How Good Things Can Come Series

How good things can come

4th part of grasping a full life.

Brief review of past messages:

1. "Triple God’s blessing for you." God is determined to bless us and keep us, make his face shine on us and be gracious to us.

2. "Life is beautiful." To God, life is beautiful, we are precious, the Father wants the same love He has for Jesus his son to be in us, He breathed His life in us, and when He made us purposeful formed us, it was deeply personal, most pleasurable, life to God is beautiful – so we must treat life as such,and not kill it. If we are to grasp full life, need to see how God sees life.

3. "Seven things that never fade away." We invest in many times but do we invest in things that’s temporal or things that endure. If we treasure things that are temporal and we will end up with nothing. But if we see long range, and invest in things that will stand the test of time death and decay, we will be much fuller and richer for it.

4. Now wrap things up…

2 And now I want to plead with those two women, Euodia and Syntyche. Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement. 3 And I ask you, my true teammate, to help these women, for they worked hard with me in telling others the Good News. And they worked with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are written in the Book of Life.

4 Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! 5 Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon.

6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned from me and heard from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4 (NLT)

A. The problem of good things.

1. It is real.

What ya talking bout? Good things, a problem???

i. Go camping, get mosquitoes, go beach, get sunburn, go skiing, get frostbite, go hiking, become bear food???

ii. Look at the case of most prosperous nation today yet in land many good things comes problem of out of control drugs, AIDS, boredom single moms, people bored to dead, our neighbor. Surrey is the #1 car-theft city in all of our English speaking world, and Burnaby, Vancouver is not far off. Nice to live here, no#1 rated city to live in by many people but it’s got problems many cars get stolen! Heard story of two American teenage boys, James Parker and Robert Tulloch murdered Half and Susanne Zantop, college professors, with a pair of navy seals knives they bought via e-mail. They did it for the thrill to find a "fuller" life and now live with deep regret in jail.

iii. Look at the case of those who own liquid gold, the Arabs but oh the problems they have… Such hatred is there for anything American and Jewish. Dr. Mahatir said the Islamic world full of backwardness despite being rich because they are trying to solve their problems with violent force, it will not work, he says.

iv. Look at the case of Acts 6,church expanded, success story but complains arose about food distribution

v. Look at the case of Joseph, nice coat of many colors, favored by daddy but gets into hot soup with brothers.

vi. Look at case of David, at the height of success, good thing of being a great king but he fell hard with his sin of adultery with Bathsheba.

vii. Look at the case of Mary, good thing happened bore the Son of God, what a privilege but perhaps shunned – bore a child out of wedlock, then got to watch her son die on the cross.

2. Even good things can be problematic bring low energy to people (v.1-3).

Text points to specific case of Euodia and Syntyche. Good things happened here. It is due to their hard work, and how they labor with Clement and the other people at church. Their names are in the Book of Life. No doubt about their Christian walk, note Paul does not diminish them or castigate them but pleaded with them, get it out of your system.