you do?

My whole life, I've had pastors and teachers telling me, listen,

So you need to read your Bible. You need to read your Bible.

You need to read your Bible.

And for 1500 years, for most people, that wasn't an option.

Well, go home and read your Bibles. And they're going, what Bibles?

You've got the only Bible in the town.

And for the first couple of centuries, it was probably like,

what do you mean by Bible?

We've got Mark, like somebody delivered to us, John and Mark,

somebody delivered to us the gospel of Luke.

We've got one letter from Paul and a gospel.

That's what we have right now. And I think it's helpful for us to be reminded that.

Paul writes this to this church, he's not telling them to go home and get on a Bible reading plan.

Now, that would be awesome. If you haven't read the Bible all the way through,

I can't recommend it enough. Read it every year.

I'm not knocking reading the

Bible. What I am saying is, what Paul's saying is, this isn't a system.

This isn't a, well, here's the nine-step process for thinking about the Lord.

He's just saying, listen, in your life, as you live and breathe,

as you go to work, as you go in and go out, as you raise kids,

as you get ready to die, right?

As you do all of these things, think about the Lord. Just think about it.

Consider him in your days. Consider him at night. Just think about it.

Whatever you know of him, whatever it is you know of him, think about that.

Because for so many of the people in this church, what they knew of him was what Paul had told them.

And they, like most people, had probably forgotten a lot of that.

But there are things that they hold on to that he says, man,

think about these things. Listen to Luke 10, 21.

I thought it would be interesting to look at, you know, what brings Christ joy? What does he rejoice in?

So he'd sent out the 70 disciples. He'd given them the authority to cast out demons.

And they had come back and reported to him that some people had turned and believed.

And he says, at that time, Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit,

said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden

these things from the wise and the learned and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

Listen, Jesus rejoicing when people's eyes are open to the beauty and majesty

of God and his salvation through Christ Jesus by the power of his spirit.

That's what Jesus rejoiced over.

Right because even as we lay out these things we're supposed to do hey

don't be in conflict with one another always be

rejoicing be gentle make sure you're trusting and praying make sure you're thinking

on godly things the truth is we're often none of those things we're often in

conflict with people we're often not rejoicing we're often not gentle not trusting

and praying We're often not thinking ungodly things.

So when Paul says to think on these lovely things, the thing that you should

think on the most is that God did not withhold his mercy and grace from you.

That Jesus did not recoil at your sinfulness or lack of joy in what God had

done for you and that the spirit did not pass over you because of what you lacked.

Let me invite you to rejoice in what Jesus rejoices in, and that is that he

came into a world to save sinners.

The reason I say that is that I don't want you to get so wrapped up in what

the Bible is asking you to do that you miss what the Bible tells you God has done for you.

Because the truth is, if you want to be a gentle person and you want to be a

person that avoids conflict and you want to be a person that trusts and prays

and that thinks on the right things, the only way to do that is to be a rejoicing person.

And the only way to be a rejoicing person is to think about what God has done for you.

If you go home and you sit down and you write a list of 20 things that you want

to do for God, that would be great.

But then when you wake up tomorrow and you fail to do a couple of them,

what's going to be your response? Are you going to tailspin?

Are you going to go, man, I had a plan and I knew what I wanted to do.

And I knew I shouldn't have done that. I knew I shouldn't have said that.

I knew I shouldn't have thought that. I acted that way or looked at that.

I knew I shouldn't have done that.

Or will you rejoice in what God has accomplished for you, what God has done

for you, what he's purchased for you in Christ Jesus?

Listen, do you want to be gentle? Do you want to be a trusting and praying person,

do you want to think about the right things?

Then rejoice in the Lord.

Rejoice in what he's done for you. Think about him. I rarely sit down and go,

I'm going to be more gentle today.

I'm going to be more gentle. That may last for a day, maybe two.

It may not make it till I hit my desk in the morning, depending on what kind of phone calls I get.

But the times in my life where I can honestly say, listen, I just want to focus

on Christ. I just want to see him for who he is. I want to be joyful.

I want to think about what God's

done for me. Then those things have just naturally flown out of my life.

Do you know him? Do you rejoice in him? Are you just trying to make him happy?

Jesus doesn't rejoice because you do things for him.

That's not how that works. The Bible's already told us what Jesus rejoices in

is that God has revealed these things to little children and hid them from the

wise and understanding.

Jesus rejoices that the greatest truth in the world was revealed to you and

me, his brothers and sisters, God's children.

His rejoicing, again, has not come from what you've done for him,

but what God's done for you.

And so should ours. So should ours.

Rest in this, that we can rejoice in the Lord. We gentle, trust,

pray, think rightly, but above all else, rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, Paul says, rejoice.

Let's pray. Father, again, thank you for this morning.

I thank you for the chance to be in your house. Thank you for the chance to be with these people.

God, again, we pray for those that are sick or ill, that are going through something

right now that we would be loving and kind to them. we would reach out and be

of any help that we can be.

But God, this morning, would you remind us to rejoice in you?

God, so many times when we leave church, we leave with a to-do list in our heads

of things that we need to do better.

And that's not the worst thing. It's not the worst thing to leave and go,

man, I've got some work to do.

But it is all for nothing if we don't leave first and foremost saying,

God, we just cannot believe how good and gracious and kind and gentle you've been with us.

Christ Jesus, we cannot believe what you've accomplished for us on the cross.

Spirit, we cannot fathom what you've done in opening our hearts and minds to

see the beauty of the salvation that God offers.

I truly believe if we'll do that, if we'll be a people that focus and fix our mind on those things.

And all the things that you've asked us to do will flow out of that.

That we'll handle conflict correctly.

That we'll be gentle with one another. That we will trust and pray in God that

we will slowly but surely begin to think more and more about the things that

you've called us to think about and to fix our minds on.

Because we think about what we enjoy.

And God, if we enjoy you, if we rejoice in you, That's what happens.

We thank you again. Amen.