Let's turn with you now to our sermon text in Philippians chapter four. Philippians chapter four, beginning in verse one. Therefore, my beloved and longed for brethren, my joy and crowned soul stand fast in the Lord, beloved. I implore Euodia and I implore Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. I urge you also, true companion, help these women who labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all men, the Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Heavenly Father, this is not the first time we have heard these words, but Lord, we pray that this time they would sink deep into our hearts, and souls, and minds, and Lord, they would reside there, and that they indeed would more than color, but rather dictate all of our thinking. In a time, in an age, wholly given over to anxiety of every kind, a perfect storm of conditions bringing about these things, And Heavenly Father, we pray that, Lord, your remedy would be sufficient for us, that we indeed would receive these words in faith and in understanding, Lord. We pray that this word would be opened up to us, even beyond that which I am able to do in the words that I convey, that through the power of the Holy Spirit, these things would be known, received in faith, and obeyed. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. So having at last completed the Exodus series, I am for the moment stepping away from book series to a topical series. And just a note, I would say, you know our dear brother Ian Murray of the Banner of Truth has spoken and written on this more than once in recent years because the pendulum has swung so far with regard to preaching methodology. There once was a time where the great malady, the great thing that was a problem was that everyone was just preaching on pet text or pet topics here, there, and everywhere. And the people of God were really starving because it was only the preacher's proclivities rather than the whole counsel of God that they were receiving. And so, thankfully, the pendulum has swung in the direction of what's called Lectio Continua preaching, which means preaching through whole books of the Bible. But it was not always thus. And the reality is that the men, almost all of the men whom we would all regard as the best preachers that we know of, whether Augustine, whether Christosom, whether Calvin, whether Edwards, so forth, none of them really preached only and always through books of the Bible. And we therefore must make room for these exceptions. And our brother Ian would point out that there are often occasions as the shepherd of the flock sees particular food or medicine that his flock needs, that he would give that rather than being tied utterly to what happens next in scripture. This is not at all to take away from the wonderful providence that it seems amazing that even as we go through a book, very often it is precisely that which we need. But just a reminder that there are more than one way to accomplish this in the goodness of God. So with that said, my unfinished topical series, do you remember what it is, children? The Fruit of the Spirit. That's my unfinished topical series. There are of course nine of these fruit mentioned in Galatians chapter five. Do you know what they are, children? The fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now, I have made it through a series, a sub-series on joy, but only one sermon so far on peace. And so I've returned to this unfinished business on the subject of peace. Now, how do we understand peace? Well, the ancients sometimes made their definition in terms, in the way of negative, a negative definition. What is it not? What is its opposite? And if we think about peace, we can think about at least three opposites. The absence of war, we'll speak of that on another occasion. The absence of a guilty conscience, which is surely the core, really, of the gospel sometimes. But also the absence of anxiety, and I'm gonna focus on that aspect tonight. The absence of anxiety. And my text, of course, is in Philippians 4. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Now we surely need this. As I mentioned, there is an absolute epidemic of anxiety in our society today, and we are not immune to it. We are particularly susceptible to it. There are aspects, in fact, of our particular location and composition as a congregation that actually mean that we probably suffer from it more than most congregations in the country. So we absolutely need to receive this word of God and I pray that it would do us much good. So the title is Peace from Anxiety. And the three points are of God, surpassing understanding, and guards. Of God, surpassing understanding, and guards. I want to say that this peace from anxiety that I'm mentioning is first of all of God. And the peace in verse seven, and the peace of God. I mean, we have to dwell on that, because as with so many things, what matters about something is where it comes from. It matters, for instance, where water comes from. Water can be poisonous if it comes from one source, and it can be actually worth a significant amount if it comes from some wonderful mineral spring somewhere else. Even more so, dried paint is not worth anything in itself. "'but dried paint from the hand of Rembrandt "'is worth millions.'" All right, so what is the source of this peace? Well, the source of peace in terms of the world, well, that's not very, it's not worth anything. The peace that the world can give is not good. And the Lord Jesus Christ says in John 14, 27, "'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, "'not as the world gives you do I give to you, Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Now, he doesn't elaborate, really, go into detail with regard to not as this world, but I think we all know what kind of peace the world gives to us. It's a peace that is based on circumstances. You know, if only we had more money, we'd not be so anxious about running out of money. If only we had more popularity, we'd not be anxious about people not liking us, or something like that. So it's based on circumstances, It's certainly superficial because it couldn't reach to the core of who we are as God's image bearers. And above all, it is temporary. And I think you should be able to guess that the great problem with anxiety is what happens in the future, is contemplating what might happen next. And if you know from the beginning that your peace is surely and inevitably going to be temporary, it isn't worth much, right? And that's the kind of peace that the world gives. Real peace is of God. Real peace is not based on circumstances. And it does, in fact, reach to the deepest recesses of who we are, because God is the one who grants it. And he who created us, who knows our makeup, who designed our makeup, knows what it takes to fix our problems. He looks at an anxious sheep, he does not want the sheep to remain there, and he is not, in the end, frustrated for lack of resources to do it. All right, if a veterinarian goes, The shepherd brings a veterinarian out to the sick sheep, and a competent veterinarian surely has the medicine, surely has the technology, surely has the skill to fix the sick sheep. And God is not worse than that. And if you are sick with anxiety, you need to understand that somewhere in the mind of God, somewhere in the power of God, there are resources because He has designed you. He knows how you ought to think. He knows how you ought to speak and how you ought to act and how you ought to live. And there is a way, there are resources. to address that anxiety and to give you the peace. Around Jesus Christ is a liar. He says, my peace is not like the world. My peace, I give to you. And he expects us to understand that that peace can work, right? So this peace of God is not of the world. And secondly, I want to say this peace surpasses understanding, and I really want to dwell on that. Verse seven, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. That's such a point of contrast with the world's peace, so-called peace that it gives. Because you can understand that kind of peace in some sense. Again, let's go back to the example of money. Lots of people are anxious about money, but if we go to that example, someone who struggles to make ends meet or is in debt or something like that might look at a billionaire and say, well, I understand why this man seems to be and untroubled and does not seem, the troubles that reach me do not seem to trouble Tim. Why? Because he seems to have infinite resources of money. He will never run out of money. He has so much money, there is no way he could possibly spend it all. So there's an understanding, there's a rationale for the reasons why someone has peace in this world. But beloved, that is not God's peace, right? God's peace works at a deeper level, and it transcends the things that we can understand, right? It's not, and I want to say, it's not that it's irrational, because again, going back to the source of peace, it is infinitely rational, far more rational to look for peace in God, our maker, God, the sustainer of the universe, God, our triune God, who has redeemed us, our Lord, It's far more rational to look to him than to anything that this world affords or certainly than what we provide. And again, I say, it's not just that we look to the world for peace, we look to ourselves as our peacemakers very often. But that's not rational. So I want to say that the peace that God gives is surely rational. But what I am saying and what the word of God is proclaiming to us is that it transcends our rational thinking. It goes well beyond it. Because the way that God gives peace means that Christians can sometimes be enabled to be utterly calm and to have a great peace, even when there are things that are going on that would surely be making, in a kind of cold, rationalistic sense, could only be met with terrible anxiety and deepest trouble and depression. As I say, it goes beyond, it transcends our rational understanding. That's first of all because God's peace is predicated upon faith. And let me say that more than once, God's peace is predicated upon faith. We walk by faith and not by sight. That is fundamental to our religion. The world walks by sight, only the things that it can see. And if we fall into that manner of thinking, then we will be greatly troubled. In fact, we'll be more troubled than the world. Because the world's profession and the world's manner of thinking and speaking and living, all those things are in agreement. There is a integrity to their situation. But as for us, we who are believers, we who are making our investment in the future world, we who are looking to the future world, if we step away from that and begin only to look at what is in front of us, well, it's going to be all the worse for us. Paul says, if in this world only we have hope, we are of all men, the most to be pitied. Because we have given up things in this world. And we have, in various ways, incurred the displeasure of our friends and relatives and all the rest of it. And we have made our choices to be God's people. And therefore, if we start thinking like that, we are going to be miserable. But we walk by faith. And what are the things that we have? What are the benefits that we have in Christ? How many of those things can be seen with the naked eye? Not many, not many. There are a few. We have the visible church. That's the beauty of that. We have, in fact, the means of grace we have like baptism. It's great that God gives us both a word that can be heard with the ear and also sacraments that can be seen and touched and all the rest of it with our other senses. But really, I haven't seen Jesus Christ and you haven't seen him. I haven't seen the Holy Spirit, you haven't seen him. I haven't seen the Father. So none of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, none of us have seen this triune God. I haven't seen heaven. which I preach so routinely, and you haven't seen heaven either. And all the things which we are promised and all the things that we look to, we haven't seen the end of them. That is the whole point of the great Hebrews chapter in faith, chapter nine, is that all these lived having not received the thing that was promised. They lived in faith, they walked in faith. And so the peace of God is utterly predicated upon that. Right, so martyrs, for instance, could go with a remarkable calmness of spirit as they're put to death because they know for certain where they're going. And so the things that would otherwise deeply trouble someone, they're able to deal with equanimity and peace and calmness because of what is unseen. So first of all, it passes understanding, it transcends our understanding because it's predicated on faith. And I should say, it's principally about those things that lie in the future, but I also want to say that it's about faith even in God's promises to sustain us and to provide what is necessary for us. God says, I will never leave nor forsake you. And day by day, we have to believe that. Not just in the sense that at the end of all these things, I will be brought into the presence of my Lord and be in sinless perfection and wonderful glory forever and enjoyment of him. That is true, certainly. But day by day, we have to believe that he's never going to leave nor forsake us. Because that is a problem of our hearts. It is when we move away from that, that we embrace a sort of idolatry, not explicitly, but implicitly. And we say that God is not able to do these things, and we turn to other resources, whether in ourselves or in something else. And so we have to walk by faith, first of all. But I also want to say that this peace passes understanding, transcends understanding, because it's supernatural. Peace is one of the fruit of the Spirit, why? Because it comes from the Holy Spirit. Every aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, and I should say that these things are not, again, they're not individual, that you kind of pick and choose as a smorgasbord or a cafeteria, that all of these things come together. On every Christian, there are some measure of every one of these fruit to be found, all nine of them, okay, and some more as well. But my point in this is the kind of peace that you find on a true Christian is a kind of peace that fundamentally the world cannot give, and therefore you'll never find on someone who's not a Christian. Well, where did we get it from? We got it from the Holy Spirit. It is a fruit of the Spirit's work in us. Do you understand? And if it's a fruit of the Spirit's work on us, then it is a supernatural thing. It can't account for it in any rationalistic or reductionistic or materialistic ways. It has come supernaturally. And so if we have given into the world's kind of anti-supernaturalism, or even given into the kind of incipient anti-supernaturalism that we sometimes find in the church, You know, we're not like those charismatics always talking about the Holy Spirit and always referring to the supernatural. We're better than that. Please. No, no, no, no. That's biblical religion. The charismatics make other mistakes, but their emphasis on the power of the Spirit, their reliance on the power of the Spirit, and their willingness to receive and rejoice in the things that are supernatural, that's not a problem, that's a good thing. And we need to do that as well. So this peace, as I say, it's predicated on faith, and it is given to us supernaturally as a gift of the Holy Spirit. So can I, in the end, explain exactly how this comes or how you can get it? Not really, because it's a peace that passes understanding. And if I could explain every aspect of it, well, then it wouldn't pass understanding. What I'm saying is, it's a gift of the Spirit. What would we say, generally speaking, if we lacked some aspect, some measure of the gifting of the spirit? Well, we have a promise from the Lord that he is a good father. He loves to give good gifts. He doesn't give, when the son asks for a fish, he doesn't give him a stone or a scorpion or something like that. And so it is for those who ask for the spirit that he gives liberally. Not that we for the first time are somehow baptized in the Spirit and have some second, you know, blessing sort of thing, but rather that we are encouraged by God to be filled more with the Spirit, right? So anyone who is a believer, you certainly already have the Holy Spirit in you. He is the one who regenerated you in order to believe in the first place. But we all, with the exception of Jesus Christ and the glorified saints in heaven who have, are filled with the spirit to an unlimited capacity, we are all on a sliding scale of having more or less of this spirit operative in us at any one time. What we need therefore, if we lack peace, is first of all to pray that we'd be filled more and more with the spirit of God, so that all of the fruit, including peace, might abound in us. So this peace of God, it is of God and it surpasses understanding therefore. And thirdly and finally, it guards. It guards our hearts and our minds. That's what it says. This peace of God will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. And that's an interesting thing to me. I think it appeals to my sort of military background, that there is something out there that is there to guard, right? It's as if, this verse comes across to me as if it is anxiety is there prowling around as some enemy or some thief coming to steal our peace. But the peace of God is standing guard at the doors of our hearts and the door of our mind to protect us from anxiety. And I think that that's a good way to think about it. Because if nowhere else at no other time, that enemy is at our gates. It's not just out there, it's in here. It's in your house, in my house, and it's ready to strike, it's ready to rob us of our peace. And what we need is something to guard our hearts and minds from it. Something to stand watch, and that's what the Lord says, that's what this Bible, that's what this inspired word of God declares, that the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Now how so? Well, let's begin with the mind because generally speaking, the mind is indeed the gateway into the heart, right? That's again, that is one thing that the charismatics get wrong. They discard or discount the usefulness and proper role of the intellect. But God has designed us, he's given us a mind, and the mind is the way into the heart. We hear things with the ear, we process them with the mind, we assign them truth or falsity, but from there it goes into our hearts, and that's where it resides and does its work. And here the great enemy is anxious thoughts and or lies, right, those things. Anxious thoughts and or lies. Those things are sometimes together, sometimes there is a distinction between those things. I was just reading David Murray's book, Christians Get Depressed Too. It's a very thin little book, easy to read. And although he's talking about depression, most of what he talks about applies to anxiety as well. And he gives these lists of false things, false ideas that reside in the heart of one who is anxious and given to depression. False extremes, false generalizations, false filter, false transformation, false mind reading, false fortune telling, false lens, false feeling-based reasoning, false shoulds, and false responsibilities. A lot of false things. Look, Satan does his work through lies, through things that are not true. And these, every anxious thought is in the end something that is not true, or at least is not taken in context. Maybe there's an element of truth to it somewhere, but it's not taken in its proper context of your, of what you've been created to be and to do in Christ and of his promises to you. But let's just take, we don't have time to deal with them all, but let's just take two of them, fortune telling and responsibility. I want to say that we in the UK, I include myself in this, are pretty good at managing risk. Things like physical safety, financial safety and security. The UK is good at that, really good. We don't run with scissors. We have health and safety for everything under the sun. And there are good things about that. I don't want to live in a place like Somalia where there are actual literal pirates roaming around taking over ships and holding people hostage. We don't want to live that way. And absolutely anything could happen at just about any time. And there are places also where you're taking your life in your hands just to drive on the highways. But friends, what does that, in an unbalanced sort of way, what does that do to our minds? What it does, if we're constantly doing all this kind of risk analysis, is we focus on the worst case scenarios of what could possibly happen a long time in the future. And all the negative feelings that are associated with those outcomes come flooding into us as if those things were happening right now. Friends, and that is a recipe for anxiety and depression. All right, just live that way in an unfettered kind of, let's just keep on analyzing these risks and thinking what could happen, what could happen, and you will be anxious before you know it. God didn't design us to live that way. What he actually says is, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. He commands us, he tells us, don't think like that. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider and count the cost. That is the good part of all that risk analysis. That is a good part of the way we think and live in this country. We should count the cost. But as for dwelling on all the negative things that could happen rather than all the positive things that are more likely to happen, It is God's universe after all, we're Christians after all. He answers our prayer after all. If we focus on all those negative things, it's going to lead to all kinds of problems. Now the other thing I wanted to mention is false responsibility. Again, it is great for us to take on responsibility, and this is a very responsible group of people. I praise God for it. Generally speaking, if there is something you ought to do, you do it. If you're assigned something, then you carry out those things, and you don't shirk responsibility, praise God, that's wonderful. But some of us take on responsibilities that are a little bit too big for our britches, and we end up having impossibly huge remits, as if the whole world were on our shoulders. And we begin to chip away about the things that are actually on God's shoulders, the things that God is in control of, only that God can either bring about or God can prevent. The good things that God can do are the bad things that God alone can prevent. And we begin to think that those things are really on our shoulders. But friends, that's not right. It couldn't be that way. That's idolatrous to think that way. God has the privilege of the outcomes. All we have day by day is to do our daily work and to eat our daily bread and to take our daily sleep. As for the outcomes of all these things, they're simply not in our hands. And we are going to fail because, well, that's what we are in this fallen world. We're never going to do things perfectly. There will always be things that we'll have left out, didn't think about, didn't complete, didn't do to the precise way that we should have. And praise God, our loving Heavenly Father is on the throne of this universe or else we would be sunk. But we're just not. Because God is on the throne, we aren't, and that's a good thing. So let's not take responsibility for things in an impossible, sort of all-encompassing way, but give us precisely that which we know good and well that God is actually going to hold us accountable for. That's a good exercise, actually. Let's not think about all the horrible things that could happen or all the things that maybe we could've or should've have done had we had 1,000 more hours per week and a lot more talent and energy and all the rest of these things, but let's focus on the things that we are convinced that God will speak to us about at the end. He's gonna ask us some questions, not to condemn us, not to send us to hell. We know good and well that Christ has died. But he'll be handing out rewards and he'll be talking about the things that we've done and the things that we have been clearly called to do. What is he going to be talking about in those days? On that time, I shouldn't say those days, that brief amount of time. We'll focus on those things and not things that are out our remit. Stay in your lane, as they say. So rejecting this fortune telling, which is always the worst case scenario, and false responsibility, we need to guard our minds. But as I say, it is a peace of God that guards our minds from these things. but also our hearts, right? So if we think about these things and maybe the peace of God and right thinking is preventing these things from entering our minds, but I would also say with regard to our hearts, there must also be a positive attachment as well as a keeping out the bad things. There must be something there in our hearts that is just so big and so powerful and so attractive that it kind of repulses these negative things from entering into our hearts and minds. And here, what we need to have in our hearts is a faith in, and an attachment to, and a belief in, and a daily walk with a God who is so big and so powerful that anxious thoughts seem dumb, okay? Just to say it bluntly. That's what we need. And forgive me for bringing up the military examples again, but again, think of me walking around wherever I might be with the guys that I serve with, all right? They're all huge, right? Far more muscular than I. And they're all packing three weapons, firearms at least, an extremely high-end carbine with lots of ammunition, a pistol, maybe two, sometimes a breaching shotgun, and at least one big knife. All right, how concerned am I for my physical security? You'd say, well, you'd be dumb to be worried about walking in the wrong place or town or something like that, because these guys will surely protect you. You're right, they will. But you have to imagine a situation maybe where someone's got a, I don't know, maybe you're just having a bad day and you're just kind of closing your eyes and imagining instead of walking with such men that you're walking with weaklings who are unarmed and there are thieves and robbers around. And then maybe you become a little bit anxious. Friends, that's what we do with God. We close our eyes and we think of a small God, bereft of his power and authority. He doesn't care about us much. And in that moment, that's when our hearts begin to give over to idolatry because whatever that God is not able to do as we shrink him down, we have to assign to some idol. Whether out there or in our own hearts, we have to assume that responsibility, find someone who's able to protect us because God isn't. Beloved, don't do it. Fill your hearts with true views of who God is and all of his supreme majesty and all of his beauty and all of his power, all of his unlimited authority. Say with the great saints of old, of Joshua, for instance, That at the end of his days, he said, not one good thing has failed of all the things that God has promised. And we ourselves know that he's in our right minds that that is true. That all those most horrible things that we feared most, they haven't really happened. And on the other hand, the things that we've relied upon God and put our faith in and believed, he's upheld us, he's answered our prayers, he's been sufficient for us. And that's what must fill our hearts. And really, all of this is getting back to worshiping God, as I say, rather than idols. As I mentioned, when we're anxious, it is virtually guaranteed that somewhere in our hearts, there lurks an idol. And that must be rooted out. But on the other hand, it must be supplanted by a wholehearted, whole life, continual worship of God. At the moment, at the moment, if it's possible, just think about being transported for a moment, as John was, so it's not so crazy. There once was a man whose name was John, and he was transported into heaven, and he experienced for himself what it was like to worship in that sea of people whom no one could count, of every tribe and tongue. There they were, falling down before the Lamb, giving Him all thanks and praise and glory and ascribing to Him all these things. Friends, how anxious was he at that moment? None. It's all just destroyed in some anxiety poison. It kills the poison. It's dead. It can't exist. It's like the Dead Sea for fish. You could try to put a fish in the Dead Sea, but it would die almost instantaneously because nothing can live in the presence of all that salt. And friends, that's what it's like to worship the true and living God wholeheartedly, giving ourselves fully over Nothing, no anxious thought can survive. And friends, that's why it's so important to give ourselves over entirely to this Lord's day. We have got to be able to do that. He understands that it's gonna be hard. We're called to work, to work six days. But on this day, we really do have to take a break and step away from all the things that we have because it is what is going to give us the habits of heart and mind to be able to move away from anxiety. Because if we come with our anxious thoughts, with our schoolwork and what our, and the work that is waiting for us, we won't give ourselves over to worship. And the one thing that God has given in the week to really clear ourselves of that and to set a better paradigm and to be a medicine for us, even that won't work. Because we've removed ourselves from the one thing that's really designed to work as we give ourselves to worship the one true and living God. We've got to give ourselves over to it fully. Now I want to say, just on this last point about guarding our hearts, let's not forget that this peace really is through Jesus Christ. And though this is not the gospel, that we're going to have peace if we put our faith in Christ, right? The gospel is God's solution to the sin problem and it focuses on eternity, not what happens in this world. But it is true that peace is one of the benefits that flows from the gospel. That's what it says in the Shorter Catechism 38. It is one of those benefits. that accompanies or flows from those primary benefits of justification, adoption, and sanctification. And therefore, if we receive the gospel, we receive all of the gospel and everything that comes from it. And our good Heavenly Father wants us to receive also this peace that is of God, from God. It is a peace that passes understanding and will guard your hearts and minds. And what are the applications? Long list. First of all, don't be anxious. Pretty simple. But I want to put it that way. Just take it that way for a command, right? Because anxiety is not only a disorder or disease. It can rightly be described that way, of course. Anything like that, after it takes its course long enough, it leaves marks in our minds, it leaves marks even physically in our brains. And you can look at these things on the right equipment and see that the brain of someone who is habitually anxious looks different than someone who's not. So it is, we can think of it as a disorder or disease. But for believers, it is also a sinful pattern of thinking and feeling. And so like any other sin, it needs to be confessed, and it needs to be repented of. And friends, some of you are anxious, and some of you need to confess and repent of those anxious thoughts and feelings, right? Because at the end of the day, we must simply do the thing that God has given for us to do, call sin what it is, and turn away from it in faith in Christ. Secondly, although I don't say that to minimize in the slightest these things, I'm just, I wouldn't say I'm exactly as likely as anyone else, but if I could count the number of anxious thoughts that go through my mind in the course of a week. The more that you're involved in, the more that your remit, as I say, becomes impossibly large, the more that these things have a way of reaching you. I know what it is, but I think we all need to together confess and repent of those things. Secondly, you ought to guard your mind. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. So that in guarding our minds, we actively seek to, yes, we know that the peace of God is that which is really doing the guarding, but in our own thinking, we have to surveil, we have to set in place things that will minimize the incursion of these anxious thoughts. Just like we would with anybody else. And we're so good, aren't we? As I say about physical security. And so we put up all these things that will keep us safe in this place. We put these signs up. There's a first aid sign, look, right behind you guys over there. Do you see that? It's first aid and it's got a list of people to contact and all the rest of it. And there's a sign up there in case this place burns down, we know where to run or whatnot. We're so good at that. What kind of signs do we put up? What kind of provisions do we put in place to keep us from thinking anxious thoughts? I think we need to do a lot better on that. We need to help each other to do that as well. Not to feed those things, not to indulge those things, but to go after them, to attack them, and to suggest alternatives to them. Guard your minds. Thirdly, work rather than merely think. I don't mean to say that anxious people are lazy, quite the opposite. The people who are most given to anxiety are typically the people who are doing the most. But God has designed us to work as servants, not to be little gods, and to just sit around and think and sort of plan out the universe. And as we think and plan out the universe, all the bad things that could happen, or it becomes, it all of a sudden becomes clear to us as we're moving things about the chessboard in our minds, that we don't have the resources to do this. that we're not perfect, we're not strong enough to do it. And all of a sudden, then the anxious thoughts come flooding in. Friends, we just need to get to work, right? Ordinarily, that's the thing. God has designed us to work, and we need to find some useful work to do, right? Exodus 5.9, this is, I don't want to be giving you Pharaoh's advice, but notice the way he phrases it in Exodus 5.9. Let more work be laid on the men that they may labor in it and let them not regard false words. I say that only because the Greek is precisely the same word as in Philippians 4. It has to do with anxiety and worry. And so a more literal translation would be, let more work be laid on the men that they may worry about that and not let them be worried about false words. Well, this is obviously a bad idea in the hands of Pharaoh, but there's an element of truth in it. That as we simply get on with the things that we need to be doing, rather than worrying about them, that there's something healing and healthy about that. And I know that's true in my own heart. Because I can sit there and worry about things without end. But may I and you just do day by day the few things that are in our hands to do about those things, rather than to worry about them. Fourthly, I want to reiterate what I've already said in the midst of the sermon, which is to worship God. If you struggle with anxiety, you ought to become an expert at worshiping God. And I mean, certainly on Sunday, that is the supreme thing, but even in the course of the week, do what you would tell a new believer to do. Load your phone or your car with good worship songs, with hymns and psalms and so forth that you can listen to, with sermons that are gonna take you there, that are gonna bring you in the presence of the holy God and enable you to worship. These things are not to be laughed at. These things are not to be diminished. There are things that Satan wants us to forget about, but we should all the more seek to make provision in our lives to worship God. And never, ever, ever, if we're in a household, Even a household of one, should we forsake our family worship, right? We are never ever so busy. If the moment happens that we're too busy to worship God in the course of a day, you can be certain of one thing, you're guilty of idolatry, all right? Because we have to lay down whatever it is that we're doing in order to remind ourselves and to show to God that we really believe that he's on the throne. And therefore we worship him no matter what. And that's a powerful antidote to anxiety. And fifthly and finally, we ought to have faith. That's all I can offer. In the end, I can say all these things to all of us, but we all just need as well to have faith. I've said with regard to God has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And if anyone ever finds him to be untrue in this, well, you'd be the very first, all right? He'll never leave you nor forsake you, believe it. But I also want to say it really will end well. If you're a believer, do you believe that? Do you really believe that all is gonna end well? It's not true of you if you're outside of Christ, right? God is your enemy. If you don't repent and believe, you're gonna end up in hell forever. That's anxiety producing. You ought to deal with that issue first and foremost. But friends, beloved, if you're a believer, it's the opposite of those things. Nothing that you are worried about right now is going to even appear on the day of judgment. Nothing is going to loom large in eternity. This life, I'll say it again, in the truest sense, is a comedy for the Christian believer. There are lots of difficulties that reach us, things that seem really terrible. But then God appears, the Lord Jesus Christ appears on the clouds of glory and everything. If you're wounded, you'll be healed. If you're dead, you'll be raised alive. You're all gathered together and it's all smiles and joy and happiness. Rejoice in embracing one another and receiving God's goodness for all of eternity as he wipes every tear. And all those problems and all those things that seem insoluble, that was just part of the plot of the great book that he's writing of redemptive history. And all those things are gone. It's a happy ending. Do you believe it? I hope you do. Because if you dwell on that, It's hard to be anxious. So smile. Even me, I'll smile. Happy endings coming soon enough. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we know good and well that we have not always received your word. It's precisely in some bad habits in our minds and in our hearts that we know these things, but in some sense we know better, or we think that we know better. We take on for ourselves, we arrogate to ourselves a greater and far more reaching authority and responsibility for things. And we think far into the future of many bad things that have happened, but we neglect the future of the good things sometimes. And we neglect your day-by-day promise that you'll never leave nor forsake us, and that you never call us to do things that are impossible. You'll never hold us accountable for things that were utterly outside of our hands to do. And we know that thus it is with every outcome that we can think of. Heavenly Father, we pray, Lord, your forgiveness in any ways that we might have fallen into idolatry We pray indeed that we'd have compassion on ourselves and on each other, knowing good and well that almost this whole congregation struggles with inside in one way or another. and Lord God, that the peace that passes understanding, the peace that comes from God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the peace that works on a supernatural basis, and that you say will guard our hearts and minds, we pray, Lord, that you give this peace to us, and the power of your Holy Spirit, and through the, in accordance with Your willingness and desire to heal us, we pray that you'd give us this peace. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.