Today in our journey along Route 66 we come to Paul’s Letter to the Philippians...
Author
Philippians is one of the undisputed letters of the Apostle Paul. All commentators ancient and modern are agreed that this letter is by him.
Date
This letter was written by Paul when he was in prison, most likely in Rome, sometime between AD 62 and 64 (see Acts 28:30), though some commentators think that Paul wrote this letter earlier, during one of his other imprisonments.
Themes
J. B. Phillips summarizes the themes of Philippians. Paul writes to the church at Philippi, where he…
… had been beaten and imprisoned but had seen his gaoler converted (Acts XVI, 25-34). It was also at Philippi that Lydia, a business woman selling purple-dyed cloth, became one of the first Christians.
The first purpose of the letter is to acknowledge a gift sent to Paul in prison by Epaphroditus from the Christians at Philippi. Possibly this letter was delayed by the serious illness of Epaphroditus while with Paul (II, 27) and Paul is evidently by now himself expecting early release from prison (II, 24). Except possibly for the letter to Philemon, this is the most personal example of Paul’s correspondence, and he is obviously very fond of the little church at Philippi. It expresses his high hopes for their unity, faithfulness and progress in the faith. It also contains a warning, like that in the letter to the Galatians, against false teachers who wanted to bring these inexperienced Christians under the Jewish Law.
Structure
The theme of joy relates to every part of Philippians. The structure of the letter works out like this…
Choose joy…
· In relationships (1:1-2)
· In prayer (1:3-11)
· In spite of circumstances (1:12-30)
· Through unity (2:1-11)
· Through self-sacrifice (2:12-18)
· Through humility (2:19-30)
· Instead of legalism (3:1-11)
· By pressing on (3:12-21)
· Through agreement (4:1-3)
· Instead of worry (4:4-9)
· Through contentment (4:10-20)
· Through grace (4:21-23)
Key Concept—Pacifying Panic
Philippians has long been one of my favorite books in the Bible, mainly because of this theme of joy. The word “joy” appears five times in this letter. And the word “rejoice” appears six times. There is joy, in one form or another, in every chapter of this letter.
Because this is my favorite letter in the New Testament, it is hard to pick just one part of it to talk about. But choose I must. Therefore, I would like to read to you from Philippians 4:4-9. Listen for God’s word to you…
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brothers 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. 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.
The Greek word for anxiety means “to be pulled in different directions.” That’s what anxiety felt like in the first century and it is what it feels like in the twenty-first. We live in such an anxious society today that many products are created in response to our worries. Furthermore, such products are almost always guaranteed to sell. I think of one product in particular that is now a part of most of our lives. I’m speaking of the panic button on our automobile key fobs. Remember when they first came out? They used to say, “PANIC” in big red letters! Now they don’t have to say “PANIC” because we all know what the button is for.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had a PANIC button for all of life that we could just push and thereby fend off all our worries? The good news is that the Lord has given us such a PANIC button in these verses in Philippians. Sometimes when I am worried, I find that simply reading this passage over again calms my fears. Better yet, practicing what Paul says here will indeed calm our worried souls every time. There are several steps to Paul’s process for pacifying panic. Let’s look at them one by one.
Rejoice!
The first step is to rejoice!
Did you know that joy and worry don’t mix? It is impossible to be filled with joy and filled with worry at the same time. In fact, worry is the greatest thief of joy; worry strangles joy out of your life. But the opposite is also true: joy can remove worry from your life.
Paul tells us we need to rejoice in the Lord. No matter what is happening in your life right now, you can rejoice in the Lord if you are a follower of Jesus Christ. Why? Because his relationship with you is constant. Though everything else in the world may go sour, the Lord’s relationship with you will never go off. He will never leave you or forsake you. As Paul notes in Philippians 1:6, “…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Paul tells us we need to rejoice in the Lord always. Joy is a choice, not a feeling. Joy is not dependent upon circumstances. Therefore, we can always choose to rejoice in the Lord.
On a balmy October afternoon in 1982, Badger Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin, was packed. More than 60,000 die-hard University of Wisconsin supporters were watching their football team take on the Michigan State Spartans.
MSU had the better team that day. What seemed odd, however, as the score became more lopsided, were the bursts of applause and shouts of joy from the Wisconsin fans. How could they cheer when their team was losing?
The explanation was this… seventy miles away the Milwaukee Brewers were beating the St. Louis Cardinals in game three of the 1982 World Series. Many of the fans in the stands at the University of Wisconsin were listening to portable radios—and responding to something other than their immediate circumstances.
Paul encourages us in 2 Corinthians 4:18 to fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. When we do, we can rejoice despite hardships because we are tuned into Christ’s larger victory. That’s what Paul did as he was languishing in a Roman prison. He chose to tune into the heavenly radio station.
I wonder: what station are we listening to?
Relax
Paul’s second step to pacifying panic is to relax. Paul says, “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.”
The Greek word for gentleness means “to give way graciously and not insist on one’s rights.” So often, when we find ourselves in difficult situations, we try to take matters in hand and make them work out the way we want. And very often this leads to greater anxiety. Rather than trying to desperately fix things ourselves, we need to relax our grip and turn things over to the Lord to fix.
The only way we can do that is to realize that the Lord is nearby. God is close by, and he will work in our situation for good. Psalm 145:18 says, “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”
Think about how young children respond to thunderstorms in the middle of the night. The loud noise scares them. They come running into Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Mom and Dad perhaps let the kids sleep in their room. Five minutes later the thunderstorm is still raging, but the kids are fast asleep on the floor next to Mom and Dad’s bed. What has changed? The storm hasn’t, but the child’s sense of their parents’ nearness has.
When we realize that the Lord is near and that we are his children through Jesus and that he loves us and has everything under control, then we can relax. We don’t have to panic. We don’t have to worry anymore.
Pray
How do we become aware of God’s nearness? We do it through prayer. That is the next step in Paul’s plan for pacifying panic. Paul’s ultimate solution for worry is prayer. Turn your cares into prayers. As Peter says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)
Specifically, Paul mentions three aspects of prayer that help to eliminate anxiety. The first word that Paul uses for prayer is προσευχῇ. It is the general word for prayer, and it can mean to pour out one’s heart. When we are anxious, we need to tell the Lord that we are worried. Tell him everything we are feeling about the situation. He will listen whenever we come to him in the name of Jesus. There is no problem too great for God’s power and there is no person too small for his love.
The second word Paul uses for prayer means to petition the Lord. In other words, tell God exactly what you want him to do for you.
The third aspect of prayer Paul touches upon is thanksgiving. The word is plural: thanksgivings. So often I find that making a list of things for which I’m thankful gets my mind refocused and helps to allay anxiety.
Paul says if we take these three steps in prayer, then the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Paul knew what it meant to be guarded. He may have had guards on either side of him while he was dictating this letter to the Philippians. Paul is saying that if we pour out our hearts to the Lord, if we tell the Lord what we want him to do, and if we give him thanks, then God’s peace will stand as the sentry at the entrance to our minds and our hearts. Sometimes I find it helpful to picture Jesus standing guard at the front of my mind and at the front of my heart, not allowing worrisome thoughts and feelings to intrude.
Years ago, a pilot was making a flight around the world. After he had been in the air for two hours, he heard a noise in his plane. He recognized the sound to be the gnawing of a rat who had stolen aboard while the plane was on the ground. The pilot was worried, to say the least. That rat could be chewing through a vital cable that might cause the plane to go down. It was two hours back to the last airport and more than two hours to the next stop. What was the pilot to do?
Finally, the pilot had an idea. He raised the altitude of the plane. He kept going higher until the sound of gnawing ceased. The rat could not survive the high altitude and died.
Worry is a rodent. It cannot live in the heights of a close relationship with Jesus Christ. Worry dies when we ascend to the Lord through prayer.
Think
Paul’s fourth step to pacifying panic is to think. “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.”
Worry is often the result of filling our minds with the wrong thoughts. One study revealed that 60% of our fears are totally unfounded. 20% of our worries are about things in the past. 10% are about things so petty they don’t make any difference. 5% of our worries are about real things that we can’t do anything about. That means that only about 5% of our worries are about things we can act upon. That’s truth worth focusing upon.
Paul says we need to focus not just on what is true, but also on what is noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. Paul knows how hard it is for us to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative sometimes. That’s why he gives us this exhortation.
The story is told of a pastor’s wife who was known for her ability to make positive comments about every facet of her husband’s ministry. However, she found it difficult if not impossible to say anything nice about the choir in their church because they all sang off key. (Needless to say, this story is not about our church!)
Finally, the pastor’s wife thought of a solution to her negativity one Sunday morning. As the choir filed into the church, she leaned over to the person next to her and said, “Aren’t they walking well this morning!”
Do the things we think about pass the positivity test that Paul sets here? If not, why not make the choice to refocus our thinking?
Put into Practice
Paul’s final step to pacifying panic is to put into practice. Specifically, he tells the Philippians to put into practice what they have seen him doing and he promises that the God of peace will be with them.
Not many preachers can say, “Do as I do.” But Paul could. He talks about the things the Philippians learned directly from him and the things they received from him. The latter is a reference to the official tradition of the church that Paul passed on. Paul also talks about what the Philippians have seen in him—his example.
We don’t have Paul here with us like the Philippians did. But we have his example written about in the Bible, and we also have Paul’s teaching and the tradition of the church recorded in the same place. The question is: are we putting these things into practice? James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
Paul says that if we put these things into practice, the God of peace will be with us. God is not a creedal formula. He is a living Person. If we seek him, we will find him, when we search with all our hearts, and when we find him, there is peace.
There was a great church sign that said, “If life is a puzzle, look here for the missing peace.”
Life is a puzzle sometimes. Often it is a worrisome puzzle. But if we look for the Lord in the ways he has said we can find him, through prayer, Scripture, the church, then we will find that missing peace/piece we are all searching for.
My friend, Tim Hansel, received a gift from a friend years ago. It was a framed saying that contained this statement: “Until Further Notice: Celebrate Everything!” However, when Tim received the gift in the mail, the glass in the frame was cracked. Rather than replacing the glass, he decided to leave the frame as it was, because he thought it presented an appropriate parable of life. Tim lived with chronic pain for half of his life because of a mountain climbing accident, but somehow, he was able to rejoice through it all … and his joy was contagious.
We all go through tough times in life. There are experiences that crack the glass and skew our vision of life, of ourselves, and God. But in the middle of those cracking experiences comes God’s message to us in Christ: “Until further notice: rejoice!” That is God’s message to us today, no matter what tough times we are going through. Jesus has already experienced the worst for us on the cross. Because of what Jesus went through, we can be sure there is no pit so deep that Jesus is not deeper still. Furthermore, he came up out of the pit. He was raised to life and is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Therefore, if we put our faith in Jesus, we can be sure he will raise us up too. That means that no matter what depths we may be in right now, we can rejoice in him.
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