Spiritual Stability, Pt. 3
Philippians 4:5‑6
Those of you who have been with us over the last number of weeks know that we are considering the theme of spiritual stability and we are looking at the text of Philippians chapter 4 where the Apostle Paul gives us the principles that create or generate a spiritually stable life. You know, this entire society in which we live struggles with the matter of stability. It ought to be obvious to all of us that we live in a very unstable world. And we are in the midst of very unstable people. Our world is filled with anxiety. It is filled with an inability of folks to cope with circumstances in life. There are a myriad of solutions but not many that work any that work apparently as the society continues to escalate in its instability.
Sad to say our particular culture and maybe even sadder to say the church itself continues to direct people in the wrong direction to find the solutions to their anxieties and their instabilities. We have bought into the psychological lies that indicate that man can solve his problems through certain psychological principles, certain introspective self‑adjustments. And those have proven not only to be unsuccessful but to be diversionary so that people pursuing the wrong thing and the wrong area come up with the wrong answer and not only that but they then therefore miss the right answer. The legacy of philosophy and psychology to this particular day and age has been to sell a whole generation snake oil...which doesn't do anything that it promises to do.
This was pointed out rather forcefully to me by an interview that I read with Dr. Robert Coles, C‑o‑l‑e‑s. Dr. Robert Coles is a social psychiatrist. He is perhaps as esteemed as any man in our country in terms of his area of psychiatry. He is an M.D., he is a research psychiatrist for Harvard University. He is professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard Medical School. He has written 36 books. He has authored 600 journal articles of one kind or another. And in 1973 he received the Pulitzer Prize. He is a very decorated esteemed and respected psychiatrist.
This interview points up the futility of his own area. While understanding superficially some things about Christianity, he will not call himself a Christian, does not believe he is a Christian and makes that clear in another part of the article. But his answers are very interesting. They asked him why he was not a surgeon. His answer, "I'm sloppy, not a great quality for a surgeon." He said, "When you get a combination of a befuddled slob who doesn't have the necessary toughness and is a little mixed up himself, you've got a psychiatrist." A befuddled mixed up slob with no toughness is a psychiatrist. The question is a mixed up psychiatrist? Coles, "Of course." Question: Is it futile then to search for ultimate answers in psychiatry or psychology? Coles, "The futility is in searching for ultimate answers in the entire secular culture. Psychology happens to be a temporary secular religion. How long will it last? Fifty years. Secular religions come and go. Today it's psychology, tomorrow it will be weight reduction or cholesterol or getting to the moon or Mars. Who knows what our culture will be preoccupied with next? But none of this is going to give us answers to the moral, spiritual questions that we ultimately hunger for. Psychology isn't equipped to answer those questions. Psychology gives us some information about the mind but the mind is not the soul." Question: Psychology then can help a person's mental health? Coles, "We shouldn't even use words like mental health. The question is not what is mental health, or do you have mental health. The question is what do you do with your life?"
Question: But even ministers today are becoming psychologists. Coles, "That is paganism." Question: Pastoral counseling is the term for it. Coles, "It's paganism. My mother was dying here in Massachusetts General Hospital. A minister came to see her. He wanted to negotiate her through the stages of dying. She wanted him to pray for her. She knew she was dying. He wanted to talk about anger and denial but she wasn't angry and she wasn't denying, she just wanted him to pray for her." Question: Is this all part of the same syndrome, we all want to worship the expert? Coles, "The secular expert. Who are these secular experts anyway? What do psychologists and psychiatrists know about the Christian life? What can they tell us?"
Quite an interesting response, isn't it? You get the feeling he's been dropping his bucket in a dry well and he's come to that conclusion. Where do you go to find stability in life? Where do you go to learn to cope? Where do you go to learn to deal with anxiety? Where do you go to deal with circumstances that you find debilitating you and pressuring you? Where do you go to get your life really stabilized? You hear people all the time say, "Well, I've just got to get my own life together." We are literally living in a sea of people who are emotionally unstable.
Let's look at a biblical illustration of stability. Psalm 1, this was one of the first Psalms I ever memorized as a child. It is the foundation song of the psalter. It is the foundation Psalm. And it speaks directly to this issue of stability. It says in verse 1, "How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law he meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree, firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and in whatever he does he prospers." Now that is the kind of life that most people would really like to live. They would like to be firmly planted in a place that flourishes with all the delights of life. They would like to produce significant fruit. They would like not to dry up and wither away but to flourish throughout their lives. And whatever they do to prosper. I mean, that is the scenario that anybody could paint for his own life. That's the stable life. That's the spiritually stable person.
Look at the contrast, verse 4. The wicked are not so. They're not firmly planted. They are not benefiting from life. They're not producing fruit. They are withering and what they do does not prosper. They're not like that. But rather, "They are like chaff which the wind drives away." And anybody in an agrarian culture who knows anything about chaff knows it is absolutely worthless.
And what is the psalmist saying here? This is remarkable. He is saying there is a man whose life is deeply rooted and firmly planted, who sucks up the pure water of life, a man who is productive, a man whose life is sustained in its flourishing capability and a man who does things that really count and prosper. And then there is a man who is just like chaff, just blowing around without purpose, without value, shapeless, worthless, rootless, unstable, good for nothing.
Now which would you rather be? The first one is the one who walks with God. The second one is the wicked man who rejects God. Would you notice that the key to the first life is found in verse 2? "His delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law he meditates day and night." Two things contribute to a stable life, delighting in the Lord, that's having a living relationship with the Lord and then meditating in His Word so that life is viewed from a divine perspective. On the other hand you have the shifting blowing useless worthless flotsam and jetsam, the chaff of this world headed for judgment. I don't know about you but I'd rather be that productive stable life. And that is offered every Christian. That is God's desire in salvation is to root you and to make you productive. It's a marvelous description of the godly, of what God wants you to be...spiritually stable.
Now, we're learning how to be spiritually stable here in Philippians 4, so let's turn back to it. Would you notice Philippians 4 verse 1 and let me briefly review. In Philippians 4:1 the key statement is "stand firm in the Lord." That means be spiritually stable, don't be like those who are tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine. Don't be like the man in James who is unstable in all his ways, wavering like the sea. Be firm, be strong, be stable in the Lord. We ought to be the very demonstration of spiritual stability. But how? That's the little word "so," thus or in this way stand firm in the Lord, here's how, I'm going to tell you how. Here's what it requires to be stable.
Now what we already learned I briefly review. Point number one, spiritual stability demands cultivating peace in the fellowship of love. Spiritual stability demands cultivating peace in the fellowship of love. And we noted that in verses 2 and 3, two women, Euodia and Syntyche were causing discord in the church. Paul exhorts them to harmony in the Lord in verse 2. Then he asks Syzygus which is the proper name translated true comrade, he asks Syzygus to help those women who have been a help to him and among others been a part of his ministry. And what he's saying here is, "Look, if you're going to experience firmness and stability, you've got to be in a stable environment that is not being ripped by conflict." We pointed out a couple of weeks ago that where you have a church environment that is in conflict, you will not only have an unstable environment but you will have unstable individuals who will literally be affected by that instability. But where you have harmony and unity and love and peace in the environment of the church, it becomes the strength to the individual and so they experience personal stability. Harmony in the church is a great stabilizer. The unity of believers stabilizes the individual. So if I want to experience spiritual stability, then I want to be a peacemaker. I want to demonstrate love. I want to eliminate discord. I want to do all I can to cultivate peace, to cultivate harmony, to cultivate unity in the fellowship of love so that I become a strengthening stabilizing influence so that the environment begins to produce a stabilizing bond among Christians who can stabilize one another.
The second thing we talked about, the second principle, if we are to be firm in the Lord, is not only to cultivate peace in the fellowship of love but secondly to maintain a spirit of joy. Verse 4, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice." This too is directly related to spiritual stability, cultivating an attitude of joy, maintaining a spirit of joy, incessant joy, independent joy in the sense that it doesn't depend upon circumstances. Please notice, "rejoice in the Lord," not in your circumstances. You can't always rejoice in your circumstances but you can always rejoice in the Lord, in your privileged union with Him, that's the idea. That's a joy no circumstance can touch. So to be spiritually stable requires maintaining the habit of constantly expressing joyful wonder when contemplating an eternal unchanging enriching relationship with God through the living Lord Jesus Christ. Great truth. As long as I contemplate the Lord and what He's done for me and is doing for me and has planned to do for me, I find my joy there.
By the way, that is a command. It is no less a sin not to rejoice then not to repent, or not to do anything else God commands you to do. We rejoice in the Lord. You remember in Luke 24 the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus met with them, talked with them out of the scriptures describing the things about Himself. Finally they came into the house and in the breaking of bread He revealed Himself to them and it says their hearts burned within them. What...what is that? That's the burning heart that is the result of a relationship with the living Lord. It was in the joy of His presence that they experienced the burning heart. Stable people are people who bring peace to situations, who create in the fellowship of love a unity, who are a stabilizing influence in discord. And the spiritually stable are those who in the ebb and flow and rise and fall of circumstances in life always maintain joy, joy is at the heart of stability.
Let's go to the third principle. Spiritual stability also requires learning to accept less than you might think you're due, learning to accept less than you might think you are due. Verse 5, "Let your forebearing spirit be known to all men." Now that's a very very important statement and a very important element in this matter of spiritual stability. It is really speaking about contentment. It could read, "Let your contentment be known to all men." In fact, I suppose that for every translation of this text there is probably a different word used here because this is one of those almost untranslatable Greek terms...epieikes, it's practically untranslatable if you're talking about translating it one word for one word. It means more than anyone English word can capture. If you've studied it long enough you get the feeling of what this word means. For example, it has the sense of sweet reasonableness, that you are...you are responsive to an appeal, that there's a gentleness about you when someone asks you something, you're sweetly reasonable about it. It also could be translated big heartedness. Not only are you sweetly reasonable but it goes beyond that, you are very generous. It could be translated good will. Since you only wish or will good on others, you tend to almost bend beyond what would be expected to grant them good.
Some have suggested it could be translated friendliness. That seems a little bit thin when compared to the others. Some have chosen the word "magnanimity," let your magnanimity be known to all men. In other words, your over‑generosity. Some have suggested it means charity toward faults of others. Some have said mercy toward failures of others. Some have said the best word is leniency. Some have said it should be indulgence. Let your indulgence be known to all men, not your personal indulgence in sin but your ability to indulge all of the failures of others and not be personally offended or unkind or bitter, retaliatory or vengeful. It is a kind of patience which is able to submit to injustice, disgrace, mistreatment without hatred, without malice, without retaliation, without bitterness, without vengeance.
Now if you add all that up at the risk of standing against a lot of better Bible scholars than myself in the translation process, I would suggest the best word I can think of is graciousness...graciousness. Let your graciousness be known to all men. Certainly in sweet reasonableness there is grace. Certainly in big‑heartedness there is grace. Certainly in good will there is grace. Certainly in forebearing there is grace. Certainly in friendliness, magnanimity, charity, mercy, leniency, indulgence, you're demonstrating graciousness. And that word probably in a Christian sense embodies it.
But there's another element to it that we have to go into to understand it. It is the graciousness of humility which basically says you may have offended me, you may have mistreated me, you may have misjudged me, worse than that you may have misrepresented me, you may have maltreated me, you may have not given me what I deserve, you may have given me what I do not deserve, you may have ruined my reputation with some, you may have acted in hostility against me unjustly, I may the recipient of your inequity, injustice and mistreatment, but I humbly and graciously accept it. That's what it means. And again, isn't that exactly what the grace of God is like? You may have hated Me. You may have been My enemies, God could say. You may have shaken your fist in My face. You may have blasphemed Me. You may have mistreated Me, misjudged Me, you may have done all of that and I still reach out to you in love. Now, boy, when you have that kind of an attitude, you're a stable person. Spiritual stability belongs to the humbly gracious...let's use that phrase. Let your humble graciousness be known to all men.
You don't demand your rights. You get into that kind of mentality and you will become an unstable person. The philosophical mindset of our day behind say the contemporary psychology that's infiltrated not only our country but the church, the philosophical mindset is primarily the mindset of existentialism. And existentialism basically says, bottom line, every man has a right to do whatever feels good. That's existentialism. By the way, existentialism is a reaction to humanism. Humanism made man a machine. Humanism says we're nothing but biological machines and we really don't have choice and we really don't have solutions to problems, we just function like an animal. And in a really a reaction to the humanistic, that's a materialistic humanism, materialism says man is a machine, in a reaction to materialistic humanism came existentialism which says I don't buy that, man, I've got dignity, I'm somebody. And so existentialism says you are somebody and you ought to feel good about who you are and you ought to do whatever feels good. And so we talk about human dignity as a reaction to materialistic humanism and we talk about the fact that man ought to be whatever he wants to be and do whatever he wants to do and whatever feels good you ought to do it. And therefore what you get is massive self‑centered pride and ego. With everyone wanting to react to materialistic humanism philosophically, even if they don't see it as that, and be someone and be who they are and that's who I am and I have a right to what feels good to me, that's what existentialism says, that's the only value in existentialism is do what feels good. And the only rule is if what feels good to you hurts me, you can't do it. But if it doesn't hurt me, what's the difference? That's why you have homosexuals saying, "Why is homosexuality against the law? It doesn't hurt anybody." See, that's existentialism. That's philosophical existentialism. If it doesn't hurt anybody, what's the difference? If it feels good to me and doesn't hurt you, then forget it. Well AIDS has shot that argument down. It could end up destroying a whole generation of people. Sin always eventually hurts somebody else.
But when you have a world of basically pragmatic existentialists like we do, and that's the kind of world we live in, absolutely the kind of world we live in, what does Burger King say? Have it your way. And I'll tell you what, I've been to Burger King a lot of times, I have never yet had it my way. You know what my way is? I get the hamburger, I don't pay...that's my way. They're not giving it to me my way, I pay every time, that's their way, not my way. The bottom line existentialism doesn't work, it doesn't even work at Burger King let alone in philosophy.
But that's what's the mindset of our day. You've got to feel good about yourself, elevate yourself, love yourself, develop yourself. And that kind of thinking is in the church to an incredible degree. I was listening to a tape today of a friend, Dr. Paul Brownback(?), and in this tape he was saying, and I hate to say this, but he said, "I believe this is true, that if you and I went into a Christian bookstore...Christian bookstore...and we pulled off the Christian books that are being written today and took highlight pens and I highlighted everything that came out of Carl Rogers(?) self‑love theory and you highlighted everything in those books that came out of the teaching of Paul, I would run out of highlighters before you would." That's how insidious this is and how far into the church it's come...the cult of self‑love which means whatever feels good to me, whatever satisfies me, whatever builds me up, whatever gets me over my inferiority complex, whatever gives me a better self‑image, whatever gives me better self‑esteem, that's what I do. On the other hand, what Paul says is be humble, gracious, don't demand anything, give charity to those who are committing crimes against you, give mercy toward the failures of others, you'll be a stable person. You see, you cultivate all that self stuff and you don't create stability, you give them a never ending trail to greater and greater instability and unfulfillment. Tragic. We are to be characterized by the right virtues.
Spiritual stability comes when I have no demands for myself. Then if I get something, fine. If I don't, fine. If I'm treated a certain way, fine. If I'm treated this way, fine. It doesn't really matter to me, I'm not concerned about me. That's what makes Paul say, and he's the living illustration of all of this as we shall see in the next session, "In whatsoever state I am, there with to be...what?...absolutely content." Why? Because Paul's not the issue. I'm not an issue so I can have a forebearing spirit. I can have a gracious big‑hearted magnanimous humble charitable spirit. That's stability. Boy, you can't get knocked off your pins. Some people live and die in that revolving door of listening to what everybody says about him and taking in personally every single thing that ever happens in their life and filtering it through their little ego process and if its wounded them in any way, they're in immediate instability, anxiety.
You can't be knocked off balance by inequity, injustice, unfair treatment, lies, humiliation if you're not the issue‑‑if you're not the issue. That's humility...humble graciousness. So, spiritual stability belongs to those who cultivate peace in the fellowship of love, those who maintain joy, and those who do not demand what they might be due but are graciously humble.
Let me reduce those to three virtues...love, joy, humility. Let's look at one more, number four. And this is at the heart of everything. Verse 5, back to it again, let's put verse 5 and 6 together, "The Lord is near, be anxious for nothing," stop there. Boy, in those two sentences there is so much to say. That's our fourth point, here it comes, spiritual stability requires resting on a confident faith in the Lord...spiritual stability requires resting on a confident faith in the Lord. And I'll say it again, I've said it before, your view of God is what stabilizes you. This is crucial, look at verse 5. The Lord is near. That's a great statement. The term "near," engus, can mean near in space or near in time, just like the word near can be near in space or time. I could say that pew is near, that's near in space. I could say Monday is near, that's near in time. Same near just used in different terms. It can be a spacial word, it can be a time word, a chronological word. We have to decide which in this text. The Lord is near...what do you mean,He's near in time, you mean soon He's coming, soon He will be here? Are you talking about the Rapture? Are you talking about Christ's return? Well that certainly could have been in his mind, after all chapter 3 verse 20, "Our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." Certainly the Lord was near in terms of time. I mean, there was going to be a return of Christ some time soon...soon obviously was a relative term. We still say His coming is soon, relative to the history of this world and to eternity. So it could be that he's got the Rapture in mind, the Lord is near, stop worrying.
Well maybe it's used in the sense the Lord is near in time because you're going to die pretty soon. Well that's a possibility that he is saying, "Well, you're going to die soon anyway so the Lord's going to be around to take you home. He'll come and take you to be where He is and you'll meet Him face to face and all of that. So since you're going to see Him soon and He's very near, don't be anxious."
Now I don't want to say that those two thoughts are not in the mind of the Apostle Paul or the Holy Spirit because they may well have been a part of what he was saying here. But it seems to me that the real strength of this exhortation is that the Lord is near in terms of space, if we can use that concept. It's not so much that He's near in terms of His coming, in the sense that He's near in terms of His immediate presence, that He's there, He's encompassing you...personal presence. That's what the Psalmist meant in Psalm 119:151 when he said, "Thou art near, O Lord, Thou art near, O Lord." You're here, You're near. The Lord who will come, the Lord who will meet us in death is now near. Don't you live your life in that confidence? Don't you live your life in the confidence that even when you think a thought He's near enough to read it? When you whisper a prayer, He's near enough to hear it. When you need His strength and His power, He's near enough to provide it. In fact, is He not living in you, providing the very spiritual life which is your life? It is the life of God in your soul. No, we are dependent on that. And I think that's what he's saying. The Lord is near, so don't be anxious, so don't be unstable, so don't be wavering, so don't be collapsing, having a breakdown, paranoid, or whatever. Understand the Lord is near.
Now we have to understand not only that the Lord is near but we have to understand who this Lord is who is near. And now we get to the crux of the issue because your view of God will control your conduct. Can I give you an illustration? Let's go back to 1 Samuel chapter 21, 1 Samuel chapter 21 verse 10, David is running from Saul. He's really in no‑man's land, right? If he's going to get away from Saul, he's got to get out of the area so he runs to the next region which is Philistia and he winds up in Gath. And he goes to Achish, the King of Gath. And so I guess in a sense he was looking for some kind of asylum from Saul. But the servants of Achish said to him, to the king, "Is this not David the king of the land? Did they not sing of this one as they danced saying, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten‑thousands? And David took these words to heart and greatly feared Achish, King of Gath." David's running for asylum, exile in a sense, protection. The servants of Achish run in and they say, "Hey, you don't want this guy around here, if you think Saul is a formidable foe, the song goes, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten‑thousands. This guy is a warrior. This is the rightful ruler and he's even greater than Saul." And so they tell the king this. Well David finds out that they told him that and now he panics...assuming now he's right there in the environs of the king who can kill him on the spot and in his panic he has to come up with a ploy to get out of there. So he disguised his sanity before them and acted insanely in their hands. David decided to act like a total maniac. He scribbled all over the doors of the gates. I mean, this is the king, this is David, scribbling on the gate and let his saliva drool all through his beard...like a mad man. And, of course, that was a desecration of the symbol of your maleness, the beard.
Why did he do this? Why? I'll tell you why he did this. He got unstabilized. He was so fearful that he was taking things into his own hands. And Achish response...the thing worked. Achish says to his servants, "Behold, you see the man behaving as a mad man. Why do you bring him to me? Do I lack mad men?" I love that. Do I need another one? I've got you...right?...I don't need another one. Don't bring me another one. Get him out of here. I don't need some guy scribbling on the gates and drooling all over the place. Get him out. I don't want him in my house.
So David's little ploy works. So he's off the hook. So he's still got to run from Saul. Where does he go? Chapter 22, "He departed from there, escaped to the cave of Adullam. Huh‑ huh‑huh, you know, panting in the cave. It worked, it worked. He sits in the cave and starts to think about what a jerk he had just been. Do you think God could have delivered him from Achish? Did he think God could have delivered him from Achish theologically? Yes. Practically? Panic set in. It was in the middle of that he apparently from historical notation wrote Psalm 57 and he starts to put his theology back together. He says, "Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me. My soul takes refuge in You, in the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge until destruction passes by, I will cry to God Most High, to God who accomplishes all things for me, He will send from heaven and save me." And he goes through this tremendous statement about the power of God. "My heart is steadfast," verse 7, "O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing, yes I will sing praises. Awake harp and lyre, I'll awaken the dawn, I'll give thanks," and he launches off in this great stuff about God. Well if he'd have remembered that up there in Gath, he wouldn't have acted like such a jerk. He wouldn't have embarrassed himself and been such a reproach to God as if the God of David couldn't deliver him from that little man named Achish.
But that's the way we live our life so often. Our theology works on Sunday but when we hit the wall on Monday through Friday and we get some trauma in our life, then we start, you know, drooling in our beard, metaphorically speaking. We loose our self‑control. We flip out and it's a lack of confidence in God. You see, if I have a confident trust that the Lord is near, what am I worried about? What am I worried about? Well it doesn't matter to me what men say against me. It doesn't matter how I'm treated, the Lord is near and the Lord knows the truth about everything. And the Lord is the ultimate equalizer. All things are equitable in His hands for everyone else and me. And this is the source of my security...trust in the presence of my God. If I understand who my God is and that He is near, that's all I need to know.
Let me give you another illustration. Turn