Dr. James White: The Encouragement Of Joy

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If you'll turn with me, please, in your Bible to Philippians, chapter 4, Philippians, chapter 4.

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Our goal this afternoon to consider the exhortation of the apostle to a church that brought great joy to his heart.

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And hopefully in looking at these words, we will be encouraged in our service toward Christ as well.

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So Philippians, chapter 4, therefore, my brother is loved and long for my joy and crown.

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In this way, stand firm in the Lord, my beloved. I urge Yodia and I urge Syntyche to think the same way in the

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Lord. Indeed, I ask you also genuine companion, help these women who have contended together alongside of me in the gospel with also

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Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the

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Lord always, again, I will say rejoice. Let your considerate spirit be known to all men.

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The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

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And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things.

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Just a few words written by the apostle long ago to a church that clearly gave him great joy.

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You have probably heard that this epistle is called the epistle of joy because of the prominence of that particular term.

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The number of times it is repeated over and over again, rejoice, have joy.

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And so how do we have joy? Well, there's a lot of things in Philippians we could look to.

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We could look at Philippians chapter two. I think there we have one of the most important sections where if you want to keep a church together, if you want to keep it united, then what you do is you follow the apostle there.

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And what does he say to do? Don't look to your own things, look to the things of others. Act in humility of mind toward one another.

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And he gives Jesus as the example. And I've said many times, having been in much larger churches than our own, one thing

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I certainly discovered was that the things that cause division, the things that cause difficulties were when people start focusing upon themselves.

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When you had certain performers, certain singers, certain big names, and they would start creating factions and would divide at the drop of a hat if they didn't get what they desired.

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The apostle knew that that was a problem and he therefore exhorted the Philippians to act in humility of mind toward one another.

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But here getting toward the end of this epistle, he comes to the final exhortations.

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Therefore my brothers, loved and longed for, my joy and crown in this way stand firm in the

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Lord, my beloved. Now in this way would refer to what came before that. And we don't have time today to go back over all of that.

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But the point is, look at the language that the apostle uses when he addresses this church.

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When he says my brothers, he's not excluding the women. In fact, it's going to become very clear in the very next two verses that he's including the women in that phraseology.

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There's been people who have freaked out about some translations saying brothers and sisters. It was just the way of speech at the time.

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It was not a way of exclusion of the women. As I said, the next two verses will demonstrate that that's the case.

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So therefore my brothers is to be referred to the entire group, the entire congregation of the beloved.

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And he describes them as being loved and longed for, loved and longed for.

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It's one thing to say you love the brethren. But do you long to be with them?

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I've heard it said, you can say, oh, I love the brethren and say it from your easy chair at home. But when you have to be with them and bear their burdens and the fact that there are some people in the congregation that, oh,

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I don't know, rub you the wrong way. Well, the apostle can say that the church at Philippi loved and longed for, loved and longed for.

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He could not be with them all the time, obviously, but he longed to be with them.

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And in fact, he described them as my joy and crown. And those are, those are, you can say that at that time, in a sense, they were a reason for rejoicing in his life.

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But especially that term crown, we know how Paul has used that elsewhere. It's well, we have the

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Olympics coming up. And I'll admit, when I was younger, I'd get a lot very excited about that.

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Now not so much since they've become rather woke. But you know that there would be a crown that would be given instead of a gold medal, a silver medal, bronze, whatever.

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You'd be given a crown. And that was indicative of your having conquered in that particular field of endeavor.

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And so a lot of people would say that my joy and crown here really has some forward looking thinking to it.

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That is, Paul's going, I've planted a lot of churches, I've done a lot of ministry. And here is a church where the spirit of God has been active.

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And I can honestly say that I will be able to rejoice in them and they will be a crown upon my head, a place where God has truly blessed and I will be able to be blessed along with them.

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So he addresses them as loved and long for my joy and crown in this way, stand firm in the

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Lord. I should have done a study across Paul how many times he used this term.

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Stand firm, hold fast. Stand firm, hold fast.

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It's one thing for us to say that to each other now. And certainly we can look at the situation that we face, the uncertain future, the overwhelming expression of evil and rebellion in our day.

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And we can understand why we need to be exhorted to stand firm and hold fast. But please keep in mind,

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Paul's writing this at a time where there is no history of the Christian church.

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Yes, you can look back at what God did with the people of Israel. But as far as having, you know, we can look back and there are so many that we can look to, to drive strength and encouragement from.

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There really wasn't anything like that. They had to look back to the remnant amongst the people of Israel.

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That's what you have in Hebrews chapter 11, for example. And so they didn't have the same kind of history of Christ working and building his church that we have today.

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And so when he is repeatedly saying to them, stand firm, hold fast.

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I can only imagine, as he himself said, he had the weight of the churches upon him.

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He could not stay in each church. He had to keep moving around. He had to keep, as a missionary, spreading that message.

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And so he had to trust, he had to trust in the spirit of God to found and ground those churches.

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And so he exhorts them, stand firm in the

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Lord, not in the newest fad that comes along, not in business acumen.

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I've seen it so many times. I've seen churches where the leadership gets caught up in using the wisdom of the world and the ideas of business and corporate success, and they start putting up charts, and we need to have this much growth by this amount of time and this kind of stuff.

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And the exhortation to stand firm is in the

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Lord. It is in Christ. It is in his truth.

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It's in relationship to him. It's in service to him. And all of us have to have that same perspective, no matter what your calling is in this particular fellowship.

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And each one of you has a calling. Each one of you has been given certain gifts and capacities and abilities.

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Have you thought, how am I using them in the service of the body? Well, all of those different gifts would have us going a hundred different directions if there was not something that was holding us all together.

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We as a people are to stand firm, knowing that there's going to be all sorts of pressures that are going to come against us, temptations to chase after this little thing and that little thing.

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We are called to stand firm against all of those pressures in the

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Lord, in Christ. It means we need to know who he is. We need to know how it is we can even stand firm in him.

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He's our creator. He's our maker, our sustainer. He's king of kings and Lord of lords. He's been enthroned on high.

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He is the son that is to be kissed lest he become angry with you. He will be the judge of all things.

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He is the lamb who stands before the throne standing as if slain and he's the lamb in Revelation chapter six, the great men and the little men of the world call for the mountains to fall on them and to hide them from the wrath of the lamb.

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He will be the judge in the last day. He is the one that we are to stand firm in.

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Let me just say, if your desire is to stand firm in Christ, you will not be easily offended by brothers and sisters in the

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Lord. You will have thick skin. You will not be one of those people that's constantly looking for other people to do something for you.

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You will always be looking to do something for others because your eyes are not on you.

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Your eyes are on the prize. Your eyes are on the goal. When a congregation does not have a direction to be moving together, it's like herding cats.

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Doesn't work real well. Trust me. Stand firm in the Lord. In this letter where Paul is expressing so much joy, we also see clear indication that guess what?

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The Philippians were humans and sinners like us. In fact, it's extremely unusual.

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He names names knowing that this epistle is going to be read when that letter arrives in Philippi on the next

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Lord's Day. The church is going to gather. They don't get to gather in buildings yet.

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They may still be outside. They may be in various houses. But this epistle is going to be read.

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I urge you Odia and I urge Syntyche to think the same way in the

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Lord. That's sort of a paraphrase. It's actually to have this, to be like -minded, to have the same mind in the

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Lord. Now, do you think, do you think you

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Odia and Syntyche, do you think that the guy who read the epistle warned them before he read it?

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I always wonder about that, you know. Before the service started, he said, hey, girls, just,

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I just want you to know that Paul mentioned you. Oh, really? Yeah. And it wasn't really bad, but he was, he's just saying he wants you to think the same way in the

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Lord. And then he says, indeed,

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I ask you also genuine companion, help these women who have contended together alongside of me in the gospel with also

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Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life. So here you have somebody mentioned, and we're not told who it is.

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Who is the genuine companion? There are some really interesting theories that you can sort of follow through.

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And if you look at Acts and sort of figure out who was with whom and what letter was written where and all this kind of stuff, one of the more interesting theories is that it's

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Luke, Luke as an author of the gospel and Acts, but we don't know.

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Whoever it is, it's a, a genuine companion, a genuine fellow worker, maybe the one who is going to be reading the letter.

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And so he says, I ask you also genuine companion, it's singular, help these women who have contended together alongside of me in the gospel.

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Now we're in a day where there's a tremendous amount, I mean, we've, we're seeing the horrific results of feminism in our society.

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Word came out a couple of days ago that the Senate Armed Services Committee is talking about initializing registration of all young women for the draft.

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And someone who's will remain nameless respond to that on Twitter over my dead body, or was it my dead and cold body?

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I forget dead and cold body. There you go. All right. And that's my thinking too.

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I'll be honest with you. Come after my granddaughters and don't worry, girls, I'll die first.

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Okay. You ain't sending my grand granddaughters off to some foreign land.

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Another one of your make yourself rich wars, which unfortunately are going on all the time these days.

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But that feminism and we recognize that we have to fight against it.

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We have to defend biblical roles. You all heard about what's going on in the Southern Baptist Convention this past week and the law amendments and everything that's happening there.

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And you look back over history, you look at all of the churches today with women, priestesses and pastrixes and their rainbow stoles, telling silly stories and saying

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Jesus was a racist, all the rest of that stuff. Where'd that come from? Well, it started there.

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It started with rejecting the biblical revelation of different roles for men and women.

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But the tendency is to not remain balanced.

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You know, when you're in a tug of war, I'm not sure if they allow tug of war anymore in school or something like that, because one side has to win and one side has to lose.

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And I guess you're not allowed to do that anymore. How many of you are old enough to remember dodgeball? OK, now sit there and think for a second.

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What did the ball sound like when it hit you? Every one of you remembers it, don't you?

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You can hear it right now. Just bing. Oh, it's just such a special hit you in the face. You can remember that one really well.

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But tug of war. Remember tug of war? It's hard to remain balanced when you're in a tug of war because you're pulling and you're not trying to stay in a center point.

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You're trying to pull the other people another direction. And in the same way, since we've been in a battle, it's easy for people to go the other direction.

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I've certainly seen some of this only over the past year. I've seen some really weird stuff, you know, guys dressing themselves up like they're crusaders going off to free the

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Holy Lands or whatever without really knowing what the crusades were about. But anyway, you can see some excesses.

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One thing we can certainly see here, the Apostle Paul did not hesitate to refer to two women that he was exhorting.

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They seemingly had some kind of division. They were going different directions.

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The resolution was for them to think the same way, have the same mind in the

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Lord. But he says to probably

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Luke, someone like that, help these women who have done what? Who have contended together alongside of me in the gospel.

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I don't know how else you can put that, but the fact is he sees that these women in Philippi and think about the church in Philippi, had it get started,

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Lydia, a woman. That's where the apostles come. The Lord opens her heart.

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She opens her home, there the things get started. These women who have contended together alongside of me in the gospel.

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That is high praise and that is a high recognition of the fact that the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

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And while Paul himself gave instructions as to the proper role of men and women were only given qualifications for men to be elders, so on and so forth.

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That does not mean that only men contend in the gospel.

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Paul could recognize that these women had contended together alongside of him, not behind him, not in front of him, alongside of him in the gospel.

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And when he makes reference to that, he can't help but also go with also

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Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life.

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Now, again, I just remind you from a worldly perspective, if you had looked at the church, if you had looked at Philippi as a city at this time in history, would you have seen a massive impact of the church, the

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Christian church at this time in this place? Well, probably not from a secular perspective, not from a historical perspective.

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The impact is going to be felt over centuries, literally. And when persecution would be coming and it would be coming soon, persecution, strong persecution is only a few years away.

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And that persecution is going to last for about 250 years, 250 years.

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You get a good reason why we need to be told all the time, stand firm, hold fast.

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But when we look at what was going on, it's still a relative period of peace.

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Rome hasn't really turned on the church quite yet fully. When I say Rome, I mean the

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Roman Empire, not Roman Catholicism. There's probably not as much of an issue with the

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Jews here in Philippi, but here's this small band of people, and we have some names,

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Yodia Sintiki, Clement, and the rest of my fellow workers, they're working, they're contending, they're defending the faith, they're presenting the faith.

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They can't have any idea of how many millions and millions of believers there would be centuries down the road.

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They can't know. There's no way they can know that. And yet,

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Paul not only commends them, but what does he say? Whose names are in the book of life.

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Whose names are in the book of life. What a tremendous commendation.

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And if we want to hear it said of us, your name is in the book of life.

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What would that mean to us? If we want to glorify

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Christ, if we want to be a part of that faithful congregation like Philippi was, wasn't perfect.

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These words are in the midst of exhorting believers to think in the same way, to not have division.

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And yet, if we want to be in that kind of congregation, how will that impact how we respond to one another?

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So often, major splits and divisions in churches come from the smallest of issues, little things.

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And if we were truly focused, and certainly we're thinking right now about the horrific possibility of what could happen in our state, how can you ask

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God to bless a nation or a state that would just not only have blood all over its hands, but take it and pour it over their heads?

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That's what this state is thinking about doing right now. Yes, that can bind us together in moving toward a particular goal, but the greatest unity that we can have will come when we think the same in the

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Lord. That is, focus upon what's really important.

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Don't get carried off in, oh, the things that you can get involved with in social media.

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You chase after this little thing over there, and you chase after that little thing over there, and you find some new little movement over here, and, oh, people will run off seeing it over and over again.

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If we have unity on the central issues, and we're passionate about them, that goes a long way to defeating the schemes of the enemy and dividing our fellowship.

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These individuals are described by the Apostle Paul as those whose names are in the book of life.

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That is what we want to have happen. Now, I'm getting a little bit worried that pretty soon all the lights will go off at the same time.

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So hopefully, wherever the lights are, we can find them again, and there's probably some kids someplace going, oh, look at this.

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This doesn't do anything. Oh, yes, it does. It just does it someplace else that you don't know where it is. We continue on.

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Verse 4, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.

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Again, it's called the epistle of joy. Rejoice in the

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Lord. Not in your accomplishments, not in things like that.

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Rejoice in the Lord always. Now, most of us will go, well, that's an exaggeration.

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And yet, some of the greatest saints will tell you that it was in embracing this command that they did find the greatest joy.

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I've told you before, if you've never read The Hiding Place, Corey and Betsy Ten Boom, their experience in the

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Ravensbruck concentration camp in World War II, highly recommend it to you.

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I need to listen to it again myself. Maybe on this next trip, I'll do that, especially since I got to visit

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The Hiding Place when I was overseas, I think in 2017, as I recall.

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But, it was these kinds of commands, rejoice in the

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Lord always, be thankful for all things, that in the midst of degradation and suffering and starvation and evil, gave them strength.

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Not just for their own personal survival, but to lead others to Christ in the midst of their suffering.

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Rejoice in the Lord always, there is nothing, and this is not,

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I do not say this lightly, there is nothing that we will experience in this world that is sufficient to cause us to stop rejoicing in light of what

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Christ has done for us. And when we get to glory, we will have the perspective to be able to see that with completeness.

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Paul himself said, the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

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And when we don't do that, when we reject that command, when we allow bitterness and disappointment and sadness to consume us, what we're saying is,

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I don't really believe that the glory that will be revealed to us someday is really all that glorious.

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That's what we're saying. Rejoice in the Lord always, again,

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I say, rejoice. Let your considerate or restrained or disciplined spirit be known to all men.

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We shouldn't be people who fly off the handle. We shouldn't be people who jump on the most recent bandwagon.

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We should be people who, once convinced of what's right, the defense of the unborn, the defense of the doctrines of Trinity against false groups, whatever it might be, once convinced, we can never be turned away.

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But we shouldn't be the kind of people who jump on to things only to be proven wrong.

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Happens a lot online, and in fact, these days, to be honest with you, when

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I see something online today, my first thought is, is it real? Is it real?

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Hey, if it's even me talking, is it real? Because I now have a number of different programs.

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I've got one on my phone here. It's a really useful program.

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It reads to me stuff that I need to have read to me, especially while I'm spending five, six hours a day driving the roads of America.

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It's wonderful, but it gave me the opportunity to create my own voice to read stuff to me in.

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Now a lot of people just don't even want to do that. But I've unfortunately had to listen to my voice for a long, long time.

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And I don't find it distracting at all, but it is a little scary because I've had people send me things in my voice that I didn't say.

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And already you can do it with video and it's going to get better and better and better. So the point is what?

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God's law says two or three witnesses. Don't believe everything you see. Don't believe everything you hear. That doesn't mean to be skeptical about God's promises.

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It means to be skeptical about modern man. That's what it means to be skeptical about.

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So you're considerate spirit. You consider you're disciplined. Don't be like people who are constantly bouncing around all over the place, jumping on this thing and then jumping on the next thing.

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When it says the Lord is near, I know when I, when I was raised that that meant, well, you know, uh, the rapture is just about to happen.

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And if you take it that way, then Paul was wrong. But if you understand that the

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Lord is near to us in his coming for us, then you can understand he is with us.

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What did he say in the great commission? I am with you to the end of the age.

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We're not alone. We're not so far away that he is not completely and totally aware of everything that we are experiencing in our service to him.

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And since he is near, be anxious for nothing. Tell you what, if we had an altar call right now for how many of us need to repent of anxiety and worry, do you think we'd have enough room down here?

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Oh, you're all sitting there going, who me? I'm never anxious about anything.

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I never worry. Well, I guess that I'm doing the only confession here, but it's so easy for me to see what's going on in the world and to sort of follow the progression and go, oh my.

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And then I have to stop and I have to remind myself, king of kings,

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Lord of lords, working all things after the counsel of his will, the world would tell you no.

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Well, scripture tells you trust. And our

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Lord taught us in everything by prayer and petition, prayer, communication with God, but petition with thanksgiving, petition, asking of God, asking of God.

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But in what context, I know it's not November, so we're not supposed to talk about this word, but the context of God honoring effective prayer is always thanksgiving.

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It's never the petty self -centeredness that is so often what you see in the modern day church.

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It's all about me. It's all about what I want. It's all about my needs. If you have thanksgiving toward God, then you already have the perspective that you're seeing how blessed you are to have life, to have food, to have redemption.

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And for the vast majority of humanity down through the years, that was about all you could ask for.

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Most of us live like kings and queens in comparison to generations before us.

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We live with so much, and if the Lord takes even a little bit of it away, all of a sudden we're wondering if God still loves me.

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Isn't it true? Isn't it true? But to petition

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God with thanksgiving will change what you're petitioning him for.

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Because so often our petitions are for version 2 .0

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of what God already gave us in version 1 .0, right? We set our heart on something, and we've seen the newest version, and I just can't be happy until I get that widget.

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But if we have true thanksgiving and we already see what God has given to us, isn't that going to change what we're asking for?

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Isn't that going to change our prayers? And you see, prayer is about changing us.

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We're not trying to make God better, but when we commune with our God, he changes us and conforms us to his will.

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So, in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

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You don't think God already knows? No. It's in the expression that our thoughts are ordered and our will is changed.

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That's what's so beautiful about it. Let your requests be made known to God.

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And if God needs to change your heart and your will, he will.

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But let your requests be made known to God with thanksgiving. And when that is our regular experience, then we possess something the world cannot begin to imagine.

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Look at that phrase, the peace of God. The peace of God.

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What is the greatest source of the evil we see in this world?

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Men and women made in the image of God at war with God, his law, his way, the world around us, themselves at war, enmity, enemies of God.

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There's only one way of peace with God, in and through Jesus Christ, the only way.

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God has ordained it to be that way. And if we as his people, with thanksgiving, will communicate to God our petitions, then the peace of God will be ours.

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How is it described? The peace of God which surpasses all comprehension.

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That's why you can't describe it. You can't put it on a slide and look at it through a microscope.

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You can't put it up on the screen because it surpasses all comprehension.

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Only those who experience it know it.

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And if you've walked with the Lord for almost any period of time, you know those special times.

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When you gave it all to God, you recognized your own incapacity to do anything.

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You came to the end of you and found out that's a good place to be.

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And you experienced the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension.

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And what steals that from us normally? Thinking like the world, dabbling in the world's things, and letting our hearts become focused on things that are passing away rather than things that will be eternal.

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The peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will do what?

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Will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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What a guard. What a guardian, the peace of God.

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But we're at war in this world with the world, not with God. If we have the proper focus, the proper understanding of who we are, who

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God is, what our purpose is, we can have a peace that will endure in the midst of the most horrific trial and tribulation.

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It will guard your hearts, guard your minds in Christ Jesus.

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It's not a switch you flip on and off. It's a way of life.

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It's something that grows in time as you see God's faithfulness in your life.

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And it should be the greatest goal we all have. To regularly experience the peace of God.

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That's not the same as saying, oh Lord, I want to live a life of ease. Those are not the same things.

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And in fact, the people that I have seen who have embodied and grown in and come to understand the peace of God were the very people who experienced the greatest tragedies and difficulties in their lives.

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Because they were always forced out of themselves into relying upon the supply that comes from Christ.

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The peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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And seemingly, having said your minds in Christ Jesus, and you could preach months on this next text, let me just wrap things up with this thought.

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Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

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Ask yourself a question. When it gets quiet,

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I've noticed that the younger generation doesn't like it when it gets quiet. They've always got to have headphones on, those cigarette things sticking out of their ears.

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That's what it looks like to me. The first time I saw them, I was like, why do you have a cigarette butt in your ear? I don't understand this. But, you know, there's always got to be something going on.

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There's got to be sound, sound, sound, quietness, solitude.

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Once your batteries die and it gets silent, what are you thinking about?

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What are you thinking about? What comes, what fills your mind? This text says, guard your mind, peace of God will do that, and here's a practical way of doing it.

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Think about what is true, dignified, right, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise.

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And now ask yourself a simple question. How often is the entertainment that we expose ourselves to leading us to ponder the exact opposite of what is given to us here in Scripture?

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I'm not saying that there are not movies, films, documentaries, and the like that do direct us toward some of these things, but the reality is the vast majority of what the world shovels into our brains is not true, dignified, right, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent or worthy of praise.

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It's the exact opposite. And so are we, on one hand, asking

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God for the peace of God to protect our hearts and minds and then constantly opening ourselves up to exposure to everything that is the opposite, the opposite of what

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God tells us to consider? Practical question,

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I have to ask it of myself. It's a practical question. But this coming week, ponder this verse.

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And when you have time to just be thinking, to just be considering, ask yourself, what's something that's true that I can consider, something dignified, right, pure, lovely, and think on these things?

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It's an amazing impact it will have upon our thinking. And so I chose these words because Paul loves the

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Philippian congregation. They're not perfect. He asked to exhort them to unity.

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That's the case everywhere. This group of people, you have so much energy, excitement, commitment, willingness to serve.

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And the only way that's going to continue is if we listen to these words, we stay focused upon the proper goals and directions, we are willing to serve others, to have the same mind, to go, that's what's really important.

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I'm not going to worry about this thing over here. What this person said to me really is offensive, but you know what?

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That's not nearly as important as what we're all pulling toward. And when we have that attitude, our enemy will struggle to find a way to cause division amongst us.

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Let's pray toward that end. Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do pray that you would, in these words written so long ago to a congregation so far away, let us hear what the

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Spirit would say to us. May we rejoice that our names are written in the book of life.

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May we view each other as fellow workers in the establishment of the gospel.

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May we pray each and every day to increase our love for one another, to decrease our willingness to be offended, but instead to always seek to love and to serve and to honor others.

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We do pray that you will encourage us as we seek to be faithful in these dark and trying times.

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Remind us that you are near, that you're not watching from afar.

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You are with your people as you've promised. We thank you for the freedom you've given to us to serve you in the way that we have.

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We know that there are many who would like to see that freedom taken away. We ask,

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Father, that you will use us as we have opportunity now to glorify the name of Christ.