A family had put their Grandma on her first plane flight, but she hadn’t been very confident about the experience of leaving the ground on this contraption. When they met her at the airport on her return, one of the family members kidded her by asking, “Well, did the plane hold you up okay?” She grudgingly replied, “Well, yes,” and then quickly added, “But I never did put my full weight down on it!”

Many Christians are like that Grandma. The truth is, they’re being sustained completely by God, but they’re afraid to put their full weight down on Him. As a result, they’re plagued by anxiety and aren’t able to enjoy the flight.

Few of us are strangers to anxiety. It creeps in over big and little things, gnawing away at our insides. Someone graphically described anxiety as “a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained” (Arthur Roche, Reader’s Digest [6/88], p. 64). We now often hear phrases like being “stressed out,” or having “a panic attack.” Although I disagree with their psychological approach to the problem, the Christian psychiatrists, Frank Minirth and Paul Meier, say that anxiety is the most common mental disorder they encounter at their network of clinics across our country (Worry-Free Living [Thomas Nelson], p. 17).

We often feel anxious about our finances: How can we make this month’s bills? How will I be able to fix my aging car if it breaks down? What if I lose my job? How will we put the kids through college? How can we meet our medical bills? How will we ever save enough for retirement? What if the economy fails?

We feel anxious about our health, especially as we grow older: What if I get cancer or Alzheimer’s? What if I’m disabled or have to go into a nursing home? If we’re younger, we may have these same anxieties concerning our aging parents.

We’re anxious about our children: Will they turn out okay? Will they avoid drugs and sexual immorality? Will they be safe in this crime-ridden world? Will they be able to get into college and then get a decent-paying job? Will they marry a godly person and have a happy home? What kind of world will their children have to live in?

The lists could go on and on. Maybe you’re getting anxious just listening to me give different reasons for anxiety! Sometimes we can’t identify any specific reason for our anxiety, but it’s there, nagging away at our insides. If we don’t learn to deal with it properly, it can cause all sorts of health problems, which in turn feed our anxiety!

To those who follow Him, Jesus promised, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful” (John 14:27). He spoke those comforting words on the most difficult night He faced on this earth, the night before His crucifixion. Seven times in the New Testament our God is called either the God or Lord of peace. That peace can be the constant experience of every Christian, even in the midst of trials. In our text, Paul the prisoner tells us how:

To experience God’s peace instead of anxiety, pray with thankfulness about every concern.

There are three key words in these verses that reveal the theme: Anxious; prayer; and, peace. Being anxious is the problem we are told to put off; prayer is the procedure we are told to practice; peace is the product we are promised by God.

1. We must put off anxiety which is sin.

“Be anxious for nothing.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made it clear that anxiety stems from a lack of faith and from a wrong focus on the things of this world instead of on the kingdom of God (Matt. 6:25-34, especially verses 30 & 33). If we excuse our anxieties by saying, “Well, it’s only human,” or, “Anybody would feel anxious in this situation,” we will not overcome it because we are not confronting the root cause of it, namely, our sin of not believing God and of not seeking first His kingdom and righteousness.

As I mentioned last week, our Christian witness to a lost world is one of Paul’s main themes in Philippians. He wants Christians to have God’s joy in every situation, not just so that they will be happy people, but so that they will be effective witnesses of Jesus Christ (see Phil. 2:14-18). In other words, we are to be seeking first God’s kingdom, not our own happiness. If a non-Christian sees you as a believer weighed down with anxiety and care, he isn’t going to be asking how he can have what you have! Anxiety and joy are mutually exclusive. So for the sake of our testimony of Jesus Christ, it is imperative that we learn to experience the peace of God, especially in the face of trials.

This means that when it comes to the matter of dealing with our anxiety, we must, at the outset, confront our motives for wanting to have peace. If our reason for wanting to be free from anxiety is so that we can live a peaceful, pleasant life, our focus is self-centered and therefore wrong. There are many people who come to Christ because they are anxious and they want the peace He offers. But if they do not confront the fact that they are living to please themselves rather than God, they will simply settle into a self-centered life where they “use God” for their own peace and comfort. Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it” (Mark 8:35). The peace Christ offers is the by-product of enthroning Christ as Lord and living for His kingdom.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus warns (Luke 8:14) that the seed which fell among the thorns represents those who have heard the gospel, “and as they go on their way, they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity.” Worries is the noun related to the Greek verb be anxious in our text. The scary thing about Jesus’ words is this: As I understand that parable, only one of the groups is truly saved, namely, those who bring forth fruit with perseverance. Those who profess to believe, but then get choked out by worries, riches, and pleasures, have never taken self off the throne of their lives and put Jesus and His kingdom on the throne. They are deceived into thinking that they are Christians, but the truth is, they are just living with the same focus the world has, namely, for personal pleasure and peace.

In relation to Philippians 4:6 this means that what we have here is not just a simple formula, “If you’re anxious, try prayer; it works.” Rather, it means, “If you’re anxious, examine either your lack of faith in the living God, who has promised to supply the basic needs of His children.” Or, “Examine your focus, whether you’re living for Christ and His kingdom or for yourself.” Whatever the root cause, anxiety is sin that must be confessed to God and put off.

Before we leave this point, let me clarify that Paul is not encouraging a careless, carefree, irresponsible attitude toward people or problems. I’ve seen Christians swing from anxiety to either apathy or inaction, claiming that they’re obeying the command not to be anxious. But Christians should care deeply about people and their problems and should work hard to resolve problems. As members of the same body, we are to have mutual concern for one another (1 Cor. 12:25). Paul mentions the concern that he bears daily for all the churches (2 Cor. 11:28). He tells the Philippians that Timothy is genuinely concerned for their welfare (Phil. 2:20). In each of these verses, the word concern is the same as the Greek word for anxious, but clearly it is not sinful anxiety but proper concern. It is proper to be concerned about our future welfare to the extent that we take responsibility to plan and save for future needs (Prov. 6:6-11).

But proper concern turns to sinful anxiety when we lack faith in God’s role as the Sovereign Lord and provider, and when we put self at the center instead of God’s kingdom and righteousness. So the first step in dealing with anxiety is to examine whether it is due to lack of faith or to a wrong focus on self. Confess the sin to God and yield to Him.

2. We must practice prayer with thankfulness about every concern.

Paul mentions four Greek words for prayer which overlap in meaning and yet are helpful to distinguish: Prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, and requests.

*Prayer--a general word for prayer, always used with reference to God, with the nuance of reverence. When Paul says to make our requests known “to God,” the Greek word means “face to face with God,” to come directly before Him. This means that when we pray, we must stop to remember that we are coming into the very presence of the holy God, where even the holy angels cover their faces and cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:3). Yes, He welcomes us into His presence as a father welcomes his children. Through our High Priest, the Lord Jesus, God invites us to draw near with confidence to the throne of grace to receive mercy and grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16). But we must remember that it is to the throne of the universe, to the Sovereign, Eternal God that we come.

This means, of course, that we must always examine our hearts and confess and forsake all sin when we come to God in prayer. The psalmist says, “If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear” my prayers (Ps. 66:18). But we also have the assurance that if we confess our sins, the blood of Jesus is sufficient to cleanse us (1 John 1:7, 9).

Please notice that the believer is told to come directly to God in prayer. Christ is our mediator, our High Priest. The Holy Spirit who dwells in every believer prompts and moves us as we pray, interceding for us (Rom. 8:26-27). Thus prayer is a personal drawing near to the Triune God. But we should not pray to Mary or any of the so-called “saints.” We do not need to go through any human priest. As believers, we all are priests before God, able to draw near directly to Him in effectual prayer.

*Supplications--This word gives prominence to the sense of need and also looks at specific requests. Sometimes people ask, “Why pray, since God already knows what we need?” John Calvin has some of the most profound and practical words on prayer that I have ever read (Institutes of the Christian Religion [Eerdmans], ed. by John McNeill, III:XX). He points out that whatever we need and lack is to be found “in God and in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the Father willed all the fullness of his bounty to abide” (III:XX:1). It is through prayer “that we reach those riches which are laid up for us with the Heavenly Father” (III: [Eerdmans], ed. by John McNeill, III:XX). He points out that whatever we need and lack is to be found “in God and in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the Father willed all the fullness of his bounty to abide” (III:XX:1). It is through prayer “that we reach those riches which are laid up for us with the Heavenly Father” (III:XX:2). Prayer is not so much for God’s sake as for ours. It shows us our total need for God Himself, and not just for certain temporal benefits. It casts us in dependence on Him, so that we will “seek, love, and serve Him, while we become accustomed in every need to flee to Him as to a sacred anchor.” It purifies our desires, since we must bring them to God Himself. It prepares us to receive thankfully what He gives, being reminded that it comes from His hand. It helps us to meditate on His kindness as we delight in what He has given. It confirms to us our own weakness and God’s great providence and faithfulness in meeting our needs (Calvin develops these points in III:XX:3).

This means that our supplications must be in line with God’s will and purpose. In the Lord’s Prayer, we learn that the first focus of our prayers should be on God’s kingdom and righteousness, and only secondarily on our personal needs (Matt. 6:9-13).

*Thanksgiving--When you’re anxious, presumably you’re in a situation that gives some cause for anxiety! At such times, thankfulness is not automatic or spontaneous. You have to do it deliberately by faith. Thanksgiving in a time of trials reflects three things: (1) Remembrance of God’s supply in the past. You think back over His faithfulness to you up to this point and realize that His mercies have sustained you. He has been with you in every trial. He never abandons or forsakes His children, even if we face persecution or death for His sake.

(2) Submission to God’s sovereignty in the present. To thank God in the midst of a crisis or trial is to say, “Lord, I don’t understand, but I submit to Your sovereign purpose in this situation. I trust that You know what You’re doing and will work it together for good.” We are not just to thank God when we feel like it, but also when we don’t feel like it (1 Thess. 5:18).

(3) Trust in God’s sufficiency for the future. A thankful heart rests upon the all-sufficient God, knowing that even though we don’t see how He is going to do it, He will meet our every need as we cast ourselves on Him. I love Jeremiah 32:17, especially when I think about its context. Jeremiah was shut up in prison. Nebuchadnezzar was besieging Jerusalem which was about to fall (32:2). In that situation, the Lord told Jeremiah to do something that everyone would have thought was crazy, to buy a field from his uncle. Anybody knows you don’t sink your money into real estate when a country is about to fall to a foreign tyrant. But God wanted to show His people that “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (32:15). Then Jeremiah prays, “Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You” (32:17). Jeremiah was trusting in God’s sufficiency for the future.

When I first came to this church we had some difficult problems to resolve. We had a crucial meeting, where things could have gone either for my leadership or against me. I spent the day fasting and praying, but as I walked up the sidewalk from my car, I felt anxious. I was reciting Philippians 4:6 when the two little words, “with thanksgiving” jumped out at me, and the Lord reminded me that I had failed to give thanks for this difficult situation. I paused and said, “Thank You, Lord, even for these trials,” and immediately I was flooded with His peace. He worked in that meeting in obvious ways.

*Requests--This word overlaps with supplications, emphasizing the specific, definite nature of our petitions to the Lord. So often our prayers are so vague and general that we couldn’t know whether God had answered them or not. This is the word used where Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matt. 7:7). He goes on to illustrate the point by saying that if a boy asks his father for a loaf of bread, the dad won’t give him a stone. If he asks for a fish to eat, the dad won’t give him a snake. Jesus concludes, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!” (Matt. 7:11). Ask the Father, and if it’s for your good, He will give it!

Sometimes we fail to ask because something seems too trivial or small to trouble God about. But if it’s big enough to make me anxious, it’s certainly big enough to ask God about. A woman once asked the British Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan, “Do you think we should pray about the little things in our lives, or just the big things?” He retorted, “Madam, can you think of anything in your life that is big to God?” So whenever you’re anxious, come to God in reverent, humble, specific, thankful prayer. The result:

3. We are promised God’s incomparable peace when we pray.

“The peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7). This is not some psychological peace gained through coping techniques. The Christian psychiatrists I mentioned earlier give all sorts of “common sense” and psychological methods (alongside the “spiritual”) that you can use to alleviate your anxiety, including picking a phrase (any phrase will do, they say) and repeating it over and over (p. 110-111)! This is just thinly disguised Transcendental Meditation!

No, what Paul is talking about is the peace that comes from the God who is never subject to anxiety because He is the sovereign, omnipotent Creator and Lord of the universe. Nothing takes Him by surprise or makes Him bite His nails, wondering how it will turn out. This is the peace that Jesus promised, “not as the world gives.” It is humanly not explainable. But, praise God, it is real, and every child of God has known it and has known that it comes from God alone, not from psychological insights.

Note that this peace stands guard like a sentry over our inner person, our hearts (the comprehensive term for our whole person) and minds (specifically, our thoughts which threaten to trouble us) in Christ Jesus. We are in intimate, permanent union with Him, and to get to us, anxiety must go through Christ Jesus! So what God promises isn’t just a quick fix, where prayer is a technique that will bring you calm until you get through the crisis. Paul is talking about an ongoing, deepening, intimate relationship with the God of peace, where you seek to please Him with all your thoughts, words, and deeds. In a time of trial, you draw near to the God of peace, you focus on His grace to you in Christ Jesus, you pour out your heart to Him, and the result is, His peace stands guard over your heart and mind.

Conclusion

A little over a year ago, I learned that a woman who led the music ministry when I first began to pastor almost 20 years ago had been stricken with three malignant brain tumors. She and her husband are maybe ten years older than I am. I wrote to her and she wrote back and told how her husband, who has worked all his life in construction, now has such bad arthritis in his hip that he can no longer work. She said how the doctors had warned them to do anything they really wanted to do, because her time may be short. Her final paragraph said, “The peace the Lord gave me while I was in the hospital is far beyond understanding. Everything is in His control--especially the timing of our life. He said that His grace is sufficient and I found that to be so true. His strength is made perfect in weakness.” She is now in the Lord’s presence, free from this mortal body.

Do you know God’s peace in the midst of situations that the world gets anxious about? If not, examine yourself: Is your faith in Him and your focus on His kingdom, rather than on selfish pursuits? Have you drawn near to God in reverent, specific, thankful prayer? You can put your full weight down on Him, and He will bear you up and give you His indescribable peace. It makes the flight so much more enjoyable!

Discussion Questions

1. How can we know when legitimate concern crosses the line into sinful anxiety?
2. Is it wrong for a Christian to take tranquilizers or sleeping pills to calm nervousness or anxiety? Is this any different than taking aspirin for a headache?
3. What is the difference between using prayer as a technique and prayer as a whole way of life?
4. Can God guide us in His will by withholding or granting His peace? Cite Scripture to support your answer.

Copyright 1995, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible © The Lockman Foundation

A doctor from Texas owned a home in Mexico. He felt sorry for the poor people there, many of whom were often sick because they didn’t pasteurize their milk. So he bought them a pasteurizing machine. The villagers built a special shed to house it in and made a big deal out of it when he finally brought it down and installed it. When the doctor returned a few months later, the leading man of the village greeted him, “Oh, doctor, good to see you! If we had known you were coming, we would have plugged in the pasteurizing machine.”

Obviously, a pasteurizing machine doesn’t do a bit of good if it isn’t plugged in and used for its intended purpose. While we chuckle at the story, many Christians treat the Bible like those poor villagers were treating that machine. It occupies a central place on a coffee table in their home. They believe in all the good it can do. But they aren’t pluggng it in to deal with the very problems in their lives it is intended to solve. They are not applying Scripture to change their conduct.

They’re like the gray-haired old lady, a long time church member, who shook hands with her pastor after the service one Sunday. “That was a wonderful sermon,” she told him, “just wonderful! Everything you said applies to someone I know.”

We all tend to think that attending church is a nice, safe thing to do. It feels good to sing and to fellowship with the nice people and to hear a message from God’s Word. But James 1:22 warns us that if we hear God’s Word but do not become doers of it, we deceive ourselves. Hearing the Bible and knowing the Bible without translating that knowledge into obedience is dangerous because we deceive ourselves. The Bible was not written to satisfy our curiosity or to fill our notebooks with charts on prophecy or theology. It was written to be translated into genuinely Christian conduct in our daily lives.

In Philippians 4:9, Paul exhorts us to follow his example by becoming doers of the Word. He shows us that

Christian conduct is built on biblical content and is vital because it results in the very presence of the God of peace.

 

Verse 9 must not be separated from verse 8. Our thought life forms the basis for our behavior. If our conduct is simply outward conformity to the expectations of the Christian crowd, it is not genuine and will not stand up under pressure or temptation. Christian conduct must flow out of a Christian thought life, and as we saw last week, a Christian thought life is the result of genuine conversion, where God imparts to us a new nature that is able to please Him. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it this way,

... the gospel is not something we add to our lives, it is rather, something which should entirely dominate them. ...

The Christian life, therefore, is not merely a modification of the natural life, it is a new life, and Christians do not merely add something to their lives, they are people who have been changed at the centre, they are entirely different (The Life of Peace [Baker], p. 191).

Once we are converted through faith in Christ, we begin the process of sanctification, or growth in holiness, through the renewal of our minds through Scripture, and the corresponding changes in our conduct, so that we learn to please God with our lives. In verse 9, Paul shows us how this process works and why it is of vital importance, namely, that the sense of God’s presence as the God of peace is linked with it. He mentions four components: (1) The intellectual--“What you have learned”; (2) The volitional--“What you received”; (3) The behavioral--“What you have heard and seen, which you must practice”; (4) The emotional--“The God of peace shall be with you.”

1. The intellectual component: The Christian faith has content that must be taught and learned.

The word “learned” implies that the Christian faith has content which must be taught by someone who understands it and mentally grasped by those he teaches. Of course, the Christian faith is much more than mere intellectual understanding, as we will see. And even on the intellectual level, Scripture teaches that “the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Thus God must open the minds of unbelievers to respond to the gospel, as Paul goes on to say, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). God shines into our hearts to give us knowledge, and such knowledge is grasped with the mind.

We once visited a church where the pastor did not clearly communicate the content of the gospel, but when he gave the invitation at the end of the service, about a dozen people went forward. I said to Marla, “What in the world are they responding to?” It had to be a mostly emotional response to the mood and music rather than an intelligent response to the truth of the content of the gospel, because such truth had not been made clear. But Christian faith is not in a vague feeling. It is not faith in faith itself, as in the popular song, “I Believe.” It is not faith in “God however you conceive Him to be.”

This week at the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry, who spent time in jail for doing crack cocaine, thanked God for his recovery and told the crowd, “The vision for the Million Man March came directly from God himself. It was God-inspired.... Whether we call god Jesus Christ, Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah or just God, he’s God. I know first hand God’s power, God’s grace and God’s redemptive love” (Arizona Daily Sun, 10/16/95, p. 1). That is generic faith, but it is not biblical faith. Biblical faith is in the historical person of Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture and in what He did for us in dying on the cross. Thus there is specific content, an intellectual element, to the gospel message.

Once a person has responded by faith to the person and work of Jesus Christ, he must go on to learn the great doctrines of the Christian faith. We live in a day that disparages doctrine. We think that it is some needless nicety for theologians and seminarians to banter about. But we need to remember that Paul didn’t write the major doctrinal portions of his letters to theologians. He wrote Romans and Ephesians and the other great doctrinal sections to common people, many of them uneducated slaves, who had come to faith in Christ, to help them understand how to live in a manner pleasing to God.

Note the importance of teaching in Paul’s ministry: In Acts 11:26, Barnabas brought Paul (then called Saul) to Antioch, “And it came about that for an entire year they met with the church, and taught considerable numbers; ...” In Acts 17:2-3, Paul “reasoned with [the Jews] from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.’” Paul’s evangelistic efforts were not based on emotional appeals, but on a reasonable appeal to their minds.

We see the same thing in Acts 19:8-10, where Paul was in the synagogue in Ephesus for three months, “reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.” But when some became hardened and disobedient, he withdrew with the disciples, and continued to reason with them daily from the Word of God. In Acts 20:20, 27 he reminds the Ephesian elders how he “did not shrink from declaring to [them] anything that was profitable, and teaching [them] publicly and from house to house,” how he “did not shrink from declaring to [them] the whole purpose of God.”

In Colossians 1:28, Paul describes his ministry: “And we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ.” In his pastoral letters to Timothy and Titus, Paul repeatedly emphasizes the theme of “sound doctrine.” In the final chapter he wrote before his death, he exhorted Timothy with what must have been of utmost importance (2 Tim. 4:2-3), “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; ...”

Thus the Christian faith has content that must be learned and taught. The question is, Are you studying and learning God’s Word? It doesn’t happen without diligence and effort. I encourage you to apply yourself to learn the great truths of God’s Word with a view to obedient application.

2. The volitional component: The content of the Christian faith must be responded to with our will.

Our text mentions “the things you have learned and received.” The word means to take unto oneself, especially the traditions as delivered and handed down from Christ to the apostles. Here it has special reference to “the ethical and procedural guidelines for Christian living” (F. F. Bruce, New International Bible Commentary, Philippians [[Hendrickson], p. 147). To receive the teaching concerning Christ, the gospel, and the moral and ethical demands which go along with it, means to submit our will to the lordship of Jesus Christ over every aspect of our lives, beginning with our thought life (4:8). In other words, the gospel always demands not just an intellectual response, but also a moral response, where we personally receive Christ as Savior and Lord.

I have found that invariably, people who claim to have intellectual problems that keep them from responding to the gospel in reality have moral problems that are the real reason for their not responding. Every person, from the Ph.D. at the university to the illiterate subsistence farmer in Mexico, has the same need, namely, that his sin has separated him from the Holy God. Thus he needs Christ as Savior. But, every person also has the same stubborn self-will that refuses to submit to Jesus as Lord. We all want to run our own lives without bowing before Jesus.

So if a person tells me that he can’t believe in Christ because of intellectual problems, I will say, “Specifically, which problems?” He may name something, such as evolution or that he doesn’t believe the Bible is God’s Word. I respond, “If I can provide you with reasonable answers to that problem, will you then believe in Christ?” I’ve never yet had a person say, “Yes.” Instead, he will say, “Well, there are other issues, too.” I say, “Name them. Give me the list, and if I can provide reasonable answers to each problem on your list, then will you become a follower of Christ?” I’m trying to help the person see that the real issue isn’t intellectual, it’s moral. He doesn’t want to give up sex with his girl friend or doing drugs or some other sin. But the content of the Christian faith must be received by submitting our will to Christ.

3. The behavioral component: The content of the Christian faith must be worked out in real life conduct.

Paul says, “The things you have ... heard and seen in me, practice these things; ...” Paul is not boasting in himself. He simply knew that his life had integrity. He did not teach one thing and live another. He did not act one way in public, but have a secret life of sin in private. You could follow him around 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, and see a man who walked with God, even in the trials he encountered. In fact, the Philippians had seen and heard about Paul and Silas singing hymns of praise and praying in the Philippian jail at midnight during his first visit to that city. You can’t fake it when you have been wrongly denied justice, when your back is laid open and your feet are in the stocks in a smelly, rat-infested jail cell. Paul’s Christian life was real in the crunch, and so he could honestly, without pride, call people to follow him as he followed Christ (see 1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1; Phil. 3:17; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2 Thess. 3:9; 2 Tim. 3:10).

His words point out the importance of having godly examples who show us not only by their words, but also by the way they conduct themselves in the home and in all their lives, how to live the Christian faith in the real world. Pastor John MacArthur correctly advises, “Never expose yourself to the ministry of someone whose lifestyle you can’t respect” (Anxiety Attacked [Victor Books], p. 41). John Calvin said, “It would be better for the preacher to break his neck going into the pulpit than for him not to be the first to follow God.”

It is not that Paul or any man, except Jesus, is sinless. But a man who teaches God’s Word must live it with integrity. That’s why an essential qualification for both elders and deacons is that they manage their own households well (1 Tim. 3:4-5, 12). If I am not living under the lordship of Christ with my wife and children, dealing with problems in a biblical manner, demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit in my relationships with them, then I need to get out of the ministry.

Those of us who have walked with the Lord for a few years need to be looking for younger men (or, women with women) we can spend time with to show them by the way we live how they should live as Christians in daily life. That may threaten you, because you can’t fake it if a guy is watching you when difficult situations arise. Do you live Christ in those situations? Do you demonstrate godliness when you’re provoked?

When I was in my early twenties, a brother in his early thirties, who was married with three young daughters, invited me to live with them for a short while. I spent three months with them, and while he and I couldn’t spend as much time together as I had hoped for, because of his busy schedule, I still could see the reality of Christ in their family life.

Also, I have been helped tremendously by reading Christian biographies. I feel like I know many of the great saints who have gone before me because I have read their stories and I know how they dealt with the trials and tests that came into their lives. By reading their biographies, I learn how the content of the Christian faith takes on shoe leather, how it works out in daily conduct. I encourage you to read the biographies of the faithful saints who have gone before us.

When Paul says, “Practice these things,” the word implies doing something repeatedly until it becomes a habit or way of life. At first, habits feel awkward and unnatural. Remember the first time you ever drove a car with a stick shift? It seemed like there were a million things to remember and do all at once. But once you get it down, so that it’s a habit, you can hop in the car and drive off while discussing some fine point of theology with a friend, and you don’t even think about what you’re doing.

Habits can be either your friend or your foe. Godly habits work for you, since they determine your daily routine in ways that help you grow in holiness. In Luke 4:16 we read that Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and then it says, “and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath ....” Jesus had a habit of spending the Sabbath with God’s people, worshiping God. We should have the same habit every Lord’s day. We should have the habit of reading God’s Word and praying each day. We should have the habit of avoiding things that pollute our minds. Habits come from practicing these things over and over. At first, when you’re changing from ungodly practices to pleasing God, it may seem awkward. Keep at it, practice it until it becomes your routine.

Thus, Christian conduct is built on the biblical content of the Christian faith. There is the intellectual component of the faith, which is grasped by the mind. There is the volitional component, yielding our will to receive God’s truth personally. There is the behavioral component, learning to put the Christian faith into daily practice. Finally,

4. The emotional component: The result of Christian conduct is the very presence of the God of peace with you.

In verse 7 we saw that specific, thankful prayer results in the peace of God guarding our hearts and minds. In verse 9 we see that the practice of Christian conduct results in the God of peace being with us. You may be wondering, “I thought that God is always with us. Why does Paul say something that’s always true as if it were a special deal?” The answer is, because it is a special deal! Yes, God is always with the believer (Matt. 28:20; Heb. 13:5). But we do not always sense His presence, nor do we always know His presence with us as the God of peace. He is the God who is never troubled by the ups and downs of life, by the storms of circumstances that batter us around, because He is the eternal, sovereign, Almighty God who accomplishes His purpose (see Isa. 40).

Do you covet and seek for the presence of God, the God of peace, in your life? When Moses was faced with the awesome task of leading an entire nation out of bondage in Egypt through the barren Sinai desert, he prayed, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. For how then can it be made known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth?” (Exod. 33:15-16). God responded by promising His presence. The presence of the God of peace with us is promised if we put our knowledge of the Christian faith into daily Christian conduct.

Conclusion

D. A. Carson writes (Christianity Today [6/29/79], p. 31),

The supreme irony is that Christians hear best what the Spirit is saying to someone else. Speak to the fundamentalist about the truth, and he hears you, precisely because he doesn’t need to; it is the person with fuzzy notions about the eternality of the truth who will not hear. Speak to the genuinely broad-minded ecumenist about love, and he hears you, precisely because he doesn’t need to, but fundamentalists of a harsher variety will not.... The one who truly hears what the Spirit says to the churches will be the one who is receptive to the words of God that he least wishes to hear [emphasis his].

Elisabeth Elliot once overheard her young daughter singing to her cat, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like you!” We’re all like that; the truth applies to the other guy! “If just my wife and kids would apply this to their lives, we’d have a happy family!” No, I need to apply the content of the Christian faith to my daily conduct. Then, the God of peace with be with me. Let’s all practice being doers of the Word and not hearers only who deceive themselves!

Discussion Questions

1. Why is Bible knowledge without application dangerous?
2. Why does modern Christianity disparage doctrine? How can we overcome this?
3. Is most change in Christian conduct instantaneous deliverance or a slow struggle? Why?
4. On which of the four components (intellectual, volitional, behavioral, emotional) should our primary focus be? Why?

Copyright 1995, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible © The Lockman Foundation

Whenever I speak on the subject of giving, I’m aware that I’m dealing with a sensitive area where people are easily offended. “The church is always after my money,” is the common complaint. I’m also reminded of the comment a preacher made, that when you throw a rock at a pack of dogs and one of them yelps, you know which one got hit. So before you yelp about this sermon, you’d better think about whether the Word of God may be hitting you where it hurts!

If you’re visiting with us, you need to know that my usual method is to preach through a book of the Bible, and speak on what the text says. It’s your lucky day--you just happened to come on a day when the text talks about giving money! The Bible speaks very plainly about money because our hearts and our wallets are tightly bound up together, and God is after our hearts. Jesus talked often about money: 16 of His 38 parables deal with how to handle money and possessions. In the Gospels, one out of ten verses (288 in all) deal directly with money. The Bible offers 500 verses on prayer, 500 verses on faith, but more than 2,000 verses on money and possessions (Howard L. Dayton, Jr., Leadership, Spring, 1981, p. 62).

I also want you to know that I do not know how much or how little anyone in this church gives. If you think I’m looking at you because you don’t give very much, it’s just your guilty conscience! If you fake it and smile back at me, I’ll probably think you’re a big giver! But it won’t fool God. Also, you need to know that this year our giving is actually more than $4,000 over our budget, so I’m not addressing the subject because we’re in a crunch. Our text is a “thank-you note” Paul wrote to the Philippians who had given sacrificially to meet his need. In it he gives us one of the most comforting promises in the Bible:

If we give faithfully to the Lord’s work, He will supply all our needs.

In the context, it’s a conditional promise; you can’t divorce verse 19 from what goes before. It is to people who have given faithfully and generously that Paul says, “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” If we meet the condition--give faithfully, God will fulfill His part--supply all our needs. So what is faithful giving? There are many more principles than the ones found here, but these four we all must learn:

The principles for faithful giving:

1. Faithful giving should be one of the first things we establish in our Christian walk.

Paul commends the Philippian church by reminding them of how, at the first preaching of the gospel, after he departed from their region (Macedonia), they shared with him in the matter of giving and receiving (4:15-16). At that point, they were the only church that took the initiative to send support to Paul. Even when he was still in Macedonia, at Thessalonica, more than once they sent gifts to him. Apparently those gifts were not enough to provide full support, because he reminds the Thessalonians how he worked with his hands to provide for his needs when he was with them (2 Thess. 3:7-9). But right from the start of their Christian experience, the Philippians had given.

Paul taught that it is proper for a man who labors in the gospel to receive his support from the gospel (1 Cor. 9:1-18; 1 Tim. 5:17-18). But for the sake of avoiding the charge that he was preaching for the money, Paul chose not to receive support from a new church where he was ministering while he was there. Instead, he supported himself by making tents. But if the funds came from another church outside the area, he would stop making tents and devote himself full time to the work of the ministry (compare Acts 18:1-11, 2 Cor. 11:7-12). As I mentioned last week, Paul never seemed to make his needs known, even as prayer requests, but trusted in the sovereign God to provide. When funds ran low, he would go back to work until God met the need.

But Paul must have taught the Philippians early on the importance of faithful giving to support those in Christian ministry, because soon after he left town, they sent gifts after him. They would have been just a few months old in the Lord, but they were already practicing faithful giving.

Jesus taught the same principle in Luke 16:10-13. After giving the parable of the unrighteous steward, which has to do with money, He said, “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much.” He goes on to show that the “little thing” is our use of “unrighteous mammon,” or money. If we are faithful in how we use our money to advance His kingdom, the Lord will then entrust “true riches” to us (16:11) which, in the context, are souls. If we want God to entrust us with souls, we begin by proving our faithfulness in what to us is a “big thing,” but to God is a “little thing,” the use of our money. That’s His test. So financial faithfulness, which includes giving, but also how we manage all the material goods God has entrusted to us (earning, spending, saving), should be one of the first lessons we learn in our Christian walk.

One of the first lessons on giving should be that we learn to take the initiative in looking for faithful Christian workers who are focused on the glory of God and the work of the gospel (as Paul was) and support them without being pressured to give. It’s a sad commentary on the American church that we live in relative luxury while faithful servants of the Lord are being held up from going to the field because of a lack of funds, or they have to return from the field to raise more support. Many American Christians are so used to the pressured appeals of TV preachers, that “if you don’t give right now, this ministry will go off the air,” that we overlook the faithful servants of the Lord who are not so forceful in their appeals for funds.

In our own church, we have faithful people who are doing the Lord’s work. Don’t assume that all their financial needs are being met. Like the Philippian church with Paul, take the initiative to support them. If you’re not sure of their need, ask them. Keep in contact and direct some of the resources God has entrusted to you to help support them in His work.

2. Faithful giving should be focused on the furtherance of the gospel.

Paul was “preaching the gospel” (4:15). He had given each church where he worked an example of his hard work and his freedom from greed (Acts 20:33-35; 1 Thess. 2:5; 2 Thess. 3:7-9). There are those who claim to be serving the Lord, but they are lazy and greedy. Don’t give to them. If a TV or radio preacher pleads for money, saying that his ministry will go under if you don’t send your gift today, let him go under. He’s not trusting God. Look at his lifestyle. If he’s living in luxury, let him sell some of his junk and give it to his ministry. The Scriptures warn us about men who are in ministry for the money (1 Tim. 6:5; Titus 1:11; 2 Pet. 2:3, 14, 15).

The famous British preacher, C. H. Spurgeon, once received a request from a wealthy man to come to their town and help them raise funds for a new church building. He told Spurgeon he could stay in his country home there. Spurgeon wrote back and told him to sell the home and give the money to the project.

Give to those who emphasize ministry, not money. Paul’s focus was on preaching the gospel, not on his need for money. While he genuinely appreciated the gift from the Philippians, he was more excited about what it signified about their heart for God, that it represented fruit accruing in their account in heaven (4:17). As for himself, Paul lived by faith and was content with whatever God provided. But he never made strong appeals for funds for himself.

Paul did, by the way, make a strong appeal for funds for others. In 2 Corinthians 8 & 9, he appealed strongly to them to give generously to meet the need of the poor Christians in Judea. Of course he would never stoop to some of the fund-raising gimmicks used by various ministries and churches in our day--sending out “prayer cloths” in exchange for your contribution, church raffles, bingo games, and the like. He appealed to them to give based on God’s gracious gift of His Son for us (2 Cor. 8:9; 9:15). He was always scrupulous not to take advantage of anyone in financial matters, but to keep his focus on ministry (2 Cor. 7:2; 11:7-12; 12:18; 2 Thess. 3:8). So look for faithful servants or ministries who are focused on the furtherance of the gospel and give faithfully to them.

3. Faithful giving is investing in eternity.

Paul says, “I’m looking for the profit that increases to your account” (4:17). These terms were common accounting words. Paul is saying that when you give to the Lord’s work, you’re putting money into your account in the Bank of Heaven, and it pays guaranteed high interest for all eternity. If you have any money invested in stocks or mutual funds, you realize that the more risky the investment, the greater the chance that you can make high returns, but also the greater the chance that you can lose a lot. And, even the “safe” investments have no guarantees. But when you invest in God’s work, there is no risk and you get the highest possible return on your investment, guaranteed by the very Word of God!

In Luke 16:1-9, Jesus tells the parable of the crooked steward. He was being called on the carpet for squandering his master’s possessions. He knew he would lose his job and he didn’t want to become a beggar or to dig ditches. So he quickly called his master’s debtors and reduced their bills. Since he knew that his time was short, he made friends for himself in high places, so that in the future they would welcome him. Jesus isn’t praising the steward’s dishonesty, but rather his foresight. He is telling us for the short time we have left on this earth to use our Master’s money to make friends for eternity, to see people come to Christ. Then, when we step into heaven, they will welcome us. By giving to the Lord’s work, you are investing in souls for all eternity. It’s the smartest investment you can make.

4. Faithful giving should be motivated by worship.

Paul calls their gift “a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God” (4:18). These terms come out of the Old Testament where they describe the sacrifices that worshipers offered to God. They also are used in the New Testament to describe Christ’s offering of Himself for our sins (Eph. 5:2). The point is, you aren’t giving to the pastor or to the church; you aren’t giving to the missionary or mission organization. You are giving to God Himself. If Jesus Christ bodily walked into this church, if He was the usher handing you the plate, and you saw the nail scars on His hands that were pierced for you, and if they money was going to Him personally for His support, would you give any differently than you do now? Would you grudgingly say, “All right, here’s a few bucks!” Or, would you give gratefully out of a heart of love and worship because He gave Himself for you?

Suppose I gave my wife a gift on Valentine’s Day. How would she feel if I said, “I didn’t really want to, but I hadn’t gotten you anything for quite a while, and I was feeling kind of guilty. I know that our neighbor got his wife something and I know it’s my duty as your husband to give you something.” She wouldn’t be “well-pleased,” because my motive was wrong. But if I said, “Honey, you deserve even more than I can give, but I love you so much and I was thinking of how much you mean to me when I bought this,” the very same gift would be accepted as well-pleasing to her. That’s how we should give to God, out of a heart of love and gratitude, to glorify Him (4;20).

If our giving is done as an act of worship to glorify God, then we won’t want it advertised how much we’re giving. Many Christian ministries cater to the flesh when they put up plaques or memorial books with the names of donors. The best plaque I’ve ever seen is one at the village at Campus Crusade’s Arrowhead Springs that reads, “This village was donated by five businessmen who want the glory to go to God.” Amen!

Thus we are to give faithfully to the Lord’s work of furthering the gospel, out of a heart of worship to our Lord who gave Himself for our sins. If we do, God promises something:

The promise from our faithful god:

Faithful givers can count on the faithful God’s faithful supply: “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (4:19). What a magnificent promise!

1. The source of the promise is our God with whom we are in union in Christ Jesus.

“My God,” “in Christ Jesus.” Here again is Paul’s intimate, personal relationship with his Savior. Giving to the Lord’s work is not for anyone who does not know Him through the cross. If you know Him as “my God,” if you know that by faith you are “in Christ Jesus,” then the privilege of giving and the promise of God’s faithfulness apply to you. If you do not know Christ, you can’t give to Him until you receive from Him His gift to you.

It is none other than the God who spoke the universe into existence who promises to supply your needs when you give faithfully. Even though, as Paul himself experienced, you may suffer some tight times, your needs (not luxuries--this isn’t prosperity theology!) will be met, and you will have far more, namely, the great joy of fellowship with the Creator and Savior.

2. The sufficiency of the promise is the riches of God for all my needs.

He promises to supply all our needs according to (not “out of”) His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. What a staggering promise! The God who owns the whole earth says that He will meet our needs if we give faithfully, and it is a blessed thing to know this in your experience as you watch Him do it.

The American pastor Wilbur Chapman had a family tragedy occur that made it necessary for him to travel to the West Coast. A banker who attended his church visited with him just before he left. As they talked, the banker took a piece of paper out of his pocket and slipped it into his pastor’s hand. Chapman looked at it and saw that it was a blank check made out to him, signed by the banker. Momentarily stunned, he asked, “Do you mean you are giving me a signed check to be filled out as I please?” “Yes, exactly,” said the banker. “I don’t know how much you might need, and I want you to draw any amount that will meet your need.” Chapman gratefully took the check, but he didn’t need to use it on his trip. Later he commented, “It gave me a comfortable, happy feeling to know that I had a vast sum at my disposal.” Our supply is as sufficient as the Bank of Heaven, a blank check for all our needs. But how do we know the check is good?

3. The certainty of the promise depends on God Himself.

Blank checks are no good if the person who signs them is destitute or a crook. But if the check is signed by “my God,” the God I know personally, the God who is also our Father (4:20), the God who has never in human history failed His children, the God who demonstrated His great love for us by giving His only Son on the cross, then the check is good! “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). If we meet the condition by giving faithfully, the promise is certain--our God and Father will meet all our needs. You can count on it!

Conclusion

There is probably no more accurate gauge of your spiritual life than your giving to the Lord’s work. Do you give only grudgingly and under pressure? Then you’re not focused on the abundant grace of our Lord in your life. Are you hit and miss about your giving, doing it once in a while, but not systematically? Then you’re probably not faithful in other disciplines of the Christian life, such as devotions. Are you stingy and tight with your giving? Then your love for the Lord is probably cold and sterile. Do you religiously give ten percent and take pride in it? Then you’re probably legalistic in your spiritual life, judging yourself and others by the performance of certain duties rather than by a heart of love for the Savior.

The reason your giving is a pretty good gauge of your spiritual life is that your heart is bound up with your treasure. Jesus taught, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21). If you want your heart to be with the Lord, put your money in the Lord’s work. If you want your heart to be in this evil world, put your money in the things of the world. It’s a simple principle to state, but not so simple to implement, because it requires faith.

To give generously to the Lord’s work requires that you believe that there really is a heaven ahead. Since you plan to spend eternity there, you put your money over to the other side in advance, where it’s earning interest in heaven’s bank, awaiting your arrival. Jesus called it “laying up treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:19).

It’s like the story of the sailor who was shipwrecked on a South Sea island. He was seized by the natives who carried him to their village and set him on a crude throne. They treated him as royalty. Soon he learned that their custom was once each year to make a man king, king for a year. He thought this was a pretty good deal until he started wondering what happened to all the former kings after their year was up. He found out that after the year, the king was banished to a deserted island where he starved to death. That worried him, but he was a smart king, so he put his carpenters to work making boats and his gardeners to work transplanting fruit trees and other crops to the island where he would be banished. His carpenters built a nice home there. So when his year was over, he was banished, not to a barren island, but to an island of abundance. In the same way, if we really believe that this life is temporary and eternity is ahead, we will be sending our treasures over to that side by our giving, so we’ll have something there waiting for our arrival.

Giving generously also takes faith because you have to trust that when you give away your money, God is going to make up for it by providing for your immediate needs. What if I give and then some unexpected emergency comes up? What if I give and lose my job? I heard of a fellow who was struggling with the idea of giving ten percent of his income to his church. (I believe ten percent should be the base, not the ceiling.) He told his pastor that he didn’t see how he could do it and keep up with his bills. The pastor replied, “If I promise to make up the difference in your bills if you should fall short, do you think you could try tithing for just one month?” After thinking about it for a moment, the man replied, “Sure, if you promise to make up any shortage, I guess I could try tithing for one month.”

The pastor responded, “Now, what do you think of that? You say you’d be willing to put your trust in a mere man like myself, who possesses so little materially, but you couldn’t trust your Heavenly Father who owns the whole universe!”

That’s the issue at the heart of this matter of faithful giving. Will you trust the living God who gave His Son for you by giving generously and systematically, out of a heart of gratitude, love, and worship? If you do, He promises to meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Discussion Questions

1. Should a Christian who is in debt give to the Lord’s work or first pay off his debts?
2. In light of all the needs, how can we know where to give and how much to give?
3. Is it a lack of faith for Christians to have savings and investments? Should we give everything and trust God for the future?
4. Is tithing the standard of giving for those in Christ? If not, how do we know how much to give?

Copyright 1995, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible © The Lockman Foundation

Where Should You Give?

How should we determine where to give, since we are confronted with so many ministries and needs worldwide? Of course, waiting upon the Lord in prayer is crucial for determining where to give and how much to give. But also, there are some guidelines. The local church is God’s ordained means for propagating the gospel (Matt. 16:18), and so you ought to support its ministries. Beyond that,

1. Support individuals whom you know personally to be faithful.
2. Consider giving to those who are serving in difficult places.
3. Consider whether a person is helping reach those with no gospel witness. They may be serving at the home office of a mission, but if they are part of an outreach to those who have no indigenous church in their midst, they ought to be higher priority for support than those who are reaching the already reached.

If you’re giving to a Christian organization (rather than an individual), ask some questions:

1. What is the organization really aiming for? Is their doctrinal statement sound? Are they using biblical methods? Is their focus on the gospel as essential, and not social ministry for its own sake?
2. Is the organization using sound financial methods? Do they belong to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability? If not, are their books audited? Will they send you a financial statement? Do they use proper fund-raising methods?
3. Do you know and trust any of the leaders in the organization? Are they godly people of integrity? Is the leader accountable to a board, or is the board a rubber stamp?
4. How does the organization function? Do they strive for excellence without extravagance? How much of their income goes to overhead and fund-raising (more than 25% is suspect)? Do the leaders live simply or in luxury?

It is easy—far too easy—to settle into a comfortable, routine Christianity. I have been a committed Christian for about 36 years and a pastor for 25 years, and it’s easy for me to drift into a safe, comfortable routine, where my heart is not panting after God like the thirsty deer after the water brook (Ps. 42:1). At such times, I am not, as David put it, thirsting and yearning for God “in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps. 63:1). My heart grows dull and my vision for God is gradually blurred. What I need at such times—what we all need repeatedly—is for God’s Spirit to blow upon us in spiritual renewal.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are about God’s renewing His errant people. They are put together as one book in the Hebrew Bible, although the fact that the lists in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 are virtually the same argues that originally they were separate. Ezra is about the return of the exiles from Babylon, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the restoration of God’s people spiritually. Nehemiah is about the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, as well as the spiritual renewal of God’s people.

The Book of Ezra falls into two sections: Chapters 1-6 deal with the initial return of a remnant from Babylon under the leadership of Zerubbabel in 538 B.C., with the aim of restoring the Temple. The project began in 536 B.C., but opposition quickly arose, leading to the abandonment of the project for 16 years. Through the ministries of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah (5:1-2), the construction was renewed, coming to completion in 515 B.C.

Between chapters 6 and 7, there is a 58-year gap during which the events of the Book of Esther took place. At the beginning of chapter 7, in 457 B.C. (81 years after the first return), Ezra the priest led another smaller group to return to the land and bring renewal to the people, who were already drifting into assimilation with the surrounding people.

So the theme of the book is God’s restoring His people to the land according to His gracious promise and restoring His people spiritually to proper worship and godly living. A brief outline is:

1. Restoration of the Temple (1-6); return under Zerubbabel (538-515 B.C.)

A. The decree of Cyrus (1)

B. The census of the people (2)

C. The commencement of the project (3)

D. The opposition to the project (4)

E. The construction renewed amid opposition (5:1-6:12)

F. The construction completed (6:13-22)

(58 year gap—the Book of Esther)

2. Reformation of the People (7-10); return under Ezra (457 B.C.)

A. The leadership of the reformation commissioned (7)

B. The leader and his people return (8)

C. The reformation commenced (9-10)

(1) The condition of the people revealed (9:1-4)

(2) The confession of Ezra in prayer (9:5-15)

(3) The covenant (10:1-8) and cleansing (10:9-44) of the people

With that as a brief introduction, I want to focus the rest of our time on chapter 1. The lesson there is:

Spiritual renewal requires God’s great power working according to His gracious promises for His glorious purpose.

1. God has His chastening purposes for dry times and He has His gracious purposes for spiritually renewing His people.

As you know from the history of Israel, for four centuries the Lord warned His disobedient people, calling them back to Himself through His prophets. Finally, they had persisted in their idolatry for too long, and God fulfilled His warning by scattering them among the nations (Deut. 28:64). As God prophesied through Moses almost 1,000 years before, “And among those nations you shall find no rest, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot; but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul. So your life shall hang in doubt before you; and you shall be in dread night and day, and shall have no assurance of your life” (Deut. 28:65-66).

Why would God give His people a trembling heart, failing eyes, despair of soul, and no assurance of life? Hebrews 12 gives us the answer: “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives…. He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness” (Heb. 12:6, 10). By nature, we’re all so wed to this world and the things of this world that the Lord has to bring us to the place where we find no rest in Babylon. We have to recognize that all that this world offers will leave us with a trembling heart, failing eyes, and despair of soul. The dry times spiritually should make us thirst after the living God, who alone can satisfy.

There were many Jews in Babylon who were comfortable there. Many of them had been born in captivity and Babylon was all that they knew. They heard stories from the old-timers about the glories of Zion and the beauty of the Temple. But they just shrugged, “Why go back there when we have a good life here?”

Besides, it was both inconvenient and risky to go back to Jerusalem. It meant saying good-bye to the comfortable and familiar surroundings and friends and venturing across 1,000 miles of hostile desert terrain to a land that had been decimated by war. There weren’t cities with beautiful empty homes awaiting them. There were piles of rubble and some hostile people who had moved into the empty land after the Babylonians had dragged off the surviving Jews 50 years earlier. So why go back?

But there were other Jews in Babylon who were not comfortable there. They remembered Zion and said, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land” (Ps. 137:4). They exalted Jerusalem, where God’s people worshiped Him in His temple, as their chief joy (Ps. 137:6). So when they heard the unbelievable news that Cyrus, the pagan king, had issued a call to the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Lord’s temple, they were like those who dream. Their mouths were filled with laughter and their tongues with joyful shouting. “Then they said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad” (Ps. 126:2-3).

Cold water tastes so good when you are dry to the bone. God’s river of living water tastes so good when you have gone through a dry time and you’re aware that all of Babylon’s pleasures only leave you with despair of soul. But the key is this: When you are in a dry time, don’t get satisfied with Babylon. Remember Jerusalem, and cry out for God’s Spirit to take you back there. But, how does it happen?

2. Spiritual renewal requires God’s great power.

Ezra 1:1-3a is identical to 2 Chronicles 36:22-23. They are astounding verses. In Jeremiah 29:10-14, the Lord had sent word through His prophet to those who were already in exile in Babylon:

For thus says the LORD, “When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,” declares the LORD, “and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.”

The Lord had wounded; now He would heal. The Lord had killed; now He was giving life (Deut. 32:39). The seventy-year captivity began in 605 B.C. Jerusalem fell in 587 B.C. The decree of Cyrus was in 538, the first year of his reign over Babylon, 67 years after the first deportation, but scarcely 50 years since the destruction of the city. By the time the people returned and built the altar in 536, the 70 years were almost expired. Derek Kidner observes, “It was not the last time that God’s mercy would shorten the days of trial (Matt. 24:22)” (Ezra & Nehemiah, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries [IVP], p. 32).

But the remarkable and significant thing is that it was God who stirred up Cyrus to make this dramatic proclamation. About 150 years before, Isaiah had predicted this event (Isa. 44:28-45:7). The fact that he named Cyrus has led critics to say that Isaiah could not have written this, and thus to attribute it to a later scribe. But only a bias against God’s supernatural knowledge would lead us to reject Isaiah’s prophecy.

Why would Cyrus, a pagan king, issue a decree for the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild their Temple? In the 19th century, the Cyrus Cylinder was discovered. It reveals that he had a policy of restoring people to their native lands and religions, asking them to pray to their gods on his behalf. A portion of it reads, “May all the gods whom I have resettled in their sacred cities ask daily Bel and Nebo for a long life for me” (cited by Kidner, p. 18).

So on a human level, you have a polytheistic king following his program of religious tolerance, superstitiously asking the subject people to pray to their gods for his well being. He even provided for funds to be raised to support the restoration, and he donated the temple objects that Nebuchadnezzar had taken years before.

But as our text shows, behind it all was the sovereign God turning this king’s heart as channels of water to fulfill His purpose (Prov. 21:1). Cyrus was ignorant of God’s ways. From his perspective, he was building his empire by employing wise policies that would insure his long reign. But behind Cyrus’ incredible decree, God was working to fulfill His Word through His prophet (1:1). Just as in the exodus, the Lord put it in the hearts of the Egyptians to give gold and silver to the Jews, so here He worked through Cyrus so that the Babylonian residents gave those returning silver and gold, goods and cattle (Ezra 1:4, 6). There is simply no human explanation for this. God was the only reason for it.

There are human schemes and methods for bringing spiritual renewal. But for it to be genuine, God must work according to His mighty power. Anything less will be a cheap, superficial substitute. But, then, do we just sit around and wait for God to work, or is there something that we can do?

3. Spiritual renewal is according to God’s gracious promises.

Everything in the spiritual realm depends on God’s grace as promised in His Word. If God had not promised restoration, no amount of human effort could have brought it about. But since God had promised, and since He works through means that He ordains, there are some things that we can do:

A. Prayer brings God’s promises into practical reality.

The prophet Daniel’s meditation on Jeremiah’s prophecy and his prayers for God to forgive and restore His captive people were behind these dramatic changes in history (Daniel 9). Daniel didn’t read Jeremiah’s prophecy, realize that the 70 years were almost up, and say, “Cool! Let’s sit back and see what happens!” Rather, he humbled himself with fasting and he confessed his people’s and his own sins.

If we want spiritual renewal, whether personally or for God’s church, we must humble ourselves before God and entreat Him for it. If we’re content in Babylon, with no longing for worship in God’s temple in Jerusalem, we won’t cry out to Him for anything different. But if we realize that God promises more than we’re experiencing, we will give ourselves to prayer until He grants it.

B. God’s Word reveals His promises and His path of blessing.

The renewal under Ezra was a renewal of God’s Word. The fulfillment of Jeremiah’s and Isaiah’s prophecies showed God’s people that His Word is true and can be trusted, no matter how impossible the situation. Ezra 7:6 tells us that Ezra was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses. Ezra 7:10 says, “Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.” In Nehemiah 8:8, we find that under Ezra’s leadership, in front of all the people, well-trained scribes “read from the book, from the law of God, translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading.” Many scholars think that Ezra is the author of Psalm 119, which extols God’s Word for 176 verses. Clearly, Ezra was a man who believed in the transforming power of God’s Word.

Every true spiritual renewal is founded on and sustained by God’s Word. The Reformation was a renewal of the Word. Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers began systematically teaching and applying God’s Word in ways that had been grossly neglected by the Roman Catholic Church. The Puritan movement also was centered on God’s Word, as pastors would explain and apply the great doctrines of Scripture, usually in hour-long sermons (J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness [Crossway Books], p. 280). In the preface of his wonderful book, Calvin’s Preaching (Westminster/John Knox Press, p. x), British scholar T. H. L. Parker indicts the modern church that has abandoned Calvin’s method of careful exposition of Scripture. He says, “What wonder that a Church which picks and chooses what it wants out of the Bible should become confused in its theology, flabby in its morals, and with little to state but the worldly obvious—the day after worldly liberals have stated it more convincingly?” If we want renewal, we must put a renewed emphasis on God’s Word of truth.

C. God’s provision supplies the demands of His promises.

God had promised to restore His people after the 70 years, but it was a humanly impossible task. After 70 years in Babylon, with the city of Jerusalem and the Temple in ruins, how could things ever be restored? The Jews didn’t have the resources to do it, even if a royal edict permitted them to return to the land.

But what man could not do, God did. He had Cyrus put it into the royal edict that the people should contribute to those returning. And, Cyrus himself brought out the vessels from the Temple that Nebuchadnezzar had put into his own temple. The 2,499 in 1:9-10 probably refers to the bigger and more valuable items, whereas the 5,400 in 1:11 is the total of all the items (John A. Martin, The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books], 1:655). Also, while there is debate as to the exact identity of Sheshbazzar (1:8, 10), probably it is the Babylonian name of Zerubbabel (cf. 5:16 with Zech. 4:9), who was the godly grandson of the godless Jewish King Jeconiah (1 Chron. 3:17-19; The Ryrie Study Bible [Moody Press], note on Ezra 1:8).

Derek Kidner (p. 35) points out that every piece of these temple items was “a witness to God’s sovereign care and the continuance of the covenant.” Here’s the application for us: Christ has promised to build His church and that some from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation will one day be gathered before His throne (Matt. 16:18; Rev. 5:9). But the task seems humanly impossible! Where do we get the resources to see these promises become a reality? The answer is here: When God promises, He also supplies the demands to meet those promises as His people wait on Him in prayer. As Hudson Taylor used to say, “God’s work done in God’s way will not lack God’s means of support.”

Thus, spiritual renewal requires God’s great power according to His gracious promises. Finally,

4. Spiritual renewal is for God’s glorious purpose.

The Temple at Jerusalem had been the place where God’s glory was displayed. That place had been destroyed because of the sins of His people. He now is referred to as “the God of heaven.” That title is used 9 times in Ezra, more than in any other book of the Bible. It is used 10 times in other post-exilic books (2 Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Daniel), and elsewhere in the Old Testament only 4 times (Martin, p. 655). It shows God to be the sovereign over all. But it also may hint at the fact that His glory was not now being revealed on earth, since the Temple had been destroyed.

Thus God’s purpose was to manifest His glory through a rebuilt Temple where His restored people could worship Him in spirit and truth. His glory was supremely revealed in the rebuilt Temple when Jesus the Messiah appeared there as “God’s salvation, which [He] prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel” (Luke 2:32).

God’s purpose today is the same: He wants to reveal His glory through a renewed people, who by their holy lives and witness reveal His Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to all peoples. In other words, spiritual renewal is not for us, so that we can lead happy, fulfilled lives to the neglect of the world. Spiritual renewal is for God’s purpose, that His glory would be revealed to the nations.

Conclusion

How can this happen? I can only be brief and limited here.

First, ask God to give you a vision of what a renewed, holy, worshiping, evangelizing community of His people would look like. Then, devote yourself to being a part of making that happen here. It has to begin on an individual level before it can move to a corporate level. In other words, ask God to renew you! If your heart is stirred for renewal, that stirring came from God (1:5). And yet each of us is responsible to seek the Lord and “search for [Him] with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13).

Men, especially, need to take the leadership in this process. It was “the heads of fathers’ households of Judah and Benjamin” that arose to the challenge to return to Jerusalem (1:5). While God greatly uses godly women, He has ordained for men to take the spiritual lead in the home and in the church. God won’t bring renewal while men are spiritually passive.

Finally, be willing to be inconvenienced to see spiritual renewal happen, both personally and corporately. To return to Jerusalem was a major hassle and inconvenience for everyone who responded to the call. But if God is going to renew your life, you’ve got to get out of your rut and make some changes. You’ve got to be willing to give up the comfortable life in Babylon and embrace the hardships of seeing His Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem. It may be as simple as turning off the tube and picking up your Bible on a consistent basis to spend time with the Lord. It may mean scheduling regular extended times for seeking the Lord. It may mean setting some spiritual goals and asking God for the grace and wisdom to achieve them. But it certainly means doing some things differently than the current status quo!

Do you sense the need personally for spiritual renewal? If your honest answer is, “No, I’m fine, thanks,” you’ll stay in Babylon. It’s a comfortable place to live. You’ll enjoy a good life there. But you’ll miss what God wants to do with you personally and with you as a part of His church corporately.

If you sense the need for renewal, get alone with God as soon as you can and begin asking Him by His great power according to His gracious promises to work for His glorious purpose in you and in this church. It won’t be an easy, comfortable road to travel. There are many hardships and obstacles along the way. But, as Derek Kidner points out (p. 35), the closing words of chapter one, “from Babylon to Jerusalem,” mark one of the turning points of history. God calls you to join that group returning to the place of His blessing.

Discussion Questions

1. Why is a holy discontent with where we’re at spiritually essential for every believer?
2. Should we just accept spiritual “dry times” or should we fight to get out of them? If we should fight, how?
3. A fellow Christian tells you that for him the Bible is dry and boring. What would you say to help him?
4. How can a Christian get his or her eyes off of individual problems and onto God’s greater global purpose of His glory?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation