Joy in the Lord

Transcript (Auto-generated)

Well good morning everyone it's um so good to be able to worship together isn't it and uh to share God's word together so if you've got your Bibles there you might like to tune I'd encourage you to turn to Philippians chapter 3 um contrary to um what you may be thinking Philippians translated does not mean unicorn at all it's not the book of unicorns that we're looking at good question question miners who knew that the Unicorn was the oh one or two okay sort of goes with Kilts and bag pipes and whatever so um fantastic Philippians chapter chapter 3 and um we this morning are just looking at the first 11 verses and as you're aware from uh from ion and Kylie that uh the theme for this uh this week is joy in the Lord so Philippians chapter 3 and verse one finally just take note of that fake um there's four chapters here and just halfway through Paul says finally so what does it mean when a preacher says finally some people say means absolutely nothing and uh so for all of us preachers is a word of encouragement for us we can say finally and we're good for another uh period of time after that the reality is is that when you see the word finally that Paul is uh is changing Tech here so when he uses that word finally it might be introducing a new topic it might be a summary might be an emphasis that he's bringing out there's only four chapters folk why don't you read Philippians right through this week in one sitting and try to think with this word finally what's that finally therefore okay so finally my brothers and sisters rejoice in the Lord that's the theme it is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again and it is a safeguard for you watch out for those dogs those men who do evil those mutilators of the flesh for it is we who are the circumcision we who worship by the spirit of God who glory in Christ Jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh though I myself have reason for such confidence anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh I have more circumcised on the eth day the people of Israel of The Tribe of Benjamin Hebrew of the Hebrews in regard to the law of Pharisee as for Zeal persecuting the church as for legalistic righteousness faultless but whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ what is more I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whose sake I have lost all things I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings becoming like him in his death and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead we know that God always blesses the reading of his word let's pray father God we pray that these words may be lifted from the pages or from the tablet whatever is in front of us and that they will truly be your word to us speak to us today um that we might know your voice clearly speaking to us whether that be a word of encouragement a word of of assurance word of challenge a word of reprimand even whatever it may be father we would want to sit at your feet today and hear from you amen I heard this quote during the week and um so I want to just just share it with you it says it says this says in the 1950s kids lost their innocence they were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs cars and lyrics and music that gave rise to a new term the generation gap in the 1960s kids lost their Authority was a DEC of protest Church State and parents were all called into question and found wanting their Authority was rejected yet nothing ever replaced it in the 1970s kids lost their love it was a decade of me ISM dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self self-image self-esteem self assertion it made for a lonely world kids learned everything there was to know about sex and forgot everything there was to know about love and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference in the 1980s kids lost their hope stripped of Innocence Authority and love and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future in the 1990s kids lost their power to reason less and less were they taught the very basics of language truth and logic and they grew up with the irrationality of a postmodern world in the New Millennium kids woke up and found out that somewhere in the midst of all this change they' lost their imagination violence and perversion entertained them till none could talk of killing innocence since none was innocent anymore well that might be a simplistic View but there's certainly an element of Truth in that but when you look at these words there innocence Authority love hope power reason and Imagination I wonder as you cast your eye over all of those things I wonder which of these things might be most important to you uh whether you want to say Well they're all important I want to actually take that question a little further this morning and to ask you this question what is the most important thing in your life what matters most to you in life while our topic this morning is joy in the Lord We Gather from reading this um this passage of scripture that uh what matters most to Paul becomes evident in um in this passage of scripture you see he talks about in verse 8 s the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord so the most important thing is stated for Paul just in those that phrase there of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and then a couple of verses later he emphasizes this again he says I want to know Christ so this is what is apparent to Paul and um while it's it's stated here in Philipp Ians chapter 3 when you read all of Paul's writings one cannot help but to realize that this is the most important thing to Paul to know Christ and to understand very clearly that when he's talking about that there's different words in the language that this was originally written in there's a different word to knowing about someone and actually knowing someone um you know what I'm talking about here and the word which Paul is talking about here is that he's saying I don't just want to know about Jesus I actually want to know him and we can know all sorts of things about people but it's quite different when we actually meet them live with them and engage with them what on whatever level it's a different thing to knowing about them and actually knowing it's always scary when you meet somebody and they say to you I've heard about you have you had people say that to you they say it to you and you think well I wonder what they've heard about me in fact we had a conversation with somebody just earlier today and that was something which happened in this conversation so oh we heard about you oh what was said whatever so what Paul is saying here is I just don't want to know about Jesus I actually want to know him to experience him to engage with him to enter into a relationship with him it's the challenge which comes to you and to me today as well that it's one thing to know about God but to actually know him and Paul is probably he's probably familiar with these words in Jeremiah which is Jeremiah is is quoting God is is writing down what God is saying when he says this this is what Jeremiah says this is what the Lord says let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches okay you get that don't boast about your wisdom and your education whatever don't base about all the physical things or don't base of all the things that you all the things that you have or your possessions but let the one who boasts boast about this that they have the understanding to know me so what word do you think is being there to know about or to experientially know it's of course the experientially to know let them boast about this that they have the understanding to know me that I am the Lord who exercises kindness Justice and righteousness on Earth for in these I Delight declares the Lord so here is stated in the Old Testament what uh what what's important when God says now if you're going to brag about anything there's lots of things that people brag about even in our society today you hear people read hear whatever people boasting bragging about stuff but if there's one thing to really brag and to boast about that this is the most important thing and Paul is reflecting this this is the most important thing in my life is the Jeremiah passage that I have the understanding to actually to know God to know him in a personal relationship with him so I want to question you this morning to ask us all question I've been asking myself as I've been preparing this to what extent do I actually really relation Ally engage and to know God and so when we think about this what we have to realize is this is that we have to make a decision um in life about what is going to be the most important thing and once again Paul talks about this decision which needed to be made uh see he says in verse one rejoice in the Lord and so that is one thing one um choice that we have is that we rejoice in the Lord is that's a part of knowing him which we will uh discuss a bit further or the alternative is what Paul is saying or to place our confidence in the flesh uh it says that in verse three and in verse four it says in verse verse three was written we uh worship by the spirit of God who glory in Christ Jesus who put no confidence in the flesh and then again he says that again in um in the following verse in verse four about having no such confidence in the flesh so what does this mean to have confidence in the flesh well in Verses 4 to6 Paul lists out this he said if anybody's going to have confidence in the flesh I've got every reason to have confidence in the flesh and in the these few verses Verses 4 five and six he goes through all his um all his Earthly um attributes his uh his CV his uh what whatever his reputation for how good a person he is so Verses 4 to6 he lists out these these things so he talks about being circumcised which is talking about ritual that he's been through he talks about belonging to Israel which is about his ethnicity or the race which he belongs to these are God's chosen people then he takes it a bit further I even belong within that to this special family The Tribe of Benjamin so these are my family connections then he talks about being a Pharisee it's talking about respectability because these Pharisees are really really just um outwardly looking they're just s such respectable people uh they could be seen on the surface being the sort of man that every parent hopes their daughter will bring home sometime this is a really really top living person but then he also talks about how he persecuted the church how sincerity was there he was so sincere and then finally he says uh says at the end there that he he was blameless as for the legalistic righteousness faultless blameless so he talks about his ethics and the the way that he lived you know these are often things which we might hear about people talking about their own lives and sometimes we even hear people when they're talking about uh about Acceptance in God's family uh about being acceptable to God that they sometimes raise one or two or more of these issues some I say well ritually I've I've gone to church all the time I've been there done that whatever um you know isn't every Australian a Christian or my family are good upright people live a respectable life and and I'm I'm so sincere in the way that I live not recognizing it can be sincere but to be sincerely wrong or the what or the life that we we live and so Paul is saying in the flesh um I'm I've got it all I had it all there fake and we need to just to be very much aware that sometimes we can fall into the Trap of thinking that we can earn our acceptance with god with one or more of these things the reality is f there's absolutely nothing absolutely nothing that you and I can do in ourselves to earn any acceptance with God now when you look at that list there's nothing wrong with that that list is it I mean you look through all of that say Well they're they're admirable but we've got to get it in perspective because while nothing's wrong with those things they do not earn us any brownie points at all when it comes to being in relationship with God when it comes to knowing god when it comes to not knowing about him but engaging with him relationally and so Paul says this is all what my CV look like and then in verse eight right about there he uses this word loss he uses it three times he say this is loss it's loss it's hopeless and then he says that it's all rubbish um that's a polite way of putting it actually I don't your version says there but um if you go back to the original language what that word rubbish is is um is a it's manure it's uh that sort of rubbish uh so that's human waste that's the W which is being used there so when all of this Paul says all of this no matter how good I am who I belong to what my family connections are whatever but when it comes to actually knowing god to relationally to experiencing him none of that's going to get me anywhere it's a waste of time and I don't know whether anybody's putting a great hope in some of these things or a little bit or whatever but you need to hear this very carefully that all of this is really a waste when it comes to to knowing god and so we have this um this word in it's coming out and I spent a few time just thinking about what this word in means and uh so it comes out a few times in this passage where it talks about uh about being rejoiced in the Lord says in verse three to glory in Christ Jesus verse 9 it says found in him in verse 9 it also also says faith in Christ uh by the way that's a really good study to do sometime as the Greeks in Christo is to go through all the times that phrase in Christ occurs in the New Testament it's a very rich study to do uh the in Christ and then also as a crit there crossed out he also talks about having confidence in the flesh so that word in becomes an important um an important word for us so what does the word in I really struggle to uh come to be able to explain it to myself what all this means but in if you're in the water what what's that mean well you're immersed in there you're engaged with it becomes your focus um we talk about these things about being in the Lord in Christ in him in Christ in the flesh but sometimes you use this word in in in other places as well um we have probably all heard our parents when we were younger or if you still young heard your parents say you are now what in trouble um so we know what that means you're immersed in trouble you're you really got it coming for you this time but sometimes we've used in other expressions in a more positive way when we talk about being in love and uh so most of us adults we know in one form or another we know what it means to be in love and when Paul is talking about this being in Christ uh this is what came to my thinking when we talk about being in love is that we say that we are in love with somebody and we get to that point of saying you know I could live with that person for the rest in my life um and that that can be an expression of being in love with you know a man sees this woman after dating I could live with her for the rest of my life or vice versa woman to a man but then it progresses a bit beyond that doesn't it with true love because instead of saying I can live with them forever we progress to the next stage where we say I cannot live without them um and so that's really taking this expression of being in love that step further and so when we're talking about relationship with Jesus and take the Romantic side out of the love that what is talking about it's going beyond the I can live with Jesus forever to saying I cannot exist I cannot exist with without him uh for the rest of my life and this is what what this expression really is all about about uh being in the Lord is being in that place where I have come to that point in my life where this love not this romantic love but this Agape this self-giving love there's such in this relationship that's not a case of just saying I could live with God forever but I just cannot live without him I just cannot get out the morning I just can't go through my day without him so so that's the word in but we also have this word joy as well so our topic this morning is about Rejoice so let me just give you a bit of a Greek lesson for for a while here the word Joy um is is the word Cara uh Cara in in uh in the Greek which is calmly happy glad delighted is the um is The Words which uh was explanation from the experts that I looked up there and so there's the joy there but the Rejoice we Joy is not something that we do but it's rather it's rather estate U we do things which results in joy um we don't do joy we do things and as we do things we uh Joy is the outcome of that but there is a verbal form of that and you'll see and I put the Greek word in an English U thing there where it's K and so just putting the Cara up there in the K this changing from the noun to the verb because just to show you that the rejoice and the Joy is connected in the original language you see that so the joy is the outcome but the Rejoice is the action that I take to lead to that joy and so this theme that we have today rejoice in the Lord um reflects the overall theme of we're looking at Philippians which is joy in the Lord and so if we going have joy in the Lord as the outcome then then what that means is that we have to rejoice in the Lord uh we have to do certain things for that to be the outcome in uh in being joyful disciples so let me just share with you just four things that come out in this passage about uh about rejoicing um in the Lord about this phrase in the Lord um we see see in verse three that uh that Paul talks about worship by the spirit of God so verse one is this this thing about uh about rejoicing in the Lord and a part of rejoicing in the Lord is worship in the spirit now we need to realize this is that Worship in the Spirit Worship by the spirit um is true worship has uh has very little has practically nothing to do with the outward expression of our worship um I've been in all sorts of worship around the place and discovered this that you can be in whatever sort of service but for the spiritually Discerning you can sense whether there's this sense of awe and worship here or whether it's just a performance and it doesn't matter what that worship style is we're sitting behind Elizabeth this morning and um because this is in my mind about this um Elizabeth Africans cannot worship and stand still can they that's right and so but I noticed that while there's a gentle movement with the with the music which I won't do but um but when you get with the pile of Africans Africans cannot stand still and worship um we were in um England anal remember this will of Baptist World Congress so there Christian Baptist from all over the world and a significant number of those are Africans and just spontaneously in the worship this the African started this Conger line and so this is good Baptist worship fol and this congal just grew and weaved in and out of the congregation as the worship took place and that was worship um does that make sense Elizabeth of course it does and um you know I just sometimes I wish we could be a bit more African so we'll get Elizabeth since senen up here one time to lead us in how to do this sometime but there's another time where the Africans can't stand still in their worship there's a we've got some fol this morning part of our church were from Ukraine number of years ago visited the Baptist Union of Ukraine the Baptist Union of Ukraine by the way is the be Baptist Union in Europe they visiting there preaching a number of churches do you know something about Eastern Europeans they stand perfectly still when they worship they do things differently like they stand to pray is that right stand to pray and uh tell you what it's a bit confronting you know when we go to a restaurant if we G enough to pray we sort of scratchy eyebrows as we pray but not in Ukraine we went out with fake from the Baptist Union in a restaurant everybody stands together before the meal and somebody uh verbally out out loud speaks and praise thanking God for the meal and so which is the right form of worship you see it doesn't matter so much about the outward form but there's something very different and it doesn't matter whether we are more African where we've got to move or more Eastern European where we stand still well I'll give you another example we um don't see them here this morning but we've got Solomon Islanders in the church and I've been over to honar a few times and there's one uh time I was there doing some seminars and then are preaching in honiara Central Church Sunday morning a thousand or so people men sitting on one side women on the other by the way a few non-conformist men and women sitting together in the middle but by and large men on one so women on the other which by the way happens in some other churches where we've been to as well um where where that happens PNG is one of those places but I was preaching in in the honiara Central Church thousand or so people I'm not sure how many are there and I had to catch an international flight um back to Australia um after the service now you know something about Pacific Islanders and about them time doesn't mean a thing to them and uh so worship is worship until we get the worship worshiped so I was expressing some concern to the head of the denominations he my counterpart at the time and saying look I'm just worried that I've got to I just know how Solon worship goes and I've got to get this plane international flight from honey Ira back to Australia and Solomon El only have two or three flights a week can't remember what it was um back so if I missed this flight on the Sunday wait to Tuesday something like that so I said this to him a couple of times about my concern I could sh the sermon earlier in the Z I don't want to miss the plane whatever and finally he said to me David do not worry about it the head of Solomon Airlines is an elder in our church and he has given the people out at the airport the command that the plane is not to take off until you were on it so you preach as long as you want to now I'm not sure how many preachers can say they've had international flights uh put on hold till they get but anyway all worked out that got out in the plane was able to take off on time so you see worship by the spirit fake has absolutely nothing to do or very little to do with the outward form but what does it have to do with it has to do with being in Jesus about rejoicing in Jesus about that I know him and because God is not looking at the outward experience he's not looking at the outward expression but he's looking where at the heart so folk when being in the Lord where Paul says is a part of this to worship by the spirit then it's important that we understand that that it's not so much the outward expression that can be helpful of course but it's the inward expression what's going on inside of us glory in Christ Jesus of course just means what's more most important to you it's like what I was saying about in love you know how it is when you meet that person and you um are so in love you are so captured by them that they become the focus of every waking moment and you think I can't wait till I see that person and and so on and whatever glory in Jesus is like that well not in the romantic way of course I just need to make that distinction but I'm just trying to express the the depth of relationship here that that we glory in Jesus that I just can't wait to be in the presence and to lift him up and to hold him up is that he is the really the fakest and he's everything in all of this no confidence in the flesh will I'm putting these in the order which they occur and hopefully this has been I made this clear enough now that don't worry about all the other stuff and you know all of us have our strengths and weakness and whatever we bring them all to Jesus and we just give him what we have and he takes and uses that okay and to be found in him well uh we understand what that is as well you're looking for somebody uh you always find them with the head in a book always find them down at the beach to be found in Jesus that this is the focus of our life F this is what rejoicing in the Lord is all about one of the downfalls of our current worship of course is that songs come and go fairly quickly these days but do you remember we used to sing that song rejoice in the lord always um who remembers that I was going to get potsy here come up here and we'd sing a duet to the congregation that you're looking at me like you're not going to do that I'm just pulling your leg poy Po's our king of karaoke by the way he's enjoys he does enjoy karaoke but you see this this is how important in knowing Jesus and experiencing him as this is because we read there in chapter one uh chapter 3 rather verse one rejoice in the Lord and then next uh somewhere in the future we'll be looking at chapter 4 and we go to chapter 4 and verse 4 and what does he say rejoice in the lord always so he said it once in chapter 3 ver one gets to chapter 4 and he says it again and then he says this rejoice in the lord always I will say it again what Rejoice that's what we used to sing sometimes us to sing it sing is around because it used to be good doing it that way and sometimes probably really missed the meaning rejoice in the Lord this is where we find our joy in Jesus not in the confidence in the flesh to know God relationally hey that's so so so important is there a fear that uh you were thinking well if I go down that road you know what I might be known as a religious nut or some sort of fanatic doesn't mean that at all fake it's um to know Jesus and to know him intimately actually places our feet more firmly on the ground it's important that we understand this it's the most important the most important thing to pul most important thing that you and I will ever be able to know to do is this is to know Jesus and to rejoice in him so I we'll leave this challenge with you this morning and say what is the most important thing in your life maybe some of those things we talked about earlier in the introduction that quote or maybe it's our family or our job may even be ourselves but for Paul which we know the life that he lived and the joy that he experienced but for him the most important thing was to know Jesus relationally and to not only get to know him initially but in ongoing on gr deeper ways so I just want to ask you this one question this morning or leave you this one challenge they said if this is truly your desire to know Jesus to be rejoicing in the Lord what's just one change um don't try to think well there's 50 things I need to do but just what is just one thing thing one change that you could Implement in your life to somehow bring this reality more to the for in your own life that that to know Jesus and to rejoice in him what's just one thing in fact it it may be a really biggie I I don't know what's going on in your life but you know for some people sitting here this morning I'll I'll guarantee that there's some people sitting here well this is what people are seeing I hope they don't know what's really go going on inside of me and what's happening and so it might be a biggy change but then again it might just be a um just a a change a small change an incremental change and maybe it's just a tightening up or a or a fine tuning of something in our lives f it may even be this that you may have to say God I'm not willing to change but I'm willing to be made willing does that make sense God I'm not willing to change but I want to say to you today at least I'm willing to be made willing rejoice in the lord always again I say rejoice because this is really at the heart of getting to know Jesus to getting to know God relationally let let's pray I just want us just to pause for a few seconds not going to ask you to say anything or do anything publicly or so so it's just between you and God this moment but just that last challenge there in the context of all the our worship this morning in the context of the sermon of the Bible reading what's one change that you can make to pursue the one thing the one thing that matters most you might know it immediately you might need to say father God what is that change maybe it's a big change for the very very first time in your life you will say I want to enter into a relationship with Jesus that's where you're at this morning you can do that right where you are but share it with someone else this morning but for those of us who know the Lord Jesus it's one thing we can do father your word says they those who want to you you of honor and so father we've heard our prayer what we've prayed this morning the change that we want to put in Implement in our life Grant to us the strength of Grace and whatever else we might need to do that for your sake as well as for pray. Amen.