Good morning. Today's last sermon of the year
and we want to go out with a bang.
We want to go out with a bang. It's also the first sermon as we
lead towards the new year, the 2026, and we want to start off
with a bang. The idea of starting with a bang
and ending with a bang are both ideas that come from the idea of
a race or a competition or something like that.
So you've got a large field or something along those lines and
you want to get people going started at the same time.
You want to end at the same time.
So you have a starter gun or a beat, a drum or something like
that. You have a Big Bang at the
beginning, a Big Bang at the end.
In order to get going, we do that same kind of an imagery
with the benediction, which is what comes at the end of every
worship service. At the end of every worship
service, we try to do a benediction.
That is, we try to end with a Big Bang, try to send things off
in that regard. Over the past seven years, while
I've been pastor here, I have ended each year with a
benediction sermon. I believe I haven't missed one
of them. And I've, what I've done is I've
taken the benediction that we've used throughout the year as
closing out our worship service and use it time to close out the
year and also to launch us into the next year.
And so we're about to look at a benediction.
And then the point of this is to say, Hey, how do we understand
what God has done in 2025? Just like the benediction at the
end of a worship service is supposed to summarize the
worship service. It's supposed to be God's last
good word to us as we go out into the day.
So what, what have we done during this worship service?
Well, the benediction kind of summarizes that for us.
And then also at the start of the new year, at the start as we
go out into this world after the worship service, well, what's
the, what are we supposed to do in the upcoming week?
We have in being launched into the world, we are launched with
this benediction. Well, we are going to do the
same thing here today, but kind of encapsulate the whole year.
What is the year 2025 been like? How do we close out 25 with a
bang? And especially then, how do we
start 26 with a bang? And we are going to look at a
familiar benediction. It should be somewhat familiar
to those of you who worship frequently with us because I
have attempted over the past number of months here to close
each worship service that we've had with this particular
benediction. And as always, I like the
imagery of standing when the Lord speaks to us.
So if you are able, please stand for the word of the Lord from
Philippians chapter 4, verse 7. And the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your
minds in Christ Jesus. Once again, the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
My friends, this is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Dear Lord and Father, we do pray
that You would bless us with the ability to understand these
words, not just intellectually, but to understand them deep in
our hearts so that we might be transformed by it.
Lord, You have given Your word to us so that we might be made
new, more and more shaped into the image of Your Son.
So make it so, we pray through Christ our Lord, we ask, Amen.
Please be seated. So the benediction, the peace of
God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
I hope you can see the appropriateness of the song that
Brendan LED us through right here right before the sermon.
It fits very well with this. As a matter of fact, it's it
fits so well that at the end of the sermon, I'm going to ask
Brendan to do it again. Sorry, I had to check to make
sure he was OK with that. He stuck his thumb in the air.
So here's the reason why this benediction, I think fits so
well for us today. Some of it is context.
If you have your Bibles or your phones available, you can find
out in verse 6 that the verse immediately preceding this verse
which talks about the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, which guards our hearts and our minds in Christ
Jesus. The immediate verse before that
talks about do not be anxious, do not be anxious about anything
but in prayer and petition. Bring your request anything.
Make your request made known to God.
Do not be anxious about anything because and then the point of
verse 7. The peace of God will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
And So what we want to do is check to make sure that
everybody here has had and they can identify a moment of anxiety
in their life, perhaps sometime over this past year, if maybe
you can expect or anticipate that there will be a moment of
anxiety in the year 2026. And how does God speak to us in
light of such a persistent concern that so many of us
experience rather frequently these momentary bouts of
anxiety? Well, this benediction, and now
a benediction is a good word. That's a Latin for good word.
And the idea is it's the last good word of the year.
So what what I'm trying to accomplish here with this
benediction is to say, look, regardless of what happened in
your past year and if your year was like mine, it had some ups
and it had some downs. It was chaos.
It was filled with trauma. It's filled filled with
difficulties. It was also filled with joys and
blessings. What's the best way to look at
it? Well, what I'm suggesting is
that this benediction wrapping up the year is the way in which
I hope God allows you to think about this past year.
Not only that, how do you look at the year ahead as we are sent
forth into this world, As we're sent forth into this upcoming
year, how do we anticipate or think through what God has had
planned for us? I think wrapping yourself and
starting your idea with this benediction is a great way to do
it. Now Why so do not be anxious
about anything in light of the struggles and and of course
there are levels of anxiety there can rise to a significant
mental issue. It can be a temporary issue for
us. It can be an acute, it can be
chronic. All of these different ideas,
but certainly all of us have some experience with what it
means to be anxious in light of that here.
This promise, the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus, the peace of God. Now, whenever we talk about
peace in church settings, you always have to warn against the
marshmallow spirituality. A marshmallow spirituality is
one of those things that, Gee, it kind of looks good and it's
there and it's look nice and fluffy and it's all, you know,
kind of sugary and stuff like that.
But let's face it, there's very little substance there.
And that's, I think a lot of times when we talk about peace
of God, when we talk about peace of God as believers, we can be
slipped, we can slip into this idea of this marshmallow
spirituality where what are we talking about?
Well, we're talking about something cute and sweet and and
nice, but really lacks any serious substance.
It lacks any concrete idea. Well, this verse plays out a
concrete idea of the peace of God for us in such a way that I
hope that it will serve as a way for you to think about your past
year and also for how you think about this upcoming year, the
peace of God. Now, if you've been around
church for very frequently, we have at this church commented a
couple of times over this past year and before that about what
we're talking about when we when we talk about peace.
Peace is a very loaded biblical term.
For most of us, especially coming out of the Christmas
season, peace is the absence of conflict.
If you got through your Christmas Day without fighting
with your siblings or something along those lines, that was a
peaceful time. So it's peace is measured by the
fact that, you know, there wasn't too much chaos going on.
Good. That's a peaceful moment.
That's the way in which we tend to use peace as a contrast to
conflict. So you've got war and you've got
peace, you've got the, you know, difficulties, you've got a
peaceful time, etcetera, etcetera.
So we tend to think of peace just in that format.
So if you think of the peace of God in that regard, you're
thinking in terms of, well, things are peaceful, they're
steady, they're non conflictual, but it biblically peace means so
much more than that. Peace is caught is tied to the
Hebrew concept of Shalom. The Hebrew concept of Shalom is
1 where we talk about a wholeness or a completeness or a
fullness. It's a satisfying your, your
purpose in creation. What did God create for you?
When you are satisfying that purpose, then you are at peace.
It doesn't mean the absence of conflict because conflict
actually can happen in the midst or can be swirling around you.
Chaos can't happen around you. And it's something I think we're
going to see in a few minutes here.
Conflict can be happening, and yet the peace of God can be
present because there can be that sense of a wholeness, A
satisfaction, A completeness that takes place across the
board with a person. And here I think you see it.
But notice that we're not talking about peace.
We're talking about the peace of God, Peace of God.
Now, I think that there's a number of different ways you can
understand that phrase. We can understand it, I think,
in in two ways that both make some sense to us.
It's the peace from God. It's the peace that God gives.
And so when we're talking about a wholeness, completeness,
satisfaction, a way of being true to what God has created you
to be, the peace from God is that sense and awareness that
you are completely fitting into God's purpose for your life at
this particular moment. It's a satisfaction.
It's a sense and awareness that, hey, I am doing that which God
has created me to do. That's the kind of peace that
comes from God. But the peace of God is also the
peace that belongs to God. It's the peace that he has.
Now picture for a second anxiety, because again, this is
happening within the context of being anxious.
And God, God is utterly and completely devoid of anxiety.
He is so because he holds the future.
He there, there is no doubt in our Lord, there is no confusion
in our God. And so we have the peace of God,
the peace that belongs to God, that certainty, assurance of the
God's own purpose and intent in this world that is being
communicated to us. That is what comes to us.
The peace of God is both what he has, but also what he gives to
us. So when we're talking about the
peace of God here in the midst of an anxious situation or a
troubled time, we are talking about the peace that God himself
has and possesses, that inner certainty of our Lord himself
that he communicates to his children, to his people, the
peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.
Now, just in a knee jerk sense, my guess is that both of you,
that everybody here kind of has a sense of what that means.
It's a, it's a piece of God that surpasses our understanding.
It's marvelous, it's majestic, it's wonderful.
It's beyond our understanding. And that's what the phrase
intends. But we can shorten it.
We can confuse it a little bit. I used to love going into
bookstores. I love going into bookstores
because I'd walk down all the aisles and I'd sit there and you
know, here's a military history aisle, here's a business aisle,
here's a psychology aisle and all.
And you're walking down the aisles of the bookstores and I'm
sitting there thinking, wow, all of this stuff I get to learn.
All of this stuff I get to learn because there's lots that I'm
not that I don't know, and I get to learn all this stuff.
Now I go through a bookstore. I'm depressed because I go
through, I think all this stuff that I'll never get to learn,
you know, because I'm getting too old now I won't be able to
learn all these things. We have a there, there's a
possibility that you sit and think that the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding means that it's
that it's that it's unknown. It's a piece of God that is
unknown to our understanding that we that we don't understand
it. You know, it's like physics or
psychology or something, or intimate relations.
You know, it's, it's stuff that you can't put your finger on.
You just can't know it. It's out there, but you just
can't know it. I don't think that's what Paul's
getting at when he says here that the peace of God is beyond
surpasses our understanding. It's not that it's unknown, it's
that it's unknowable. It is far beyond what we can put
our fingers on. It's far beyond what we can
understand because it's beyond human comprehension.
We are not designed to comprehend this peace that God
gives. We are designed simply to live
in it and to experience it and to acknowledge.
Have you ever had somebody who's in the been with somebody, a
believer who's in the midst of a traumatic situation?
They're in the midst of a horrid situation and yet there is that
peace. They're exuding that peace of
God, and you sense it as a fellow believer.
You're walking with them and you're just as stunned by the
peace in which they are exuding that they're communicating.
They could be in turmoil, but they have this peace that is
communicated. If you ask them about it, I
guarantee you they'll stumble around.
They'll go well, you know, just something that God gives,
etcetera, etcetera. Why?
Because it's beyond understanding.
It's outside of our human ability to grasp, because it's a
picture of God's divine work in our lives.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard,
will guard. Now I have, if anybody's been
paying attention, my guess is nobody has.
I have shifted throughout the whole year.
I've shifted when we've delivered this benediction at
the end of every worship service.
I've shifted the modality of the verb.
All right, what does that mean? The text says that the peace of
God will guard your hearts and your minds.
At the end of every benediction. I shifted it into a benediction,
into a into a blessing to go forward.
May the Lord guard our hearts and our may the peace of the
Lord guard our hearts and our minds.
I've shifted it to a possibility, to a hope, to an
expectation of what God will do. That's not what the text says.
The text doesn't say may the peace of Lord guard your hearts
and minds. It says the peace of the Lord
will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.
It is a promise that the Lord is making.
This is not something that is optional.
This is not something that we hope for.
This is not something that if I'm a good enough Christian, God
will satisfy. This is not something.
This is something that rests completely and totally with the
giver of the gift, God himself and the promises for every
believer in this room that for the past 2025 and for moving
into 2026, not that made God. Boy, I really hope God, the
peace of God, guards my heart and mind.
It is a promise that God, that the peace of God, will guard
your heart and your mind. It's not a possibility.
It is a promise from the Lord Himself.
The modality of the verb, the way in which the verb is
structured in the text, makes it clear that this is not a wish, a
hopeful expectation. This is a reality for the
believer. What's the reality that the
peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard
your hearts and your mind? Now, guarding is a military
term. Guarding.
Here we can think of guarding and somebody guarding somebody
else or something. Guarding something.
We can think of it a lot of different ways, but the text is
fairly clear that it's a military term across the board.
What we're talking about now, Philippi was a city on the top
northern Greece, and in northern Greece was close enough to the
frontier that in order to protect the city, you built a
big strong wall and then you garrisoned it with soldiers who
were responsible for guarding the population.
They guarded and protected the population by walking the
perimeter of the wall and the wall itself was this guard or
this protection for the population that lived inside.
We live in a time period where our military experiences such
with bombs and with explosives and stuff like that, that we no
longer really appreciate the impenetrability of a good stout
wall. The city would be surrounded.
So think in terms of a castle or a fortress or something like
that. Today, in today's weapons, a
castle or a fortress doesn't stand much chance.
You launch a couple bombs at it and blows the walls down and
that's it. But before the coming of bombs
and stuff like that, even with catapults and those kind of
things, a strong wall would defend the city and make it
basically impenetrable. And what God is saying here is
the peace of God will surround you, will guard you, will
protect you in such a way that nothing will penetrate it.
And this is a protection, a fortress that God is providing
around you. This is not something that you
are doing. This is not something that the
that you do because you really hope that you're capable and
strong enough to do. This is something that God
himself does, builds this hedge of protection around his people.
And it is an impenetrable hedge. And that hedge is the peace of
God itself. And so the peace of God will
guard our hearts and our minds, hearts and minds.
Again, it's a small shift, but it's an important enough one.
When we think in terms of hearts and minds, we tend to think of
the heart is the seed of the emotions.
That's where we do our emoting and our, and our feeling and
stuff like that. And our heads, our minds are, is
the seed of our intellect. It's where we we think things
through and stuff like that. And so you can read the passages
saying, you know, God's peace is guarding our and our feeling.
It's guarding our hearts and our minds and stuff like that.
But in reality, back in in the day in which the text was
written for us, hearts and minds were basically synonyms.
They largely meant the same thing.
They were talking about the inner life of the person.
What is your, what's your inner life?
Not just their feelings. That's part of it, but also
your, your will, your volition, your, your awareness, your sense
of of, of your own personality, your consciousness, your will,
your desire to do different things, your understanding of
different ideas, your wisdom. All of that is seated in the
heart. When the scriptures talk about
the heart of a man or something like that, they're not talking
about the the emotional center. They're talking about that inner
core of everything in what you're doing.
Now, Paul makes a big deal, I hear out of separating the heart
and the mind uses the different keywords that that make sure
that we realize that he's not using them as synonyms, but they
kind of function the same way. When we're talking about our
hearts being guarded, we're talking about the inner life of
the human being being guarded by God's peace.
When we're talking about the mind being guarded, that's kind
of the outworking of that inner life.
The inner life is being protected, but also the
outworkings, the way in which we are operating in light of the
inner being being at peace. And So what Paul is identifying
here is he's saying, look, because of the work of God,
because of the peace of God which surrounds your heart and
surrounds your mind, not only are you at peace inside, but
also the way in which you express, the way in which you
engage with the world around you is also at peace.
That's what it means that God's peace guards our surrounds,
protects, puts a hedge of protection around our hearts and
our minds, both who we are. Sometimes you will experience
you will interact with somebody that is showing peace on the
outside but is not peaceful on the inside.
Sometimes we. Know people that are peaceful on
the outside but may not demonstrate it on the outside.
Did I say that right? You know what, I OK, switch it
around. You know what I meant.
In any case, the point is here that Paul is saying, look,
because of the power of the peace of God, because it deals
with something that is God himself, because it is something
that he has, and he gives this inner sense of Shalom,
completeness, totality. And because he is protecting you
from that, not only is your inner being protected, but also
the way in which you present, the way in which you manifest
that on the outside that is being protected by our God.
Now doesn't that sound glorious? If that doesn't.
Sound glorious. What are you doing here?
No, that sounds glorious. That sounds wonderful.
Why in the world don't we see this?
Why are we? Not a people that this world
yearns to be like because they look and they sit and they see
us in the midst of our family turmoil and are, by the way,
when we are being guarded, when God guards us, he guards us
because there are opponents that are coming.
There is an enemy that is attacking.
There is anxiety that is coming for each of us.
There is no promise in this text, by the way, that the peace
of God will make sure that you don't experience anything
negative. It's just the opposite.
God is saying because the negative is out there because of
the trauma is coming, because of the struggles that are present,
God's peace will guard your heart and your mind.
It's not that God takes the Christian out of the troubles of
this world. God enables a Christian to live
faithfully in the midst of the troubles of this world.
So we have the troubles of the world that are coming.
And when we see the troubles of the world crashing in upon us,
why is it that the whole world doesn't sit there and think,
Man, I want to be like a Christian that is so guarded and
protected by that peace. Because the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and our
minds in Christ Jesus. In Christ.
Jesus. This is not a.
Cutesy Christian phrase that Paul just attaches to things.
This is Paul's intimate understanding of what it means
to be united with Christ, to be bonded to him, to be one with
Christ, to be so tied up with the Lord Jesus Christ that we
are understood to be at one with him, to be linked together in
such a way meaningfully that we are united with Christ.
All of that is subsumed under his little phrase in Christ
Jesus. So the in Christ Jesus is
articulating the way in which as Christians we are intended to
live. So many of us deny the length
that we are born that we are blessed with through our union
with Jesus Christ. That is, we are connected to
Him, we are united with Him, and as such, we experience this
blessed union with the Lord that needs to show itself in the way
in which He works in our lives. So often we are given a gift.
And we turn it. Away we are given the blessing,
the promise of peace, of this protective peace, and because we
do not know how to live united with Christ, in union with him,
we lose sight of that blessing that the Lord has built around
us, that protection of His goodness and His grace.
When? I read over this weekend a
series of essays over this past week, a series of essays trying
to evaluate 2025. And some of the authors were
trying to say that it was the worst year that has ever lived
in existence. And other people were arguing
that it was the best year in all existence.
And the point was to read the two articles next to each other
and see what you think. When?
You look at 2025, what do you see?
I suggest. That if you're a follower of
Jesus Christ and you are united with him, what you see is the
peace of God building that hedge of protection around your life.
You may not have lived faithfully into it.
You may not admit it, You may not embrace that hedge of
protection, but my guess is it won't take long before you see
that hedge at work when you look forward to 2026 and 2026 is
going to have all the chaos and more of 2025.
It's going to have all the joys and more as 2020, five, 2026 is
going to be a glorious mess for all of us, I guarantee it.
How do we evaluate it? How do we see it?
I think we see it within the framework of God building a
hedge of protection, this hedge of blessing around us where He
guards our hearts and our minds by his peace.
And so may the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ flow through him
into each one of us, now and forever.
Let's pray together. Gracious.
Lord, grant to us your blessing, the blessing that is
communicated here in this promise.
That the peace of. God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ
Jesus. It is so.
Easy. So tempting for us to pursue
life on our own instead of granting that surrender that
Brendan talked about earlier, that surrender of being united
with Christ and experiencing that protection that you give.
Lord, I know for sure that each one of us will experience
moments of anxiety or anxiety producing moments throughout
this coming year. At each and every.
Moment help us to turn in prayer to you and then to witness and
experience again the fulfillment of this promise of your
protection. Now and forevermore we pray
through Christ our Lord. Amen.