Peace in Times Like These

All right, so we got a lot to uh cover this morning.

So we're just gonna dive right into the text to make sure that we get through all that God has.

Uh, but we're talking about peace in times like these.

And Paul is writing uh to the church at Philippi who's experiencing controversy, who's experienced internal controversy, but also external controversy, and their circumstances seem contrary to what we would consider peaceable living, right?

And so Paul is encouraging them throughout the letter, not only to be people of joy, but to be people of peace also.

And so as we enter into this text in verse four through seven, we see guarded by the peace of God.

Guarded by the peace of God.

In these short five verses, we discover seven imperative commands that Paul gives to the church.

That's a lot of final instruction uh that we see baked into the conclusion of this letter that he writes.

But but these seven imperative commands can be distilled down into three focuses uh that he wants to leave the church with.

Uh, number one would be to rejoice, right?

Rejoice.

Number two, be gentle.

And number three, put an end to your anxiety through prayer.

Put an end to your anxiety through prayer.

So we're gonna be focusing on that third one, but we are going to hit the first two as well.

In verse four, Paul starts off with his first command, and it's actually kind of sandwiched with the same command on the front and the back of this beginning phrase: rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

You see, rejoicing in God, rejoicing in the Lord means to rejoice in him, in our standing in him, in our relationship with him, in his resources, in his blessing, in his favor, all of these things, to rejoice in the Lord rather than to be affected by our circumstances.

Our circumstances do not dictate the joy that we are supposed to have, but not only have, express in our life.

It means we're able to be joy-filled by our state of being in him.

And then Paul's repetition of the command: rejoice, and the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice.

It's as if he expects objections.

Paul, are you serious?

How can you look around at what's happening right now?

How can we rejoice in times like these?

But it's we rejoice in the Lord despite the times we find ourselves in.

It's that we rejoice in the Lord despite the circumstances that we face, because no matter what external circumstances we face, we face them in Him.

He says in verse 5, let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

Reasonableness is often translated as gentleness.

And gentleness can be a kind of ambiguous and challenging word to discern.

Because throughout scripture, we see gentleness chastised and we see it commended.

And so we have to navigate the waters of what gentleness truly means.

Anytime our gentleness would lend itself to evil works and the lies of the enemy, our gentleness should be chastised.

But if our gentleness actually shows a preference for others, if it shows a love for those around us, then it's the gentleness that the scriptures commend.

You see, it emphasizes a posture that doesn't demand, that doesn't insist on their personal rights, that prefers others above themselves.

I think if Paul was trying to do anything, he was trying to point back to what he had already wrote, commanding the Philippian church to operate in in chapter 2, verses 3 through 4.

Here would be his definition of gentleness.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

And so if you think about this life that we're called to live, there's this spectrum that we kind of have to look at and function inside of.

If over here you're just always demanding, you're always insisting that people cater to you or that they have to bend to your preference, then you're not being gentle in the way that the Lord has called us to live.

But if we're living a life over here where our gentleness is giving way to wickedness, then we are also not living in the way of which Christ has called us to.

But it was qualified that this was temporal because he says, But in the day of the Lord, he will bring judgment.

And so we are to be gentle people who celebrate, who proclaim, who stand upon truth while simultaneously preferring others above ourselves.

And Paul kind of gives this simple but powerful command or statement at the end of this command and how do we live our lives?

He says, the Lord is at hand.

See, Paul's working to draw our attention to a greater and more true reality.

It's almost as if he's saying, Why would you live in such a way where you are demanding?

Why would you live in such a way where you are insisting upon your own preferences?

The day of the Lord is near.

Do you not realize this?

Do you not understand or comprehend that at the revealing of his glory, you will have to forfeit all demands?

You have to re forfeit all self-centered preferences?

It's almost as if he's saying, Let your gentleness be known now, so that the Lord might be gentle with you also.

The Lord is at hand.

And this gentleness is not just to be known by others within the church, but this gentleness is to be known by all.

In our engagement with culture, in our engagement with one another, it should be marked by gentleness.

But then Paul goes into his third command that he gives to the church at Philippi.

And in verse 6, he says, Do not be anxious about anything.

Do not be anxious about anything.

Now, this might be the most striking command in these five verses that we see that Paul gives to the church.

But for some of us this morning, this might be the most offensive command Paul gives.

Do not be anxious.

I think it might be interesting that in the cultural moment we find ourselves in, that a command from Scripture that is for the purpose of our ultimate good might be received as offensive.

What do you mean, don't be anxious?

What do you mean, don't worry?

What do you mean don't fret?

And especially in a time where it seems as though culture has an infatuation with such things.

To be anxious, to be riddled and ruled by anxiety.

How could Paul say such things?

Paul's not speaking from some uh personal divine insight, nor is he speaking from some isolated apostolic authority.

But Paul is, if anything, giving to us what Jesus himself instructed for his church.

In Matthew 6 25, Jesus himself says, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.

Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

So hear these words from Christ and from Paul.

Do not be anxious about anything.

But let's pause just for a moment and reflect.

What might cause us to be anxious in the first place?

Anxiousness is just an expression of fear.

Anxiousness, worry, fret, nervousness, these are all different ways that we really at the core express fear.

And all of us, we fear what we cannot control.

We love control.

All of us love control.

And when control's taken out of our hands, we begin to fear.

We begin to grow anxious and weary.

We begin to grow worrisome and we fret over things.

In their book, The Cry of the Soul, How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Question About God, authors Alender and Longman describe or define fear in this way.

Fear is our response to uncertainty about our resources in the face of danger.

Fear is our response to our uncertainty about our resources in the face of danger.

Because we are uncertain about our resources, to get us through the circumstances that stand before us, we become anxious, nervous, fearful.

And this has the propensity to enslave our lives and cause us to respond in sinful, unfruitful, and disobedient ways.

Ultimately, fear tempts us to become self-reliant.

That's the ultimate temptation in the face of fear, that we would depend and rely on ourselves.

We tend to view others as enemies around us that jeopardize the very resources we're trying to cling on so tightly to and rely upon.

It causes us to believe the lie that if we are going to make it through this, then it will be on our own abilities.

But then Jesus does something.

And he says this in Matthew 6.27.

And which of you being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

I mean, that is such a stark contrast to the way that you and I often think and respond to life circumstances.

It's as if we do strive to prolong something that is ultimately outside of our control.

When the Lord desires to take us, he shall take us.

Not one of us in all of our toil and all of our anxiousness can add even but an hour to our own life.

You see, if we all fear what we can't control, then worry and anxiousness is ultimately a failure to trust that God is in control.

Do not be anxious.

It's both a command to trust in God, in his resources, but it's not just that.

It's also an invitation to tangibly experience his peace.

And that invitation is displayed for us in what follows.

But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

Let your request be made known to God.

Notice the contrast between do not be anxious, the command about anything, and then the solution, but in everything by prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.

We should not worry, we should not be anxious about, we should not fear anything in this world.

But instead, we should pray about, petition, and surrender everything to God.

You see, there's a difference that we have to wrestle with as we move forward in this sermon this morning.

What we have to try and wrestle with the tension of is the objective, normative peace that you and I have if we are in Christ Jesus.

If we are in him, then we have peace with God because the reality of the gospel is that the hostility, the separation that you and I had with God has been abolished in his own flesh that we might be reconciled to him.

So there's an objective peace that you and I have that nothing in this world could ever thwart or threaten.

We have it in Christ.

But there's a subjective, existential peace that seems so often absent from us.

Do you feel the peace of God?

Do you experience the peace of God?

Here we're being invited to experience the peace of God that we truly have because we are truly in Christ.

And this peace is experienced through prayer, Paul says.

Paul uses four forms of prayer in this passage as his solution to an ever-present problem in the church.

And the first word he uses says prayer.

Make our prayer, or in everything, we should pray.

And prayer is just this general umbrella that covers all other types of petitioning God.

We should start with prayer.

But then it's fascinating that the second word Paul uses is supplication.

And in the root word of supplication, it is in its very essence to lack, to be deprived of, to have not, or be without something.

Do you see the correlation between what we talked about fear was an uncertainty or an absence of confidence in our own resources?

And Paul is saying here that in our supplication, we're actually supposed to be honest about that reality.

You don't have what it takes.

Fundamentally, when it comes to our life, we don't have the resources.

But we are in relationship and reconcile to a father who does.

And so it's as if to experience the peace of God, you and I first have to be honest.

We don't have what it takes to get us out of the circumstances that we face.

And it's almost as if the enemy might put certain circumstances in front of you that you might observe or you might assume or even experience some semblance of victory over by your own intrinsic resources to get you to not depend on God any farther when you hit rock bottom, when you experience deep fear, when anxiousness floods in you.

It's almost as if he can get you to sense and taste victory enough that you come to a place where you no longer need to rely on God at all.

You see, Paul is saying, be honest that you lack, that you're deprived of, that you are without.

But he says, in thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is the hallmark of faithful prayer.

It's because at the same time we recognize that we are lacking, that we are without.

We must also acknowledge what God has fully provided for us.

And he says, make your requests known to God.

It's talking about making our specific needs known to him.

And it's not that we're just supposed to pray in generic ways, but we're supposed, we're supposed to pray with specificity.

We're supposed to talk about the things that seem to be robbing us of peace, the things that seem to be causing our anxiety, causing our worry, causing our fear.

We're supposed to be very specific about these things as we go before God.

As honest as we are of the absence of our resources, we must be honest about the things that are tempting us into fear.

And so Paul presents a problem.

In certain ways, we have an anxiety problem.

We have an anxiousness problem.

He provides a solution that we should present these things in everything to God through prayer.

And then he shows us the fruit.

He shows us the fruit, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

This is the fruitful promise of a prayer-focused life.

A life that refuses to allow anxiousness, worry, and fear to rule over them, but is dependent on the reigning rule of a good king who loves and cares for them.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.

The peace of God that you and I are able to experience through a prayer-filled life, at times it will not make sense in comparison to our circumstances.

Sometimes it will almost seem inappropriate to the circumstances that we find ourselves in, to have such peace that it almost appears as inappropriate to what we're going through.

As almost we would be tempted into guilt that we feel such peace in the face of such circumstances.

There's one of my favorite stories about those who gave their life for the faith, for the gospel of Jesus, comes out of North Korea.

There was a pastor named Pastor Kim who had 27 members of his church in North Korea, and they had hand-dug tunnels under the earth that they lived in to hide from such an oppressive government.

As they were building roads in this area, they uncovered these tunnels that these people had been living in.

They brought Pastor Kim and his 27 members out in front of a crowd of over 30,000 people.

And their end goal was to get them to deny their faith in Jesus.

And so they started off in this way.

They brought four of the children of the congregation out in front of the crowd and in front of their parents, and they said, If you do not deny your faith, we will hang your children.

The parents looked those babies in the eye and said, We'll see you in heaven.

Go be with Jesus.

They hung their kids in front of them.

Then they proceeded to force the rest of the congregation to lay down in front of the nearby steamrollers that they were using to create the new roads.

And as that steamroller passed over their bodies, crushing their bones, they sang this hymn.

Thee alone I see.

More love to thee.

Let sorrow do its work.

More love to thee.

Then shall my latest breath whisper thy praise.

This be the parting cry my heart shall raise.

More love, O Christ, to thee.

That's a peace that seems inappropriate.

Because it's a peace that surpasses our own understanding.

It's a peace that only God can give to his people.

What's the fruit of this type of incomprehensible peace?

There's a guarantee, there's a promise.

It will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

This word for guard is as a military term for a soldier who watches over a prisoner.

It's as if what Paul is saying is that through a prayer-centered life, anxiousness, fear, worry will be denied even entrance into your mind and your heart.

Because you have become so reliant upon the resources of all Creator Good King.

You see, this isn't some just generic spiritual formula to combat anxiety.

This isn't some just posture of wishful thinking.

This is only possible for those in Christ Jesus.

You see, Paul doesn't simply command something from them and then fail to equip them to accomplish it, nor does he give them some spiritual homeopathic remedy rooted in wishful thinking.

He gives them both a command and a divine equipping to accomplish from their peace-filled reality of being in Jesus to have the peace of God felt, experienced, realized in their life.

It is through their peace-filled standing in Jesus and their act of reliance upon God as Father, they will be a people who are guarded by his peace.

Verses 8 through 9, we see present with the God of peace, present with the God of peace.

As Paul closes out this letter, he commends them to meditate on what is holy, but also motivates them to holy living.

He commends them to meditate on what is holy, but also motivates them to holy living.

There's this inseparable connection between what we think about and how we live our life.

That right thoughts produce right living, just as wrong thoughts produce wrong living.

We cannot be a people who continue to be dumbfounded and confused when our thoughts, our meditations, the things that we are taking in are contrary to the holiness, splendor, and majesty of God, and our lives seem completely a wreck and out of whack.

We can no longer walk around dumbfounded by that reality.

But it is through allowing the light of his glory into our lives that the light of his glory is reflected in our lives.

We cannot focus our minds on what is wrong and then continue and think that we might live out what is right.

He says, Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, just pure, lovely, commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

This is this imperative command to think about.

And at first glance, we might think that what he's talking about is meditating upon or dwelling upon these things.

And it's not that it's not that, but it's not the fullness of what he is talking about.

When he says think about these things, it actually means to take account of.

Take account of these things.

It's as if he understands.

We will face things in our life that will tempt us to be full of anxiety and worry and fear.

But in light of those situations and circumstances we face, we take into account a truer reality, a better circumstance, a more faithful end.

It's as though Paul understands our hardships and our trials.

But in the midst of those situations, consider the infinitely more glorious splendor of God, the faithfulness of his promises fulfilled in Christ Jesus, and the testimony of his mighty works.

It is a call to align our minds with a greater reality, a truer circumstance than the one that simply stands before us.

The list of eight marks that Paul puts before them to dwell on is centered around the praiseworthy nature of a holy God, that which is established by him and that which flows from him.

It communicates, in some, a heavenly thinking over a debased worldly one.

It communicates thoroughly what it means to have the mind of Christ.

A pure mind that both pleases God in its obedience, but also intentionally invites his presence into our lives.

Verse 9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Finally, Paul calls the church to both live out what they have learned about the faith, but also to imitate Paul as he strives to live faithfully among them.

And at the end of this passage, he leaves them with the promise the God of peace will be with you.

Before the fruit of a prayer-filled life was that the peace of God would guard us here in our meditation on what is holy and our striving for holy living, is that we invite the actual presence of the God of peace into our lives.

There's an inseparable reality between the promise given and the instruction that has come before it.

You see, the promises of God for the believer are not divorced from our efforts to obtain them and have them realized in our lives.

I get it.

The promises of God, specifically the peace of God, often seem completely out of reach for us as believers.

But it's not because they truly are, but we tr because we truly fail to reach for them.

If we were to faithfully and honestly reach for God's promises to be experienced in our lives, we would discover them well within our grasp.

But it takes effort.

It takes us believing God, it takes us living in the ways that God has called us to, that we might have them in our life.

Our fears, anxiousness, worries are often more present to us than God seems to be.

If we're honest.

Perhaps it's because we dwell on, perhaps it's because we give too much credit to, perhaps it's because we meditate on these things, which in return promote a life of behaviors that are ruled by them.

Do we see that correlation?

We wonder why we're ruled by fear.

It's because we are meditating on that which is fearful.

If we desire to have the God of peace present with us, then we must start with the battle in our mind and wage war against thoughts of fear with meditations of praise.

And here's a central focus of what I want us to see this morning.

God's peace realized is the remedy to our fear.

God's peace realized is the remedy to our fear.

We've talked about what fear is.

Our response to uncertainty about our resources in the face of danger.

But what is peace?

What is peace and even more deeper than that, why do our souls long for it?

You see, peace is this: a relationship of love and loyalty with God and one another.

Peace is a relationship of love and loyalty with God and one another.

And we we've talked about this throughout Sacred Mission, but we're gonna recap this together this morning.

Love is this agape love.

It's the steady intention of the will toward another's highest good.

God has determined in his own will that he would be for your highest good.

That's the love of God placed upon you because of Christ Jesus.

But it's not just the love of God toward us, it's the expected love that we are to communicate to one another.

And in the presence of that love, we find loyalty.

And this is where we get this sense of steadfastness, that God's face is inseparably fixed toward you.

All throughout the scriptures, when God's face is toward his people, that means that his blessing is being poured out on them, his favor is being poured out on them, his resources are being poured out on them.

And so this steadfastness that God has with his people is that his face is inseparably fixed toward us.

But it's not just with us again, it is with God and one another.

Why do we need such peace?

We need such peace because hostility and separation exist not just between us and God, but between us and one another.

And we need some divine remedy to this hostility.

We need reconciliation to this separation that we experienced.

And Jesus comes to abolish hostility, and he comes to reconcile us to God and to one another.

This is why the fullness of the law of God could be distilled down to these two: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

How is this hostility?

How is this separation remedied between us and God?

We see this in Romans 5.10.

For if while we were enemies, while hostility existed between us and God, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son.

Much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?

Through the death of Christ, that was able to abolish the hostility that was between us and God.

But what about you and I?

What about between man and neighbor?

Ephesians 2.14.

For he being Christ Himself, he is our peace.

How so?

Because he has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

Paul's writing to the church of Ephesus, and what he's encouraging them in is there no longer needs to be hostility between you and fellow man, between Jew and Gentile, because Christ did something in his flesh.

He abolished the wall of hostility between us, making one new man.

And so it's in the death of Christ, in the breaking of his own body, that he broke down the hostility between us and God, but also between us and one another.

And because there is the absence of this hostility, there is now space for the presence of peace, the presence of our welfare, the presence of our ultimate good.

Romans 8:15 gives us this summary.

Romans 8:15

For you, dear child, did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship, and by him we cry, Abba Father.

You weren't given over to be a slave again to fear.

You were filled by the Spirit.

You were brought in as a child of the King that you might know peace.

And it's through the abolishing of hostility that we have been able to receive the present welfare of peace in our life.

You see, it is from this state of peace, from it, that we must work to experience it in our lives.

In Christ, we are not a people who are trying to acquire for ourselves or obtain by our own strength peace, not through wishful thinking, conflict resolution skills, positive meditation, ambiguous gratitude, or any sense of self-love.

No, we have obtained peace in Christ, and so we are working to experience it from that already eternal state.

We've already been given eternal peace because God has provided it for us in his son.

He's broken down what separated us from himself through the broken body of his son, and he has proclaimed peace to us and peace to one another through his shed blood.

You see, we don't strive to acquire peace.

We strive to have the peace already obtained for us realized in our life.

And that is the divine remedy to our fear.

But we still are living this life.

And you and I are still going to face circumstances that are going to tempt us to be anxious, that are going to be tempting for us to be worrisome and fret over and fear.

And here's why.

We fear this.

This is the core of our fear that we don't have what is in us.

We don't have what it takes to stop this separation.

And potentially, let me submit to you this morning that perhaps this is why death itself becomes the greatest of our fears.

Because it not only separates us from all of these things, but it threatens to separate us from our very selves.

You see, we fail to have confidence, we fail to have trust in our own resources to prevent this separation from occurring.

And death is the ultimate reality of that.

You have no resource, you have no innate strength, you have no internal ability to even add one more hour to your life.

It is in the face of death alone that we realize our resources are insufficient.

But Jesus poses an honest and profound statement about this reality to his people.

In Matthew 10, 28, he says this.

Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body and hell.

Did you pick up on that?

Did you see what he was saying there?

The question is, whom and what we will fear?

Will we fear unrighteous, ungodly things, and live a life of disobedience?

Or will we feel righteous, holy, living God?

And in that, live in peace.

You see, peace tends to become elusive to us.

We toil in anxiousness.

We work relentlessly to prevent this separation from occurring in our lives.

Peace is robbed from us because we so often fear the wrong separation fundamentally.

We fail to fully embrace that the greatest separation endangering us is that we would be separated from life himself.

Death apart from Christ is the ultimate separation.

While we are called to sobriety and what and who we should fear, we are not, though, abandoned to the crippling effects of our soul's anxiousness.

We are not left to rely upon our own resources to remedy such a dreadful separation.

We are given peace through the gospel because our greatest separation has been laid upon another that we will be reconciled into life through Him.

Do you see that?

And just for a moment, let's let's consider this.

The greatest separation that we should fear, we don't have the resources to remedy.

There is nothing you can do to earn God's love for you.

There is nothing that you can do to tip the scales of his divine justice into your favor.

There is nothing you can do in and of yourself to breach the chasm that separates us from his presence.

It is in Christ, in him alone, that he has made a means so that we might be brought near to him.

He is the infinite resource of our remedy.

And that's where we put our hope.

Jesus was separated through death and we have peace through his life.

This is our gospel hope this morning.

Jesus was separated through death, and we have peace through his life.

If at the heart of fear is the terror of separation, then we see it most clearly at the cross.

My God, my God, why have you separated yourself from me?

Why have you rejected me?

Why have you turned your back on me?

Why has your face turned away from me?

You see, Jesus experienced the very separation that you and I deserve.

That should create such horror and dread in our soul.

But we should not be left to our anxiousness.

We should not be left to fear because we've not been given a spirit that we might be enslaved to fear again.

But in Christ, we are sons.

In Christ, we are unable to be separated.

Look at this promise in Romans 8, 38 through 39.

Look at the beautiful way Paul ties this together.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to do what?

It has no power, it has no ability, it has no resource in itself to separate us.

From the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Do you see why we should not fear?

Do you see why the command to not be anxious about your life is not one that is so oppressively laid upon us that we couldn't bear come out from under the weight?

But we've been dragged out, we've been lifted up, we've been empowered by the Spirit that we can actually be obedient to such end because there's a greater fear that's been resolved, reconciled in Christ Himself.

It is because of the gospel that you and I are no longer enslaved to such anxiousness or worry or trouble.

Nothing, church, can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

That's a promise.

That's a promise that you and I must strive to walk in the reality of.

So as we leave here this morning, here is my encouragement to you.

Live in peace.

Live in peace.

Look, the cultural times that we find ourselves in, it makes all the sense in the world while they out there are riddled with anxiety and anxiousness and fear.

It makes all the sense in the world.

They have no hope.

They have no guarantee or assurance that the peace that they long for will ever actually materialize.

They should be in constant dread.

But in a sense, shame on us for allowing it to flood into the church.

That we have lived such flagrantly disobedient lives at times.

And I'm not speaking from some ivory tower.

I'm not speaking from a place that doesn't understand.

Look, it was like a week ago, asked my wife.

I woke up in a severe panic attack, jumped out of bed, ran out of our room because I was terrified in that moment.

I fear.

I filled at times with anxiousness and worry.

It's because I'm failing to reach out and take hold of them.

And I allow my mind to cycle itself on fears that have no clout, on things of this world that it doesn't matter.

Look, when we die, when we die, everything you're worried about, it dies too.

It's gone.

It doesn't matter.

Whatever you give fear to today, in the moment of your death, it's gone.

But he is not.

Life with him is not.

The beauty of the glory of his riches is not.

The fullness of his promises in Christ Jesus are not.

And so I hope and I pray you and I can be a people who live in peace.

Not some false sense or notion, but rooted in and derived from the peace that Christ has given to us through his gospel.

Amen.

Let's pray.