“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! 5 Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
“YOUR WORDS HAVE POWER!” That is the claim on the back cover of the little booklet someone sent in the mail to my wife. I glanced through the booklet and saw nothing new, so I threw it in the trash, only after tearing off the back cover so I could share its claims with you.
According to the booklet’s author God has given His creative ability to us in word form. “To be effective in life”, he asserts, “you must speak words of faith”. Then he goes on about that some more and ends his paragraph with, “He designed His Word to put you over in life”.
Do we have the very creative power of God in our words? Was God’s intent in giving us His Word that it would make us successful in life?
I think there are many places we could go to in the Scriptures to answer these claims of this man and many others like him who preach the same ‘Magic Mouth’ doctrine, but I also believe we can stay right here in our text today and respond quite definitely to his error.
LOOK WHO’S TALKING
The first step in our effort would be to pay attention to who is writing this epistle and where he is.
Now I have not forgotten that I have already mentioned Paul’s circumstances several times in the course of this study, and we all know that he is in chains, heavily guarded and uncertain that he will ever be released. I will spare you further repetitious detail today.
However it behooves us to be reminded of this once more in light of Paul’s happy and repeated exhortation to rejoice and the contrasting claim of the ‘prosperity lite’ preachers to instead speak freedom and power and success to ourselves.
There is not one word in this letter or any other epistle of Paul that bemoans his circumstances or expresses desire for immediate deliverance, other than his request recorded in 2 Corinthians 12 that God would remove some mysterious physical malady that had been sent to him to keep him from glorying in himself for the great revelations he had been given. Even then, Paul turned it into glorying in Christ and His strength and power.
OTHERS IN THE BIBLE
It is amazing to me that these preachers of the health and wealth doctrines do not seem to notice that the men and women of the Bible commended by God for their faith rejected the comforts of this world and of the flesh rather than seeking them. Listen to these phrases plucked from Hebrews 11.
“By faith Abraham…went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob…”
“By faith Moses…refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin; considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt…”
And the chapter ends talking of unnamed heroes. “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.”
Too bad they didn’t realize they had power in their words, huh?
Folks, these ‘easy Christianity’ doctrines are not only dangerous to the church they insult the faithful men and women of the ages who have endured through trials and testings, physical pain and suffering, persecutions and even martyrdom, with joy, saying with Paul, “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” 2 Cor 12:9
THE SOURCE OF ERROR
What we must be aware of and alert to is the source of teaching that glories in the creature rather than the Creator.
Why does it sound so good to our ears, to hear that because we are children of God and have His Spirit in us, we can ‘speak words of faith’, as this particular author suggests, and ‘create’ success in our lives?
Well, it sounds good because it is of the same source and appeals to the same prideful human nature that we see demonstrated in the Garden of Eden.
“The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” Gen 3:4-6
“You will be like God…” does that really sound any different from “God created the universe by speaking it into existence. He has given that same ability to you in word form”?
God has given me the same ability He has, to call into being that which was not?
What audacity! What arrogance!
And once again, beloved, I stand awed by the sheer numbers of people who say they are believers in Jesus Christ and will say that they believe the Bible and that they are a part of the true church of God, yet swallow this stuff whole and cannot see the folly of it; cannot discern the absolutely demonic error of these false teachers!
Once again, it comes back to the fact that the church has gotten away from teaching sound scriptural doctrine, and Christians are not being encouraged (hey, why not required?) to study their Bibles and know the fundamentals of the faith.
I recently picked up a book by James Montgomery Boice titled, “The Doctrines of Grace”, subtitled, “Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel”. Only a few pages into the first chapter I was encouraged to find that I apparently was not imagining the shortcomings I’ve just cited, as I read Boice’s words written in 2002.
As I said, this is from his first chapter titled, “Why Evangelicalism Needs Calvinism”, and the subtitle over this section is “Today’s False Gospel”. Here is an excerpt:
“We live in an age of weak theology and casual Christian conduct. Our knowledge is insufficient, our worship is irreverent, and our lives are immoral.”
Farther down the page: “According to the standards of worldly wisdom, the Bible is unable to meet the demands of life in these postmodern times.
By itself, God’s Word is insufficient to win people to Christ, promote spiritual growth, provide practical guidance, or transform society. So churches supplement the plain teaching of Scripture with entertainment, group therapy, political activism, signs and wonders – anything that promises to appeal to religious consumers.”
Farther down: “The world’s agenda is personal happiness, so the gospel is presented as a plan for individual fulfillment rather than as a pathway of costly discipleship.” “The Doctrines of Grace”, James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken, Crossway Books, Wheaton Ill, 2002 pp 20-21
And not far down the road along the way, we have the charlatans coming out of the woodwork, appealing to the self pride and greed of weak, ignorant Christians – those that are Christians at all – and convincing them that they have the God-given power in their words to avoid trouble, provide comfort, gain worldly success… to ‘put them over’ in life.
This is far from Biblical teaching. It is far from anything Paul intended in his admonitions to his readers. Let’s spend the rest of our time focused on the things Paul is encouraging them to do, and what he promises they will gain as they seek to glorify God and not themselves.
BE GENTLE
Verse 5. “Let your forbearing spirit be known to all men”. That’s how my NASB reads. The newer, 1995 version of the NASB uses the word ‘gentle’ in place of ‘forbearing’. Another version says ‘reasonable’.
They all have to do with our approach and response to other people. He has called for them to rejoice, but unless someone is jumping up and down and clapping their hands, joy is an invisible thing. It’s going on in the inside.
Not that there is anything wrong with that. Our rejoicing, for the reasons and purposes that Paul intends, is a communication between us and the cause of our rejoicing, God Himself.
But what he is encouraging in verse 5 is what others see. Quite contrary to an aggressive, self-seeking faith-speaking quest for victory and success, Paul’s wording here suggests a self-depreciating, others-first mentality and manifests in a quiet, gentle spirit, patient with the faults of others, forgiving of offensive confrontation and attack from others, desiring the ultimate good for others beginning with their salvation.
And he says, “The Lord is near”. Now the commentators seem to pretty much agree that Paul is referring to Christ’s imminent return when he says that the Lord is near. Another way to translate it is ‘at hand’.
He could also be reminding them that the Lord is near to them and that should inspire in them a desire to respond to people the way Jesus would respond.
Either way of receiving this is valid, so far as I can see. God cannot bless a response to people that is less than Christ-like. We’re not going to win people to Christ with our fists, or with our haughtiness, or with an arrogant attitude. Perhaps what Paul had in mind was akin to the suggestions of Brother Lawrence, a 17th century monk best known for writing a book titled,
“The Practice of the Presence of God”. Brother Lawrence developed a lifestyle of imagining Jesus standing next to him, being with him wherever he went, whatever he was doing. There’s much more to it than that, but the idea was that if we were constantly as consciously aware of the presence of God with us as we would be a person in the flesh, our actions and our behaviors and our speech would be greatly altered from what they otherwise usually are.
So it would be valid for Paul to suggest that if his readers are aware that through the indwelling Holy Spirit Christ is with them always, they would want to exhibit a gentle, reasonable, patient spirit with all men. And note that he does say ‘all men’, which would have to include the evil, nasty ones.
No wonder the gospel spread throughout the very household of Caesar.
On the other hand if Paul meant to say ‘Hey, Jesus is coming soon, so let your forbearing spirit be seen by all men’, there is validity in that. Because if we were constantly aware that at any moment we might be caught up to meet Him in the air, which we very well might, then we would not want to waste any opportunity to demonstrate a Christ-like spirit to those who need His salvation… and we certainly wouldn’t want to be called to meet Him in the air while in the course of responding in a worldly, unkind, impatient, rude, arrogant manner to someone outside the Christian fellowship or in.
BE CAREFREE
Next, don’t worry. Don’t be anxious. By that I do not mean to encourage irresponsibility.
Be free of care. These days when we hear the word ‘carefree’ we tend to think of someone who has no troubles and lets nothing concern them, even their responsibilities. Like that song from the 80’s, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. That’s not what I mean.
I mean be free of irrational concern. That’s what Paul meant too.
Undue anxiety is always based on an ungodly foundation. It is the child of greed, or of fear, or of failure to depend on God’s goodness and providence. In the Christian it is the result of forgetting who is on our side and what He has done for us.
Now here is where someone might be thinking, ‘That’s easy for you to say. But telling me not to worry doesn’t take away my concerns. Telling me what I’m anxious about is imaginary doesn’t change the possibility that it might happen. Saying that I should not be unduly concerned doesn’t help me clear my thoughts and sleep at night.’
And you would be correct in thinking that way, because it would be insensitive and irresponsible for me to just say ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ and go down the lane whistling while you stand in a morbid brood and watch me disappear into the sunset.
Paul didn’t leave it at that either. He is not being a psychologist here, he is being an Apostle of Jesus Christ and he is telling us the Christian response to anxiety.
See? “Be anxious for nothing but…” Be anxious for nothing; instead…”
“…in everything…” ‘nuff said? Your mind can fill in all the blanks there… in everything…
Now listen. Paul didn’t just throw out some words here, he chose carefully, so let’s get the fullness of what he is saying to us.
PRAYER
He says to pray. That is a very general term because we know that we have Biblical names for various types of prayer. One of them is right here; supplication. There is petitionary prayer, intercessory prayer, prayer of confession and praise and so on.
What Paul is calling you to is worship. It is important that if the Christian is finding himself anxious and worried about his circumstances or some foreseen circumstances that he go to God in worship and a conscious awareness of His personal presence.
In other words I’m saying don’t pray to God. Don’t go to some book of prayers, find the page titled ‘in times of worry’ and read some preprinted prayer then wait for a fuzzy feeling. That’s nothing more than psychology, even if you put the name of Jesus in it and call it praying.
God has invited us into the Throne room. Christ has provided the way. He is the one who is greater than the ‘everything’ there in verse 6 and He must be approached in an attitude of worship. He is the one with the powerful Word, not us.
SUPPLICATION
Next Paul uses a word that is only used right here in all the New Testament. I’m not sure what the significance of that is, but it has to do with approaching someone with a specific request. So pray about your need. Ask God for His provision for the specific thing that concerns you.
Are you seeing how this passage answers the false doctrines we were talking about? You don’t have the power. Your words of faith don’t have power to change anything. Prayer doesn’t change anything.
Have you ever heard someone say, ‘prayer changes things’? No, it does not. God is the one with the power to change and He is also the Sovereign who knows and decides whether anything will be changed and whether He will give you what you ask or answer your prayer in another way.
THANKSGIVING
Then Paul says, ‘with thanksgiving’. Now I can remember a teaching going around several decades ago, I haven’t heard it for a while but I suppose it is still floating around out there, that when you pray for something you should thank God as though you already have it and it will be done according to your faith.
You pray, “Lord, I believe you for the healing of this cancer and I thank you for it.”
This is the magic mouth doctrine with a different shirt.
Paul says to go to God with an attitude of thanksgiving, because having a thankful, grateful spirit before God is an expression of belief that He is good and that He will always do good.
THE PEACE OF GOD
So we go to God worshiping, with a grateful spirit thanking Him, not in presumption that He will grant some selfish wish, but simply that we can come before Him and we can know that He will do right by us always, and we make our requests known.
Now I want you to notice that Paul does not say, “…and you will get what you asked for”.
He says, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
This is a peace that the world cannot know. No one who does not have Christ in them can possibly have this kind of peace, and you should know if you are a believer that it is not something you can work up within yourself just because you are a Christian.
It is a peace that surpasses our understanding. We cannot comprehend it and we cannot just close our minds to our troubles and work up a feeling of freedom from care and call it the peace of God.
It is a peace that is imparted to the heart and mind of the one who has put his faith in God and notice that it is ‘in Christ Jesus’. It is the peace of God that comes to us because of who Christ is and what He has done for us.
That’s why all the promises of the New Testament that pertain to our help now and our eternal good have to do with Christ.
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son…” Romans 8:28-29a
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39
God has made peace with us through the cross of Christ, (Ephesians 2:14-15), and it is in Christ that He garrisons our hearts and minds against the onslaught of all that would steal our joy and destroy our peace.
Lloyd-Jones tells the experience of John George Carpenter, who in the 1940s was General of the Salvation Army. Carpenter and his wife had a daughter who had dedicated her life to foreign missions and had contracted typhoid fever.
They began to pray for her, but they both somehow felt that they were not to pray specifically for her recovery. They could only pray, “You can if you will” and could get no further. They prayed this way for six weeks and then their daughter passed away.
On the morning that she died, Carpenter said to his wife, ‘You know, I am aware of a strange and curious calm within’. Mrs Carpenter replied, ‘I feel the very same way. This must be the peace of God’.
In true worship they had gone to God with their supplication. They did not feel free to ask for what any of us would naturally seek; only that God would have His will. What they received was His peace in their hearts and minds. “The Life of Peace” D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Baker Books, 1990, chpt. 14
Christians, why would any true believer want to believe and practice a doctrine that would ultimately exclude us from being recipients of this glorious provision?
It is the spirit of the world that cries out for immediate gratification, for deliverance from trouble, for victory against any odds, for power and esteem above others. Placing faith in the flesh and claiming power to speak the needs and desires of the flesh into being is to deny God true spiritual worship, and He will not answer the prayer that is self-serving and self-empowering. That is not prayer at all.
But if you and I will come worshiping in a spirit of humility and thankfulness, making our requests known to the God of all help, in Christ Jesus He will be to us a bulwark, guarding our hearts and minds with a supernatural peace that the world cannot have and we cannot fathom, and that fact is what will assure us that it is God’s peace that has come, and that His love for us is forever, and it will be well with our soul.
