Confidence in Real Time

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. As we come to a close on our study on Philippians, with our message series, aren't we there yet? We're going to be in Philippians chapter 4, verses 4 through 20 today. We're looking for 4 through 20, and we're going to be focusing on kind of the end of this series, but a lot of the verses, what he's talking about here, it's going to focus our minds on practical application because at first glance Philippians can seem very Hypothetical or very idealistic almost pie in the sky You know the verses like to live to live as Christ and to die as gain or whatever gain I had I kind of lost the state of Christ or the press on toward the goal of the prize the upward call All those things are scriptural. They're true. They're good, but sometimes they you know, they're just on too many t-shirts There aren't too many coffee mugs. They're kind of meant as these, just an ideal,

they don't really have something that we can really put our hands on. It lacks specific direction for a few of us in the day-to-day of how we're going to respond to stress or crises or anything like that. And so in this last chapter, in chapter four, there is a push for practical application. We started to see that last week, just a little bit. But this week we're really gonna hone in on what real-time confidence looks like, what real-time generosity, real-time thankfulness, what all these things look like according to Philippians 4. And so with the first verse that we're gonna read, it really doesn't sound very practical, but we're gonna read it anyway, Philippians 4-4. It says, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I would say, rejoice. Now often, this makes the Christian t-shirt or the Christian coffee mug, too. You might have seen this framed in somebody's house.

But often we read it out of context. We just kind of pick this verse out of the air and we just say, hey, just rejoice and you'll be fine. It's kind of the Christian version of calm down. And that's not the context. Because what often gets lost in the book of Philippians is that it is written in a climate of upheaval. Remember, Paul is writing this letter to a church in Philippi that is experiencing major stress, major upheaval. And so in 128 when he says to strive side by side, the upheaval is that there are opponents, there are people that are making life difficult for them. In 2.14, whenever he tells the church to shine like stars, the upheaval is that there is a crooked generation that they are in the midst of. In 3.2, when we are talking about forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, and nailing your life to Jesus, the upheaval is that there are fake Christians trying to convince them otherwise.

And so when we see Philippians 4:4, we don't just need to read it as rejoice. But we need to read that in your upheaval rejoice in your suffering in your sacrifice when your life isn't going well rejoice And what the next few verses answer all the way to verse 20 is How are we gonna do that? This is where it gets practical. How in real time do we rejoice? Do we stay confident? And to see this we need to take a closer look at upheaval And we see a little bit of that in 4, 4 through 6a. We're just going to read the first part of 6. So Philippians 4 through 6a, it says, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness or gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. And the first part of verse 6, do not be anxious about anything. So, upheaval, we need to understand this, upheaval, suffering, sacrifice, it means that you're missing out on the things that you need.

By definition, suffering or upheaval is not losing the extras, it's losing the basics. So, some of the tangible things, money, food, shelter, right? If you are in the midst of losing those things, if you don't have what you need, that is the definition of upheaval. Stress comes when you don't have a home to live in. Stress comes when you don't have enough money to pay adults, all right? But it's not just tangible things. Sometimes it's intangible things. We need security, we need hope, we need approval, we need community, all these things we need and when we don't have them, that can also be people. So this is why we're fighting anxiety whenever we feel rejected or when we're insecure about our identity. And this is why verse six mentions anxiety at all. This is why we're directing our hearts toward joy, toward gentleness, which is also reasonableness. Because in upheaval, when we lose those things,

stress and anxiety come. And it says, in our upheaval, we need to remember that the Lord is near. This is what it says in verse five. It says, the Lord is at hand, which means near. So the Lord is near in a people, and we are fighting anxiety with this unshakable truth that Jesus is going to bring to completion what He has begun in us. That He's working in us. That He's working through the people that are around us. Right? It doesn't matter where we've been, what we've done, that Jesus is going to bring His plan of salvation to completion in us, because He's begun in us. And so our confidence is in Jesus' record. Our confidence is in the cause that we are a part of, in making disciples, in working out our salvation with fear and trembling. That's still worth it. Our reasons for confidence in the midst of upheaval do not change.

And so what does confidence still, what does this look like? What's the practical outcome? So let's keep reading on verse 6b and then 7. So 6a says, don't be anxious about anything. And here it is, "...but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." And so confidence in real time looks like strong prayer. We take the anxieties that we have, we take the frustrations that we have going on, and we bring them to the throne of grace. We make our requests known to God. We don't pretend like they don't exist. We don't put them on this tough exterior. We open our hearts, we spill our hearts to God and say, This is what I'm concerned about. 1 Peter 5, 7, cast your cares upon God because He cares for you.

There is a real time confidence expressed when we say, hey, in our people, we're going to do strong prayer. And it's not because we're strong, it's because the person that we're praying to is strong. And I don't know if you know this, but every stress that you have, you are outclassed by. Every anxiety, every problem that you have, you in and of yourself are unable to deal with it. You don't have what it takes. It's more powerful than you. And that's not to make you feel depressed. It's to help you understand that when you have these things that are making you anxiously, stressored, this upheaval that you're dealing with, the best thing you can do, strong prayer, bringing it to Jesus. because He's stronger. And when you have this, when you bring this to God, this peace, this protection, it comes over you because you are believing in real time. Let me just give you

an example. If you begin praying, then you need money for rent because you need money for rent. You begin praying for that, but you actually believe, even though you're praying, you really believe that it's up to you, then even if you're praying, you're still gonna freak out. Even if you're like, oh god, provide, you know, rent money, but you don't believe he's going to do it, you don't believe that there's a plan going on, you don't trust him for that, then you're still going to be anxious. That anxiety isn't going to go away, but if you believe that God is going to show up, that God is going to provide for you in the midst of that, there is a peace that passes is understanding there is a protection that comes over you. If you're in an argument and that argument has left you feeling insecure and you begin to pray, I love Jesus, don't let me fall into insecurity.

But if you don't believe it, you don't really believe that Jesus is interested in how you're feeling, then you are going to grab for security in any other direction you can. You're going to look for a bottle, you're going to look for another person, you're You're going to look for something to make you feel secure because you do not believe. If you believe that God freely gives security, identity, approval, if you believe that God freely gives that, that's whenever peace and protection will come. This is confidence in real time. This is confidence in the midst of upheaval. And that confidence should drive us to spill our hearts before God for a strong prayer. Okay, but it's not just a strong prayer. What else does confidence look like? Let's go to the next verse in Philippians 4:8. Philippians 4:8 says, Finally brothers, whatever's true, whatever's honorable,

whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, If there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. That's a whole long list there, right? Think on these things. In your upheaval, you not only need to have strong prayer, you need to keep a strong mind. And then this is what we were talking about. Last week, we were talking about the mindset. Remember, it says, if you are mature, you need to think this way. If you don't think this way yet, you will, okay? You need to have the mindset where you are rehearsing truth is going to help you keep that mindset. Imitating leaders is going to help you keep that mindset. More on that in a second. You focus forward and upward to the upward call of Christ Jesus. That is going to help you have that mindset that you need to have. And what it's saying right here in verse 8 is that you need to have that strong mind by setting your mind on these things.

and to be specific, to be practical, we get a list. Things that are true, things that are honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, worthy of credit, all these things, they have something in common, they all have integrity. In other words, they all don't change. What's true now is still going to be true in the midst of a people. What is honorable now is still going to be honorable then. What's just now, what is pure now, lovely, beautiful, commendable, excellent, not, will also be in the midst of upheaval. And I cannot say it enough, we've said it a thousand times, I want to keep saying it, you become what you rehearse. You become what you rehearse. And for many of us, what we're listening to, what we're taking in, the things that we're thinking about, about what we are rehearsing, our standard is not that bad. If it's not that bad, then we're gonna listen to it. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna give it, we're gonna

rehearse it, right? What these verses are telling us is, what this verse is telling us is that you need to rehearse what is timeless, not what is not that bad. You need to develop a strong mind. A strong mind. And so ask yourself, how often are you taking in what is true, what is pure, what is a love thing. And listen, to be frank, I've seen how combative some of you are on Facebook. And what it shows me is that you are meditating on how dumb other people are. Oh man, they're so dumb. They're not even thinking about their argument. They're so illogical. And when I see you rehearsing, it's comebacks. I don't see you rehearsing I don't see you rehearsing generosity or confidence in the Lord or anything like that. And the combative nature of a lot of what goes on with online back and forth is really toxic. And what it does is it makes you believe that everybody who doesn't think exactly like you is the enemy.

And that's just not true. We have an enemy, he's real. Whenever you begin treating people like they're your enemy, you're not rehearsing generosity. You're rehearsing your own protection. You're not building the kingdom. You are just making ends. And you're ruining your witness in the meantime. Confidence in real time looks like setting your mind on things that will not change. Timeless truths. We need to have a strong mind. We need to spill our hearts. We need to believe that when we're asking, when we're praying strong prayer, we need to believe that that's what God is doing, that we need to, we can expect something from Him whenever we are praying strong prayer. So strong prayer, strong mind. This is how confidence looks in real time. There's one more thing and it's Philippians 4-9. Philippians 4-9, what you have heard and received and heard and seen, oh excuse me,

what you have learned and received, and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you." It's such a strong statement that in our people, we need to have strong examples. We need to seek out strong examples. And this should sound very familiar. We talked about it last week, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago. Right, in 317, he's saying, Philippians 317 said, imitate me. In the end of Philippians 2, We're talking about Timothy in Epaphroditus and he says, honor such men. And we've talked about it with our church, pastors and deacons, right? We need to have leaders, we need to have pastors. And again, I'm your open pastor now. I hope that we have a number of pastors in the future that are leading together, you know, not the one right after me, but us all together, right? And deacons leading the way by serving the physical needs of the church.

We want pastors and deacons, We want them to be lifted up and say, these are the examples, these are the people that you should follow. Honor these men. The Philippian church right here in 49, and then throughout the letter, they are actively wondering who to trust. And so Paul is pointing to strong examples. He's saying, hey, you know Timothy and Epochonitis, you know these leaders, you know real people, You know me. And he's saying, it's not a vague exhortation to go find people that are good and imitate them. He's saying, look, I'm living in a way where you can imitate me and the God of peace will be with you. That's a strong statement. Literally, he's saying, do what I'm doing, do what they're doing and things will go well with you. If you ask people what church success is, or how do you know what church is successful, whatever you want to ask it, you're going to hear a few examples, kind of right off the bat.

One is a lot of people. If a church has a lot of people, they're doing really well. There's really not a whole lot of qualifiers with that. Don't just say, oh, a lot of people, they must be doing well. If the church is serving the poor, or if they have a cause, or they're serving the community, then they're doing really well. If the church has a lot of new believers, they're doing really well. If the church is influencing social change, if they're talking about racism, then they're doing really well. These are all kind of these common measures of how a church is doing. If a church is doing those things well, then they're successful. But let me tell you, nothing, nothing is more important for a church to be healthy than to have solid Christian leadership. It is of the highest importance because we all of us be included we need to see real sustainable examples of people following Jesus

Not some not some guy on the camera talking about you know, Philippians 4 You don't just need to see me here. You need to see my life You need to see me love my family. You need to see me make tough decisions You need to see me receive devastating news. And not just me, but other leaders. We need to see how people handle finances. We need to see how they handle failure. All these things that we need to see that don't happen on a Sunday morning. We need to see our leaders go through that to take our cues. To see, oh yes, to be reminded, yes, this is how we follow Jesus in the midst of people. It's not simply a leader saying, hey, go follow Jesus. Because there is a translation that needs to happen from a first century Jew who is the Son of God, how he lived, how he taught. We need to translate that, we need to contextualize that to American life today. In other words, what does the Bible say about navigating same-sex marriage?

What does the Bible say about navigating gender identity? What about racism? What about social justice? How do we handle that? Scripture says things about it, but how does that interpret? How does that look today? We need leaders to show us this. Don't make it up, Scripture. They're not making up truth. They're interpreting it. They're saying, this is how it looks in real time. When you get rock-style leaders listening to the Spirit, seeking to be obedient, leading others to obedience, investing in caring for people, then you get all the rest. If you have strong Christian leaders doing that, you get all the rest. You get people becoming Christians, you get people serving the community, you get people being the hands and feet of Jesus, you get people addressing social change, you get all of that. This is real time and confidence that Paul is trying to illustrate for the Philippian

Church and he does it in a few ways. So here's the summary. And in our upheaval, our people is not having what can be. In our upheaval, real-time confidence, real-time generosity looks like this. It looks like strong prayer where we're spilling our hearts to Jesus. It looks like having a strong mind over our hearts. Timeless truth. We don't just kind of take in whatever's in front of us, but we seek out what's true. And also, we seek out certain examples. We imitate people that are vulnerable with Jesus. At the end of the letters of the Philippian Church, this is verses 10 through 20, Paul begins to kind of step down and focus on their relationships. Their relationship. Well, what he does is he drops two gems kind of in the middle of it all. And so I want to read through it just so we understand what's going on. Verse 10, Philippians 4, 10, it says, He said, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at length you have revived your concern for me.

You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. He said, you were concerned for me, you had no opportunity. I'm glad that you revived your concern. So he found the church, look, I'm glad we're back on track. And he said, the reason we got on track is because you didn't have an opportunity to provide for my needs. In other words, church, I know that you wanted to provide for my needs, But I didn't really need anything at the time. You didn't have an opportunity to bless me. And it's like he gets on the subject of needs, and he wants to eliminate a little bit of confusion. And so the first gem that we get is in verses 11 through 13. 14, 11 through 13. Since not that I'm speaking of being in need, For I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, I know how to bug-bound. And in every circumstance I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. And so there, in 11-13, this is the mindset that He's pushing for. suffering or not Jesus is still bringing his work to completion he's still working out his salvation right he's still bringing us strength he's so inspiring confidence and generosity and us and this is this is the mindset but this is strength right here that he's showing he's saying look big strong in the Lord is not controlling your destiny it's not about controlling your environment. Because he's saying, look, I don't care if I have plenty of work or if I'm in need. I don't care if I'm Rallo. I don't care if I'm feeling depressed that day. He's saying,

my strength, real strength, is not in controlling how I feel or controlling what's going on around me, but in trusting the one who does. Trusting Jesus because he is in control of everything. And he's going to build on that in a minute, but he presumes his gratitude here in verses 14 through 16, says, "...yet it was kind of you to share my trouble." And you, Philippians, yourselves, know that at the beginning of the Gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me, except you only. Even in Thessalonica, you sent me hope for my needs, once and again. So again, he gets to a subject of needs, And he wants to eliminate some confusion. He wants to clear it up. So we get the last verses, and Philippians 4, verses 17-21. There are a couple more after that, but we're just going to cover these last, or these three or at least four right here.

Verse 17, not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. I have received full payment and more. I am well supplied. Have I received from impact for that as the gift you sent, Afraid of offering a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God and so he's saying look I've got what you sent me I'm not I'm not talking about You know, I'm not writing you so that you give me more stuff. That's not what we're talking about. I'm glad we're partners I'm not asking for more stuff. I have everything I need and look here He begins to show them what needs actually are 19 to 20 He says, and my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory, in Christ Jesus, to our God and Father, be glory forever and ever, amen. He's showing them what needs actually are, that they are simply opportunities to share what we have,

that needs are opportunities to see Jesus move and provide, that God is gonna supply the needs that we have. And so in Jesus, strength looks different. Strength looks like speaking your need, right? It looks like rehearsing truth, and it looks like seeking and providing examples. Let's just talk about each one of those. Speaking your need. When you have a need, you need to let it be known, not just to the Lord, but also to the church body. We don't need to kind of shrink back and begin to fret about where what we need going to come from either it's a tangible need or you know money, food, shelter, or the intangible need. You know acceptance, security, hope, community. We don't need to sit back and fret where that's going to come from. We need to ask the Lord for it and we need to speak our name to the Lord but we also need to speak our name to the body. It has been really good to be on Facebook during this

COVID time and to see everybody's needs. There's no needs that are going on in our body. I'll encourage you if you have some spare time and I believe you do during the COVID pandemic you might have some more time alone than you typically do. Go through that Facebook feed and begin to pray for the needs that people are posting there. Also you know we're a couple of we're a couple months away from it but we're talking about a setting up a system where Deacons are having families that they're in charge of where they're going to listen to the needs that you have. They're gonna ask you, how can I pray for you? What's going on? You need to speak that need. We need to know as a church body, I need to say my needs. And so if you have a need, I wanna just take this time right now. Please take a second and click on the link that I'm gonna have below in the comments.

That's our Connect card. And so our Connect card is going to be for anything that you might need, right? It's going to be for prayer. If you want to be baptized or interested in becoming a member, if you just have a question, you can just write something on the notes. And I will call you. I'll text you if you want. Just write that in the notes. Speak your need. Let me encourage you. Speak your need. So strength looks like speaking your need. Also, strength looks like rehearsing truth. Rehearsing truth. We need to lean into the people that can help. We need to urge truth with other people. Now our life groups are actually starting the week of August 23rd. And life groups are going to help you do this. They're going to say, okay, what's true? You're going to kind of review your week, say, okay, here's what happened, here's what happened, here's what happened.

Or you're going to text them during the week. They're going to remind you of what's true. They're going to remind you, hey, hey, Jesus has a plan for you guys in the midst of this. You don't even freak out. This is what the Lord is doing. Or hey, they're going to remind you to pray for that. Hey, focus on what the Lord is doing. We need people to help us rehearse that truth. Lastly, strength looks like seeking and providing examples. Listen, seeking and providing examples for each other and for the people that are around us, this is our way forward as a church. We talk about our goal, our vision, being to plant gospel seeds in the lives of other people. But we can't do that unless we are giving and receiving examples, right? If we're not providing examples, if we're not seeking examples to imitate, then we're just all gonna be kind of closed in on ourselves.

We're not gonna be reaching out to anybody, we're not gonna be inspiring anybody, we're gonna be inspired by anybody. And so I would encourage you, reach out to another person during the week. I'm telling you this week, reach out to another person. You know, we've emailed several times, and in those emails, all those old emails, there's a church directory link. You can click that and see everybody's cell numbers. And you can text them. It's okay if you've never texted before, just say your name at the beginning of the text and move on. But reach out to someone. Even if you're comfortable, go grab coffee with somebody. Go grab a meal with somebody. But at least text them, at least call them on the phone. And reach out and begin to build relationships where we can seek out and provide examples of how to live according to the gospel. By doing these things, we are going to be living

in confident generosity on our painful journey. And that is my prayer for you. That's my prayer for my own life. Let's see it happen. Let's pray right now. Jesus, thank you so much for all that you do. Thank you for giving us confidence, for allowing us to be generous, for helping us see this painful journey that we're on, we're not alone. And that many others are on a painful journey We're all stressed in some capacity. We're all suffering in some way. Jesus, you have a plan for that. You're not surprised by that. That's part of what it is to follow. Help us to go to you in our need. Help us to speak our need. Help us to reach out to others in our need. I know that's your name and we pray. Amen.