1-26-25 - Rejoice in the Lord Always

Well, good morning. It's good to see you all. It's good to be in the house of the Lord together. My sermon text for this morning is Philippians four four through seven. And in this passage, we have two big commands, promises, and some words of comfort.

But the two commands that we have are to rejoice in the Lord always, and to not be anxious about any. Now, through these commands, the Apostle Paul is teaching Christians what their attitude and their approach to life should be. He's teaching us how we should respond to all circumstances, whether those circumstances are positive or negative. So during these cold, gray, January days, we're called to rejoice. The cold.

Many of us have been sick, are sick, will be sick, our kids will be sick. We're still called to rejoice in the Lord even in the midst of sickness and puking and all of that. In the midst of the problems that we're facing in our jobs or maybe in our family's lives, And if you're anxious about kids, you know, we have, many things that we could be anxious about when it comes to kids. You know, feeding schedules and sleeping, food, school work, or if we're anxious about our marriages, or if you're in school, you're anxious about school, what the other kids think about you, about our work, our country, anything. These verses are commanding us not to be anxious.

That that we should give our cares to God and no longer live in anxiety. So at first glance, these commands may seem a bit discouraging, a little bit impossible to follow. However, Paul does not give these commands without context encouragements that should be a great comfort to us, to help us and enable us to follow the commands that were given. And so my hope today is that you will be encouraged by the promises that we find in this passage and that we'll be challenged to grow in our ability to rejoice in the Lord in all circumstances of life. And that will be comforted as we cast our anxieties upon the Lord.

So if you will, please stand for the reading of God's word. Rejoice in the Lord always and again, I will say rejoice. Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. So this passage that Paul is writing begins with the striking command.

Right? Rejoice in the Lord always. And then if if if rejoice in the Lord always wasn't enough, he says, I actually really mean it. And comprehensible. Rejoice.

Okay. If Paul just said rejoice, we'd all be on board with that. Right? Like, we should be joyful. If he says rejoice, I think we'd all be like, okay, yeah.

We should rejoice. But rejoice always? Like, always is sort of inclusive. It's all always. Right?

And and so rejoicing is fine but but always is kind of a lot. Now, it's it's easy if we look out in our culture and we see like emotions are often people are controlled by emotions. Right? And and our culture wants us to do gentle parenting and to not teach our children to control their emotions. I think most of us are generally gonna be opposed to that.

Right? We think that, yes, emotions shouldn't control us. We would agree that, you know, complaining and whining or giving into anger is not good. We we shouldn't give in to these emotions. Right?

We should we should have a handle upon them. Simply avoid negative responses or emotions towards circumstances. Right? Avoiding the negative response is not the same thing as obeying the command to rejoice in the Lord always. Similarly, suppressing your fear or your anxiety is not the same thing as trusting God with them and not being anxious.

So the commands that we're given here are not to avoid or to control our reactions, our ways of thinking or feeling, but it's actually a positive command. Rejoice in the Lord always. Do not be anxious about anything. So I think at first, if you're like me, these commands can feel very overwhelming. We might think, I can't always rejoice and I don't know if that even seems reasonable to ask.

If I tell you, rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice, what comes to your mind? What what thing are you facing right now? You're like, wait, I gotta rejoice in that. What areas in your life does it feel impossible to rejoice? Whether it's work, school, being single.

Let's be honest that it's easier to rejoice when good times are happening, when we feel like we have answered prayer, when life is going well. But when Paul says, rejoice in the Lord always, he doesn't just say when we feel like rejoicing or when we think we're in rejoicable circumstances. But that rejoicing would include trials and challenges. And so always is a hard word in the context of rejoice in the Lord always. Well, if we consider that we should not be anxious about anything, I think we find ourselves in a similar sort of quandary.

Rejoicing and anxiety though are very connected. Let's I wanna look at both of these because they're sort of connected because I don't think that if you're anxious you're going to be doing much rejoicing. Rejoice and anxiety, fight against each other. They don't mix well. The more worried we are, the less ability we have to rejoice.

And I think if we're honest to ourselves, when, And I think if we're honest to ourselves, when we hear, you know, be anxious about nothing, we're probably our first response is something along the word lines of how. Like, that's very easy to say but it would be very hard to do because think about how easy it is for you to fall into anxiety. Because, often all it takes is for us to hear one person's name, and all of a sudden we start feeling very anxious. You're reminded of a responsibility that you have. A book report, the deadline for a project, your kids salvation, your health, your kids health, the health of your parents.

And all of a sudden without like, there any sort of transition immediately you feel that anxiety tense within inside within you. And that's to say nothing about all the situations that we can just conjure up out of thin air of things that we should be worried about. You know, I with our kids, it's really easy to be amused by our kids anxieties, I think. Because we're adults and we can see the, we have a greater perspective than our children. Right?

So, when your kid builds their nice Lego creation and then the other kid tears it apart, And the kid who built it's distraught now. And you're like, it's it's okay. Like it's Legos, you can you can rebuild it. Right? And in the scheme of their lives, that Lego creation is nothing.

It's not it will not affect their lives. Or, you know, your child has someone take their car. You're like, alright. Like, it's it's you get it, you know, someone takes something, but you realize like, the anxiety you're stressing out over is not worth stressing out over. Or or you know, what happened in my house recently, one of my kids came up to me and was like, you know, the other kid said that this paper is mine and it's not mine.

Which led to a I mean, there's a big fight going on over whose paper this was, which was probably gonna end up in the trash by the end of the day. Right? Like, but there's real anxiety over this. And it's it's really easy, I think, for us to look at that and we can all chuckle and laugh because we have this perspective that's outside of We know the world's a lot bigger than the kids world who's very distraught about these little things. And so we have no problem to tell them to chill out, to not worry about it.

It's gonna be alright. We don't think we should be told that. Right? Like, we feel often that we have a right to our anxiety. After all, our problem is a real problem and the solution is probably out of our control.

So we're really justified in the anxiety that we feel, as opposed to the anxiety that our kids feel. And and the the thing is, like, in in our lives, we will, experience many things And we're called to rejoice in all things and to be anxious over nothing. And in those situations, they are going to range from, like, trivial to serious. So, you know, we are to rejoice in trivial things like, having to go to work when it's cold outside, or being told we can't have a piece of candy, all the way to things like rejoicing when we have debilitating sicknesses and when we're facing death. So the call to rejoice does include the trivial but also to the serious as part of always.

Right? And the same thing is true of situations that make us anxious. I had a customer one time who, had us paint this bathroom in a house that she was selling, and we painted it red. She came back the next morning and was like, I couldn't sleep last night. That's the wrong color for this bathroom.

And she was so stressed out about it on how she's selling. Right? Like, we can easily get really worked up and anxious over things that are fairly trivial like that. Like, the fact that we got caught at a red light. And it also ranges towards really actually serious things like the salvation of our kids, or how to deal with sinful matters within our family.

And so there's a spectrum of serious and non serious, but in all of these things, the what Paul's saying is, rejoice in it all and don't be anxious in it. Now, we might think this is maybe an unreasonable or really a hard thing, but it's helpful for us to remember the man that wrote this and is now calling us to rejoice in all things and to not be anxious in all things. Because this is no naive man. He was not raised in any flowery beds of ease. This is the Paul who was beaten, scourged, and stoned, and shipwrecked, and in constant danger.

And as he was writing this, was under Roman house arrest. And writing to the Philippian church, which is where he had the church was started when he was sitting in the Roman jail rejoicing with Silas. Paul is under no delusion about the difficulties that the Philippian church is facing right now. If you read in chapter one, the Apostle Paul tells them to stand firm and no way be alarmed by their opponents. For God has granted them he's granted them suffering.

And as they saw Paul in conflict, they should expect conflict as well. Paul's not a naive young man. He knows what he's talking about. So we have to say like, okay. We get it.

We get it. This this is hard. This is command, but like, how? How? Like, how can we actually do it?

Right? Where's what's how can we actually rejoice? What's what's we all get it's a problem, but what do we do? Well, the first thing I want to say to you is that it's a hard work and it's a continual work. That that when when Paul says, to rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice, and to not be anxious about anything, it doesn't mean that you're going to read that and then all of a sudden be like, okay cool.

Now I'm gonna rejoice in everything. Okay cool. Now I'm gonna just not be anxious. This is the this is the goal. Right?

But there's we we have to work towards being the kind of Christian being a Christian that's not anxious about everything or that's not that is rejoicing in all things. Some of us are more inclined to joy than others. Others of us are naturally more patient than others. But it is a work that we all have to do. And so as we explore the how and the why of rejoicing and of not being anxious, it's something that we're going to need to work on and to grow in.

It's not like one done fixed, now we move on to the next thing. It's going to be a continual thing that we work on. So what we see is that Paul tells us that the Lord is near. And at the end of the passage, notice that it's in Christ Jesus. So the answer to our ability to being able to rejoice always and to not be anxious about anything is to be found in God.

God is a good father. But get this, he's not just a theoretical good father. If you're a Christian, God is your good father. He's your father. God is perfect and just and holy and merciful.

He's sovereign. Nothing is outside of God's control. And this is why one of the it's so important for us to think about the attributes of God and who he is. Because then when Paul says, God is near. The Lord is near to us.

It will bring great comfort and it will help us. It's gonna help us to begin to have a true perspective on the circumstances that we find ourselves in, that we're being called to rejoice in and called to not be anxious over. With our kids, it's easy to see their lack of joy and their anxieties as being trivial or silly because we see how small their world is. They just don't have a broad experience yet. They lack a context for the problems and the issues that they face.

But we don't when we do not rejoice and we give in to anxiety, we also demonstrate that we actually have a small view of the world also. That we are lacking in context just as much as our kids. Because we are forgetting on who we are to rely. That that our reliance is on a good God who's sovereign and who loves us. And we know that because he's demonstrated his love for us in what?

That he sent Jesus to come and to die on the cross. So so that we are no longer under the wrath of God. World, when Adam sinned, right? God removes himself and now God's at enmity, right? There's this enmity, there's this fighting.

God is angry with the wicked every day. But if we are in Christ, we're God's peaceful towards us. That's what it says in later on in this passage that we didn't read, but in verse nine, it calls him the God of peace. Of God which surpasses comprehension, which we're working towards. But when we know God, it gives us the context, the the perspective in which we will be able to rejoice in all things and to not be anxious.

Because we know him as our father, as the one who's loved us and sent Christ. Now, what Paul says here is that the Lord is near and the Lord being near has two main ideas in it that should comfort us and help us. Mind with the imminent return of Christ. That the Lord is near. Remember, John saying, Behold, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And again that Christ is going to return and it's going to be soon. And so when Christ returns, what is the work that Christ is coming to do? Well, he's going to come back to judge, as we just said, right? The quick and the dead. He's coming back to judge.

And this is an antidote to our lack of rejoicing. When the Lord comes back, he is going to right every wrong. He's going to bring back perfect justice. Often, I think our lack of rejoicing has to do with the fact that we feel, impugned upon. That that we face some sort of negative thing that we don't deserve.

Right? And that that we've been wronged. And part of the nearness of the Lord that we can bring have comfort in and we can rejoice in is that we don't have to get revenge. You don't have to get your pound of flesh because when Christ returns, he will bring about a perfect justice. So when the scripture tells us that, we should not take revenge but revenge is mine sayeth the Lord.

Actually, you having to get revenge and go get your pound of flesh and to go stand on your rights and fight for all your like, that's stressful. And it's hard work, and it's miserable work. And if you can just give that to God, and let him deal with the injustice, and you can turn the other cheek, you will find it much easier to rejoice in all things. Because you trust God to bring about the justice. And the beautiful thing is that God is perfect in his judgments, and we're not.

And we go too far in ours often. When God returns, he's there's a promise that he will wipe away all of our tears. Difficulty that we face, we should rejoice in him in the context, in the perspective that in the our service of God, he will not be found lacking in his reward and his care and his love for us. The Lord is near. We're also promised in scripture that the Lord will never leave us nor forsake us.

His people, he will be with them wherever they go. And this is very evident in the fact that if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you. And that, that should help us with our anxiety. We are to not be anxious, which is possible because the Lord is near to us. Now think about I don't know if you've there's this idea of deism.

Right? There's this false view that God is sort of this watchmaker who winds up the world and then steps back and just watches. That's such a cold view. It's such a comfortless view. Praise God that we don't have a God like that, but he's intimately involved in every aspect of his creation.

His hand is present and so he's near to us to care for us, to, guard us. You can go to God in prayer. Think again of kids. Right? You you've seen a little kid who starts getting really anxious.

They're sitting there playing, then all of a sudden they're like, where's mom? They start getting anxious. Right? And they look around and then they see mom or dad across the room and they may either start playing or they get up and they run over to mom or dad and they get a hug and they go back to playing. Right?

They wanna know, is mom or dad near? And the nearness of the parent calms the anxiety. They go to them, they give them a hug, they seek for mom or dad to fix the problem and then they go back about the business of what they're doing. And this is a picture of the Lord being near to us. That that we don't have to be anxious because the Lord is here with us.

We're not we're not off going through all these difficulties and trials by ourselves. But God is near to us, walking with us, strengthening us. In prayer, we get to present whatever is bothering us, all of our worries, our problems, our desires to God. And then, after we place them into God's hands, we don't have to worry about them. We don't have to be anxious about them because God is good and he's sovereign.

And this sovereignty means he's capable. It means that he has the ability to bring about that which is good for us. That it's not we're not just sort of bringing our problems to a party who has no ability to affect the outcome. Because that wouldn't really be comforting. What if if God could not fix the problem or get you through it, bring you through it, strengthen you as you go through it.

If he had an inability to do that, then prayer would be pointless and wouldn't be comforting. But because God's sovereign and he's good and he's near to hear us, it can bring us great comfort as we go through this. Think about, if you read through Psalm chapter three. It's a beautiful picture of this. It's it's it's kind of a a crazy psalm because in Psalm chapter three, David starts going about all his enemies who want him dead.

Thousands upon thousands of people that are surrounding him. And he he cries out to the Lord and then he says, what? I lay down and slept. I woke again for the Lord sustained me. I mean, you think about I mean, I think I I don't know I when he wrote Psalm three, but think about when he's on the mountain and Saul's troops are enclosing him and they're coming and Saul wants him dead.

And you think about him saying, Lord, I've got all these enemies who are around me. Could you deal with them and keep me safe? And then just laying down and sleeping. I mean, that's that is the Lord being near, and that's a picture of of trust and faith in a God who's sovereign, who we can put our hopes in him, and place our burdens, and give them to him, and the peace that he can give. A peace that doesn't make sense.

Right? Like, it doesn't make sense. Saul's coming up the mountain. Well, if we're gonna rejoice in the Lord, it requires a perspective that's greater than the current circumstances in which we find ourselves. In fact, it means that our focus can't be on the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Often, I think we get get discouraged because we focus on the rejoice always. Paul doesn't actually tell us to rejoice always. He says what? Rejoice in the Lord always. So if if if we get caught navel gazing, you know what navel gazing is?

It's like you're just looking at your belly button. If you're if if if you're just navel gazing, you won't be able to rejoice. You will have no desire for rejoicing because you'll be caught up in all these. Think about think about, the song. Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Look full in his wonderful face and the things of earth will go strangely dim, and the light of his glory and grace. If you're solely focused on your problem, the diapers, the food, hiring, the exam, Whatever the issue of the moment is, you'll not be able to see Jesus. You'll not be able to fear feel his nearness to you. Recall what Peter went through. He sees Jesus walking across the water towards him.

He gets out of the boat and he starts walking. But as as soon as his eyes come off Christ, he goes down. The anxiety, the fear, there's like it's His ability to go through that was as long as his eyes were focused on Christ, and as long as he knew and rested in the nearness of Christ. If we'll pull our eyes off of ourselves in the storms around us and fix them on Christ, we'll be able to rejoice in the Lord. There are many reasons that we should rejoice in the Lord.

That things that we can preach to ourselves, to comfort ourselves, to remember his nearness. Think about it. Our salvation is entirely dependent upon him. As Christians, we've been predestined, elected, regenerated, justified, adopted, and sanctified with the promise of being glorified. And that is the best news ever.

Persecution because we've been sealed. We have an inheritance. We will get to see God in a way that Moses spoke to God face to face, but but in heaven, we'll we'll see God. This doesn't mean that the things that we go through in this life that are hard are meaningless. No.

They don't they have full meaning. It doesn't mean that they're easy. Rather, it means that we have hope and that there's a joy set before us which will enable us to rejoice in spite of the present circumstances which are hard. That we can rejoice in spite of these circumstances. Because because when we look at these truths of who God is and what he's done and the salvation that he's wrought, all of a sudden it's like with our kids when they begin to realize what a real problem looks like and all this it's like, you know, having not getting your piece of candy is not a big deal anymore.

Like, in the same way for us, it's like we begin to see the end. The the trajectory that we're on. The glory that it's to come. The inheritance. The the union with God that will become a visible reality where faith is sight.

And and when we begin to see that, that begins to give us a perspective that helps us to rejoice in the present difficulties. Ability to rejoice. And that's where the ability to not be anxious about all these fearful things that come at us. Because we're no longer simply focused on this life, but we see the end game. We rejoice for the hope that's set before us.

This is what Christ did, right? For the joy that was set before. He endured all things. It's not so how do we do this? What are some of the practical ways that we do this?

By prayer and supplication. When we pray, when we supplicate God, when we turn to God, we're essentially we're saying, we're giving these problems to God. Interesting because everything's already in God's hands. Right? He's he's already sovereign.

It's not that when we pray, all of a sudden we're releasing the control and giving it to God. He's already in control. But when you pray, you're acknowledging your inability. And it may be that what you do when you pray is that while God's already in control, what you're doing is you're actually teaching yourself to believe that God's in control. And and so like like if you have a problem with something and you go to your boss and you say, hey, there's this problem and your boss says, okay, I'll deal with it.

And you can kind of have peace and like, okay. The boss is gonna deal with it. Like, in prayer, we're we're giving our burdens and we're giving them to God and we're seeking God help, and mercy, and letting him deal with it, and trusting him with the outcome of it. God's sovereign. He can bear all of our burdens.

Interesting. One of the guys I was reading said this, in a time of anxiety, it's easiest to retreat into a corner complaining to ourselves. Now, I might add that not just to ourselves. Right? We'll complain to other people.

Right? But but, like, when anxiety comes, it's very easy to complain. But then he goes on and says, but it is when we bring the matter to God that we find release. Our gaze should be so constantly upward that all of life is at once reflected as by a mirror to the throne. All of your life is reflected as by a mirror to the throne.

That it's not that God doesn't know what's going on, but that with all of our burdens and the problems and the issues that we face, that we're constantly taking it and praying and giving it to God, seeking his mercy, seeking his help, seeking his guidance, and and and and putting the judgment up to him. And so we're just sort of reflecting all these problems back up to God. And in doing so, it it can release us. We can have peace knowing that we have a sovereign heavenly father who is dealing with it, and caring for us. And when has complaining to someone ever actually brought you joy?

But I promise you, if you pour out your cares and fears and anxieties to the Lord, it will bring you peace. The more anxious we are, the more we ought to wear our knees out praying. There is, brother I think it was brother Lawrence. They called him camel knees. Like his knees were so worn and just calloused because he's had so much time praying.

Thanksgiving. Giving thanks is a very neglected work. We often think that we deserve the good things that we have and are given, so we don't show gratitude for them. We just receive it and then when we don't have it, we complain. Have you noticed how often Paul begins his letters by saying, I thank God for you.

I mean, he's constantly thinking in his letters. So how does being thankful help with anxiety? Well, it shifts your perspective to something that's positive rather than the negative. When when you teach yourself to be thankful, what you begin to do is see how God's blessing you, and how God's caring for you. And you'll often I think we think of God as such a hard man.

We've had hard fathers. We've had hard things and so we think God is. But it's like if you read scripture and the blessing and and and the fact that he saves you and it's a free gift, that he doesn't require the work of you. You see how generous God is. And and if you teach yourself to be thankful for the blessings that God's given you, it it will help you to rejoice and will help you to not be anxious because your perspective on who God is will change.

Because you won't see him as a stingy, sovereign, aloof God, but you'll see him as a good, kind father who delights to give you good things. In order to be able to give thanks, you have to notice what God is doing. Good practice might be to get a notebook and to write down every day three or five specific sentences of something that you're thankful for. Do something like this. Put the date, I am thankful Don't just write, I'm thankful for my wife.

Right? I am thankful for my wife and the work that she's done today washing my clothes. Be really specific. Don't just be generic, but actually think about what are you actually thankful for? How has God actually blessed you?

Make it a habit. Before you go to bed, write down five things. Teach your kids to do this. If your kids are full of grumpiness and complaining and Yeah. Teach them to notice things.

How is God blessing them so that they'll be grateful? This is a discipline that I will be evident is not just by smiles but we'll begin being thankful for each other and we'll tell each other, hey, thank you for this work that you did. Because as we begin to notice God's goodness to us, we'll also be like Paul who's thinking all these Galatians and thanking God for the Galatians because of all the work or the the the Philippians. Because of all the work that they've done and their goodness. Right?

Like this is this will change your perspective on life. Being thankful and seeing it. But we have to see it. Right? We won't be thankful for things that we don't notice, that we don't acknowledge.

So this will be portrayed if if we work on this, if we give ourselves to prayer and supplication and to thanksgiving. The fruit of that will be evident in our lives. Have you ever noticed you read about the martyrs. Have you ever been shocked? Like, you have the martyr who's they're they build the fire and they put the grate and they throw the guy on it and then he says to them, hey, I think this side's done.

You wanna flip me over? You just read these wild stories of of Thomas Cranmer who signed, who who recanted the faith and signed it. And then he recanted his recantation. And then when they burned him at the stake, he says, this is the offending hand and he sticks into the flame and burns it off first. Because it offended God, right?

And you say, how? How on earth do people rejoice and things like that? How can they have peace and not be anxious in those situations? Well, they trusted in God. They knew that he was near.

They threw their anxieties on him. They turned to him, and it gave them a peace that does not it cannot be comprehended by anyone outside of the faith. And sometimes, I think we can barely comprehend it. And it produces this this attitude of rejoicing and a lack of anxiety produces what he says here is a gentleness that will be known to all men. And this gentleness is an ability to remain calm, to not be easily annoyed, not frustrated, especially in adversity.

It's Jesus when he's being crucified, not reviling. It's Stephen praying for his persecutors and asking that it wouldn't be held against them. It's the spirit of God who enables us to rejoice and to give over our fears and anxieties in whatever the circumstances we have. Because we're our focus is not just in this short context, but it's the hope that's set before us. And it will give us peace.

Second Corinthians four seventeen through 18 says, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comprehension or far far beyond all comparison. Momentary light affliction. Remember, all the things we talked about Paul went through. He's calling it momentary light affliction while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

And so, I think that for us to rejoice in all things, to not be ruled by anxiety, means we have to learn to have a perspective that isn't grounded in our physical circumstances. But we have to see what we're going through in light of that which is to come. Nearness of him. And if we do that, then we'll have joy. And and the whole world's gonna recognize it and be like, these people don't make sense.

And it will be one of the most powerful witnesses we can have. Let's pray.