Series on Philippians #17

Peace Found (or Defeating Worry and Every other Sin)
Philippians 4:6-9

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Let’s pray…

Okay, before we get started let me tell you, we will have a pop quiz a little later and the answer to all the questions will be Jesus. So tuck that away and let’s get going.

Last week we discussed the end of Philippians 4:5 through verse 6 and to sum it up if you weren’t here, or to review if you were, The Lord is near. Jesus is coming back and that is great news if you are a believer.

He’s in control and He’s on your side if you are a believer, so don’t worry about anything. Worry is a lack of faith and that’s a sin.

So, how do I (you) {we} keep from worrying? By prayer. We go to God in our quiet time for close, devotional, intimate prayer each day, but we don’t leave him there. We recognize that God is always with us, so we continue to pray to Him throughout the day and we pray about everything. About what? About EVERYTHING. Agreed?

That means when we see a flowering tree, we thank God for the beauty and our ability to see it.
When we get an awesome cup of coffee with the perfect temp and not too bitter, we praise God for coffee and the person who made it.

When we almost get hit while walking on the crosswalk, we thank God for our safety and we give our anger and or fright up to God and ask Him to calm us down before we do something stupid.

When our husband or wife or child or parent gets terribly sick, we go to our Lord with our requests for healing and we ask him to strengthen our faith and we lean into Him. All the while praying ultimately for His will to be done in the situation.

When that same person dies of the illness, or when they are hit by a bus and die, we take our honest grief, frustration, anger, and questions to God. That’s our first line of defense. We don’t hash it out first with some other lost fool. We take our hurt directly to the Lord.

Sometimes we’re going to be praying with nothing but sobs, but praying nonetheless.

In all things, we go to our Lord in prayer. That is how we deal with worry. Now let’s read tonight’s passage and we’ll see that there is more that we can do. If you are someone who likes some real practical, a + b = c type stuff, this message is for you tonight.

Paul lays out what NOT to do, what to do INSTEAD, and he gives A PROMISE of what we will get if we follow the directions.
And listen, last week we hammered on the fact that worry is a sin. We don’t give it another name, we don’t look the other way, we don’t run away from it, we don’t… No, we tackle it with the Gospel and kill that sin. This passage is how to defeat – how to kill – the sin of worry and find peace.

That said, YOU may not be worried about worry, that may not be an issue that grips you. But I’ve got good news. I’ve been looking over this passage for a few weeks with a series of different lenses and let me tell you, I believe it works as a weapon against all kinds of sin.

So if worry isn’t a problem for you, but lust is. Follow the same steps that we’re going through tonight. If you’re not worried or lusting, but you’re full of anger or pride and self-righteousness, same rules apply. Follow these directions.

If I haven’t named the sin that has had you in a corner lately, maybe it’s just laziness, or greed, whatever. Beat that sin down with this passage. Now, Philippians 4:6-9:

6 Do not be anxious (put your sin in place of anxiety or worry) about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

If you’ll notice, we are starting with verse six again. And that’s by design.

Again, I want you to plug your sin(s) into the passage. I think if you dig down and are honest worry is on the list, but then I want to go back to prayer.

The rest of the process described is positive thinking and actions and promises. I wanted last week to push prayer and I wanted to hit it again tonight before we go on, because it has to be made a central part of our lives as Christ followers.

If we don’t make a conscious effort to redouble our prayer life, we can get off track quickly.
You might think that this is easy for me because I’m the pastor, but I definitely struggle with this.

I’m pretty good with the Oh, no! prayers and I’m usually good with the thanks for the big stuff prayers, but I’m terribly undisciplined with quiet time, devotional time and the like and I’m not yet to a point in my moment to moment prayers where my first reaction, my reflex is to ask God for help before I speak in frustration or anger.

If you are a new Christian or an old Christian, I’m calling you to really focus on your prayers. This is not just a one-week challenge to pray for a week. This is every day, every moment, like I said last week, this should be like breathing for the Christ follower. PRAY.

Moving on, if we pray about everything – good and bad, there’s a promise…

7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The promise here is that if we really start to pray IN FAITH about EVERYTHING and connect with God on this level, then we are going to have peace that transcends all understanding. And that peace is like a bouncer at the club, and he’s not letting worry past the ropes.

What’s that mean? People are going to be asking, what’s is up with you? Don’t you get it? The sky is falling, why aren’t you joining our panic party?

The world is not going to understand. And listen, there are a lot of people within the church who are also going to be clueless here. They are going to be asking you to join them, or they are going to ask how to get some of what you’ve got, because listen peace is attractive to people who have been in the whirlwind of chaos for a while.

And, when it says that it will be a peace that transcends ALL understanding, that is going to mean your understanding too at times.

Maybe you’ve been there. Have you ever looked back over a few years and been like, man, 20 year old me would have never made it through this. Wait a minute, how’d I get through this? Why am I calm?

And again, that’s all dealing with worry, but look through this with your sin in the spotlight.

Any sin is a violation of God’s design for our life and when we are outside of the will of God, our fellowship is damaged and we are NOT going to be at peace.

When we slide back into the rut of sin, we revert to being like Adam and Eve, trying to hide from God and blaming one another for our problems. But, when we go to Him and flee from sin, we are promised to find peace. Incomprehensible peace.

Now, Paul fleshes it all out some more. He’s adding more weapons to our arsenal.

8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

This is not simply a new-age power of positive thinking sham. It is Paul saying, as you empty your heart and mind of worry (or your sin of lust, anger, pride, greed, laziness, etc.) don’t leave it empty, fill it back up. And make sure you fill it with the right thing. Otherwise we’ll have a whole new round of trouble.

I told you there was going to be a pop quiz. Here it goes. We are told to think about things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.

Answer these questions, in light of the Scriptural teachings on Jesus:
Who is the ultimate source of truth, in which there is no deceit?
Who is our noble King?
Who is our example of righteousness?
Who was completely pure, a spotless lamb, sacrificed in our place?
Who is most lovely, unblemished by sin?
Who are we to admire most?
Who is the most excellent, superior to all others? And who is most worthy of our praise?

If we don’t look at Jesus as the ultimate in each of those categories, we run the risk of looking to other things or other people and making them into idols that we turn to in order to defeat our worry, or to defeat other sins.

When we are racked buy temptation to sin, our recourse is to pray to our God and to meditate on the truth, nobility, righteousness, purity, loveliness, admiration, excellence and praiseworthiness of Jesus.

We think of Him as our King and the perfect example for our lives. We meditate on the fact that He is true to His word and that He will never leave us or forsake us. We think about the fact that He could have left us to suffer the wrath due to us for our sin, but instead came down from Heaven, lived a sinless life that we were unable to live and went to the cross to carry the weight of our sin load and absorb the wave of wrath that we should have suffered.

We think about the gift of His mercy and grace. We think about the gift of the Holy Spirit that followed after Jesus to fill every believer to guide and protect and to sanctify us for the return of our King.

We think on these things and we pray and we do this all the time. Don’t listen to your idle thoughts, take every thought captive and praise the Lord instead.

Now don’t hear me say not to think on the many other lesser things that also have qualities of truth and nobility and righteousness and purity.

Do fill your time thinking about your family and maybe aspects of your job and the good qualities of your nation and the beauty of nature or the amazing designs of men in the cities. Enjoy and spend time in books and watching movies.

Think about and enjoy great food and drink.

But please, please, please do not let any of those lesser things become greater in your heart than Jesus. Always find a way to thank God for those things that bring you joy and peace. He is the author of those things.

Now we’re almost done, look again in Philippians 4:9

9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

If you weren’t here last year, one of our first series of sermons came from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. It amazes me how nearly every other sermon can be tied back into that treasure trove of Jesus’ teaching. Let’s not end simply on Paul, as great as he was, let’s go back to the source and see how Jesus said this same thing.

Matthew 7:24-27

24 "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.

{UNPACK}

Communion…
Let’s pray…