About this sermon
Paul tells the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord always and not to be anxious about anything, but to bring every request to God in prayer with thanksgiving. The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, then guards their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, who knew sorrow himself. A life free of anxiety comes from a transformed heart and mind that dwells on whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, and lovely.
Sermon transcript
You may be seated, please. And let me invite you to turn to passage we’ll be considering together in the book of Philippians chapter 4. Philippians chapter 4 and We’ll be considering verses six and seven, but we’ll read four through nine. And Paul tells us here, verse four. 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 request be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there’s anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.
This is the word of the Lord. Let’s pray together. Father, indeed, we come down to hear from you. through your word, through the proclamation of it. So we would pray that as you by your spirit inspired the original authors, would you so illuminate our hearts and minds that we may indeed hear what it is you have to say. So take the words of my mouth. the meditations of our collective hearts and make them acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Well, according to, and I’m sure this is no surprise, but according to mental health professionals, the number one problem is depression and anxiety. And just on the surface of that, what that says is that worry, and people recognize it. Millions and millions of people recognize that worry is a prominent feature of our fallen human condition. It is a part of our fall that people are very concerned about in big numbers.
And of course, that’s no surprise. Everyone carries some level of anxiety, rather acute or kind of subterranean anxiety. draining effect that we have. Everyone carries something. We live in a fallen world where things don’t work the way they’re supposed to work. And we feel that. You know, there was even a record-breaking song about worry. And it broke all kinds of records from the 80s. And that again shows our collective desire as a people to be free from it. To have, to live without anxiety. We live in a worrying world. In fact, I mean, we’re such worrisome people that we even worry about worry. That we’re going to get it when we don’t even feel it or have it. We worry about that. We just think it’s right around the corner.
And so it is the such people as us, sons of Adam and Lady Eve, such people as us that the apostle Paul issues these well-known words in particularly verses six and seven of chapter four, do not be anxious about anything, but everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, your requests be made known to God. So I’m going to turn our attention, gives consideration to a few things from those particular verses. But in the context that we read in verse four down through verse nine, the apostle Paul is giving a series of short and brief exhortations and encouragements. And it’s in the midst of those little short encouragements and admonitions that he so often deploys in closing up his letters, that he gives us the words, this classic exhortation. The text is classicists of anxiety and worry in verse seven, six and seven. So let me say four things about this together. I’ll say four things. First thing. We can gather from this text, and this is a straightforward one.
Circumstances don’t cause anxiety. Circumstances reveal our anxieties. By anxious, Paul says, don’t be anxious for anything. What he means is He’s referring to those kind of harassing thoughts and concerns that run us down, that chase us. And usually those are concerns about present or future circumstances, which we find ourselves. It’s the same thing that Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. when he says, don’t be anxious about your life, about things that you’ll eat, you’ll drink, what clothes you’ll wear, what’s going to happen 24 hours from now. It’s the same kind of thing. It addresses those thoughts, those concerns that harass us, usually about present or future circumstances.
But again, our circumstances aren’t the thing causing the worry and anxiety. They’re simply revealing them. Why do we say that? Because in verse seven, Paul says, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and minds.
What God deals with when we’re anxious is not our external circumstances, not the things outside of us. He actually deals with our inner life, our hearts and minds. It’s us that he works on, not our environment. His worry and anxiety is a reflection of what’s at work and internal to us, not the things external to us. And what is it that’s actually going on inside of us when we’re worried, when we’re anxious?
I think one way of looking at it is to say, worry is really just a function or a fruit of an obsessive desire to control. I like how one author puts it, one of my former professors, he said, worry assumes the possibility of control over the uncontrollable. The illusion of control lurks inside your anxiety. Anxiety and control are two sides of one coin.
When we can’t control something, we worry about it. The child who’s supposed to be home at 11 is not home. You worry about it because you don’t have omniscience to know exactly where the child is, and you don’t have omnipotence to actually do something for sure about it. You lack the kind of control. On our health problems, we worry because we can’t make our bodies work.
The sin underneath the sin, as it were, the thing underneath worry, is a lack of control. That’s the kind of sin beneath the sin, as it were. And our anxiety is just an expression. of that lack of omniscience, that lack of omnipotence, ability to manage everything that comes at us in life.
So Paul isn’t an environmental determinist. It’s not that our circumstances and situations determine how we respond and who we are. He’s the opposite of that. Our circumstances, of course, influence They put pressure on us. They impact us, but they don’t determine us. They don’t determine our worries.
I remember someone talking about how our circumstances are like a cinnamon tea bag in a cup of hot water. You put that tea bag in the water, And what does it do? It doesn’t make the teabag cinnamon flavor. It reveals the cinnamon flavor. It just shows us what was already inside of the teabag. It didn’t create it. It just made it manifest. It revealed it.
And even the Apostle Paul, in writing this letter, wrote it from the confines of a Roman prison. And yet this is known as the epistle of joy. And he writes this words. In fact, he just said in verse four, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. So clearly. It wasn’t his circumstances that induced joy. Because that would tend to sorrow that would tend to sadness to be imprisoned. And yet. Here he is in prison writing what has come to be known by the church through the centuries as the epistle of joy.
And I love the passage in Corinthians where Paul writes to the Corinthians encouraging a kind of generosity, 2 Corinthians chapter 8. And he’s wanting to encourage the Corinthians to give, and he grounds it in Christ’s own giving. He who was rich, for our sakes he became poor, that we who are poor might become rich. And he grounds it in the grace of God seen in Christ. But he also motivates them by pointing out the Macedonian church and says that they were under severe affliction.
So this was a church that was suffering a lot. And they were extremely poor. But they gave from beyond their measure. So their external circumstances, their personal circumstances didn’t hinder them. And what he says that that was at the heart of their giving was this abundance of joy that overflowed. So a church under severe affliction, a church that was extremely poor, still was incredibly generous. The circumstances didn’t determine their response or even their disposition. They had a disposition, a spiritual working that produced the fruit of joy. This abundance of joy overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part, the Apostle says. So of course, what this means is that a joyful life, an anxiety-less life, they are tied to some kind of inner heart-mind transformation.
Not circumstances. The circumstances don’t cause worry and anxiety. They only reveal them. That’s one. Two, the call to stop worrying, to not be anxious, isn’t a call to self-mastery. It isn’t just a bare command that comes to us as humans. Paul wrote this.
There was a group, a philosophical school, many of us know it, the Stoics, and they had their way of achieving freedom from worry and anxiety. It was through a kind of emotional indifference, a kind of cool detachment. They just released, you know, a sense of care for anything. and just no complex emotional involvement with things. So guys like Epictetus at Seneca urged this kind of cold embrace of one’s life and its problems and its pressures.
There’s one thing that Epictetus said. He said, make the best use of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens. And you know, to a degree, that actually works for some people. to a degree. It won’t work ever at a fundamental level. There’s a couple things the Stoics ignored.
One, we are actually made, created, to care, not to worry, but to care about. To not care is to not be properly human. Peter says about the ministry of Christ to us that he cares for you. Now, obviously, if the perfect son of God cares, has proper concerns, then to care and have concerns is not a sin. He was perfectly sinless and he cared.
And there are only a small group of people in any case who have ever been successful with the stoic approach. And again, not even completely successful. There was a certain level of success in which they’re able to detach themselves. But for the average person to stop worrying is like telling water to stop being wet. It’s so endemic to who we are as human beings.
And if you doubt that, Check out the amount of money made on anti-anxiety medication. But in any case, the self-mastery or just the bare, cool detachment that the Stokes encouraged, this buck up, grin and bear it, is not how Christians are to deal with worry. It’s not a Christian technique. or method according to Paul. Because Paul says, in response to that command, or in addressing it and supporting it, says don’t worry, and implicit in that is point three.
This call to the priority of prayer. You see the emphasis, it says in verse six, do not be anxious about anything, there’s the command. And it immediately adds to that, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request. He’s using three different words. It’s covering all the prayer bases as it were.
So unlike Stoics, Paul urges and commands believers to not look to self, the inner resources of our strength. To not look to self, but to look to our Savior for the deliverance from worry that we seek. And that happens by prayer. Prayer reveals exactly where our heart trust is. What we most rely on. Our prayers reveal that.
You remember how Jesus talked about worry in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, you know, all these birds, your heavenly Father knows when they fall. He knows how many fall to the ground. He knows the numbers of hairs on your head. In light of that kind of fatherly omniscience, worry is a colossal waste of time. You can’t change things by worries, how Jesus argues. Then he says, you know, don’t worry. Don’t be anxious because your heavenly father, what knows what you have need of before you even ask.
That is an implicit statement To trust. Implicit command is the word. To trust. He knows what you need. In other words, you have this Heavenly Father who is infinitely aware of all the kinds of things you’re inclined to be anxious about. Trust Him. Trust. Prayer is an expression of that trust.
So in the logic of Paul, the opposite of careful, being full of care, isn’t carefree. The opposite of anxious care is faith. So we don’t be full of cares or stop being full of cares. No, the opposite of being full of cares is actually faith in a Heavenly Father who actually cares. That’s the proper response. That’s the opposite.
And that faith, that trust, is evidenced in a praying life. A life that, as opposed to being anxious, turns in trust, trusting reliance, to God, who actually cares for us. And this praying is, of course, no vain, meaningless chant, there’s a result here that Paul says prayer is the instrument of, it is the means to which we gain. There is this result of a peace that is beyond the human ability to comprehend, to fully understand.
And that peace, you know, it’s not It’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s a tough, not wimpy piece. The language literally is this garrison of guards that line up and protect fortress like our heart. That’s the kind of piece that comes again, not a change in the circumstances, a showing up of us, establishing us, our hearts and minds.
One of the most beautiful things I like to do is go to rocky cliffs, rocky seashores in the Pacific Northwest, in the New England area, and to see the waters come in and just crash against the rocks and then go back out and just kind of do that repeatedly with the very loud swishing sounds and things like that.
You know, you see the water rage out, rage in, recede, rage, recede, cover the rocks, and then the water leaves the rocks. And something interesting about the rocks, they’re still there. They don’t move. All that water, over and over and over and over, rushing up against it. Loud noises receding back out into the ocean. And yet the rocks remain the same. That’s the heart of peace. It’s not moved. The circumstances rage. They can be calm. They can be terrifying and chaotic. But the heart that has been guarded in peace doesn’t change. doesn’t move.
I like what Augustine says. He says, only a love for the immutable can bring tranquility. And his point is, actually, that was a philosopher summing up Augustine. I don’t think he exactly said that. But his point was that Augustine was talking about love. and how our love for fallible, mutable objects doesn’t lead to peace in the lover. When you love something that changes, you change with it. So if you love something temporal, then your love is only as strong as that temporal thing remains. When it changes, your love changes.
And he says, the only object, the only object of our love that can lead to a permanent tranquility, as it were, is a love for an unchanging God. That our hearts will be incredibly restless when we fill it with anything less than God himself, because our hearts are made for him. So the only kind of peace that will be truly lasting is in the God who gives the peace. Any lesser thing actually can’t give us tranquility. And this is a piece that comes from God. And a piece that is in our final point here, let’s consider the worry as it relates to Jesus, the passage talks about.
Because it’s possible, and most people do it in our therapeutic age, they deal with anxiety in a psychological way. you know, revise your reality, rid yourself of negative thoughts. There’s all these kinds of techniques that people employ, particularly in secular fields, psychology, to deal with anxiety. And they can turn, they’ll even accept, you know, Christians who say they should pray about their anxiety and go to the Lord. And they’ll make that into a kind of relaxation technique, right?
Or a thanking of a power. a higher power or something like that, right? And we could even think that except for the very last words of the apostle Paul in verse seven. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
I listened to this radio interview actually on anxiety, just to kind of just like to hear what people say about it. And the psychologist said the way to deal with it, you know, she was just throwing out a bunch of stuff that she uses and encourages. She said you could use Buddhist meditation. She was encouraging certain kinds of cognitive behavioral therapy. And I thought to myself, no, that’s a dead end ultimately. It may have some temporal value, common grace value, but at a fundamental level it fails.
The Christian way with worry is connected to Jesus Christ. It is in and through Him, the Apostle says. Jesus is at the very center of how anxiety and care is dealt with. There are only two types of people in the world. There are those who are in Jesus Christ, and those who are outside of Jesus Christ. There are two ways we can deal with our worries. In Christ Jesus, in Jesus Christ, or without, outside Jesus Christ.
But the only people who get this supernatural, this peace that surpasses human comprehension, that goes beyond the natural, the only people who get that peace are the ones who know the Prince of Peace. The one who is the source of all true peace. All lasting and eternal peace. Not temporal peace. Fake peace.
It is only in and through Jesus Christ. We must look to Him. See Him. If you’re a person who is in Christ, then you know and you see that He is the one who bore all of our griefs and sorrows. That He took all of our anxiety and placed it on Himself. We can see that. If you’re in Jesus Christ, then you see that. That’s why you go to Him.
He is the one that was acquainted with grief. He’s the one that said in the garden that my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. He knew care because he took all our cares on himself. He’s the one that told his disciples, you know, stay and watch because his soul was overwhelmed.
And if you’re in Christ, you know that was for you. He did that for his people. You know that and you can see that. And so you see the good news under worry. You see that we don’t need to worry, that we can go to Christ. We don’t need to worry because Jesus has taken all of our worries. and cares on himself. That sin is fully dealt with. So now we have a heart and response of faith and trust that goes to him to deal with remaining sorrow, remaining cares that we have.
Make two quick practical points in closing. This should lead us to do two things, to listen and to look. Listen. Paul says, don’t be anxious for anything, but in everything. So presumably, the everything is anything that will cause us worry. In everything, by prayer and supplication. So that implies we actually know those things that are causing us anxiety and worry. That we’re aware of it. That we’ve slowed down enough to know what is going on in our hearts that is causing anxiety.
What lack of control do we have that is leading us to work, right? So we actually need to listen to what’s going on inside of us. The psalmist says, when he was anxious or depressed, however we want to categorize it, why is my soul cast down? Oh soul, why are you cast down?
He has a self-awareness that leads to prayer. So we have to actually slow down enough to have our heart searched and known in order to bring those things that cause even the low grade anxiety before the Lord, who actually cares for us, who garrisons our hearts with his supernatural peace. So one, you have to listen to your heart. in the sense of figuring out what cares are going on inside of it. Because in everything, by prayer and supplication, everything that would cause us care.
Two, look. So listen, figure out what’s going on, and look. What Jesus says to those gathered when he’s giving the Sermon on the Mount, he says, consider the birds, consider the littlies of the field. That traveling father clothes them. Basically an observation from general revelation reveals a quality about our Heavenly Father that He actually cares. So look at the actual circumstances.
How do we pray with Thanksgiving? Paul says, you know, pray with Thanksgiving. He doesn’t say pray and then you’ll be thankful. He says pray with Thanksgiving. How is that? Thanksgiving, Eucharisto, it comes from a recognition that God has gifted us and has demonstrated His goodness and that life is a gift and the circumstances in which He’s put us I mean, things are simple as sitting in a warm building and not having to flee for our lives.
I just read a letter from Chinese pastors. The government is cracking down on gospel preaching pastors in China, and they have to hide and change locations almost weekly to stay a step ahead of the government. And here we sit in absolute freedom and peace to listen, to respond to the gospel. And I don’t think anyone’s going to leave here and go and starve.
So an observation of God’s general revelation of goodness to us in the circumstances of our life, of praying with thanksgiving is what is always in order. It’s a means by which he uses to deal with our worries. So listen and look. And may the God of peace, as Paul asked, establish us in his peace. Let’s pray. Father, indeed, we’re thankful for your word.
We recognize our own fallibility and weakness and need of your continual need of your sanctifying grace. So would you help us to not worry, to not be anxious? We don’t know what a day brings forth, but you do. you’re well aware, you have it all in control and you give to your people a peace that passes human comprehension, our ability to take in. So we’re thankful for your word, Lord, cause it to take root in our hearts and to bear fruit in our lives. In Jesus name, Amen. Let’s take our hymn, hymn Nolan. Sing an affirmation of The peace that only God gives to His people, hymn number 587.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.