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Directives Concerning Anxiety Albert N. Martin

Philippians 4:6-7

Now I would direct your attention tonight to the fourth chapter of the book of Philippians, or more properly, the letter to the church at Philippi.
And I shall read the first nine verses. Philippians chapter four, verses one through nine.
Wherefore, my brethren beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord my Beloved.
May I pause to say this idea that letting our hearts get out from underneath where no one can read them and putting them out on our sleeve
is something that should be more common amongst us as the people of God.
Paul is not ashamed to use some almost embarrassingly intimate terms of endearment when he refers to his fellow believers.
My beloved, my longed for, my joy, my crown, my beloved, almost sounds like a love letter, doesn't it?
Well that's exactly what it is, tied together in intimate bonds of affection that go far deeper than that which unites even a man and a woman in the pure bonds of Christian affection.
And so he addresses them in these deep, these intimate, strong terms of endearment.
I exhort Eodia and I exhort Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.
Yea, I beseech thee also, true yokefellow, help these women, for they labored with me in the gospel,
and Clement also, and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life.
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice.
Let your forbearance be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
In nothing be anxious, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,
if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things,
the things which ye have both learned and received and heard and saw in me, these things do, and the God of peace shall be with you.
Quite frequently when I'm preparing to leave for a day or two or sometimes more, a more lengthy period of time,
I think of all the last-minute instructions I want to leave with my wife or with the elders relative either to the domestic sphere or the ecclesiastic sphere,
and often in those few moments where you're compressing a number of things together, you become very, very expert in the matter of condensation.
And because of the time element, you just don't have time to go into extended things and you say,
oh, remember please to do this, and by the way, please do this, and oh yes, here's something else I want done.
Well, I've got to get in the car and run to the airport and catch that plane.
Now, there may be very little connection between these various exhortations, these various reminders,
but their brevity and their disjointed nature, rather than negating their importance, is an indication of how important they must be.
If a man knows he only has a few minutes and he's got to condense things, then he only speaks of the things that are most pressing in his mind at the moment.
And so when you come to the end of many of the epistles, both of the apostle Paul and also in Peter's epistles,
you find that they're doing something like this. For whatever reasons were present in the immediate situation,
we know there was the overruling sovereign purpose of God and the Holy Spirit inspiring them in their writing,
but as in the choice of their vocabulary, as in the structure of the development of the various themes,
the Holy Ghost does not bypass the natural. He takes hold of it and captures it and makes it the vehicle
through which he expresses his very mind to us in the very words that he himself chooses.
And so often when we come to the end of these epistles and we find these various directions
which seem to have very little logical conclusion or connection, which seem to have many times very little explanation,
we tend to overlook them and to get our minds involved in the more profoundly developed arguments of the main part of the epistle.
May I suggest that you break that habit if you have it, and remember that when a man is in a hurry to close his letter
and he puts something in at that point, it's because it is of great importance to him.
And as the apostle Paul draws this letter to the Philippian church to a close,
we are in that section from which I read where we have some of these miscellaneous exhortations and directives.
There's this directive concerning unity amongst two of the believers that are there,
this exhortation to joy and then to the pursuit of Christian virtue and Christian activity.
And nestled in the midst of these things are these very familiar words to which I would direct your attention tonight.
In nothing be anxious, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus.
Now before we lay before you the basic structure of the text and how I propose to think through its message with you,
let me first of all underscore something very fundamental to this passage, as with most other passages in the Word of God.
To whom are these words of direction given? To whom does the apostle say be anxious for nothing?
To whom does he say in everything by prayer and supplication?
To whom does he give this promise concerning the guarding influence of the peace of God?
Well he's addressing it, you say, to the people at Philippi. Yes, but to what people?
Well he's very, very clear to tell us who he has in mind when he opens the epistle in chapter 1 and verse 1 by saying,
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus to all the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi.
He is addressing a very exclusive group of people, those whom he calls saints.
That is, those who are the holy ones, those who are set apart as something special.
They are set apart from the mass of lost humanity.
That mass of humanity which fell in Adam, which is under the condemnation and wrath of God,
these people are set apart. They are the holy ones, the separated ones, the sanctified ones,
and they have become that because of this little phrase, in Christ Jesus.
They are the saints who are in Christ Jesus. What makes them different from the word?
Well the answer is not anything that they are in themselves.
It's what they have become by virtue of union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
So then this directive, Philippians 4, 6, and 7, is addressed exclusively to those who are in a vital saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
That union which is never experienced apart from the sovereign gracious work of Almighty God, 1 Corinthians 1-30.
But of him, that is of God the Father, are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
So we get into Christ by nothing less than direct sovereign saving activity of the living and the eternal God.
We do not get in Christ by virtue of the activity of clerical professionals, by virtue of the activity of the wishes and desires of our parents.
We get into Christ Jesus only by the mighty sovereign work of the living God.
And the scripture reveals if we are in Christ, God has not only worked sovereignly and graciously, but he has worked in a way in which his power is evident.
2 Corinthians 5-17, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.
Not he ought to be. He may eventually become. It is desirable that he should be.
The scripture says if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.
And I pause to emphasize this because this is one of those passages which is given out indiscriminately and then dubbed with a little phrase, prayer works, or prayer accomplishes things.
And people make, as it were, some kind of a psychological fetish out of prayer.
And do not put it in the context in which we heard it this morning. It is only those who can address God as Father through the mediatorial work of Christ who can truly pray.
And the apostle not only teaches us this by way of inference, by introducing the whole letter with the phrase in Christ, but notice how this text closes.
The peace of God shall guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus. So the promise is never fulfilled unless you are in Christ Jesus.
Now if I had three minutes to spend with every one of you before you left tonight, the question I would want to press upon the conscience of everyone is this.
Are you in Christ Jesus?
Now I'm not asking you, are you in the church where Christ is honored? That's not my question. I'm asking you, are you in Christ Jesus?
I'm not asking you, would you like to be? Do you think it's nice? Do you believe there is? My question is, are you in vital saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ?
That's my question. If so, then this text is directed to you. If not, this is the children's bread and it's not yours.
Written over this text, if you're not in Christ, his hand's off. And I hope the sheer glory of what God has promised to his own will make you so jealous that it's not yours that you'll say,
I must be found in Christ that such gracious promises can become mine. And that's a biblical motive for Paul says, by telling you what I'm telling you,
as he says to the Romans, I hope to provoke my fellow unsaved Jews to jealousy. And so I hope to provoke some of you to jealousy.
When you see the gracious provisions of God for all who are in Christ and you realize that when you reach out to take that promise, God slaps your hands and that's not for you.
Till you're in Christ, that's not for you. Keep your hands off. I hope I say it will cause you to become intensely jealous that you might be in Christ and that to you then,
this will be one of those promises that is yea and amen where? In Christ Jesus. For how many so ever be the promises of God? In him is the yea and in him is the amen.
The promises of God are ours in Christ and in Christ alone. So much then for to whom these words are directed.
Now as we look at them, consider them first of all as a word of prohibition. Be anxious for nothing. Then a word of direction but in everything.
And thirdly, a word of promise and the peace of God shall guard your hearts. Very simple to think our way through the text.
May the Lord help us then to penetrate the mind of the Spirit of God in this portion of his word.
First of all then, a word of prohibition. The apostle begins with a negative. The American standard renders it more accurate in relationship to the original.
In nothing be anxious. There are just two words in the original. The word nothing and the word be anxious.
So he's very very concerned that this prohibition be seen in its breath and in its extent. He's saying in nothing be anxious.
The anxious, the emphasis being upon the nothing. Now we must define biblically this word anxiety. Be careful or be anxious for nothing.
What does it mean? Well let me start by saying what it does not mean. This is not a prohibition of legitimate burden and concern.
There is much teaching on the Christian life that would make us something less than human.
That would interpret this verse to mean to be anxious for nothing means that you as a Christian must so rest in the Lord that you attain some state of Christian nirvana.
Where you feel nothing, where you react to nothing, where you just sort of float above everything in a feelingless existence.
Now that is not the teaching of the word of God for this very same word in the original is used concerning things that are proper.
Anxiety and care that are proper for the people of God. 1 Corinthians 7 33 in his example.
Paul says he that is married is, same word, anxious for his wife.
If I as a husband am seeking to love my wife as Christ loved the church, nourishing and cherishing her, I will experience genuine anxiety for her well-being.
Genuine concern. I will anticipate her needs. I will feel a sense of disappointment if I cannot meet those needs. That is legitimate anxiety.
1 Corinthians 12 25 says concerning the members in the body of Christ that the members have the same care, same word in the original, the same anxiety for one another.
When one of our fellowship is passing through deep waters and you find it hard to sleep thinking about them, that is not sinful anxiety.
That is legitimate Christian concern. The members have the same anxiety one for another.
Philippians 2 20. In this very epistle, Paul speaks as one of the virtues of Timothy chapter 2 and verse 20.
For I have no man like-minded who will care truly for your state. And the word care there is be anxious.
Paul says I don't have anyone else who will have a natural sense of legitimate burden and concern for you people.
And then he uses the noun form of himself in 2 Corinthians 11 28 speaking of all of the concerns that he has.
And he says beside all of this that which cometh upon me daily care, anxiety, same word in the original, care for all the churches.
Paul had true anxiety for the churches. He said who does not fall and I burn with concern and with spiritual burden.
Oh how his life was bound up in the lives of his people. He said for now I live if ye stand fast in the Lord.
He said you want to make life full for me? Stand fast in the Lord. But when you stumble and fall into deflections of life or doctrine,
he said it's as though my very life is being squeezed out of me. Now I say when this apostle submits to us this prohibition,
be anxious for nothing. He is not condemning this legitimate burden and concern in these various facets of life.
This would mean that we'd be less than human. We would be men without a heart.
The classic denial of all of this is just a careful reading in the gospels of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He knew what anxiety was for his own. He knew what concern was. He knew what it was to be distraught and troubled over the state of his people.
Well then if that's not what it means, what does it mean?
Well basically it is a prohibition of that kind of anxious care which in the best analogy I know to give,
and thank God I don't know it from experience but from observation, is like that of a nagging woman who wears down the spirit of her husband.
And I say thank God I don't know that from experience but from observation and from reading the scriptures.
It is that kind of concern, that anxiety that makes the soul sour.
Instead of the soul being sweet with the fragrance of the realized presence of Christ, it becomes rancid and sour with these concerns.
It is that kind of anxiety that clouds the face of God. All you can see is that concern, that problem, that situation,
and you can no longer see the face of God in it or in through it.
It's that kind of anxiety that totally unfits you for present duties.
You are paralyzed to do in the immediate circumstances what you know to be the will of God because all of your mental and spiritual energies are being poured down the drain of this anxiety.
It's that kind of anxiety that utterly unfits you for future responsibilities.
It just wears you out and brains you.
It is that kind of anxiety which makes us lose all relish for the word of God, which makes us begin to rationalize on spiritual duties.
It is this kind of anxiety which is condemned by our Lord in Matthew chapter 6, always speaking in this language.
What shall we eat? Wherewithal shall we be clothed? What shall we put on? How shall we be fed?
When Jesus condemns sinful anxiety in Matthew 6, the same word is used in the original.
He says this is the language, always anticipating needs and becoming fretful in the light of them.
This is the kind of anxiety our Lord speaks of when he says in Luke 8 and in Matthew 13, the cares of this world, same word in the original, the anxieties of this world choke the word.
The kind of anxiety that so grips you that when you come into the house of God to gather with his people, you can't give yourself to the preaching of the word.
Between every sentence, your mind is raised loose and goes back to that particular concern.
And you're not bringing that concern to the preached word to have it resolved.
That concern is dragging you away from the preached word. You see the difference?
It's one thing to come laden with a concern saying, oh God, in the midst of this anxiety, speak a word to me.
And you are as it were as you sit there reaching out for any phrase, any thought, any word from God that will be his answer to that need.
That's perfectly legitimate. That's doing what Habakkuk did. I will set upon my watch and I will see what the Lord will say to me.
He's in the midst of a perplexing circumstance and he just can't say, oh well, I'll just reckon myself dead to everything around me and I'll be happy, happy, happy.
No, no. He's concerned for the nation of Israel. And God said this wicked nation is going to come and block them out.
It's going to come and bring judgment. And he says, God, this doesn't seem right. He's anxious.
But what does his anxiety do? It drives him to an attentiveness to the word of God.
But this sinful anxiety as it were just short circuits all of the receivers of the word of God.
And you sit and stew in your anxiety and no word from God breaks through to you. It's the care of this life that chokes the word.
Jesus talks of it in Luke 21 34 as that care, the anxiety of life, same word, that makes men unfit for the Lord's return.
He says, beware lest your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and the anxieties of this life and that day come upon you unawares.
It's the kind of anxiety that makes eternity very unreal and makes time in the present the only real thing.
Now, you see, I haven't given you a formal definition, but I hope I've given a comprehensive description that will help you to know the kind of anxiety that Paul is prohibiting.
It's that anxiety produced mainly by the unexpected that breaks into the life, the uncertain.
What should we eat? What should we drink? And also by the legitimate demands of keeping soul and body together.
Now notice that the Apostle Paul, in prohibiting this anxiety as well as our Lord who prohibits it, particularly in Matthew 6,
they both assume that being a child of God will not negate the situations which produce anxious care.
If when one becomes joined to Christ, when one is constituted in Christ Jesus by the sovereign work of God,
if that automatically meant that God so arranges all of the circumstances of life that there'd never be a situation to cause anxiety,
why do they say be not anxious?
And I think we've got a starry-eyed idealism about the Christian life that needs to be slain and demolished by the word of God.
God nowhere says that because you're his child you will be exempt from the circumstances which are common to all men which create anxiety.
This kind of anxious care.
What God does say is if you're joined to Christ there are resources of grace which can enable you to be more than conquerors in the midst of those circumstances, not exempt from them.
Well then, so much for the prohibition.
We may say in passing word of application, whenever you find yourself in the vice-like grip of this kind of anxiety,
you don't need to debate as to whether or not it's right.
You know that it's sin because it is in direct violation of this clear prohibition, be not anxious.
And that's as much a commandment of God as thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,
thou shall do no murder, thou shall not commit adultery.
The same God with the same authority says to his people, thou shalt not be anxious.
All right?
Having looked then at the prohibition, let us go on in the second place to Paul's word of direction.
The way to be kept from any given sin is to cultivate the virtue which is its opposite.
The Bible says, be not overcome of evil, but, and what's the opposite, overcome evil with good.
And you find this structure throughout the word of God.
Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, sit in the seat of the scoffers.
That's what he doesn't do, but how does he overcome that path of compliance with sinful counsel?
His delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law that he meditate day and night. He cultivates the opposite virtue.
So the apostle Paul says, and this is the gist of his whole word of direction,
Paul is saying the way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful about everything.
The way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful about everything.
For the word of prohibition is immediately followed by the word of direction.
Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.
Now for those of us who were here this morning, I need not remind you that prayer as a Christian privilege and duty is not to be governed by impulse.
Prayer, like every Christian duty, is to be governed by the revealed will of God.
And there are five things that Paul says about prayer as an exercise, spiritual exercise, to negate anxious care that deserve our attention.
First of all, notice who is the object of this spiritual exercise.
But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.
And he uses an unusual preposition here. Translated literally it would be, let your requests be made known towards the direction of the God.
In other words, he wants the Philippians to understand that in this word of direction, the positive counterpart of his prohibition,
it is all important that we keep before us the object of this spiritual exercise.
Prayer and supplication mingled with thanksgiving is always to be in the direction of the living God himself.
Prayer is not to be thought of as a form of psychological self-help shot with a little religious overtones.
No prayer is the person in Christ Jesus having direct objective dealings with the great God who is his creator and his redeemer in Jesus Christ.
The God who is, as we heard this morning, our Father in all the filial intimacy of the family relationship.
But he's our Father who is in heaven, the place of supreme might and majesty in all the glory of his sovereignty, his love and his desire to give.
And you remember how Jesus underscored this again and again in the extended commentary on this passage, Matthew 6?
You remember what Jesus said again and again? He said, look, you who are anxious, you've forgotten who your Father is. Look at the birds.
Doesn't your Father feed them? Are you not of much more value than they? Look at the fields. See the lilies?
God cares for them. Are not you of much more value than they? You see what he's saying?
Unless as we turn to God, we think right thoughts of God, we will not be emboldened to pray in the presence of God as we ought.
And so we need constantly in the face of those things that would create sinful anxiety to remind ourselves of the object of this spiritual exercise to which we are directed in the passage.
There needs to be meditation on the nature and the character of the God to whom we come.
And with many of us, there is a subtle form of disappointment and unbelief. We say, well, I've gone with my anxious cares to God and I've prayed and I've come away and haven't really felt that the peace of God has been ministered to me.
Well, could the reason not be that you've run into his presence and you've blurted out your complaint and you haven't paused to remember that your prayer and supplication is to be towards thee, God.
And in the contemplation and the quiet reflection of who he is, faith is then stimulated and strengthened in the heart of the Christian.
But then he tells us a second thing about this spiritual exercise to which he directs us, not only the proper object, the living God, but the nature of that spiritual exercise.
And he describes it in two words, but in everything by prayer and supplication.
You'll find these two words joined together in other passages, Ephesians 6 18, with all prayer and supplication in the spirit.
1 Timothy 2, 1, I desire that prayers, supplications, intercessions, giving of thanks be made for all men. And then again in 1 Timothy 5, 5.
Now what is the meaning of the words? Well, the word prayer is the general word for any kind of address to the living God.
It can include confession. It can include praise. It can include petition.
It is the general word for the posture of the creature in the presence of God, addressing him with an attitude befitting the relationship of the creator to the creature.
But the word supplication is a more precise and more limited word.
It is, to use the words of one commentator, and I believe they are most accurate, the humble cry for fulfillment of needs that are keenly felt.
When you supplicate, you are zeroing in upon your needs in the presence of one whom you believe will be disposed to supply those needs,
and you are bringing in humble cry your request that the needs may be fulfilled.
So then the nature of this spiritual exercise to which we are directed by which anxious care is overcome is prayer in whatever scope is needed
that would involve perhaps confession, complaint of our situation, acknowledging to God that our hearts are filled with this anxiety and they should not be.
And then after we've prayed in that general sense, then there is to be specific supplication.
And we find that hinted at in the very words, let your requests be made known unto God.
So there you have the contents of this exercise, the object, God.
The nature, prayer, supplication, the specific content of this exercise, let your request, literally your askings.
This is the form of the verb, it comes from the verb to ask, used all the way through scripture, to ask, to ask.
So this is let your askings, your petitions, let your requests be made known unto God, indicating that there is to be a specificness,
if I may coin a word, or a specificity I think is the proper one, of the things that we bring before him.
We're not to just deal in vague generalities, and here again you see our view of the Father's heart comes into play.
If you've got a God who is so exalted in the heavens that you forget he's your Father, you say,
how can I bother the eternal God of the heavens with all this trivia?
No, no, you've got to bother him with your trivia.
He's concerned about your trivia and it's your trivia that makes you anxious, isn't it?
How many of you have been anxious about whether or not you ought to push the button by which we bring in a nuclear war?
That's not your responsibility.
Your anxiety is how you're going to get from the $30 balance in the checking account up to $55 so you can make your car payment for the month.
Your anxiety is the difference between $40 and $55.
You say that's trivia for the God who owns heaven and earth.
It's not trivia if it makes you anxious.
Your anxiety is not over how you can have a job that will enable you to buy a yacht and own an island out in the Caribbean.
Your anxiety is produced over how you can have a job that will pay you enough in order to keep soul and body together in the metropolitan area.
And that's maybe trivia to some people, but if you live in this area it isn't.
Isn't that what causes your anxiety?
Isn't that what causes your spirit to become sour and your mind to be clogged up with these carking, pressing, nagging concerns?
So he says the content of this spiritual exercise is your request, your petitions.
Then he gives in the fourth place the extent of this exercise and notice it.
But in everything by prayer and supplication.
And he sets these words in apposition to one another.
Notice, in nothing be anxious, but in everything.
What should come into the compass of our prayer and supplication to God?
Whatever would cause sinful anxiety.
The nothing of the prohibition is met by the everything of the petition.
In nothing be anxious, but in everything by prayer and supplication.
And then in the fifth place he gives us what I'm calling the necessary attendant of this exercise.
In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.
May I state it this way? Prayer divorced from praise is no Christian duty.
Supplication stripped of thanksgiving is no Christian virtue.
One commentator has beautifully said, prayer without thanksgiving is like a bird without wings.
Such a prayer can never rise to heaven and can find no acceptance with God.
May I repeat? Prayer divorced from thanksgiving is no Christian duty.
Paul is careful to state, along with the object of this exercise, the living God himself,
the nature of it, prayer, supplication, the contents, request, the extent, everything,
all of this is to be mingled with this necessary attendant with thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving for what? I'm in the midst of things that are creating anxiety.
I don't feel like giving thanks to God. That's right, that's why he tells you to do it.
When you feel like it, at least is when you need most to do so.
Well, what do I thank him for?
Well, you thank him that you have access to him in the name and through the merits of his son.
In the midst of whatever is causing the anxiety, your union with Christ has not been affected.
God's ultimate purpose to land you safe in his presence has not been altered.
So you thank him that that relationship that is formed is a covenantal relationship
sealed in the blood of the everlasting covenant, ordered and sure in all things.
Thank him not only for your relationship to him that enables you to come,
but thank him for the confidence you have that he cares.
It is God who moved Paul to say, be anxious for nothing, but in everything.
Paul didn't just wake up some day and say, I think it would be nice to write to them.
They wrote to stay removed by the Holy Ghost.
And God, as it were, was giving you close to 2,000 years ago the fuel for your thanksgiving
in the midst of your anxious care, the very fact that his ear is open to your cry
and that he cares for your need.
And thank him for this very circumstance or collection of circumstances that is driving you to seek his face.
So subtle is the influence of our remaining corruption unless God hedges us up to our own waterloos
time after time, we'd think we could go on without him.
Thank God for those times when Esau's coming with his band of 400 and we get desperate
and feel we've got to seek God instead of sleep.
You know the instance in the life of Jacob to which I'm referring.
He got scared to death.
He said, I better split my family up into two groups.
Esau may be coming with our mens and going to have our head.
And so he prays and he cries to God.
Thank God for the very situation that's driven you to see you're a creature and you're helpless
and you're in God's hands.
We're all the time slipping out of our role as creatures and playing little gods.
And so God just sends a blast to our check balance or sends a blast to our health,
brings us into circumstances that cause us to feel experientially that we are but dust
and our lives are in his hands.
Thank God for it.
That's what you are anyway.
You've been going around drunk with a heady wine of your own self-sufficiency
and God just sobers you up with a good black coffee of those circumstances that you can't avoid.
And he says, now see, look what you are.
And you come out of your crazy illusions that you're all right and can get there on your own.
Thank God. Give him thanks then for those circumstances.
Thank him for the promises by which you draw near.
Thank him for past deliverances.
You begin in the midst of that anxious care to say,
now Lord, you've told me that my prayer and supplication is to be mingled with thanksgiving.
Therefore, I must find fuel for thanksgiving.
And you start thanking him on the basis of duty.
I believe that's what Paul's driving at because the time you're least likely to thank him
is when you're pressed down with something causing anxious care, isn't it?
After God's delivered you.
It's much easier to thank him, much more natural.
It isn't totally natural.
The ten lepers, you remember, only one returned to thank him.
But it is much easier.
But the time we're least apt to thank him is in this very circumstance.
Hence, your thanksgiving is not to be a matter of how you feel.
It's to be a matter of what you know your duty to be.
God tells you to seek him with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,
and if you don't do it simply because you don't feel like it, you're acting like a spoiled brat.
My children don't do something because they don't feel like it.
I have measures to change what they feel like doing.
And so does our Heavenly Father.
So does our Heavenly Father for whom he loves.
He chastens and scourges every son whom he receives.
Now you see how different is this direction of Paul
as to what we're to do in the face of the things that cause anxious concern?
His direction is to engage in this positive spiritual exercise of prayer and supplication
in the five ways that I've outlined for you.
Now look what some people do, and I want to bring a little practical word here.
The language of fatalism is be anxious for nothing,
but just sit back and say what will be will be.
That's the language of fatalism.
You see, the God of fate has no eyes, he has no heart, he has no hands.
And that's a grotesque God that has no eyes, no heart, and no hands.
And that's not the God of the Bible.
The God of the Bible who says the nations are before me is the drop of a bucket.
I do according to my will in the armies of heaven and earth, and none can stay my hand.
It's not the God of blind fate, but the God who has taken up into his own eternal councils
the whimperings and the pleadings of his own dear children
whom he's bought at the price of the blood of his own dear son.
Fatalism would say be anxious for nothing, because what will be will be anyway,
so just resign yourself to it.
That's not what Paul says, be anxious for nothing,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.
The language of activism is be anxious for nothing, but go out and change the situation.
Your world is what you make it.
That's the language of activism.
Don't dirty your knees by prayer,
wear out your shoe leather by running hither and yon and changing things.
And then there's the language of quietism.
It says be anxious for nothing, just rest in the Lord.
Just rest, just rest.
It sounds very pious, but you read on in this passage
and there's no inactive resting.
After giving this direction he says finally brethren whatsoever things are true, honorable, pure,
seek these things.
Verse 9, the things you've learned and received and heard and seen in me do,
and the God of peace shall be with you.
The same God who's promised peace to the praying man promises peace to the active man.
But it's activity that grows out of prayer.
Never activity that is not rooted in prayer,
never prayer that stops with prayer and doesn't give birth to activity.
Here's the biblical balance.
And so let us beware of any other answer to the subject of anxiety,
anxious care than that which is given to us here in the word of God.
And now may I leave exposition and go to application for a moment.
And if you don't give me permission I'm going to do it anyway.
Is this what you're doing with the circumstances in your life that create anxious care?
Are you doing what Paul has directed you to do here?
I'm not asking you believe that's what you ought to do.
I'm asking you are you doing it?
Are you doing it?
Are you doing it?
This was not given just to be the subject matter of a sermon now and then when a preacher happened to be in Philippians.
This was given as part of the whole council of God to conform you to the image of his dear son.
Here's not only then the word of prohibition, the word of direction,
but the passage closes with this gracious word of promise.
Verse 7,
And if you do what you're told in verse 6,
then he says,
Now what is this peace of God?
Well basically it's the peace of which God is the author and the giver and the sustainer.
It's peace that comes from God.
And you can never disassociate the word peace from its counterpart, from its antonym, warfare.
In a very real sense sinful anxiety is the most vicious warfare in the soul.
It's like hand to hand bloody combat going on within your own bosom.
And some of you know what that is.
You carry around hand to hand combat in your bosom.
Because on the one hand there is that sense, I ought not to be distraught like this.
With God being my God and what I say I am in Christ and what he is to me on behalf of Christ,
and here I am bowed down, pressed under, squeezed at the very vitals of my spiritual life by these circumstances.
This ought not to be.
And there's that sense of turmoil and warfare within the soul.
What is the peace of God?
It's God coming in and causing that warfare to cease.
Let me read from Hendrickson's commentary on Philippians.
He has I think a very helpful and pastoral description of what this peace of God is.
He says, this sweet peace originates in God who himself possesses it in his own being.
He's glad to impart it to his children.
It is therefore the gift of God's love.
He not only gives but he maintains it at every step.
Hence it has every right to be called the peace of God.
It is founded on grace.
It is merited for believers by Christ.
And then he quotes those many passages in John 14, 15, and 16 where Jesus said,
My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled.
He goes on to say in the world you shall have tribulation.
Be of good cheer I have overcome the world.
Paul speaks of this peace in every one of his letters.
Often at the opening and at the close.
Sometimes in the body of the epistle.
In Philippians Paul mentions it as almost always.
Immediately after grace.
Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Peace is the smile of God reflected in the soul of the believer.
It is the heart's calm after Calvary's storm.
It is the firm conviction that he who spared not his own son will surely also along with him freely give us all things.
Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee.
Isaiah 26 3.
In the present context it is the God given reward resulting from joyful reflection upon God's bounties and trustful prayer to God.
The God given reward resulting from joyful reflection upon God's bounties, prayer and supplication with thanksgiving and trustful prayer to God.
That's what the peace of God is.
Now what is the quality of this peace?
Paul describes it in these words.
And I'm going to use a term and explain it.
It is supra-rational.
It passeth all understanding.
It's a similar phrase in Ephesians 3 concerning the love of God.
That you may be filled with that love, Paul says, which passeth understanding.
It is not irrational but is supra-rational.
It surpasses human understanding.
It's not something I can put down and categorize like I can tell all the ingredients in a cake that a wife may make or all the components in a colored television set.
It is something that goes beyond the power of the human mind to rationally lay out.
Here I am distraught and disturbed and tossed to and fro like a little ship on an angry ocean.
By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving I've let my requests be made known unto God.
And I've rolled this thing upon Him in wonder of wonders.
In the midst of that storm comes His word.
Peace is still.
And we stand just as amazed at the peace that has come to our spirits as the disciples stood amazed when they saw those waters from their tumultuous heaps.
And all of their tossing to and fro become calm as could be.
And they said, what manner of man is this that even the winds and the waves obey His voice?
The quality of this peace, it surpasses human understanding.
And how will it function? That's the third thing he tells us about it.
He says, it will guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus.
And he uses a word which connotes a military figure.
Now the Philippians, of course, being residents of a Roman town, many times saw garrisons of soldiers standing guard.
And that's the word he uses here.
The peace of God will function as a garrison of soldiers around your heart and around your mind.
So here's the picture of distress of heart and mind seeking to batter down the soul and the spirit of the child of God.
And he says, no, this peace will stand as sentinel as guard to preserve, notice, both heart and thought, heart and mind.
What a terrible thing when the heart becomes distracted by anxious care.
For out of the heart proceed what? The issues of life.
And once the heart, the center of your being, has become the seat of anxious care, everything that flows out of your life is affected by it.
Right? You can't pray. You can't enter into the concerns of others.
When you're held in the vice-like grip of anxious care at the center of your being, then everything is affected.
For out of the heart are the issues of life.
And there's such an intimate connection between the mind and the heart.
Many times the Bible uses the terms in a way that they overflow, as it were, and one leads into the other.
He says, this peace of God will be a sentinel in the citadel of your being, your heart, and then in the realm of your thoughts.
So that instead of thinking these anxious thoughts, in the words of our hymn, what can these anxious thoughts avail?
These never-ceasing moans and sighs.
And all of us, I'm sure, are all too familiar with what it is to feel that there is absolutely no sentinel around the heart and the thoughts and every situation that is proposed to us.
What about this? What about the future? What about the bills? What about this problem? What about your health? What about your relatives?
All of your brothers or sisters dying of cancer or dying of this, you're going to be…
And you face all of these things, and it's just like someone says, let's mount a general attack, and your heart and your mind seem powerless to stand against them.
And they just come in and they take the field, and you feel like you've been left defeated.
Now God says his peace will act as a sentinel, so that when the armies of these anxious thoughts would gather themselves together and seek to storm man's soul,
they are met by the garrison of the peace of God, found in the life of the one who, in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, is letting his request be made known unto God.
And then the last thing he tells us about this peace, which is the word of his promise.
Not only the quality passes understanding, its function, it acts like a sentinel, but he tells us something about its source.
It shall guard your thoughts and your hearts where? In Christ Jesus.
You see, Paul does not give us mere psychological advice, and my heart is grieved when I see men like Norman Vincent Peale and others taking Bible truth
and stripping it of its distinctive Christian element and making it nothing but oriental mind psychology with a sprinkling of Christian terminology.
Paul takes us right back to the source of this peace of God that acts like a garrison, and he says it flows out of the virtue that is stored up in Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 1 and verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
And so he traces this peace that comes to the praying, supplicating heart of the Christian who's determined he shall not submit to this sinful anxiety.
He traces it back not to his strong will, not to his prayers as though he prayed for ten minutes, therefore he gets ten minutes of blessing, some pagan concept of a prayer wheel which is salvation by works.
No, no, he traces it right back to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the union of the believer with him.
Guard your thoughts and your hearts in union with Christ Jesus so that the child of God who has felt the garrisoning effect of this peace is not to say,
Well, I guess it's because I've really been praying now. No, he says, Lord, thank you for this gift of your grace that comes to me through the infinite merit and virtue of your dear son.
It is Christ who said, Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Hence the child of God, when he's known what it is to be delivered from anxious care, doesn't reach around and pat himself on the back and say,
Boy, you really prayed. You did it right. You praised. You made petitions. You did it just like the pastor said there as he opened up the text. You really did it right.
No, no, no. You fall down upon your face and you say, Lord, why should you give and give and give again out of the fullness of the merit and virtue that is stored up in your own dear son?
Now do you see why I started where I did? To whom is this passage directed? Unless you're in union with Christ Jesus, you cannot have the peace of God garrisoning your heart, which has as its source the virtue of Christ.
You must be in Christ before there can come out of Christ the peace of God that passeth all understanding. And so I'm going to close where I started.
Are you in Christ? Are you in Christ? By the mighty work of God's grace, discovering to you your sinfulness, your uncleanness, your unfitness to face God your maker, has the Holy Spirit discovered to you the beauty of Christ?
The sufficiency of Christ crucified, risen, exalted as the only hope of sinners, has the Spirit brought you to the place where abandoning all confidence in anything else, you rest the full weight of your sinful soul upon Christ and Christ alone.
Have you been brought to that place? If you're in Christ, then dear child of God, your union with Christ is not a negation of the necessity of the discipline of this passage.
It is the pledge and the certain assurance that grace is available for you in Christ, that you shall not be anxious, but that you shall be enabled in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, to let your requests be made known unto God,
in the assurance that the peace of God which passes all understanding shall then garrison your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Oh, I trust that the Spirit of God will so write this text upon our hearts, that we as a body of God's people may be in some measure a monument of the mighty power of Christ to keep his children from that kind of anxious care that drowns multitudes in perdition.
What's worldliness? It's just acting like men devoid of the Spirit of God. And one of the most vicious forms of worldliness is anxious care.
Some of you may pride yourself, oh, I'm not worldly because you don't do certain things. Worldliness is simply acting like men devoid of the Spirit of God. That's all.
And what's the characteristic of men all about you? Anxiety about temporal concerns. And when the child of God reflects that Spirit, he's worldly, he's conformed to the Spirit of this age.
And it's in this setting that you and I are called upon to shine as lights in the midst of darkness by being freed from anxious care.
Could it be that maybe this enters into Peter's words, sanctify Christ as Lord always in your heart and be ready always to give an answer to every man who asketh a reasonable hope that is in you?
You stand amidst your fellow men not delivered from the problems that cause anxiety to them, but they see you beset with common problems but empowered with uncommon grace to face those problems.
This is the thing that causes them to say, what makes you tick? You tell them what makes you tick.
And there is opportunity to bear witness to the saving and keeping grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. To this end, may God be pleased to bless this word to the hearts of his children.
And for those of you who are not in Christ, I hope you go home tonight haunted with the realization, oh, what a wonderful thing it would be to have that kind of promise.
But it's not yours until you're in Christ. Oh, but you say, what promises are mine? Every single promise that God receives believing repentant sinners.
They are directed to you and to you is this word of salvation said, repent and believe the gospel. He that believeth on the Son hath life. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
Those are the promises that are to you and may God help you to embrace them and to embrace the Savior who comes in. Let us pray.
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