Robert J. Morgan's Blog, page 11

Whatever Happens, Remember How Rich You Are!

Philippians 4:14-20

A name popped up in the news the other day that I didn’t know. He is now reportedly the richest single person on the entire planet. He’s a Frenchman. His name is Bernard Arnault, and he’s a fashion industry executive who oversees the likes of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Tiffany’s, Marc Jacobs, and Sephora and much more. I wondered where such a person lives, so I searched online and found some pictures of his expansive chateaux in France. But there’s also a Penthouse in Paris, a vacation home in San Tropez, another vacation home in the Alps, an entire island in the Bahamas, five mansions in Los Angeles, and a very expensive home in the Hamptons. I don’t think I ever found a complete listing of his residences, but he also has jets and yachts. I expect he doesn’t try to live in all those places; they’re part of his investment portfolio. But overall, he is said to be worth $211 billion.

But…

But for all of that, he is not as rich as the humblest child of God, and I’m not just speaking metaphorically. Let’s look at the passages we’re coming to today in Philippians 4, beginning with verse 14:

Scripture

14 Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. 15 Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; 16 for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. 17 Not that I desire your gifts; what I desire is that more be credited to your account. 18 I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. 19 And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. 20 To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

There remains just the sign-off in verses 21-23: “Greet all God’s people in Christ Jesus. The brothers and sisters who are with me send greetings. All God’s people here send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.”

Background

As we saw earlier in this book, the church in Philippi is the New Testament premier model of church stewardship. In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, Paul gave an extended talk about this. Here at the end of Philippians, he is circling back to thanking them again for the financial support they had sent him while he was under house arrest in Rome. As we say, Epaphroditus had been commissioned to travel the 800 or so miles and take their gift to Paul in Rome, an extraordinary thing for a church to do. 

Dr. Matthew Harmon says the distance traveled could range from 700 to 1200 miles depending on the route taken, and that was partially determined by the time of year. He said that the best estimates for the length of the trip by foot would be six weeks. But in less favorable circumstances, it would take three months. As we saw, Epaphroditus became deathly sick after he arrived in Rome, and Paul nursed him back to health. Then the apostle wrote this letter to the Philippians as a thank you letter, gave it to Epaphroditus, and sent him home. So now, here near the end, Paul has said most of what he wanted to say, and he brings the letter to its conclusion by thanking them and talking about the gift they had sent. 

The Final Paragraph In Philippians

Verse 14 says: It was good of you to share in my troubles. In other words, you partnered with me during this difficult time as a prisoner in Rome, and I appreciate it. It was very good of you.

Verses 15 and 16 say:  Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. 

Here Paul was thinking back over the years to the way the Philippians had sent him financial support. I can’t imagine what this means to a missionary. Throughout my life, I’ve been fortunate to receive a paycheck for services rendered, first at places like J.C. Penney and Sears, and then at the churches I’ve pastored. But I’ve never had to raise my own support the way many missionaries must do. After watching this process for many decades, I can tell you it is harder for some missionaries than others. But I’ve grown in my conviction that a church should as much as possible sponsor and support the missionaries it sends out. This is what the Philippians did for Paul. They became, in effect, his primary supporting church.

So here at the end of the letter, he was officially expressing his deepest gratitude. He went on to say in verse 17: Not that I desire your gifts; what I desire is that more be credited to your account. 

Paul may have been thinking of what Jesus said in Matthew 6:19: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in a steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”  

In some sense, our financial support for the Lord’s work on earth is credited to our account in Heaven. Paul went on to use several other phrases to describe their gift. Look at verse 18:

18  I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.

And now we come to the glorious closing note of the book in verses 19-20: And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The Final Promise in Philippians

Apart from the Bible, my primary source for this study of Philippians has been Dr. Gordon Fee, whose commentary on Philippians is top rated. What Dr. Fee said about this verse is so good I want to quote it to you.

This sentence is a master stroke. Although (Paul) cannot reciprocate in kind, since their gift had the effect of being a sweet-smelling sacrifice, pleasing to God, Paul assures them that God, Whom he deliberately designates as “my God,” will assume responsibility for reciprocity. Thus, picking up the language of “my need” from verse 16 and “fill to the full” from verse 18, he promises them that “my God will fill up every need of yours.”

…”every need of yours,” especially their material needs…, but also every other kind of needs…. One cannot imagine a more fitting way for this letter to conclude, in terms of Paul’s final word to them personally in the midst of their “poverty,” God will richly supply their material needs. [Going back to the main themes of the letter, he is also saying that in] their present suffering in the face of opposition, God will richly supply what is needed (steadfastness, joy, encouragement). In their need to advance in the faith in one mindset, God will richly supply the grace and humility necessary for it. In the place of both “grumbling” and “anxiety,” God will be present with them as the “God” of peace. “My God,” Paul says, will act for me on your behalf by “filling to the full all your needs.”

And God will do so, Paul says, “in keeping with His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. The Philippians’ generosity toward Paul, expressed lavishly at the beginning of verse 18, is exceeded beyond all imagination by the lavish wealth of the eternal God, who dwells “in glory” full of “riches” made available to His [children] “in Christ Jesus.”

This verse is simply a continuation of a theme we find throughout the Bible. When we put the Lord first in our lives, our habits, our priorities, our giving, our living, He will make sure all our needs are met, whether those needs are financial, emotional, spiritual, relational, or whatever.

Psalm 23:1 says, “Because the Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything I need.”

Matthew 6:33 says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.”

John 1:16 says, “From the fullness of His grace, we have all received one blessing after another.” 

Philippians 4:19 says, “And my God will supply all your needs according to His glory in Christ Jesus.”

Former president Dr. Mark Smith (of my alma mater Columbia International University) told of a time when he and his wife Debbie were newly married, trying to graduate from college, and living on a shoestring. Tax season came, and they owed $278 in taxes. That doesn’t seem like a lot to most of us now, but it was a whopping amount to that couple. They were so distressed that for thirty days they committed to fast from certain meals and to pray fervently for that money–$278. 

Dr. Smith later said, “We claimed Philippians 4:19 as a promise that applied to our situation…. Paul wrote this promise to a church that had been giving sacrificially to his own ministry. And our finances were tight because we had followed God’s guidance to attend Bible college.”

Meanwhile, the youth group back at Mark’s home church decided to take up an offering for them, and it amounted to $153. Mark’s grandmother decided to send them a check for $100, and when her husband heard about it he added another $25.

Mark and Debbie received in the mail $278, down to the penny. It was a lesson they never forgot.

The Final Word in This Series of Messages

I said earlier that the humblest child of God is richer than the richest man or woman on earth, and that I wasn’t speaking metaphorically. I want to end our studies of Philippians by sharing 25 Bible verses with you to prove the point:

Genesis 27:28 – May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s  rich ness— an abundance of grain and new wine.Ephesians 1:7 – In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the  rich es of God’s grace.Ephesians 2:7 – …in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable  rich es of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.2 Corinthians 8:9 – For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was  rich , yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become  rich .In the parable of the rich man in Luke 12:21, Jesus said – “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not  rich  toward God.”1 Timothy 6:18 – Command them to do good, to be  rich  in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.James 2:5 – Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be  rich  in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?Ruth 2:12 – May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be  rich ly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.Psalm 119:14 – I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great  rich es.Psalm 145:8 – The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and  rich  in love.Proverbs 22:1 – A good name is more desirable than great  rich es; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.Proverbs 22:4 – Humility is the fear of the Lord; its wages are  rich es and honor and life.Proverbs 28:20 – A faithful person will be  rich ly blessed….Ephesians 2:4 – God… is  rich  in mercy…Isaiah 33:6 – He will be the sure foundation for your times, a  rich  store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.Romans 10:12 – There is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and  rich ly blesses all who call on him.Ephesians 1:18 – I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the  rich es of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.Ephesians 3:8 – Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless  rich es of Christ.Ephesians 3:16 – I pray that out of his glorious  rich es he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,Colossians 1:27 – To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious  rich es of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.Colossians 2:2 – My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they will have the full rich es…Colossians 3:16 – Let the message of Christ dwell among you  rich ly…2 Peter 1:11 – …and you will receive a  rich  welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.Romans 11:33 – Oh, the depth of the  rich es of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!Philippians 4:19: And my God will meet all your needs according to the rich es of His glory in Christ Jesus.

How Rich I Am

Since Jesus came my way
Redeemed my soul
and turned my night to day
How very rich
How very rich I am…

All things have changed
My eyes once blind can see
The whole wide world
is now my symphony
And with all this
Heaven is my destiny
How rich I am!

(John W. Peterson)

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Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

A Study of Ephesians 6:18

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. 

Background

Ephesians 6:18 is truly one of the Bible’s great verses on the subject of prayer, and it’s notable for its four-fold use of the word “all”: And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. 

This passage comes at the end of Paul’s discussion about spiritual warfare. Look at what precedes it in verses 10 and following:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God….

He then lists these pieces of armor and he ends with this verse about prayer. Prayer is a major part of our strategy when it comes to spiritual warfare. It’s important in at least three ways:

A) The very action of prayer places us in a strong and safe zone. The devil and his hordes of demonic and spiritual foes are trying to trip us up ever single day. But they have a very hard time doing any real and lasting damage to a praying Christian. When we are in our place of prayer, in the very presence of God, in the Holy of Holies, talking with the Lord as a person talks to their friend, Satan is hindered in his ability to harm us.

B) Second, while we are there in the safe zone of the Holy of holies, we can ask God for divine protection. In the Lord’s prayer, there’s phrase that says, “Deliver us from evil,” and many commentators believe it is better rendered: “Deliver us from the evil one.” In his prayer in John 17, Jesus prayed for His disciples saying, “Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your name…. My prayer is not that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one” John 17:11 & 15).

C) We can also pray against His schemes. We can say, “Lord, look at how Satan is trying to draw my son or my daughter into the wrong crowd. Lord, rebuke his schemes and frustrate his plans.”

Prayer is a battleground. Think of how the prophet Daniel prayed for three weeks, and the answer to his prayer was hindered by the conflict taking place between angels and demons in Daniel, chapter 10. But the answer came through at last, and Daniel had the victory.

I would like to suggest you have a little nook in your home—a small desk, an alcove, a cubicle or a spot that is hallowed, sacred, and set apart for prayer. Realize that place is your holy of holies, where you can ask God for protection and pray against the schemes of the devil. My mother created several spots around her mountain house and its gardens and woodlands for this very purpose.

That’s the background of Ephesians 6:18. It’s given to us within the context of spiritual warfare. Now, with that context established, let’s look at the verse phrase by phrase:

1. Pray in the Spirit

The verse begins by telling us to “pray in the Spirit.” We have a very similar word in Jude, verse 20: But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. 

What does that mean?

It means that prayer is like any and every other aspect of our Christian, biblical experience. We cannot do it on our own, but only in the power the indwelling Spirit. 

Only Jesus Christ can live the life of Jesus Christ; and if you and I are to be Christlike, it will be Jesus Christ Himself living His life through us by the Holy Spirit who indwells us from the moment of our conversion. 

That means we’re not merely resisting temptation on our own. Jesus is resisting it through us by His Spirit who indwells us. We are not preaching or teaching on our own. Jesus is doing it through us by His Spirit. We are not worshipping on our own. Jesus is worshipping through us by His Spirit. We are not raising our children on our own; Jesus is doing it through us by His Sprit. 

And when it comes to prayer, we’re not trying to pray on our own. Jesus was the greatest prayer warrior who ever walked across the face of the earth. He is praying through us by His Holy Spirit. He is prompting us to pray, teaching us to pray, showing us how to pray and what to pray, and actually praying through us by His Spirit.

Dr. Gordon Fee said, “For Paul, the Spirit, as an experienced and living reality, was the absolutely crucial matter for the Christian life, from beginning to end…. The Holy Spirit is the way God is now present on earth…. Paul understood prayer in particular to be the special prompting of the Spirit….”

Romans 8:15 tells us, “The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by Him [that is, by the Holy Spirit] we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”

The old commentator Matthew Henry said that “praying in this Spirit” is to pray “under His guidance and influence, according to the rule of His word, with faith, fervency, and earnestness; this is praying in the Holy Ghost.” I think that sums it up very well.

But let’s back up and remember that the book of Ephesians is a treasure-trove of verses about the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 1:13 says that when we belong to Christ we are marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.In Ephesians 1:17, Paul prayed that God would give us the Spirit off wisdom to know Jesus better and better.According to Ephesians 2:18, we have access to the Father by the Holy Spirit.In Ephesian 2:22, we learn that God lives within us by His Spirit.In Ephesians 3:16, we discover it’s the Holy Spirit who gives us inner strength and empowers us internally.We’re told not to grieve the Holy Spirit in chapter 4.Chapter 5 says, “Do not be drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.Ephesians 6:17 tells us to wield the sword of the Spirit.And now we’re told to pray in the Spirit.

To pray in the Spirit is to pray, not in our own name or strength or power, but to pray as a believer who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, filled with the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Everything about our Christian life is under the control and direction and empowering of the Holy Spirit, and that includes an effective prayer life.

Dr. Gordon Fee, believes that Paul may have also had in mind something about praying in tongues, which, frankly, has not been part of my own prayer life; but in any case, said Dr. Fee, “Paul considered prayer to be above all an activity empowered by the Spirit.”

Maybe the most practical way we can apply this is to tell the Lord, at the beginning of our regular, daily prayer time, “Lord, fill me now with Your Spirit, and may the Holy Spirit empower me as I pray, join with my requests, and guide my thoughts and emotions so they will be effectively answered before Your throne. I trust the power of the Holy Spirit to empower my prayers with a fervency that’s beyond my own ability.”

2. Pray in the Spirit On All Occasions

Let’s read on. Ephesians 6:18 goes on to say that we’re to pray in the Spirit on all occasions. We discover, as we read the Psalms, that King David took this approach. In Psalm 4 he prayed before going to bed. In Psalm 5, he prayed before beginning his day. In Psalm 5, he prayed when he felt like groaning. In Psalm 6, he prayed when he had sinned. In Psalm 7 he prayed when he was under attack. In Psalm 8, he prayed when he was overwhelmed with the beauty of nature. In Psalm 9, he prayed when he was happy and God seemed close at hand. In Psalm 10, he prayed when God seemed far away. And so forth.

It’s wonderful to get into the habit of pausing to pray through the day. I confess I’m still working on this. But just imagine the constant fellowship you’d have with the Lord if you paused and whispered a prayer before starting a project, making a phone call, attending a meeting, making a financial transaction, or going to join a friend for coffee. Ask God to guide your conversation and to bless you and make you a blessing. While I believe in having a daily time of prayer set apart and woven into our daily routine, that doesn’t erase the need to pray without ceasing.

3. Pray in the Spirit on All Occasions with All Kinds of Prayers and Requests. 

Ephesians 6:18 goes on to tell us that we should pray with all kinds of prayers and requests. How many different kinds of prayer are there? Well, I don’t know. Maybe there are thousands. Let me suggest a few.

First, there is memorized prayer. Back in 1873, in Istanbul, a brilliant theologian and orthodox archbishop was doing research in his monastery when he found a cache of ancient manuscripts. Among them was a document that we now call the Didache. It is recognized as the oldest document in the history of the church, apart from the New Testament itself. It may even date from the first century, and it describes how the very early church worshipped. Reading it is like peeking through the shutters of a local congregation at the end of the first century. 

What did they pray when they assembled together? They prayed words that we ourselves often pray today, in our assemblies and in our homes: Our Father, which art in Heaven. Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come…. 

This is a prayer I memorized as a child. I don’t even remember when or how or where I memorized it, because we said it so often at various gatherings back in those days. I’m very worried that even in our churches, children are not memorizing the Lord’s Prayer, the Twenty-Third Psalm, or even John 3:16. We need a strong Bible memorization (like AWANA) in our churches and homes.

The wonderful thing about memorized prayers is we can offer them over and over, with persistence and perseverance, so long as they don’t become mere mindless repetitions.

Many of our great hymns are also memorized prayers that we can sing, such as: “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.”

Second, there are written prayers. Sometimes when I’m having trouble praying in any other way, I’ll write out a prayer. If in the future when one of my great grandchildren uncovers my journal in a forgotten box in the attic, he’ll find many prayers that I’ve written out. It’s a biblical practice, for many of the psalms are written prayers.

Third, there are bedtime prayers. I read about one little girl who was having her bedtime prayers. Her mother heard her laughing up a storm. Going into her room, she scolded her for laughing and giggling during her prayer. But she replied, “It’s okay, Mom. I was just telling God a joke.”

I think it’s wonderful how she felt such fellowship with the Lord. I heard a lady say the other day how often she awakens in the night and, unable to go back to sleep, begins praying for the people she holds dear in her life.

Fourth, there are Scripture prayers. Over the last few years, I’ve learned something about the power of turning the Bible into a prayer book. I have a couple of people on my prayer list, and one of my primary prayers for both of them goes bac to Romans 15:13: “Now may the God of hope fill them with all joy and peace as they trust in You, so they will overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Fifth, there are quick prayers. Missionary Amy Carmichael  said that Dr. F. B. Meyer told her that when he was young he was very irritable, an old man told him to look up to the sky the moment he felt his anger rising and saying, “Thy sweetness, Lord.”

Amy Carmichael learned that whenever she came across someone she didn’t like, to look up and say quietly, “Thy love, Lord.”

Or “Thy patience, Lord!” 

Or “Thy wisdom, Lord!”

On one occasion, Jesus offered a prayer that was nothing more than a sigh offered up to heaven. And I’ve found that sometimes I can just lift my heart up to heaven and say, “Lord, give me patience.” Or “Lord, give me strength.”

Sixth, there are walking prayers. Over the years, the term “prayer walking” has become popular. People pray all the while they are walking. Sometimes people literally walk around a particular geography, claiming it for the Lord. 

I’ve recently studied the life of the Civil War evangelist E. M. Bounds, and I read that every afternoon in his little town in Alabama he would go for a long afternoon walk and pray for every family in the houses that he passed. But there’s an even earlier example. In the Old Testament book of Joshua, the children of Israel conducted a prayer walk of sorts around the city of Jericho, claiming it for the Lord.

Seventh and best of all, there is the regular, daily prayer time that helps comprise our quiet time, as I mentioned earlier in my discussion of prayer nooks.

Christianity Today ran a profile of the late British pastor, John Stott, who was for many years the rector of All Soul’s Church in London. The article was written by a former research assistant to Dr. Stott, who knew his daily habits intimately.

Dr. Stott began every day at 5 a.m. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and started the day with a version of this Trinitarian prayer.

Good morning, Heavenly Father; good morning, Lord Jesus; good morning, Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, I worship You as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Lord Jesus, I worship You, Savior and Lord of the world. Holy Spirit, I worship You, Sanctifier of the people of God. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Heavenly Father, I pray that I may live this day in Your presence and please You more and more. Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow You. Holy Spirit, I pray that this day You will fill me with Yourself and cause Your fruit to ripen in my life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons in one God, have mercy upon me. Amen.

For decades, Stott begun each day with a version of that prayer.

And then he had a small leather notebook, stuffed full of folded papers and held together with a rubber band. Each morning, having read three chapters of the Bible and meditated over them, he opened this prayer notebook and prayed for families, friends, ministries, and even for strangers. He kept a daily prayer list that was always under revision. Then he had a prayer calendar that listed missionary projects and people groups all over the world. He prayed over these things without haste or hurry.

This is the way he began each morning, and every one of us needs to develop a pattern of regular prayer in our lives. We may not do it just as John Stott did, but I love the idea of methodical daily prayer.

There are so many other kinds of prayers—corporate prayers, prayers of confession, prayers of thanksgiving, pastoral prayers at church, and so forth. Learning to pray effectively is a lifelong adventure, and I hope this one verse is an encouragement for you to work on your own habits and practices this week.

Perhaps somewhere in my message today you’ve gotten a single hint or spur of motivation to do as the Bible says:
Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

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Blessed!!

Psalm 1

Introduction

Many years ago when I was in college, a couple of friends and I were invited to spend the weekend at Billy Graham’s mountain home in Montreat, North Carolina, with his wife Ruth while he was away. Ruth was a wonderful Bible teacher, and she said many things that I’ve never forgotten. One of them had to do with Psalm 1. She told us, “Memorize Psalm 1, because it is the gateway to all the 150 Psalms.” I did memorize it, and even now, a half-century later, I quote it silently to myself almost every morning when I awaken.

It’s fair to say that all the other 149 Psalms are an extended explanation of Psalm 1. It’s almost like you have the whole book of Psalms in a nutshell when you read this one. So that’s what I’d like to share with you today.

Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers.

4 Not so the wicked!
    They are like chaff
    that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
    nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
    but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

1. Blessed Is…

The opening word is Blessed. In Hebrew, it is esher. This word occurs 44 times in the Old Testament, and it is always used about human beings. Let me show you one of the times this word is used, and it’ll give us a good idea of the meaning. 

In 2 Chronicles 9, the Queen of Sheba came to visit King Solomon. Sheba was the ancient name for the country that we call Yemen, which is at the southernmost part of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering Saudi Arabia on the south. There was a lot of commerce taking place on the high seas, and the queen had heard of this golden and blessed kingdom to the north that seemed to be mystical and magical—like Camelot, we would say. So she undertook a long trip to see for herself and no doubt to strengthen her international alliances. 

Look at 2 Chronicles 9:5-8:

5 She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. 6 But I did not believe what they said until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half the greatness of your wisdom was told to me; you have far exceeded the report I heard. 7 How happy your people must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! 8 Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on his throne as king to rule for the Lord your God. Because of the love of your God for Israel and his desire to uphold them forever, he has made you king over them, to maintain justice and righteousness.”

Notice the phrases: How happy your people must be! How happy your officials must be!

The word “happy” there is esher, which is translated blessed in Psalm 1. So the idea is this: When we find ourselves under the sovereignty of a good and wise and wealthy King, we are very fortunate. We are in a good place in life. This is where we want to be. That’s what the word “blessed” means—the fortunate, enviable, happy condition of those who are living under a good and gracious and great King.

2. Blessed is the One Who Does Not…

That’s just the first word of the Psalm. Let’s go on:

Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,

In other words, blessed people are blessed, in part, because they do not let the world around them determine their lives. I remember preaching from this text once at a retreat and a young lady came up to me afterward, troubled. She said, “If I have to give up my non-Christian friends, how will they ever come to the Lord?”

This verse is not telling us to live in isolation from ungodly people. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 5:9-10, the apostle Paul said: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.” Instead, he said, we should not associate with people who claim to be Christians but are living in sexual immorality and so forth.

The key in Psalm 1 is in the verbs. We are not to walk in the way or stand in the place or sit in the seat of these people. In other words, although we are surrounded by ungodly people we are not to let our lives fall into their patterns. We are not to be like them. We are not to follow them into sin.

3. Blessed Is The One… Whose Delight is in the Law of the Lord

We are not to be governed by the world but by the Word. Verse 2 goes on to say: …but whose delight is in the law of the Lord.

When I was in Israel, I purchased a new English translation of the Psalms done by a Jewish Rabbi, and this verse said, “…but his delight is in the Torah.” The Torah is the first five books of the Bible, which was essentially David’s Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.

I believe David was a brilliant young man who could read and write and who, thanks to his parents and his mentor Samuel, had his own copy of the Torah. And there’s one passage he took very seriously:

Deuteronomy 17 says:

14 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,” 15 be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. 16 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

18 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. 19 It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

There’s no doubt David copied every word of the Torah—the Bible of his time—and read it every day of his life.  And now we have the completed Bible—all 66 books. But notice that David didn’t tell us here to write it out, although that’s a good thing to do. He didn’t tell us to read it, although that’s a good thing to do. He told us to delight in it!

To delight in something is to find a lot of pleasure in it. 

Here is the question for you. Do you find a lot of pleasure in reading and studying and pouring yourself into the Bible? 

This isn’t just a question for kings and preachers and missionaries. It’s for every single follower of Jesus, regardless of our age or educational background. Do you find pleasure in studying this Book?

4. And Who Meditates on It Day and Night

David went on to say… but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

Now I want to talk about this word: “meditate.” Let me show you two other times this same Hebrew word occurs in the Bible. Both are in the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah 31:4: As a lion growls….Isaiah 38:14: I moaned like a mourning dove…

The words “growled” and “moaned” are the same Hebrew word as meditate in Psalm 1. Do you see the connection? This is something you do under your breath. It literally means to mutter Scripture under your breath. It means to make a low sound. To the Hebrews, meditation was a matter of whispering to yourself, muttering to yourself, repeating to yourself in a low sound. In other words, you’re not speaking to someone else; you are using the Word of God to speak to yourself, to mull over it and think about it. 

How often should you be doing this? Day and night! You find a Bible verse or a passage that really speaks to you—like Psalm 1—and you…. 

Verbalize it—reading it over and over.Memorize it—almost without trying because you keep going over it.Analyze—like we’re doing to Psalm 1.Personalize it—how does this change my life?Emphasize it—by sharing it with someone else.

In my book about God’s faithfulness, I related a story told to me by Dr. Gary Mathena involving his father. Dr Mathena said:

One of my dad’s heroes in the ministry was an African American preacher named Manuel Scott. After hearing Dr. Scott preach one evening my dad had the opportunity to have breakfast with him the next day. My dad said, “Dr. Scott it is so evident that you are a spiritual man. How does a man become spiritual? How can I learn to preach with the insights and depth with which you preach?”

Manuel Scott thought for a moment and said, “Well, Harold, when you wake up in the morning spend time reading and thinking about the Word of God and then throughout the day meditate and ruminate on the Word of God all day long. And then before you go to sleep at night allow the Word of God to bathe your heart and mind.” Then Dr. Scott paused and reached up to put his thumbs under his red suspenders and said, “If you’ll do that, then one of these days, you’ll just wake up spiritual!”

5. They Shall Be Like Trees

Well, here’s the way King David put it: That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.

I grew up beside the Doe River in Carter County, Tennessee. It forms from waters rolling off Roan Mountain and winds its way through Doe River Gorge, which is one of the most beautiful places in Tennessee, and ends up in Elizabethton where it flows under a historic Covered Bridge and then disappears into the Watauga River. When I was a boy, I grew up in a house just across the street from the river. In fact, our street was named Riverview Drive. When I was in college, my parents moved to their family property in Roan Mountain, which is right on the same river. Beautiful trees line the river, and in my kitchen in Nashville I have an oil painting by a mountain artist of a scene I know very well. It’s a tree leaning over the river and soaking up the nourishment of the life-giving waters of little Doe River.

That’s a picture of every person on earth who avoids letting their friends push them into negative patterns in life, and who lets the Word of God dominate their thinking.

This is a very common biblical metaphor.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 says: “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Psalm 92 says: “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,  they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord,  they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, “The Lord is upright; He is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in Him.”

There’s a reason why this is so. Remember what I said about the painting by a mountain artist? Our minds are like a canvas. When we’re born, there’s very little on the canvas, but as we begin learning one brush stroke after another adds color and content. Without the Bible, the colors are dark and dull and shadowy. But whenever we let the Lord dip His paintbrush into the pallet of Scripture, He covers the canvas with the cheerful colors of truth and joy and hope and life. The more we meditate on Scripture, the brighter our minds and the wiser our hearts and the happier our lives.

6. Not So the Wicked!

But now let’s go on to verse 4: No so the wicked. They are like the chaff that the winds blow away. 

The righteous are like a tree, but the wicked are like the chaff that the winds blow away. That’s a dramatic contrast. I have never winnowed grain, so I looked up some videos. When you harvest wheat, you bundle some of the stalks together and these are called sheaves. The sheaves were stacked up in the field to let them dry out some more. At the top of every sheave is the heads of the plants containing the wheat berry. You had to figure out how to remove the kernels of grain from the straw. A lot of times that was done by putting the wheat on the ground and having a donkey pull a threshing board over it or you might beat it against the wall of a building or the floor, and that breaks loose the wheat berry from the little sheath around it. 

But then how do you separate the wheat berries from the chaff? It would take hours to do it by hand. No, you find a windy day, toss the mixture into the sky, and the wheat is heavy enough to fall back to the ground, but the wind carries the chaff away like dust or debris. 

Back in the 1970s, a musical group came out with a song that was very popular, but it was fatalistic and despairing. The words said, “All we are is dust in the wind.” That’s something of the picture the Psalmist is painting.

Now, let’s look at verses 4 and 5 together: Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

Does this remind you of any other passage of Scripture? When John the Baptist came to prepare the way for Jesus Christ, this is what he said in Matthew 3:11-12:

“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes One who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will clear His threshing floor, gathering His wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

This is a picture of the judgment! The ultimate judgment at the end of the age.

Conclusion

But notice the final verse: For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. Those who walk in step with the wicked and stand in the way of sinners and sit in the company of mockers will wind up in judgment and destruction.

But the Lord watches over the way, the life, the path, the destination of those who know who to avoid, what to think, and how to meditate on God’s Word.

Dr. Walt Larimore once saw a woman who was battling depression. Her name was Debbie, and she was in her thirties. She had all the classic symptoms of low level depression including lack of energy and stamina. Depression was in her family history, and Dr. Larimore talked with her and together they devised a plan. He took his prescription pad and wrote out a prescription for a mild antidepressant, then he turned the page and wrote another prescription. He tore it off and gave it to her and told her to come back in two weeks.

She was back two weeks later, and she was like a different woman. She was energetic and upbeat. He went through the screening questions for depression, and her results were much better. She said, “The prescription you gave me really worked.”

He said, “The antidepressant usually takes three or four days before it kicks in, sometimes three or four weeks, but I’m glad it’s working for you.”

But she told him that was not the prescription that had the biggest impact on her. It was the second prescription. The second prescription said, “Read your Bible every day and memorize Psalm 1.”

May I offer the same prescription for you today!

The post Blessed!! appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

Whatever Happens, Learn the Secret to Contentment

A study of Philippians 4:10-13

Introduction:

One of the best reasons for going to Washington, D.C., is to visit the museums, especially the various Smithsonian museums and the National Gallery. And, of course, my favorite—the Museum of the Bible. There’s one museum I want to see more than any of the others, but I can’t get into it. It’s arguably the most fascinating museum in Washington, but it’s off limits to you and me. It’s the Secret Museum of the Central Intelligence Agency, located at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It occupies 11,000 square feet of space, and contains all kinds of spy gadgets and espionage memorabilia and unusual weapons. 

The only thing is—the only people who can visit it are employees of the CIA.

Washington is a city of top secrets and classified information. There is so much we, as average citizens, do not know. I hope the government will declassify all the files related to the assassination of President Kennedy—which I remember—so that I’ll finally know who shot the man.

Well, the Lord has secrets too, and sometimes He declassifies some of them for us. That that brings us to our passage today in Philippians 4:10-13:

10 I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. 11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

1. God Has Secrets

He had learned one of God’s secrets. It’s very interesting to think in these terms. Look, for example, at Deuteronomy 29. In this chapter, Moses is very old and nearing the time of his death. He gathers the nation of Israel and leads them to renew their commitment to God. He explains what the Lord will do for them if they remain true to Him, and what the Lord will do if they forsake Him, and Moses implores them to obey the law they had been given. 

Now look at the final verse—Deuteronomy 29:29: The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of His law. 

God has revealed to us a great deal of information. He has given us all sixty-six books of the Bible, plus all of the physical universe as a classroom. But there are some things He has not told us. After all, He is omniscient. 

Isaiah 55 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts…. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are…my thoughts (higher) that your thoughts” (verses 8-9). 

But God is a God who reveals His secrets. Look at Isaiah 45:2-3: I will go before you and will level mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the hidden treasures, riches stored up in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. 

This was originally addressed to King Cyrus as a prophetic statement by Isaiah, but there’s application here for us. God gives us the hidden treasures of His secrets.

When Jesus came, He revealed more secrets, helping us to formulate a clearer picture of the Gospel. He told His disciples, “…the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given to you” (Matthew 13:11).

But when it came to God’s secrets, there’s one thing that even Jesus in His humanity did not know—the exact time of His Second Coming. He said, “But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36).

Well, God had one secret that the apostle Paul learned over time. Look at this passage again. Verse 10 begins, “ I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.” Remember that the Philippian church had always been Paul’s best supporting church, sending him funds again and again. This time they had sent him money by the hand of Epaphroditus, and Paul was thanking them.

But he went on to say in verse 11: “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”

Notice the simple statement: “I have learned to be content.” And in verse 12, he explains what he means: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.”

Some days Paul is staying in the wealthy villas of his friends and being cared for by wealthy Christians, and other times he’s exposed to the weather or having to scramble for food. But he is as content in one situation as he is in the other.

Now, in verse 12, Paul repeats himself but he goes further in his comments: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

The Greek word that Paul used was amazing. It’s a Greek technical term. If you read this phrase in English, it is made up of five words: “I have learned the secret.” But in Greek, that entire phrase is given in one  short word: memyemai, (pronounced me-MA-o-mi). This is the only time this word occurs in the Bible.  It means to be initiated into mysteries. In secular Greek usage it had to do with the mysteries of the magical cults. To become a candidate for some mystery religion, you had to go through some kind of initiation or ritual. After you learn the mysteries, you must make a vow of silence. 

In the Second Temple period, it was sometimes used to describe the top secret information that a king had issued involving a war or involving a matter of national security. 

Paul said, “I have learned something that is top secret, that was classified information.” He had uncovered one of God’s best secrets.

2. One of His Secrets Has to Do With Contentment

He said, “I have learned to be content…. I have learned the secret to contentment.”

This is a very, very hard thing to learn. At some level, were we truly content we would be just as satisfied in our heart… 

In a hospital bed as in our bed at home.In a one-room apartment as in a three-story house.In being single as well as in being married.In failure and in defeat as in success and victory.In losing the game as well as in winning it.

But I am not always content when things aren’t as I want them to be! Or at least, I have to really work on it. In order to get there, we have to know exactly what contentment is. I have worked and worked on a definition of contentment—and my best suggestion is Quiet Joy.

Contentment isn’t loud joy. It’s not shouting in exuberance; it’s not like the finale of a fireworks show. It is quiet joy, like the sound of a gentle rain or the purring of a cat. It’s the green pastures and still waters of Psalm 23. It’s the glow of a campfire or the sound of leaves crunching under our feet in the fall. It’s a hot cup of tea, sweetened with honey and good to the last drop. It’s lighting a candle on an overcast day, or an extra blanket on a cold night. It’s the quiet joy of knowing the eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. We may not have everything we want or even everything we need, but we have HIM—and that gives us an inward quiet joy that we call contentment. 

Few people have written about this, except for a couple of great Puritan writers long ago. But one man did. Pastor Erik Raymond wrote a book called Chasing Contentment, and this was his definition: “Contentment is the inward, gracious, quiet spirit that joyfully rests in God’s providence.”

The Bible devotes several verses to this:

Psalm 131:2: But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.1 Timothy 6:6-7: But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, will we be content with that?Hebrews 13:5: Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

But notice Paul didn’t say he had learned contentment. He said he had learned the secret to contentment. Contentment is one of the Lord’s secrets. It’s one that Paul somehow uncovered. God has a secret code that unlocks contentment, and Paul discovered it over time. What was it? I know what it is, and I’m not going to sell it to you. I’m going to give it to you for free, absolutely without charge. God’s secret code to discovering and learning to be content are the numbers 413—Philippians 4:13!

3. And the Secret to Contentment Is…

Philippians 4:13: I can do all this through the one Him who gives me strength.

I want to read this verse from several different translations so we can get the force of it.

I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me (Good News Translation).I am ready for anything through the strength of the one who lives within me (J.B. Phillips).I can be content in any and every situation through the Anointed One who is my power and strength (The Voice)I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency] (Amplified Bible, Classic)

This verse is not an absolute promise you can do anything you want to. God is not promising you’ll run a four-minute mile, or make a million dollars, or hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine in one season. Perhaps He will help you do one or all of those things, but this verse has the exact opposite meaning. It means that whether you reach your goals or ambitions or not, He will give you the strength to have His quiet joy. 

Many Christian athletes write Philippians 4:13 on their arms or on their sneakers, which is a very good thing. But it doesn’t mean God will give you the strength to win every event, but that He will give you the strength to do your best and then handle the outcome with a sense of inner peace and satisfaction, whatever happens. 

In other words, when we are in Christ we have everything we need, and He infuses us with the strength we need to live with contentment, whatever the circumstances, knowing He is with us, He is working, and He has a wonderful everlasting eternity ahead of us.

The secret, in other words, is Jesus Himself, and the strength He brings to our hearts when He enters any situation with us. Being content depends on your content. It depends on having Jesus Christ within you by His Holy Spirit.

Recently I’ve circled back to an old Gospel song about guidance. I’ve walked through difficult times recently and had to rely on the Lord’s guidance when I was unsure what my next steps should be. But the Lord directed my attention back to the great song, “He Leadeth Me.” One of the verses sums all this up with these words:

Lord, I would place my hand in Thine,

Nor ever mummer nor repine;

Content whatever lot I see;

Since ‘tis My God that leadeth me.

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,

By His own hand, He leadeth me.

His faithful follower I would be, 

For by His hand He leadeth me.

Let’s be content whatever lot we see! And let’s learn the secret of the great apostle who said: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all things through Christ who infuses me with His own strength in any and every circumstance.”

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Whatever Happens, Think On These Things

Philippians 4:8-9

There’s a celebrity doctor and psychiatrist named Daniel Amen who has done extensive research on the brain. Some of his views are controversial, so I decided to read one of his books to see what I thought. I came away ambivalent about his ideas. But there were a few sentences I highlighted, and I want to share some of those with you.

You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better….You can literally change your brain, and when you do, you change your life…. Learning to love and care for your brain will also decrease your stress, improve your relationships, increase your chances of success in every area of your life, help stave off dementia, and prevent you from becoming a burden to others.(You can) master your brain by controlling what goes into it.How you feel is often related to the quality of your thoughts.Watching just fourteen consecutive minutes of negative news has been found to increase both anxious and sad moods.Each thought you have triggers the release of certain chemicals, which makes you feel good or bad.Direct your attention toward what you are grateful for and your brain will work better.

That’s not exactly new advice. Let’s read this passage from Philippians 4:8-9 and see what the Lord has to say:

8  Finally, brothers and sisters, 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.  9  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Such Things

The key imperative or commandment is “think about such things.” The Lord is very concerned with what goes on in our minds every day. What do we daydream about? What is our first thought in the morning and our last thought at night? What are we thinking about when we’re driving the car with the radio or music or podcasts turned off? What attitudes fill our minds?

Barclay: “This is something of utmost importance because it is a law of life that, if a [person] thinks of something often enough, he will come to the stage when he cannot stop thinking about it. His thoughts will be quite literally in a groove out of which he cannot jerk them.”

Well, in this passage in Philippians, Paul gives us eight qualities that should be true of the things our minds are thinking about.

True. When I was about thirteen or so, I was walking through my Aunt Louise’s factory. There was a lot of dangerous equipment in there, but I could go through it if I followed the path that had been marked out by white lines. So I was out in the factory and I saw two of the workers by one of the machines, and they were laughing about something. I worried and worried about what had caused them to laugh. Was it because I was a little pudgy? Was it because my face was a little broken out? Was it because I wasn’t wearing the right clothes? Well, now I realize they were laughing about something that had nothing to do with me, and that I was letting a self-fabricated lie bounce around in my mind. Don’t we do that all the time?Noble – In the New Testament, this Greek word described things that were serious, noble, and worthy of reverence. As I’m developing this message there are strikes in France because of proposed retirement changes, and the garbage trucks haven’t been running. The tourists in Paris are having to walk down sidewalks in which bags of garbage have been piling up for weeks, but they do have the opportunity of choosing what to focus their thoughts on. They can either be obsessed with the garbage or they can lift their eyes to see the great monuments like the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. Our thoughts can be in the gutter or we can rise above the gutter and think of things that are noble.Right. The Greek word here is dikaios, which is often translated righteous in the Bible. And closely connected to it is the next word:Pure. Think about this word “pure.” It actually means something that is not contaminated, like pure water or pure gold. In moral terms it means something that isn’t tarnished or contaminated with sinful images or impulses.Lovely. This is a word that means something that is pleasing to see. It comes from the Greek word phileo, which means brotherly love. It has to do with the joy we have when we see a friend that we enjoy being with.Admirable. This is a straightforward term—something we are able to admire.Excellent. The word “excellent” here means excellence of quality or character. And finally, Praiseworthy. This refers to something you can applaud. I once went to hear the President of the United States speak in a high school gymnasium. I like some of the things he said, and I would applaud them. But he said other things I strongly disagreed with, and I didn’t applaud those statements. We need to fill our minds with thoughts that God applauds. 

Think

Now, obviously as we go through life we’re confronted with a lot of things that have the opposite qualities. Almost every morning I read the newspaper, spending a few minutes catching up on the nation and the world, and thinking about warfare and death and destruction. I think about political polarization. I read about the persecution of Christians, and about secularism and about all manner of evils bedeviling our planet. 

Are we not to think about those things?

Well, we are. But the word “think” here in the New International Verse is translated differently in other versions.

The New King James Version says meditate on these things.The Christian Standard Bible says dwell on these things. The New American Standard Bible says let your mind dwell on these things.The Contemporary English Version says keep your mind on [these things].And the Amplified Bible says, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart].And the Good News Translation says, fill your mind [with these things].

All of this comes down to thinking more and more about the Lord and about His ways and His will for us and His Word. Paul is simply restating what the entire Bible teaches.

For example…

Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is the person…whose delight is in the Law of the Lord and who meditates on it day and night.”Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep those in perfect peace whose minds are set on You.”Romans 8:5 says, “Those who lie according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.”Colossians 3 says: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

How Do We Do this?

When it comes to biblical meditation, I have four steps that all begin with the letter “R”.

Read

First, we have to read our Bibles. In many periods of history, Christians would hear and learn vast portions of material. But today global literacy stands at 87 percent, and in most developed countries that number is 99 percent.

We praise God for that, because it gives us the opportunity to read God’s Word for ourselves. It bothered Jesus very greatly when His audiences did not read and ponder the Scriptures. Let me give you some verses just from Matthew’s Gospel.

Matthew 12:3: Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?Matthew 12:5: Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temples desecrated the Sabbath and yet are innocent?Matthew 19:4: Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female.Matthew 21:16: Haven’t you read, “From the lips of children and infants, You…have called forth Your praise.”Matthew 21:42: Have you never read in the Scriptures: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”?Matthew 22:31: But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you?

The Lord expects us to read His Word with reverence. And something happens when we begin reading the Bible seriously every day. In her blog, Annett Coffee writes about how she had a massive stroke at age 45 and was unable to speak for seven years. Even now, many years later, she has trouble pronouncing some words, so she writes more than she talks and she ministers through her blog. In one entry, she wrote:

I believe now that my stroke was the most important thing that ever happened to me…. I have come to not only believe in my God but got to know him and his character so very well that I realize that I can’t possibly live a minute without him. Nor do I ever want to. I began reading the Bible every day the year after my stroke. And though at times it has been tough, I committed to read straight through from the beginning to the end. The only way you can have a real good relationship with someone is to get to know everything that is important to them and by sharing everything that is important to you also. That’s why reading the Bible and prayer is so valuable. It’s actually better than the best textbook , owner’s manual, or guidebook for life and it was inspired by the very one who made us and knows what is best for us.… I can honestly say that I have never been more at peace, happier, more fulfilled than I am right now.

You don’t necessarily have to read from Genesis to Revelation, but it is important to begin reading today where you left off yesterday. And I like to read the Bible with a pen or pencil in my hand, because that helps me begin making notes and underscoring various verses that really speak to me.

You can do this. Find an easy-to-read translation and get started today.

Remember

That leads to the second step, remembering it. How do you do that? I think the most creative thing I’ve read about comes from an athlete named Vera Schmitz, who was an athlete from Missouri and an Olympic hopeful and All-American pole vaulter. Whenever she would compete, she would write a Scripture verse with a Sharpie on her arm. Later she started a website to help people memorize Scripture. If you subscribe, every month you get a scripture card, a key chain, and three temporary tattoos to help you remember the verse you’re working on. 

I’m not necessarily suggesting you subscribe to this service, but we need ways of remembering and even memorizing key verses the Lord gives us. It helps if we find ways of writing it down.

Ruminate

Third, you have to ruminate on it. I could have used the word “reflect,” but as I prepared this message, I read a book entitled The Art of Divine Meditation by a Puritan named Edmund Calamy, who lived in the 1600s. He was a very popular preacher in London. 

He referred to a most unlikely passage in the Bible. Leviticus 11 says that there are clean and unclean animals. One of the indicators was this. The animals that chew the cud are clean, and the ones who don’t are not.

Calamy said the same is true for people. The ones who chew the cud are clean—and getting cleaner every day. What did he mean by that?

I grew up around livestock and I’ve owned livestock. Some barnyard animals like cows and sheep have a divided stomach. They graze and eat all the grass they can and swallow it whole, and then later they find a shady spot, regurgitate it, and chew it up really good before swallowing it again.

This special stomach is called the ruman, and that’s where we get our word ruminate. It means that we let our minds chew on whatever it is that we’ve read and remembered. 

In his book, Edward Calamy wrote: “A meditating Christian is one that chews the cud, that chews on the truths of Jesus Christ, that does not only hear good things, but when he has heard them, chews them over, ruminates on them, so that they may be more fit for digestion and concoction, and spiritual improvement.”

Let’s say you’ve been focusing your attention on this particular verse—Philippians 4:8. It says, “If anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” You consider what’s been occupying your mind. Has it been filled with worry about something? Has it been filled with impure images? Has it been filled with the nonstop coverage of some story in the news? Are those things excellent or praiseworthy? How would you explain this phrase to someone else? You just sit there and ruminate about this. 

Whenever I’m preparing a sermon, I find that after I’ve studied the selected passage as well as I can, I inevitably have to talk a walk or pace back and forth in my office, trying to figure out how to explain this material and make it practical and apply it to life.

That is rumination. That is reflection. That is biblical mediation. 

We let the Bible change our thoughts.We let our thoughts change our attitudes.We let our attitudes change our behavior. 

Realign 

And that brings us to the final step—we realign our life to what we’ve learned. We respond. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

And the promise is that the God of peace will be with us during the process.

Years ago there was a motivational expert named Henry Thomas Hamblim. I want to take something he wrote and read it to you, but I’ve updated it in my own words. He said, in effect…

The world today is in its present state simply as a result of mankind’s collective thinking…. And each individual is what he or she is, what their lives are, what their circumstances are, simply as a result of their own thinking. 

What we think, we become; what we think is the mainspring of all our actions; what we think is what builds our environment around us. 

What we think determines the kinds of friends we have, whether we are happy or miserable, successful or not. What we think either builds us up or tears us down.

The Washington Post recently ran an article entitled “America Was Obsessed with this Self-Help Craze 100 Years Ago.” We call the decade between the first and second world wars the “Roaring Twenties.” During this time, there was a Frenchman named Émile Coué, who developed a concept called autosuggestion. During the 1920s, this fad swept over America like the wind and everyone was caught up in it. Here’s what people did. 

They bought a strand of 20 beads, and every morning when they woke up, sometimes without even getting out of bed, they repeated this phrase twenty times in succession: “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” 

They could keep count of how many times they said it by moving their fingers through the beads, one at a time, like using a rosary. In the evening when going to bed, they would do the same. 

America became infatuated with this practice, and for a little while Coué was the most talked about man in the country. He died in 1926, and American’s quickly forgot about the frenzy, but his ideas lived on. The Washington Post said he led the way for the likes of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale, and more recently Oprah Winfrey, who told her followers: “Look at yourself in a full-length mirror. Now compliment yourself. Yes I can do it. Repeat those empowering words aloud every morning and every night.”

I’m not selling you any beads, and I’m not trying to push any self-help slogans. But when it comes to the specific Bible verses God gives you, I want to suggest repeating them over and over.

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…. And the God of peace will be with you.

In closing, let me give you the devil’s version of this: 

Finally, my pushovers, whatever is disturbing, whatever is worrisome, whatever is sleazy, whatever is impure, whatever is worthless, whatever is filthy, whatever is doubtful, whatever is bitter—if there is anything crude and perishable—think on these things, and the heartaches of the world will engulf you.

For what it’s worth, I suggest the original version—Philippians 4:8!

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Whatever Happens, Have a Strategy for Imperfect Situations

Philippians 4:2-7

Introduction

Many years ago when our children were young and we were living in the church parsonage, Katrina worked all afternoon on her signature lasagna. She did everything from scratch, and we peeked into the oven and it was perfect—golden brown and hot and bubbling. She grabbed the potholders to take it out of the oven. 

It was absolutely perfect—and then it wasn’t!

I still don’t know what happened. Somehow it slipped out of her hands, flew through the air, and landed upside down on the kitchen floor. Katrina instantly burst into tears and it was one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen. We had to take the broom and dustpan and mop and dispose of it all, and all the time Katrina was just sobbing. I tried to console her and went out to get pizzas for supper.

Nothing is perfect in this life. Things get turned upside down all the time. Even a perfectly designed vacation is going to have a snag here and there. A perfect concert will have a discordant note somewhere, even if most people don’t realize it. And how often have I told people, “There is no perfect church.”

The church in Philippi was just about as perfect as we find in the New Testament, but there were a couple of women who had dropped the lasagna, as it were, and they were arguing about it. Paul wanted someone to console them and to send out for pizza. 

Look at Philippians 4:2-3: I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, to help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the Gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

These two women—Euodia and Syntyche—(we don’t know anything more about them) were causing some kind of division, and Paul wanted the others to help them resolve it. 

But now, beginning in verse 4, he goes on to tell us what to do in imperfect situations. We have a series of five statements that scholars call a paraenesis (para-nee’-sis), or a short set of instructions given in a staccato style. The apostle Paul often did this at the end of his letters. He had a lot more he wanted to say, but he was running out of parchment. So he begin using what we call today “bullet points.”

Perhaps the best illustration of this is in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22:

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.

Here in the closing paragraphs of Philippians, Paul says some of the same things, and I want to show you five of them in this message. Philippians 4:4-7 says:

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

1. Rejoice in the Lord always.

Rejoicing is something that doesn’t come to us naturally; it comes to us supernaturally. Happiness and sadness are natural emotions. They come to us naturally, and they are universal. But rejoicing is an attitude that is only available to those who are serious followers of Jesus Christ. It is produced within us by the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is joy. If you’re working at a fast food restaurant with 40 other employees, and you’re the only believer there, you are the only one who can represent joy in that establishment. If you’re the only believer on your team or in your family, you’re the only one who can experience joy.

It is a supernatural attitude that must be cultivated by training ourselves to respond to life with the words of Jesus in our hearts when He said, “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

Paul had learned to do that, and he wove this theme into the entire book of Philippians. The word-group of joy and rejoicing occurs sixteen times, so much so that Philippians has been rightly called the “epistle of joy.” 

So here in Philippians 4:4, Paul said, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.”

Notice the three modifiers.

We are to rejoice in the Lord. This is Old Testament language. The most visual description of faith in the Bible is in Habakkuk 3, when the prophet said, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.” Even in imperfect circumstances, we can rejoice in the Lord.We are to rejoice in the Lord always. That might be the most remarkable adverb in the whole book of Philippians. Joy is a supernatural attitude that’s like a fire in our hearts that never goes out. We are to rejoice in the Lord always, and we’re to double down on it: And again I say rejoice. 

I recall one day when I was depressed and anxious. I wanted the joy of God to fill my heart, but my heart was consumed with worry. Somehow, I don’t remember how it happened, the words came to me of the great hymn by Henry Van Dyke. It said:

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,

God of glory, Lord of love;

Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,

Opening to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness,

Drive the dark of doubt away;

Giver of immortal gladness,

Fill us with the light of day.

That prayer became very real to me. “Lord, melt the clouds of sin and sadness. Drive the dark of doubt away. Giver of immortal gladness, fill me with the light of day.”  The Lord answered that prayer, and in the years since I feel I’ve been growing in the joy of the Lord. We simply have to make up our mind to do it: Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice!

2. Let Your Gentleness Be Evident to All

This is one of the most convicting verses in the Bible to me, because for much of my life I didn’t know how to be very gentle. The biggest barrier to gentleness is our anger, our tempers. The second biggest barrier is lack of training.

The Greek word for gentleness has to do with being gracious. It has to do with etiquette. I want to say something I think you’ll understand. When I was just starting out as a writer, a particular magazine asked me to review a book and, if possible, interview the author. I read the book and liked it, but when I tried to interview the author, he was very difficult. This was a Christian book, and I was going to write a positive review of it, which would have contributed to its success. But this man was rude. Being published had gone to his head, and he thought of himself as more important than he was. I came away from that experience as a young writer saying to myself, “I never want to be like that person.”

Gentleness does not mean a lack of strength or drive or determination. It means your strength and drive and determination is cloaked with graciousness. 

In Luke 4:22, the people were amazed at the gracious words that came from our Lord’s lips. And Colossians 4:6 (TLB) says, “Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.”

This is most important in the home and family, with our husband or wife or children or in-laws, and then in the church and community.

Let your gentleness be evident to all. Things are not perfect in this world, and nothing about our lives is absolutely perfect. Nothing about our health is absolutely perfect. Nothing about our finances is absolutely perfect. Nothing about our homes or churches is absolutely perfect. But harshness always makes things worse; gentleness always makes them better.

3. Remember the Lord is Near.

The third item in this paraenesis (para-nee’-sis) is actually a statement. The other items are commands, but now Paul interjects a statement. He says: “The Lord is near.” But I think he intended it to be something like a command. In other words, he was saying, “Remember something. The Lord is near.”

This is a very simple statement, but it is very difficult to interpret. About half of the scholars believe Paul was talking in eschatological terms, saying that the Lord’s return is near. Just a few verses before, at the end of chapter 3, Paul had told us to eagerly await the Savior from Heaven who will transform our bodies to be like His glorified and glorious body.

The other half of the commentators believe Paul was referring to the geographical presence of Christ, that He is near us by the Holy Spirit. His presence is near. The book of James tells us to draw near to Him, and the Psalmist said that the nearness of our God is our good. 

But I don’t think we have to decide about it. I think Paul was using a literary device known as a double entendre. Now, when we hear that term, we usually thing of an innocent statement that can be turned around to have a vulgar meaning.  But the phrase simply means a statement that can be taken in two ways. And we certainly know both interpretations represent reality. The Lord’s coming is near, and His presence is near.

Theologians talk about the imminence of Jesus Christ, by which they mean His coming is imminent. 

James 5:8 says, “The coming of the Lord is at hand.”Revelation 1:3 says, “The time is near.”Luke 20:40 says, “You must be ready, for the Son of Man when come at a time when you don’t expect Him.”Titus 2:13 tells us to be waiting for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When I was a boy, my dad would sometimes travel to agricultural or educational meetings. Or he would travel to a denominational meeting and be gone several days. He always brought me back something, and the longer he was gone the more I missed him and the more I wanted him to get home. I remember once he came back and I said, “What did you bring me?” He grinned and opened his suitcase and there was magnetic gyro wheel. It was a classic toy, but I’d never seen anything like it. When you held it in your hands, you could aim it up or down, and the wheel would spin over the bars, and I spent hours playing with it. Now, I don’t know whether I was more excited about seeing my dad or seeing what he had brought me; but I do remember the sense of anticipation I had about his return. That’s the way we should feel about Christ.

But even now, before He returns face to face, we have Him near us by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

It’s because of His nearness that we come to the fourth point of strategy:

4. Do Not Be Anxious about Anything

I’m a person who tends to be anxious about everything. The only good thing about it is this—it has driven me to study everything the Bible has to say on this subject. The whole Bible is given to keep us from fear and worry. This is the greatest anti-worry Book in the world. I’ve found strength and reassurance on every page. But there are three passages that seem to me as definitive words from God on this subject.

The first is Psalm 37: 

1 Do not fret because of those who are evil
    or be envious of those who do wrong;
2 for like the grass they will soon wither,
    like green plants they will soon die away.

3 Trust in the Lord and do good;
    dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
4 Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.

5 Commit your way to the Lord;
    trust in him and he will do this:

8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
    do not fret—it leads only to evil.

39 The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord;
    he is their stronghold in time of trouble.
40 The Lord helps them and delivers them;
    he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
    because they take refuge in him.

The second passage is Matthew 6:

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The third passage is this one in Philippians 4. I want to suggest that if you battle worry, take the flyleaf of your Bible and write the words “Anti-Worry Verses.” Start with these three—Psalm 37, Matthew 6, and Philippians 4. And when you find other verses that help you, write them down too, and create your own list of anti-worry passages.

5. In Every Situation, By Prayer and Petition, With Thanksgiving, Present Your Requests to God

The final strategy is: “In every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Let me mention three things about this verse. 

First, it involves an exchange. We’re to go trade in our problems for prayer. The Living Bible says, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.”

Second, it is comprehensive. Do not worry about anything—not one thing. Nothing. But pray about everything. Every single thing that bothers you. Notice those two words: Anything and Everything! 

Third, don’t forget to add thanksgiving to your prayers. This is master psychology. This is graduate-level information about the soul. 

Dr. James Moore was a noted Methodist pastor in Houston. On one occasion when he was traveling on a speaking engagement, he had supper with a young family. When they sat down at the table, the wife explained they’d been working on helping their children learn the important of prayer and thanksgiving before meals. Each night, they asked one of the children to say the blessing in a rotating fashion. 

As they bowed their heads, it was the little boy’s turn to prayer. He launched in and began to thanking God for every dish on the table by name—the roast, the mashed potatoes, the corn, the rolls and so on.

Then he gave thanks for all of the people present by name. This included his parents, siblings, their guest Dr. Moore and even their dog Spot. 

Finally, he moved on to all of the items in the home for which they should be grateful and again went into specifics by expressing gratitude for the table, the chairs, the silverware, the plates, and glasses, and on and on it went.

The siblings began to giggle. But when it was over, Dr. Moore admitted he was strangely moved. This four year old had reminded him of how important counting our blessings, all of our blessings can be. How much God has given us, and how little of it do we thank Him.

Dr. Moore was so moved, he later wrote a book about the importance of thanking God for even the simplest things in life.

Conclusion:

7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

As we learn to do these five things, God does something unimaginable for us. He sends us His peace that exceeds human comprehension to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. The word “guard” is a military word.  In 2 Corinthians 11:32, Paul said that the governor of Damascus ordered troops to guard the city gates, and the same Greek word is used here. The peace of God is like a sentinel, like a Ranger, like a Navy Seal, that goes with you everywhere to protect your mind and your emotions from being attacked by Satan’s weapon of worry. 

Do not fret… Do not worry about your life… Things are not perfect. No, nothing is perfect in this world. But we have a strategy for imperfect times:
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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Whatever Happens, Think Forward

Philippians 3:17 – 4:1

Introduction

Last year a group of men wanted to hike a rugged portion of the Buffalo National River that winds through the Ozarks. I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen pictures and videos. It’s a dramatic area controlled by the National Park Service. There are no dams on the river, and at places it is very treacherous. The bluffs on either side are breathtaking. One of the men fell to his death. The Park Service said the reason was the group hired a guide who didn’t have a license or insurance, nor did he have a very good track record. He took their money, but he led them into an area that exceeded their level of preparation, and one man died because he followed the wrong guide.

How easily that happens in life. 

In the passage we’re coming to today he tells us we are more likely to stand firm when we follow the right examples and maintain the right expectations for the future. Let’s read this passage, from Philippians 3:17 to 4:1:

17  Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.  18  For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.  19  Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.  20  But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,  21  who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends.

This is an easy paragraph to dissect. The apostle Paul is wrapping up the core message of his letter, and he circles back to this main theme—to stand firm. He says something about that in verse 17; something else in verses 18 and 19; and something else in verses 20-21.

1. You Will Only Find a Few People After Whom You Can Pattern Your Life (verse 17)

First, in verse 17, he tells us we will find only a few people in this world after whom we should pattern our lives. 

17  Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. 

I want to suggest that the entire letter to the Philippians hinges around this thought. Let me show you my hypothesis. When you begin reading the book of Philippians, you see that the first 26 verses are an extended introduction in which Paul tells us what he is doing and how he is doing. The actual formal content in the letter begins in verse 27: “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come to see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm…”

Notice this theme: Whatever happens, I want you to stand firm! Then in chapter 2, he gives us Jesus as an example and tells us to have the mind of Christ. He also holds up Timothy and Epaphroditus as examples for us. Then in chapter 3, he offers himself as an example and says to model ourselves after him. And then in chapter 4:1, he finishes the formal content of his letter by saying: “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, this is how you stand firm in the Lord.”

Notice again the sequence of the letter: Stand firm—like Jesus, like Timothy, like Epaphroditus, like me—Stand firm!

Today the forces coming against the followers of Christ are relentless. The Lord wants us to stand firm for the truth, and to stand firm against:

Our own fallen natures with their tendencies to sin and bitterness and division.The culture, the sexual immorality, the pornography, the vile nature of our society.The efforts of our enemies to intimidate us or silence us or persuade us to compromise our biblical worldview.The theological errors of the false teachers and the erosion of doctrine in our churches.The attitudes of fear and hopelessness that can plunder our joy.

So it’s important for us to find some men and women who are standing firm, who are holding to the apostolic faith, who are victorious, who are joyful, who are biblical, and who have developed the habits and attitudes of true Christianity. We need their example.

17  Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. 

Do you have someone in your life who provides you a pattern, who is a good example? There aren’t very many people on earth like that. I’m thankful the Lord gave me a number of great mentors, from my parents to my pastors to my professors and others. But I sometimes had to seek them out, and I had to have a teachable spirit. And I’m not beyond needing people like that now. Sometimes I find them through their writings. I never met Elisabeth Elliott, but I almost always have an Elisabeth Elliott book near at hand and often when I feel wobbly, a page or two of Elisabeth can set me right.

2. You’ll Find a Large Number of People Who Will Mess Up Your Life (verses 18-19)

The next thing Paul tells us is this: While we’ll only find a few people living apostolically and biblically enough to follow, we’ll find a large number of people who will mess up our lives very quickly, and we must avoid being influenced by them in any way. Look at the next two verses:

18  For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.  19  Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. 

Paul describes these people in five ways:

They are enemies of the cross of Christ. They are hostile to the message of Scripture and to the cause of Christ.Their destiny is destruction. They are hell-bound. This is in direct contrast to what Paul just said about himself earlier in chapter 3, that he is straining forward toward the upward, heavenward call of God in Christ Jesus.Their god is their stomach. They are controlled by their appetites and desires.Their glory is in their shame. They are proud of what they should be ashamed of.They set their minds on earthly things. They don’t study the Bible or ponder the truth of the Lord and the things of God. They don’t think about Heaven. They are absorbed with this fleeting earth.

We aren’t exactly sure who Paul is talking about here, but look back again at the earlier passage in Philippians 1, beginning with verse 28. He tells them to stand firm, “without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved.”

I don’t need to belabor this because this is the world that surrounds us every day. They are the people that populate our culture.

3. You Will Only Find One Man Who Will Transform You Eternally (Verses 20-21)

But now Paul comes to the climax of his argument. If we’re going to stand firm in our faith there are a few people whom we should emulate; there are many people we should not emulate; but there is only one Man to whom we should give our lives and who can and will transform us forever. Look at verses 20 and 21:

20  But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,  21  who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

This is acknowledged by theologians and Bible students everywhere to be one of the greatest eschatological passages in all the Bible.

But Our Citizenship is in Heaven

Philippi was a Roman city, and the members of that city were citizens of Rome. The Roman Emperor had many titles, among them were:

Kurios (Lord)Soter (Savior)

Gordon Fee wrote, “By the time of our letter, the primary titles for the emperor were Kurios and Soter (lord and savior)…. In a city like Philippi this would have meant that every public event…would have taken place in the context of giving honor to the emperor, with the acknowledgment that (in this case) Nero was “’lord and savior.’”

In verse 20, Paul is telling us that we are citizens of another kingdom with one who is truly Kurios and Soter. Notice the present tense. Paul didn’t say, “But our citizenship will be in heaven.” We are currently citizens of heaven living as expatriates here on earth. I remember hearing Vance Havner say, “We are not citizens of earth going to heaven; we are citizens of heaven traveling through earth.”

When I travel overseas, I may be in France or England or Ghana or Japan, but my thoughts are back home. I’m glad to be of service in those countries for a little while, and I enjoy seeing the sights. But I try to keep up with the news back home, and I miss my family back home, and I don’t feel truly at home in the various cultures that I visit. The stress and strain of travel gets to me, and sometimes I suffer a bit of culture shock. But I’m always missing home. I’ve never been as homesick as I’ve been on a few occasions overseas.

While making our way through this earth, we shouldn’t really feel at home here. We want to be of service and see the sights, but we’re homesick for heaven. 

The book of Hebrews says we are “foreigners and strangers on earth” (Hebrews 11:13).

First Peter 1:17 tell us to “live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.”

If you want me to prove I’m an American citizen, I’ll pull out my passport. But if you want me to prove I’m a citizen of Heaven, I’ll pull out my Bible and turn to Philippians 3:20. Our citizenship is based in heaven; it is recorded in heaven; and we are under the jurisdiction and under the constitutional protection of heaven. The very King of Heaven is our Father!

And We Eagerly Await a Savior From There, the Lord Jesus Christ

As I’ve studied through the four chapters that make up the letter to the Philippians, I’ve found twelve different references to the return of Christ and our eternal home. For example, he said in chapter 1 that for him, to live is Christ and to die is gain. He desired to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. In chapter 2, he talked about the day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord. In chapter 3, he talked about the upward call of God in Christ; and in chapter 4 he said, “The Lord is near,” and may people interpret that to mean, “The Lord’s coming is near.”

As you study his thirteen epistles, you discover that Paul could hardly write a chapter without talking about the return of Christ and our eternal home. After all, he had once been caught up to the third heaven and seen just a little bit of what awaits us there. He said he was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things that he was not permitted to tell (2 Corinthians 12:1-4). 

So he used a phrase here in Philippians 3:20, saying we are eagerly awaiting the return of the Savior.  That phrase is the true biblical definition of hope. Hope is eagerly awaiting a future reality. 

Paul used this phrase twice in Romans 8.In 1 Corinthians 1:7, he talked about eagerly waiting for Christ to be revealed.He said the same thing in Galatians 5:5.

Every sunrise reminded him of the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of glory, and every sunset reminded him that he was one day closer to that event. Every time he looked up to the sky he thought of heaven beyond. Every time he looked down at the ground, he thought of how very temporary was his stay here. Every goodbye reminded him of the coming reunion where there would be no more sad partings, and every pain reminded him of the day when pain would be no more. Every brush with death gave him a thrill of being nearer to heaven, and every act of service reminded him that his labor on earth was nearly over. 

Herbert Lockyer wrote that the very word “rapture” has come to describe an ecstatic experience of great joy. We say that something is rapturous. “It is widely accepted as being expressive of the unspeakable joy of being caught up to meet our returning Lord, and the rapturous rejoicing of the saints as they see their Savior in all his beauty and glory.”

What is wrong with us that we do not think constantly of our heavenly home, so eager we can hardly wait!

Who, by the Power that Enables Him to Bring Everything Under His Control…

The next phrase says, “…who, by the power that enables Him to being everything under His control.” This harkens back to Philippians 2:

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

…Will Transform Our Lowly Bodies So They Will Be Like His Glorious Body

Now we’re coming to one of the most glorious verses in the Bible regarding our future. Here the apostle Paul states under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the physical frames of human beings who are redeemed by the blood of Christ will be resurrected, and our resurrected bodies will be transformed and glorified to follow the observable pattern of the resurrected and glorified body of Jesus Christ.

I’ve studied this in the Scripture and I’ve not been able to exhaustively understand it, but let me give you three facts I do understand and want to confirm.

1. Our Resurrection Bodies Will Be Recognizable 

The resurrection body will be our actual bodies—the ones we have currently here on earth—and not a new creation. We will be identifiable in our new bodies. We will recognize each other.

Matthew 24:8-9 says that on the first Easter after the women heard the message of the angel at the tomb about the resurrection: “…the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell His disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ He said. They came to Him, clasped His feet, and worshiped Him.”

Jesus was alive in the same physical body that had been crucified. They recognized Him, and He spoke to them with His mouth and with His voice—the same voice they had known and loved. And they fell at His feet and wrapped their arms around His ankles. 

Now look at Luke 24:13-16: “Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing Him.”

Notice that. Jesus showed up from somewhere and started walking with them. He was recognizable, but God did something to their eyes or brains that prevented them from recognizing Him.

Verse 30 says: “When He was at the table with them, He took bread, gave thanks, and broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and He disappeared from their sight.”

We will recognize each other. We’ll have the same recognizable bodies we have on earth. As we’ll see, they will be new and improved, but the resurrection is not a matter of re-creation but of renovation. 

2. Our Resurrection Bodies Will Be Functional

They will function very much like our current bodies. We’ve already seen that the resurrection body of Jesus can walk seven miles in step with two of His disciples. Now, look down at verse 36 and following of Luke 24: “While they were still talking about this, Jesus Himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and frightened, thinking they had seen a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at My hands and feet. It is I Myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.’

When He had said this, He showed them His hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, He asked them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.” 

So we’ll be able to eat. We’ll have an appetite. Does that mean we’ll get hungry, that we’ll suffer hunger pangs like we do on earth? I don’t know. But I think I’m safe in saying that when we get to Heaven, we’re going to enjoy eating and drinking just like we do on earth. And there’s absolutely no reason I can think of that we should not also be involved in food preparation if we want to be. I happen to enjoy cooking, but in Heaven I’ll know I’ll not be able to make anyone sick or give them food poisoning when they come over to my place for lunch.

I’m not making light of it. If you have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, your body will be resurrected, and your resurrection body will be identifiable and it will function very much like your body does now, only without all the stress and strain.

Now, Jesus was able to do some remarkable things with His body. He could appear and disappear; He could pass through stone barriers and wooden doorways. He could apparently travel by telepathy. Will we be able to do those things, or is that something unique to His Divinity? I don’t know. I can’t speculate. But I can tell you something else about our resurrection. Not only will they be recognizable and functional, but they will also be imperishable.

3. Our Resurrection Bodies Will Be Imperishable

The most extensive passage on this subject is 1 Corinthians 15. In a way, Philippians 3:21 is a one-verse summary of the entire fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. The first part of the chapter talks about the resurrection of Christ, and then Paul progresses to talk about the subsequent resurrection of Christ’s followers. Look at verses 35 and following:

35  But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”  36  How foolish! 

Paul wasn’t saying that the question itself was foolish. He was referring to scoffers who were asking the question in derision. In this entire chapter, he is addressing those who didn’t believe in the resurrection. But now he goes to nature to make a parallel.

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.  37  When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.  38  But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

In other words, our resurrection bodies will be of the same nature as our physical bodies now. They will be of the same essence and identity. But they will be as distinct in quality as a stalk of corn is to a kernel of corn. When you plant an acorn in the ground, you’ll get an oak tree. But the oak tree is much more glorious than the acorn.

Our resurrection bodies are going to be more glorious than our current bodies as an oak tree is to an acorn. They are going to be of an eternal, imperishable quality.

Now let’s go on to verse 39:

  39  Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.  40  There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.  41  The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

42  So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. 

In other words, God make different things. He makes human beings. He makes animals. He makes birds. He makes planets. He makes stars. It’s nothing for Him to make a glorified, resurrected, eternal human being. Our new bodies will be very different in terms of splendor. God can create splendor. Our bodies now are fearfully and wonderfully made, but they lack the splendor of an eternal nature. But that will change with the resurrection.

Verse 42 goes on:

The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 

That is a very important sentence. Our bodies are now in the perishable sphere. When our bodies are resurrected, they will never again be capable of deterioration, and that means no sickness, no weakness, no exhaustion, no disease, no aging, no dying.  

43  it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;  44  it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

The term “spiritual body” means a body that can function in the spiritual realm of Heaven. It is a body animated by the Holy Spirit, a body just at home in the Heavenly realm as it ever was in the earthly. Notice the word “body.” The resurrection body is still a human body, but now it has a spiritual dimension it never had before. In our resurrected bodies, we’ll be able to experience more love, more joy, more euphoria, more of all the spiritual qualities that are characteristic of Heaven.

In other words, we will be more like Jesus Christ than we can imagine. Look at verses 45 and following:

  45  So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”, the last Adam [Christ], a life-giving spirit.  46  The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.  47  The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven.  48  As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven.  49  And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we [ g ]  bear the image of the heavenly man.

50  I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.  51  Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—  52  in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  53  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.  54  When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 

Conclusion (4:1)

And that’s why Paul says in Philippians 4:1: Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends.

There are a few people who are worth emulating today; there are many who will mess up our lives if we let them; but there is only one Person who has the power to bring all things under His authority and we are citizens of His kingdom—and we are eagerly awaiting His glorious return, when He will rapture the living, raise the dead in Christ, and transform our lowly bodies so they will be like His glorious body.

So whatever happens today or tomorrow, don’t worry. Follow the right Guide. Follow the one who invited us to come, deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him.

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Praise The Lord Who Changes Things

A Study of Psalm 107

Introduction

At the conclusion of my recent trip to Israel, my spirits collapsed. Whether fatigue, homesickness, or nagging worries, I felt lonely and blue. I sat down at the desk in the hotel, grabbed my Bible, and opened it somewhat at random. I turned to Psalm 107, and I read it, studied it, analyzed it, and went to bed with a sense of peace. I rested in the Lord because of this Psalm.

The verse that encouraged me is number 6: Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.

I wasn’t actually facing trouble or distress as such, but I did feel a little troubled and distressed, and this verse calmed my nerves. What’s more, I found this verse is repeated again word-for-word in verses 13, 19, and 28. 

The next morning I read it again, and the phrase that stood out to me was in verse 16, which tells us that God can cut through bars of iron.

On the way home, I continued to study and analyze this Psalm, and I had a lot of pencil marks in my Bible by the time I returned. I saw how organized it is, how purposeful it is. On my first day back home, I found my favorite commentary on the Psalms, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, and this stood out: “[This] hymn of praise ascribes to the Lord the ability to change things.”

The Lord has the power to change things. He can change our lives, our attitudes, and our circumstances. God can change things. And that’s the theme of Psalm 107. So let’s study it together and I hope it encourages you as much as it has me.

The Background of Psalm 107

The words “Book V” occur at the heading on top of Psalm 107. The book of Psalms wasn’t written or compiled all at once. It developed over time, and it specifically developed in five stages. When you read through the book of Psalms, you see these clearly. 

On the very first page of the Psalms, even before you read Psalm 1, you will see the words Book 1. In my opinion, this was original to King David. He was a musician and a worshiper who was preparing for the building of the temple. He wanted his people to worship, and so he wrote many psalms and hymns and spiritual songs for them. He or his musical director selected 41 and published them as a hymnbook. Book 2 includes Psalm 42 through 72, and I suspect it was compiled by Solomon or his worship leader, drawing on unpublished hymns by David and others, including Solomon. Book 3 goes from Psalm 72 to 89, and it was compiled after the destruction of Jerusalem. Book 4 goes from Psalm 90 to 106, and is very triumphant and liturgical. And then we come to Psalm 107 through 150, and this is Book 5.

This is important because it indicates these were the latest and last of the Psalms, compiled perhaps by Ezra the Scribe or his worship leaders after the Jews had returned from exile.

Here’s the story in summary: The Lord established the nation of Israel as a channel through which the Messiah would come into the world. But in the days of the Old Testament kings, the people rebelled against God, neglected Him, disobeyed Him, and lived in vile wickedness. So the Lord let the Babylonian Empire subdue and conquer the nation of Judah in 587 B.C. The temple was destroyed, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed, and the survivors were exiled. But the Persian Empire arose, and King Cyrus issued a decree allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem. The temple was rebuilt, and Ezra the Scribe came from Babylon to restore worship and biblical knowledge to the land.

We call this the post-exilic period, and that’s when this Book V was compiled. All of that is important because the opening Psalm in Book V—this Psalm 107—is all about the exiles returning from Babylon and from their points of dispersion back to Jerusalem. They have been redeemed, rescued, and they are full of triumphant joy.

God has changed things for them, and they are full of thanksgiving. Think of the many times God has changed your outlook, your attitude, your circumstances, your life. This is a psalm of praise to the God who changes things.

The Theme of Psalm 107 (verses 1-3)

The first verses give us the theme:

Give thanks to the  Lord , for he is good;
    his love endures forever.

2  Let the redeemed of the  Lord  tell their story—
    those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
3  those he gathered from the lands,
    from east and west, from north and south.

Notice the first two words: Give thanks! There is nothing that helps us psychologically in a crisis or in any confusion like stopping to discover how we can thank God, even in the moment. I want to suggest something if you need a personal Bible study aimed at building up your morals. Take a colored pencil and begin reading through the book of Psalms. There are 150 Psalms, but if you take three of them a day you can complete this study in about six weeks. Read each Psalm carefully, looking for anytime you see the words thank, thanks, thanksgiving, thankful, or grateful. Color those verses. You may want to make a list of them. You’ll find about thirty verses all together. These thanksgiving verses begin in Psalm 7 and go to Psalm 147. Then you can take those verses and systematize them. For example, some of them point out the things for which we’re thankful. Other verses tell us how to express our thanksgiving. And so on.

If you still need some encouragement, or if the book of Psalms is too big for you to tackle at first, you can do the same thing with the book of Colossians. You’ll find that pouring yourself into a study like this will have a powerful influence over your personality, over your feelings and attitudes and worship. 

That’s how Psalm 107 starts out: O give thanks to the Lord.

Why? For three reasons: He is good. He is loving. And He is eternal: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.

Verse 2 says: Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story.

I grew up hearing this verse quoted very often at church. In the old translations, it says, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” We sometimes had testimony services on Sunday nights in which Preacher Floyd said, “Does anyone have a testimony tonight? Has the Lord done something in your life? Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.”

And people always began standing up and sharing.

But in Psalm 107 notice to whom the invitation is given: Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story—those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.

This is a scene in the partially rebuilt Jerusalem. The Second Temple, as small as it seemed compared to the original temple of Solomon, was standing in its place. Sacrifices were again being offered in the courtyards. Worshippers were gathering. The exiles had returned from their banishment and from their expulsion. Young Jewish children were running in the streets, and Jewish customs were once again shaping the Holy Land. People had returned from the east and west, from the north and south. This is a testimony service in the days of Ezra among the remnant that had returned from exile. They had been redeemed!

And so have we!

Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it!

Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb!

Redeemed by His infinite mercy,

His child and forever I am.

1. Refugees Who Were Redeemed (verses 4-9)

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so! And now, four different groups are going to sing of their redemption. The first are those who had been in refugee camps but were now back home. Look at verse 4:

4  Some wandered in desert wastelands,
    finding no way to a city where they could settle.
5  They were hungry and thirsty,
    and their lives ebbed away.
6  Then they cried out to the  Lord  in their trouble,
    and he delivered them from their distress.
7  He led them by a straight way
    to a city where they could settle.
8  Let them give thanks to the  Lord  for his unfailing love
    and his wonderful deeds for mankind,
9  for he satisfies the thirsty
    and fills the hungry with good things.

2. Prisoners Who Were Redeemed (verses 10-16)

The second group had been imprisoned by the Babylonians. They weren’t just in refugee camps; they were in Babylonian prisons and jails. Look at verses 10-16, and notice the same structure, the same literary formula is used:

10  Some sat in darkness, in utter darkness,
    prisoners suffering in iron chains,
11  because they rebelled against God’s commands
    and despised the plans of the Most High.
12  So he subjected them to bitter labor;
    they stumbled, and there was no one to help.
13  Then they cried to the  Lord  in their trouble,
    and he saved them from their distress.
14  He brought them out of darkness, the utter darkness,
    and broke away their chains.
15  Let them give thanks to the  Lord  for his unfailing love
    and his wonderful deeds for mankind,
16  for he breaks down gates of bronze
    and cuts through bars of iron.

3. The Sick Who Were Redeemed (verses 17-22)

The third group had been sick, suffering from all kinds of ailments, illnesses, diseases, and afflictions. Verse 17 says:

17  Some became fools through their rebellious ways
    and suffered affliction because of their iniquities.
18  They loathed all food
    and drew near the gates of death.
19  Then they cried to the  Lord  in their trouble,
    and he saved them from their distress.
20  He sent out his word and healed them;
    he rescued them from the grave.
21  Let them give thanks to the  Lord  for his unfailing love
    and his wonderful deeds for mankind.
22  Let them sacrifice thank offerings
    and tell of his works with songs of joy.

4. The Mariners Who Were Redeemed (verses 23-32)

The fourth group had been sent away from Israel on Babylonian ships to distant lands. Verse 23 says:

23  Some went out on the sea in ships;
    they were merchants on the mighty waters.
24  They saw the works of the  Lord ,
    his wonderful deeds in the deep.
25  For he spoke and stirred up a tempest
    that lifted high the waves.
26  They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;
    in their peril their courage melted away.
27  They reeled and staggered like drunkards;
    they were at their wits’ end.
28  Then they cried out to the  Lord  in their trouble,
    and he brought them out of their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper;
    the waves of the sea were hushed.
30  They were glad when it grew calm,
    and he guided them to their desired haven.
31  Let them give thanks to the  Lord  for his unfailing love
    and his wonderful deeds for mankind.
32  Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people
    and praise him in the council of the elders.

We can’t read this particular paragraph without thinking of how our Lord Jesus calmed the storms of Galilee with His words, “Peace, be still.” This is also the passage that strengthened the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower when they ran into a terrible storm on the Atlantic. 

Later, William Bradford, the leader of the Mayflower group and the Governor of the Plymouth Colony, announced the celebration of the first Thanksgiving service by citing Psalm 107.

Here in Psalm 107, I’m sure you see the formula. This is our formula for worship. We find ourselves in trouble, but we cry out to the Lord in our distress and He changes things. And we give thanks to Him for His unfailing love, for His wonderful deeds toward us.

I want to go back and read a few verses again so you can see the pattern:

Some wandered in desert wastelands… Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress… Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind.

Some sat in darkness… … Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress… Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind.

Some suffered afflictions… Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress… Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind.

Some went out on the sea in ships… Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress… Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind.

When were you in distress and you cried out to God in trouble? He changed things. Let us give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds to mankind. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so! Let them tell their stories.

The Lesson in It All (Verses 33-43)

The last stanza of this song tells us how the Lord can bring distress when we disobey, and how He can redeem our circumstances when we do trust and obey Him.

33  He turned rivers into a desert,
    flowing springs into thirsty ground,
34  and fruitful land into a salt waste,
    because of the wickedness of those who lived there.
35  He turned the desert into pools of water
    and the parched ground into flowing springs;
36  there he brought the hungry to live,
    and they founded a city where they could settle.
37  They sowed fields and planted vineyards
    that yielded a fruitful harvest;
38  he blessed them, and their numbers greatly increased,
    and he did not let their herds diminish.

39  Then their numbers decreased, and they were humbled
    by oppression, calamity and sorrow;
40  he who pours contempt on nobles
    made them wander in a trackless waste.

41  But he lifted the needy out of their affliction
    and increased their families like flocks.
42  The upright see and rejoice,
    but all the wicked shut their mouths.

As I went over this during my trip to Israel, this is what I wrote in my notes: “The reversals of life are reversed through repentance and revival.” If you have had some reversals in life, trust God to reverse the reversals as you turn everything over to Him in faith and obedience.

The final verse says:

43  Let the one who is wise heed these things
    and ponder the loving deeds of the  Lord .

Conclusion

I’ve often read about the great Chicago fire of 1871. It figures prominently in the stories of men like evangelist D. L. Moody and hymn-writer Horatio Spafford, who wrote, “It is Well With My Soul.” But I did not know that in that same period and even on that same night other fires broke out in other cities in the Midwest because of frightful weather patterns.

One of those fires engulfed the small town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin. The fire erupted so suddenly it sounded like an explosion that woke the entire town and, within a single hour, incinerated everything. Residents fled to the Peshtigo River, which was a chilling 60 degrees. The air was so filled with smoke that breathing was difficult and a terrible burning sensation filled the eyes. One spectator said: “A thousand deafening noises rose in the air together. The neighing of horses, falling of chimneys, crashing of uprooted trees, roaring and whistling of the wind, crackling of fire as it ran with lightning-like rapidity from house to house — all sounds (except the) human voice. People seemed stricken dumb by terror. They jostled each other without exchanging looks, words, or counsel. The silence of the tomb reigned among the living; nature alone lifted up its voice.”

Eight hundred people died in the fire, making it the deadliest fire in American history.

When the fires had passed, the ashes cooled, and people could go back and look at what was left, they found that almost nothing survived except a Bible, which was found near the town drugstore. It had been petrified by the flames, and it was open to Psalm 107.

It was a message to them that even in hard-to-comprehend times, God can be trusted to redeem us, to help us, and to save us from our distress. The Lord has changed things on your behalf, and He will do so again and again. And even when something in our life turns to ashes, in the middle of it all we can read:

Give thanks to the  Lord , for he is good;
    his love endures forever.

  Let the redeemed of the  Lord  tell their story.

Let’s praise the Lord who changes things!

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Bonus: Samuel Dunn’s Glorified Body Sermon

A continuation of our study of Philippians, in preface to our study of Philippians 3:15-21

(Originally written by Samuel Dunn, a nineteenth century British minister and theologian)

—

The Washington Post recently asked readers to describe the world today in one word or phrase. Some of the answers were unprintable in a family newspaper, but the top three responses were: Exhausting. Lost. Chaotic.

Who doesn’t feel this is an exhausting and an exhausted world, one that has lost its way and is descending into chaos?

Sometimes I feel exhausted, lost, and chaotic too, but that’s when I take time to revisit the ancient church of the Philippians. I take my seat, as it were, and imagine the leader calling the service to order with news that a letter had just arrived—through the hand of a traveling church member—from Rome. It was from Paul, the apostle who had planted the church years ago.

It wasn’t a long letter. Four short pieces of parchment, but every verse is special. Today I want to take an excursus on Philippians 3:20 and 21, which says: But our citizenship is in Heaven. And we eagerly away a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so they will be like his glorious body.”

We’ll exegete that passage in a week or two, but today I want to do something different with this podcast. I would like to share with you a tremendous sermon about what our resurrection and glorified bodies will be like. The Bible says, “For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead will rise first. Then we who are alive will be caught up into the air to meet the Lord in the clouds.”

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul said the body is sown into the earth as a perishable object, but will be raised imperishable and incorruptible. John said that when we see Him we will be like him.

Well, on this special edition of my podcast I want to read to you some excerpts from a sermon preached on Sunday, October 16, 1842, in the South-Parade Chapel in Halifax, in England. The sermon is titled, “The Glorified Body,” and the preacher was Samuel Dunn, a Methodist pastor who wrote over 70 books. 

Even with language slightly dated, I think you’ll catch the spirit of excitement Pastor Samuel Dunn had about our future bodies in this sermon. He said:

As Christ is risen from the dead; as He has destroyed the destroyer, spoiled the grave, burst the barriers of the tomb, opened the iron gates of death, our resurrection will follow. He rose in our nature, as our representative. His resurrection was a proof, a pledge, an earnest of ours…. The resurrection will be a miraculous work, performed by Christ. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ will all be made alive.” 

It is also plain that the same body will be raised again. However wondrous and glorious the changes in its qualities and form may be, the substance will be the same…. If God gave not the same body we once inhabited, it would not be a resurrection—a rising again—but a creation.

[Job said], “In my flesh shall I see God.” There are difficulties connected with the subject; that the body after it has been reduced to dust, and that dust blown by the winds or washed by the floods or consumed in the fire or transmuted into plants and animals; shall be raised again, and that a sameness shall be preserved. But He who first formed it from the dust of the earth shall effect it. To omnipotence, it is possible—it is easy.

It should also be kept in mind that the apostle is speaking in the text exclusively of the righteous; of those who have believed in Christ, who have suffered for Christ, who have had the sting of death extracted from the souls by the blood of Christ. Of those who have fallen asleep in Christ…..

The body is indeed fearfully and wonderfully made; it is the most beautiful and curious piece of mechanism that was ever constructed. The dignity of its form, the symmetry of its parts, the nature of its different organs, the relations which they bear to each other, and to external objects, all show the hand of a divine architect. But in its present state it is subject to numberless infirmities. There is a constant tendency to disease. Some diseases disfigure the body, others torture it, while others rapidly corrupt its solids and poison its fluids. No powers of medicine, no skill of physicians, can preserve it in perpetual existence…. Death takes hold of the frame. It is screwed up in a coffin, consigned to the grave, and speedily becomes a mass of nauseous, putrid matter. It sees corruption. 

[But then] the voice of the Son of God shall strike on its dull cold ear, and it shall start up, obedient to the call. Then it shall no more be subject to pain, disease, decay, mutilation, disruption, dissolution, disorganization, degradation, putrefaction. It will no longer be the nurse of violent appetites and passions or the seedbed of weaknesses, pains, and maladies. 

Its substance will be indestructible and unchangeable; its inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and will never fade away. There will be no more hostile attacks, infectious particles, unwholesome sweats, poisonous threats, or malignant vapors, conspiring to its destruction. It will be no more be flushed with fever, or with consumption, suffocated with asthma, or strangled with infection, swollen with dropsy, or racked with rheumatism…. It shall flourish in immortal youth, in undecaying luster, ever beautiful and ever young.

God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things have passed away. 

The eye shall be adapted to the splendid scenery of that world, the ear to its melody and harmony, the smell to its glorious flowers, and the taste to the fruit of the tree of life…..

It shall be so beautified and covered with excessive brightness so as to exceed all that is beautiful and splendid on earth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun…. The countenance will yield to the impressions of the pure soul, filled with peace and beaming with love….

The glorified body of Christ will be the model after which the bodies of His people shall be formed…. We shall not only see Him; we shall be like Him. The first glimpse we see of Him as we come forth from the tomb will be a transforming one. A powerful influence shall emanate from His effulgence, which shall have an immediate and necessary effect of assimilating us into His likeness. Our glorified body shall be like His, as it appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration, when its glory so irradiated His garments that they became as white as snow. Like His, as Saul beheld it on his way to Damascus, when its brightness eclipsed the light of the noon-day sun. Like his, as represented to John in Patmos, when His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, his eyes as a flame of fire and his countenance as the sun shining in all its strength. 

Like His body, now that it is raised to the pinnacle of the universe, seated on the throne of light, closely allied to Deity, beheld, admired, beloved, adored by cherubim and seraphim. The bodies of the saints shall be faithful transcripts of His.

But the splendor of the resurrection body surpasses all our conceptions. It shall be in glory—fairer than the fairest flower, purer than the unspotted firmament, brighter than the morning star, more radiant than the midday sun, more splendid than Adam’s body in paradise, more illustrious than angels. It shall be like the body of our Lord Jesus Christ….

[Our resurrection bodies] will be supported and pervaded by a power of which at present we can form but little conception…. They will excel in strength…..

[Your resurrection body] will possess the power of moving, perhaps, from world to world with greater celerity than the sunbeams and with greater ease than we can now pass from the chapel to our respective houses. 

As the bodies of Enoch, and Elijah, and of our Lord went up into heaven, so shall the bodies of all the saints, unaffected by the laws of gravitation or by the pressures of the atmosphere. We shall have the power of adapting them to every…employment…. The eye may have the power of seeing minute objects immensely distant, and the ear of catching the faintest sounds…. We shall move without weariness, cogitate without exhaustion, contemplate the loftiest objects without difficulty.  

If the body shall be so glorious, how great must be the glory of the soul!

The post Bonus: Samuel Dunn’s Glorified Body Sermon appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

Whatever Happens, Strain Forward Toward Christ

A Study of Philippians 3:12-14

The face of Christ—as bright as the sunshine, as wise as omniscience, as full of smiles as He is full of grace. And in eternity we’ll have all of infinity to be with Him, walk with Him, talk with Him, dine with Him, and get to know the wonders of His majesty.

That’s why like championship runners, we are straining and striving to win the prize for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus

Introduction

I recently read a book by Meb Keflezighi, who is one of the most amazing marathon champions the sporting world has ever seen. In his book 26 Marathons, Meb describes each of his legendary 26 marathon races—one race for each mile of the race—and what he learned in each one of them. Meb was born in war-torn Eretria, came to America as a refugee, and is a devout follower of Christ. As he recounted his victorious 2009 New York City Marathon, he said, “I’ve always believed consistency, not isolated killer workouts, is the key to peak performance. Many elite runners could have done any one day, or even any one week, of my training for New York. It’s doing those days and weeks over and over again that makes the difference.”

In his thirteen amazing letters, the apostle Paul used running and racing as a metaphor for consistency in the Christian life. We have to be consistently running, training, and making progress—hence Philippians 3:12-14, one of Paul’s classic testimonies. For context and review, I want to start with verse 8:

Scripture 

8  What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ  9  and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.  10  I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,  11  and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

12  Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  13  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  14  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Theme

The apostle Paul began chapter 3 by warning us against false teachers. In Paul’s day, his primary opponents were the Judiazers. In terms of Jewish heritage, they had nothing on Paul. He had impeccable Jewish credentials and he was building a significant role for himself within Judaism. 

But, he said, I now consider all these things as rubbish for the sake of the surpassing value of knowing Christ—and that’s the theme of this paragraph. Look at Philippians 3:8: What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

The surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Knowing Christ Jesus our Lord is worth more than all the money in the world. It is worth more than all the gilded mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. It’s worth more than all the real estate in Manhattan or Hawaii or Davos, Switzerland. It’s worth more than all the fame of all the celebrities. It’s worth more than all the diamonds and precious stones in the world, crammed into one immense treasure chest. 

Everything else is garbage and rubbish compared with the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s Paul’s language. 

The Three Phases of Knowing Christ

But in the subsequent verses he’s going to break it down for us and give us three distinct phases when it comes to getting to know Christ. There are three aspects to the process, and we can uncover that by looking at three phrases that Paul uses here. Each phrase stands for a stage of our relationship. Three phrases. Three phases. Three stages.

To give you an example, let’s take a couple who fall in love. First, they meet each other and begin dating. Second, they became engaged; and third, they get married. In every stage, the great goal is to get to know one another better and better.

Notice very carefully the words Paul uses as he describes the process of experiencing the surpassing value of knowing Christ:

First, We Gain Christ – verse 8: I consider them [everything else] rubbish that I may gain Christ.Second, We Get to Know Christ – verse 10: I want to know Christ.Third, We Are Called Heavenward to Be With Christ Jesus – Verse 14: I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

1. Gaining Christ

The first part of the paragraph describes gaining Christ. Look again at verse 8: I consider [everything] rubbish that I may gain Christ. We talk about receiving Christ or accepting Christ or asking Christ into our hearts as Savior. Those are good terms and I’ve used them over and over. But I don’t think I’ve ever preached a sermon in which I’ve encouraged people to gain Christ—until now. That’s the word Paul used. 

The word in Greek is lambano, which does mean to receive, to get, to seize, or to gain. It’s a word that implies acquisition. 

This refers to the moment when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior. We gain Him. Recently the Gideons International gave me a new book telling the story of their 100-plus years of ministry, and they told a story I had never heard before. There was a famous baseball player named Oral Hershiser. Even as a child, he displayed remarkable athletic skills. He spent seventeen years as a professional baseball player.

After he signed with the Dodgers in 1979, he was assigned to training camp in Scottsdale, Arizona. His teammate and roommate was a dedicated Christian who was always reading his Bible. One night, Hershiser asked him what he saw in that old book, and his roommate said, “Everything!” Not long afterward, Hershiser picked up the Gideon Bible in his room, started reading it, and came under deep conviction. He later said, “Without any prompting, I slipped to my knees by the bed. Openly confessing my sins, I invited Christ into my life.”

He later fell in love with singing the Doxology. He sang it in the locker room, in the dugout, and even on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He could praise God from whom all blessings flow because he had gained Christ.

I hope you’ve gained Christ. At some point in our lives we all need to slip to our knees, confess our sins, and invite Him into our lives as Savior and Lord. That’s how we meet Christ. That’s how we begin the process of getting to know Him. We gain Him.

2. Knowing Christ

But there’s a second phase and a second phrase here: knowing Christ. Let’s read this again:

I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ   9  and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.  10  I want to know Christ ….

Paul said, “I have gained Christ, but now I want to know Him.” In other words, I want to know Him better—to become more intimately and deeply acquainted with Him. This happens over the course of our lifetimes as we cultivate and develop our friendship with Him.

Hosea 6:3 (ESV) says: Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; His going out is sure as the dawn; He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.

We are to know Him and to press on to know Him better. That’s what Paul was talking about here. There was an article in Women’s Health magazine recently that suggested 200 questions to ask in order to get to know someone better. The first one was what do you like to do on your day off? Then what was the best vacation you ever had? What are your hobbies?

The last one, Number 200, was, “If you could change anything about yourself, would you?”

Of course, it’s not a matter of sitting down, starting with question 1, and going through the whole list. The idea is that getting to know someone involves engaging in meaningful conversation with a real desire to know someone better who is becoming a close friend.

For the Christian, that’s the function of what we call our Quiet Time. Earlier this year, Lifeway Research released the results of a survey in which they found that nearly two-thirds of all Protestant churchgoers have a daily time when they meet with God. The question on the survey was: How often do you intentionally spend time alone with God? Sixty-five percent of churchgoers said they did this daily.

God speaks to us when we close the door and read our Bibles, looking for what He is trying to tell us. We speak to God when we pray, letting Him know the things that are on our minds. As we develop a daily habit of doing this, we are getting to know Him better and better.

As the years pass and we find Him faithful to us in all kinds of perils and problems, we come to trust Him more. Our relationship with Jesus Christ should become deeper and enjoyable and more fulfilling and more important to us as long as we live.

3. Called Heavenward In Christ

But… we have one enormous hindrance that keeps us from knowing Christ as perfectly as we would like. We are separated from Him by realm. We are in one realm and He is in another. Right now we cannot see His face.

First Peter 1:8 says, “Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy.”

Second Corinthians 5:6-9 says: “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord [Jesus Christ]. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.”

We know Him now through salvation and through the Scriptures and through the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives. 

Jesus said in John 14: 25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. 28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.”

In John 16, He said:  14 “He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

Dr. Gordon Fee wrote that the Holy Spirit represents the presence of God and of Christ among us now. He said, “The Spirit is the way God is present now.” Paul refers to the Holy Spirit 145 times in his thirteen letters.

In the Old Testament, God the Father dwelt among His people Israel as a cloud of glory in the Holy of Holies. He also represented the Son and the Spirit. In the Gospels, God the son dwelt among His people in His flesh. He also represented the Father and the Spirit.After the Day of Pentecost, God the Spirit dwells among His people, representing the Father and the Son.

He dwells in us, around us. He seals us and fills us and empowers us. He strengthens us with all power in our inner being. He cultivates the character of Jesus within us. The love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us. We are led by the Spirit, and we overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 1:17 says: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit [the Holy Spirit] of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better.”

This is an imperfect illustration, but Katrina and I really fell in love long distance. We knew each other and had worked together at our job on campus, but we didn’t think of ourselves in love. We ended up writing letters to each other, and we got to know one another and fell in love through our letters. 

It’s possible to get to know and fall in love with someone even if you can’t see his or her face. In the case of Jesus, it’s by the agency of the Holy Spirit and Scripture and prayer. But one day we will see Him face to face. I believe that’s what Paul is talking about here.

8  What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ…. 10  I want to know Christ….

12  Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  13  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  14  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Heavenward, upward, skyward! 

The prize is being with Jesus forever. God is calling us.

I believe Paul is saying, in essence, “I want to be as close to Christ as I can possibly be. I have gained Him as my Savior. I am growing in my love for Him through the Holy Spirit and getting to know Him better and better. But without looking back, I am straining toward the future, pressing on for that day when God will call me heavenward, upward, and I will see Jesus Christ face to face!

That’s why Paul said, “…absent from the body, present with the Lord.”

When Stephen was being stoned to death for his faith, he said, “Look, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).

In 1 Corinthians 13:12, he said, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”

In Philippians 1:23, Paul said he had a deep desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.

First John 3:2 says, “We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

Revelation 22:3-4 says, “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him. They will see His face.”

These are the stages of our relationship with Christ—this is the process of acquiring the surpassing value of knowing Him. We gain Christ when we receive Him as Savior—that’s justification. We get to know Him better and better as we walk in the Spirit—that’s sanctification. One day we will see Him face to face—that’s glorification.

The face of Christ—as bright as the sunshine, as wise as omniscience, as full of smiles as He is full of grace. And in eternity we’ll have all of infinity to be with Him, walk with Him, talk with Him, dine with Him, and get to know the wonders of His majesty.

That’s why like championship runners, we are straining and striving to win the prize for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. And…

It will be worth it all when we see Jesus!

Life’s trials will seem so small when we see Christ.

One glimpse at His dear face, all sorrow will erase.

So bravely run the race till we see Christ.

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