In Christ - Philippians 4

Music. All right, good morning. I hate to interrupt.

It actually would be great. Maybe someday we'll just let you guys keep chatting and we'll see how many times the two-minute counter can count over and over again until somebody notices. I bet it would take a while, which is probably a good sign of a healthy church that you guys want to connect. So open up your Bibles and you have them in front of you if you don't have another source of a Bible.

We're going to be in Philippians 4 today, not bouncing around too much, so we can kind of just stay in Philippians 4. I'm Ryan, if we haven't met associate pastor here, and I get the joy of preaching occasionally, and I always say this when I do, thank you guys for the opportunity because I had the chance to sit and just kind of live in this scripture for the last couple of weeks. And it's just awesome to be able to do that. The best way to learn something is to teach it.

And in prepping to teach this, I really feel like I benefited way more than you guys will. So you can be jealous. We're going to go ahead, we're going to pray, and then we'll dive into Philippians 4 here. Lord God, I just am thankful for this morning. I'm thankful that we get to gather and just lift you up. Lord, you are worthy of that. And we love you. And we humbly approach your word and just ask that you would use it to speak to us. Ask that you would use it to draw us closer to you.

Thank you, Lord. Be here now. Use this time. In your son's precious name, we pray. Amen. So we're going to be looking at a couple verses today, a passage that is, I would say, Instagram famous, okay? Very quotable, very put it on a coffee mug, very, you know, text it to your friend. And that is not a bad thing. 100% not a bad thing. Anytime we can get scripture in front of people, that is a great thing. Anytime you have scripture in front of you, that is a great thing.

And I think we can dive in and look at kind of the larger context and what's going on here in these passages, in these familiar verses, and see kind of the fullness of what God is doing here and what the Apostle Paul is trying to say. So some of you probably have seen these verses a thousand times in your life, and some of you probably have them memorized, try to look at them freshly. Try to look at them freshly, and let's read it in context and see what God has

for us. So, I'm going to start in Philippians 4.1. It says, So then, my dearly beloved and longed for brothers and sisters, my joy and my crown, in this manner stand firm in the Lord. Dear friends, I urge Iodia and I urge Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, along with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the book of life.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again. Rejoice. Let your graciousness be known to everyone. The Lord is near, don't worry about anything, but in everything through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So we actually looked at chapter four, verse one, last time I was up here, but I wanted to include it this time because it really sets the tone and makes it clear that Paul is talking here to a group of people. He says, so then my dearly loved and longed for brothers and sisters. And also he says, I urge you to, in this manner, stand firm in the Lord, dear friends. So we can kind of put ourselves almost in the position of like, these words are being presented to a group of people.

We could actually look back, even if you got your Bible and you glance at chapter three, verse 20, it says, our citizenship is in heaven. We eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. So this is to a group. And to me, this helps me get in, I think, the right frame and understand this correctly, that this passage is not written to 21st century Ryan. It's not written to me. It is written for me.

So when I say it's not written to me, that does nothing to take away from the fact that, man, I can get a lot out of this. And God has so much for me and for you from this passage, but I need to not read it as if it were written to 21st century individual 2024 Ryan Gilbert. It wasn't. It was written to a church in Philippi, a church that Paul had started earlier in his career. And then he goes on in his ministry career, all sorts of successes, trials, adventures.

He's at the end right now. He's actually in prison and he's writing back to this church. And so this passage is written to them. One example of why this is kind of tricky to look at this passage and read it this way, we don't have a plural you in the English language, which is so weird. Unless you're in Texas, and it's y'all, but I don't know why, maybe somebody knows, maybe there's some logic to it, but why do we not have a plural you in the English?

We don't. So it's easy to read this as if, oh, it's just for me, but it's not. It's written to a group. And I think it'll become clear, as we go on, why that actually does matter. And it's encouraging to us. So let's start for real in verse two. Paul's writing, again, he's writing back to this church. He's in a prison that's a couple of weeks journey away. And he says, I urge Iodia and I urge Syntyche to agree in the Lord.

Yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, along with Clement and the rest of my coworkers, whose names are in the book of life. So two things that I want to draw out of this passage. First is what Paul's really trying to tackle here is unity. There's some sort of disagreement in this church between these two women, and it's significant. We're not told what it is. And I have to interpret the fact that we're not told what it is.

It doesn't matter what it was. If it were important, we would know. But we know that the disagreement itself is significant, because it's not as if Paul has picked up the phone and made a call and it just happens to come up in conversation and he addresses it. That's not how communication works in these days. So it's a two to three week journey from Philippi to where Paul is in prison, which also means it's about a two to three week journey back to where the letter's being sent to.

So this has to be a longstanding significant conflict that has popped up between these two women. It's a big deal. And he's trying to address that. And by the way, this you, when he says, yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women, that is the only singular you in this passage. All the other yous are plural. But in this case, he's telling one person. He's empowering one person. We don't know exactly who that is.

It's probably Epaphroditus who we don't know much about other than the fact that Paul has given Epaphroditus this letter to take to Philippi and deliver to them. Okay. Doesn't really matter a whole lot. The point is Paul has appointed somebody and he said, hey, there's a problem in this church. Go deal with it. You're in charge. It's important. It needs to be dealt with. And it needs to be dealt with because that unity in the church is so important. One commentator that I read says it this way.

I think I have a slide for it. It says, it's significant. Laurie, do you have that slide? There we go. It's significant that when there's a quarrel in Philippi, Paul mobilized the whole resources of the church to mend it. He thought no effort too great to maintain the peace of the church. A quarreling church is no church at all for it is one from which Christ has been shut out. No one can be at peace with God and at variance with others.

And I think this is insightful to us. We've talked about this a couple of times from up here. And by the way, one thing I enjoy and appreciate about this church is I don't, maybe it's there and I don't see it, but I don't think we have a lot of disunity. I think we talk to each other and we're open with each other and this is not an issue, but it doesn't mean it couldn't become an issue.

And as a church, we're exploring a time where there's a potential move that we're exploring that we've been praying about for months. And we've been praying about it in the sense that, hey, God might have this in mind. We can't force this to happen. There's like 8 million moving pieces. Some of them are giant and cannot be moved by any individual that have to come into place for this move to happen, if it's going to happen.

And if it doesn't, it doesn't. And if it does, it does. And we're just curious and excited to see what God has for us. And some of those pieces are moving. I have no new information, by the way. I'm not, you guys don't know anything I don't know. I'm not revealing any news here. This is just the situation that we're in as we're praying for that. But any church in transition has the potential for disunity.

And so I just, actually, I just want to take a moment and pray for our church that as we, you know, as we're exploring this, that disunity that could potentially be caused by any transition, I just want us to fight against that. And I want us to be aware of that, have our eyes open. So anyway, let me pray. Let's stop. Let's pray. Lord God, you are powerful in ways beyond what we can do. In ways beyond what we can plan, in ways beyond what we can grit our teeth and

flex our muscles and our brains and force to make happen. God, there's so much more that you can do. So Lord, we've been praying for months that you would just bring clarity. And in your perfect timing, I don't think we have clarity yet, but Lord, I just pray that through whatever happens, staying, going to place A, going to place B, going to some place we haven't thought of yet, God, I just, whatever you have for us, God, I just pray for unity in this church.

I pray that if and when little bits and potential for disunity pop up, that you would allow us to see that and work through it. Just like Paul asked his dear friend to do for this church. God, I just, yeah, just help us, guide us. Let any potential transition that happens or doesn't happen to not be a source of disunity for this church. In Jesus' name, amen. Second thing I want to point out from this passage, from these two verses, and it's obvious, but it's significant.

Iodia and Syntyche are women. Where could we go to the side with the scripture on it again? They're women in the church and And they're women that Paul calls co-workers and that he calls, sorry, make sure I get the wording right, that they have contended for the gospel by his side. And what an amazing thing to say. I would love for somebody in a position like Paul to say that about me someday. I want to, that's a great thing to have said about you.

And it's significant that they're women because I think sometimes Christianity today gets a bad rap for being anti-woman. And I'm just bringing it up because it's in the passage. I think that women, we see women play very key roles in Jesus's ministry. We see women in the book of Acts, Lydia gets converted to Christianity, and then she goes and spreads the gospel in her whole household and households are big groups of people. Her whole household is converted through Lydia.

Women are playing key roles in Paul's ministry here. The fact that they contended for the gospel by his side, it's an incredible thing for Paul to say. And this is at a time where it was not a friendly time and place for women. Okay. And I'm not going to go into like a ton of detail, but at any stage of life, being a woman was not a good thing in this age. And Jesus comes along and paints a drastically different picture of what that looks like.

And I actually, I have this in my notes and then I crossed it out because I wasn't happy with how I worded it, but I'm going to go for it. And you're going to listen generously, okay? So why am I bringing this up? I think if we look at today's culture, and you can probably say that this happens for 18 different reasons, okay?

And I'm not going to go into any of the 18 different reasons, but if you look at today's culture and you say that the Christian church is anti-woman, I think something has gone wrong, okay? Something has gone wrong if we are coming to that conclusion. And that something going wrong, I think, I'm going to go, I'm going to touch on a couple of reasons, but it could be a matter of perception. It could be a matter of interpretation.

It could be a number of different things. But there's a disconnect between what we see in the New Testament and a modern church that is perceived to be or said to be against women. Okay, moving on. Let's dive into what Paul is really—so he kind of touches that side issue on unity, and I just want to point out that these are important women in the church. So as we dive in, we're going to look at verse three, or actually kind of look at this as a chunk.

Keep in mind, though, that all of the U's that we see, all of the Y-O-U-U's are plural. Paul's talking to a group of people. So, and again, these are coffee mug verses. These are Instagram verses. But let's look at the argument that Paul is making here. And I think we'll get nothing wrong with Instagram verses, but I think we'll get a little more fullness here as we look at the passage as a whole.

So first of all, starting in verse four, regardless of circumstance, Lori, can we get the slide with the bolds on it? There we go. Perfect. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice. And this is regardless of circumstances. Again, Paul's towards the end of his ministry. He's in prison. He may be chained to a wall, okay? And he's saying, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.

He's saying this to a group of people who are early on in their ministry, he can project ahead and see that the road is not going to be easy for them. This is not a matter of like, hey, things are going to be great. You've made this choice to follow Christ and therefore puffy clouds and puppy toes and everything's going to be great. This is not the case at all. So how do we understand this? And this is going to be a big key as we go through all this stuff, this phrase, in the Lord.

I don't know how many times I've read this passage and just kind of skipped over that in the Lord. And that is actually the whole key. This reminds me of Psalm 3.3, and there's a youth group campfire church camp song that I just was ringing in my head as I read that. And it's from Psalm 3.3. It says, but you Lord are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head. So what does it look like to be in the Lord? I think the next sentence actually

kind of helps us a little bit with this. So verse five. Graciousness, let your graciousness, other translations say gentleness, let your graciousness or gentleness be known to everyone. This word, the Greek word is, I'm going to say it once and butcher it and then I won't say it again. Epikeia, it's, I'm told, I'm not a Greek translator, but I'm told it's the most difficult Greek word to translate.

Different Bible versions have it as graciousness, reasonableness, gentleness, moderation, patience, softness of mind, modesty, forbearance, magnanimity. If you transfer magnanimity, I might need that retranslated. There's a Bible version that has this verse, let all the world know that you will meet a man halfway. Let all the world know that you will meet a man halfway. The Greeks translated this or explain this word as justice and something better than justice.

So it's like justice applied in such a way with graciousness, with understanding, with patience. Think of it as like, okay, you're driving down the freeway. I know we have some new drivers in here who would never do this. So I'm not talking to you, but other people might go 85 on the freeway and get pulled over and get a ticket for that. Like, okay, justice, fair. I earned that one. Thanks very much. Never happened to me, by the way, Abby.

But this concept, this graciousness would be applied if I were going 85 on the freeway, got pulled over, officer sees I've got my about-to-give-birth pregnant wife in the car with me, and I'm rushing to the hospital, and the officer says, go.

That's this idea of like, okay, it's okay. We can have justice and be reasonable and gracious and gentle. That's but let it be known to everyone. Let that be a marker of you. And again, that's not a singular you, that's a plural you. Let that graciousness be a marker of the American church today. Is that the case? I don't know. Let that be a marker of I-90 Community Church. Do people see the people of I-90 Community Church and say, graciousness, gentleness, justice that's better than justice?

I hope so. I like you guys. I hope so. But I know we can do better, at least, at very least, because I know I can do better at this concept. And if we make it individual for a second, is that how you individually are known? Do people look at your life, your words, your actions, and see graciousness, gentleness, magnanimity, whatever that is?

Is that what you are known for? It reminds me of John 13, 35, where Jesus is talking to his disciples, and he's kind in the process of preparing them to go about their ministry, preparing them to go out into the world. And he says, by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Okay. It's the love of the disciples for each other that will mark them as Christians. What marks us as Christians? Do we have a reputation for this graciousness, this gentleness?

Great, great thing to think about. Let's look at verse six. Verse 6, and you might be familiar with the translation that says, do not be anxious. And honestly, this one gave me some anxiety as I was preparing to stand up here and point at you and say, don't be anxious. Stop worrying. Okay. And that really would have helped you. Right. And I'm glad that the Lord showed me there's, there's more going on here than that.

When we read this on a coffee mug or we get a text from a friend with this verse and it's like, gosh, that doesn't actually help. And I think it's because there's more going on here. And if I could, I would take the six that marks the beginning of verse six, and I would move it up one sentence. And Trey's nodding, so I feel like I have permission to do that.

Some very smart people, I'm sure, some very smart people, much smarter than Trey and I, put the six where it is, and there's probably really good reasons for that. But the numbers aren't scripture, so we don't need to, we are not obligated to start our reading of this verse at the six. we can read it as the Lord is near. Don't worry about anything, but in everything through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And remember, those are all plural use.

So I could actually read that. You're going to forgive my, I'm not even going to attempt like a Texas accent here, but I'm going to say, I could paraphrase this, this passage and say, y'all have God with you. So y'all don't need to worry about anything that the world can throw at you, but the God who is with y'all, my wife is laughing at me. The God who is with y'all wants y'all to turn to him with thanks and with y'all's needs. Okay.

And that's a lot. And again, put it on a coffee mug. That's great. Scripture is great. But I think we see there's more going on here when we see the Lord is near. God is with you in this moment. God is with you and therefore you don't have anything to worry about. The world can't take anything away from you. And then he makes a very good point about prayer. He says, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

God wants to hear about everything. The big, the small, the hard, the easy, the embarrassing, the triumphs, the failures, and the shame. God wants you to bring that to him. N.T. Wright says it this way. He says, we note that Paul says we should ask God about every area of life. If it matters to you, it matters to God.

Prayer like that will mean that God's peace, not a stoic lack of concern, but a deep peace in the middle of life's problems and storms, will guard around your heart and mind like a squadron of soldiers looking after a treasure chest. God wants to hear from you. This reminds me of a parenting quote that Cheryl and I stumbled across. I can't attribute it because I don't know where it came from. It probably came from my very wise wife, actually.

But it's just a little side note here to parents, but I think it, and then it applies to our passage. The idea is if you want them, them being your kids, if you want them to share the big things, you need to listen when they share the little things, because to them, they're all big things. And that is our perspective as parents, as we are fathering and mothering our kids. And our father, God, models that when we approach him.

He wants to hear the things. He's not going to look at you and laugh at you and say, that's not actually important. Even if what you're bringing to him in the scheme of things might not actually be that important, God wants to hear from you. And if we go back to the passage, it kind of centers around this idea of giving thanks. God wants us to come to him and in everything through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

And I know Thanksgiving's coming up. I'm not gonna talk about turkeys, but just the idea that God wants us to bring stuff to him and he wants us to bring it with thanksgiving. Well, sometimes thanksgiving and the stuff that we bring to God are hard to kind of bring together, okay? Sometimes we don't feel like we have a lot to be thankful for. Sometimes that can be hard. Sometimes it's not, but sometimes it's hard.

And I just wanna encourage you guys, if you're having trouble bringing thanksgiving to God, number one, that's okay. God still wants to hear from you. And number two, you can thank God as you come to him, that the Lord of the universe, the creator of heaven and earth, who formed you out of nothing, he wants to hear from you, okay? That is thanksworthy right there. The fact that the father God wants to hear from you.

He wants you to present your requests. And if you've read this verse, anything, like I've read this verse in the past in my kind of like selfishness and self-centeredness, it's easy to get, you know, present your requests to God's requests. And then as it goes on, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and mind in Christ Jesus.

That's what God is offering, the peace of God. And actually next time I'm up here and we're talking about Philippians, we're gonna kind of come back to this idea of what it means to have the peace of God. A little bit more, but I just want to point out that it's not that we're getting the stuff that we're asking for necessarily, or the circumstances that we're asking for necessarily. We might, but what God promises is his peace, which is such a better thing overall.

So I was writing this yesterday. Ideally, I would have been writing it in the middle of the week, but I didn't have time. And I was writing this yesterday and I was contemplating, So we're in verse seven now, and I was contemplating, do we go on and tackle verse eight and nine at the same time? And we're not, I'm almost done. But I was sitting there looking at this, and then I saw these last three words, and it totally shifted my view of this passage.

We'll guard our hearts and mind in Christ Jesus. This is like the real key. And it actually, Lori, if we could go to the next slide, this idea of in Christ Jesus, it's all over this. But it's easy to miss because it's kind of like, these are familiar verses, it's Christianese, we just kind of read over it, it's just kind of there. But gosh, this is important. In Christ Jesus. So how do we rejoice always?

In the Lord. How do we let our graciousness show? Because the Lord is near. How do we not worry? Because the Lord is near. He's with us. How do we pray? We present our requests to God. You can't present something to somebody who's not near you, who's not welcoming, who's not receiving things. How do we get the peace of God? It's in Christ Jesus. And it struck me, and I'm ashamed to say that it hadn't struck me until yesterday, because it's so critical and it's so like big picture.

This is what's happening in the Bible. This whole concept, the Lord is near being in Christ, this only happens in a world where Jesus reigns. This only happens in a world where Jesus reigns. This cannot happen in a world where we can't approach God. And sin, and this is the gospel, this is the good news. Sin from Genesis 3 creates separation from God and it enacts God's grand plan to bring us back to him, which ultimately comes to fruition through Jesus dying on the cross for our

sin. That allows this to happen. We get to be with God. We get to have these statements be true of us because of the gospel. This only happens in a world where Jesus reigns. Without Jesus, we can't say, we'll guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Because we're not in Christ Jesus. We're not in the Lord. There's sin blocking us. But Jesus allows that. The gospel allows that.

And this gospel that we get to allow this situation, all these bold letters to happen so that we can rejoice, so that we can pray, so that we can be without anxiousness, it is all because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and it's all a free gift to us. Romans 5.1 says, therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Justification, the elimination of sin on our lives, on ourselves, not that we're perfect, but that God sees us as without sin, comes through faith, gives us the peace of God that we then get in our Lord Jesus Christ. This all happens because of the gospel. And if you feel like you need to take a step in response to this, I don't want to assume that everybody's in any particular place with the Lord, not at all. Some of you may need to take a step in accepting this and knowing that I can

be in Christ. I am invited to be in Christ. All this stuff is an invitation to me. Some of you maybe just need to take a step of obedience, maybe in baptism or something like that. Maybe there's a step that needs to be taken. Maybe, just guessing here, maybe some of us feel like we're not very worthy of being in Christ, that we're not perfectly worthy of being in Christ because of unconfessed sin or something that we haven't dealt with.

It's easy to feel that way and it's easy to get stuck that way, but you don't have to be stuck that way. Okay. The idea of being in Christ and the idea of being more in Christ is available to us.

And I just want to mention, you know if there's somebody that you if there's something that you feel like you need to take a step you need to talk through something with somebody trey's available savannah's available i'm available drews and elders there's probably 20 people in this room who would love to have that conversation with you about any step that you might feel that you need to take in order to experience being in christ and i guarantee you that we will be zero percent

surprised if you come up and you say, things are not perfect. I don't feel perfectly in Christ. Okay. There will be zero surprise. I think we all, let me speak for myself. I won't speak for you. I think I put a significant amount of effort into walking around as if things are. And that just is not the case. We all know that we all have stuff going on under the surface. We all know that this idea of being in Christ is kind of difficult.

And gosh, there are steps that I could take to have more of it. And so if God's asking you to take a step like that, I just, please do, please do. Worship teams, they kind of seem like out there, unattainable, how can I do that? And the truth is, the super encouraging, unbelievably encouraging truth is that God has given us, God, you know, Paul's letter is written to a Philippian church, a group of people.

Well, we are a group of people reading the same message, and God has given us the opportunity to really step into this, to rejoice in the Lord always, even through the hard times. The Lord is near. We don't need to worry. There's nothing that the world can throw at us that the Lord can't handle. We are asked to present our requests to God. And that peace of God, that deep abiding peace that is beyond what we deserve. It's there for us. It's in Christ Jesus. So let me pray and then we'll worship.

Lord God, I just am so thankful for this group of people that we get to gather here and hear this message. Lord, you don't have to do any of this. You didn't need to create us. You didn't need to rescue us from sin. You don't need to be present and allow us to approach you with every little thing that we might have in our prayers. Lord, none of that is necessary for you, yet you do.

You do, and you say it over and over and over again in your scriptures, and we feel it and we see it over and over and over again in our lives as we're looking for it. Lord, you do, you love us far more than you should, if I'm honest, but you do. And you wash us pure and you want us to approach you. So Lord, I just hope that you work in everyone's life here. Give us those opportunities to approach you further, to be in Christ.

Lord, that's what we desire. And we're thankful for your love, your grace, your patience with us so that that can be a reality more and more fully. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.