December 12th, 2021

December 11-13, 2021 

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

REJOICE! The Lord Is Near!

1.       Gentle Joy.

2.       Prayerful Joy

3.       Peaceful Joy

In the name of Jesus in whom we can rejoice,

This is my youngest granddaughter!  This week at church someone mistook her for a little boy.  This was the face she made.  It is also the look we sometimes have on our faces when we things don’t go quite like we expect or want.  It is the kind of look we get on our faces when watching one awful event after another from crime to weather to warfare on our news broadcasts.  It is the kind of look we can easily get on our faces when we look to the future and wonder about what things will be like in the lives of our children and grandchildren.  But Jesus changes everything.   We see that in God’s Word today as we continue to prepare our hearts for Jesus’ return and as we get ready to celebrate his coming in Bethlehem.   God’s Word assures us that we can rejoice in every circumstance.  Not with a pasted on smile kind of rejoicing but rather a heart filled rejoicing no matter what is happening around us.  God’s Word tells us, “Rejoice!  The Lord is near!  1. Gentle Joy.  2. Prayerful Joy.  3. Peaceful Joy.

      Philippi was the first city Paul visited after Jesus gave him the vision of a man from Macedonia asking him to “come over to Macedonia and help us.”  So the Gospel moved from Asia into Europe.  It’s easy to see why the man in Paul’s vision was pleading “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”   For much of its history, there was not much rejoicing in the Savior God in Philippi.  Apparently, Philippi  had only a small number of Jewish inhabitants and no synagogue. The worship on the Sabbath  was held outside the city by the river.   It was at the river that Paul met a group of women, including Lydia, to whom he preached the gospel.  The people rejoiced to here of God’s forgiveness in Christ.  There were some challenges they faced.  This was an area where earthquakes could and did happen.  That might be one reasons why the city declined.  Their city ended up in the headlines of the news for some bad things that happened there.   Brutus of “You too Brutus fame?” were defeated there after the assassination of Caesar.  After Shakespeare’s play, “I’ll see you in Philippi” became a way of saying, “ You will get yours.”   The devil was working hard to wreck things. The Book of Acts tells is that there was an evil spirit there who had taken control of a little girl.  Through Paul, God made the evil spirit leave her and that got Paul and Silas thrown in prison there in Philippi and years later, Paul himself was sitting in prison when he wrote this letter talking about our response to the fact that our Lord is coming soon.  “Rejoice in the Lord always! I will say it again: Rejoice!  Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.”   Rejoice with a gentle joy.

     Thae word translated “gentleness” has the idea of someone who has the ability to rip, snort and tear but doesn’t- someone who holds back, who doesn’t take other’s actions in the worst sense.  It literally means, “super fair.”  It could be spoken of those who control themselves even when provoked.  Though it is true that Jesus is always near seeing everything that is not so much the reason for us to let our gentleness be evident to all.  The time when Jesus, the one who loved us enough to die for us, is returning to take us home is coming soon.  So now is not a time to be flying off the handle.  Now is not the time to be holding grudges.  Just before these verses we hear Paul say, “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.”  So Paul urges these two women to put aside the things there were apparently arguing about.  Then he urges others to help these ladies get along.  Not because they we all so nice, but, “in the Lord”, because Jesus is so nice.  Be filled with gentle joy because Jesus was filled with gentle joy.  A famous preacher, “Charles Spurgeon” once said, ”People who are happy in the Lord, are not apt either to give offense or to take offense. Their minds are so sweetly occupied with higher things, that they are not easily distracted by the little troubles which naturally arise among such imperfect creatures as we are. Joy in the Lord is the cure for all discord.”

      Is our gentleness evident to all?   Is our gentle joy evident to someone who meets us on the street? Or someone who waits on us in the restaurant? Is our gentleness evident to all in homes?  Is the joy that Jesus brings evident to all whom we disagree with as we talk with them.  Truth is- we haven’t always been gentle to all.  The truth is that we have ripped, snorted and tore over the hearts and feelings of others along the way in places where Jesus would have been gentle.  But the Savior traded places with us.  He took our record of sins and gave us his pure holy gentle record.  The Savior who is coming on Judgement Day not to condemn us but to take us to our home in heaven.  How then shall we live while we wait?  With gentle joy.

     “Do not worry about anything.”  Do you remember the “Stretch Armstrong” toy?  When I was growing up it was a toy many wanted for Christmas?  It was a rubber wrestler that you could pull and stretch the legs and arms in all directions.  The word for worry here has the “Stretch Armstrong” idea of being pulled and stretched in all kinds of different directions.  Paul points out that there is no reason to let things pull us in all different directions.   We have someone to talk to.  We have someone to lean on we have someone to rely on.  “In everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” 

     Peter, someone we might guess might have at one time had a problem with worrying, quoted God’s care in the Psalms and urges us, “Cast all your care upon Him for He cares for you.”  Pastor Martin Luther once said that it is the skill and and ability of Christians before all others on earth.  They know where to put their trust and lay their care….Let Christians learn more and more to cast their hearts and cares on God’s back, for God has a strong neck and strong shoulders.  He can easily carry the load.”  Friends God is good at carrying our loads.  He carried the load of our sins to the cross.  He now stretches out his arms to us and says, “Come to me all ye that labor and are heavy ladened and I will give you rest.”  Jesus brings us prayerful joy. 

     Advent is a great time to more and more grow that prayerful joy in our lives.  Now is a good time to honestly look at our prayer lives.  Are we in the habit of making our requests known to God in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving?  In other words are we thanking God in everything along with bringing anything we are concerned about to him?  Is there a pretty good balance there?  Does the joy of Jesus being near come through when we talk with God in our prayers?  Or would our prayers to our loving God sound to someone listening a little more like a conversation across the counter of a complaint department?  If we are treating prayer more like a complaint department, wouldn’t now be a good time to remember again the words of the hymn, “nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.”  God doesn’t owe us anything but punishment.  Yet in Christ Jesus he gave us everything.  On top of all of it, we get to not only talk to him about our cares but trust him with everything on our hearts.  Rejoice!  The Lord is near!  Rejoice with prayerful joy.  That prayerful joy brings peaceful joy.

      “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  You might recognize those words from Paul.  Pastors often use those words after the sermon as an assurance that the peace we hear about in God’s word will guard our hearts and minds. God doesn’t get rattled.  He is God.  He is perfectly calm.  He is perfectly in control.  Read through the Bible!  Evil people and their plans do not rattle God!  The Psalmist says that when the nations rage, “the one enthroned in heaven laughs.”  He has a plan for you and me to be with Him in heaven and He is carrying it out.               

       As we wait for the Lord we have the joyful peace of knowing that God guards out hearts like protecting it in the inner chambers of a castle or guarding our hearts like a circle of secret service agents.  That joyful peace comes from the finished work of our Lord Jesus who fixed the relationship between us and God by becoming “the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”  God doesn’t look at our sins and see us as his enemy.  Instead for us who trust in Jesus, God sees us as His own dear children.  No matter what is happening in your life you can rejoice.  Even when things make you unhappy, your inside joy rests in your God.  Nothing can sperate you from His love.  That brings peace- peaceful joy.

     Getting ready to celebrate Jesus’ birth  can be a fun time but the Christmas tree and parties and presents are not where our joy comes from.  When those blessings are there, our prayer is that they just reflect the joy that Jesus brings, gentle joy, prayerful joy, peaceful joy.  Amen