Bible Passage: Philippians 4:4-7
Pastor: Michael Willitz
Sermon Date: December 12, 2021

Bulletin December 12, 2021

Philippians 4:4–7

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always! I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The Christian’s Key to Joy: Jesus

1. In Jesus, we may live in gentleness toward everyone.
2. In Jesus, we may pray to God.

Dear fellow redeemed in Jesus Christ our Lord,

We have now reached the third Sunday in the season of Advent, and from ancient times, this Sunday has been known as Rejoicing Sunday, or, in Latin, Gaudete Sunday. This Sunday’s emphasis on rejoicing is represented here in our sanctuary: if you look to your left to the banners on the wall, we have one banner for each of the four Sundays in Advent. The third of those banners shows a rose colored-candle with the word “Rejoice” written on it. It reminds us that today is a day for our Christian joy to be burning brightly.

But shouldn’t that be the case on more days than just today? Paul doesn’t say “Rejoice in the Lord only on Gaudete Sunday.” He says, “Rejoice in the Lord always!” If Christian joy is like a candle, then maybe we should think of it like one of those trick candles, one of those candles that doesn’t go out no matter how hard a person blows on it. In the same way, Christian joy is to keep burning always, no matter what happens around us. But someone might be wondering, “How is that possible? How can a Christian always rejoice? What about the sad days? What about the painful days? What about the days filled with difficulty? What about the days filled with uncertainty? Should I rejoice in those days too?” Yes, you should! We are called to rejoice always! And in our text, Paul tells us the source for our joy. He tells us The Christian’s Key to Joy in absolutely any and every circumstance. We rejoice in the Lord. We rejoice in Jesus.

Now, as Paul exhorts us to rejoice in the Lord always, he is not unaware of the troubles in this life. Paul, of all people, knew very well about the sorrows and the sufferings that Christians face. Even in the four chapters of this letter to the Philippians, we find several references to the difficulties that Paul and the congregation were enduring. For one thing, Paul was writing this letter from prison. He was in chains, and it was not because of anything wrong he had done. He was in chains because of the gospel of Jesus. Paul also mentions some difficulties that the Philippian congregation was facing: they had enemies on the outside who were putting pressure on them, and they had divisions on the inside in need of godly resolution. In such difficult times as these, what should an apostle and a congregation do? Rejoice is what they should do. They should rejoice in the Lord.

In the face of such earthly difficulties, Paul shares these words of counsel, from verse 5 in our text: “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.” The Lord is near, that means Jesus is coming back soon, and when Jesus comes again every one of our sufferings is going to end. You can endure a whole lot of difficult things if you know that something better is coming for you, and dear Christians, we know that something better is coming for us. We know that an indescribably wonderful future is coming for us. Our suffering will be over, and the glory of heaven will be ours when Jesus comes again on that wonderful last day. And the way that we are sure of this is because we know that Jesus came for us the first time. Earlier in this letter, Paul reminded the Christians in Philippi of the way that Jesus humbled himself for their salvation. Our sins once stood against us and condemned us before God, but our Savior took those sins on himself, and he “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross,” [2:8]. Because he died for our sins and then rose from the dead, we know that heaven is our future and not hell, as we deserve.

With this in mind, we know that our present troubles are only temporary. We know that our deliverance is coming, so we can live lives of joy in spite of our troubles, and we can let our “gentleness be known to everyone”, as Paul counsels us to do [5]. That word “gentleness” is actually a difficult word to translate from the Greek. It can refer to “being reasonable”, or “being kind”, or “being yielding” in our interactions with others. You could picture it as the gentleness of a big dog interacting with a little dog. Have you ever seen one of those interactions before? This isn’t universally the case, but quite often, if you put a big dog and a little dog in the same room, the little dog will show quite a bit of insecurity. He will be uptight, and he will be frantic, and he will growl and yelp any time he feels threatened. Meanwhile, the big dog will remain calm and relaxed and confident. He is gentle because he knows that he is secure.

That’s the kind of gentleness that Christians can have. We have the security of knowing that our place in heaven is won by Jesus already. We have the confidence of knowing that soon Jesus will return, and all our pains and our troubles will be over. So we remain gentle, no matter how frantic and frenzied everyone else in the world may become. We don’t have anything that we have to earn. We don’t have anything that we have to prove. Everything we need has been won for us already, and nothing in this world can take it from us. So we can be gentle. We can be yielding. We can be reasonable especially with our fellow believers. And we can continue to glow with joy regardless of any earthly troubles.

Even as we endure these troubles and we wait for Jesus’ coming, Paul shares another way that Jesus is the key to our joy: In Jesus, we are invited to pray to God. Going on in our text, Paul says, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God,” [6]. Through Jesus, and in his name, we Christians have the privilege of praying to God. If we were still in our sins, God’s face would be turned away from us, and his ear would be closed to our prayers. But Jesus has changed that for us with the sacrifice that he gave on the cross. At the cross, God’s righteous wrath for all of our sins was satisfied. Now God is favorable toward us, and he demonstrated his favor for us by raising our substitute, Jesus, from the dead.

Because of our Savior, we have a God who does not turn his eyes and ears away from us in anger. Instead, we have a God who looks down at us with favor. We have a God who listens to our prayers with a merciful heart. Because of Jesus, we have a God who is glad to help us and to save us when we are in trouble. So Paul tells us, “Do not worry about anything,” [6]. Worry is never a solution to any problem that we face. Instead, worry is a parasite that attacks our Christian joy. It eats away time and it eats away energy, and in return, all it gives back to us are the toxins of discontent. Worrying has never accomplished a single good thing. Instead, it only does harm.

When you find yourself worrying, then you know it’s time to pray. Unlike worrying, God’s Word promises us that prayer is actually effective. When we pray, we are calling upon the Almighty to deal with our problems. When we pray, we are placing our troubles in the powerful hands of the One who can actually do something about them. And he has invited us to do this. He says in Psalm 50, “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you and you will honor me,” [15]. And though we are unworthy to pray, Jesus invites us to pray in his name instead of our own. Prayer is a tremendous privilege and a blessing of our God! And apparently, the Apostle Paul thought that we should be using this blessing often. He says, “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God,” [6].

In Jesus, we know we have a God who loves us, and we know that he hears our prayers, and we know that he is going to answer us and help us in the way that he knows is best. What joy we can have in praying to our God! He wants us to cast all our troubles on him, and, in return, he gives us peace. Paul writes, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” [7].

The peace of God guards our hearts and our minds, just as a company of soldiers guards a city against invaders. We can endure suffering, and we can endure persecution, and we can endure the challenges that arise among fellow believers, and all the while the peace of God keeps worry and doubt and despair from invading our hearts and our minds. But what kind of peace can do this? What kind of peace guard our hearts and minds? It is the peace that is in Christ Jesus. It is the peace that the world cannot give, which Jesus promised his disciples on the night before he died. It is the peace which Jesus proclaimed to his disciples, showing them the nail marks in his hands after he rose from the dead. It is the peace in which the Lord let his servant, Simeon, depart, having seen the Lord’s salvation in Jesus. It is the peace of sins forgiven. It is the peace of reconciliation with God. It is the peace of an eternal future in heaven. It is the peace of Jesus coming soon to take us there with him.

With Jesus on our side, we need nothing more. In any and every circumstance, with Jesus, we can rejoice.

Amen.

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