Spiritual Stability, Pt. 5
Philippians 4:6‑8
Let's open our Bibles to the text of our message this morning, Philippians chapter 4, returning to the passage verses 1 through 9...Philippians chapter 4 verses 1 through 9. And our subject is spiritual stability. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth "Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord," he was calling for spiritual stability. When James wrote that a double‑minded man is unstable in all his ways, that too was a call for spiritual stability. When Peter wrote that God desired to perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you, that also as the result of casting all your care on Him was a call to spiritual stability. And when the Apostle John said that he had no greater joy than to hear that his children walked in the truth, he spoke of spiritual stability.
Those are a few samples to indicate to us how significant a theme, the theme of spiritual stability, is throughout the New Testament. Over and over again we as Christians are called upon to be faithful, to be consistent, to be stable, to be strong, to be bold, to be courageous, to be unwavering, to be uncompromising as the children of God. And this really gets right at the very heart of Christian living. The call of God upon us is that we should be stable, firm, strong and, of course, that against the onslaught and the attack of the world, the flesh and the devil, therein lies the spiritual battle. Persecution, hostility, rejection, testings, trials, temptations, all of these kinds of things come at us to topple us, to make us unstable. And the call of the New Testament is for us to be stable.
Now we're learning how to be stable. It's one thing to be called to spiritual stability, it's quite another thing to understand what that call involves. And so as we look at Philippians chapter 4 and these first nine verses, we are given here a pattern of truth that produces spiritual stability. Obviously all of us who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ would affirm that we want to be stable. No one likes being defeated, no one likes being a loser, no one likes being beaten down, no one likes being depressed, no one likes falling under temptation and therefore in to sin, no one likes persecution, no one really enjoys going through a test and failing it. The assumption then is that there is a desire within us to experience the full expression of our identity as an overcomer. We want to be a winner. We want to triumph spiritually. We want to be the victor. We longingly look at someone like Paul and wonder if he's even human because he seems to experience so much spiritual victory in the middle of so much spiritual warfare.
But the question that comes back to us is even though we want this and even though we understand that this is a biblical issue, how can we be stable? How can we hold our ground? How can we not become the loser and remain the winner? How can we not be defeated and triumph? How can we not be depressed and be joyous? How can we ride across the top of all of the waves, as it were, that come against us?
Well I believe Paul gives us the answer to that very very important question right here in this wonderful passage. The key phrase I draw you to is in verse 1, we noted it each time, and this is message number five in the series...the key phrase is this exhortation or command "Stand firm in the Lord." That is a command and that is the bottom line here in the text...Stand firm in the Lord. Stand against doubt. Stand against temptations. Stand against trials and tests. Stand against persecution.
But notice also the little word "so" or thusly, or in this way. And Paul is saying now I'm going to tell you how, here is how to stand firm. And then he proceeds to give a number of disciplines, principles by which we as believes can enjoy spiritual stability.
Now do you remember principle number one? Spiritual stability requires cultivating peace in the fellowship. We looked at verse 1, we saw Paul's expression of love. We looked at verses 2 and 3 and saw how deeply he desired the unity of the church and he wanted those two opposing women to get together and he wanted the church to help them in the process. Why? Because individual spiritual stability is the result of corporate harmony, corporate peace. Where there is peace in the church and harmony in the church, the church is stabilized individually. On the other hand, where there is discord, conflict in the church, it breeds insecurity. So the first virtue that is necessary for spiritual stability is peace...peace.
The second is in verse 4. Not only does spiritual stability mandate cultivating peace in the fellowship, but secondly maintaining a spirit of joy...maintaining a spirit of joy. Rejoice in the Lord always, he says, and I will say again rejoice. The rejoicing, you will please note, is in the Lord. If you attach your rejoicing to your circumstances, it will come and go. If you attach your rejoicing to the Lord, it will always remain the same because He never changes nor does His relationship to you ever change. So you learn to rejoice in the privileged union you have with Christ which transcends circumstances. So the second virtue then necessary for spiritual stability is a surpassing overruling joy that is not subject to difficulty.
Third, the third principle we noted was that spiritual stability comes to those who learn to accept less than they deserve. Learning to accept less than you deserve. Verse 5, "Let your forebearing be known to all men." What he means by that word forebearing is really your willingness to accept less than you deserve. He's talking here about the spiritual virtue of humility. You can call it forebearing, you can call it contentment, you can call it humble graciousness. It is the attitude of a person who seeks nothing so that when he gets nothing he's not concerned with that. Humility.
The fourth principle also in verse 5 and then on to verse 6 is this, spiritual stability requires resting on a confident trust in the Lord...resting on a confident trust in the Lord. He says in verse 5 the Lord is near, then verse 6, so be anxious for nothing. What are you going to worry about when the Lord is there? If you understand who God is and if you believe Him and you believe in Him, then what are you going to worry about? He transcends every problem. He transcends every difficulty, every test, every trial, every temptation. So the bottom line here is how much do you know about God and how much do you trust God. If you trust God, you will transcend your difficulty because you will understand who God is, you will understand the purposes of God, you will understand that God is still in control and you will therefore be calm in the midst of your storm. Let's call this the virtue of faith. These are the virtues that make for spiritual stability...peace, joy, humility, and faith. You trust God and you know He's in charge.
The fifth principle and the one at which point we stopped last time is this, spiritual stability requires reacting to problems with thankful prayer. In verse 6, you remember, Paul said instead of worrying about things, pray. But he said, pray with thanksgiving...pray with a thankful heart. So let's say the fifth virtue is gratitude...gratitude. You show me a person who has peace, the peace that the Spirit of God produces, joy, a person who is humble, you show me a person who believes truly in God and you show me a person who is thankful in everything and I'll show you a person who is spiritually stable. Those are the virtues.
Just a footnote from last time on this note in verse 6 about praying with thanksgiving, no matter how difficult the problem. If you rightly understand what you're going through, you should be thankful. No matter what persecution, no matter what trial, no matter what temptation comes your way, first of all, you can be thankful that in it there is the purpose of God. Right? God is accomplishing some purpose. All things are working together for good according to His purpose. In it also there is the perfecting work of God. Through every difficulty He conforms you more and more to be strong and to be like His Son. In it also there is the provision of God, for it allows Him in difficulty to manifest His care for you. In it there is the promise of God that the God who takes you through and cares for you now is the God in whom you hope for a future deliverance which will lead you into His very eternal presence.
So in the middle of your trial you can be thankful for the purpose of God being worked by that trial. You can be thankful for the perfection of God being worked and accomplished in your life. You can be thankful for the provision and care of God in the process. And you can be thankful that it's only a taste to assure you of the future promise of God to be revealed in the day of Jesus Christ. You need to learn to be thankful. And if you really know who your God is, and you really understand who your God is and you really know that He's working out His perfect plan, you can have a thankful heart in any difficulty at all. You don't need to lose your stability.
Let me give you perhaps the most interesting illustration of this. You remember a man named Jonah? Jonah had a predicament that is unimaginable, absolutely unimaginable. Somebody sent me a little sign this week, it's been a very difficult week or so for me, a lot of battles and somebody knew I was kind of struggling with a lot of things that were going on. They sent me a picture of two penguins. They were standing like this, facing forward and one of them was consumed down to the middle by a huge fish and the other one was saying, "Remember God is in control." That's easy for you to say. And I couldn't help but think of Jonah. That was exactly his predicament.
As you come to Jonah chapter 2 it simply says, "Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish." Now if you were in the stomach of a fish what would your prayer be like? Ah, maybe not a lot like Jonah's, maybe a lot of screaming and crying out and pleading and "What are You doing, God? Where are You? Where have You gone? Why is this happening?" That was not Jonah's approach. Listen to this, Jonah in the first place must have had his senses about him as he was floating around in the gastric juices because this is what he said, verse 2 chapter 2, "I called out of my distress to the Lord and He answered me. I cried for help from the depths of Sheol, Thou didst hear my voice for Thou hast cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the current engulfed me, all Thy breakers and billows passed over me." I mean, he pictures himself sinking into the sea. "So I said, I have been expelled from Thy sight, nevertheless I will look again toward Thy holy temple." In other words, he says I'm so far down here God doesn't know where I am. He can't find me. "I will look again toward Thy holy temple, water compassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever. But Thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. While I was fainting away I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to Thee into Thy holy temple. Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to Thee with the voice of thanksgiving."
He says, "I will sacrifice to Thee with the voice of thanksgiving." There's one thing a fish can't stand, it's a thankful prophet that made him sick and he vomited Jonah out in verse 10. Here was a man who was in the direst imaginable circumstance, an unthinkable trauma who in the midst of it all expressed his great prayer of thanksgiving. Now that in spite of Jonah's other weaknesses reflects a great amount of spiritual stability. And then he says, "Salvation is from the Lord." There never was a wavering in his confidence of God's ability to deliver, should He choose to do so.
Now back to Philippians chapter 4 where Paul says, if you pray like that, if you manifest that kind of thanksgiving because you have that strong faith, you will find, verse 7, the peace of God will guard you from being unstable. The peace of God will bring a tranquility and a contentment and a consolation beyond human device, beyond human explanation, beyond human understanding, he says it really surpasses all comprehension and it will guard you from instability. We call this the virtue of gratitude, a grateful heart.
You see, spiritual stability is experienced through these means...peace, joy, humility, faith and gratitude. And when your life is characterized by those spiritual attitudes, you will be able to experience difficulty and not lose your balance and not get knocked over and toppled. But Paul is not through. He now reaches, I believe, the climax and another essential key to being spiritually stable and really the key to everything in verse 8.
This is the major point that he wants to make, the high point. In order to be spiritually stable, and frankly in order to experience peace, joy, humility, faith and gratitude, you must be focusing on godly virtues...you must be focusing on godly virtues. You cannot experience godly virtues unless you focus on godly virtues. Verse 8 says, "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things."
Now here the Apostle Paul sums up what he's been saying. The word finally indicates that he has reached a climax at this particular point. And this is the great, in a sense, the great summation of everything, the great key to all the other elements. And what he is saying basically is summed up in that last phrase of verse 8, "Let your mind dwell on these things." Spiritual stability is a result of how you think, of how you think. Now modern psychology today which has a corner on supposedly on helping people says that if you want to be stable, if you want to get your act together, if you want to be delivered from your schizophrenia, from your various neuroses and psychoses, if you want to be a calm, comfortable, stable person who has got it together, one of the things you need to do is look into your past. You need to sort of get out the dredge and dredge up the scum of the past, you need to dive into the trash bin of your past, you need to find your old sins and your old hurts and the abuses and mistreatments and all of the chaos of your past, the garbage of your life, the old sins and failures and you need to poke around, stir it up, deal with all of it, regurgitate it all, etc., etc. They may even go to the extreme where if you happen to go to a psychiatrist who develops primal‑therapy techniques, he'll stick you on the floor, stuff pillows around you, put you in a fetal position and try to get you to feel the pain of your prebirth experience in the womb of your mother. And that is the start of the path to stability. This, of course, has spilled over into Christianity as well. However, in the light of verse 8 it seems to me to be utterly obtuse and ridiculous for what the Apostle Paul here says is clearly this, that you are to focus your attention completely on things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and of good repute. The focus of the Christian is away from those things of which it is a shame to speak for they are the things of the darkness, as Paul calls them in Ephesians chapter 5.
So Paul wants to sum up and what his final and summing point is that you must if you want to be spiritually stable learn how to think on the right things. And as I said, the key phrase, let's look at it now, is in verse 8, "Let your mind dwell on these things." This is a call for right thinking. The verb is logizomai(?), it's an imperative which means it's a command. It means not just to think in the simple one‑dimensional sense, it means to evaluate, it means to ascertain, it means to use your faculties to consider the validity and implications of these things. In other words, to develop these kind of thinking habits.
Now I want you to listen carefully to what I say. This seems obvious. You as a believer are a product of your thinking because it says in the Bible as clearly as possible, "As a man thinks in his heart, so...what?...is he." You are the product of your thoughts. The computers, people say, GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. Whatever you program is exactly what you're going to get. You are the product of your thinking.
Now what is particularly frightening about that in our culture is that it seems to me that thinking is not really that important today. We are not so concerned about thinking as we are about two other things...let's call them emotion and pragmatism. We are concerned about feeling and we are concerned about success, we are not so concerned about thinking. In other words, people don't ask this question...is it true?...and they don't ask the question...is it right?...they ask these questions...does it work and how will it make me feel? That's what they want to know. They don't want to know is it right, they don't really care if it's right. They don't particularly care if it's true, but will it work and will it make me feel good? That's a tragic thing to face but that is in fact the nature of our society. The mind is depreciated in our culture because we are in to a feeling kind of culture. Even in theology it is sad to say that the issue is not always is it right or is it true but will it divide or will it offend? Those are new things for us to deal with.
You see, the noble Bereans were noble because they searched the scriptures not to see if these things felt good, and not to see if these things worked, and not to see if these things would not offend, but to see if these things were so. Now we live in a culture that is fast learning not to think because it is fast learning not to read which creates thinking. Paul Robinson, professor at Stanford University was a contributor to the latest edition of The Little Brown Reader which comes out and is for those people in the English and communication's field. I was sent a copy of the article he wrote entitled, "TV can't educate." It's quite a fascinating article. He simply coming from a secular mind analyzing our society and the mode of communication that is effective in the thinking process simply says this, "The only way to learn is by reading." It's the only way to learn because words on a page freeze a thought, you can analyze it, you can synthesize it, you can verify it, you can meditate on it. Pictures don't create thought, they just grab emotions.
He goes on to point out the fact that the worst possible TV is educational TV because it is a contradiction in terms since TV can't educate. He said, "You would be better off never to have educational TV because at least in your mind there would be a vacuum that some day might be filled with a real thought." We have a society that doesn't think. We're not in to is it true, is it right, we're in to how does it make me feel and does it work?
Bill Hull(?) in a book entitled Right Thinking written in 1985 writes, "What scares me is the anti‑intellectual, anti‑ critical thinking philosophy that has spilled over into the church. This philosophy tends to romanticize the faith, making the local church into an experience center. Their concept of church is that they are spiritual consumers and that the church's job is to meet their felt needs," end quote. And what is happening in the church is that people are going to church not to think, not to reason about the truth, not like the noble Bereans to search the scriptures to see what is true, but they're going there to get a weekly spiritual fix, a weekly spiritual high so they can feel that God is still with them. They are spiritually unstable because they live on feeling rather than on thinking. The Christian must not be a victim of his feelings. He must not get caught in a pragmatic trap of does it work, is it successful. John Stott has written in his helpful little book Your Mind Matters this, "Indeed sin has more dangerous effects on our faculty of feeling than our faculty of thinking because our opinions are more easily checked and regulated by revealed truth than are experiences," end quote. Very wise statement.
In searching a little bit deeper into this subject this week, I took a book of my shelf entitled Stations of the Mind written by William Glasser, an MD psychiatrist who is basically the father of reality therapy, the innovator of a kind of psychiatric therapy called reality therapy. He has an entire section in that book on the brain and how it works, coming from a secular psychiatric mindset, it's quite curious what his research has led him to conclude. He shows, for example, that humans are not simply what they call SR animals, SR means stimulus response. You see, traditional pagan humanistic psychiatry, psychology simply sees man at the end of an evolutionary process. We are simply the pinnacle of evolution, we're along the lines of all other animals. In fact, if you go back earlier than that we're not much different than a rock or a leaf or whatever. We're just at the end of the evolutionary chain, out there on the top of this thing but we have the same characteristics as those other elements along that evolutionary chain therefore we are a stimulus response kind of animal. And that is why, for example, you have a man like Pavlov who gets a bunch of dogs and runs a bunch of tests with dogs and whenever there's a certain situation to stimulate them, they start to salivate and you take Pavlov's dogs and you translate it over into human behavior because all we are is fancy dogs, that's all. So whatever made Pavlov's dogs salivate should be conclusive about human behavior. So you come up with a conclusion that we are SRs, we are stimulus response people. When the stimulus is there, we respond. And given the same stimulus we have a predictable response.
This has been pretty much unassailable truth in the evolutionary mindset. Glasser attacks it, interestingly enough, and says frankly that man is not controlled by a predictable stimulus response factor. Man is controlled from the inside, he says, by what he wants and what he desires. And he says what he wants and what he desires is predetermined by what has influenced his...what?...his thinking...his thinking. He says you can give one man the same kind of stimulus several times through his life and you might get several different responses. If it were a factor in human design that he always responded in an SR fashion, than his response would always have to be the same to the same stimulus, but it isn't. Furthermore, you can take 15 people, give them all the same stimulus and get 15 different responses because man responds not by the outside stimulus but by what he wants and what he desires, he says, which is programmed by what is influenced his thinking. His response is not mechanical, says Glasser, it is thoughtful. That's very important. It is thoughtful. The mind then becomes the command center which determines his conduct based upon how he thinks, based upon how he's been influenced to think. So how one thinks is the critical issue. You're not just a fancy dog, you're not going to salivate every time the same deal happens. You're going to react according to how you think. The mind then has the power to shape you and to shape your action and consequently is the most powerful element of human life.
Lord Pamerston(?) said in the House of Commons in July 21, 1849, quote: "Opinions are stronger than armies, opinions will in the end prevail against the bayonets of infantry, the fire of artillery and the charges of cavalry," end quote. He's right. Armies come and go, ideologies last. It's amazing how powerful opinions are.
Now from the biblical perspective it becomes very clear how important thinking is. And that is precisely what Paul is calling for in this verse. He is saying you've got to learn how to think on the right things. Let's talk a little bit about what the Bible says about thinking. What a very basic issue this is.
First of all, God has commanded us to think. Do you remember Isaiah 1:18? You remember what God said? He said, "Come now, let us...what?...reason together." Let's think this thing through. He didn't say...Come let us feel one another. He didn't say...Come let us experience this together. He said...Come, let's reason, let's think this through. In Matthew chapter 16 the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to Jesus, they said, "We want to see a sign. We want You to show us a sign, do something spectacular that will overwhelm us." And He said, "Well," He said, "you can look at the sky and tell what the weather's like, why can't you look at the revelation of God and figure it out." In other words, I'm not going to give you some spectacular show in the sky, I'm going to ask you to consider what the facts are that you already have access to.
Jesus furthermore said, "Even though someone is raised from the dead they won't believe if they didn't believe Moses and the prophets." Always the Bible calls on men to think, to reason. You see, that's why the Bible is a book. When God gave us His revelation He did not give us a movie, He did not. He did not give us a series of music videos. You know what? He didn't even have built‑in organ background when you read the Bible. Nobody is humming. There's nothing to touch your emotions except the contemplation of truth. No stimulus other than truth which requires thought. So scriptures assume that the first priority is to think because it's a book. Don't you see how different this is from the modern‑day sort of Charismatic Movement where everyone is running around not looking for truth but looking for...what?...experience, emotion, feeling. The Bible is by its very nature calling men to think.
Psalm 32 verse 9, verse 8 actually, "I will instruct you, says God, I will teach you in the way which you should go, I will counsel you with My eye upon you." In other words, I'll give you all the truth, all the instruction, all the teaching, all the counseling...verse 9, "Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding." Think. Don't be like a horse or a mule, think and you'll have access to My truth. Psalm 73:22, the Psalmist admits, "I was senseless and ignorant, I was like a beast." Don't be like that. Think.
Listen now. Careful thinking is the distinctive of our revealed faith. Let me say that again. Careful thinking is the distinctive of our revealed faith. Orr wrote a book called The Christian View of God and the World. In one paragraph he says this very insightfully, "If there is a religion in the world which exalts the office of teaching, it is safe to say that it is the religion of