Philippians 4:4-7 • Paul Deschamps

Hi, CTK. My name is Paul Deschamps and I'm the Director of Student Ministries here. It's a great pleasure for me that I get to join you today in your living rooms, on your porch, or wherever you are as we, the church, gather to worship our great God. Please join me in turning to Philippians 4:4-7 and follow along in your Bibles or on the screens as we turn our attention to God's word.

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 made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. — Philippians 4:4-7

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Let me pray for us. God, open our eyes and our hearts this morning. Meet us in your word. Let the joy that you give us flow in and through us. In the name of your son, Jesus, amen.

So this is one of the most famous passages in the Bible. It's so famous that these words almost need no introduction. Over the last few months, it's likely that you've spent time glued to your couch like me, scrolling through social media. You may have even come across these words in an encouraging post. These are the Instagram words. These are the verses for this cultural moment that we find ourselves living in. We all know the posts—the mountains with the sunrise giving hope for a new day, the beach with the waves washing away sandy footprints, that mug of coffee with the perfectly placed, loved and well-worn Bible right behind it, open to these words: "Rejoice in the Lord always. Be anxious for nothing." It's good stuff, but it's a little bit like cotton candy. It tastes good for a second, but then it dissolves.

And then we scroll down and we hear about another friend who has tested positive for COVID. We see the windows of another business shattered and looted. We see protesters in the streets, crying out for equity, for justice, and for mercy. And if these words are true, and if we are supposed to rejoice in the Lord always, I wonder: why don't we see these verses plastered over a picture of a positive COVID test? Or a picture of a line of police officers in full riot gear?

I know what you're thinking. That would be crazy. You might be saying, "That wouldn't give me hope. That just reminds me of the problems and the anxiety that I'm already feeling about everything in my life right now."

In our house, my wife and I keep having this conversation that sounds like this: "Blah blah blah. Ugh. It's so weird right now. I don't like the new normal. This isn't how it's supposed to be." Every single one of us is experiencing the universal problem of anxiety right now.

One counselor that I know by the name of Mike Emlett says that anxiety is a state of mind, heart, and body that's governed or controlled by fear of some negative outcome in the future. In other words, we all have expectations about how life is supposed to work best. And when our experiences come out of sync with expectations, we experience anxiety.

Over the last few weeks, as we've been reading Philippians together, we have seen example after example about how we are supposed to be a people that are filled with joy. And today we're challenged by these verses because they tread on some uncomfortable territory. God wants his people to be marked by rejoicing, not worry. To answer that call, we're going to look at joy in three points today: joy is a command, not a feeling; joy is an attitude, not a response; and joy is beyond our understanding.

Joy is a Command, Not a Feeling

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. — Philippians 4:4

Paul is reminding us that after all he has said and done, we are first and foremost to remember that our joy is found in the Lord. Jesus is the object of our joy, not our circumstances. When we consider all the obstacles to joy that this life seems to throw at us, it feels practically impossible to be able to rejoice in the Lord always. And yet, this is the only place where we can rejoice always. Because our joy is in the always.

When I think back to one of my most joyful days that I can remember, I think of my wedding day. I will never forget the light in the room, the way the sun floated through the windows. I remember how it struck my wife's veil as she turned the corner to walk down the aisle. The look on her face.

I will never forget that breathless feeling like my heart was gonna stop as we stood there hand in hand and we shared our vows, our promises. And yet, even on that happiest day, there was a shadow. Because our promises that day, they have an expiration date. We were pronounced husband and wife until death do we part. Our happy ever after story, it isn't a forever story.

See, always only happens in the Lord. And when we are joined to Jesus, we're not given a wedding vow until death do we part, because Jesus has already done the dying part. And we are promised life with him forever.

I just go back one verse and take a look. Paul, he's reminding us in verse three that our names are written in the book of life. That's the book of people who belong to, who are united to Jesus. That's you. You are secure in the always joy that is found in Jesus.

Joy Found in Christ, Not Our Accomplishments

See, our success, our hope, and our joy isn't in our accomplishments, but in what Christ has accomplished for us. So many of us are trying to fill up our joy bucket by the things that we do, and by the way that we feel. And to be fair, that's not always a bad thing. Modern psychologists have studied the effects of helping others. And they've concluded that it's really good to help other people. It's really good because you help someone else solve their problem. You maybe improve the quality of their life. But the end result is often for the volunteer that they too experience happiness. We feel good when we do good.

But the joy that we're talking about today is a joy that is beyond something we feel when we do even the good things. Jesus in Luke 10 verses 19 through 20, he says this to the same people that he sent out to do good things in his name:

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. — Luke 10:19-20

Do you see? Jesus sends his people to share in the work of the Gospel and the joy we feel in doing good work and participating in good things in life circumstances that make us feel happy. It's just a fringe benefit to the real joy that we have. That in Jesus, we are assured a forever seat in his kingdom, at his table.

So our worst case scenario is this: if you have faith in Jesus Christ, you can have a rotten life. But in your death, you will be with Jesus in glory. Now if you don't have this, then you can be living your best life now. And your joy will turn to ash as you spend eternity apart from God.

Rejoicing as a Spiritual Discipline

See, this kind of joy is a command because it's kind of like a muscle that we constantly need to take to the gym. When Paul says in verse four, "rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice," he isn't trying to repeat his point. He isn't nagging us so that we'll finally listen. No, what he's saying is he's giving us a pattern for our rejoicing. He's showing us what the workout is. And what he's really saying is rejoice that you are always in the Lord. And keep rejoicing. Never stop rejoicing. Never forget that.

And we are called to do that same workout to exercise our joy. But we're called to work it out to exercise it in a certain way. If rejoicing in the Lord is the muscle that we flex to secure our internal joy, then these verses tell us how we are to express our joy externally. See joy is an attitude, it's not a response.

In verse five and verse six they say:

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.

Paul is calling the Philippian church to be the people who are known for their reasonableness, as the ESV translates it. But I think a better translation for this word is gentleness. He says let your gentleness be known to all people. So the joy that we have in Jesus, the joy that we have in the Lord, it isn't for us to keep, but to share. Our joy needs to be public and it needs to be gentle.

Paul says in Philippians two fourteen through 15:

Do all things without grumbling. Shine as lights in the world. — Philippians 2:14-15

Remember, Paul is saying this while chained to a prison guard. He wasn't in a hammock between a couple of palm trees on the beach. And this isn't the only time he was in jail. This wasn't like a one off thing for him. He'd been shipwrecked, he'd been thrown in jail, he'd been beaten to within an inch of his life. He'd been driven out of towns. There were people who had committed to neither eat nor drink until he had been murdered.

Now how's that for a baseline of inner joy? How's that for conditions? And what Paul says is take it. Take the punch. Lean in. Turn the other cheek.

And draw closer to your neighbor, draw closer to your enemy. I mean if you think about it, this is totally counter cultural to the way we live today. Scott Sauls in his new book, A Gentle Answer, he tells this story about Doctor John Perkins, the now 90 year old pastor and civil rights activist. Perkins says we are the first generation to use hate as an asset. And what he means by that is that we have claimed as a society the right to be bitter, the right to be angry, and the right to get even. Outrage has become the engine for social change.

Now if there is a man alive who has a right to leverage hate, it's Perkins. Since his birth in 1930 in Mississippi, his mother died in his infancy. His father abandoned him in his childhood. His brother was killed during an altercation with a Mississippi police officer. And as a civil rights activist, he was beaten, arrested and jailed. And he received countless death threats. But his response isn't hate. He has spent his life confronting racial injustice, oppression, and violence. And all the way, he has advocated for reconciliation, peace, equality, healing, and hope.

See, instead of hate, he's preaching forgiveness. Instead of moving away from his enemies, he's moving toward them in love. Christians, we're not called to run away and hide from our problems. We are called to stand up in our problems. And Christians are to be the ones who are at the very center of the fray. And while we're there, we're to display with gentleness. Display the gentleness of Jesus. We're to see the world through his compassionate eyes. And move in empathy towards our neighbors.

Now if I'm honest, this sounds even more impossible than rejoicing always. I mean, how do we do this? I think Perkins knows. The Lord is near. Jesus has come. He has died. He has risen and he reigns. And he has promised to return. And he's promised to make right all that has been made wrong. And through the power of his spirit, we can endure with great gentility any trouble that comes our way.

Now Paul, you might be thinking, this sounds great. This sounds like a good thing to do, the way we should treat others, but what about me? Why do I feel so anxious still? How are we supposed to process our anger, and our hurt, and our grief? What are we to do? Paul's answer here is prayer.

Prayer as the Path Forward

This passage shows us two different paths that we have to take. So look at the text. Verses five and six. We let our gentleness be known to people, but we let our anxieties be known to God through prayer. And do you remember ancient history way back at the beginning of this sermon series, week one? Jeff was talking about prayer, and he said prayer might be all that we can do right now. And in reality, it's the best thing that we can do.

This passage tells us how to pray. It tells us how to practice a specific kind of prayer. And the term used here is supplication. Now supplication means, just a fancy word to say, we ask God for things. We ask God for help. That all the horizontal problems that we face every single day in this world, we take all of our problems and we go vertical.

When Paul says don't be anxious, he isn't saying that our problems are not real problems, or just forget about it, or cheer up, it's gonna be okay in the end. Or maybe he's not telling us to do baby steps like Bill Murray in What About Bob. No. Paul is acknowledging that every day we face real and challenging problems. And instead of becoming angry, anxious, worrisome, and hateful people, we can lay them at the feet of Jesus.

The most common command in the Bible is the command do not fear. 365 times the Bible makes this command. Now that's a call to lay down your fears at the feet of Jesus every single day for a year. See the follower of Jesus isn't supposed to never feel fear, but we redirect our fears to the Lord, and we ask him for help. And we do this thankfully.

See, thankful prayers align our hearts with God's heart. We give God our pain, and we thank God for being God. We recognize that He is God, and we are not. And we trust that in all things, always He's in control. We practice this every week in our church when we say the Lord's prayer together. When we say our Father in heaven, hallowed is your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. We can trust that God is sovereign and that His plan will be accomplished.

And when we do this, we are welcomed into His peace. Which is a joy that goes beyond our understanding. See real rejoicing comes from the joy that we find in Jesus. This letter that we've looking through Philippians is often called the Epistle of Joy. And I know you've heard this. And it's called this because it mentions the term joy 14 times in some manner throughout this book. I mean, it's clear. Joy is a really big deal in this letter to Paul. And it should be a big deal to us.

But while we're on the subject of counting words, the name Jesus is mentioned close to 40 times. And don't you see? The Epistle of Joy is really the Epistle of Jesus.

And you wanna know joy? You have to know Jesus. See, Philippians 4:7 promises that God will guard your heart and your mind in Jesus. And this is possible only because in Jesus, through his work on the cross, this peace has already been achieved. And Jesus graciously gives us his peace.

Because of sin in our lives, we really only have one real problem: we have been made enemies with God. And there is nothing that you can do to get around the fact that, as scripture says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And we can't earn our way back to peace with God. But by his death on the cross, Jesus has paid for your sins. And he offers you peace with God. And he offers you eternal life with him. That's good news.

And when we join with Christ, not only do we make peace with God, but Jesus promises us something more. He gives us the Holy Spirit, which binds us to the peace of Christ. In John 14:27 Jesus says:

My peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Jesus gives us his peace, which surpasses our own understanding. And this produces in us real joy, real joy that is beyond our understanding. This literally means this is something that our minds cannot do. It is a joy and a peace that is beyond even our wildest dreams.

See, our solutions to peace require us to say things like, "I gotta figure this out. Or I can fix this. Or what we've gotta do is. Or it's not so bad. We can live with this. We'll get through this one way or another." Our solutions more often don't lead us to peace, but to higher levels of anxiety and depression. It can lead to suicide. It can make us do crazy things like feel like I need to steal something to survive. Make us feel like I must do violence to satisfy justice. Make us feel that my hate is my strength.

See Jesus doesn't offer us strategies to peace. He has offered us himself to protect us from ourselves so that we don't sabotage our own joy. We can be joyous and rejoicing people because the God who made us loves us. And he has promised that he will never forget us. Isaiah 49 tells us that he has written our names on his hands. And Jesus himself with nails on a cross has forever carved our names on his hands. He loves us. And he is working all things for good. And he will never separate himself from us.

Corrie Ten Boom's Story

You know, when I think back to those Instagram stories that I made fun of, and what it would look like to plaster these verses over the difficult images that have been captured over the last few weeks, it reminds me of a story by Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie Ten Boom, if you're not familiar with her, she and her family were a part of the Dutch resistance in World War II. And they were sent to Nazi concentration camps for hiding and rescuing Jewish families from the Holocaust. And in her famous book, The Hiding Place, she tells the story of when she and her sister Betsy were sent to Ravensbrook Concentration Camp and had to live in Barracks 28.

As Corey and her sister Betsy had been relocated to these new barracks, and they're laying in the reeking straw and the cramped quarters, breathing the foul air, wondering how they'll make it in such insufferable conditions. Only to begin to be bitten by fleas. Now I have a friend who's been bitten by fleas, and he says it hurts a lot. I can't even imagine.

But as they're laying there suffering, they begin to pray. They're asking God, "God, show us how to survive in such a place." And they remember this Bible study that they had just looked at that very morning. And they had read these words:

Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.

And out of options, that's just what these two sisters do. They give thanks for being together. They give thanks that their Bibles were not confiscated from them when they came into the camp. They give thanks for the close quarters so that more people might hear the gospel. They give thanks for the foul smelling air because there's still breath in their lungs. And they give thanks even for the fleas.

And while being thankful for the fleas at that very moment, it disrupts Corey's sensibilities. They press on. And as the days unfold, remarkable things begin to happen. And while they're out in the camp, they suffer from brutal conditions and brutal treatment under the ever present and ever watchful eye of the Nazi prison guards. But when they return back to Barracks 28, they encounter such freedom and peace from their conditions that they're able to hold regular Bible study sessions, sharing hope with all who are forced to live there. And all through it, they become really confused as to why they've been given such freedom in their barracks. Until one day they find out.

And Corey's story reads, she says, "That afternoon Betsy said, there had been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes."

And they'd asked the supervisor to come and settle it. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't step through the door, and neither would the guards. And you know why? Betsy could not keep the triumph from her voice. Because of the fleas. That's what she said. That place is crawling with fleas.

My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. And I remembered Betsy's bowed head. And remembered her thanks to God for creatures that I could see no use for.

CTK, would our faith be so secure in Jesus Christ that we can be people who rejoice with Him in all things. Good, sad, hard and true. And would we even rejoice in the fleas?

Let me pray.

Jesus, help us. We need your love. We need your grace. We need your peace. And we need your joy. Help us to be thankful and rejoicing people. Help us to rejoice in you always. We pray this in your name, Amen.