Albert Mohler: Thinking Like a Christian

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It is my honor to preach the final message from Paul's Holy Spirit inspired letter to Philippians, chapter 4. How would Paul end a letter like this, how? How? What would he say? We looked at so many majestic themes, such a display of God's glory in doctrine and theology for the church, such pastoral admonition. But my honor is to preach this text and to speak about thinking like a Christian. Thinking like a Christian, how unusual is it that this is strange language to so many Christians? The false gospel of moralism means that there are a lot of Christians, or those who believe themselves to be Christians, who believe the question is always, "How do you act like a Christian?" Now the New Testament makes that clear that is never the wrong question. It's just not the first question. The first question is, "How do you think like a Christian?" The recovery of a concern for the Christian worldview became necessary because of the acute crisis of biblical Christianity in the modern age. So, even as you might say in retrospect and various other moments of church history, there was a lot of attention to how to think like a Christian, it was not usually in the period from the medieval era to the modern age. It was not generally a sense of emergency in which over again some other reality, some other dominant worldview, Christians had to think about the Christian worldview. It's not unprecedented. In fact, the first precedent is New Testament Christianity as recorded in the New Testament. That's the first, the first emergency for the church to try to think through what it would mean to think as a Christian. That was the first emergency. The second emergency was the fall of Rome. And with the fall of Rome, with Rome as it turns out providing so much of the intellectual certainty for those who were the citizens of the Roman Empire, even those beyond the Roman Empire, for whom the Roman Empire was the great fact. The fall of the Roman Empire was a great crisis, in which there needed to be an answer, "How do we think as Christians?" And the greatest, the most majestic of those answers was of course Augustine's great work The City of God. It then comes to the great flower of the Reformation, when not so much Luther, but Calvin in the Institutes of The Christian Religion responded to another kind of emergency with thinking through what it would mean for a church to be Reformed and for the gospel to be the gospel, for Jesus Christ to be Lord, and that God-centered obsession that was Calvin as displayed devotionally, theologically, doctrinally, doxologically in the Institutes of The Christian Religion. Why do we now use this language? Why do we speak of thinking as a Christian in a way that our grandparents or great grandparents probably never felt the urgency? It is because we know that urgency. It is because the dominant worldview around us is increasingly the worldview of a post-Christian, secular age. It's because an antagonistic antitheism and a very toxic secularism now mark so much of the world around us and when we think as Christians about thinking as Christians, one of the things we have to recognize is that if we do not think carefully as Christians about thinking about thinking as a Christian, we won't think like Christians, we won't be Christians. We won't. It requires concerted, dedicated thought. It requires a comprehensive consideration of the question, "What does it mean to think as a Christian?" Modernity, the modern age with its challenges, didn't just arrive in the twenty-first century. It didn't just arrive in the twentieth century. It arrived earlier, especially in Europe. And especially in the nineteenth century, there were those in both the European context and the British context who were trying to think this through in a way few Americans did. In the European context, you had someone like Abraham Kuyper in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, who became actually the prime minister of the Netherlands for a relatively brief time, but was trying to think through what a Christian worldview, as we would say, borrowing from the German worldview that emerged in the cultural crisis of Germany in the nineteenth century, as to what would that look like. In the English-speaking, someone like James Orr was asking many of the same kinds of questions, trying to think about a Christian view of God and the world. It was really in the United States, more in the 1940s and 50s, that evangelical Christians began to ask some of these questions. They began to talk about the Christian worldview, borrowing that concept from others and inheriting this concern from people such as Orr and Kuyper. Francis Schaeffer began speaking about the comprehensive Christian worldview just the time I needed him when I was a teenager in the 1970s. And I was trying to find out, figure out…I was looking for a guide, I needed someone to be able to put together in a comprehensive way what I was struggling to try to understand, and along comes Schaeffer talking about a Christian view of culture and a Christian view of art and a Christian view of politics. Christian, Christian. Not just as held by Christians, but Christian as the determinative modifier. So that the Christians look at politics differently than non-Christians, Christians look at history differently, Christians look at economics differently, Christians will look at art and all the artifacts of culture, Christians will look at the family in a different way than others, all rooted in the fundamental reality of the Christian worldview that grows out of Scripture, a theological worldview. As we think about modern Christianity, I think the figures who probably contributed most of this would've been Schaeffer in the '70s and then after that the massive contribution of R.C. Sproul to the development of the Christian mind and the very heritage and existence, the mission of Ligonier Ministries to take all objects of knowledge and submit them to Christ and submit them to Scripture. And here we are today in the year 2018, and we fully understand that if we do not operate out of an intentional Christian worldview, if we don't think as Christians, then we will not possibly live as Christians. And it's just not a matter of our faithfulness; it's a matter of our public witness and the integrity of our witness, even our communication of the gospel as well. And furthermore, we understand as Christians that if we do not inculcate in our children and in our children's children the disciplines and the biblical knowledge necessary, the Christian thinking fundamental to thinking as a Christian, then they will not be Christians. My honor is to direct us to Philippians chapter 4, beginning in verse 2. I'm going to read the entire passage, as is my charge, all the way to the end of the chapter in order that we would hear it together as the Philippian church would have heard it at the conclusion of the reading of this letter. The Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul writes: "I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 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. I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only. Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. I have received full payment, and more. I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." It's hard to imagine how you would end an epistle like this, how the Holy Spirit would inspire Paul to conclude a letter like this. After all that's already been said, what do you say now? Well, we should be very thankful that what Paul speaks of here speaks directly to the question of how we would think like Christians. It doesn't start there, at least not apparently, "apparently" being the key word here. Look at verse 2. It's another pastoral admonition. In this case he's entreating two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to agree in the Lord. The context here is unknown to us as to what the disagreement might be, but the disagreement was by two women amongst them and may appear to both be faithful Christian women. Paul doesn't side one way or the other in the dispute. He just commends them, entreats them to agree in the Lord. Now what we know as background to this is sufficient from knowing the Apostle Paul, as he writes elsewhere. We know that this cannot be an issue of truth, it cannot be an issue of doctrine, not of any doctrine because Paul is not going to take a "get along and go along" position when it comes to doctrine. He's not going to say, "Just find a way to agree, find the lowest common denominator." That's not Paul, and that's not Christianity. We know it really can't be a crucial moral question because in the same way the Apostle Paul is really, really clear about biblical morality. He's really, really clear about what is required of the Christian. He speaks of this with amazing candor. So what must it be? Well it must be something we don't need to know, or we would know. It must be something in which you could have two goodhearted, faithful, convictional Christian women who disagree, but need to agree in the Lord. That's important for us to understand. There are times when we need on issues that are not of doctrinal importance, where truth is on the line and where morality or ethics is not on the line, where both our witness and our conduct before the Lord would be in question, there are some questions in which we just need to agree in the Lord one way or another. And the servant here, his "true companion" and that probably is Epaphroditus, who had interceded in such a way to help to bring about this kind of agreement. You know, this is what's really interesting. The Catholic charge against Protestants is that we keep splitting up. We do. I love the way one of the Puritans put it. He said, "We have many fractured and fissiparous sects." Fissiparous, yeah that's us. We do that at times. And by the way if we do it over truth, that's the right thing to do. If we do it over doctrine, that's the right thing to do. If we do it over a consistent Christian conduct, then that's the right thing to do. But sadly, at least the landscape of Protestantism is indeed sometimes littered with the schisms and divisions that should never have happened over things nobody can even remember. Now, we don't have to go into the false claim of unity in the Roman Catholic Church. I will take our fissiparousness over the falsity of the Church of Rome, but that doesn't mean we sometimes should not be embarrassed by the disputes that divide us. When I was a college student preaching in Alabama, I was preaching in a rural association. That's where you preach when you're a college student, generally. I was preaching out in the boondocks where it was…here's my favorite, there were three churches that are all linked to something, I know not what links them except history, and I can write the history even though I have no idea of the particulars. Here are three churches out of the twenty-one in a Baptist association in Alabama. Okay? Follow. "Harmony Baptist Church," "New Harmony Baptist Church" and "New Harmony Baptist Church Number Two." Okay, so there's something horrifying about that. First of all, if you have harmony, you don't have new harmony unless you've had disharmony between the first harmony and the new harmony. And what kind of disharmony must have come in between Harmony, New Harmony, and New Harmony Number Two? All right. And I'll just go out on a limb and say, "I really doubt this was a serious doctrinal issue." And one of the things we do come to understand here is that this is not extraneous to the consideration of the Christian mind. Remember what Paul had written in Philippians chapter 2, even in that great Christological passage, "Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus," and speaking there of our proper humility following the example of Christ. What is our humility compared to the humility of Christ in the incarnation all the way to the cross? One of the things we see here is that there is a pastoral urgency, not just a cultural urgency, not just a chronological urgency as we're living in this post-Christian, secular age. There's a congregational urgency to the Christian way of thinking. It should, if we are actually developing a Christian mind together, it should be unitive. It should be unifying. That's something else you see in this, as the Apostle Paul writes. It says here, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." And you say, "Well, isn't that a bit abrupt?" I mean, he's dealing with a pastoral problem. Now, he's dealing with rejoicing. Well, I want us to think about this for just a moment. It turns out that one of the great gains amongst many Christians, gospel-minded Christians in our generation is that we are thinking much more clearly and intentionally, and I even believe faithfully, about the Christian worldview, about the Christian mind and about thinking like a Christian. That's great gain. And we need to understand that essential to that gain has been understanding what it means to cogitate, to reflect, to analyze, to make judgments, to discern, to distinguish on the basis of the truth of God's inerrant and infallible Word. The total comprehensive truth claim of Christianity applied to every dimension of life. And a part of that necessary gain for us has been even learning an intellectual apparatus, which is necessary for the development of the Christian mind and understanding of reality and understanding of truth and understanding of how we know, its ontology, its epistemology. All of this has been necessary, and many of the gains in our thinking by means of the Christian worldview has come by understanding truths, revealed truths of God within the context of a comprehensiveness of the Christian truth claim, and to understand those truths and to define those truths and as necessary to defend those truths in order that on the basis of truth, we may make true judgments and we may analyze and know truly and speak truly and accurately and faithfully to whatever question may come to us, whatever dimension of life we might address. That's gain. That's undeniable gain There's also been gain in the Christian mind in that we have learned how to fit the Christian mind, how to situate the Christian mind within the great unfolding narrative of Scripture with creation and fall and redemption and new creation, such that we begin to understand that we are thinking about how everything, everything that exists, all of creation, the entire cosmos, and we ourselves and all the questions of right and wrong, and all the questions of truth and untruth. This is all placed within our understanding, history certainly, but not only the past, not only the present but also future within that narrative structure of creation and fall and redemption and new creation. That has been great gain. But here is the question I want to ask you, is it possible, is it possible to think like a Christian and not be a Christian? And the answer is yes. So actually, I want to play with my title just a little bit. I'm actually far more concerned, not with thinking like a Christian, as with thinking as a Christian. There is nothing wrong with thinking like a Christian. As a matter of fact, we must think like a Christian, but it's just not enough. We actually have to think as a Christian. We're actually not satisfied that people think like Christians. The Great Commission was not "Go and encourage people to think as Christians," but to be Christians, to trust Christ, to faithfully follow Him, to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded. So the great gain we have from Philippians chapter 4 in our understanding of the Christian worldview, we're going to see there are several dimensions of this great gain, is that the Apostle Paul begins the Christian worldview in his consideration in this passage what it means to think as a Christian, morally, even attitudinally. As we look to this passage, I want us to think about what it means to assume the attitude of the Christian mind, the attitude of the Christian mind. "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." Do we really take that seriously, you know, what it means to think as a Christian means first of all to rejoice? I don't think this word even comes naturally to us, except at Christmas. You can't have a decent Christmas card without "Rejoice." Angels talk that way. We know it's the kind of language, "We rejoice," I mean let's just admit we consider it odd if people talk this way, men maybe particularly. I was always, as a boy, trying to take the measure of how my dad was coming home. It's an important thing to know. It's a survival technique for children. You just kind of have to know what's the attitude. My dad was a hardworking Christian man, and I could tell when things have gone well and I could tell when things went poorly. Now the good news was he got happy when he was around us. That was really important. But you know, just when he got out of the car how did that door close? You know, as a boy you learn these signals. Was it just a satisfying click or was it a slam? Okay, alright. If my dad had come in and I'd said, "Hey dad. How was your day?" and he said, "I'm rejoicing in it," I would have wondered who this was. This is not the kind of language. And as matter of fact, we don't even use the "joy" vocabulary very much. But the Bible uses it a great deal. The Bible repeatedly, both the Old and New Testaments, as they are rightly translated, but just take the New Testament. The "joy" vocabulary is huge and the reason we're so easily bought off with happiness or disappointed when we're not happy, I will just tell you when I look at the New Testament and I look at the Apostle Paul, I think there's a great deal of evidence that he wasn't always happy. But he was never without joy, even held in Caesar's captivity. Joy, even struggling with that thorn in the flesh. Joy, even facing his death being poured out as a drink offering, joy. And of course, we're told that that joy is made possible only because of Christ. We should use this language more often. But very pointedly here, we should understand that the attitude of the Christian mind is one that begins in rejoicing, and it's on the basis of who God is and what He has done for us in Christ, on the basis of the gospel, on the basis of the atonement, on the basis of the promise of salvation, on the basis of the assurance of things to come we're to rejoice. We can face anything. You realize that there are a lot of Christians right now who are trying to hunker down because "we got to think as Christians because the world's coming at us," which by the way it is. That's not a misunderstanding. It's just the wrong attitude. I mean if it's up to us, we're doomed anyway, right? That doesn't mean we're not to be faithful, but it does mean at the end of the day we're not up to this. The prince of darkness grim will win, but for the fact one little word shall fell him, "Christ." It's not Al. It's not you. It's not me. The little word is "Christ." That's what we have to realize. We rejoice because Jesus Christ is Lord, and that's enough. The attitude in the Christian mind begins in rejoicing, and that rejoicing produces something that Paul mentions next, "reasonableness." Reasonableness, and this isn't just rationality. This is reasonableness as an attitude. It's very, very clear in the context here. This means being reasonable with one another. That turns out to be really, really important. Let your reasonableness be so famous about you that it's known to everyone. "The Lord's at hand." There's that eschatology, the Lord's at hand. "Do not be anxious about anything." Now, wait just a minute. Back when I was preaching this morning from Philippians chapter 2, I pointed out that reasonableness and anxiety are right there. I mean rejoicing and anxiety are right there. You see it in chapter 2 verse 28. This is about Epaphroditus. "I am the more eager to send him therefore that you may rejoice at seeing him again and that I may be less anxious." It's one of the problems with not reading something like the epistle to the Philippians in one sitting. You will miss the fact that the Apostle Paul admits in chapter 2 he has been anxious, only in chapter 4 to say, "Don't be anxious about anything." And you know what's going on with the Apostle Paul? He's preaching to himself. This is how the Holy Spirit has inspired Paul in this honesty in chapter 2. He's been anxious. We can understand that. We can understand the context of his anxiety. But by the time he gets to the end of the letter, it's "Be anxious about nothing." The Christian should not have an anxious mind. The Christian should not be marked by an anxious heart. Why? Not because we are up to this, but because Jesus Christ is Lord. Christ is more than sufficient for these things. And thus, why be anxious? What does that do for us anyway? Does Jesus ask Himself -- anxious about how tall we are? Solve that. Anxious about the number of our days? Try that. What good does it do to be anxious? And it's because the Lord is at hand, because the consummation of all God's promises is coming, it's coming assuredly, "Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything…don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." The exercise of the Christian mind, what is that? Cogitation, analysis, discernment, discrimination, judgment? Yeah, all those things are part of the exercise of the Christian mind but thinking as a Christian, as it turns out, is demonstrated in prayer. This is humbling to me. It's very humbling. It's convicting to me because I so often think of the Christian truth claim and thinking as a Christian, developing a Christian mind, I want to rush to thinking, concluding, discerning, judging, discriminating, when actually we're called to pray. How do we think as Christians? Well, evidently it's not going to come but by prayer. We've heard that before. We heard it from Jesus. It comes only by prayer and prayer here defined as both supplication with thanksgiving, the two of them together. So supplication, we make our requests known to God. But thanksgiving, we're already thankful. We're already filled with gratitude. We make our requests known to God, and "the peace of God, which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." So what is the conclusion? What's the product? What's the result of the Christian mind? Christian thinking, yes. Christian faithfulness, yes. Strengthening of the church, yes. Edification of the church, yes. Demonstration of the church's public witness and its credibility, yes. Being able to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, yes! But it turns out that the fruit of thinking as a Christian, beginning in the attitude of rejoicing and then in the exercise of prayer, ends up with the product of peace, peace. That's another language we don't use too often, not in this sense. Here we are told that peace, that the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, let's just take that seriously for a moment. It is beyond our intellectual reach. No apologies for failing in any sense to develop the Christian mind. No apologies for seeking to understand Scripture thoroughly and to apply it consistently. No apology. That's Christ's command. But at the end of the day, the peace of God will surpass all understanding. It's not achievable, measurable, or even retainable merely by the intellect. It's a peace of God that passes all understanding and knowing that it's a protective peace, the peace of God. It's the gospel, the reality of Christ. "The peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." We need our hearts and our minds to be guarded. We need a guard over our hearts because we cannot serve as the guardian of our own hearts. We need a guard over our minds. Yes, we want to develop discernment. We want to think clearly, all of that by God's command, by the demands of faithfulness. Yes, but at the end of the day we can't guard our own hearts. We can't guard our own minds. We are not sufficient for this. In chapel to students just a few days ago, I preached a message that was really on my heart to preach to them. I'm not going to preach it here to you given the constraints of time, but I did tell them that as a child I was terrified by sleep, terrified by sleep. I was a child with lots of big questions and just lots of huge concerns, raised by wonderful faithful Christian parents whom I must've driven crazy. But as a child I was afraid to sleep. Because how could I hold myself? How could I keep myself, myself? Maybe if I fall asleep, I will cease to be. I know who I am when I'm awake and I can think and I can do and I can watch myself thinking and doing and I can know I am alive. But if I sleep, maybe I'll simply cease to exist. Of course, sleep wins. Sleep wins, and amazingly enough I would wake up. That's why I love that hymn, He Will Hold me Fast. Here's the good news of the gospel. We can't hold ourselves even for a second, but He holds us eternally. He will hold me fast. When I can't even keep my eyelids open, He will hold me fast. And by the way, when my eyelids are open, they are only open because He is holding me fast. And we can't guard our hearts, and we can't guard our minds. As much as we are called to the disciplines of the Christian life and to the full embrace and glorying in Christian truth, at the end of the day the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, it will guard our hearts and minds. How? In Christ Jesus. But there's more here about thinking like…thinking as a Christian, and in many ways this is the most surprising. What follows is within the context of the New Testament what is most surprising, and in the context of many considerations of the Christian mind what is also most missing as with what came before in this passage. Let's just look at the text again, "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." Think about these things. What's really, really interesting is the rhetorical sophistication of this part of Philippians chapter 4. Again, this Paul who says he's is not going to depend on human rhetoric and he doesn't. He's not seeking to be persuasive merely by using human rhetoric, but he will use human rhetoric in order to display, by the Holy Spirit, the truth the Holy Spirit means to communicate to His church, and this is an exercise of rhetorical brilliance. It is also an in-your-face to the Greco-Roman culture. It is a confrontation with that culture that the early church found itself emerging within and over against, it's the Apostle Paul redefining virtue ethics for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Greeks and the Romans, they defined those things to which we should aspire as virtues and, by the way, by God's common grace many of those virtues really are virtues. We should be thankful for that. And should be thankful for the virtues, the biblical virtues, the virtues are rooted in God's own character. We should be thankful wherever they appear. Romans chapter 1 makes it very clear that God has revealed even His invisible attributes in the things that are seen. So you wonder, why is there an appreciation for beauty just about everywhere you find human beings? Why is there a yearning for peace? Why is there love? Why is there a quest for justice? Why is there even a knowledge of good and wrong? Where…why, as you find human beings, do you find them everywhere moral creatures? Why? Well, the problem with the ancient Greeks and the Romans was not their concern for virtue. It was their lack of an understanding of how virtue exists, and how it is secured, and how it is to be measured, and how it is to be emulated. It's a huge problem when you put all of that together. They really had no explanation for why the virtues exist. And part of the problem with the virtue ethics of the ancient world is that the virtues just kind of existed out there as if they were just hanging on their own. And of course, they developed within both the Greek and the Roman polytheism. They developed all kinds of different mythology. Remember how you were tortured by this in junior high school. Edith Hamilton, thank you very much. You remember all these, and you know, the problem is they could not, with a straight face, really make a direct connection between their idolatrous deities and the virtues. So they got them all mixed up, which is just another reason you were tortured in middle school or junior high school or high school, trying to think through the Greek and Roman mythology. And so, one of the things that by the way, New Testament scholars will note in looking through the New Testament is how throughout most of the New Testament there's an avoidance of anything close to virtue ethics. There's very little use of this kind of ethical format. So, what's the Apostle Paul doing? The Holy Spirit has inspired the Apostle Paul to say, "Here is how a Christian thinks. This is the focus of the Christian mind." This is what it means to think like, as a Christian. We understand the virtues far better than the Greeks and the Romans because we don't ground them in themselves or in some kind of foibling, fumbling mythology. We understand that the virtues are the virtues because of the infinite perfections of the one true and living God. And we understand that every human heart has at least some yearning for those perfections, those attributes. But here, the Apostle Paul says we as Christians should think on certain things. And you'll notice "what's true, what's noble, what's right, what's pure, what's lovely, what's admirable." Now, we could take months to discern exactly what the differentiation is there. But even just hearing the words, there's enough. You get a pretty good idea of what the Apostle Paul's doing. "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely…lovely, and whatever is admirable." Do you want anything less than all those words? Think about the opposite of all of those words. By the way, think how a confused, hedonistic, humanistic society begins to actually have an appetite for the opposite of all of these words. It turns out that the Christian church does not live by a virtue ethic in which virtue is self-defining, but it turns out we do live by a virtue worldview and by a certain virtue ethic that is grounded not in a human understanding of virtues defined in and of themselves, but rather the attributes of the one true and living God which, by His grace to His glory, He's revealed particularly to the saints. We're to think on these things. Here's one of the problems. Here's why many Christians don't rejoice as a natural disposition of heart. This is why many Christians are not marked by the peace of God that passes all understanding. It's because many Christians are not thinking about the things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Some of you are thinking, "Do you ever listen to this podcast called The Briefing?" Yeah, so what do I have to keep doing? People say, "Well, how can you talk about all that stuff?" It's because I spend far more time, by God's grace, thinking about that which is true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable. And only then, only then can the Christian approach the world as it is, and the headlines as they come, and the issues as we must address them. But if we spend most of our time, if most of our intellectual energy, if most of our Christian thinking is devoted to the problem rather than to the gospel, to Christ and to the Word of God, then we're going to be in big trouble. It's a good warning to us. And the Apostle Paul didn't say, "Don't worry about those things in terms of dealing with them," don't engage. He does this. He certainly makes very clear that at the end of the day, the most important thing for the Christian is thinking on certain virtues which are grounded in God Himself and revealed to us. That which is true noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable. "If anything is excellent," that's a loaded word. That's one of the least expected words in the New Testament. "Excellent," where does that come from? Well, here the Apostle Paul uses it in the gospel context to say it's going to be infinitely higher than any human standard of excellence. It's going to be excellence that is going to be grounded only in the excellence of Christ. And by the way, this is an interesting issue how the rhetoric changes from "think on these things, true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable," but then "if anything is excellent, if anything is worthy of praise, think on these things." The Christian worldview is inherently theological, you know that. It's inherently moral. It does apply to every single dimension of life from politics and economics to aesthetics. It's comprehensive, it's the truth as God, it's all-encompassing and comprehensive. It's going to take all of us thinking together to think as Christians, so it just throws us back again upon the local church, upon the communion of the saints. It's going to take every bit of Scripture, it's going to take every word of Scripture. It's going to take prayer and then again, as I said in the morning's message, the ordinary means of grace, the preaching of the Word of God. Because here's the most amazing thing, no one said it better than Luther, you know, Christians are made by the preaching of the Word of God in a way that Christians do not know, and which is even greater than what they heard. Because what they heard with their ears, that is the necessary means. But what the Holy Spirit does in the heart, conforming us to the image of Christ, it's even beyond the words. It's one of the reasons why I tell the parents, "Read the Bible to your children, especially when they don't understand it." I don't mean any less in the future, but I mean there are people who say, "Look, they don't understand language." You don't have any clue what the Holy Spirit's doing with those words in that heart invisibly, when they don't even understand the polysyllabic words. Let it take root in their hearts. Well, once again Paul ends on a pastoral word. You see this in the verses that conclude the chapter. Paul's rejoicing that that they've revived their concern for him. He gives words of appreciation. He makes very clear that in every circumstance he's learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." That's not prosperity theology. That's not a "name it and claim it." That's an assurance that what Paul does by the faithfulness of Christ is secured in Christ, and he can do all that he's ordered to do through Him who strengthens me, guards my heart and my mind. He recites a bit of what the Philippians know about his ministry and the kind ministry of the Philippians to him when he was in Thessalonica. And then he says, "My God will supply every need of yours." He said, "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me," and "My God will supply every need of yours." Just put it together, "according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." Think about that, "My God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." Prepositions are always so important. You'll notice it follows, it's not just that, "My God will supply every need of yours." It's "Every need of yours according to His riches." But not just His riches, "His riches in glory. His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." My goodness! It's a Holy Spirit inspired chain of logic. Once again, it ends in Christ, Christ Jesus. And then what you would think would be the end of the letter "To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen." It's not quite the end. The Holy Spirit prompted Paul to write, "Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you," notice these words, "especially those of Caesar's household." Boom! Wow, seriously! It's like the Philippians, they're going to be very thankful that he didn't stop with "Amen." Keep going, keep going, "among the saints, with Paul" who greet them, are members of the household of faith in Caesar's household. Oh, my goodness! You read about that, and you say "Well, obviously." Not obviously. This is how powerful the gospel is. The gospel is in Caesar's household. Caesar is worried about barbarians. What he should be worried is Christians. The gospel, the gospel has invaded even Caesar's household. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen." The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. May we not be satisfied with thinking like Christians. In some sense, cultural Christianity is what happened in our country. People thought like Christians, but weren't Christians. And here's what we discovered. People who think like Christians but aren't Christians don't think like Christians for long. They begin to think like anti-Christians. I love old books, that's no secret. I got some new old books when I was here. And here's one that grabbed my heart so much that I had to go back and get it when I didn't buy it. I had unbuyers remorse. I went back to get it. It's The Remains of John Brown, Minister of the Gospel at Haddington. It's also one of the very first books ever published from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "Printed and published by Cramer, Spear and Eichbaum at the Franklin Head Bookstore in Market, between Front and Second Streets, Pittsburgh, 1810." Alright, so this is how John Brown ended his last communication. This is back when ministers used to leave "remains," meaning "last words." These are the last words of John Brown to his fellow ministers. "If your labors appear to have little success, be the more diligent and dependent on Christ. Never mourn as they that have no hope. Let not the eunuch say 'I am a dry tree.' Jesus hath said, 'I will pour water on him that is thirsty and floods on the dry ground. I will pour My Spirit on thy seed and my blessing on thine offspring.' A seed shall serve him, the whole earth be filled with his glory. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. Believeth on the testimony of God Himself. Believeth on the testimony of all His faithful servants. And if mine were of any avail, I should add it that there is no master so kind as Christ, no service so pleasant, as profitable as that of Christ, and no reward so full, satisfying, as permanent as that of Christ. Let us therefore begin all things from Christ, carry on all things with and through Christ, and let all things aim at and end in Christ." And I love the last word of his last word, finis, "the end." All is Christ, and all is well. To God be glory forever and forever. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father, we are so thankful for Your letter to the Philippians, through the Apostle Paul and to us and to all your saints till Jesus comes. Father, may we be not only those who think as Christians, think like Christians, but may we think like Christians because we are Christians, may we think as Christians to the glory of Christ and to the edification of this church and to the extension of the gospel until Jesus Christ our Lord shall come. Amen.
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Channel: Ligonier Ministries
Views: 11,694
Rating: 4.8766518 out of 5
Keywords: Ligonier, Ligonier conference, Lancaster Conference, philippians, conference, albert mohler, mohler, r albert mohler
Id: HqX6eka8F6U
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 48min 56sec (2936 seconds)
Published: Wed Nov 28 2018
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