Thank you, David, thank you, choir. I invite you to turn with me to Philippians chapter four. We are still looking at verses one to nine, and I wanna read all the verses to you, even though we're only gonna be taking a small section like we did last week again, but I wanna read all the verses one to nine to you. Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. I entreat Euodia and I entreat Suntouhe to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement 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 reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Don't be patient about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. Let's pray. Father, once again, as we always do, we come to you. Come to Your Word now. We know that this is the God-inspired Word. We know this is the Spirit-inspired Word. We know that this is Your Word given to us, that we might know You, the Giver of life. And so as we come to Your Word, we ask for the help of Your Spirit, for the power of Your Spirit to help us to not only understand what You would say to us, but to imprint it on our hearts that we might go out and live in light of what you have told us in your word. So we ask for this grace and this mercy now in this moment. I ask for your help to say what you would have said to your people this morning. In all this we ask in the name of Christ, amen. So the theme has been pressing on. That is the theme that we have been considering in the final chapters here in Paul's letter to the Philippians. Pressing on in the Christian life. Striving toward that final goal. Like athletes who push themselves to the limit to attain the prize, to attain the crown, to obtain the medal, to obtain the gold medal. Our final reward is what we are pressing on toward, striving toward, laboring toward, which means our final reward does not come easy. Our final reward is not cheap. First, our final reward is based upon the infinitely valuable blood of Christ that was shed on our behalf. I fear that much of what passes off as worship in American evangelicalism, superficial worship that plagues our churches in our day, is born out of a lack of awe and wonder at just what it was that Jesus truly accomplished. We have a high view of ourselves, and therefore we have a low view of what the sacrifice of Christ really entailed, and what it really accomplished. By and large, it seems most people fancy themselves as worthy to be died for. And therefore, when we think about the cross of Christ, we think about it as something that we deserve. Of course we deserve to be bought and purchased by His blood. Look who I am. How wonderful I am. But it is a wonder in all what He accomplished. He lived perfectly. And He died obediently. He sacrificed His own life in order to appease the wrath of His Father in the place of sinners for all who would believe in Him. This is a monumental and a momentous thing. And by and large I fear we have lost it, the sense of awe, the sense of wonder at the supreme glory of Christ and the supreme glory of God that is displayed in that moment upon the cross. And His mercy and His forgiveness and His forbearance meet His wrath and His justice and His righteousness in that one pivotal moment as Christ gives His life as a ransom for many. And the Father's complete and total wrath is being poured out upon the sinless, spotless Lamb of God that sinners like you and I might be forgiven. And we're told that God did this because He loved us while we were yet sinners. In other words, while we were unworthy of this amazing grace, He died for us. This is an awesome thing. Our final reward does not come cheap. It requires the infinite sacrifice to appease the infinite wrath of an infinite God who has been infinitely transgressed by every one of us. It is not cheap. It is precious. Secondly, not only is it not cheap because it is based upon this blood of Christ, it's not cheap and it's not easy because coming to Him in faith does not mean we now get to coast into heaven. We don't get to set the cruise control on life and sort of coast our way through this thing. It means that we have been born again, that we have been regenerated, that we have been given new hearts, and therefore new minds and new desires and new thoughts. From that moment of faith and repentance, which we call conversion, the life of the believer is a life of war. Struggle. Difficulty. War with ourselves and our sin. War with the things of this world. War is what the Christian life is. Fight. Labor. Toil. Struggle. Hardship. The Christian life is not for the faint hearted. Which is why you see all over the place, from the words of Jesus and the words of Paul over and over again, don't lose heart. Don't lose faith. This is not a battle and a war for the weak. It is for warriors. Not warriors who fight with guns and swords. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, Ephesians 6, 12. That's the kind of warrior that we mean, ready to battle against the forces of evil at work in our own hearts and in our own minds. And so with that in mind, we come to this passage in Philippians. This passage where Paul has been telling them to press on back in chapter 3. As you know, we had that command back in chapter 3. Join in imitating me. I press on, back up in verse 14, toward the goal of the upper call of God and Christ Jesus. And then he says, join in imitating me in that pressing on. by that command is the how-to for pressing on. Imitate God in leadership. Evaluate enemies of the cross. Keep your mind fixed on heaven. Now we're considering the practical fruit of pressing on. He tells them to press on. He tells them how to press on. And now He tells them what it looks like to press on. Last week, what did we see? Fruit of pressing on is first brotherly love. You had Paul's love for the church in verse 1. You had the church's love for each other when he entreats these two women to agree in the Lord. Some disagreement had caused division in the church. And he calls them out by name and says, you two need to agree. And then he even turns to the church in verse 3 and says, you get involved as well. Disunity is spiritual disaster for the church. Unlovingness is spiritual disaster for the church. It is spiritual suicide. It is just as evil as allowing false doctrine to be taught. And it is just as evil as having open sin in the church. I was meditating on this concept of brotherly love and I was thinking about the church in Ephesus. You remember what Jesus said to them in Revelation 2? He says, I know your works. your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my namesake, and you have not grown weary." This is a good church. according to these opening verses in this letter that Jesus writes through the pen of John. Then in verse 4 He says, "...but I have this against you, you have abandoned the love that you had at first." Ephesus is a church that has all the doctrinal T's crossed and all the doctrinal I's dotted to the point that they can even discern false teachers. They can discern false teaching. They can discern what is evil. They've endured through toil and through hardship, and they've kept the faith. But they've lost their love. And because of this, he threatens in verse 5 to remove their lampstand, remove their blessing, remove their status as a true church of Christ. for all of their doctrinal precision, for all of their knowledge of what the Scriptures teach, for all of their knowledge of who Christ is, and who God is, and what the cross meant, and what it meant to be a Christian, and what it meant to live like Christ taught us to live, for everything that they knew, they did not love. And therefore, He threatened to remove from them their lampstand unless they repented So brotherly love is first. Secondly, we looked at heavenly joy in verse 4. Rejoicing joy, rejoicing the Lord. It's a resolve to be confident in God because He is the one in control of all things. And He is the one who can satisfy our soul's deepest desires and longings. What we know about God grounds our joy in God. What we know about Him is what our joy in Him is grounded in. So I don't want to necessarily belabor those two points in this reintroduction, but this is important. That's why we're moving so slowly through these fruits, because these are important for the life of a healthy Christian, and they're important for the life of a healthy church. So I want you to get it in your mind and remember it. So that's what we went over last week, brotherly love and heavenly joy. The third thing that Paul mentions here in verse five is worldly contentment. worldly contentment. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Now, of course, when I say worldly contentment, I don't mean worldly in a negative sense of the word. I just mean content in this world. I'm just trying to make it sound like the rest of the point. So worldly contentment. He says, let your reasonableness be known to everyone. Reasonableness is a word that can be translated as patience, or forbearance, or gentleness. And the King James is translated as moderation. Let your moderation be known unto all men. And the ASV is translated as forbearance. In the Holman Christian standard, it's translated as graciousness. Here, it's translated as reasonableness. It's a difficult word to convey in English, which is why it's so diversely translated. Listen to John MacArthur's commentary on this Greek term. Epiekes, which is the Greek word, has a richer meaning than any single English word can convey. Hence, commentators in Bible versions vary widely in how they render it. Sweet reasonableness, generosity, goodwill, friendliness, magnanimity, charity toward the fault of others, mercy toward the failures of others, indulgence of the failures of others, leniency, big-heartedness, moderation, forbearance, and gentleness are some attempts to capture the rich meaning of this term. The best corresponding English word is graciousness. The graciousness of humility. The humble graciousness that produces the patience to endure injustice, disgrace, and mistreatment without retaliation, bitterness, or vengeance. In a word, it is contentment. Contentment. You realize how much being content in this world feeds a heart of graciousness. and a heart of selflessness. When you are content with what you have, it's easier to give away out of your abundance. Is it not? When you are content in your job, it's easier to work hard. Right? When you are content in your home, it's easier to be a better husband or father. Or whatever. And on and on it goes. Contentment is the key to gracious humility for the sake of our neighbor. And our entire culture is built to feed the monster of discontent in your heart and in your mind. Everything that we see on television, everything that we see on internet banner ads when you pull up Yahoo or Google, everything that we see on billboards as we drive down the interstate, all of this promises what? The next big thing. And all of it promises the next big thing will finally be what brings you the contentment and the peace that you have been longing for. That's what they promise, but the reality is they are not selling contentment. They are feeding discontentment. I remember reading one time about the release of the newest iPhone last year, and they were talking about how when a new iPhone goes out on the market, The next version of the iPhone is in the final stages of production. The next version of the iPhone is in the final stages of development. And the next, next, next version of the iPhone is in the beginning stages of research and development. They know they're fixing to send another one out on the market a year later. Two years at most. You know how technology is in our day. If you bought something six months ago, you are way out of date today. That's just the way it works. I bought my iPhone a year ago. I feel like a dinosaur with that thing with some of the stuff that a lot of my co-workers are walking around with. They're big computers now. They won't even fit in their hands most of the time. They're not stupid. Think about it. If a company truly thought that they could satisfy the deepest desire of every person on the planet, they would not put it on the market. The market would dry up. Everyone would be happy. They put themselves out of business. They're not worried about you and your contentment. They're worried about you and your wallet. Better business model would be to put that stuff and hide it in the background. Save it for a rainy day maybe. So our culture feeds this sense of discontentment. And we are so entrenched in it, in our culture, that I don't think we even see it anymore. We swim in it. This is just our life. We don't even realize it. We were talking in Sunday school about this a couple of weeks back and the effect that it has on our parenting of our children. Raising our children in this environment of microwave culture and fast food society and everything is right at your fingertips. You can have anything you want. I mean, I got people that I know, and I mean, we do it some, we don't do it 100% of the time, but people I know do not leave their home anymore to go Christmas shopping. It's right there at their fingertips. Free shipping, Amazon, eBay. You don't even have to leave your home to go Christmas shopping anymore. Which, of course, really has an effect on the impulse buying. Used to, part of what kept you from impulse buying was the fact you had to get in the car and go somewhere in order to do it. Now it's just a click away. The effect of this on our parenting, the way that we teach our children, the way that we teach our grandchildren, they can have anything they want whenever they want. Feeding the zeitgeist, so to speak. The culture of discontent. In contrast, Paul is calling us to be reasonable, to be gracious, to be content. What is godly contentment? It is contentment in the things of this world because everything that we have, everything that we own, everything that we possess has been given to us. And it's been given to us by God. And it's been given to us for a reason. Why does He give us good things? That we may glorify Him. This is what godly contentment understands. We will be happy with what we have because God has given it to us. And we will be happy that God has given it to us because He gives us all things that we might glorify Him. He gives us the good things in our lives that we might glorify Him. And He gives us the painful things in our lives that we might glorify Him. Jesus taught us how to pray. What did He say? That we should ask for this day our daily bread. Nothing audacious about that prayer. Nothing otherworldly about that prayer. Nothing big about that prayer. Just give me today what I need to survive. And the underlying implication is, and with this, I will be content. And I will work to see your name hallowed, which he also taught us to pray for. Hallowed be thy name. And give me my daily bread that I might do that. So that's the fruit here. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. Let them see your reasonableness, your graciousness, your contentedness. Why? Because the Lord is at hand. The Lord is near. Such a sweet phrase, once again reminding us of the eminence of our Lord. He is not far off. He is transcendent. He is above this creation. He is above this world. And yet, He is not far from each one of us. He is near. So be content for today. Next is fervent prayer. Fervent prayer. Do not be anxious, verse 6, about anything. But in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Fervent prayer. He starts off this command for prayer with, don't be anxious. Don't be anxious, but instead pray. That ties back into the Lord being at hand as well, right? If He's near, if He's at hand, if He's there, if He's not far off, if He hasn't left you to deal with this world on your own, why in the world would you be anxious about anything? He's near. I was talking to someone about something I might have seen in this movie. It's a very old movie. It's an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Commando. I don't know if anybody's ever seen Commando. But they set Arnold Schwarzenegger up in this movie as this superhuman-like force. And there's this one scene where he even breaks a big chain with his bare hands. It's just ridiculous, but it's great. Because this whole movie, if you just like a good action movie, you can just sit and know that he's going to run roughshod over the bad guys the whole movie. And that's it. There's no tension. There's no tension. There's never any thought that he might lose this thing. At one point, he's running across a yard with an entire army shooting at him. Nothing. You know, it's just it's crazy. You never have this this moment of tension or this moment of anxiety that things aren't going to work out for Arnold in this thing. At the end of the day, you know, he's got this. That's what Paul is calling us to have here, this attitude, Christ is near, so don't be anxious. He's got the whole world in His hands. We teach kids to sing that right from a very early age, from the moment they can even start to speak, we teach kids to sing that. Instead, because we have this Almighty God who is near to us, instead of being anxious, what should we do? We should turn to Him with prayers, The supplications, thanksgiving, letting our requests be made known to Him. What should we do? We should be prayerful people. We should be people of prayer. He uses both prayer and supplication. What's the difference? The difference is the word that is translated as prayer is a word that denotes worshipful prayer. It's prayer that acknowledges who God is. It's prayer that extols and exalts in the glory of who God is. Supplication is exactly what it sounds like. It's a request. It's a petition. And then he says it again, let your what? Requests be made known to God. In other words, he's saying by worshipful and petitioning prayer, make your petition to God. Notice what he is saying. Ask God with a heart of worship and a heart of reverence. The context is clear. He's saying that when circumstances and situations come up that would cause anxiety, when circumstances come up that would cause stress, when they come up that would cause you to lose heart, or to blame others, or maybe even to blame God for how hard your life is, and why would you let this happen to me? And, oh, only bad things happen to good people. He says, don't be anxious. Life is going to come at you. But don't be anxious. Instead, lift it up in prayer. The underlying assumption for Paul here is not that bad things may happen to you, and if they do, act this way. The underlying assumption is bad things will happen to you. And when they do, don't be anxious. Philippians 129, it has been granted to you that you should not only believe, but also suffer for his sake. He's already promised them that God has given it to them to suffer for his name. And he says, when those things come up, don't be anxious, lift it up in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Notice also the attitude of fervent prayer. What's the attitude of fervent prayer? It's thanksgiving. Thanksgiving and everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. He pulls all this together when he writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2, verse 1. First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercession, and thanksgivings be made for all the people. We are to be thankful prayers, not sluggish prayers or ungrateful prayers. It's easy to blame someone else, especially God, when things don't go the way that we think that they should go. And then we remember the words of James in chapter 1. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. And as an extension of that, Paul says that during those trials of various kinds, we offer up prayers with thanksgiving. With thanksgiving. Now what happens when we offer up this fervent prayer from a heart of thanksgiving? We get godly peace. Godly peace. Verse 7, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That's a wonderful promise. The peace of God will guard your hearts. What does it mean by the peace of God? First off, we're promised the peace of God, a peace with God, in salvation. More specifically, in justification. Romans 5.1, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the promise of justification that we are no longer at war with God, but because of the righteousness of Christ and because of His atoning blood, we are transformed from being enemies of God into friends. God goes on in verse 10 of Romans 5 for while we were enemies We were reconciled to God by the death of his son. Much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. We were enemies and we have now been reconciled. James 4.4, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Paul says in Colossians 1.20, that we were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds. And Ephesians 2, he says, we're dead in our trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passion of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the mind, and the body, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind." And in Romans 9 he calls the reprobate children of wrath who are prepared for destruction. The sinner is an enemy of God. The sinner outside of Christ is at war with God. But all of those realities carry the big but after them. But God being rich in mercy. But Christ has reconciled us. We who were once at war with God are now at peace with God. Not only do we have peace with God in our relationship with Him, but we are given the peace of God. This is a beautiful reality. Peace of God. The tranquility of soul. Matthew 11, 28. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, peace, tranquility. John 14, 27. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled. and be not afraid. Even the Old Testament prophets foresaw this. Isaiah 26.3, you keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on you because he trusts in you. And Paul and I mean David in Psalm 29.11, may the Lord give strength to his people. May the Lord bless his people with peace. What is this peace like? We're told that we'll have this peace. What is this peace like? Paul tells us, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. Whatever it's like, it's beyond human comprehension. Whatever it's like, it's beyond human intellect. It's beyond the human capacity to understand it. It's beyond rational thought, this peace of God, a supernatural peace that is given to us. This is a peace that can't be understood, and yet it's a peace that lifts us up out of the despair that can come from trials of various kinds, multifaceted and multicolored trials. I remember so many years ago, we still lived in Lake Charles when the hurricane hit New Orleans, and then the hurricane came through and hit Lake Charles as well. We had to come up here. We stayed with Jennifer's family for three or four weeks, I want to say. during that time. And I remember so many at our church there in Moss Bluff lost their homes, lost many of their belongings. Some of them came home to slab. People down in South Cameron came home to nothing. And I'll never forget the testimony of those who, standing in the midst of the rubble of their homes and the memories that were now lost and would only live on in their minds and in their hearts, standing in the midst of their entire lives being shaken literally to the core, reminding everyone around them that God is good. God is good. That's a piece that surpasses understanding. People see that. And they don't know what to do with it. Unbelievers see that. The world sees that. And they don't know what to do with it because the world lives for everything in this world. You take everything in this world away from the world, they don't have anything else to live for. It's a false peace and a false security. That is not, as Jesus said, what He gives. Not like the world gives do I give. My peace I give to you. We're told what it's like. It's beyond understanding. We're told what it does. It will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. This term for guard, it's a military term. It denotes the one who would stand on the city wall and keep a close watch for foreign enemies who might come and try to take the city. His audience would have understood well what he was trying to say. It will guard you. It will keep watch over you. It will be vigilant, this peace of God, as it keeps watch over you in the midst of the trial, in the midst of the anxiety, in the midst of the worry. That's what it guards us against. It guards us against the doubt, the worry, the anxiety, the stress that can come into our hearts and our minds as we go through a trial. That's the result of what happens when we thankfully pray to God in the midst of the storm. Do you do that? Do you pray to Him with thanksgiving in the midst of the trial, in the midst of the storm, in the midst of the struggle, in the midst of the pain? And if you do, how did it work out? Did you feel the peace? There's a promise He'll always take away the pain. But He does promise He will give you peace, tranquility, calm, resolve in the soul that God, confident resolve, just like we saw, that God is in control of even this. On the flip side, have you ever in the midst of the storm lashed out? Lashed out against others? Lashed out against God Himself? And how did that work out for you? You know well how it worked out. That is not the fruit of godly peace. That's the fruit of worry and doubt. And ultimately, even if it's for a fleeting moment, a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God, that He is in control. So we have brotherly love, heavenly joy, worldly contentment, fervent prayer, godly peace. Now I've got two more for you and we'll finish that out next Lord's Day. Let's pray. Father, we do pray as we have seen as we walked through these verses together one by one, we do pray that you would make us this type of people. People who love each other, who rejoice in the Lord, who are content in this world, and when trying times come, that we would run to You like a child runs to its father to get Your peace in the midst of the storm. We pray that as we live this way, that others would see these good works, these good fruits. They would see our peace in the midst of the storms of this world. And they would see a little bit of what it means to belong to You. In all this we ask, in the precious name of Christ, Amen.