Worry And Anxiety - Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Paul is speaking there that the real world is spiritual, and there's a physical world that claims it's the only real world that is. He said, yeah, that's because it's against the knowledge of God.

These are foolish, these are just speculations. He said, but I know better than that, and you need to know better than that. And notice, he said all this happens in our own mind.

He said, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's the real world. The spiritual world of God is the real world. This world is a world that claims to be real, but is not.

And it is certainly subservient to the sovereign one over it. That's what Paul was trying to get across from them. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.

Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's word meets our world. So let me just hypothetically put you in a situation. You've been falsely charged and convicted.

And you're put in prison. Now, after you're put in prison, falsely charged, I want to ask you, how would you feel when you find out they're perhaps going to execute you? How would you feel? Would you feel any anxiety? Seriously, would you feel any anxiety at all?

I want to tell you what Paul felt. No anxiety. I don't mean a little.

I mean zero. He felt no anxiety. In fact, the theme of the Book of Philippians is not about how do you deal with terrible circumstances. The theme of the Book of Philippians is joy. Paul talks about all the joy that he has. So he writes this verse to them out of prison where he might be executed. His anxiety and worry level is zero.

None at all. In fact, early in the book, in the early chapter, Paul says that if you gave me a hypothetical situation, Paul, I'm just going to ask you, if you had a choice of whether living on or dying right now, what would you choose? Paul said, oh, that's easy. I'd rather die right now. What? Is that your choice? I mean, all of us, right? All of us want to go to heaven.

None of us want to go tonight. You see what I mean? That's the way this works for us. That's just the way we see this. Paul says, no, absent from the body, present with the Lord, no more sorrow and no more tears forever with my Lord.

If I had a choice, that's what I'd take. He said, but if for your sake God wants me here, I'd be glad to stay here and be your teacher. See, that's the sovereignty of God in Paul's life.

That's how he sees it. So he says to them down here in verse six of Chapter four, be anxious for nothing again, a commandment, but in everything by prayer. That's in treating the Lord with petitions and then a key word and supplication. The word supplication means an emotional response.

In other words, pour out your heart to God. Let him know how you feel. If the situation you're in warrants tears, cry. You see what I mean?

If you're really afraid, tell him. He said, you can do that. You can pray your humanity to me. I'll let you pray your humanity to me.

Just pour it out to me. So prayer and then supplication. And then the thing that changes this all with Thanksgiving. Now, that is completely backwards to your thinking and mine often. Because I know that because you tell me. You know when I hear your Thanksgiving?

When you get what you want. Isn't God good? Isn't Jesus good? I prayed for that job, but isn't he good?

He is good. But it doesn't take much faith to say that. God says, no, you thank me up front before you get it or not get it. You thank me before you get it. Why would I thank him now? Because you believe that I'm sovereign and I love you and I'm right here. And you believe that. So why not thank God in the beginning?

He's sovereign over everything. So why not thank him when I'm praying? See, what we end up, we pray and if we get our result, we're thankful. And then if we don't get our result, we're not thankful at all.

He said, no, pray up front. Thank me up front. I'm sovereign over everything.

I can do anything. I love you. You see how this works? God says, thank me if that's how you see life or do you see life circumstantially and that I'll be thankful, God, after I get what I want? You see, that's not faith.

In fact, in that sense, it's very anthropocentric, very selfish. Long as God gives me one to one, I'll be thankful. So he says, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Then the result, great verse, and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. There's a promise.

This is important. What does God promise you if you do this? Peace. What kind of peace? A peace beyond all comprehension. Jesus said, John, my peace I give to you. That's unbelievable peace. If you have unbelievable peace, guess what you don't have?

Anxiety, worry. God says, I promise you, all of you, I'll give you peace. If you pray that, believing that, you'll get peace. And it'll be beyond all comprehension.

Wow. That's what I'm saying. The sovereignty of God, if you really believe it, will take away all your anxiety and worry. Because God is completely sovereign over everything. And he loves you. And he will never leave you, nor forsake you.

Once you believe that, I have no reason to feel anxiety. That's what Paul did. I want to illustrate that. Go with me back to the book of 2 Kings chapter 6. 2 Kings chapter 6. And in 2 Kings 6, God's going to do something you don't see often in the word of God. We think this is the world, the whole world, and the real world.

God says, no, that's not true. What God does in 2 Kings 6, for one of the rare times in the Bible, he's going to pull the curtain back. And he's going to let you and me see what the real world is. Not the world of just physical world, but what the real world is. He pulls it back so you and I can see it.

Should give us tremendous confidence. Well, here's how the story goes. Verse 8. The king of Aram, that'd be modern day Syria, the king of Aram was warring against Israel. And he counseled with his servants and said, in such and such a place shall be my camp. The man of God sent word to the king of Israel and the man of God's Elisha, saying beware that you do not pass this place. For the Arameans, he said, are coming down there. The king of Israel sent to the place about which the man of God had told him. Thus he warned him so that he guarded himself there more than once or twice. He already went there and fortified the area.

He said that's where it's going. Elisha told the king of Israel this. Now watch. Now the heart of the king of Aram was enraged over this thing. And he called his servants and he said to them, will you tell me which of us is for the king of Israel?

Now you understand what he's saying? Loose lips sink ships. Somebody in this room told the king of Israel that I was going to attack him there. One of his servants said, no my lord, oh king, but Elisha the prophet who is in Israel, he tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.

You got to love that. You speak something in your bedroom, he'll tell Israel about it. Now you think if that were true that this king of Aram would have been like, oh my goodness, that's amazing power.

He just ignores a typical but unbeliever. And he says, so he said, go and see where he is that I may send and take him. And it was told and he said, behold he's in Dothan. So he sent horses and chariots and a great army there. And they came by night and they surrounded the city of Dothan. He sent hundreds if not more of troops to kill one man.

That's his goal. Now, when the attendant of the man of God, this is Elisha's attendant, had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city. Now how do you think he felt? Anxious. He said, uh oh, he sent an army to kill a man and I'm with him, he's going to kill me too. His servant said to him, alas my master, what shall we do?

What is that? He's worried. Wouldn't you be? You shouldn't.

But would you? There's a whole army coming just to kill you and Elisha? See, well that's a time you really want to worry. Now notice what Elisha does. He answers, do not fear.

How anxious does Elisha sound to you? Zero. No anxiety. Do not fear. None. Just like Paul, none. Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with him.

I imagine right there the attendant's like, I didn't see anybody but you and me here. But what Elisha was doing is speaking the truth about the reality of it. Those who are with us are more than those who are with him. Then Elisha prayed and said, oh Lord, I pray open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the servant's eyes and he saw and behold the mount was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. What did God do? He gave him a glimpse of reality. There they are. So what are we afraid about? See, Elisha didn't need to see it.

Why? He believed it. He believed that God is sovereign. He just believed it. He didn't have to see it.

I know this is true. I know about God. It says that when they came down, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, strike these people with blindness, I pray. And he struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.

That man got to see something most of us never do. There's always the real world of God and this physical world of our flesh. Reality is found in God and not in our physical world. Now, you may be even saying, yeah, but you know what?

That sounds like a good story, except Elisha is an Old Testament prophet. I know I'm not. And he has an experience like that, but I know I wouldn't.

Well, maybe not. But I want to show you something where reality really lies. Come with me to 2 Corinthians in the New Testament, chapter 10. The Apostle Paul writes this, starting in verse 1. He said, now I, Paul, myself, urge you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. I, who am meek when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am absent. I ask that when I am present, I need not be bold with the confidence with which I propose to be courageous against some who regard us as if we walked according to the flesh. Paul was saying, I have a tremendous confidence even though I appear meek. But he said, I have tremendous confidence.

And his confidence is based on what? I know where the real world is and you don't. Here is it says, for, that's an explanatory gar in Greek and we explain, for though we walk by the flesh, we live in flesh and blood. We do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.

What do you mean, fortresses? We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Paul is speaking there that the real world is spiritual.

And there's a physical world that claims it's the only real world that is. He said, yeah, that's because it's against the knowledge of God. These are foolish.

These are just speculations. He said, but I know better than that and you need to know better than that. And notice, he said, all this happens in our own mind.

He said, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's the real world. The spiritual world of God is the real world.

This world is a world that claims to be real, but it's not. And it is certainly subservient to the sovereign one over it. That's what Paul was trying to get across from them.

So what you end up seeing here is that this theme that has three steps to it. One, God is sovereign, completely sovereign. God loves you. I want you to think, for God so loved the world, he sent his son. So he loved us enough that when we were still at enmity with him, Paul says in Romans, that he sent his son to die for us. His love is so great, Romans 838, nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. Not spiritual beings, not life, not death, nothing that exists in creation will ever be able to separate you and me from the love of Christ. So he infinitely loves me. He is infinitely sovereign over every aspect of the whole creation, including my life. And he said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you.

I'll always be there. What should that produce in your mind? Peace. About what? About everything. Nothing is out of the reach of this. You see, that becomes such an important part of this whole thing. That's what makes a difference. I'll use two illustrations.

Here's one. You all know, or most of you know, the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are Jewish brothers, in a sense, with Daniel. And they're in the Babylonian captivity. And Nebuchadnezzar's king. And he's an egomaniac, like lots of kings. And he decides to build a statue of himself about 90 feet high. And he demands that everybody worship it. So comes the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who have real favor in the king's eyes. And he's, you know, will you worship this? And they said, politely, no.

No, this is my image. You have to, I'm the king. You see, I have the power. No, we would never do that.

We're not going to worship any idol of a man. That made him mad. A lot of times when you say things like that, the kings, they get mad. And so he got really mad. So he had a furnace. He heated the furnace up seven times hotter than it was designed to be. In fact, the poor attendant at the door dies.

And I'm sure, oh, look at it. He died and he wasn't even in there. So he said to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, now you're going to change your mind. They said, no, not at all. Now I want to tell you how much anxiety they had about this.

Zero again, none. And their statement to him was interesting. Our God is able to deliver us.

That's where their peace came from. He's able. Well, what is God able to do?

Anything, right? Anything in his sovereign will he wants to do, he's able to do anything. So they said, King, our God is able. If he delivers us, fine. If he doesn't, we're still with our God.

You see, it doesn't matter. We're going to be with God either way, right here or right there. We're fine.

We're not doing it. Now, the story goes, though, what happened? They got delivered. You see, they got delivered. But they didn't get peace because they got delivered. They had peace before they were delivered. They gave thanks to God before they were delivered.

Why? They believed he was sovereign, that he loved them, that he's right with them. So they had peace. Now, with that in mind, I want to give you a contemporary version of the same story. This is by Stephen Cole, a pastor in California.

And he writes this. He said, a little over a year ago, I learned that a woman who led the music ministry when I first became pastor here almost 20 years ago had been stricken with three malignant brain tumors. She and her husband are maybe 10 years older than I am. I wrote to her, and she wrote back and told how her husband, who has worked all his life in construction, now had such bad arthritis in his hip that it could no longer work. She said how the doctors had warned them to do anything they really wanted to do because her time on earth will be short.

This is her final paragraph, he said. The peace that the Lord gave me while I was in the hospital is far beyond my understanding. Everything is in his control, especially the timing of my life. He said that his grace is sufficient and that I found that to be absolutely true and that his strength is made perfect in my weakness.

Then Cole writes this. She's now in the Lord's presence, free from her mortal body. She died.

Now it's not a Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego story, is it? But what did she get that God promised? Peace. Total peace. Complete peace. The peace before she died. Complete peace and she said this peace is so great I don't even understand it.

I can't even understand it. I know that his grace is so sufficient that in my weakness this had to be painful for her. In my weakness his strength prevailed. She had peace. She wasn't worried. She's not full of anxiety. And so many of us all, if I was in that situation I'd be so worried.

No. See, if you truly believe in the sovereignty of God, in the love that God has for you and his presence in your life, there's nothing. You see, there's nothing out there that can take away your peace. See, God is not restricted by what you and I call the real world. He's not restricted by medical science. Well, the doctor said he's not restricted by that. He's not restricted by natural laws. He's not restricted by that. He will do, as the psalmist says, as he pleases.

You know what? I hope for you but I can tell you for me that's good enough for me. If that's what God wants to do with my life, that's fine. I mean, he knew what my life's going to entail while I was a fetus.

So nothing's going to change that and I'm fine with that. See, that's where the belief in the sovereignty of God and his love for me and his ever-presence, that's God's promise to you and me. I'll give you peace. That's why it seems amazing that Jesus speaks so often about worrying. He said, don't worry if you have food to eat. Don't worry if you have clothes on your back.

God's in control. Don't you worry about this. He said, look what he does to a sparrow. Look how he takes care of the birds.

He thinks more of you than that. Stop worrying. But somehow for Christians, our worldview that the circumstances of my life are most important betray us. They cause us the anxiety and the worry. Word of God takes all of that away. I don't know one single sermon that I've ever prepared that I've prayed more for you and me, but for you. I'm so involved with all the worry and anxiety of your lives.

I see it all the time, and it's so unnecessary. You don't have to do this. What you have to do is just trust the Lord, because he's sovereign over every single thing. Nothing that will ever happen to you or me didn't go through his sovereign love first.

Nothing. And I trust his judgment completely. And as you know, because I've said it a thousand times, even the worst thing that could happen to you, it can't happen to you. Praise God for that. Fill your heart with peace instead of worry.

Let's pray. Father, we all worry, stress out, have anxiety, and somehow in the middle of it, it dominates our thought life when we should be thinking of who you are and what you've done. And what each of us means to you. Your promises should give us comfort. Your power should give us peace. And Father, when we learn this lesson, what a benefit it is for us.

What a testimony it is for us with others of what Jesus Christ can produce in the life of a human being. Father, use this truth to change us, to convict us for our good, and use this truth for your glory. In Christ's name, Amen. In Christ's name, Amen. In Christ's name, Amen. For any message you are looking for, you can listen online. Or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.