I hope as you were coming in to church this evening I hope
you noticed the sign with our bible reading on it out the front, and the tree and
bird house. The tree is a prayer tree planted in June here at the church. The
idea is to invite the community to bring their cares and concerns and place
them in the bird house and a dedicated team will commit themselves to praying
about them. Bringing them to God.
I’m not a member here at Mt Albert but think it is a great
idea, and I hope people in the community take advantage of it. There is a
wonderful picture in the book of Ezekiel chapter 17 of the coming messianic
king, being like a tree that God plants out of the royal house of David, and it
growing to be a strong and healthy tree bearing fruit and offering shelter and
a place to nest to all the birds of the air. It’s picked up by Jesus in Mark
4:30-32 where Jesus likens the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, the smallest of
all the seeds that is planted, that falls to the ground and dies, but then
becomes the biggest of all the garden plants, and the birds of the air come and
find shelter and nest in its branches. So I see all that symbolism in what
you’ve done out the front. The bird house is like inviting people to come and
find shelter and rest and hope and hopefully home amongst the branches, in the
Kingdom of God, as they experience God in their lives through the power of
prayer and your churches Christ like love and care.
When I came out to Mt Albert to get some idea for a poster
to advertise this evenings service, it was
Now that all may sound kind of flowery, but tonight I want
come in from the carpark and the outside and explore what Paul has to tell us
about Knowing God’s presence and help in that verse from Philippians and what
the wider passage has to tell us, and what at its heart it tells us about the
power of prayer.
The church at Philippi was facing external opposition and
some internal strife and Paul had written to encourage them to keep going and
to be a unified community that would keep on sharing the gospel even in those
tough situations. He was in Prison himself when he was writing and so able to
share with them how he kept himself going.
The passage we read is like a series of three quickfire encouragements
for the believers. In fact Paul would have been chained to a guard and here Paul
says it’s not that guard that keeps me safe, but these things guard my heart
and mind and will guard yours as well.
Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice!
In his letter Paul had used the word Joy fourteen times. In
the face of persecution Paul wants his readers to know that standing firm is not
just a teeth grinding, white knuckle hanging on for dear life, but rather to
know in their lives and to share the fullness of joy that comes from Jesus
Christ. It is a joy that Transends
circumstance, that is not dependant of situation or emotion or feeling. To
rejoice in the Lord is to find our joy in who God is and what God has done for
us in Jesus Christ. he has made the
world and all that is in it, he is the God who is sovereign in history, who has
shown his faithful love for his people, who send Jesus Christ to be one of us,
Jesus Christ who showed us God’s great love, who died on the cross that we may
be forgiven and reconciled with God, whom God raised to life again, who
promised to be with us until the end of the age, who poured our his promised
Holy Spirit on all of us. Who leads and guides, who is working all things for
good not for harm, who will come again to put all things right. That’s just not
our theology, that is our hope its our source of joy. When its going
wonderfully well, we need to remember it is because of God’s goodness, when its
going bad, we need to remember it is still true.
Paul himself had given the Church at Philippi an example of
this. While in Philippi he had been arrested beaten and thrown into jail.
Instead of grumbling and sulking, he and Silas had sung psalms and given praise
to God. The Church would have been aware that as they were doing that an
earthquake had happened and their chains had been broken and the cells sprung
open. Even if they hadn’t I think Paul and Silas would have kept on praise God
and rejoicing.
I read the testimony of Czech national Petr Jasek in the
August edition of the voice of the martyrs magazine. Petr had visited the Sudan
to encourage the local church and on the way out of the country was detained
and jailed for espionage. He was kept in appalling conditions packed in with a
group of Muslim extremists in what was meant to be a single person cell. He
said his attitude to his imprisonment changed when he called to mind the prayer
of the angelic hosts in the book of revelations “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God
almighty”, and began using that as his public prayer of praise. It didn’t
improve his circumstances his cell mates objected to it and became abusive
towards him. But just as Pauls says to the Philippians he found that the peace
of Christ was with him. Later in another cell he shared his faith with a group
of people and saw a couple of them come to know Christ. he said this for him
was the reason God had allowed all this happen. After four months in prison the
Czech government arranged his release.
When we rejoice in the Lord it changes our focus from
situation to God, from problem to god’s goodness, from despair to hope. It
guards our hearts and minds.
Let your gentleness be evident to all.
It is easy and maybe natural when we find ourselves in
confrontation situations or situations where we are facing opposition to want
to retaliate, to give as good as we get.
But here Paul exhorts the church to react in a Christlike way. To extend
having the mind of Christ, he talked of in Philippians two not only towards
others in the Christian community but to those outside.
We often confuse gentleness with weakness, but rather it is
the word meek, which has the idea of harnessing ones strength for the common
good and not being distracted by slight or injury, insult or threat from
achieve that common good. The Clydesdale hporse is a great example of that…
they are blinkered to stop themselves from being distracted so they can focus
all their strength in achieving the common goal of pulling a cart.
In Romans Paul speaks
of not returning evil for evil but overcoming evil with good. I was reminded of
the example of one woman in the aftermath of the bloodshed and genocide of
Rwanda, who even though up to fifty members of her extended family had been
killed, looked after the father of a neighbour who was in prison for leading
one of the very mobs that could have killed some of her family members.
I don’t know about you but I find myself needing to hear
this sentence from Paul. It is so easy to simply worry and be concerned about
an issue, to let it sap you of your joy and peace, here Paul says the first
port of call is not anxiety but rather in all situations to pray, with
thanksgiving.
In his testimony that
I mentioned earlier Petr Jasek said that as he began rejoicing and focus on
Jesus Christ he found himself able to pray. He found that instead of worrying
about his family and friends he began to pray for them, he found that his
prayers for persecuted Christians round the world became more insightful and
deep.
It is as we turn to the Lord and bring him our cares and
worries that we become aware of the presence of the God of peace and his
presence can guard our hearts and minds. Shane Clairborne says that Christian
often use prayer as a form of escapism they want God to airlift them out of a
situation, but rather what happens is that Jesus parachutes in to the issue
alongside us. We talk about faith that
can move mountains, its as if there is Jesus with some shovels and he hands us
one and then gets to work right alongside us.
But the God of peace also tells us, that prayer is not only
so that we may become aware of the abiding presence of God, but also that there
is the hope of God kingdom coming as well. That God does answer prayer
sometimes in miraculous ways . Peace in the scriptures comes from the Hebrew
word shalom, which means wholeness and as we pray knowing God’s peace, can be
God speaking wholeness into our lives, a restoration of right relationship with
God, with each other, of justice when we have been mistreated and abused and a
restoration to health, as the
consequences of sin are dealt with in Jesus Christ.
In the midst of these three quickfire encouragements, Paul
gives the reason we can rejoice and be gentle and that we can have confidence
in prayer. Paul is very Jewish in this thought patterns and often the central
and most important thing appears right in the middle of a whole lot of ideas
that are connected and here it is this wonderful short sentence… God is near. We
can rejoice even in the face of tough times, because God is near, God is here,
we can live with gentleness and not be distracted from living for the common
good because God is near Christ is here, we can have confidence in bring all
situations to God because god is near Christ is hear, the Holy Spirit of God
dwells within us.
I love the picture of God that we have in psalm 113. The God
who is sovereign in control seated on the throne above heaven and earth… but
not a distant disinterested deity, cut off, separate and uncaring. But rather
we have this picture of a sovereign God who stands and even more stoops down to
see, to see and know what is going on, then who reaches down and raised up the
poor and the fatherless those in need to seat hem with princes.
It is interesting that the idea of a king stooping down to
see and to connect with the poor isn’t such a shocking idea for us, because we
see it in our royal family, we don’t realise how historically unique it is, to
have royals connecting and bending down to talk with children, or to play
football with orphans. It maybe that the queen has had to learn that it is
necessary to make that connection, or it maybe that it comes from her Christian
faith and the idea of leadership as service. But its a good illustration what the
psalmist says God is like.
This God who stoops and sees and lifts up the poor and needy
and seat them in places o honour is at the centre of the scriptures. It’s the
God Moses encounters at the burning bush, who says I have seen the mistreatment
and sorrow of my people and I have heard the cries of my people and I am going
to sent you to bring them out of their captivity so they may worship me, and I
will take them into the promised land and they will be my people.
It is the posture of God that is at the centre of the
gospel, God sees and hears the plight of humanity enslaved to sin and death and
stops down even further and in Jesus Christ becomes one of us, and to die on a
cross for our forgiveness, that we may be lifted back to being in relationship
with God, we may know new life and fullness of life in Christ.
That is the power and hope of prayer, not our words, not our
action, not even our level of faith, but the God who is near, who sees who
cares who stoops down to lift up and restore and bring God’s peace.
So tonight can I encourage you to hear and to put into
practise Paul’s encouragement that in all circumstance and situations, with
thanksgiving we bring it all to God in Prayer.
If you ar here tonight and you don’t know Jesus and you feel
that while God is near and Christ is here, that you are still out in the cold
and dark, or caught up in captivity. We’d love to pray for you and lead you
into finding peace with God. That God would guard your heart and mind…
If there is stuff going on, if you are finding yourself
slogging through the greyness and the storms of life and you are longing for
that spring bloom of hope come forward and we will pray with you. God is near.
Christ is here.
If you are faced with illness and unwellness, we’d love to
pray for you that you might receive a healing touch from the God who raises up
and brings wholeness.
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