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Fighting for Joy, Growing in Humility, Knowing Christ and the Peace that Passes Understanding: A Study of Philippians (42): Do As I Do

The Lord’s Day
Morning

May 25, 2008


Philippians 4:8-9


Fighting for Joy, Growing in Humility,


Knowing Christ and the Peace that Passes
Understanding
: A Study of Philippians


“Do As I Do”

Dr. J. Ligon
Duncan III

Amen. If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with
me to Philippians 4:8-9. A couple of weeks ago we were looking at Philippians
3:17-4:1, and we said that Paul was teaching us how to fight worldliness there.
One of the ways that he told us to do this was by carefully following the godly
examples of believers around us. As we look at believers in their various
professions and callings in life pursuing God, living a godly life, resisting
the temptations of the world and the flesh and the devil, we ourselves are given
an example about how to be heavenly minded, how to pursue godliness, how to
resist worldliness in this fallen world. So, following examples is one of the
tools that Paul gave us to add to our arsenal in the battle against worldliness,
and in particular he encouraged us to follow his example. He said in effect, ‘Do
as I do. If you want to defeat worldliness, if you want to grow in grace, look
at what I do. Look at how I live and follow my example. Do as I do.’

Well, Paul is back to that theme again today. You
see it especially in verse 9, where he urges us to follow the practice that they
have seen and heard from him. So not only what he taught but how he lived he
commends to the Philippians as a help to them in their growth in grace in the
fight against sin and worldliness.

And you’ll also notice, as you look at verses 2-7 of
Philippians 4, that a pattern emerges in which Paul gives exhortations and then
follows that list of exhortations with a promise. In Philippians 4:2-7, he gives
four exhortations…exhortations that are meant to be part of our growth in grace
in the Christian life, and he concludes them with a promise that the peace of
God will surround and flood their understanding and desires.

Now you’ll notice as we read the passage today that
once again Paul will have a series of exhortations, and he’ll follow it with a
promise — a promise very closely related to the promise that he has stated in
verse 7. That promise comes at the end of verse 9. So the pattern again is
exhortation followed by promise. Bear this in mind as we read God’s word, and
before we do, let’s look to Him in prayer and ask for His help and blessing.

Heavenly Father, this is Your word. It’s not the
words of men. It’s not our ideas about God. It’s not our reflection on reality.
It is Your word of self-revelation to us. In it You tell us about yourself, and
about Your Son, our Savior; about our sin; about the way of salvation; and,
about the way of life. Every word of God is true and tested. Every word of God
is inspired and authoritative. Every word of God is profitable for faith and
practice. But because we are often so blind and so distracted, we ask for Your
Holy Spirit to help us see and behold wonderful truth from Your word today. This
we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hear God’s word in Philippians 4:8-9:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me–practice these
things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Amen. And thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired,
and inerrant word. May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.

How often do you think? I mean really think. How
deeply do you reflect on the most important things of life?
Are you so
caught up in the hustle and bustle of every day that you find yourself, like I
do, at the end of a long day filled up with all sorts of stuff… at about 10:30
at night wondering if you’ve thought about anything of eternal significance?

I had a professor in college in the history
department who was responsible for teaching the Renaissance and Reformation
course and the History of the Enlightenment course, and when I would go to him
for meetings as my class professor, I always enjoyed sitting outside his office
waiting for my appointment because he had interesting cartoons and sayings on
his door. One of the sayings that I still remember went something like this:
“Some people would rather die than think. Many do.” I liked that saying; it made
me think every once in a while!

But the pace and preoccupations of our lives,
especially in our contemporary world, conspire together against deep thinking.
They do that together by preoccupying us with the trivial so that we never get
around to the profound and the permanent, and by filling up our minds with the
trivial so that there’s no room left for anything really important, and by
keeping our schedules so packed that there’s no time to do any deep reflection.

Well, in this passage the Apostle Paul makes it
absolutely clear how important it is for our living of the Christian life to
think deeply–to meditate, to reflect upon the truth of God’s word. In fact, he
says it is absolutely of strategic importance to the Christian life that we do
so.

Perhaps you had the same initial reaction that I had
when the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3:17 said, “Do as I do” — Paul, how in the
world can I do what you do? How can I follow the one who saw Christ face to
face? How can I emulate your example? Well, Paul in this passage lays out a
pattern whereby we can do just that. He’s going to teach us four huge truths
about living the Christian life.
Let me just outline them for you and point
you to the parts in the passage where they come from.

First of all, he’s going to tell you the
important of meditation in the Christian life.
You see that in the very last
words of verse 8: “Think on these things.” What’s Paul talking about? He’s
talking about Christian meditation.

Secondly, he’s going to tell you about the
importance of cultivating godly affections and desires

Third, he’s going to show you the pattern of
Christian discipleship in two verses.
In two verses he’s going to tell you
how it is that you grow in grace. And then, finally, he’s going to close with
a promise.

So, he’s going to point to the importance of
Christians meditating on God’s word and on things which are true and
commendable; he’s going to talk about the importance of cultivating godly
affections or desires; he’s going to show you the pattern of the Christian life;
and, he’s going to point you to a promise. Let’s look at these four things
together briefly today.

I. The important of meditation
in the Christian life.

The first thing that he does is he calls us to
Christian meditation.
Notice his words: “…think about these things” (end of
verse 8). Christian, think about these things. This is a call to Christian
meditation. He’s saying you will not grow in the Christian life unless you are
deliberately locked on to a pattern of mediating on and reflecting about and
thinking deeply on the truths of God’s word, and things which are true and
commendable.

Now, notice that the kind of meditation that Paul is
calling you and me to is entirely different than the kind of meditation that you
most frequently encounter in programs on television and on the radio and in the
self-help Psychology and Religion section of your local bookstore. Almost all of
those practitioners of meditation will tell you that it is vital to empty your
mind, that meditation is about emptying the mind. You will never
find that instruction in Scripture!

Notice that Paul’s mediation is not about
emptying the mind: it is about filling the mind up with God’s word and that
which is true and commendable
, and then working that around, over and over
and over. In fact, the very practice of emptying the mind in meditation is a
dangerous, dangerous practice. The point of meditation, you understand, is so
that we hear God’s word. Forms of mediation and even a prayer that tell us
that we need to empty our minds, to wait, to listen for God to speak to us, are
assuming that God has not already spoken to us
. And
He has! God’s already spoken
.

The problem is not that God’s not spoken; the
problem is that we’re not listening! Have you ever talked to your children…?
You’re going to tell them something really important. You’ve been thinking about
it for several days. You know, ‘I’m looking for the right time, the right place
to tell him [to tell her] this really, really important thing.’ And you notice
this blank, dull stare, indicating to you that that child, though three feet
proximate to you, is in fact one million miles away from what you’re having to
say. Well, that’s our problem, too. God speaks to us clearly and importantly in
His word, and our minds are a million miles away. Meditation is designed to
help you listen to what God has already said.

Have you ever had the experience of a significant
person in your life — maybe it was your Mom or your Dad, or an older Christian
who had taken you under his or her wing and taught you things about life — have
you ever had them tell you something really, really important, but you didn’t
realize how important it was until years and years later? You know, they said
something to you that you might not have appreciated at the time, but somehow it
lodged in your mind, and years and years later, it came back to you how
thunderously true and important that thing was. What happened? Well, for one
thing you matured, and you’d had enough life experience to appreciate what had
been said to you. But another thing that happened is you listened to what they
said. It might have taken five years or ten years or fifteen years, but you
finally listened to what they said. That’s what Christian meditation is designed
to do.

Meditation is the activity of calling to mind and
thinking over and dwelling on and applying to yourself the various things that
you know about the works and the ways and the purposes and promises of God, from
God’s word.
And meditation humbles us and encourages us, and reassures us;
and especially, mediation connects the mind and the will — the head and the
heart — so that the truth we know is worked deep down into our soul so that it
begins to affect what we desire. We often talk about how do you move the —
whatever it is — the twelve or eighteen inches from the head to the heart. Well,
one of the biblical answers to that is through meditation, through dwelling on,
reflecting on, thinking over, looking at every side of the truth in meditation
and reflection. The idea is for the truth to so take hold of our desires that we
begin to desire the right thing rather than the wrong thing, the permanent thing
rather than the temporary thing, the lovely thing rather than the ugly thing,
the true thing rather than the false thing.

Now 24/7 on your television, on your radio, on your
computer, on your iPodĀ®, and on your cell phone through text messages you are
being bombarded with the trivial and with the crude. If you do not deliberately
plan to think on what is true and commendable, it’s not going to come knocking
to your door. And so Paul is saying, ‘Christian, if you want to grow, you’ve got
to have a plan for how you are going to think on these things.’ That’s the first
thing that he says.

II. The importance of
cultivating godly affections and desires

Here’s the second thing: He calls you to the
cultivation of your desires and affections by pointing your desires to that
which is true and right and good. Notice what he says: Think on what is
true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of
praise.

In other words, when you are bombarded by a powerful
desire that is enticing you to focus on and enjoy something that is either wrong
or trivial, you can’t fight something with nothing. The answer to fighting that
powerful enticement to desiring something that is wrong or trivial is not to say
“Stop it!” Chances are, if you are a Christian, you already know you ought to
stop it. Your question is, “How?” And the answer is there has to be a desire
that is opposite and greater than the desire that is enticing you to what is
wrong and trivial if you’re going to be able to fight that desire. Now how are
you going to encounter the desire that is opposite and good if you do not think
on what is true and honorable and just and pure, and lovely and commendable, and
excellent, and worthy of praise?

In other words, the very activity of meditating is
so that you will begin to desire something better than that which is being
offered to you.

You know, you could be a Christian woman, and you
might walk into a room and within a nanosecond you’ve sized up all the other
women in the room. You’ve sized them up as to what they’re wearing. You’ve sized
them up as to their physical appearance. You’ve compared yourself — “Am I
prettier than she is? Am I better dressed than she is? Am I smarter than she is?
Am I more popular than she is?” That might be a tendency you have, and it might
be a pre-occupying tendency. It might be a tendency for a variety of reasons.
Certainly the world is commending you to think that way. You understand that.
The world is commending you as a woman to think that way, to value yourself as
an object, and this might pre-occupy your time. But in fighting that tendency
you might instead determine first of all, “What do I want my heavenly Father to
see, when He sees me?” and then to begin to meditate on what is true and
honorable, and just and pure, and lovely and commendable, and thus to be
thinking more about those things than the thing that you’re tempted to do when
you walk in the room.

Or, you may be a Christian man, and you may be in a
profession that requires you to see and live in the midst of and experience some
of the ugliness of life, to the point that it is frankly depressing. You know…
you might be in the financial services industry and you might see families year
after year, month after month, tearing themselves apart when it comes time to
settle an estate.

Or, you might be in the legal profession and you see
people killing one another in marriages and families, and in work relationships.
And you do your best. You serve as a faithful Christian, but the corroding
influence of being in the midst of seeing all of the ugliness of life wears on
and wearies your soul. How do you battle that unless you settle your affections
on the things that really matter, what is true and honorable, and just and pure,
and lovely and commendable?

The Puritans made it a practice of meditating on
six great things from God’s word
: the majesty of God; the severity of
sin; the beauty of Christ; the certainty of death; the finality of judgment;

and, the misery of hell. And those six things they thought were
absolutely essential for cultivating heavenly-mindedness.

Paul is saying the same thing here, although he’s
directing us to consider what is true and honorable, and just and pure, and
lovely and commendable everywhere–not only in God’s word, but everywhere! Many
of you know and love the Christian author, John Stott. He’s written dozens and
dozens of wonderful Christian books. One book that you may not know that he’s
written is about bird-watching. He loves to look at birds, and he’s written a
little book about what he’s learned from birds about the Christian life. [Now,
really, he’s learned it from the Bible, but he’s seen it illustrated in the life
of birds.] And in the introduction to the book, he whimsically calls it “ornitheology”–not
ornithology (or, the study of birds)–but ornitheology (learning
about God from the study of birds). But what’s he doing? He’s doing exactly what
Paul is commending here. Even, John, as you look at that beautiful bird that you
went up to the Fair Isles in Scotland to see, what are you doing? You’re trying
to focus your mind on that which is true and lovely, and commendable and
honorable.

You may be thinking over this Memorial Day weekend
the sacrifices that people have made for the freedoms that we enjoy. That would
be an appropriate thing for us to meditate upon; in fact, it would be
inappropriate for us not to meditate upon it, given the freedoms and the
privileges that we enjoy as citizens of this great nation. And when you think
about it, it enables you to think on things which are honorable and
commendable–a man laying down his life, giving up his family and his future for
the freedom of his fellow citizens. That is a commendable and honorable thing,
and of course it leads us, having meditated upon it, to think about the greatest
man who ever lived and how He laid down His life for the sake of His friends.
And so the very meditation on these things moves us to thinking about the gospel
itself.

Let me be crystal clear. As Paul is giving these
exhortations, he’s not giving you the gospel. He’s telling Christians who
already have received the gospel how you live the Christian life. If you’re not
a Christian today, the exhortations that I’m giving today are not how you become
a Christian. They’re how you live, having already become a Christian. If you’re
not a Christian, the first thing you have to deal with is with the claims of the
gospel which say you are a creature made by God, whether you acknowledge it or
not. You are a sinner and estranged from God, whether you acknowledge it or not.
Without forgiveness for your sins, you will not experience satisfaction in this
life or heaven in the next. But God in His mercy has sent His Son to die in your
place that, if you will believe on Him, you will be reconciled to God; you will
know satisfaction and joy in this life and in the life to come eternally. That
is the gospel. And meditating on what is true and pure, and just and right, and
lovely and commendable, and excellent, will lead you to reflections on the
gospel. That’s the second thing that Paul says.

III. The pattern of Christian
discipleship

The third thing is this: Paul gives us a
pattern for Christian discipleship here. Look at the words that are used
in the exhortations: think; learn; receive; hear; see; practice.

Do you realize that in these two little verses Paul
has given you a four-part pattern for Christian discipleship? Listen to it real
quickly: Meditation; Instruction; Direction; and, Application.

The first thing he says is “think on these
things” — last phrase of verse 8 — “think about these things.”
In other
words, what’s your first step in growing as a disciple? Meditating on the word
of God — reflecting on, deliberately reflecting upon, the content of God’s word
and on what is true and honorable and just, and so on. So it begins with
reflection. This is part of really, really listening.

Second, instruction. Notice that Paul does
not think that our desires, that our affections, are innately right. They’re not
innately set on the right things. Therefore, what do we need? We need
instruction. We need our desires to be instructed. It’s not just that we need to
know stuff; it’s not that we need just a little information transfer. It’s that
our desires need to be directed in the right direction, and so he says what?
‘What you learned and received from me, practice that.’ In other words, he
wants our desires to be instructed by what we have learned and received from the
preaching of God’s word.

Third, direction. Look again in verse 9,
where Paul says ‘What you heard and saw in me, this practice.’ Notice that Paul
emphasizes that truth cannot simply be conveyed by a television, or a radio or a
CD. You have to hear and see the truth lived out. That’s why a TV preacher can’t
show you how to live the Christian life. How did Paul show the Philippians how
to live the Christian life? He taught the truth, and then he lived and suffered
and died right before their faces, so that they could see how a real flesh and
blood disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ lives and suffers and dies. They heard
and saw the truth. They got direction.

Let’s say you were going to take up football, and
the coach called you up in June and he said, ‘Look, don’t worry coming to
practice. I’ve got a book for you on football. Just read that book, show up on
the first Friday night in September. We’re going to play our archrivals.’ Would
you be up for that? You’d get slaughtered! No, you need him all summer long
saying, ‘No, no, no, no! This is how you do it. Let me show you. This is who you
block. This is who you tackle. This is how you block. This is how you tackle. Do
that again…again…and again… and again.’ Over and over — direction is what you
need. You need to hear and see, and so the Apostle Paul says what’s the pattern
for Christian discipleship? Meditation and instruction and direction.

And then there’s application (end of verse 9).
Put all this into practice. So, you’re getting ready for the piano
competition. You play it once and get it, and then you just show up at the
competition, right? No. You play it 300 times…500 times…600 times…1,000 times,
1,200 times. And then you go and you play in the piano competition. You do it
over and over, and over and over again. You put the truth into practice.

So there it is, the pattern for Christian
discipleship: Meditation; Instruction; Direction; and, Application.

IV. A promise.

And then comes a promise. And this promise is
even better than the promise that Paul gave in verse 7. Isn’t it fascinating?
The exhortations come in verses 2-6, and then the promise in verse 7. And
what’s that promise? “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding will
guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” But the promise in verse 9 is
even better. Follow these exhortations, and what does Paul say? “And the God of
peace will be with you.”

Did you catch that? In verse 7, he says follow these
exhortations and the peace of God will be with you. In verse 9, he says follow
these exhortations and the God of peace will be with you. Did you catch the
difference? The peace of God…the God of peace. The God of peace himself, the God
who gives peace, the God who gives the peace of God will be with you.

It’s really striking, this promise of the experience
of the presence of the God of peace. Paul says it in the most shocking way:
Practice these things and the God of peace will draw near to you, and you will
know His presence and you will know His peace because He has drawn near to you
as you obey His word.

Let’s pray.

Our heavenly Father, we all know the battle
against worldliness. We all know the encroachment of it upon our hearts. We need
every weapon that we can muster, and so we thank You for Your word which
provides us a panoply — a myriad of remedies, of responses, of tools to use
against the enemy. So we pray that You would grant that we would take heed by
the grace of Your Holy Spirit these exhortations, and thus know the comforting
presence of the God of peace. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Now let’s practice fixing our eyes on what is good
and lovely, using hymn No. 565, All for Jesus.

[Congregation
sings.]

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.