Philippians 4:2-9
Sin is the cause of a lot of what goes on in our lives. Recently we talked about the fact that all suffering is caused by sin. It might not be specific sin that causes specific suffering, but our lives were not created for suffering, we were not created to die, hell was not created for man; sin caused all of these things. Sickness, divorce, depression, murder, idolatry, addiction, everything that is apart from God and that we can define as suffering is caused by sin. The first sin, committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden immediately brought shame, brought fear and caused man to hide from God. Shame, fear and hiding can all be attributed to sin; they would not exist if sin didn’t and they will not exist when sin is vanquished by Jesus the conquering King. There is another issue of life that we all experience and that we have come to accept and part of the human condition when it is in fact the cause of sin: conflict. All conflict is caused by sin. Conflict in the spiritual realm, conflict between man and God, conflict in the world and conflict within the Body of Christ, it is all caused by sin. The good news is that sin has a remedy, the blood of Jesus. Peter wrote that we were redeemed by the blood of Jesus, Paul wrote that we were far off from God and then brought near by the blood of Jesus and the author of Hebrews wrote that our consciences are purged from dead works to serve the living God by the blood of Christ. The blood of Jesus is the remedy for sin which means that the blood of Jesus is also the remedy for all of our conflicts. Conflicts need to be resolved and we have been given the resolution, but what we have been often missing is the application. Today we are going to read a familiar passage of Scripture in Philippians 4 and attempt to apply it in an unfamiliar way. I believe that the Apostle Paul gives us a blueprint for conflict resolution within the Body of Christ. If we will begin applying it to our lives we will then become the living application of conflict resolution within our community. We live and worship in a city attacked by conflict. At this moment there is political conflict, the conflict of addiction, of abortion, of fatherlessness, of poverty, of racism, of religion, of greed and of selfishness. We have been given the remedy; we must receive it, apply it to our lives and then pour it out to a people longing for joy but divided by the fruit of sin, the conflict created by the lies and longings of the enemy of their souls.