“But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

(Philippians 4:19)

Our text this morning on the 3^rd Sunday in Advent is St. Paul’s word to the Philippian Christians: “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Suppose for your Christmas gift this year a rich friend would place in your hand a signed blank check and say: “Now you fill in the amount — and make it big — to take care of all your present and anticipated needs. You write your own ticket. In this time of high prices I don’t want you to lack for a thing. This is my Christmas gift for you.”

Well, that’s what St. Paul says God has done for us — given us as His Christmas gift a signed, blank check to cover all our needs: “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

But is the Apostle here promising more than God will deliver? Is Paul talking too big with his mouth, getting over-enthusiastic in his language, beguiling us to hope for what just isn’t coming?

St. Paul is a great one, all right, for using that sweeping phrase: “all things.” “I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.” “Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.” “We know that all things work together for good.” “Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” All things, all things, all things. Does St. Paul never tire of that extravagant phrase? Here he is promising that God will supply “all our need.”

Is it just the Apostle’s extravagant rhetoric? No, rather it is the expression of the vast, cosmic sweep of Paul’s magnificent intellect, the measure of the depth of his spiritual perception.

Yes, this is your Christmas check from the Almighty with your name written upon it — God’s promise to supply all your need, certified and countersigned in the blood of Calvary.

Such a glorious Christmas gift deserves close inspection. Let’s take a careful look at this Christmas check of yours and notice three qualifying features about it.

First, the promise of God is to supply all our need, and not our wants. There is a difference you know. We have a way of confusing our needs with our wants or our wishes, of worshipping a God whom we have made in the image of an indulgent Santa Claus. And when the object of our faith does not immediately oblige with every detail of our expressed wish, in proper color of paint and texture of fabric, our faith is dashed.

But God never made such a promise. It is our needs and not our wants He obligates Himself to fulfill. Jesus teaches us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread,” and not, “Give us today, tomorrow and forever, cake and custard, ice cream and ambrosia.”

In one of those audience participation TV programs, the master of ceremonies was interviewing some six and seven year old children. To one little fellow the M.C. put this puzzler: “If somebody gave you a hundred dollars, what would you do with it?” Quick as a flash the little lad with a sensitive face replied: “I’d pay my Mama’s hospital bill.” “Then what would you do with what was left?” asked the M.C. “I’d buy Mama and Daddy a refrigerator and some furniture for the house.” Obviously amazed at the wants and wishes of such a seven year old, the interviewer pushed the lad still further and proved at last it was indeed a child he was interviewing. “And what then would you do with what you had left?” “I’d buy a candy store,” chirped the bright-eyed little boy.

Still amazed at this remarkable child, the M.C. took a different tack and said: “What are you going to be when you grow up?” The immediate, decisive response was: “I’m going to be a physiotherapist.” “And what is a physiotherapist?” “Somebody who helps sick people get well.” “How do you know about physiotherapists and what they can do?” “Because my Mama has been sick and the physiotherapist has been coming to our house to help her walk again.”

The difference between our needs and our wants? What is it? Would to God we knew as much about this important matter as did that small potential physiotherapist! First, notice this qualifying feature of your Christmas check on the divine grace — it’s made out to supply all your need — not your wants or wishes.

There is a second thing to notice about God’s blank Christmas check: He promises to supply all our need according to His riches. That means, I take it, not only that He will be drawing on His boundless heavenly resources, but also that His supply to meet our needs will be according to His estimate of what those needs are, rather than judging by our idea of what our needs are. We not only confuse our wants with our needs, but also, we know how mistaken we can be in sizing up or forecasting our needs. Take salary for example: how often we’ve thought a given figure would be sufficient, but in a new locality or a new situation living expenses were higher, or inflation overtook us, or unexpected illness and responsibility befell us. We just didn’t know what our needs were going to be.

When Christ was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod the King, devout Jews were expecting God to send them a Messiah who would come as a mighty military deliverer to free them from Roman tyranny. That’s what people thought they needed in that day more than anything else. But God sent instead a little baby to a poor family who grew up to be a mild-mannered, courageous man who proclaimed Himself a Savior from sin.  God knew better than people their deepest needs and sent a Savior from sin to meet their need according to His riches. And, ever since, people have been bursting into song and celebrating holidays and dividing all time into before and after His birthday because of their joy that God met their needs according to the riches of His judgment and grace rather than giving people what they thought they needed.

People so often are like horses in a burning stable, who nervously sense danger and need but will dash back in to the blazing doorway to their destruction unless guided by a superior intelligence to the safety they unknowingly need.

God’s blank Christmas check is His promise to supply all our need according to His riches and judgment. So then: —

Be still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side:

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain,

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In every change, He faithful will remain.

Be still my soul, thy best, thy heavenly Friend,

Through thorny ways, leads to a joyful end.

Finally, notice this about God’s Christmas check made out to you — it is His promise to supply all your need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. What God will supply then is not left to inscrutable fate, a mystery of which we have no hint. There is this clear token — it is a Christmas check. The promised collateral is Christ — “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

And what is the glory of Christ? Why, it is humility, not pride; self-sacrifice rather than self-assertion; thirsting for the privilege of serving rather than hankering after being served; of loving and not counting the cost; of hoping and believing in poor, broken, undependable beings like Judas Iscariot, and Simon Peter, and you and me, and getting hurt by it. That is the peculiar glory of Jesus Christ. This is what God promised to provide for us to meet our every need. What do you now make of your Christmas check’s value? Has it become a worthless thing in your sight?

Everyone knows that the surest way to forecast need is to determine destination. Where are we all going? What is our destination? Whether we know it or not, eternity is our destination. God knows. And our needs for that are best met in God’s riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

When Nathan Pusey was the President of Harvard University his family doctor was fond of saying: “Nate really feels he is training his children and his students, not for this life, but for eternity.”

Travelers to India tell of seeing there men who sit beside pools of still water and, by skillfully dropping colored dust slowly on the surface of the water, paint recognizable portraits of great people. Then the wind comes, ruffles the surface of the water and the face vanishes. Is that what this life you and I are living is like? A mysterious hand drops dust on the surface of time and lo, a face momentarily appears: an Isaiah, a Moses, a Mendelssohn, a Sister Teresa of Calcutta, then the water trembles and the face disappears into nothingness? Is that all there is to it?

Well, such is not the meaning of life as God has revealed it in Jesus Christ. The Calypso carol belts out that meaning in the words: “And man shall live forevermore, because of Christmas day.” Yes, man may, but will he? Is he getting ready? Will he have what he needs when he arrives? Not unless that need is supplied by God, and God alone, in the Savior Christ, God’s consummate Christmas gift. For Christ not only sketches for us the outline of that perfect character portrait, but by His amazing grace, supplied to meet our deepest needs, helps us achieve that Christ-like character which is the goal of all our living.

The journey of the magi to the Christ child is a parable of what we are here talking about. The wise men and women of life are those who see the heavenly goals, the eternal destination of humanity, as a bright star shining in a firmament of life, and journey far, enduring hardships, discomforts and even the scorns of the worldlings upon their purpose, in order to bring the treasures of their lives and place these at the feet of the manger cradled King.

And our God will supply all we need for that. We can bank on that. And we can bank on this, too. He will give us all the strength and health, all the wisdom and patience, all the courage and endurance we need to weather the wilderness storms and bring through to Him our caravan of years. “For our God shall supply all our need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

To an open house in the evening,

Home shall men come,

To an older place than Eden,

And a taller town than Rome.

To the end of the way of the wandering star,

To the things that cannot be and that are,

To the place where God was homeless,

And all men are at home.

1. K. Chesterton — Home at Last