Welcome, as again we have been called together by our God to worship him. Just a summary of the announcements, again, for all of you who are interested. We will have a time of prayer after the morning worship service, maybe about 10 minutes at the close of the service. If any of you would like to come together and pray together for a few minutes, you're certainly encouraged and invited to do that. One, I think, very important thing that you're aware of is the issue that is before our Supreme Court that heard the arguments last week. The case is a case of a school board in, I think it's Delaware, against a bunch of parents. The school board in Delaware has adopted a curriculum which includes the LBGTQ plus idea, and it's now mandatory. There are no exceptions allowed. to that curriculum. A group of parents have sued and say they want to opt their kids out of that curriculum and that now has come before the Supreme Court. It's a very important case because it's going to determine who owns the kids. Do the state own the kids, and do the parents have no control? Or do the parents own the kids, and it's their responsibility? And that is now a clear-cut issue that is before the Supreme Court. They'll probably make a decision sometime in June. So I think we pray for these nine people on the court that in God's grace they will not rob us of our children and say the children are tools of the state rather than children of God. So I call you to worship this morning. from the words of Psalm 119. Now let's stand as we are called to worship. How can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips, I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. Congregation, our help is in the name of the Lord, the creator of the heavens and the earth. Receive his greeting. Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen. Our Father, we thank you for calling us into your presence. We thank you for your blessing. We thank you, oh Father, that You have called us to serve you and to love you. And now we pray that you will nurture our faith and bless our worship. Be present with us in the person of your spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So let's sing, using the Brown Hymnal this morning, number 433, Sweet Hour of Prayer. and others sing, but after sin my life returns. See how from where, see how from where, see how from where my nature Seated. We turn to the law of God this morning from Exodus chapter 20. And God spoke all these words, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above, on the earth beneath, or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold him, anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or your maidservant, nor your animals. nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. But he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or maidservant, his ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Congregation, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And you shall love each other even as Christ has loved you and me. Have we measured up? No. This morning in catechism we were talking about sin. Sin is any lack of conformity to or disobedience to the law of God. We don't measure up. God is holy. We are sinful. How do we get from here to here? Can we work our way up to here? No. There's no way we ever measure up to God's standard. But of course the blessing is that Christ has brought us up to God's standard. by giving us His holiness and His righteousness so that we now in Him are one with Him. And one with Him we are justified and our sins are forgiven. If you turn to Psalm 30, Psalm of Thanksgiving, I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord, my God, I cry to you for help and you have healed me. You have brought up my soul from Sheol, from death, from the grave, and you restored me to life. from those who go down to the pit. So sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name. In verse 11, you have turned for me my mourning into dancing. You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever. Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise, hymn number 76. For a thousand tongues to sing The Lord is come, my God and King, the triumphs of his grace. Jesus, the name which our prayers and our sorrows cease, let me hear my Savior's ears, ♪ There's light within the power stream ♪ ♪ It will never be full ♪ ♪ Here in the depths of wisdom ♪ ♪ Our hearts shall touch the moon ♪ ♪ We find we hold your sacred throne ♪ ♪ And we believe you are true ♪ ♪ My graciousness to you ♪ For our confession of faith, let's turn to Psalm 23 this morning. Let's confess our faith in unison using the scriptures of Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows, surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen. Serve him now as you present your tithe and offering. I think most of you know Steve Miller. We stopped to see him for a while yesterday. He has kidney failure. He has dialysis three times a week. And he says he gets very, very tired in between his dialysis treatments. So we assured him that we'd pray for him this morning. So again. He's not here this morning, he says he's gonna be too tired to worship with us this morning. But please keep Steve Miller in mind, okay, as we pray together again this morning. Let's pray together. Our Father, again, we praise you for you have taken us to yourself in Jesus Christ. You have crowned us. We confess, oh Father, that we rebelled against you, that we sinned against you, we rejected you, we hated you. We'd rather serve the devil. But you have reached out sovereignly and graciously, and you have exalted us. You have crowned us. You have restored to us your image to rule and to have dominion over everything you have created. You have blessed us with your Holy Spirit to exercise that dominion. You have made us kings and queens, princes and princesses in your house. Oh Father, help us to understand that tremendous grace The great blessing that we have in that full and complete and total salvation out of death into life to rule, to govern ourselves, to govern our families, to govern this creation, to govern the ground, to grow fruit in it, to direct it, to glorify you, to use it for your glory. Oh, God, help us understand that great blessing. Honor you. We praise you. We glorify you. We thank you. We thank you for the privilege of coming here this morning. We thank you for your call. And we pray that as we come, you will accept our praise and our worship. And you'll also hear our petition. And oh, Father, We come to you now asking for your blessing upon our homes. We thank you so much for our kids and for our young people. and oh God, help us as moms and dads and also as a congregation to be an example to these kids of godliness. That we might love them and reach out to them and bring them to you and be an example of your love to them. Oh Father, that all of our kids might grow up to know the Lord, to love the Lord and to serve him. And this morning, we kids do want to come to you and thank you for our moms and dads and help us to obey them and to serve them and to love them as well. We pray, oh Father, for those that are sick. We think of Steve Miller, oh God, the discouragement that he has to go to Yankton so often for dialysis, tiredness. He wants so much to worship, but he simply can't make it sometime. Oh God, we pray for him, that we might be a blessing to him, even as he has been to us, with his humble service that he has given to us. We also pray for the Ullman and Schultz family, Ray and Dennis. You'll give them faith and strength. This disease has entered their bodies. But oh God, we thank you that this disease will not be victorious. But that it will be overcome with immortality. And give grace to us and to many others, oh God. So many of us have things that that we need problems in our homes and families. Give grace that they might be healed, that we might truly come together as one body in Jesus Christ and serve you. We pray for our missionaries, we thank you for them, and we pray that as they proclaim the gospel, in very difficult places sometime, that your Holy Spirit will also reach into the hearts of those who have never heard the gospel, that it might come to you, your church might grow. So we pray, oh Father, that you will be honored as your church grows in number and grows in faith. You will bless our witness as well, especially those of our families who are careless, who don't really care. that we might be a witness to them and invite them and bring them to worship, that they too might be converted and come to know you. And we also think in terms of our neighbors that we might also be a witness to them. So help us, oh God, to be your witnesses here in Freeman and to the ends of the earth. We pray for our courts especially, oh Father, We confess that as a nation, we have drifted so far from you. And even in our laws, we have made sin legal. Oh, Father, be merciful. And we pray that this particular case that's in front of our Supreme Court now, that you will humble our judges, that they may not rule what they think is best, but what your will is. We might all realize that our kids don't belong to the state. They don't even belong to us. They belong to you. So Father, bless our nation. We pray for an end to war. Give wisdom to our president and to those that advise him, our congressmen, our senators. We pray that it might be your will that wars might cease, especially in Ukraine and Russia. And now, oh Father, we pray that you will bless us as we open your word together. Speak to us by your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Take your Bible now and turn to Philippians chapter four. Philippians four, we'll read verses four through nine. This is now near the close of Paul's letter to the church in Philippi. And he closes with some exhortations. And the exhortation that we focus on is the exhortation to prayer. Philippians four, beginning at verse four. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put into practice, and a God of peace will be with you. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your word. Now open it to us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Rejoice always. That's Paul's exhortation to us. Don't be anxious. but rather in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests may known to God. Of course, this is not something which is original with Paul. It's just command to come to God is all through the Old Testament and the New Testament. Hebrews 11, whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists, of course, that's the beginning, there's no point praying to God if you don't believe he exists, and that he rewards those who seek him, those who look for him, who want to find him, who want to have communion with him, not only a one-way kind of communion, but a two-way kind of communion. Again, in Proverbs 8, I love those who love me and those who seek me diligently will find me. And then Jeremiah again, you will seek me and find me. when you seek me with all your heart. And the very familiar passage of Jesus in Matthew seven, verse seven and eight, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened unto you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. So in short, those who seek will see. Those who pray will be heard. and they will receive an answer from the Lord. Interesting experience last Monday, after breakfast, it was a pretty nice morning. I went outside and quite frankly I was not praying, I was not seeking the Lord. I didn't say, oh Lord, open my eyes that I may see. But you know, and maybe this happens to you sometimes, My eyes were opened. I couldn't help it. Ever feel that way? I had planted spinach a few days before, and lo and behold, spinach was coming up. It's amazing how stuff grows in Iowa and in South Dakota. So I found the glory of God in the growing of my spinach in the garden, in the greening of the pasture, in the racket of the birds. all around me, the revelation of my God. He opened my mind. What happened to you that comes into your mind without even expecting it? And that, of course, opened all kinds of other areas. I remembered the grace of the breakfast I had just eaten, the love of my wife, the beauty of a pot full of pansies, And I was reminded of a quote from Aurora Lay. She says, Earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes. Earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes. You know, so often we're so self-centered. that we're blind to what is going on around us in creation and in redemption. So this morning, we need to take off our shoes and behold the glory of God in creation and in redemption. But you know, we pray, don't we? My wife and I pray and I confess it's almost the same every morning. Lord, reveal to me your glory today. Lord, build up my weak faith. Grant me wisdom. Open my eyes, the eyes of my family. I even pray that God will open your eyes as members of Bethlehem Church. So God answered that prayer and I wasn't even aware of it, was I? Maybe the same kind of thing that happens to you. Or maybe it was because I was thinking of prayer. Paul's admonition to pray. And he couples that with a call to rejoice. To rejoice sometime? No, to rejoice always. And this morning I want to focus briefly with you on that command, that sovereign and gracious command to rejoice and to pray. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again. I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness, and I'm using the ESV version of the Bible here, let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Don't be anxious about anything, about 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 your minds in Christ Jesus. written by Pastor Paul. You can tell that Paul loves the church. In this, of course, he echoes the love of Christ. Christ loves the church, and that love of Christ has filled Paul. You know how he has been converted miraculously and graciously, and how he has been called to minister the gospel to the Gentiles. And for Paul, it is not something, oh, bummer, Lord, did you have to tell me I'd do this? I'd rather not do it. No, he loves to do it. That's real love. Real love, you realize, must always find its root in Christ. Any other love is not love, not the real McCoy, not the genuine article. There's a lot of talk about love these days by people who have no idea what love is. Worldly love is simply a thin veneer of selfishness. I love you because of what's in it for me. Oh, I suppose you can have a kind of a mixture of this worldly love and Christ-like love, but it's nowhere near the genuine article. And here, love, rejoicing, and prayer come together. Now, that love is far from perfect. It is infected by sin, but for those who are one in Christ, by faith, there is the beginning of that love in me and in you, a beginning which must grow by means of the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the gospel, the sacraments, and by prayer. You know something? Love is exercised by works, isn't it? And prayer is also exercised by works. Prayer is the outworking of love, of faith. Prayer that moves away from words and finds expression in deeds. You know, in the book of James, it says that faith without works is dead. We can also say prayer without works is also dead. It's so easy to say, oh Lord, please bless Uncle Joe. and you never talk to Uncle Joe. Oh, he may live next door, he may live there, but Lord, please bless him, but don't use me. Don't pray that. Don't pray for Uncle Joe unless you wanna talk to him and be a witness to him and be an example to him, be Jesus to him. You see, prayer is the outworking of love. that moves into acts. So Paul loves the church because he has the mind of Christ. If you look at chapter one, verses three through 11 of this letter, he says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy. I pray with joy because you're one of me, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. I have the affection of Christ Jesus, even as Christ Jesus yearns for you, even so I yearn for you. I pray for you, I love you, I want to bless you. Can you sense that emotion that there is that in Paul? I love you, I pray for you that we might abound in love. It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more to the glory and praise of God. more and more rejoice, more and more always grow in fellowship with Christ, with his body, the communion of saints. And then the peace of God will fill us. You know, congregation, I think we are just beginning to understand the peace of that. the father of the eternal home, the father of heaven, the father of paradise. The church is not the gate of heaven, it is heaven. God loves us. We're at peace with him. We are holy in Christ. And that is nurtured by prayer. We must pray that we might abound in that love, that we might begin to comprehend the length and the depth and the width and the height of the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. So Paul now is coming to the close of his sermon to the church in Philippi. What does he tell them? Rejoice. And of course, that's not new. In Psalm 32, be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Psalm 33, shout for joy in the Lord, ye righteous. Praise befits the upright. Psalm 35, then my soul will rejoice in the Lord, exalting in his salvation. Now, I only happened to turn to Psalm 32, 33, and 35. I could have gone back in the Psalms and probably found Dozens of reference to rejoice. Yes, Paul says, I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, it will turn to my blessing. I know that your prayers will bless me. I know it will turn out for my deliverance. I know it will turn out to the glory of Christ. Paul knows that. He says, I know that through your prayers and God's spirit, the two go together, you'll bless me. You'll encourage me. And that brings him tremendous joy, because you see, he's not alone. Joy is fellowship with each other. Joy is love between husband and wife. Joy is love between parents and kids. Joy is love between members of a congregation. Joy is love in Christ. And how do we get that? Oh yes, we attend to the ministry of the word. We have the sacraments, but prayer becomes so very important. He says, let your reasonableness be known to everyone. Now, what does Paul mean by reasonableness? The original Greek word is epiekes. You can forget about that, okay? But a better translation would be your kindness, your gentleness, your forbearance. I think of your putting up with-ness. You know what putting up with this is? Frankly, you gotta put up with each other. You know, we had Pastor Fluck and his wife over for tea yesterday afternoon, and we were talking about the church, and the fact that people don't put up with each other very well. Matter of fact, take offense. And sometimes, I suppose, not sometimes, it's always true, isn't it? We're sinners. I'm sorry, but you're not going to like some of the things that I say and do and think. And maybe I shouldn't say that and do that, but you've got to put up with me. You're a Christian. I'm a Christian. And by the word forbearance, Paul says, hey, look, acknowledge that we're all sinners. We've got to put up with each other. We've got to forgive each other. We've got to pray for that unity. And now that prayer doesn't mean that we tolerate sin, but we rather love in correction. What is Christian discipline? The problem with Christian discipline is that it so often lacks love. How do you discipline your kids? Well, they need it, because they need correction. But how do you do it? Your arms around them. You love them. And this, you see, is also true in the relationship we have in our marriages, in our families, in the church. Oh, yes, I'm a sinner. And perhaps you need to see, you see my sin much better than I see it in myself. So you come to me and say, hey, Pastor Wynja, that's wrong. I love you. Talking about that spinach. in my garden. They're both weeds and the real thing. So what do I do? Oh, you naughty weeds. Very, very carefully, you pull out the weeds that you don't hurt the plant. Our congregation, when we discipline, yes, but don't hurt the plant. Do it with overwhelming love, and let that never be forsaken. And this is exactly what Paul is after when he's talking to the Philippian church about prayer, about unity, about abounding in love. Yes, correct each other, discipline each other, talk to each other about their sin, but do it with love. Sometimes that's missing, isn't it? And what we have is offense. Again, your parents know what I'm talking about. And your kids know too. Sometimes your kids are naughty, right? Any of your kids that are never naughty? What are you going to do? Well, you're going to do what Paul says, be reasonable. You're not going to denounce them. You're not going to condemn them. You're not going to disown them. You're not going to excommunicate them. You're going to love them. No computer for a week. So you see, that's where you are, in the Father's home. And this brings rejoicing. And sometimes we don't rejoice all that much. But then Paul says, we're still anxious. The word anxious here is in the second person plural present imperative. That sounds impressive, doesn't it? That means, it's plural, it means all of you are anxious. You're anxious right now. And yes, you're stuck with that anxiety. What are we anxious about? Well, you know, There's a lot of uncertainty in our lives. Think of national events. Will there be war? Will the cost of living go up? Will the crops fail? Will we get enough rain? Will I lose my job? Will I get sick? Will I die? And then what of my family? Matter of fact, we can make a long list of worries. Well, what do we do about them? What can we do about them? We feel that we are in the grasp of a power we can't control. We can't control the germs infecting our bodies. We have a son who's mentally ill. We pray for him every day and we feel so powerless. Can he change? What do we do? We pray, we worry. We worry about our kids, our grandkids. We see some of them wandering away from the Lord, we worry. We are not in control. But who is in control? We have a father. And this father is sovereign. This father is almighty. And he is, by faith, our father in Jesus. Christ, we are in Him. But we're still anxious. Matter of fact, Paul assumes that the people in the church in Philippi are anxious. He doesn't say if you are anxious, they are anxious. Now, there is one thing he doesn't mean. He doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned about these things. If it doesn't rain, you might want to irrigate. If you get cold, you might want to get some medication. You need to use the available resources. But in the final analysis, don't worry. You are in the hands of the Father. What must we do? Rather than be anxious in everything, Paul says, no exceptions, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. In the church, that's where God is. Pray for each other. What are the issues? Health, okay. The economy, okay. But what should you request? Whose things, what are the things that will give you the peace of God? Those things that will open your mind to the blessings of salvation, the forgiveness of sin, the blessing of freedom from worry. The world, you see, is so much captive to itself. The prison of your mind, which cannot and does not see God. A world that is deaf to the word of God. Make your requests known to God. Listen to Jesus as he teaches that I be an instrument of his peace, that I work to bring peace, not to make division, not to push away, but to unite. that I, that you, might be an instrument of his peace, to bring each other into that peace. That his kingdom, the glorious kingdom of Jesus Christ may come through me, the church now, and the final kingdom when Jesus returns, that his will be done, a will that is perfect and will reveal the blessings of the covenant, that we might abound in love, that I may be forgiven as I have been forgiven. to protect me from yielding to the temptations of the devil when he seeks to draw a curtain between me and my father. That is my request. That is my prayer for faith, for wisdom, for love, and congregation. That's a prayer that is going to be answered. In Christ Jesus, Christ in him, and now the Holy Spirit in us, one body. Peace of God. If God is for us, who can be against us? I think of the peace of a child that is embraced in the strong arms of his father. You see that? I see that little baby held in the arms of his mom or his dad. He is resting. He's at peace. He's not anxious. His anxiety begins when his mom and dad put him down. He has lost his security and he's not happy again until again he is held and loved by his mom and dad. That's the peace of God. When you see yourself in the arms of Jesus, Almighty God, Almighty Father, and nothing can remove you from that love of God. And that is now what we are to pray for. To pray that we might all hold each other our arms and together be held in the arms of Jesus, in the arms of our Father, that we might abound in love. Congregation, rejoice and pray. Amen. Our Father, teach us to pray Teach us to understand the fact that we need to grow in our love for you and our love for each other. We know we are sinners. We need to correct each other gently and so very carefully. We need, oh God, to come closer to you. So draw us closer to yourself and closer to each other that the love of Christ might shine in and through us to the glory of yourself, our Father, our Heavenly Father.