Ladies and Gentlemen

Be willing to respond to abuse with patience. Why? The Lord is near.

Be willing to yield your rights rather than demand them. Why? The Lord is near.

Be willing to be courteous when others are discourteous. Why? The Lord is near. Paul is writing this letter. He is chained to Roman soldiers and he effectively reminds you in that phrase. This is not the end of the story.

Hang on. Keep an eye out, as it were, for the coming of the Redeemer. In Philippians 4, verse 5, Paul tells us to be known by our gentle spirit. Of all the attributes Paul could have chosen to focus on.

Attributes like purity, integrity, honesty, humility, and so on. Gentleness seems a little bit peripheral, doesn't it? Why is it so important that we be known by our gentleness?

Well, we'll find out today as Stephen Davey opens God's Word to Philippians 4 and teaches from this important passage. This is Wisdom for the Heart and today's message is entitled, Ladies and Gentlemen. I can remember growing up with my three brothers, our family dog that kind of grew up with us. Wags was her name, very creatively named by us kids. She's wagging her tail. Let's call her Wags.

So Wags it was. She had a litter every year, no matter what my parents tried to do to somehow keep that from happening. She had a litter. And I remember many times my mother waking us up in the morning by putting into bed with each of us a warm squirming little puppy.

Isn't that great? You'd never do that with a kitten, by the way. But a puppy. And we'd wake up.

And that was a wonderful way to wake up. What happens when there is no warm puppy? You fill in the blank. When there's no money. When there's no success. When there's no popularity.

When there aren't straight A's. When there's no girlfriend, no boyfriend, no rising career, no new car, no full shopping cart. What happens when there's none of that? We tend to be happy as long as we have that. See, happiness is circumstantial and it can't be commanded. Joy is internal. It is responding to the nature of God's Spirit within us. Joy is a settled conviction that God is in control of every circumstance and every event.

Even as James would write, when trials come, we calculate it all to be a joyful response. Keep in mind, by the way, you might think Paul's writing that because he's an apostle and apostles are supposed to say stuff like that because we're going to read for 2,000 years what they write. No, keep in mind that he's writing this command.

He is not, when he writes it, sipping coffee on the coast of Italy overlooking the sea. He's writing this chain between two guards under house arrest who watch him 24-7. Rejoice, he commands. Can you imagine his demonstration through this resolution to rejoice in his bonds?

Can you imagine the effect on these soldiers that would take shifts every day as they guarded him? You happen to be living in a very unhappy culture, right? Surrounded by dissatisfied, disappointed human beings and you become a demonstration of the grace of God and the gospel when you face all things, at all times, always this resolution to rejoice. The joy that is internal comes to the surface. Don't be like so many Christians, one author wrote, whose joy is evidently so deep it never surfaces. Now, I've waited until this text to sort of flesh out this idea of joy. Let me give you four or five features of joy rather quickly. First, joy is given by God to those who are saved. Don't ever tell an unbeliever to be joyful. The best they can be is happy. Joy is bound up in the gospel. It is that resolution to respond in such a way that reflects trust and submission to the will of God. I find it interesting that when the angel first described to those shepherds the message, which is effectively the gospel in Luke chapter 2 verses 1 to 11, that angel says to these shepherds, Behold, I bring you good news of great, what?

Joy. For today in the city of David is born to you a savior is Christ the Lord. And by the way, after the shepherds left that outdoor delivery room, we're told that they returned praising God, rejoicing. And nothing, keep in mind, about their dirty jobs had changed.

Nothing about their income had been altered. Nothing about their status as ceremonially unclean, unable to enter the temple precinct had changed. It was the gospel that would give to them this lasting joy. Do your own word study and you'll find joy appearing time and time again. In fact, throughout the book of Acts says the gospel is exploding. Gentiles and Jews who are being converted are beginning to rejoice. Even the apostles who leave the presence of the religious leaders who tell them, if you speak in Jesus' name, we're going to kill you, and they leave rejoicing. It's impossible to separate the gospel we know and believe from joy.

Think on that more. Secondly, joy is an ongoing production of the Holy Spirit. It's an ongoing production of the Holy Spirit. You're not going to get up tomorrow and say, I'm going to drink coffee tomorrow morning out of my coffee cup that has a smiley face on it because I'm going to be joyful.

Go ahead and try. This is the work of the Spirit of God. In fact, Paul writes to the Galatians, the fruit of the Spirit, that is the outward manifestation of the internal work of the Spirit of God is, and he begins to rattle them off, love, what's the second word? Joy. Happiness is very human, and we love those moments. Joy is supernatural, and in those moments it may not be happy, but we can have joy, the settled conviction that God is worthy of being worshiped. Thirdly, joy is the result of receiving and obeying the Word of God. It is the result of receiving and obeying the Word of God. Jeremiah the prophet said this to God, your words were found and I ate them, and your words became for me a joy. Have you ever been at a very discouraging point in your life and you've opened the Word and found in the Word joy?

Of course you have. John the Apostle writes his inspired letters so that among other things, his readers, joy may be made complete. 1 John 1 verse 4. Fourthly, joy is deepened as believers experience trials. You became imitators of us and of the Lord, Paul writes, having received the Word, listen to this, in much tribulation and with the joy of the Holy Spirit. What a contradiction, 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 6.

What a combination. Much tribulation and joy. Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 10, we were sorrowful, yet rejoicing. There's balance there and transparency in his writings.

He's not a pietist. He's not a mystical author of here's three ways to just keep a smile forever plastered on your face. We were sorrowful.

There were things in life that didn't make me happy. My tears of sorrow, though, are mingled with rejoicing. God is worthy of worship even then. To put it another way, our inner attitudes are not bound to outward circumstances.

In fact, they don't depend on outward circumstances. Which is why Paul writes here in Philippians chapter 4, notice again verse 4, we are to rejoice in our circumstances? No. We are to rejoice in the Lord, our unchanging, unwavering, ever faithful rock and refuge and source of joy. One more, fifthly, joy is motivated by thoughts of heaven.

What keeps an athlete running is often imagining crossing the tape. It's going to be over. It's going to be over. Paul is going to arrive at the same point here in his letter to the Philippians as we anticipate seeing Jesus. I'll get there in a moment, but let me allow the apostle Peter to kind of chime in.

Here's what he says. Though you have not seen him, the Lord, you love him. And though you do not see him now, you believe in him. You greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible. First Peter 1.8 later he writes, even though you're suffering at the revelation of his glory, you will rejoice.

First Peter 4.13. Listen, the resolution to rejoice is not natural. It's supernatural. And to the depressed and despairing and disappointed human race around us and even perhaps our own hearts this morning, we demonstrate something so unique because they see in you as a Christian that your Christianity did not vaccinate you against sorrow. It didn't inoculate you against stress and relational difficulties and frustrating illnesses and financial losses and heartbreaking deaths of parents and grandparents and maybe even children and grandchildren. But they see you effectively roll up your sleeves of faith and trust. Even when you don't understand it, you didn't expect it, you can't explain it, and you cannot escape it.

There's something different about you. We are resolved to rejoice in the trustworthiness of the Lord. That's like Paul saying here, you rejoice in the Lord.

Sometimes that is all you have and it is enough. A number of years ago I was handed a poem which I kept. I would later use it a number of years ago when I was asked to preach at the funeral for a precious little four-year-old girl.

Before I chose to read that poem and my message, the lyrics struck me as deeper than normal and I wondered about the author and so I did a little digging and found that this had been written in 1932. Written by a young pastor. He and his wife had three small children. A fourth was on the way.

There were complications however during her delivery and the baby died and so did she. This young pastor called on a friend of his, another pastor, to preach that funeral service and he sat on the front row with his little children. And this pastor noticed as he was preaching that the young pastor was just writing some things on a piece of paper.

And he asked him about it later and he sort of rather dismissively said, well I was just jotting down some poetry that had come to my mind and it has been kept since. The lyrics go like this, my father's way may twist and turn, my heart may throb and ache, but in my soul I'm glad I know he maketh no mistake. My cherished plans may go astray, my hopes may fade away, but still I'll trust my Lord to lead for he doth know the way. Though night be dark and it may seem that day will never break, I'll pin my faith, my all in him, he maketh no mistake. For so much now I cannot see, my eyesight's far too dim, but come what may I'll simply trust and leave it all to him. For by and by the mist will lift and plain it all he'll make, through all the way, though dark to me, he made not one mistake.

It's as if Paul tells the church in Philippi, listen all eyes are going to be on you. What you have causes you and enables you to supernaturally respond with settled conviction in this truth. Make this your resolution, that's why he commands it, make this your resolution. It's not going to be natural, it's going to be supernatural, a resolution to be joyful. Secondly, make it your reputation to be gentle. Now if you thought the command to be joyful was difficult and convicting, as I did, get ready for this one, verse 5. Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. I mean seriously, you've ever studied the Bible and you've just sort of stopped and said, really? I'm not supposed to do that, I'm a pastor, but I'm sure you do it.

Actually I did, really. Let your gentle spirit be made known or be obvious to all men. Listen, you can't get a taxi if you're gentle. You can't make the football team if you're gentle. What does Paul mean here?

Let your gentleness be known to all men. Well part of the challenge is, over the last 500 years of the English Bible, it's been difficult to translate that rather rare word. And I got involved in more study than I'm ever going to bring you, I'm just sort of going to bring you the top of the barrel here.

But I'm going to give you just enough to let you know how difficult it's been. If you go back in time, in 1380, John Wycliffe handwrote the first copy of the English New Testament from the Greek language. And he translated the word patience.

I thought, okay, I can stay there. We can understand that. But William Tyndale, who printed the first English copy of the New Testament in 1525, translated it softness. And what's with that?

Softness. I have no idea what he had in mind there. The Geneva Bible in 1560, which, by the way, added verses and chapter numbers so you could study it. It's called the first study Bible. Shakespeare would quote from it hundreds of times, by the way. It translated the word the patient mind. Let your patient mind be seen to all men.

I'm thinking, okay. 1582, Reames translates it modesty. And that's difficult because those terms change. In 1611, the King James Bible used the word moderation. And later added in the margin the word gentleness, which my translation uses. More recent translations have used forbearance, reasonableness.

Those are all excellent, by the way. They're trying to get at the nuances that are bound up in this very rich word. Aristotle used the word in the context of not insisting on the letter of the law. It has a legal nuance. And so, Williams would paraphrase, and I love his paraphrase, where he says, this means you are meeting someone halfway. That's the idea of the word. In the days of Paul, the Greeks used the word in context where people yielded their rights, where they bore abuse, where they put up with other people's faults.

Let the fact that you put up with other people's faults be known into all men. That's a part of it. In fact, an article that I had filed a long time ago by Stanley Carver came to my mind and I pulled it back out. It was an article about the New England Pipe Cleaning Company in Watertown, Connecticut.

This three-man crew was digging 25 feet beneath the historic streets in Revere, Massachusetts, and they're trying to clean a 10-inch sewer line. In addition to the normal mess they expected to find, this three-man team ended up unearthing, this article read, 61 rings, valuable rings, several old vintage coins, even several pieces of valuable silverware, which they were allowed to keep. This is why I'm delivering this to you. It draws the moral of the story by writing it this way. Whether it's pipes or people, if you put up with some mess, sometimes you find real treasure.

Is that good? That's a bad analogy, and if I could take that analogy and bring it back to verse 5, when you're in the middle of a mess, you be treasure. You be valuable vintage coins.

You be like valuable silverware that's discovered in the middle of the mess. That's who we're to be. One recent author complained about our current spirit.

He says it's inanimate, gentle. He writes here in the 21st century, reason discourse is giving way to in-your-face soundbites. Playing hardball is the dominant metaphor for American public life. Our interchanges are confrontational, divisive, and dismissive. Balance and fairness are casualties.

On evening news shows, and you've watched them perhaps as two, three, sometimes four people contend simultaneously for the microphone. Volume and disagreement are the new civic virtues. This command has never been perhaps more difficult. Be gentle. Our resolution is to be joyful. Our reputation is to be gentle. Why? Because our expectation is going to be realized.

Notice how Paul drops in this ending phrase, verse 5, the Lord is near. Be willing to respond to abuse with patience. Why? The Lord is near.

Be willing to yield your rights rather than demand them. Why? The Lord is near.

Be willing to be courteous when others are discourteous. Why? The Lord is near. Be willing to be gracious when the world is unkind and merciless.

Why? And for the Philippians, this would apply immediately. The Lord is near. James speaks in a similar way in his letter in James, chapter 5, verse 8. Be patient and stand firm because the Lord's coming is near.

The apostles all believed they would be alive when the church was raptured away. Paul is writing this letter. He is chained to Roman soldiers, and he effectively reminds you in that phrase. This is not the end of the story. Hang on. Stay at it. Be joyful. Be gentle.

Don't keep your eyes focused on the circumstances. Keep an eye out, as it were, for the coming of the Redeemer. The Lord is near. You can certainly be interpreted in that light prophetically, which is what I've just done for you. But you can also interpret this phrase, the Lord is near, in terms of his immediate personal presence. Both could be in the mind of Paul. In other words, this isn't just a phrase of prophecy. This could be a phrase of proximity. The Lord is near to you right now.

Right now. In the best of times, in the worst of times, the Lord is with us. One of the driving principles that led one of my heroes, Hudson Taylor, to stay out of 50 years of pioneering work in China, more than 100 years ago, was this principle where he wrote, He counted Jesus as never absent.

He's near. Following these two commands that come when we live in the light of eternity, when we live as demonstrations to our lost and discouraged and disparaging, or despairing world of these two qualities of life, and we might think, you know what, if I'm going to do something for God, if indeed, as we launch this month, if I'm really going to advance the gospel, if I'm going to advance the church, if I'm going to advance the truth, if I'm going to advance biblical shalom, I mean, I've got to do something really amazing. I've got to do something very public. I've got to do something really wise.

No. Resolve to be joyful right where you are today and pursue a reputation of being gentle, a gentleman today. Deliver to your world a demonstration of grace.

I close with this. One author writes, in fact, it was Philip Yancey who was once speaking in Toronto. It was a couple of years ago and he's put it in his recent book. He was speaking on demonstrating grace as believers and he writes that at one point he just stopped and he asked the audience. It wasn't a large audience.

He said, why don't we just share together. Give illustrations of where God has allowed you to demonstrate the grace of the gospel. And he writes, one woman sort of shocked us, surprised us all when she stood and said, well, I believe that God is using me to minister grace to telephone marketers. How many of you have done that lately? She said, you know, the kind who call at inconvenient hours and deliver their spiel and they won't even let you say I'm not interested. How many times have we all, the author sort of interrupted, responded rudely or simply hung up? She continued, you know, all day long these sales callers here, people cursed them and slammed the phones down. I decided I would listen attentively to their pitch and then I would respond kindly even though I wasn't interested more often than not in buying what they were selling. And I would at some point try to interject a question or two about them, their time on the job, what city they're calling from, what country they're calling from.

I would ask them about their lives and then I would ask them as I tried to turn this corner if they had any concerns that I might pray about on their behalf. She said, they're often totally shocked and they don't know what to say, sometimes a long silence. Often they ask me to pray with them right then and there before we hang up. It isn't unusual for them to end the conversation in tears.

She said, you know, they're people. They're probably underpaid and they're surprised when I treat them with courtesy and grace. Yancy concludes, you know, I wonder how often I've missed those moments in my own interactions with people. I marvel at this woman's gracious courtesy and I think of the times when I've been irritated on the phone or irritated with employees on computer helplines that are calling me from a country where they can't even speak good English.

I catch myself, Yancy writes, treating store cashiers and Starbucks baristas as if they are machines. Subtly or not so subtly, I'm communicating that I matter more, that I'm being interrupted, that I need to get back to my life and in the process I'm missing wonderful opportunities of dispensing grace. Isn't that what Paul is commanding us here? Imagine the church could be known as an assembly of ladies and gentlemen.

Wouldn't that be remarkable? Who are resolved to follow joyfully their Lord who is near and whose coming is nearer than ever before. Perhaps in this way, these simple interactions, we might truly advance the gospel, advance the church, advance truth, advance shalom for the glory of Christ. Make this your resolution.

Make this your reputation for Him. Thanks for listening today to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. I trust this message has encouraged you.

We need to be the kind of people who live joyfully and are known for our gentleness. It's our prayer for you that this time in God's word has helped equip you to pursue just that. We have many additional resources available, all designed to equip and encourage you in your walk with Christ. You can access all of those at our website, wisdomonline.org. The complete archive of Stephen's teaching is there in both audio and written transcripts.

Those resources are free. We also have books, commentaries, Bible study guides, daily devotionals, and more. Go to wisdomonline.org to learn all about it. If we can help you in any way, please call us today at 866-48-BIBLE. We'd like to help you get signed up to receive a few sample issues of our monthly magazine. Call today, and then join us again next time as we continue through this series here on Wisdom for the Heart. .