Luke 2:8-14 + Philippians 4:6-9

Discussion Questions

• To answer the question “What is wrong with the world?” we first must answer the question, “What is the nature of sin?” How would you describe “sin” to a non-believer?
• How and why does God defeat the ultimate effects of sin? (Jn 3:16)
• Does the hustle and bustle of the season stand in the way of your grasping the magnitude of the incarnation of the Son of God? What can help you stay grounded spiritually during Advent?
• Of “the top 10 ways to be a more anxious person,” which one do you struggle with the most?
• In what ways are fear and anxiety the antithesis to Christian hope? What did we learn is the antidote for all anxiety, fear, and anger?
• How can we create new neuropathways that follow Paul’s prescription for Peace? What are the 6 things from Philippians 4:6-9 we can think on that rewire our brain for receiving the peace of God? Give specific examples from your daily life.
• Why can we cast our anxiety on God? (1Peter 5:7)

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. On the four Sundays of Advent leading up to Christmas, we take a little break and go to the Advent themes. If you need a copy, we are going to look at a couple texts, raise your hand up real high and somebody will be glad to drop a copy of the text by, so that you can follow along in the Scriptures. Up on the screen you’ll see the sermon notes and quotes, if you would like that. You can access those in advance, you’re welcome to use your camera on your phone to jump to those. You’d have then all the notes and quotes that we’ll use here in our study today.

During the Advent season, we talk a lot about peace, and yet I wonder, looking around, maybe you do too, why so many people are falling to pieces instead of being peaceful, why so many people are outraged or fearful or anxious or nervous. And there are some things in the world that set us off in that direction. Is there an answer? Is there an antidote? And yes, that’s what we want to talk about today. First, we want to thank the folks from around the world that joined us online this past week, either for Bible study or for worship. From Brisbane, Australia we had some folks. Isn’t that awesome? That’s halfway around the world, isn’t it? Franklin, Tennessee, that’s pretty close. But back to Australia, Melbourne, Australia as well. So, I don’t know if your head is spinning; I feel like my time zones are all messed up. I’m not sure what to do. And then London, over in the UK as well joined us. All of those great folks, I hope they’re with us.

I’ve done something wrong when the elves come up onto the stage – my good friend, Ryan, who’s always keeping our tech working. Let’s give Ryan a hand, by the way, because I do appreciate you, brother. With all of these people here, surely something is bound to be a little bit strange about some of our tech. But the Latin word for Advent is “adventus.” You will see this up on the screen. It means arrival or coming. And during the Advent season, we both look backward in time, and we reflect on the first appearing or coming of Jesus Christ back in the first century to an insignificant country, to an impoverished couple. And the country itself was under great oppression, part of a sort of a pass-through nation that lots of empires had run over top of, if you know much about your Ancient Near East history. But Advent is about looking back to that time when Jesus chose to come there instead of somewhere else, when it came to that darkness. And then we look forward, don’t we, in the Advent season as Christians, Bible-believing Christians, to the time when we anticipate Jesus fulfilling His promise to return, to come back and to set the world to rights.

And so, we’re always inspired as we come to the Advent season to be able to reflect yet one more time on those things. Here are the four themes for the four Sundays of Advent this year. We talked last week about unquenchable hope of God in Christ, and Pastor Tommy led us through a couple passages in Isaiah as we looked at that. Today we’ll be looking at the unwavering peace of God in Christ; next week, the unshakable joy of God in Christ; and then on our fourth Sunday of Advent, right before our Christmas Eve service, we’ll look at the unconditional love of God in Christ. Each of these four foci are divine gifts. They’re not human achievements. And I think that it’s really important for us to remind ourselves of from time to time. We aren’t ginning this up. We’re not having to push it, the start of it all, back further and further and further because it’s so hard to actually get there, you know. We don’t have to start putting stuff on the shelves in July or August here at the church because we’re immersing ourselves in the Word of God all year round. And when we get to Advent, man, what a beautiful, wonderful time it is to be able to see what God has done in the past and continues to do among us.

Today we’ll look at two passages: Luke, Chapter 2, and Philippians, Chapter 4. In just a moment, after I pray for us before we open the Scriptures, we have some special friends who are going to come and lead us in the reading of Luke, Chapter 2. But let’s pray first: Lord, thank You for Your Word. Steady our hearts with it, we pray, but also please stir our minds and brighten our hope. Draw us into the wonders of the coming of Jesus in space-time history. And as we observe this Advent season, Lord, lead us to the reassurances that You offer as we reflect on His first appearance and as we anticipate His second coming. We study Your Word today praying that You’ll give us a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in Your power, and a more confident assurance of Your love for us. In Jesus’ name, amen and amen.

Now, Luke, Chapter 2, is so well known by you, by me. I’ve been a pastor 25 years. We come to it every single year. You hear it all the time. You see it in all the Christmas specials that still have some element of the Biblical Christmas story in it. I like to have it. I want to hear it in different ways. And so, I wonder this morning if you would welcome with great gusto a handful of those kids that were just up on this platform earlier. They’re going to give us Luke, Chapter 2. Let’s welcome them. Come on, kids. Yeah. All right. So, these guys actually have committed this to memory, all right? So, you can probably watch up on the screen, some of this, but Luke, Chapter 2, verses 8 through 14. These are some of the TVC kids, which I am so proud of all of them, but this special group this morning because they have this memorized, and they’re going to remind us of the wonders of Luke, Chapter 2. Ready? “You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.” Right, buddies. Yeah. That was amazing. That was inspiring too, wasn’t it?

You know, we don’t want to just be informed, we want to be inspired and encouraged, and they certainly have done that for us. You know the rest of the story, don’t you? The kids portrayed it a little bit earlier, as well. The angels disappeared back into the heavenly realm. The shepherds decided, “Let’s run to Bethlehem and see if these things are true.” They ran there, they saw that they were true, and it’s amazing, astounding. They actually leave from there, we’re told in Luke, Chapter 2: “And they returned,” it says. Returned to where? They returned to work. They returned to their everyday life, and for them, shepherds, socially marginalized, looked down upon, poor, uneducated, not the cool, not the hip, not the – you know. No. And yet we’re told in Luke, Chapter 2, they returned glorifying God and praising God and telling literally everybody about the things they had seen and heard. What an amazing access point in their lives! What a pivot for them as the ordinariness of their life became remarkable. And I heard that even in the play, I heard those words all the time. There was this extraordinary, or remarkable ordinary, that had happened.

God comes into the world, one of a million, gazillion planets in the universe, in a tiny little dust-ball-sized planet called Earth and chooses that little country in that space-time history, sort of the first century. Not with all the devices. Just a simple little place and time, very ordinary timing for God to invade His own creation. A darkened world, spoiled, ruined by sin and selfishness, by violence, by oppression, and that’s where He comes. Not to a palace, but to a stable. Not with a lot of fanfare, but with some really remarkable kind of interesting angels that appear to some common people, shepherds, blue-collar workers if you will. And just the extra and the ordinary come together, and the remarkable and the normal are completely changed by what has gone on with God at the helm and driving things.

Now some of you would agree with me as you look around the world that we live in and all of our sophistication and all of our science and knowledge and understanding, all that sort of thing in our day and time, and you might think, “Oh, that’s a quaint story, that Christmas story, the shepherd story. That’s quaint. You know, they didn’t really understand much of anything back then, and we’re much more knowledgeable and we have all the science in all the world and have figured out so much.” But yet, we haven’t figured out what’s wrong with the world, and we haven’t figured out why there isn’t peace with men. And yet the Bible speaks very clearly about it, and we’re going to connect the dots between the coming of the Prince of Peace, Jesus, and the way that we now live our lives even 2,000 years later, or 2,000 plus years later. Is there a way that that can all be connected? You’ve got to at least ask the first question, which is: What is wrong with the world?

And Tim Keller has done that. His wife, Cathy, after Tim went home to be with the Lord, she has taken some of his sermons and released another book, which has got this title, you can see it up on the screen, What is Wrong With the World? The surprising subtitle I love is, “The Surprising Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid.” And I don’t want you to avoid that question this morning. What’s wrong with the world? Tim said this, “If we stand any chance of answering the question of what’s wrong with the world, much less of being saved from the answer to that question, we must begin with understanding the complexity and multifaceted nature of something the Bible calls sin. It’s our rebellion against God. It’s the darkness that we choose to prefer to live in instead of coming into the light of God’s grace and the gospel of God’s grace and His glory as well.” And so, Tim says, “We’ve got to understand the complexity of it and the multifaceted nature of that sin. But then we’ve got to end with understanding the unfailing love of a God who chooses to save us from it.” The referent to it, the sin. He’s come to save us from our sin and that’s why Jesus came.

It’s not just to be a sweet little story of a baby born to a little couple that’s, you know, kind of impoverished. No, no, no. And that’s lovely and it’s wonderful. We do need to tell that story. But this isn’t mere sentimentality. It’s not just nostalgia. It’s not just a work holiday where we dress up in our own ugly Christmas sweaters and drink way too much hot chocolate and eat way too much fudge or pie, or better combine the two and eat way too much fudge pie. I like fudge pie, actually. I’m from Tennessee. We like fudge pie around here. But we don’t want to just plop ourselves down in front of the TV, do we, for 10 or 20 hours of football? We certainly don’t just want to immerse ourselves in an endless stream of Hallmark movies. I know you. How many of you, I’m not going to ask you because it’s embarrassing. Yeah. They all are the same, aren’t they? They all take place in a small town called Evergreen. I’ve noticed it. I mean, there’s like this ongoing thing. If it’s not Evergreen, then it’s at least Hickory Ridge or Cedar Cove, and the place they all take place is this kind of bed and breakfast place called Holly Ridge, or Holly Lodge or something like that.

The lead actor always has perfect stubble right here on the face throughout the movie. That’s pretty amazing. And the lead actress has at least appeared in 3 other Hallmark movies that you’ve seen as well. That happens all of the time. The lead actor is usually named Chad or Blake. Did you notice this? Chad or Blake, that’s it. The local airport closes due to snow, but it only affects the one. And that’s always powerful. There’s a character who owns a shop. It’s usually named something like Sprinkles of Joy or Tinsel and Twine or something like that. Someone invariably, in all of the Hallmark movies, uses the phrase, “The true meaning of…” Yeah, that’s right. Always comes around. You can hear it coming. It’s like a mile away and you see it. Everyone gathers in one house on Christmas morning, and there is this landslide of, a collision of, flannel overload that happens when they all get together in their jammies in Christmas morning. And there’s lots of fake snow that falls right on cue, and that’s when we see the long-anticipated kiss, and somehow even with all that snow, their makeup and hair stay perfectly in place, don’t they? It’s just amazing. It’s remarkable.

In contrast to all of that, we have smelly shepherds on the hillside with smelly sheep, lots of mud, running down the hill in the mud, running into Bethlehem where there’s no Holly Lodge. There’s not people standing around with wassail and apple cider and lookalike sweaters. But there’s a couple there, and they’ve got a newborn baby. And they’re out in what looks like a little cattle stall, and they’re impoverished. But this baby is there just like the angels said the baby would be. And the birth of the baby was nothing remarkable. That happened in that day and time just as often as it happens here. Maybe more, who knows? But God becomes remarkable in this song, telling this story in a very remarkable moment, and then invades a very ordinary situation, scenario, don’t you know? How does that work? Well, Advent and Christmas are holy day observances, annual reminders of what God has already done and still intends to do about what’s wrong with the world, as Tim Keller’s book says. What’s wrong with the world? It’s not very peaceful. It’s filled with unrest.

And I’m not just talking about wars, by the way, although those are sad and terrible, a lot of what’s going on there. Yeah. But there’s unrest in your life and there’s anxiety in your life and there’s difficulty around the corner for some of us and we don’t even know it. How will we meet that? And when we meet that, will we become more anxious or will we have learned how to turn to the King, the Prince of Peace, Jesus Himself, who is offering us unwavering peace? Now, if you don’t want the unwavering peace and you prefer a more anxious lifestyle, I have come up with 10, the top 10 ways to make you more anxious if you’d like to be more anxious. Ruminate on all your anxieties is the first one. Now, ruminate, if you look it up in the dictionary, it will say, in the dictionary it will actually say, “Like a goat chewing its cud.” That’s what ruminate means. Now, you know somebody, don’t you, who ruminates in their anxiety? They just chew it and turn it around in their mouth over and over and over again. Their jaw hurts, but they keep doing it. They just can’t let it go, and somehow, they think that if they, in their imagination or in their mind, will write some narratives perhaps that’ll help. As they ruminate and write narratives, it never helps, does it?

So, if you want to become more anxious, ruminate on your anxieties, wallow in your guilt and shame. Wallow, if you look it up in the dictionary, it’ll say something like this, “Like a pig in mud,” you know, a bunch of mud, just wallow in it, you know? And the pigs are usually trying to do something like get rid of a fly or an insect that’s on their skin, or they just like the coolness of it or whatever. But they’re just dirty, muddy, and some of us are like that. And we’re like that, sadly, about our guilt and our shame, and then we become more anxious and our life is not peaceful at all. Bang your head then in frustration over your repeated failure to control all the outcomes. Man, I love it that some people in the church have figured it out that if you really want to make God laugh, you tell Him what you are in charge of because we’re not really in charge of much, are we? I mean, think, every single day I depend on God for gravity, light, water, air. So do you. We take those things for granted all the time, yet our little, tiny dust-ball-sized planet called Earth is precariously perched at just the right angle, just the right axis as it spins so that we get to enjoy things like gravity, oxygen, and sunlight, and our world doesn’t become a dust ball. Or if it were to go the other way and off-kilter, off its axis, it would become an ice ball. Yet God has given us these gifts. We forget about them all the time. Bang your head about what you think you wanted to be in control of, and you’re not in charge of these things at all.

Number 4, ignore your relational conflicts and bitternesses. You know the folks that like to sweep stuff under the rug, they don’t want to talk about it ever. You try to bring it up, they don’t want to talk about it. You try to bring it up later, they don’t want to talk about, and they really don’t want to confront it. They don’t want to deal with what it takes to make peace in their own lives, and it actually is something that has to be made. It’s not just something that happens miraculously. Feeding your addictions to noise, hurry, busyness, or isolation, and this, we do this every single day. Most of us, on average it says, you know, most of the statistics will tell us that on average most of us are checking our phones near 100 times a day. I love it, the irony of it, that every Sunday morning, this may or may not happen to you on your service plan for your phone, but my service plan for my phone reminds me of how many hours I’ve been on my phone, how many hours each week, and it happens while we’re at church. I love that. That’s great. I think that’s just so cool.

Number 6, worship false idols. That happens a lot. It’s your job, and so you begin to worship it. It becomes, you know, it. And it’s not much more than a couple of decades ago that people were called workaholics, and there’s a reason for that, because they literally are addicted to work, and they find their identity there, they find their significance there, and there only. If anybody gets in the way of that, you know, they run them over, and they’re worshiping a false idol. It can be beauty. It can be looks. It can be talent. It can be any number of things. And some of these things are good things. They’re just false idols. They’re not really the thing that can save us. Indulge false identities and lean into those, demanding validation from everyone else causes conflict, causes conflict within you, confusion within you, and again, makes you anxious. Surrender to spiritual oppression, acquiesce to moral or spiritual drift. Lastly, cultivate unbelief. This is really at the core of all my sin and all my anxiety is my unbelief.

I actually get to the place every now and then where I just don’t think God’s got it, so I cultivate unbelief. So, anxiety is me thinking God is going to get this wrong. Anger is usually me thinking God got this wrong, whatever this is. Maybe you’re the same way. So, I’ve given you the prescription. If you want to become more anxious, there it is. It’s all up there for you. What’s unbelief? It’s simply forgetting who God really is. Who has God revealed Himself to be. And this is not God as you imagine God to be. Please don’t fall for that nonsense. Your imagination is not powerful enough to create who God really is. Our imaginations fall so far short of that. He is high. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His ways are so much more brilliantly wise and effective than the ways that we might be able to think of. So, if your God, in some way, doesn’t push, pull, stretch you a little bit, you probably don’t have a real God. But if you’re really believing in the God who is there, the infinite God, the all-wise God, the all-loving, kind, generous God who’s done everything necessary for you to experience His salvation as a free gift, man, that’s the God we want to call you to believe in.

Turn with me, if you will, to Philippians, Chapter 4. We’re going to look at just four verses there, which I think really speak to the way that we want to get from connecting the Prince of Peace having come. Jesus, the king of the Kingdom of God, He’s come, and with His arrival here in the first century, we have the inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s begun because why? Because the king has come, okay? Now, it’s unfolding, and He has promised to return one day and consummate or bring to its fullness this kingdom that He began back in the first century when He came the first time. But when we want to link together the arrival of the Prince of Peace with New Testament church understanding of what peace is, it’s going to take a little bit of just connecting some dots. So, while you’re turning there, I want to throw up on the screen, if you don’t mind, a couple of the biblical terms that are translated into English as “peace” in the Old Testament.

We have the Hebrew word “shalom.” You’ve heard of that word before, most of you I would bet. It appears 237 times in the Old Testament. The New Testament word, Greek word is “eirene,” and it appears 92 times in the New Testament. Both of these ancient Bible terms mean more than just the absence of conflict. They refer to the wholeness, the completeness, the welfare, the prosperity and health and safety that God puts on offer in what we call peace. And so, the New Testament word eirene does not seek to replace or in any way diminish shalom. Actually, it wants to get us there in the fullest sense of shalom, because the New Testament word, as the New Testament writers write, they continued to speak about how Jesus is presented as the embodiment of God’s peace on offer to you and to me. In Ephesians, Chapter 2, “He Himself is our peace,” the Apostle Paul would write to the church at Ephesus. Through His death and resurrection, believers are told in the book of Romans, Chapter 5 that we have peace with God because of Christ Jesus.

And we can experience supernatural inner peace even in the middle of life’s tribulations through the verse that Kim referred to in her prayer earlier, John 16:33, “In the world you will have tribulation,” Jesus said, “but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.” He has left His peace. He’s given His peace to us, and so we trust in Him. Let’s look at Philippians, Chapter 4, verses 6 through 9, where the Apostle Paul says this, “Be anxious for nothing.” Or “Do not be anxious,” some of your translations might say. But, and that’s in contrast to that, “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” And then it says right there in verse 7, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” It will literally “bethe,” the word guard is like a garrison. It’s like you’ve got an elite force around your heart and your mind in the peace of God. He’s guarding your hearts and your minds. And then I love the way that end of that verse wraps up, “In Christ Jesus.” Why? Because Christians, if you’re a Christian, and the word Christian, by the way, only appears three times, I think, in the New Testament. Whereas this idea of you being in Christ is close to 200 times. So that’s who you really are. You’re Christians, yes, we use that term all the time, but you’re actually living your life in Christ.

And the Apostle Paul is saying to the Church of Philippi, which he loves by the way, he’s writing like a pastor to this ancient church. And he’s telling them that the peace of God which surpasses your understanding, in other words, which blows your mind, will guard your will, garrison around your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Now, when you are fretting, when you’re anxious, when you’re nervous, it’s because you need to be reminded that God and His peace need you need to surrender to those at work in your life, as opposed to gin up or steel yourself. You know, the problem with steeling yourself as a human being is you end up becoming less human. You become more steel, more robotic. What you need to do and what I need to do when we’re going through times like that is surrender to Him and trust in Him, the only one who can actually bring me the peace, that can, can handle the incursion of suffering, or that can, that can repel the fearful thoughts that I might have. I need to trust Him to do what I cannot do for myself.

“Finally, brethren,” verse 8, “Whatever is true, [There are 6 whatevers.] whatever is honorable, whatever is right,” or some of your translations will say. “Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute” or “if there’s any excellence or anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” That’s a direct imperative command. Believers, chew the cud of this. Just get that worked into your head and your heart and your mind. Don’t dwell on your anxieties. Dwell on the things, these six things, these whatevers, they’re beautiful. What a great list! Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right. Be thinking about that. In other words, redirect your thoughts. This is what you’re supposed to chew on and to dwell on, “The things you have learned,” the Apostle Paul says, “And received and heard and seen in me, practice [rehearse, keep doing those things] …and the God [Here’s the promise] of peace will be with you.”

So, the antidote to anxiety, we learned in the beginning, verse 6, is you and I falling on our knees and beginning to pray. That’s the antidote to anxiety. The way that we find ourselves immersed in the peace of God is to get before Him and then trust His promises. The peace of God will be with you. In His presence, He will actually be with you. So, we see, don’t we,  Ephesians 4:6-9, we see the proscription for peace. A proscription is something that is barred or banned, something you’re not supposed to do, okay? So, we see the proscription, we see the prescription, we see the promise of peace, and it’s all wrapped up, isn’t it, in the Prince of Peace. Back in the Old Testament, we have these kinds of promises made to us. The Prophet Isaiah again in Chapter 26:3-4, “You [in other words, Yahweh] keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” And then, as if he turns away from God, who he’s talking to, God in the second person, he turns away and he says to all of us, “Trust in the LORD.” That’s Yahweh, all 4 capital letters, L-O-R-D. Trust in the LORD forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.”

When you’re getting blown away by the storms of life, the winds of life, everything that’s being tossed at you and being turned over and you got nothing solid to cling to, here’s your rock, man. Here’s the rock you’ve been looking for, you know? What does it mean to find  yourself stayed, your mind stayed on the LORD? Well, it doesn’t mean chewing the cud of anxiety. It means getting your focus back on God, getting back in God’s presence. Mindfulness of God and practicing the presence of Jesus are critical to experiencing God’s peace. As we ponder His greatness and His kindness to us even in the midst of all the stuff that’s going on, whether it’s desirable or not, it builds trust and leads us to more and more peace. We belong to the King of kings. We belong to the Creator God of the entire universe. He’s our Father. We just prayed it. Do we mean it? Our Father, Who art in heaven. He’s so transcendent that the Earth can’t contain Him. He’s throughout the entire universe and even more than that because He existed before the universe did. He spoke the universe into being. That’s who we’re praying to. He’s that big, that massive, that huge.

And that’s why when Jesus came to Earth, He could make promises like this, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.” You don’t have to buy it. You don’t have to be paying for it. You don’t have to balance out the moral scales to get it. He gives it to you as a gift. Where are you turning to? Where are you looking for peace? “Well, I’m going to solve this problem for You, God. I know, Infinite God of the universe who holds all the stars in place, You need my help with my little life.” I had so many times on my knees in prayer where I’ve been all stewed up about something, and crazy about what’s going on in the world or whatever, and He just calms me by saying, “You don’t have this, Jim. I’ve got this. Trust Me with the outcomes.” And that’s what we have to remind ourselves over and over again. Jesus says, “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Don’t let it be afraid.” And maybe you have noticed it or maybe you haven’t noticed it, but the world can be a dangerous place. We could walk out of here today, trip on the sidewalk, fall down, break our leg, land face first in a potent patch of poison ivy. And you could lose all your savings in the stock market crash if it were to crash tomorrow. You could slip on a banana peel, get bitten by a rare Himalayan spider, and have a satellite fall on your head, all before you get to lunch.

Aren’t you glad you came to church today? Yeah. People in this world suffer from a host of phobias. There’s decidophobia. Maybe you know somebody like that. They just don’t like to make decisions. Decidophobia, the fear of making decisions. Nomophobia, the fear of being without mobile phone connectivity. There’s a word for that now, nomophobia. That’s awesome. Chronometrophobia, the fear of clocks, especially alarm clocks. Is anybody afraid of alarm clocks? Or you just don’t like them? You just don’t…Okay, I don’t like them either. Selfiphobia is the fear of taking a bad selfie and having no backup. That’s a phobia! Turophobia is the fear of cheese. Somewhere a charcuterie board is crying right now.  Pagonaphobia, the fear of beards. Did you see that some of the kids had those beard, right? The fear of beards. That means you see a Calvinist, you run the other way. You know? Somebody who looks like John Calvin. Or you just don’t go to East Nashville coffee shops. That’s it, you’re just not going there, you know.

What else is there here? I love this. Roosevelt, remember? Roosevelt’s the one that said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” And you know what I say? Hogwash. I mean, I know he was saying that, I think it was at the height of the Great Depression actually. It was trying to sort of gin up the resolve of a nation to be courageous in the moment. And maybe it helped a little bit. But when I think of what he said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,”  I think that’s another phobia, and it’s called phobiaphobia. It just seems like another way to say we have these fears. And we do. They’re real. And that’s one of the things I love about the Bible is it recognizes anxiety and fears and actually speaks to them. You know? I want to throw out a couple of definitions because I do think this helps. What’s the difference between fear and anxiety? The way I think about it, I think they’re cousins, close cousins, but I don’t think they’re twins, okay? You see what I’m saying here? Fear is usually our heart’s immediate reaction to a real present danger, something staring us right in the face. Anxiety, on the other hand, I think, is when we ruminate or chew it over and over again on a threat, whether it’s real or oftentimes, probably more often than not, those of you that ruminate are probably worrying about something that is never going to happen.

Probably 80% of the time, it’s never going to happen. You’re just writing narratives because you’re fearful and you haven’t turned your trust in, and I haven’t done that when that’s happening to me either, I haven’t turned my trust in the direction of a sovereign God who is really in charge of it all and who has invited me to see Him as my refuge and my strength, my place I need for a moment to rest in. I’m just so worn out, I’m exhausted by the anxiety of it all and the fear of it all. And He’s my refuge. So, He’s my hiding place, but He’s also my strength. When I can no longer stay there, I’ve got to do this thing, I’ve got to help these people, whatever it is; He’s also my strength when I run out of my own resources. He’s defense. He’s my offensive strength as well. He’s a present help in trouble, and therefore, the psalmist says, “I will not,” that means it’s volitional. The will is involved. “I will not fear,” along with the Apostle Paul who tells us not to fear, “though the earth should change, though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea.” And for a man, for an ancient Jewish person, the sea was a threat. They were afraid of it. They were not a seafaring people very much at all, and so they saw that as a dangerous place.

But the mountains crumbling and falling into the sea? The mountain’s the most secure thing they could imagine. You know, a mountain? You kidding me? Mount Herman, that falling into the sea? And so, he uses that in his song. He says, “I’m not even going to fear if the worst thing I can imagine happens. I will not fear.” Why? Because I trust in God. He’s my refuge. He’s my strength. The Apostle Peter, talking about Jesus would say, “Cast all your anxiety on Jesus.” Why? Because He cares for you. How do you know that? You read your New Testament, you study your New Testament, you trust and you believe the promises of Jesus when He said He came to bring you peace, to reconcile you to God and in so many different directions, to give you the peace that you so desperately need and really want. The Lord knows what you’re going through this Advent season, what I’m going through. The Lord is well aware of that. The question is, does He care? And I’m so glad to be able to tell you He really cares, and His care is put on visible display in the most luminous way by the thing we’re reflecting on right now, the coming of Jesus.

If He didn’t care, He wouldn’t put on human skin and come and be one of us. If He didn’t care, He wouldn’t climb up on a cross or allow Himself to be nailed to a cross and die for us. If He didn’t care, all the time He was walking around on the planet for those three-and-a-half years, that ministry part of His life that we have read about in the Gospel of Luke. He would not have invaded and interrupted that funeral procession for that widow of Nain’s son who had died. Nobody asked Jesus. He invaded that, man. He walked into that. That was awkward. Doing something awkward at a funeral is really weird, and Jesus did the most awkward thing. He literally went in there, put His hand on that kid, and told him to rise back up again. And the difference between all of us if we did something awkward and Jesus is that when He does something awkward, it turns into something remarkable. Yeah, and it’s usually in a very ordinary place, but the Bible is talking to us, isn’t it, about a lot of things and certainly about how we deal with our anxiety and our fears. It acknowledges that they exist.

One of my favorite living, uh, New Testament theologians, D.A. Carson, once said this, “I’m not suffering from anything that a good resurrection can’t fix.” So, I love that. That’s such a great pithy way of saying it. So, we have in the New Testament don’t we, the peace of God, or peace with God rather, the peace of God, peace with others, and peace within. As you look at those four up on the screen, look at those for a second, which do you right now in this moment acknowledge? I’m not asking you to raise your hand, but just think about it for a second, which of those four would you really like to have a little bit more of right now? Maybe you’re struggling and wrestling with God over something right now. Maybe you just need the general peace of God in your life. You just fret over everything. Or maybe you’re struggling with a conflict with others, or maybe you’re just wrestling with yourself and something about yourself. The peace with God, John Stott says there’s nothing like it. “It is peace with God as an objective fact, which is the foundation of the peace of God as a subjective experience.” That is so true.

You know, when I’m receiving God’s grace, and I’m in peace with God because of His finished work on the cross, then all of a sudden, I’m experiencing His peace in general, the peace of God. We have here in Philippians 4, don’t we, the proscription, the forbidden, the banned, “Don’t be anxious,” is what the Apostle Paul says. And from Scripture, we have learned over and over again that we can honestly lament all that’s gone wrong in the world while still placing our ultimate confidence and trust in the sovereign God who has promised one day to make all things right. I need to be reminding myself of that over and over again. That’s why I gather with you. That’s why we all gather together. That’s why every one of the Bible teachers that’s ever speaks up here is all about pointing us to the God of the Word through the Word of God so that we’re reminded over and over again of who He is. It’s common-sense Christianity, isn’t it? It corresponds to what we see in the world around us that is fearful and fretful.

But we can live in a dark world as lights in that world because of the light of the world, Jesus, who has come to bring us peace. How do we appropriate peace? How is it that I can find myself receiving the peace of God when everything around us may be chaotic and noisy? I’m fascinated by this quote that I’m going to throw up on the screen right now. And this author who is a believer, a Christian, she’s got a lot of letters after her name. You can see that there. She’s a neuroscientist specialist and she says, “Your mind follows what you focus on. Neuroscience shows that repeated thoughts form stronger neural pathways in the brain. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change with practice, and this is why God tells us to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. He knew how our minds worked long before modern research confirmed it.” So, while we might in our modern day think, “Oh, we are so cool. We’ve come up with this term neuroplasticity.” And I bet, you know, if I really wanted to get arrogant and proud and all that, I bet we’re one of the few churches talking about neuroplasticity today. Yeah. Pat us on the back because we got that figured out, right?

Look, God designed your brain with neuroplasticity way before the scientists slapped the label on it. God’s the one that created your brain to be able to do that, and it’s brilliant. Listen to what else she says. This is too long to put up on the screen, but she says, “When a thought arises that brings you fear or shame,” either one, “worry or discouragement, pause. Ask yourself a couple of questions. One, is this true? Is it true, what you’re thinking right now? Does it align with Scripture? Does it guard my heart and my mind? What can I replace this thought with? That’d be awesome if we started doing that, you know? Because a lot of us have been raised to think it’s sort of like our brain or our heart has unbridled freedom to do whatever it wants, and it is who we are, and I don’t think so. I don’t think, I don’t think the Bible teaches that, and I’m thrilled that neuroscience is teaching us, is confirming that, okay? Because your brain is forming new neural pathways because of this thing that we call neuroplasticity that God created back in Genesis, Chapter 1 with our minds.

Ask yourself if it’s true. Your prefrontal cortex helps you evaluate facts and calm emotional reactions. The prefrontal cortex is your logic and reasoning center. Look, I didn’t even know I had a logic and reasoning center. This is awesome. Does it align with Scripture? “If it contradicts the Word, it’s not from God,” says this neuroscientist. She says, “God does not speak in hopelessness or condemnation.” That’s because she’s a believer. She knows that. That’s because she reads the Bible. She knows that, right? “Does it guard my heart and my mind?” she says right here. Philippians 4 says, ‘The peace of God guards you like a shield when you pray and rehearse the truth.'” Oh, yeah. “The amygdala settles when you shift from fear to truth. The amygdala is the alarm system of the brain.” Ask, “What can I replace this with?” Worry says, “This will never work out.” Truth says, “God works all things out together for the good of those who love Him.” Oh, yeah.

This is a neuroscientist saying this. I love this and she goes on, “Praise shifts your nervous system out of the threat mode and into safety. Praise increases calming parasympathetic activity.” I could almost not even say that word. “Your brain rewires as you practice truth, gratitude, prayer, and Scripture. God designed your mind to renew.” Yes. I love that. Some of you listen to yourself and never talk to yourself. I’m going to recommend that we start talking to ourselves. Don’t just say anything though. Be careful. Pick what you say to yourself. What should you say to yourself? You should tell yourself what Scripture says. You should carve some new neuropathways in your mind and refocus all of your trust and hope and confidence, and especially your worship, onto the God who is there that created and designed your brain so marvelously so long ago. With Paul’s proscription for peace, he’s telling us to stop the negative rumination. He’s disrupting it. And he says the best way to do that is to get on your knees and begin to pray with thanksgiving and to make your requests known to God. And he gives you those six whatevers, and they’re beautiful.

He’s basically telling us, “Pray about everything, pray with thanksgiving, pray making requests.” So, remind yourself over and over again, prayer is not you telling God what to do, prayer is not you reminding God of what His Word says. People that do that to me are so presumptuous. You think God doesn’t know what’s in His Word? You might need to be reminded about what’s in His Word, and you might need to be reminded how to rightly divide it, but you just pray to Him, and you make requests. Requests might be granted or might not be granted. “Later,” He might say. But you’re turning to Him and trusting Him with all of the outcomes. You see, prayer is the beginning of an uprising against all that’s wrong with the world. It refocuses our attention toward God, reminding us how great God is and that we belong to Him. Prayer is God’s antidote for all our anxiety, fear, and anger. Don’t just listen to yourself all the time. Please speak to yourself a few times more than you have been doing and allow God’s Word to tell you what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful. Rehearse the promises of a sovereign God that we find in Scripture.

Let your mind dwell on these six whatevers that are up on the screen: whatever’s true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and of excellence. That will cultivate a peaceful heart because it will be focused on the Lord. It is our way to filter out and in — and to interpret properly everything that is happening in our lives. Here’s the promise of peace in Philippians 4:6-9, “And the peace of God [This is verse 7] which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and your minds.” You have to let it do that. You turn to Him, you simply obey Him, you trust in Him, put your confidence in Him. He’s got the outcomes and then this peace of God will guard your heart and your mind. That’s really a great and wonderful beautiful promise, isn’t it? And then the Prince of Peace is, it says at the end of verse 7, “In Christ Jesus.” And verse 8 goes, “The things you’ve learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.” That’s actually verse 9.

I love that. I love that promise that He will be with me. See, that’s actually, His presence is actually the full-on antidote. That’s what we use prayer for, to get in His presence, isn’t it? And the Bible’s description of God’s character helps us think correctly about who He is. The Bible’s record of God’s promises encourages us to turn to Him, to trust Him, and to rest in Him to find the unwavering peace of God in Christ. Dallas Willard says, “Peace is the rest of will that results from assurance about how things will turn out.” There’s only one person in charge of all the outcomes, and that’s the God who is really there. Two quotes and I’ll close. Elisabeth Elliot, “Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in his hand.” That’s so beautiful. That’s so rich. That’s so deep.

And then finally, Packer, “There’s no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance. They have known God and God has known them, and this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death, and on forever more.” Ah, I love all of this, and I love our Advent season for the fact that we will remind ourselves over and over again. And last week, this week, and the next two weeks in a row of the unquenchable hope of God in Christ that is so on offer. We want you to know that hope. We want you to know the unwavering peace of God in Christ, the unshakable joy of God in Christ, and the unconditional love of God in Christ. There’s somebody in this room or somebody watching online right now that might really need to know a little bit more about one of those, and I hope as we explore them together, the Holy Spirit will use our study of God’s Word and of these themes to bring us into His presence, and that we might know His hope, peace, joy and love.

Let’s pray: Lord, thank You for Your Word this morning. Thank You that it’s living and active, that it’s timeless in its truth, that it’s broad in its reach, and that it’s transforming in its power. I need You, Lord. My friends here need You. We want You as well, and we want to be in Your presence, especially throughout this season. So as thoughts approach our minds or run across our minds, or as we hear from all of the different voices that seek to influence us in the world in which we live right now, Lord, I pray that we would return over and over and over again to Your Word, and that You would speak to us words of peace. In Jesus’ name we pray this. Amen and amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs

“Hark The Herald Angels Sing“ Text translated by: James Chadwick, Charles Wesley Music: Felix Mendelssohn
“Joy To The World“ by George Frederic Handel and Isaac Watts (11am only)
“O Little Town Of Bethlehem“ by Phillips Brooks and Lewis Henry Redner
“Come Unto Jesus“ by Keith & Kristyn Getty, Laura Story, and Jordan Kauflin
“Angels We Have Heard On High“ by Text: Trad. French carol Music: GLORIA
“Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois
All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call To Worship: 2nd Sunday of Advent: Peace

LEADER: For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called:

ALL: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

LEADER: “Let us pray.”

ALL: Lord Christ, Word made flesh, our world longs for your peace, for your pardon, for your grace. Come to us in our darkness and in our brokenness. May your Spirit bring us the peace
which passes our own understanding. Open our hearts to receive your peace as we offer You our worship. All glory, laud, and honor to you, Savior of the world. Amen!

Classic Prayer: O Oriens (O Dayspring, O Morning Star)

O Morning Star, splendor of eternal light and Sun of justice, come and illuminate those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

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