Trusting God through the ups and downs of life

Today, by the way, in the church world in general, liturgical church world, today is known as Low Sunday, and that’s an expression that means it’s the Sunday after the exaltation of Easter in those churches. Our church doesn’t really go up or down that much. Easter is good and fun, and we do see a few people we don’t normally see, but generally, we hold pretty much the same.

But this year, if Low Sunday is normally the Sunday after Easter, well, this is really a great week because, in addition to being that, it’s the clock-changing ritual of daylight savings time, and that always catches Christians unaware. So all I keep saying to you, it’s always surprising to me, it never works the other way. People are never here an hour early. That says something, doesn’t it? I don’t know what. So if ever there was a gloom and doom Sunday, for some people, I guess it would be today, but in our particular emphasis on the word, we are coming to such a unique place because this is the day that we begin the fourth chapter.

It’s the seventh message from the book of Philippians. You may want to turn with us right to that passage. And I had given the sermon title in advance to our secretary that I would be speaking this morning on the subject, joy in any circumstance. And that’s doubly good for this Sunday, but I’ve also had some very interesting things happen.

Our own family went through a crisis last night, and one of our staff members has had a major crisis in the morning hours, and the burglar alarm went off here at the church in the middle of the night, and the police were called. So I wonder if the Lord was just trying to give us authority to preach on the subject joy in any circumstance.

I don’t know whether that’s true or not, even on Low Sunday and forgetful Christians and alarms and family problems and so forth. But it’s interesting because in preparing, normally I intended to get right into the fourth chapter this morning specifically. But in preparing for this week, I was struck by several truths out of the latter portion of the third chapter, which I’ve never taken time to dwell upon before in any study of Philippians.

And I’ve spent so much time studying this book in general over my lifetime, and I really feel the Lord would have us lay a foundation for this concept of joy in any circumstance, which is so wonderfully laid in the fourth chapter by looking at these verses. First, actually, I’d like to call your attention to chapter 3, just the first part of the first verse of chapter three, and then skipping on to the last verses, verse 20 and 21 of that chapter. I’m reading from a little different translation, so you may find some of the words different here.

Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. That’s verse 1, chapter 3. Moving to verse 20, the latter verse of the third chapter, “For our citizenship, or our conversation, is established in heaven, from whence we look for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall transform or change the body of our low estate into conformity with the body of His glory, by the working of His power, which is able to subdue all things to Himself.”

“So then, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, my dearly beloved, stand fast in the Lord.” This is chapter 4, verse 1. If you’re going to get a real division, remember that the chapters and verses weren’t put there by the people who wrote these books. The fourth chapter really begins with the second verse of chapter 4, “I beseech Euodia, and I beseech Syntyche.”

That’s the beginning of a new subject. So if you take the latter verses of chapter 3 and the first verse of chapter 4, you have one paragraph. What Paul is saying in this passage is to rejoice in the Lord because your citizenship is established in heaven. That’s an interesting phrase. I want to look at it with you for a few moments.

Do you remember when Jesus sent out the 70 in Luke chapter 10, He said, “Rejoice, because your names are enrolled in heaven.” One translator said that the Luke passage says, “Rejoice because you are the enrolled magistrates of the new Jerusalem.” Rejoice, in other words, because of who you are. And what Paul seems to be reminding the Philippians here is that they will never be able to conform as citizens of this world.

They’ll never really be citizens of the Roman Empire just obeying any decree that Caesar happens to give, regardless of what that decree is, because they have a higher loyalty, obedience, and citizenship. In fact, the word conversation in the King James or citizenship means state or commonwealth.

I like what Moffitt does with this translation. He says, “We are a colony from heaven, so that wherever Christians are, they are like colonists of heaven that God has invested in that world.” In fact, Molay, another professor writing on this same passage, makes the same kind of comments that Christians pass their time upon Earth, but their real citizenship is in heaven.

And this is such an interesting phrase: the locale of our discipleship, the place where we’re living it out, is not earthly, but it is heavenly. In fact, if you look in chapter three just a few verses up, you’ll see the context for these phrases, because the context is that Paul says he is ashamed to even write about those who claim to be Christians, whose god is their belly. Look at verse 18, who mind earthly things. In other words, their concentration, their whole life is centered upon the things of the earth. Then he turns around and says, “But you are different because you recognize that you are really colonists of heaven.”

There are four simple phrases or words that I want you to understand with me this morning. I believe they’re concepts the Holy Ghost wants to establish for you. And as I was mentioning, wanting to get right into the fourth chapter, the fourth chapter is so filled with verses that we love. “God shall supply all your needs,” “I’ve learned in whatsoever state I am,” “the peace of God shall stand century over your heart and mind.” The fourth chapter is perhaps the most amazing supply chapter for the believer anywhere in the scripture. We love the fourth chapter, and we love to take those promises and say, “Yes, I’m claiming that God will supply all my needs in Christ Jesus, and I’m claiming that I will have content in whatever state I am,” and so forth.

But I believe there’s a foundation here that has to be established first. And the four words or phrases I want to give you from these verses are remembrance, return, redemption, resource, and responsibility. And the first is right here: the joy in the Christian life comes from remembering who you are.

Having had some interesting moments in raising children, I know what it’s like to have despairing moments. Every time I hear of people bringing children into the world, I wonder if they’ve really thought it through. I guess it’s fortunate that you have children before you think about it. It’s probably a pretty good thing that you don’t give a lot of deliberate concept to the idea of children before they come into the world because children are the greatest source of joy and probably the greatest source of heartache that are a part of your experience. I look back at my own youth and the kind of recklessness. Of course, I was raised in an extremely legalistic family, and yet my parents were very loving. They weren’t strict, and their standards were very strict, but they were very loving, and they knew that I was kind of swinging out here like a pendulum off in left field somewhere and doing my own thing.

I was very rebellious in my spirit, and oftentimes I knew that Dad knew, though I wasn’t telling him everything that he was supposed to know in some of those teenage years. But many times when I would leave the house, he would just say something like this and I think I’m pretty well phrasing what he would say to me.

“It was never, you know, ‘I don’t want you to do this and do that.’ He knew pretty much that I was involved in some things I shouldn’t have been involved in. But he would always say to me, ‘Son, I want you to remember that you’re a Christian. And you’re a Howard,’ always in that order, and I would go out and try to have fun with those two things in my mind.”

You know, it’s really difficult when that remembrance of who you are becomes so basic to the joy God wants you to know in your experience in the Lord, the rehearsal of it in your life. There are two words that we confuse: status and state, and something you need to understand in this first principle.

When Paul says, “Remember our citizenship, we’re colonists from heaven. Our real attachment is there. That’s really where the orders come from. That’s where the life is being lived out is there.” Now our state changes. When Paul writes later in the fourth chapter, “I’ve learned in whatever state I am in, and there with to be content, wherever I am, I’ve learned to be content.”

Whatever state, our state changes. My state can be happiness. That’s why I don’t think the words happy and joy are the same words at all. My state can be happy, my state can be depressed, my state can be having pulses. “I’ve learned both to be abased and to abound; I’ve learned to abound and to suffer need at the same time.”

In other words, the state changes, but the status doesn’t change. And what Paul is saying to the Corinthians or to the Philippians at this point is, if you understand your status, then there will be joy in your life regardless of the state – prison, being beaten, having your own brothers talk against you, as was Paul’s own condition here as he wrote this letter, even Christians using his bonds as a means to bring greater unhappiness to his life. Your state can be a very widely separated circumstance, but if you remember your status, that you are colonists from heaven and you are in the Lord Jesus Christ, remembering that brings such a tremendous experience. You are the elect.

“You’re the enrolled magistrates of the coming kingdom of God. You are alien colonists, alien to this world system. You’re a heavenly gorilla force. You’re citizens and representatives of the eternal God, and when that’s really a part of you, sir, somehow it becomes like a bedrock. It’s that sense of pride.”

It’s that sense of knowledge that forms so much of the rest of our life. A couple of hymns came to mind as I was rehearsing some verses. In James Montgomery’s hymn, he writes, “Here in the body pent, absent from Him I roam, yet nightly pitch my moving tent a day’s march nearer home.” Another author, William Hunter, writes in his hymn, “Going Home,” “Let others seek a home below where flames devour or waves may flow; be mine the happier lot to own a heavenly mansion near the throne.” Now, I’m not talking about being a tramp, I’m talking about being a pilgrim. There’s a difference. A tramp is aimless, but a pilgrim has a shrine in his heart and a destination in his eye. And he understands who he is, and that makes such a difference about the way things happen. You can throw that kind of person into prison. You can say, “You are no good. You are this, you are that.” The world can outlaw the Christian faith, but when he knows his status and understands who he is, regardless of what his state is, it will make no difference.

I have a friend who is an attorney. In fact, he has come here and spoken several times. This week, I received an interesting, personally addressed note from Los Angeles from one of the largest law firms in the world, a firm that has offices in Madrid, Paris, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. The little note that I received said, “Caldwell and Tom’s with pleasure announces the withdrawal of partner Herbert E. Ellingwood to become deputy counsel to the President of the United States.” There’s a moment when withdrawal is announced with joy. Do you see what I’m saying? It just happened to come at the time I was thinking about this message. It’s because of what he is going to do. Here is a man who, perhaps in the process of his life, very godly Christian men, is now leaving his firm to take a position of responsibility with the President of the United States. I wonder if that’s not something that needs to be in our spirit. If we don’t all need to have a little card we’re carrying around saying, “The Holy Spirit is delighted to announce the withdrawal of Joe Jones from the mundane activities of this life because he’s especially appointed counselor to the King of the Universe.” You see, there’s that sense by which things become different when you understand that you’re not just walking through teaching a Sunday school class, bless God, and setting your clock early because you know the pastor will be mad if you’re not at church on time on Sunday morning.

I’m going through that kind of mundane rich when suddenly I understand and remember who I am and what my status is in God. The second important word from this is the word “return.” Look at verse three, our chapter, uh, three verse 20. “From whence or from heaven, we look for our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Expectation assures the return of the Lord Jesus. There is joy in your circumstance when there’s expectation. This whole third chapter, I think, if I were writing a one-word definition of the third chapter of the Philippians, it would be the word “expectation.” Paul says so much of it is about expectation.

He says, “I’m not yet perfect, but I’m pressing for, I’m forgetting the things which are behind. I’m pressing for the things which are reaching for the things which are before pressing toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” The whole experience of the Apostle Paul is not this kind of settled, well, bless God. I’m saved and sanctified and filled with the Holy Spirit, and I’m a member of the church, and but it’s reaching, pressing the runner just stretching forward just for that resting of the mark across the ribbon that says completion. And a part of that expectation is the coming of the Lord Jesus.

Let me tell you how important that is. According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 16, Paul says, “if any man love not the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema,” which means devoted to destruction. And then Paul says, “Maranatha,” almost the last words to the Corinthians in their first epistle, “Maranatha” is that word that means the Lord comes, the Lord came physically in the flesh. He lived among us because there were people trying to deny that. He comes now in the Holy Spirit. He’s a part of our conversation. He’s an unseen guest at our tables and meals and in our experiences, but he’s coming again, literally “Maranatha.”

It’s an interesting thing when there is a sense of expectation that the Lord may at any moment break in in reality. Now I know some of us get confused. We read the New Testament and say, “well, boy, back there 2000 years ago, they were expecting the Lord to come in and come and we’re saying now he’s gonna come any moment.” And you know what’s the difference? He didn’t come in their generation, at least he did. Every single one of them died. There was a personal coming. Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you unto myself that where I am there you may be also.” And every single believer in the early centuries had that personal coming of the Lord, and just like theirs, it wasn’t all old people that died.

In fact, if you walked through the catacombs of Rome, where 7 million Christians died in the first three centuries, you’ll see as many children and young people’s graves as you’ll see older people’s. The point is this: we do believe in a literal soon physical return of the Lord in the rapture of the church. But the church also always lives with a quickened awareness that the Lord is coming by His spirit into our conversations, into our lifestyle, into every part of our life. There’s that sense of expectation of the Lord’s return, the Lord’s coming for us, and it’s more than just the rapture. In fact, when a few verses later, Paul has to deal in the fourth chapter with two contentious women, fine women who had helped found the church but had become contentious and were allowing their own personal things to divide the church of Jesus Christ. And when Paul writes to him, he says to the yoke fellow, to the men in charge of the church or one of the presiding elders, he said, “You tell those women the Lord is at hand.” In other words, you better let them understand not just that Jesus is physically coming again in return but that He is in that process involved in their experience and in their life’s return.

The third word that comes out of this passage, and this is the one I want you to please spend some time with me because it’s so vital, is from verse 21. “Now I want to read it first. You look at it in your words. When He comes, He’s going to be a savior.” Now that’s interesting because it’s speaking about His saviorhood in the future to people who were already born again. Savior means a deliverer. What’s He going to deliver us from? Look at the words: “He shall change our vile body.” This is King James. “He shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.”

I want to read some other translations of that passage because I have some trouble with it, and yet I think it is foundational to hope. I have a favorite little section of scriptures, or a little translation I like to read, called the Cotton Patch Epistles. The Cotton Patch Epistles were written by Clarence Jordan.

A worker with the poor whites and with the blacks in the South, Clarence Jordan calls his letter to the Philippians “The Letter to Smithville, Alabama.” Here are his verses, beginning with verse 17: “Become my fellow mimics, brothers, and watch those who walk according to the example we set for you. For many people have joined the church about whom I frequently told you, and tell you again with tears in my eyes, that they are bitterly opposed to the thought of Christ’s lynching. With their mindset only in material things, their destination is destruction. Their god is pleasure. Their pride is their shameful behavior.

For our church, fellowship is a spiritual thing out of which we constantly expect to deliver Jesus Christ, and he will transform our humble little group into a form resembling his own glorious body by means of the inner working, which enables him to capture everyone.” Phillips translates it this way: “He will remake these wretched bodies of ours to resemble his own glorious body by the power of his, which makes him the master of everything that is,” and The Living Bible translates it: “When he comes back, he will take the dying bodies of ours and he will change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same mighty power that has enabled him to conquer everything else everywhere.”

I want you to hear me very specifically. There cannot be joy in the Christian life until you are really in touch with the fact that the new life of Christ is implanted in dying, weakened mortal bodies and that we are asked to live that out with a sense of hope and anticipation, and not in a sense of fulfillment. There’s one reason I don’t like that word “vile.” Not St. Paul, not any other teacher of the New Testament, ever held the human body in contempt. However, false doctrines, such as the so-called Nas es, held that the human body was contemptible and that Jesus didn’t really have a human body because the body was basically evil in itself. That’s not true, and that is not the belief of the New Testament. But there’s not a man or woman in this building who doesn’t know that upon every one of our bodies are the multiple marks of limitation and weakness. It’s a total testimony, and we testify to it in our bodies on an almost weekly basis, of the ineffectiveness and fallenness and sinfulness of this body. Our human body is fettered by frailties, and it’s locked in with limitations. Oftentimes, it’s pursued by pain, and it’s doomed. Every one of us knows it’s doomed to die.

And Paul certainly understood this, and he knew it. He was saying something so important for you and me in this passage, in which he said, not only do you remember who you are, and not only do you focus on the return of the Lord, but you understand something. It’s like bedrock in your experience, and that is, you understand that this body is not yet redeemed, and you wait for the redemption of this body.

Now, I want you to do some homework with me for a few moments. Turn with me to Romans chapter eight. I flipped back there this morning and again, reread passages that I have read so many times in the past, but you need to see them and you need to understand what Paul is saying when he says to these people the kind of basis of our hope is that we’re waiting for the Lord to come, and when he comes, there’s going to be a transformation of the weakness of these human bodies.

Romans chapter eight, beginning with verse 10. I’m going to skip through a lot of them, but just look at chapter eight, verse 10, “And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” The verse we sang a few moments ago, “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he that raised up Jesus from the dead will quicken your mortal bodies and so forth.”

Then verse 18, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. The creature was made subject to vanity, etcetera. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

Verse 21, “Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption to the glorious liberty of the children of God.” We know the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies.

Look at the next verse, how very specific it is. “For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man sees, why does he yet hope for it? But if we hope for that we see not, then we do with patience wait for it.” Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit maketh intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered, and so forth.

What is Paul saying to these Philippians? That we live in a body, and I like the words one translator says, “It’s the body of this present low estate,” that we live in a body which is weak. That there’s a condition of the earthly life, rather, in which the Christian cannot serve God with the perfect freedom he wants.

He is subject to the ills of poverty, ignorance, pain, temptation, and death, and there is this bondage in which there is a desire to be freed from that. Yet, God has asked us to walk this period out in this manner. When Jesus comes, there’s going to be a change in it, but we must live and do His purpose now in this present low estate. Brother, your ability to walk out joy in circumstance has got to be based on an understanding that we press toward this hope, but we don’t have it. We have the earnest down inside us, the miracle power of God is at work in our life, but it doesn’t completely eliminate it.

I found the other day a hymn from the Middle Ages, and it sounds to me like words that must have been written last week, and it goes like this: “Oh, how glorious and resilient, fragile body thou shalt be, when endowed with heavenly beauty, full of health and strong and free, full of vigor, full of pleasure that shall last eternally.”

Many times in the seven years, the Sabbath of suffering that I watched my father walk out, a man who had never known weakness, never known any kind of physical illness for any long period of time. In all my life, I never saw him. In fact, when he was 73, 74, he was climbing up three-story buildings, painting houses, and full of vigor and vitality. Then to be struck and not taken home as we would’ve prayed, even then, all of us prayed that he’d instantly be released. He was, in fact, the first thing he said to me after I rushed back there at the beginning of the seven years after the first problem had developed. He said, “I am so ready to go home. I’m so ready to be with God. I don’t know why He doesn’t take me.” And little did he know that it would be not just a few days, but seven years. Gradually, that seven years became especially the last three, and particularly the last 18 months of those three years, became absolutely debilitating in which the physical body was just like a baby being cared for almost in those primal stages of life, having to be cared for in all of the vicissitudes of human experience. Watching my mother care for him, and knowing because you could see in his eyes all the consciousness of his same pride, all the consciousness of the same strong, independent, self-reliant person he had already always been, and yet in that particular state.

But in that condition of weakness, both in watching him and in myself being testified to by the Holy Spirit, I saw such a parable of what our life is and what Paul is trying to say to the believers in Romans 8, and in 1 Corinthians 15 where he talks about the resurrection. Maybe you should turn with me to that passage in 1 Corinthians, the 15th chapter verses 42 through 44.

Speaking about this vile body, this body of low estate, he says it’s sewn into the grave in corruption, but it’s raised in incorruption. It’s sewn in dishonor, raised in glory, sewn in weakness, raised in power, sewn in natural body, raised a spiritual body. Now he’s speaking about something very important for you and me to understand.

The bedrock of joy in the Christian life is that our expectations are right, not fantastic. That’s one of the things that I will consistently raise the finger of teaching against so many of the apostate teachings, particularly the charismatic movement in this day, which teach you a doctrine of holding a gun up to the head of God and demanding from God things that are not according to His purpose for you and filling the believer with expectations that are totally out of the realm of God’s provision.

God wants you to understand that on this earth, you are walking out the Christian life in a body of weakness. Use Paul’s words, vileness, as long as you understand, or the translator’s words, “low estate,” as long as you understand that’s not a depreciation of the human body. It’s simply saying the body is filled with its weaknesses, with our desire to get on with things, and yet we’re so limited.

Like the medieval hymn writer I quoted, saying, “Oh, what a wonderful moment it will be when this body will be resplendent with vigor and no longer limited.” And Paul says, we’ve got the down payment, saying that day is coming, but it’s not here. And that’s why we’re filled with hope. Not having it, but knowing the Savior will make this change.

Now, let me refer to two words here, two important words. In the original language here, it says that He will change our vile bodies. I did some study on this this week and it’s incredible. The word in the original means He will re-scheme, redesign the appearance of the body. I’m really happy about that. I didn’t know that until this week. I’ve had some concern about that. The Bible says we’re going to be known as we are known, and there’s going to be recognition, but specifically, the word of God here says the body’s going to be re-schemed.

That the details of the appearance are not exactly shown to us, but like First Corinthians said, the passage we’ve just said, when it’s buried, it’s sewn in decay. It’s going to be raised without decay. It’s going to be sewn in humiliation, but it’s going to be raised in splendor.

It’s going to be raised in strength rather than weakness and raised as a spiritual body. It’s going to be changed, reshaped, redesigned, and the other word is the word, like here it shall be changed like unto His glorious body. I checked several scholars out on this, and they both say this word means that the outward appearance will conform to the inward reality.

In fact, Dr. Mole says, and I quote specifically from him, “The coming conformity of our body to the blessed Lord’s body will be an appearance because in reality, not a mere superficial reflection, we will have a likeness of constitution and of nature.” You know the little youth conflict thing that some of you have gone to at Bill Godard’s thing, and you wear a pin around that has the letters that say “Please be patient with me, God is not finished yet.” All it is is the first letter of each of those words in that sentence. What this passage says opened something to me this week that just blew my mind because that’s exactly what’s not true. Now I know what I am inwardly because Christ is in my life, and I know the power and the resident beauty of the Christ life within me. It’s the life that John says cannot sin, the new nature of God that’s planted inside me, but that new nature is planted in a body of weakness, viness, deformity. A body that does not conform to that inward change, but when Christ appears, he’s going to re-scheme and reshape that body so that in a miraculous process of God, the life within and the body without will bear perfect testimony to each other.

What a tremendous thought. What a tremendous truth. The cry of Romans 8, the redemption of our bodies that we might enter into that full and perfect knowledge. That’s a marvelous fact, and I want you to understand that Paul is saying also about that, but it has a frame of reference to now as well that that indwelling coming of Christ will begin to put the resources of God at work in our life, and as we face the twin enemies of sin and death, and Paul always ties them together, God wants to do that work of renewing and restoration. The fourth word that comes out of this is the word resource. Look with me to the latter portion of verse 21.

How is he going to change this vile body? Change it so it’ll be like unto his own glorious body, according to the working, whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself. Now, I have searched the New Testament and I know of no other passage where this occurs. There are two words, Greek words for power. One is the basic concept of power. The other is the word that means the exercise of that power. Both of these words appear here together. Together, it is the working of his power. It is the exercise of his power in our lives. The words are inner again or “energeia,” and “dunamis” “dunamis,” you know, from which we get the word dynamite.

Here are the edited text:

Here is Paul’s resident faith. He says, “Look, you wanna know how I can believe that’s gonna happen. You wanna know how I can believe that this feeble, weakened, corroding, corrupt, infirm body,” and by this time, Paul’s was a beaten mass of flesh. He had been beaten with rods three times, which means he was a hopeless cripple.

To be beaten with rods was to be laid over what we would call a horse-like a sawhorse had to be beaten by rods against the base of the spine, and anybody knows what would have happened by that process. Three times that had happened, he had been beaten five times by the 40 whip stripes of what we call the black snake whip.

Those whips were embedded with bits of rocks and iron so that even the first stripe would lay the back open. By the time it was considered capital punishment, most prisoners died in the process. Five times. He had been whipped with that 39 stripes until obviously, by this time, you could have put a fist through the basic area of Paul’s back.

You could have put a fist probably right down into the spine area because the flesh had been torn completely away from the flesh. Can you hear that, man? Can you see that man at the end of four years of imprisonment as a man who was walking out God’s deliberate purpose for his life? How does he fit into these neat little, charismatic formulas of success and prosperity and holding the pistol up to God’s head in the right way?

And God’s gonna see that everything you want, you’re gonna have doesn’t hardly fit, does it? And yet, here’s this man writing half the books of the New Testament. So basic to God’s communicating the message of truth to us. Here’s this man writing and saying, “God’s gonna change this infirm body. I have places I wanna go.

There are things I wanna do. There’s a desire within me to do more for God, but I’m so limited by the infirmities of this body, but God’s gonna change that. And how do I know it? Because of the indwelling working already of the power of God, the ness of God, and according to the working of his power, this work is going to be done.”

We spent last week kind of, if there was a text for last week, it was from this very chapter, Philippians 3:10, “that I may know him in the power of his resurrection.” We’ve said over and over that there was a release of power and authority in Jesus, and on the day of resurrection, there was a limitation and a release of nuclear power that could become immediately and was to become a continuing means of understanding for believers.

In Ephesians chapter 1, Paul says, “I want you to know the hope of your calling and the riches of God” (verse 19). “I want you to know the exceeding greatness of his power towards you who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” Lady, do you hear that?

Do you understand that there is a power resource available that is the same power by which Christ came forth from the grave, that conquered all the power, sin, and death? That power you can plug into. Well done, but don’t presume you do, as not every Christian does. It is so clear; in fact, we sang about it today. The indwelling spirit of Christ that raised Him from the dead, if the same spirit dwells in you, it will quicken your mortal bodies.

Therefore, the next verse says in Romans 8:12, “Therefore, brethren, we’re not debtors to live after the flesh.” That’s a choice. The power is there, but using it is a different matter. So, Paul says, your faith, your joy, your understanding, not only is the recognition of who you are, the remembrance of who you are in Christ Jesus. It is not only a sense of knowing the return of the Lord, but it’s based on a pure sense of understanding the redemption that we don’t yet have, the change of our vile body. And it’s also comprehending the resource of that which is the eternal working of this power in us and then tapping into it. But he ends with verse 1 of chapter 4 by referring to our responsibility, “Brethren, beloved, long for joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.”

If you look with me through a couple of verses of the fourth chapter, you’ll see the phrase “in the Lord” appearing in three ways. In the first four verses, “stand fast in the Lord,” “be of one mind in the Lord,” and “rejoice in the Lord.”

The responsibility that Paul sees coming through this is very interesting. Here’s this wonderful hope of the return of the Lord. Here’s the fact that this vile infirm body is going to be changed, and we know that the work which has begun within us, in that awful wrestling between what we want to see done and what is in truth done, that almost kind of hopelessness that we sometimes experience as Christians, the divine life but in a fallen human nature, and we wrestle with that. We go through all the truth of what’s going to happen in God’s promise to us, and we end with one simple word: “so stand fast in the Lord.”

When I came to putting this verse together with the latter portion of chapter three, when I began studying and saw that that’s the way it belonged, it was incredible that he used this word to me because the word “standfast” in the Greek’s decade is an interesting phrase. It’s a soldier who is in a battle that’s going the wrong way, and the forces are surging around him.

In fact, the actual word means for a soldier who will stand the shock of battle, and with the enemy surging all around him, he’ll stand and he won’t retreat. He won’t run. What Paul has done in those three verses that you and I have looked so deliberately at this morning, what Paul has said is, “look, it’s not completed.

There is a kind of wrestling and the weakness of your flesh. There’s a waiting for something that you don’t have, and walking out in faith, even when there’s the struggle with the weakness and infirmity of the flesh. Recognizing you’re citizens of heaven, and there’s a conflict automatically between that citizenship and the earthly things upon which carnal Christians put their mind.”

Paul says, “look, I understand there is a surging, there’s a battle, there’s an enemy. I understand that this is not an easy thing. This isn’t a happy trip. You know it. Some Christians sing. Sometimes I’d like to erase it out of our hymn books. Happy, happy, happy. The people whose God is the Lord.

You know, it’s okay. I understand why you sing it, but there’s just kind of something that’s flighty about that to me. Not every Christian is happy, but every Christian has joy. There is a well to draw the joy from, and Paul is saying, ‘look, this is gonna come against you, like a battle, like a huge battle in the Army’s going to come and it’s gonna look like you’re overwhelmed.’

And I wanna tell you something, stand in that moment. Stand like a soldier bracing himself for the shock and be prepared. Having done all the stand, I’ve already called your attention to the fact that the three things that he expresses to him in these first verses, and we’ll be talking about these verses in the next message, but the three things, whether he’s talking about rejoicing or standing, or having the same mind.

It’s all followed by this phrase ‘in the Lord.’ Now, I wanna just say something in closing this message. There are a lot of people whose company is a temptation to do the wrong thing.

From the time I was a child, I know this isn’t too much done in our culture anymore, but from the time I was a child, that was a part of my parents’ very intensive training. You avoid bad company and there are certain people you avoid. Not people because of their class or because of their the side of town they’re from or whatever else, but you avoid certain people whose language, whose mannerisms, whose whole attitude towards life is just defiling because there are some people in whose company you will do things you would never normally do.

But there’s something else that’s equally true. The other side of that ledger, there are some people who, by their very presence with you, keep you from doing something you might do.

There are some people who buy their love for you by their commitment to you, by their very presence. They remind you of who you are, and it is so much easier to stand in temptation because they’re with you. We used to have a staff member here at this church. I wasn’t particularly close to him as a human being, we were staff people, involved, and friends, but he had an absolutely incredible nose for my life. On more occasions than I could tell you, I would start out at some moment, some afternoon, or whatever, and he would step out of his office and say, “Where are you going?” I’d say, “I’m just going out.” He’d say, “Where are you going?” “Well, I’m just gonna go somewhere, do something.” And then he would always say, “I’ll go with you.” I’d say, “Oh, no, I don’t want to bother you. That’s okay.” And he’d say, “No, I’d really like to go.” And then I would say, “I really don’t want you to go.” And he would say, “I know, that’s where I wanna go.”

There are some people who, by their presence, influence you. Paul says, “You stand fast because you stand in the presence, in the awareness of the Lord,” with a little monk back in the Middle Ages, a lot like a paphitis. The man we studied in the second chapter of Philippians was not important enough to do the prayers, the teaching, or the great religious things in that particular monastery. So he was assigned to do the pots and pans, even the pots and pans. His name was Brother Lawrence. Although there isn’t a Christian in the world who could tell me who the rector of that monastery was, who the chief singers were of the Gregorian chants, or who the great leaders and teachers were in that rectory, there are very few Christians who don’t know his name, Brother Lawrence. Because Brother Lawrence, out of doing the pots and pans, wrote a little tract called “Practicing the Presence of God.” Centuries later, Christians are inspired and blessed. The basic premise of Brother Lawrence’s book was that joy in the Christian life comes from doing whatever you do in the presence of Jesus, and whether it’s pots and pans or teaching, you do it in the Lord.

Paul says, “You stand fast in the Lord.” The Spartans developed a concept, and as you study their history, you will find that they were just a city-state, not even a country. They brought their young men up together and divided them very early in their years into teams or partners, and they practiced and trained together until they became as one. When they went into battle and the battle went totally against them and there wasn’t a possibility of success.

Yes, they would stand back to back, those two, and of course, others like them in the Spartan Army. They would fight to the death, knowing that commitment, that companionship, that “in the Lord Inness,” to use Paul’s fresh expression here. That’s where responsibility becomes possible – joy in the Lord.

And this is the thing: The Spirit is impressing in my spirit for you that joy in the Lord doesn’t come from changing your circumstances. That’s our contemporary idea. You don’t like your marriage? Get another one. Don’t like your husband or wife? Trade them in. Find someone else. And people go through their fifth and sixth and seventh trades trying to find someone else. Don’t like your job? Get another one. After all, it’s just a job. Or it’s your house. That’s the problem. Your circumstances.

Let me tell you something: The Christian message is that joy comes in any circumstance. It is totally irrelevant to what the circumstance is, but when it’s based on a consistent understanding of what God is doing, who you are, what is not yet done, what is to be done, so that there’s no false expectation. Yet there is the marvelous sense of God’s presence, the Lordship of Jesus, and you are standing in the Lord. You are of one mind because it’s in the Lord, and you can rejoice in that circumstance because the Lord is in that circumstance.

You’re not running from it, retreating from it, trying to change it, or cast the devil out of it. But you’re seeing the Lord in it, and in the process of that, comes the standing. Let’s bow our hearts in prayer: “Thank you, Father, that you bring us so thoroughly to understand you. Now, Lord, there are some in this very building this morning who wrestle with vile weakness and infirmity, who have a nature done down within the new nature of God, and yet there is this dichotomy. Lord, I ask that you will establish in their heart a knowledge that they are but alien colonists on this planet whose citizenship is in heaven.

We are waiting until the body is redeemed, the adoption is completed. But while we wait, the glorious power of God, the same power that will one day change this mortal body, is at work within us. We are only being asked to stand, and having done all to stand, but to stand in the Lord, to rejoice in the Lord, to base our life and experience in Him. Father, I pray that you will help us. Oh, Father, we can’t do this in ourselves or even understand it ourselves. So we ask you to make it so clear that every word shall accomplish the purpose to which it is sent. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

God bless you, friends, you’re dismissed. There is a prayer chapel here where needs are met. If you would like to be prayed with or receive communion, we encourage you to go there. God bless you.