Well, two weeks ago, Pastor Taylor introduced a mini-series of sermons that we're doing here in the summertime entitled Biblical Answers for Common Problems. The goal of these sermons is to show that 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17 is accurate in many different areas of our lives. 2nd Timothy 3, 16 and 17 reads, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. And I encourage you to go back two weeks to listen to Pastor Taylor's message on those verses describing the sufficiency of God's word for our lives. Our hope and prayer through this little series is that you would grow in your trust in the sufficiency of the Bible. God's word is sufficient to help us in our hour of need. The Bible doesn't claim to be a medical textbook, assisting doctors in treating medical ailments, but when it comes to matters of hearts, minds, and souls, the Bible is indeed the sufficient authority. Last week, Pastor Taylor helped us to see from Philippians chapter four how the Bible teaches us to have contentment in any circumstance. Our hearts, as we know, are so often discontent and unsatisfied with our circumstances, with our things that we have, and yet in Christ, we indeed can learn how to be content in any circumstance. Today, we are actually gonna return to the same chapter, Philippians chapter four, but we're gonna cover a different topic, and that is the issue of anxiety. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 40 million Americans are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder every year, which represents about 20% of the American population. But it's not just those who are diagnosed with something that struggle with anxiety, right? All of us, at one level or another, at one time of our life or another, deal with the issue of worry and anxiety. We can find just about anything to worry about, right? We worry about our future. We worry about our children and grandchildren's future. We worry about what will happen tomorrow. We worry about what will happen in 10 years. We worry about little things, like car trouble. Or we worry about big things, like health issues. Worry is a perennial temptation of humanity. Why? Why is it that humanity down through the centuries continues to deal and struggle with anxiety? It's because we're limited. We don't know all things and we can't control anything. We can't see into the future. We don't know what will happen the next hour, the next day, or the next decade. We make plans, but we know those things change. We worry because we are not in control. Of course, if we were in total control and we knew exactly what was gonna happen and we could orchestrate it to happen, we would sit back and settle confidence because it was gonna go according to our plan. we're not in control of this world and so we fret. It's somewhat like the difference between being the driver of a car and being a passenger. I trust some of you can relate to this experience. Whereas the driver of the car Most frequently, I am the one in control. I am steering and I have settled confidence because I know where the car is going and I'm confident in my driving ability, particularly even around curvy mountain roads. My wife, on the other hand, who is in the passenger seat, sometimes her nerves can get a little bit rattled as she is a passenger driving according to my driving. And because she's not in control, the nerves and the anxiety can rise. Can anybody else relate to that kind of a situation? But in that case, we are the passengers in this life. We are passengers in this world. We are going through and we are not in control. Anxiety, for some, is just a kind of pest that sits there and we kind of brush off here and there, but anxiety can really have debilitating consequences. It can, in some senses, be deadly. It can keep people from eating, keep people from sleeping, keep people from socializing, from being around other people. And it can affect someone's every moment of their day and their night. And ultimately, it can affect the health of our souls. So I just ask you this morning as we get started, what is your relationship to anxiety? Do you go, oh, I'm a pretty chill person, I don't really struggle with that. or are you more prone to worry? And maybe you aren't generally a worrisome person, but you're still gonna face that fretting, that anxiety when it comes to maybe major life decisions, big things that you have to cross, big unexpected things that come your way. But for others of you, anxiety may be your unwelcome friend every day. You live with a constant fear of when it will strike again. different people have tried different things to deal with their anxiety and try to mask it, try to hide it, try to ignore it, try to do different things. One somewhat comical example of someone trying to deal with their their worry was a man who was a chronic worrier and then one day his friends saw him walking down the road just whistling away. And they said, can that be our friend? No, it can't be. Wait, yes it is. And they asked him, what happened? You were so worrisome and fretting and now you seem to be carefree. He said, well, I'm now paying a man to do my worrying for me. And they asked, you mean you aren't worrying anymore? No, whenever I'm inclined to worry, I just let him do it. Well, how much do you pay him? $2,000 a week. Wow, how can you afford that?" his friends asked. I can't, but that's his worry. Now, of course, paying someone to worry for us doesn't work. They're just as much not in control as we are. And many other attempts that we make to try to deal with our anxiety often fall short. But whatever your relationship to anxiety or your experience with worry is this morning, we all need to hear what God's word says about worry. And again, there are several places we could go in scripture, but this morning I've chosen to go to Philippians chapter four as our text today. And so if you haven't turned there already, I invite you to turn in your personal copy of God's word to Philippians chapter four. If you don't have a copy of the Bible this morning, you can use one that's in the pew rack in front of you and find our passage today on page 1,166. This book was written by Paul as he was a prisoner in Rome. And he wrote it to the church as the name suggests in Philippi. There were several people in the church that were having trouble getting along, they were fighting with one another, disunity was rising, and because they were not getting along and they were looking out only for themselves, their joy was being dissipated. And so Paul wrote this book in order to exhort them to find their unity in Jesus Christ, and as they would strive for unity, they would find their joy in him as well. Chapter four, he's concluding the letter, it's the last chapter of the book, and he's closing it with a collection of exhortations. Now the final section you looked at last week with Pastor Taylor on the issue of contentment. But today I want us to look at a few verses in the first part of the chapter, and these verses are foundational for dealing with anxiety. These verses, I can say on a personal level, have been extremely invaluable. As most of you know, almost two years ago now, our one and a half year old son was diagnosed with a brain tumor and underwent immediate surgery. He was in the hospital for 44 days and during that time, I found anxiety to be close at hand. Each day, there were new issues to face, new questions that needed answering, new questions that didn't get answered. And it was easy to be anxious, easy to worry. Would he be worse today? Would he take a turn for the worse? Would he get better? Would we see progress or would we see a setback? Would he be plagued with more seizures? There was so much we didn't know. And this passage, these verses were a lifeline for me. to instruct my heart in what to do when that wave of anxiety threatens to overwhelm and to seize up and to control and to crush. And I'm sure many of you have found these verses to be the same for you as well. They've steadied your heart when worry threatens to unsettle. So this is an important text for us. Let's read it here this morning and follow along as I read verses four through seven. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, 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 your minds in Christ Jesus. Let's bow together in a word of prayer. Father, we ask as we come to your word this morning that you would please guide us by your spirit. That you would please teach us how it is that we can trust you more rather than seeking to trust ourselves and find ourselves bound up in the cords of anxiety. May we take note of your cure and may we be able to walk in the peace and freedom that you've offered to us. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, it's from this text that I want to show you this morning four ingredients of God's cure for anxiety, four ingredients of God's cure for anxious care so that we might live in peace instead of worry. This is what Paul wanted the church in Philippi to live free of worry, and so too, God, through the inspiration of his word, wants us to live free of worry as well, and this text outlines how we can do that. This text indeed is a tonic to cure our anxiety, but we need to take all of the medicine. We can't pick and choose what parts of it that we want. We need all four ingredients. So let's look at the first ingredient this text gives us, and that is we must rejoice in the Lord. If we are to be free of anxiety, we must rejoice in the Lord. With this ingredient, I'm joining together verses four and five, which includes two commands and a statement. Two commands and a statement, and the first command is the most pronounced from which we get this heading, and that is, verse four, look at it with me. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. Paul makes it very emphatic that he's calling them to rejoice. He repeats it and he knows he's repeating it. He says, and again I will say, rejoice. It bears repeating again, church. You need to hear it again. You must rejoice. But this is actually isn't even the first and second time he's given this command. If your eye will glance back to Philippians 3 verse 1, he seemed like he was concluding his letter in chapter three, which we know he still had two chapters left, but as he was writing, he says, finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. There he gave his command as kind of a summation, closing out the letter, rejoice in the Lord. Well, he wrote a whole chapter and then came around back again in chapter four and decided he needed to say it again. In fact, he needed to say it two more times. And so he says, rejoice in the Lord always. But what does it mean to rejoice in the Lord? Is Paul just telling us to go around and have smiles on our faces? Are we just supposed to be happy people in a sort of veneer sort of way? The word rejoice means to be glad, to be full of joy. Paul wants us to literally be those who have joy welling up inside of us. And to be full of joy in the Lord. But notice, in that sense, it's not just to be happy in a general sense, be happy people. He's telling us specifically to rejoice in what? In who? In the Lord. Our joy is to be found in God. Pastor John MacArthur says, this joy is unrelated to the circumstances of life, but related to an unassailable, unchanging relationship to the sovereign Lord. You see, we're called to rejoice always. How do we rejoice always in the midst of a life that there is suffering and difficulty, trials and pain, when there's unexpected events that come our way? It's not by finding joy in our circumstances. It's by finding our joy in the Lord, the one who never moves, the one who is unmovable. And that's why Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord always. And let's just remember, who's the one that's telling us to rejoice always? Oh yeah, it's the guy who's chained in house arrest. He's the one who's telling us to rejoice always. And who himself was rejoicing in the Lord. Friends, this is a sweet reminder that we can find joy in Christ no matter what the circumstances of our life are. We may go through difficult things. We may, as the psalm says, walk through the valley of the shadow of death. But we don't need to fear any evil. We can rejoice in the Lord, our shepherd who's leading us. And so you too, no matter what you're going through, you can rejoice in the Lord as well. You can rejoice in the Lord in your circumstances. Because you're going through good and happy circumstances? Not necessarily. It's because you have the Lord in the midst of those circumstances. And yet, when we give ourselves to anxiety, it steals our joy, does it not? We're fretting, we're worrying, we're losing sleep, all of this, we're so focused on things, we're not rejoicing in the Lord and in what he's given to us. An old man was asked, near the end of his life, what had robbed him of joy the most of his lifetime? And he replied, things that never happened. Things that never happened. Things that he was worried about that might happen but never actually took place and he wasted his time, his joys robbed as he worried about those things. Now why is it that you and I can rejoice? Why can we rejoice in the Lord? Well it's because we are in the Lord, we are in Christ. We have been united to Jesus through his death, his burial, and resurrection. There's been an inseparable union between the believer and the Savior, and there's nothing that can tear that apart. And so because you, believer, have trusted in Christ, and God has regenerated you, he's united you to his Son, and you are forever united to him, and therefore you can rejoice no matter what you go through. Your destiny is in heaven, You're gonna spend eternity with the living God, and therefore you can rejoice as you go through your pilgrimage here on earth. And so I ask you, is it your regular habit to rejoice in the Lord? Do you wake up in the morning seeking to find your soul happy in God? The great Christian of the 19th century, George Mueller of Bristol, shared how this was his goal every morning. It's a good example for us. He says this. I saw more clearly than ever the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord or how much I might glorify the Lord, but how much, how I might get my soul into a happy state and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted. I might seek to benefit believers. I might seek to relieve the distressed. I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world. And yet, not being happy in the Lord and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit. You see, it is a priority that we see that our souls are happy in Christ. Not just busy about the Lord's work, not just busy doing Christian things, but that we are truly delighting and treasuring in Jesus. Often we find ourselves not attending these things in the right spirit. We are anxious partly because we sought for our souls to be satisfied in something other than Christ. We've looked for joy in other things. And so when we find ourselves being anxious, we first need to ask, am I rejoicing in the Lord? And this joy, if we have this joy in the Lord, it's gonna spill over in how we treat other people. And I believe this is where Paul goes next, the connection with verse four and verse five. Look at verse five with me. After he says, commands us twice to rejoice, he says, verse five, let your reasonableness be known to everyone. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. What is translated as reasonableness here is rendered different ways in other translations. And if you have a different translation, it's gonna read something different here. The footnote here in the ESV has the word gentleness and that is followed or also translated that way in the NIV and the New King James and the New English translation. But like the New American Standard, 1995, has it as gentle spirit. The New American Standard, 1977, has it as forbearing spirit. The American Standard Version has it as forbearance. The Christian Standard Bible has it as graciousness. And finally, the new translation, the Legacy Standard Bible, has it as considerate spirit. Nobody can agree on how to translate this. But I think if we read all of those things together, it helps us to understand the extent of this word. And the reason it's translated so many different ways is that we don't have a one for one parallel from the Greek word to the English word. And hence, most explanations of this word that I read in commentaries had multiple paragraphs attached to them as they tried to describe what this word described. And so to try to, for the translators to try to find one word is a difficult task. But I believe that the idea that's found in the legacy standard Bible, the considerate spirit, is a good direction to go because I think it connects back to what Paul says in chapter two, that this church, he exhorts them to do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. That they are not to be seeking to further their own interests, but they're to also look out for the interests of others. They're to consider others as more important than themselves. And so here, Paul exhorts the church to rejoice in the Lord, and if their joy is bubbling in the Lord, then how they treat other people is they're gonna treat them in gentleness, in considerateness, in love and graciousness. If we are rejoicing in the Lord, then we will treat others well. But too often in our anxiety, right, when we're worried, we're pulled into ourselves. We're so concerned about what's going on in our life and this burden that's weighing down upon us that what happens when someone tries to interact with us, we can sometimes be a little snappy, maybe be a little harsh, not be as gracious, as kind, as considerate as we need to be. But Paul says this must not be so. We must rejoice always, we must let our gentleness, our reasonableness, our graciousness, our considerateness be seen by all. This should be a characteristic of the church is that we consider other people, we are loving other people. It should be highly evident that we are the Lord's people because we are gentle towards others, not harsh and demeaning and putting other people down. Well, we've looked at two commands that are here in verses four and five, but there's one little phrase that is snuck in here to the end of verse five that we need to see. He says, rejoice, let your reasonableness be known, and then finally, the Lord is at hand. Or as some translations have it, the Lord is near. This is a simple statement of the imminency of the return of Christ. Jesus Christ, who was here upon this earth, who was born, grew up, then ministered here, and then he was crucified, buried, rose again, and then he ascended to heaven where he sits at the right hand of the throne of God, interceding on our behalf, waiting for him to return and to set up his kingdom. but he's near. The message of the New Testament is not that he's gone off in a far off place and he's kicked off his shoes and he's just sitting there having a vacation. No, he is, in one sense, he's on the edge of his seat and he's ready to come at a moment's notice. Jesus says that not even the son knows the day of his return, the father knows when he will come back. But Paul, along with the other biblical writers, help us to see that the Lord is at hand, he is near, he is ready to return and we need to be ready. He's not back yet, but it could happen at any moment. Now some see this little phrase as, why does Paul say this? They say, well, you know, he's kind of giving a little backdoor accountability. You better do what I say because Jesus is coming back and you wouldn't want him finding you disobeying. So remember, the Lord is at hand, the Lord is near. And I think this may be part of it, but I think more so, Paul is writing this because the hope of the church is in the return of Jesus. I mean, when we look at the characteristic of how the church is to look towards the second coming of Jesus, is it really one of judgment and accountability? It's primarily one of hope. It's our blessed hope that Jesus comes back to finally and completely save us. And so, Paul's saying, listen, that one you rejoice in, he's coming back. He's almost here. Hold on. Continue to press on. Continue to be about these things. continue to hope in Him. So the first ingredient that we see in these verses in God's cure for anxiety is number one, to rejoice in the Lord. And that joy in Christ will cause us to hope in His return and to treat others with gentleness and grace. And in all of this, our attention is moved off of ourselves and onto the Lord and onto others. No doubt you've heard that simple acronym, I learned this in Sunday school somewhere, that the way for a Christian to have joy is to have the right priorities. And the word J-O-Y is the acronym that helps us to know the priorities. J, we put Jesus first. O, we then put others next. And lastly, we put yourself last. How do we have joy? Jesus first, then others, then yourself. If we get that order right, then we'll have true joy. But let's move on to the second ingredient to combat anxiety. First is rejoice in the Lord, second is refrain from worry. Refrain from worry, and this is where we move on to verse six, where there is a simple exhortation. Do not be anxious about anything, he says. As one commentator says, this is the simplest of commands and yet one of the hardest to carry out in our daily lives. What's the big deal? Why don't you just stop worrying? Just stop it, right? I mean, it should be fairly easy. Of course we know that it's not. But before we begin to look at what we are to do instead of anxiety, let's first recognize that God's word acknowledges that anxiety is a real and present threat in our lives. I mean, we should be able to take comfort from the fact that God's word recognizes that we as limited human beings here upon this earth are going to struggle with anxiety. That these fears and these worries will rise up in our hearts and that they do threaten us. Anxiety is not a figment of our imagination. The Bible doesn't pretend that it doesn't exist. Rather, it knows that it's something that every human being deals with. But we are commanded here by God, the authority of the living God, that we are not to worry. This means that for us to worry is indeed a sin. Anxiety and worry is a sin. It goes against God's command here. And notice that he doesn't just say that we're not to be anxious about some things. He says, do not be anxious about anything. In fact, emphatically in the Greek, the word nothing, or as is translated here, anything, is put in the first position of the sentence. So Paul's saying, nothing are we to be anxious about. And so this means that we cannot allow worry to have a foothold in our lives. Too often, we allow anxiety to kind of be this low hum in our lives. We cut it out of some areas, but we still let it run over here on the side in some other area. We think that we can worry about our kids because we love our kids and God loves our kids, and so we need to be hyper-concerned for them. Yes, we are to be concerned for our kids, but worry is not okay. or it's okay to worry about my job or my living situation because God wants me to provide for my family and wants our family to have a home to live in. Yes, God does want these things for us, but he doesn't want us to worry about them. We can think that worry in some cases are okay, but Paul makes it very clear we're not to be anxious about anything. And so we must From this verse, must learn to adopt God's standard for anxiety, and that is a zero tolerance policy. We're not gonna allow anxiety to have any foothold in our lives. Of course, where did Paul get this idea of not being anxious? He got it straight from our Savior. Matthew 6, 25, Jesus says, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. Do not be anxious about your life. That's essentially what Paul is saying here. So why do Jesus and Paul tell us not to worry? Well, for one, because the things we worry about are often not the most important things. We can, Jesus talks about food and clothing and shelter and all these things that we are so concerned about, and he says, isn't life more than all these things? Isn't there something that's more important than what you're gonna wear or what you're gonna eat? But the second thing they tell us not to worry is because worrying accomplishes nothing. And this has been recognized by Christians and non-Christians alike that worrying is just this exercise in us that wears us down but actually seeks to resolve none of our worries. It's like spending your day all day in a rocking chair and you're working hard to rock as hard as you can and by the end of the day you're tired but you've gone nowhere. Or maybe you can picture it on a treadmill. You're just gonna spend all day running on this treadmill and you're working hard and you're sweating, but you haven't actually gone anywhere. Jesus asks in Matthew 6, in which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to a span of life? Can you actually do anything by your worrying? Unfortunately, it destroys us. It's like a rust that corrodes. Or, as one author talked about it, it's a slow trickle. And like a trickle through the dirt, it begins to build a ravine through it by which everything else begins to get sucked into it. And pretty soon our lives are dominated by our worry. But most importantly, the reason why we aren't to worry is because when we worry, we aren't trusting God's wisdom and his control of our lives. We're fretting about our lack of control. Worry and anxiety is a lack of faith because we're not trusting in his sovereign providence over what he's ordained or what he will bring about tomorrow. We don't know what tomorrow will bring, but we know the God who's already there and the God who will provide for us and be with us. And so I ask you, are you committed in your heart of hearts to obey the Lord and seek to give anxiety no place in your heart and life? Will you seek when anxiety rises up to repent of that and to seek to walk in faithfulness to God? You see, we need to have that sort of standard in our own personal lives and only we know when that anxiety rises up. the quietness of our hearts when we're driving in the car, when we're laying our head on our pillow at night, those little fears that rise up, we've got to give those over to the Lord, repent of them, and not seek to foster them. Well, how can we get rid of anxiety? We first need to seek to refrain from worry, to put it aside. But we also need to replace it with something else, and that's where Paul goes next, and that's our third ingredient this morning, is to run to God in prayer. What do we replace anxiety with? It's with trust and prayer. And we see this at the end of verse, second half of verse six. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Now here's a little hint into how the Bible talks about the Christian life. It will often tell us something that we need to stop doing, but then it also tells us something that we need to do. As Paul describes in Ephesians chapter four, it's a putting off and a putting on. He uses the same words that we'd use for putting on a piece of clothing like a jacket. We are to put off the old ways, put off the sinful ways, and we're to put on the Christ-like behaviors. We can't just take off, we can't just stop worry. We've got to then put something in its place. And so is true for many other things. We can't just stop being angry. We can't just stop being mean. We've also need to put on a kindness, a gentleness. We need to put on the Christ-like character. In this case, we put off worry, but what do we put on? We put on prayer. Instead of ruining ourselves in worry, we're to run to God in prayer, Paul says. Now the main verb and the actual command in this verse is given at the end, which is, let your request be made known to God. So in other words, if you were to simplify the verse down, it would be, do not be anxious about anything, but let your request be made known to God. Those are the two commands. Everything else is further modifying or describing how that making requests known is to be done. So let's look first at that main command and then we'll look at those other modifications that Paul gives us. First, make your requests known to God. This is what he is telling us that we need to put on. Rather than allowing our burdens and cares to turn over and over in our minds and to grind us down, we instead are to turn them over to God. We're to list them out in prayer, we're to give voice to them, to the Father. Because He's a loving Father and He wants to hear what's on our hearts. And as we do this, why do we do this? Why do we make our requests known to God? Because it's as we get them off our chest, as we seek to surrender them to the Lord, we are communicating our faith and our dependence in Him. We're going to Him as humble children that seek to depend upon our loving Father. As we confess it, as we make them known to God, we're confessing that we're not in control. We're confessing, God, I have limitations. God, I'm weak. I can't do this. I'm not in control. I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. I don't know what's gonna happen with so-and-so. And so we confess it. We cast them upon him. And we confess our dependence upon him. God, you need to take it. This idea of casting them upon the Lord is exampled for us in the Old Testament, in 2 Kings 19. And I invite you to turn there with me briefly, 2 Kings 19. Here, The Judean king Hezekiah and the capital city of Jerusalem is threatened by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib. Sennacherib has gone through and he's conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and now he's making his way to the southern kingdom of Judah and he's knocking on the door of Jerusalem. He's taunting, he's promising a brutal death if they don't surrender. Now understandably, Hezekiah is burdened with the leadership decisions he has at this moment. His heart is heavy, and he could have been anxious about what he was going to do, but instead he does exactly what Paul exhorts us to do. He made his requests known to God. Pick up in verse eight of 2 Kings 19. It says the Rabshakeh, which is one of the officers in the Syrian army, returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libna, for he heard the king had left Lachish. Now the king heard concerning Terekah, king of Cush, behold, he has set out to fight against you. So he sent messengers again to Hezekiah saying, verse 10, thus shall you speak to Hezekiah, king of Judah. Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them? The nations that my father's destroyed, Gozin, Haran, Rezif, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Severim, the king of Hena, or the king of Eva? Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. And Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God. You alone of all the kingdoms of the earth, you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. And hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone. Friends, isn't this a sweet illustration of a man who took his concerns and his burdens before God, and he figuratively took the letter that he had, and he spread it out before the Lord, illustrating what we essentially do with all of our burdens and all of our concerns, that we spread them out before God. We make them known to Almighty God, and we say, God, this is what's on my heart. This is what's afflicting me. please help. And we see his prayer, a beautiful prayer in which he recognizes God's sovereign authority that he alone is the God who made heaven and earth and that there are no other gods and therefore he's pleading and asking that this gracious God would please work on their behalf. And he does. What Hezekiah does here is somewhat following what the psalmist says in Psalm 62, verse eight, where it calls us to unload our cares on the Lord. It says, trust in Him at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. We are to pour out our hearts before God at all times. Why? Because He is a refuge and we can trust Him. Which leads us to why do we tell our concerns to God? Of all things, why don't we just go talk to our friend? Why do we make our requests known to God? It's because of his character and because there is none like him, right? He's sovereign and powerful, for one. No one can stop him. He's the one who's able to do whatever he wants. He alone is able to truly work on your behalf. Why do you make the request known to God? Because he is actually the one that has the power to work in your life, to orchestrate circumstances, to change things. He has no limitations. But secondly, because he's all-knowing. He's all-knowing, he knows our problems. Not only the ones that we tell, but he knows all the other ones that we may not even know about ourselves. We also can go to him because he's loving and gracious. Is he a God that's gonna slam the door in our face? That's gonna say, get out of here, you're asking me for that again? I thought I already told you no. No. Our Father is a loving Father, and the Bible says that we are His children. He loves to hear the prayers and the requests of His children, and so we can go in childlike faith and say, Abba, Father, please help. His heart is for our good. He loves us with an everlasting love through Christ. He lavishes His grace on us. He does not hold back from us. This is why Peter says in 1 Peter 5, verses six and seven, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time, he may exalt you. Casting all your anxieties on him, why? Because he cares for you. See, Peter knew we cast all our anxieties on God because he alone cares for us. Now a perennial question is why do we pray if God already knows? Why do we need to make my requests known to God if God is already all knowing? And the short of it is we can't resolve that completely. We can't reconcile those things that God calls us to pray and yet God knows all things and yet that's what the word of God says. We have to affirm both things. God wants and commands our prayer and that prayer actually changes things. How does that work? It's in the mystery of God. How he can have a predetermined plan and yet he asks us to pray and that prayer changes things is totally bound up in the mystery of God. Deuteronomy 29, the secret things belong to the Lord. And so we simply follow the command of scripture which is we make our requests known to God. Is that what you do? Do you find it a habit of yours to go to the Lord with the burdens that are upon your heart? Do you pray to him and let him know the things, the cares that are on your soul? But there's three ways that Paul further describes this prayer. And the first is he says that this is to be by prayer and supplication. by prayer were to let a request be made known to God by prayer and supplication, verse six says. Now these are virtually synonymous terms. Prayer is like a general term. Supplication refers to a more specific, like entreaty, a more passionate, like knocking on the door, a heart-filled petitioning. The point being that making a request known to God is not like we're going and delivering a list to God in a cold, mechanical way and then walking away. No, we go to Him with passion, we go to Him pleading, we go to Him banging on the door, asking that the Lord would work on our behalf. We can pour out our hearts before Him. But not only is this making requests known by prayer and supplication, but it's also in everything. In everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God. All things that we experience, we are able to bring to God. As one writer put it, the way to be anxious about nothing is to pray about everything. The way to be anxious about nothing is to pray about everything. This is the contrast. Nothing to be anxious about, everything to pray about. Whatever we experience, whatever we go through, whether it's suffering, whether it's plenty, we can pray to God. It's not limited to certain times or certain places. And this is the practice of the Apostle Paul. Here he is in Roman prison, and he's able to pray to God about the people and circumstances on his heart. Believer, remember that everything that you experience, all of the aches, pains, cares, concerns, anxieties, are fair game to bring to the Lord of the universe. In everything, make your requests known to God. We can pray about our future, the future of our nation, the future of our kids. We can pray about our jobs and our careers. We can pray about our health and our financial situation. Students, you can pray about grades and you can pray about tests. You can pray about friends, you can pray about social media posts. Everything is fair game to bring before the God of the universe. In everything, let your request remain known to God. Nothing is too small or too big for Him. And so in everything we face, we're not to worry, but to pray to God. But there's a final piece of what is to characterize this prayer. And that is the small phrase, with thanksgiving. With thanksgiving. What is to characterize this prayer is that we are to do it with thanksgiving. And I think this is particularly needful because when we are anxious, are we being thankful for what we have? Too often we are focused on what we don't have. We're worried about what might be taken away from us. We're worried about what we might lose, rather than being grateful and thankful for what we already have. Isn't that true? And so this exhortation by Paul is particularly needful, that we would let our requests be made known with thanksgiving. That we would lead our hearts not on the path of noticing all that we don't have, but lead it down the path of realizing all that we do have. And Christian, we can thank God for so many things. for the salvation that he's worked for us through Christ, for the love he's shown us in the gospel, for the promises that he's given us in his word, for the privileges of addressing him in prayer, the fact that we can even pray to the God of the universe is something to be thankful for, and for the hope of knowing that he can do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. One old commentator put it this way, we can be thankful that he is on a throne of grace, and is ever accessible, that he is never weary with our asking and that his gifts are never exhausted and never lose their adaptation is surely a matter of thankfulness to be ever expressed before him by all suppliants. We can always be thankful for all that God has given to us. But we're not just to be thankful in a general sort of way. You hear a lot of people say, oh yeah, I'm thankful, I'm thankful for this, I'm thankful I've got this, thankful for this. But we need to realize that our thankfulness needs to be directed to the Lord. It is a Godward direction of our gratitude, not just a general feeling of gratitude that we're to have. Gratitude to God is a defining mark, a defining virtue of the Christian. It flows from the life of faith. In fact, it's fair to say that if there is not gratitude in someone's heart, there's a good reason to check whether they actually know the Lord, because what's all through the New Testament is that those who have been radically transformed by Jesus, it displays their life through radical gratitude. So where does this leave us? Well, when we have anxious hearts, when we feel it rise up, when that thing about tomorrow or something we hear about threatens our souls and the anxiety grips our hearts, we need to stamp it out and turn to God, our loving Father, in prayer. For me, a prayer walk is helpful in this regard. Get up from my chair, get up from my seat, go outside and begin to walk and talk and pour out my heart to the Lord. It The anxiety can sit there, it weighs upon us like a hundred pound weight and it can stifle us, and yet to get up and to move and to walk and just begin to talk out loud what is on my heart is so helpful. And begin to just throw those cares upon the Lord. George Mueller, who I referenced earlier, said this, the beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety. And so we need to recognize this is a real battle of faith for us. Are we gonna trust God, or are we gonna try to trust ourselves? So we've seen three ingredients so far in God's cure for anxious care. Rejoice in the Lord, refrain from worry, run to God in prayer, but there's one more in verse seven, and that is to rest in God's peace. Rest in God's peace. Verse seven begins with an and, it could really be translated as a then because it's a result. If we do all these things, if we stop being anxious and we start trusting and praying to God, then what will result? What will result is that the peace of God will guard us. And this is not something that might happen or should happen. This is a guaranteed result, friends. Believer, take this to the bank that God has promised that when we cast our cares upon Him, that His peace will come and guard you. It's certain. This peace is an inward tranquility from resting in God. After we cast our cares upon Him in humble dependence, we can then go forward in a settled, peaceful disposition, fully trusting Him to handle our situation. God personally sends His peace. as we trust Him. And His peace is powerful. Notice it's not just a peace that's just kind of sitting there to give us the warm fuzzies. It's a peace, it says, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. This peace is fit for battle. It's dressed in armor. It's gonna guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. It protects us from temptations from the enemy. It protects us from threatening worries, and it protects us from the sin of distrusting our God. And when we have peace like this, friends, in the midst of trying difficult and painful circumstances, when we have a peace from God that guards us like this, it doesn't make sense, does it? And hence, it surpasses all understanding, which is Paul says. This peace passes all understanding because it arrives in times that doesn't make sense, humanly speaking. Like Paul and being in prison, and yet he's at peace. Or Jesus at peace amid the storm on the Sea of Galilee when all the disciples are freaking out and he's got peace. It doesn't make sense. The circumstances seem to call for heightened anxiety, but with God's peace, there is great calm. This is a peace, friends, that more than 40 millions Americans long for, it's a peace that maybe you are wanting this morning, that you recognize that your life is not filled with peace, but you want it. Well, this peace is offered to all. But the last three words of verse seven indicate who it actually applies to. It says, in Christ Jesus. It's those who are in Christ Jesus that experience this peace. Those who are in Christ are those who have repented of their sins, who have trusted in the finished work of Jesus, recognizing that He died on the cross for their sins, that He rose again conquering death, and that by trusting in Him, that there is salvation from the wrath that each one of us deserve for our sin. Jesus now calls all people to come to Him and to embrace Him by faith. So the question is, have you repented of your sin and trusted in Jesus, embraced Him by faith? Are you in Christ this morning that you might experience this peace? Because God's peace can be yours today if you would humble your heart and cast your cares upon Him and trust in His Son, Jesus. Church, we must be a praying people, not a fretful people. God has given us all the resources that we need in Christ to be able to live a life of peace and trust. Our loving, sovereign God is there waiting to hear our requests, waiting to hear our prayers. May we go to him and run to him with everything. Let's bow together in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this word that reminds us that we need not worry, we need not be anxious, that we can trust wholly and completely in your name to work on our behalf. We thank you God that you are the mighty God that is working on our behalf, that you have availed yourself for us People who give you nothing, we only bring our sin into this relationship. And you have done everything else. You've redeemed us, you've sanctified us, you will glorify us, and yet you give us peace through your Son. I pray, Father, that you would help us as a church to rest fully in the promises of your word, and that we would learn to trust you more and more each day. I pray even this week, As the cares rise up in our hearts, maybe cares we don't even know about that will surprise us this week. May you prompt us in those moments to not fret, to not worry, but instead to let our requests be known to you that we might experience your peace. And we'll give you all the praise in Jesus' name, amen.