Tag Archive for: philippians

Jesus Brings Joy Against Any Backdrop

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Pastor Aaron Steinbrenner delivers a sermon entitled “Jesus Brings Joy Against Any Backdrop” based on Philippians 4:4-7 at Peace Lutheran Church in Hartford, Wisconsin.

Delivered on Sunday, December 16, 2018

For a lot of different reasons, the professional photography field has really changed.  But back in 1989, when me and my classmates were getting our senior pictures taken, we went to a studio.  There the photographer set up his lights and cameras.  And he had backdrops.  You could pick from a brick wall background or a rustic wooden wall or maybe even train tracks and trees.  One moment you could be standing at the bright sunny beach and, a few seconds later, a new background would appear and you’d be in the dark of night, surrounded by skyscrapers and city lights.  It’s still you, just standing there, but the background can keep changing.  Isn’t that a little like life?  It’s you…you’re just standing there, living your life, but the backdrops keep changing…the circumstances in life keep changing.  Sometimes peaceful and calm and relaxed.  Sometimes manageable, but a little draining.  Sometimes hectic and out of control and even scary.  At the studio, you can choose the background you want; not in life – circumstances change, without checking with you first.

That can lead to stress.  Anxiety.  Yet, Paul says, relax.  Not just relax, rejoice.  Oh yeah, easy for him to say.  He’s the apostle Paul.  He met Jesus personally on the Road to Damascus.  He’s like a super-Christian.  Everything was probably easy and smooth for him.  Not quite.  In fact, I’d be willing to bet Paul’s difficult and stressful backgrounds were much more numerous and extreme than any of ours:

  • Flogged 5 times
  • Beaten with rods 3 times
  • Shipwrecked 3 times
  • Stoned once
  • And even now, as he writes this letter, he’s not on a beach or a quaint bed and breakfast…he’s in prison, under house arrest…not sure if he’ll get released or sentenced to more prison or worse.

Yet he says, rejoice.  In fact, as a point of emphasis he says, “I will say it again, rejoice.”

  • Rejoice because it’s Christmas time and you can almost feel the positive spirit in the air and all the family will be all together and there will be fires in the fireplace and presents under the tree?
    • But also rejoice if you’re going home to an empty house this Christmas or maybe these special holiday-cheer days heighten your recent loss or if your near-empty wallet means few, if any presents under the tree.
  • Rejoice because we just celebrated our wedding anniversary and things couldn’t be going better?
    • But also rejoice even though your marriage may be going through a rocky spell.
  • Rejoice because everybody’s health is good?
    • But rejoice even though you’re taking five different medications and that dull pain makes it impossible to get a good night’s sleep.

In other words, Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”  You see, even the godless…the hardened atheist can look at his clean bill of health and his full cupboards of food and his garage with the nice car and his job promotion and feel happy about his good fortune.  But Paul suggests we can have a deeper joy…a joy that goes beyond having nice stuff and having nice things happen to us.  A joy that is ever-present.  A joy that dwells in our heart even though it might have to share space with other emotions like sadness and loneliness and heart-break…joy is still there.  Because this joy is rooted not in the ever-changing backdrops and circumstances of life but in Jesus.  Rejoice in the Lord always. 

Here’s one reason why:  The Lord is near, Paul says.  Some translations say, the Lord is at hand.  He is close.  Always right there.  One form of the word actually means guarantor.  A guarantor is the person who backs you up when you take out a loan.  He’s close.  He’s right by your side.  If you can’t pay your loan, he pays it for you.  So, rejoice….

  • There was a very special time in history when the Lord came near…took on flesh…was born in a manger.
  • There was a very special time in history when the Lord came near…took the debt you could not satisfy, and he paid it.
  • But that’s not all. The Lord still is near…he is close at hand to his believers.  So every moment of every day the Lord is near to you.  You may not feel it.  Life circumstances may try to convince you otherwise.  The devil will be sure to chime in, hoping you’ll see your problems as overwhelming and God as distant and disinterested.  But that’s not the reality.  Here’s what’s real: “This is what the LORD says…he who created you…he who formed you…fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine…when you pass through the waters…I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:1-3).

For this reason, since the Lord is near, there’s no need for you and me to be anxious or to worry. Plus, worrying doesn’t help.  Remember what Jesus said, Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?  Well, then, what are we supposed to do?  It’s hard to just sit still.  I want to be active and do something that can help and be productive.  Awesome.  Then Paul has just the thing.  Instead of being anxious…instead of worrying…in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God.  For there is nothing too great for his power to handle and there is nothing too small for his Fatherly care and concern.

Does the name Corrie Ten Boom mean anything to you?  She was a Dutch Christian woman – she and her father hid Jews in their home so they could escape the Nazi holocaust during WWII.  She was caught and sent to a concentration camp.  There was a particularly down moment she had when she and her friend, Betsie, were jammed into an over-crowded living quarters.  It smelled horrible.  And it was infested with fleas.  It took some convincing, but Betsie urged Corrie to pray and to rejoice and to give thanks.  Afterall,

  • We are in the camp together – so we have each other. Let’s give thanks for that!
  • We have pages of a smuggled Bible – so we can read God’s Word every day.
  • It’s crowded in here…cramped – but see how many other people we can touch with God’s Word!
  • And even the fleas…these horrible fleas – the fleas are keeping the Nazi guards from carefully inspecting our barracks…and so we can read our Bibles ad even have quiet worship services.
  • And so they prayed…with thanksgiving…they even rejoiced. They weren’t magically transported away from that concentration camp, but they knew the Lord Jesus was near.  And so they had a joy, so deeply rooted in Jesus, that fleas and Nazi soldiers could not extinguish.

For Paul, floggings and shipwrecks and a stoning could not remove his joy in Jesus.  You also have a joy that cannot be extinguished no matter what your backdrop is right now or what any of your circumstances in life have ever been.  Nothing in your life…

  • can go back in history and keep Jesus the Son of God from being born in Bethlehem.
  • can undo or erase what Christ accomplished on Calvary’s cross.
  • Can plunge into the depths of the sea and retrieve your sins which have been buried there.
  • Nothing in your life can keep Jesus in the tomb or keep him from declaring, “Because I live, you too shall live” or keep him from returning on the Last Day to gather his sheep in his arms.
  • No backdrop can remove Jesus…for the Lord is near.   Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be Content in Thanksgiving

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Preacher, Pastor Jeremy Husby delivers a sermon entitled “Be Content in Thanksgiving” based on Philippians 4:10-13 at Peace Lutheran Church in Hartford, Wisconsin.

Delivered: on Thursday, November 23, 2017

Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.

Those words, or something somewhat similar, were spreading like wildfire throughout ancient Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia Minor in the 1st Century. However, though they sound familiar to Christians who have read through the inspired words of Paul in the second lesson for today, they did not come from his pen, his mouth, or his mind. Unlike Paul’s letter to the Philippians, the words that were captivating the Roman Empire were not inspired of God.

Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.

Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher is credited with coming up with that phrase in particular; along with another insightful quip: It is not what happens to you, but how you react that matters.

It was not accidental that Paul’s words, I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances, sound almost as if Paul and Epictetus were cut from the same cloth.

One of the apostle’s apologetic strategies, his tools for defending and explaining the truths of Christianity, was to study the philosophers of the age and expand on their rudimentary understandings of how and why human beings exist.

For a few hundred years before Paul sent this letter to the Philippians, Stoic philosophers were sorting through those very questions. What is the point of life? Why are we here? What does this world offer to me to fill this insatiable desire to be content and satisfied and, finally, truly happy?

Paul learned the answer to that question. In keeping with his apologetic efforts, the word that Paul used to describe the emotional state and spiritual gift of contentment that he enjoyed isn’t used anywhere else in the Greek New Testament. It is, however, found over and again in the writings of the Stoics.
When Paul wrote, I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances, a much more literal translation of his words might read I have learned self- sufficiency whatever the circumstances.

Have you been to a bookstore recently? Or, rather, as you are seeking out your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals over the weekend, take a look at what books are the most popular and best sellers among baby boomers and millennials, alike. The self-help sections have surged so much.

That’s because it isn’t just Stoics in the centuries just before and after Christ that are seeking happiness and fulfilment in life. Believers and unbelievers alike want the kind of self-sufficiency that Paul wrote about almost 2000 years ago. However, the secret of self-sufficiency that Paul learned is the difference between believers finally finding it and unbelievers continuing their search.

Paul had to learn that secret because, even as the philosophers posited, contentment is not a natural emotional state for human beings. That fact is something that you don’t have to learn, isn’t it? Even as you sit down for your Thanksgiving meal (tomorrow/today), with enough food to feed an army, will you feel satisfied? It could be something somewhat insignificant, like the turkey being a little dry or that your sister-in-law put too much pepper in the green bean casserole. Maybe you’d rather be watching the football game or be in a room with anyone other than your mother-in-law. Maybe it is that empty chair that still sticks out like a sore thumb, either because of the loss of a loved one or the one you are still looking to love.

Whatever it is, everything isn’t exactly the way that you want it. You might be happy, but it could be better. Or, maybe, you won’t be celebrating Thanksgiving at all. You might take the time, like you are for an hour today, to be thankful to God for all that you have but you’re not having a meal, there’s no family gathering, and your list of physical blessings to be thankful for is pretty short.

That feeling of discontent isn’t there simply because you are being ungrateful. That’s simply a symptom of the disease that affects the way that you perceive and receive the actions of your neighbors and the situations that surround you.

The reason that, by nature, you are discontent is because you are sinful. It is not outside influences that teach you how to have insatiable desires. That has been an inclination in human beings ever since Adam and Eve conceived their first child. Which means that the problem with finding self-sufficiency, that even the greatest philosophers couldn’t solve, is that your self is flawed.

But, if happiness doesn’t come from outside influences and it cannot come from within, where can it possibly be found? What is the secret?
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

Paul’s secret isn’t so secret. It is the same thing that has been giving people strength for centuries. Strength cannot come from within you and it does not come from adapting your mind and heart to, or simply accepting, your particular circumstances. It is not understanding who you are. It is about understanding what Christ changed you into.

The secret that Paul learned by experience in his life, when he was blinded and, subsequently, when the scales fell from his eyes, was so much more than simply giving him rose-colored glasses to see the world differently.

Up until his conversion, Paul had been seeking to find contentment and satisfaction in pleasing God through his righteous acts and religious fervor. But, as he learned, he could never accomplish it on his own. He could never be good enough. Instead, Christ gave him the strength to be righteous in God’s sight by changing him from being a sinful enemy of God to being an innocent child of God.

Jesus did that by living a perfect life on this earth, never once falling for the Devil’s temptations to covet or be envious or greedy. In his divine self, without the flaws of sinful man, Jesus was content to leave his plentiful life in heaven to feel hunger on earth and sacrifice that life to pay for all of the times when Paul was covetous, envious, or greedy. With his precious blood, shed from the cross, he covered Paul’s imperfection completely so that, when God looked at Paul he only saw his own perfect Son, instead.

With Christ’s forgiveness on his mind, Paul was content with whatever situation he is placed in. Even if in jail, which is likely from where he wrote the book of Philippians, he sang praises to the one who redeemed him and gave him self-sufficiency in the life Christ made his.
Is Paul a good example for you to follow? Sure. But rather than focus on him being able to overcome any situation in life, focus on why he was able to do it; Christ gave him the strength.

Christ gives you the strength, too. He lived perfectly for you. He died in your place. Whether you are well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want, Christ strengthened you to be a blood-bought child of God.

To paraphrase Epictetus, you can be sick and yet content, in peril and yet content, dying and yet content, in exile and content, in disgrace and content because in
Christ’s life and death, made yours by faith, your new self is sufficient for you. Amen.