Says, therefore, my beloved,
as you have always obeyed. So now, not only as in my presence,
but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to
will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without
grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent,
children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and
twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights to the world,
holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ
I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain."
Now, we've spent some time here in Philippians 2 thus far, and
There's still a lot to deal with. And when we get to verse 12,
we start to see a transition with Paul moving into the therefores. Therefore, because of the gospel,
because of this, because of the power of God, because of what
God has done, because of who Christ is, because of who you
are in Christ, all of these things, therefore, therefore, therefore.
Last week, we looked at the nature of obedience and the fact that
obedience to the gospel of Jesus, and I say the gospel, and that's
really a mis-tag, if you will. If you don't know what that means,
that means I'm just sort of misapplying a label. The gospel of Jesus
Christ is the good news of Jesus. We've gone through it. We know
what it is. We understand it. But at the same time, the gospel
is to be obeyed in that the gospel produces something. In Romans
1 16, it says, for I'm not ashamed of what the gospel of Jesus Christ,
for it is what the power of God unto salvation first to the the
the Jew and then the Greek. And so if the gospel is the power
of God, then the gospel in itself requires an obedience to what?
The commands of Christ. So the commands of Christ are
not the gospel, but yet they are emphatic of the gospel so
that the gospel is seen and evidenced through obedience and through
holiness. And that's what we walked through last week. And what it
looks like is this, is that there's no reason to say as a Christian,
well, I just can't stop sinning. in this area. It's just not OK
to say that. Now, it's OK to say this is difficult.
It's OK to say, I want to really put this out of my life and it's
going to take it's going to take some prayer and it's going to
take some discipline on my part. But the power of God and the
gospel is sufficient for it. And it doesn't even mean that
when we tackle this particular sin here or that particular sin
there, that it's going to give us a situation of sinless perfection. Not at all, because even our
consciousness sins. There's sinful temptations in
the mind. There's sinful lusts of the heart
that are there because of the flesh. But friends, I'll tell
you that there's nowhere in the life of a Christian to say that
I just surrendered to sin. It just doesn't happen. It's
not possible for a Christian to just give up and let sin reign
in his life, because the sin has been put to death. So what
we find, and some of us would say, well, man, there were a
season there, I wondered about myself. But maybe that season now is
past and you found that there is a righteousness that's not
of your own, that's effective in your life. There's the gospel
that's obedient, the gospel of faith, the obedience of faith.
This is actively working in you by the will and the pleasure
of God. Because see, when we don't desire to obey, when we
don't walk with a striving to live holy, then what we're saying
is that the will and the pleasure of God is not for us to walk
and live holy. But the Bible says that it is.
It is the will and the pleasure of the Lord that we strive for
holiness, because in turn, it proves it proves that we are
indeed the products of God's grace, the products of the gospel. So I don't care whether it's
addiction or language or sexuality or what it might be. When we
look at the the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, the pride
of possessions, when we see the things in the world and we see
Christ for who he really is, those things, though, they may
seem like they are desirable, we know that they're not. We
know that they do not give joy. And that's the ultimate end of
what Paul is teaching these Philippian Christians. It's the ultimate
end of what the Bible teaches us, is that the litmus test of
our salvation is that we have the fullness of joy in Christ
alone. And that anything that comes
a-knockin' to take Christ's place, we just throw it away. We go,
no, I don't. You know what? That may give
me a 45 second smile on my face. But ultimately, I know that that's
not going to satisfy me in the place of Christ. This thing. And sometimes we look at sin
and we think, well, those are the evil and wicked things that
we do. It's surely inclusive. But friends, it's not just that.
It's also the things that bide for our time. It's also the things
that continue to consume us. Things that are actually somewhat
beneficial and even somewhat good. Let me give you some examples.
What about the fact that we spend so much time working and we say
we don't have any time for prayer and we don't have any time for
Bible study, we don't have any time for this, we don't have
any time for the saints. Friends, that's ridiculous. I've never
met a person who has not gone to the bathroom in three weeks.
I've never met a person who's not eaten in three weeks that
wasn't in the hospital. I've never I've never been in
a place where I've seen people who have failed to to get dressed
and just walk around naked all over town. So we make time for
that, which is essential to us. Let me tell you something. The
scripture says that physical fitness is of some value, but
spiritual fitness is of all value. So if I had to decide whether
or not I was going to eat food or eat the word of God, I believe
I would choose the Bible. Oh, I can hear him now. That's
a crazy statement. He's saying we should starve
to death. No, I'm saying if you're starving for the gospel, you'll
eat the gospel. You ever been so enthralled in
study of God's Word that you didn't eat that day? You know
what the word fasting is all about? That's when you're like,
man, I don't need food. I want to pray. I want to spend time
with the Lord. I'm going to give up. It's not something that hurts
you. Fasting never hurts you. Fasting doesn't bother your body.
You're so occupied with the joys of Christ that you don't know
to eat. It's not this idea of punishing yourself. Oh, I used
to make the joke with some college students who went on this annual
fast. I said, well, I'm going to make
you a t-shirt. Don't bother me, I'm fasting. Because that's the
way, I mean, my goodness. It's just one of these things
that we've got to realize that the power of the gospel satisfies
us in such a way. Well, you might argue, what happens
to the, we see saints all over the time, all the time we see
saints of all of history that fail and that have sin in their
lives. And so what do we do with them? Well, listen, we say we
understand that sin is going to happen in the lives of the
Christian. It's going to happen from time to time, but it's not
normative. And when we see these bad examples,
it shows us several things. One, it shows us that they are
still human. Second, it shows us that in their righteousness,
they cannot pursue salvation and affect salvation on their
own, that it's all about Christ. And thirdly, we see an area of
weakness or an area of failing or an area of sin in their life,
followed by an area of great restoration and repentance. to
which everybody would say, we know they didn't climb out of
that. God had to do that. so that God gets the glory, so
that God is praised in his continued sustenance. He's praised in his
preservation of his people. And so when we look at holiness,
friends, there is no one who should ever say to you that we
should not look at the law of God or that we should ignore
being obedient to the commands of Christ, because the whole
New Testament is replete with continued verses that teach that
those who do not desire to obey are not in Christ. James even
says it's not about the things that you do that are evil, it's
also the things that you don't do that you should do. The good
things, the praying, the discipline of being together in the church.
The writer of Hebrews says that when those who aren't in the
church, because of no reason except that they just don't want
to be here, that, oh, you know, I'll go play golf, or I'll go
swim, or I'll go do this. Now we have seasons of our life.
You ever been depressed and not even want to get out of the bed?
You didn't care if Jesus was the one knocking at the door? We've
got a picture of that somewhere around here too, by the way.
That was a bad joke, but it popped into my mind when I said that.
I saw Jesus knocking. But we've been in places where
we were sick or we were emotionally drained. I'm not talking about
those short little seasons. I'm talking about people just
flipping, no, I don't worry about going to church. I don't need
to be in church. Church isn't what it's about. For the most
part, they're probably right because they've never been in
the church. They've attended a big group gathering, and it's
called worship, and the people there are calling themselves
the church, but they're not born again. They're just a bunch of
lost people living in a worldly sense, putting labels on worldly
stuff, and putting Jesus stickers on top of all of it, and saying,
look, we're the church. But ultimately, what happens is that the Christian
comes to church. The writer of Hebrews says the
one sure way of knowing if someone is falling away or is truly unregenerate
is that they have no desire to be with the saints of God in
worship. Do not do what he says. Gather together. Gather together,
do not do not fail in that as some are in the habit of doing.
Don't do that, because if you're not together, guess what? You
can't obey Christ. If you're not together, the gospel
has no effect in your life. If you're not with the saints,
you can't tell us what you need and you can't give us what you
need or what we need. That's a one way street the other
way, wasn't it? It sounds like marriage. Everything she has is hers, everything
I have is hers. You know how that works? Y'all heard that before?
Is that true, Jessie? Yeah, that's right. That's her
baby. You just get to stand around
and look at it. Back to the point. Obedience.
It's the litmus test. And you know what's crazy is
that obedience to the word of God is not a, as we'll see, is
not, as we've seen last week, is not a burden. It's not something
that we labor. We don't get up every day and
go, I would love to disobey God. We don't go to the grocery store
and look at all the worldly things or the shopping mall and say,
man, I just wish I wasn't a Christian for just 10 minutes. I would
just love to just dive into that worldliness over there. We don't
see the club and the party scene and go, oh, I would just wish
I wasn't saved. I'd just go enjoy me a time at
the dance hall or whatever. We don't do that. Christians
don't do that. We don't labor over the trauma
of our salvation. Oh, I wish God hadn't saved me.
I wish I didn't have to obey the Lord. No, we want to obey
Christ. We want to live for His glory.
We are dissatisfied when we sin. And when we do have a momentary
lapse of cerebral function, we fall into sin and we look at
Him and go, what have I done? I have disgraced my Father. I
have disgraced my Lord and Savior. I have fallen into a place that
is dishonorable to them. And what do we do? We cry for
mercy. to which it's already been given. We're already forgiven,
which is what even the writer of Hebrews says makes that sin
so much worse. If it is not repented of, we
continue to expose Christ to public shame and to hold him
up to content, kicking against him and stepping on him because
he's in our way and he's in the way of our satisfaction. You
see what that looks like. So for someone to say that it's
not necessary for the Christian, the truly born of God, to be
concerned with their personal holiness so that they can be
concerned, most importantly, with the holiness of the body
of Christ, it makes no sense. You have to really be an incredibly
creative person to pick and choose the New Testament text that gives
that truth. And Philippians at really tells
us that it can't be. We are supposed to obey Christ
because Christ has obeyed the father, thus creating us to be
his people so that the fruit of Christ is our fruit. The mind of Christ is our mind. Jesus didn't get in the garden
and hesitate in obedience. He prayed that if there was another
way, He wasn't stupid. He knew that the cross was something
horrible. He knew that death was something
He did not want. How many people have just, if
you've ever seen anybody in an altercation, I don't know if
any of you, hopefully by the grace of God, you never have,
but I have seen people die. I've seen people shot and stabbed
and die on the street of heart attacks and overdoses. And it's
just an unreal thing. No, no, no, no, no. I've never
met anybody in the middle of dying in those situations that
go, no, no, that's okay, I'm going to die. No, they're fighting
with everything in them to stay alive. Please help, help, please
call now something. People don't, when they get attacked
on the street, they don't just stand there and go, yeah, I've
been looking for this. No, they run. No one, when they're engaged
in an accident, man, why didn't I break my neck? When they get
out with a broken finger, they're like, thank God, I saw my life
flash before my eyes. And I know that's not a good
apologetics, not a good argument because it's a generalization.
But I would say, generally speaking, most people that you will talk
to would not want to die if they had the opportunity today. And
so because of that, we know We know that Jesus did not want
to die in his flesh, but he did want to obey the father. He did
want to obey God. He did want to redeem a people.
He did want to show that his obedience was absolute and he
was no hesitation. He was in the garden preparing
for the cross. He wasn't hiding like Jonah and
running. He wasn't he wasn't skirting
around the issue like Peter. I don't I don't know him. I don't
know who you're talking about. I'm not of these people, Peter
would say. Yeah, we saw him with the Christ. You did. It wasn't me. I was
my neighbor. He looked like me. Yeah. Jesus obeyed. A.W. Pink would say in 2009, when
I read an article by him, not an article, but some of his writing,
The very last closing line of this particular piece said, if
there's any hesitation, any pause, any delay in your obedience,
you're on your way to hell. And I took that thing and I balled
it up and I threw it in the garbage. And I've told the story many
times. And two days later, I took it out and I straightened it
back out. And he's right. He's right. It doesn't mean that
if there's sin, because John tells us if we sin, If we sin,
we have what? An advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ, the righteous, who is our propitiation and not
ours alone, but propitiation for the world. So we have an
advocate with the Father, but the writer of Hebrews says if
we go on deliberately sinning, if we go on deliberately sinning
and then the evidence of that is to be a disobedient to the
command of gathering together, you can't obey Christ alone.
like you can obey him together. The disobedience of being alone
and isolated as a church member, as a Christian of the body, is
like if I just want to leave my head at the house. How functioning
would I be? How can I obey the good commands
of bearing your burdens if I never see you? Because I'm absent and
vice versa. So here in this text, Paul has
really made it clear, I hope now that we're sort of caught
up into the moment of what this is teaching. And it starts there
that because they have obeyed, they are to continue to obey
even the more while he's not present. This is review because
this is a visual, visual, visual. visible je, visible display of
the power of God's gospel. This is a reflection of God's
glorious grace through Jesus Christ, and this is the working
out of our salvation with fear and trembling. We talked about
that last week. And that this working out, though
it is our discipline, it's not working unto salvation, it's
working from salvation. It's working out our salvation
as we're working in our salvation. In other words, it's better understood,
and this is so wrong, and people will go, this is not correct
exegetically. Well, let me give you a good, correct way of looking
at it in a watered-down way. Just like we work out our bodies
in order to get in shape, we work out our salvation in order
to stay in shape. We must work because it isn't
about God. And I gave the example that I
hear often. Well, if God wants me to stop
doing this, then He'll stop me. I hope we don't pray. Do you
pray that way? I hope not. I mean, in a moment of despair,
in a very bad spot, at the pit of darkness, you might cry out
and get a little cocky with God, but it's a real short-lived fuse.
It's a short-lived fuse. Let me tell you something. The
Holy Spirit of God can rebuke us in such a way that it feels
like we've been run over by a tank and lifted by a cloud at the
same time. a baseball bat to the face, and
a good shoulder rub. You know? It's like, wow. Thank
you, God. You're there. You're there, and
he heals us. But we don't pray that way, do
we? We don't say, oh, Lord, I come to you right now, and if you're
any kind of God, you'll help me stop sinning right now. And
if you don't, I'm gonna keep doing it. Do we pray that way?
No, we don't pray that way. Why? Because even people who
aren't truly born again are scared to death to pray that way. People
who believe in God would never say such things because they're
not. They're not that silly. Even superstitiously, they know
better. So we don't pray that way. Why do we say that to each
other? Why do people on the streets or people in our churches or
people in our homes or people in the community when we're talking
to them? And you've probably heard people say that in your
own family. That's usually when you get those kind of statements.
people that you're discipling and ministering to, and you're
trying to help, and you're trying to share the gospel. Well, if
God wants me to stop being an alcoholic, then by golly, He
better just stop it. Okay. If that's what you want. It's not the way it works. God
will, but if we don't desire to, then God hasn't. God hasn't
even called us. God hasn't even saved us. God
hasn't even brought us out of darkness when we walk in darkness.
It's a very difficult thing because everybody likes assurance of
salvation. We're friends. What if your assurance of salvation
was based on your obedience? Then where would we be? Oh, we'd
all be begging at the foot of the cross, clawing, banging on
the door. Jesus be on the other side trying
to hold it shut. Boy, these people just can't get it together. Hey,
Michael, get the bolt. Let's bolt this thing up. These
people are never going to get it. Thank God it's not about our
righteousness. But to say that Christ has given us His righteousness,
that Christ in the same power that raised Him from the dead
is residing in us, that the Holy Spirit who gave Christ the power
to endure the cross is living in us and empowering us through
the Word of God to live obediently, to say that we can't or that
we don't want to is problematic. Not just being in church, but
reading the Bible, praying. Now, I've had seasons in my life
where I could not pray. You ever been there? I couldn't
pray. And you're up all night, and you're like, I can't pray.
And you're talking to God about not being able to pray, and what's
going on, and why can't He help me, and all this kind of stuff.
And the next thing you know, you've been up all night praying. But you just didn't know. You
were just sort of communicating with God, and the next thing
you know, you've got peace about it. God's, He goes, wow. In my
need for prayer, God's called me to pray for praying, and now
I'm praying. And sometimes those are one day,
sometimes those are weeks and sometimes I hope not, but sometimes
they can be months and years. It's a working out our salvation,
but we don't lose heart in that, why? Because it's God that's
working in us. Remember last week we talked about that. It
is God's work. God is effective in working out our righteousness.
So the work of salvation is effective because God has willed it so.
It does happen with no failure. It doesn't mean that failure
doesn't come along, but it doesn't happen in the sense it doesn't
fail. We don't lose our hope. We don't
lose our righteousness. We don't lose our justification.
We don't lose our salvation. For if we're able to throw Christ
away, guess what? We were never his. What we did
with those types of believers are those who have actually have
got it in their mind that they actually picked Jesus. And because
they picked Jesus, they were actually they had him. And then
all of a sudden things came up. And next thing you know, Jesus
is out of the picture. Well, you know what? They had a Jesus. But Jesus is
a very common name. It wasn't Jesus, the Christ,
the Lord, the son of the most high. It was just a Jesus they'd
come up with in their own place, in their own mind, in their own
culture. It's not the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus of the Bible
is Lord. And even the wicked of the world, for all of eternity,
will cry out, Jesus is Lord. And they will be on a bent knee
for all of eternity, as their torment goes up forever and ever.
Every human being will praise Jesus as Lord. Some out of obligation
and terror, and some out of delight, like us. Do you believe in Christ
that way? Is He your Lord? Is He your Savior?
Is He your hope? Is He your treasure? Is He your
King? Is He your blessed assurance? You know that song? We sang it
last week. Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine. Oh, what a foretaste
of glory divine. We'll sing that after we're done. Beautiful. That's what being
born again does. It opens our eyes to see something
that we've never seen in such a way. It's not about what our
mama taught us or our daddy taught us or our sister or preacher
down the road or what we learn from a book. It's about what
God has shown us internally in our hearts and our souls, evidenced
by the Word of God so that we can show the same thing we see
to someone else. Not our personal experience, though it is very
personal, but it's an experience that God alone allows to take
place through his word alone. Living out obedience in the gospel
is glorifying for God, this is review because it is his work
and it is pleasing to him because he is pleased with his work.
It's amazing to me the number of Baptist pastors with all the
steep history of the Baptist faith from the Anabaptist to
the Dutch Reformed and on and on and on to the Southern Baptist
Convention of the 19th century. And then the reform that we even
see today through all the different Baptist associations and denominations. But Baptist theology, it blows
my mind. There's always been some solid foundations to which
are now being eroded in the last hundred years. And one of them
is the fact that God is dependent upon man. People would say that
God is dependent upon man. Well, friends, I will tell you
this, if God is dependent upon man, we better start shopping
for another one, because that is a very lowly, impossible God
that has no power. If God is dependent upon man
for his pleasure, if God is dependent upon man for his glory, if God
is dependent upon man for his sufficiency or his self-esteem,
then we have a big problem. And the scripture teaches exactly
the opposite. God is in the heavens. He does what he pleases. God
is the master carpenter, the creator of all things. He is
the potter who makes the clay. Does the clay say back to the
potter, why have you made me this way? God creates all things
for his glory and for the benefit of his own wisdom. for the power
of his own, his own words, he does that which he pleases, and
it pleases him to see the work of his hands. The Bible says
that the word of God does not return void, but it goes out
and it does all that it was intended to do so that when you hear the
word of God and God heartened, hardens your heart against him,
that is the intention of God. And yet, if we shake our fists
and say, God, you hardened my heart, then how are we aware
that he's hardened our heart? We are then being rebellious
to that which God has even clearly shown us in the scriptures. But
God's word is the only way that that hard heart that is even
dead before it even hears the word of God, the sinner who before
he has ever sinned, is guilty of sin, which is not a very popular
matter of fact, it's not even an existent doctrine today. radical
corruption or total depravity or whatever we want to call it.
The bottom line is when we look at the New Testament and we look
at the Old Testament, we will look at the creation of man.
We saw Adam and Eve created in righteousness and perfection
with an absolute innocence of wickedness. And yet we saw them
fall. And then what is Paul teach us
about that in Adam all by it doesn't say an Adam all die in
their due time when they sin against God, it says an Adam
all die. And if all died in Adam, Then for the second, Adam, many
will be made alive. We know that the Bible teaches
that people are guilty of being sinners even before they sin. To say otherwise is an incredible
misstatement, a blasphemous proposition that suggests that man knows
better about how to grade and evaluate the kindness and the
righteousness of children. Well, if we want to give an age
of accountability, I would say that it's probably around six
months. If I had to say there is one, that's probably even
before that. But I know that about six months, every one of
my five children, somewhere about there, decided that they would
learn to cry and fuss when there was nothing wrong, just so that
you would pick them up. And some people, well, that's
a psychological need. I think it's a selfish need. And we carry
our children everywhere. If Katie would let us, we'd carry
her around. I mean, we just love to carry our children. There's
nothing wrong with it. If you want to carry your children,
that's fine. But don't joke around in the idea that this is just
some physiological thing. Friends, children are sinners. And because they are sinners,
when they are able to walk and talk, they will sin against God.
The innate, frustrating truth of the mind of humanity is that
when a child at six, eight, ten months of age wants that shiny,
bright thing hanging around your neck and you say no, no, and
they pitch a fit and they slap at you, that is sin. It is willful
sin before they even know that it's wrong. They do it instinctively. They're guilty. I know that opens
a lot of questions, but I want you to understand that we are
not innocent in any way, ever. I think it's what makes abortion
so wicked, on top of the other reasons. Part of working out our salvation,
working it in, is exemplified in some specifics. Here we are
for the text today. Do all things without grumbling
or questioning. Some texts say complaining. that
you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish
in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom
you shine as lights to the world, holding fast to the word of life
so that in the day of Christ I, Paul, may be proud that I
did not run or labor in vain. There's a lot here. But I want
you to think about it for a moment. Paul is saying as we work out
our salvation, that there's a couple of things we should always keep
in mind in the context of obeying Christ. If we have the mind of
Christ, which is ours in Christ Jesus, that we are to put on
and have Put on the new man, put to death the old man. It's
ours in Christ Jesus. We are new creation. 2 Corinthians
chapter 5 would teach us. We are now reconciled to the
Father because God in His kindness has come and snatched us out
of the domain of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of
Christ. We are a new creation. We are dead to our sin. When
we were dead in our sins, God made us alive in Christ. So now
we're dead to our sins. For Christ has crucified the
flesh. So the working out of our salvation
is exemplified in some specifics. According to Paul here, he says
in all things. Now, what's the context there? All what things, all everything's. All things. All things you do,
all things you say, all things you think, all places you go,
all the stuff you look at, all the stuff you hear, all the stuff
you eat, everything you do, do it. In context, obey. And as you're obeying in all
things, do it without grumbling. Do it without disputing. Do it. so that you can show yourself
blameless. It's like the old cliché or the
old adage, if you will, hit dogs always holler. You ever heard
that? That's a redneck phrase if you've ever heard one. A hit
dog always hollers. We have wireless collars on our
dogs when they're out in the backyard and if they come close
to the boundary that we've set and it zaps them, they float
on air and they yelp. Yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp.
And so the first two or three times, then they learn. Well,
I can go about right here by this bush. I can get next to
the cement. And when they hear that warning beep, they got like
three seconds. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And they back up.
You see them, they get right out of the border. There's still
a lot of people in it. Beep, beep, beep. We know where the boundaries are. We
go right there. Friends, that's not the way Christians live.
We don't live at the edge of the boundary of what we can get
away with. We don't look to the word of God to see what it is
that God will allow us. How far into sin can we go? We
see the boundary and we run the other way. into righteousness,
into Christ. That's what the gospel does for
us in our hearts. And when we skip out on meals,
we start to become malnourished and weak and frail in our spiritual
meals. When we skip out on the Word
of God and we skip out on the fellowship of the saints, we
skip out on understanding and teaching and proclaiming the
gospel, we start to lose sight of those boundaries for our good
and for our joy. And when we do that, then we
start to look at them in a disdaining way. We start to have frustration
when we say, Man, I've got to obey. This is so hard. You see what Paul's talking about?
Obey Christ without grumbling. Obey Christ without complaining. Obey Christ without disputing.
Don't murmur and grumble in your spirit. Don't be frustrated as
you obey the Lord. Find your joy in it. Find your
joy in walking in righteousness, find your joy in being satisfied
in the fact that God has created in you a new heart and a new
mind and a new life. Because as we are walking and
doing all that we do, we ought to do all that we do. What does
Paul say in other places? For the glory of Christ, whether
we eat or drink or speak or whatever we do, we do it for the glory
of God so that then we can drink milk or put on our socks or go
to the mailbox for the glory of God. You ever met one of those
most people would call obnoxiously happy people? And you think to
them, you think to yourself, well, you know what this is?
Let's say what we think. Why are they always so happy?
They just aggravate me. They're always so upbeat. And you know,
when we think that way, when we're having a really rough day,
or a bad season, or just to have a little grumpy attitude, not
necessarily externally, because we're smiling, carrying on, and
there's this person there, over the top, excited about everything,
and you're like, you just, aggravating me. I'd rather just go watch
paint dry than talk to you right now. I mean, you know, you know,
you ever felt like that? You know why? Because we're sinful.
We envy the fact that they can have joy, but the reality is,
is that that same joy is ours in Christ. And I'm not saying
that those people actually have the joy of Christ. Some people
just get that excited about flowers. See, when I'm outside working
in the yards, I get a mixed bag. I'm glorifying God and all that
He's made and the enjoyment of doing it all, and then when I
get through sweating and feel aggravated, I'm like, this is
just a waste of time. There's nothing good about any
of this. Let's just pave it all over and
paint it green. I've got better things to do
than worry about this kind of stuff. We could be saving souls or sitting
on the couch. You can resonate with some of
that. But why do we care? Why do we care about grumbling
and complaining? Why should we really be concerned with that?
Because grumbling and disputing disprove the gospel. Because
in the antithesis of that, there may be some annoying people who
are always over the top joyful. But you know what's worse? The
complainers. Aren't they? You know how we
can, I heard that, you know how we can tell when we're really
not reflecting Christ-like joy in our home? When our children
say, you know, you've been complaining all day. Yes, we give them the
liberty to say that at the right time when the puzzle piece is
right. Share with us how you feel about things. Not in the
heat of it. We're getting on to you about
something, don't come, well now, the Bible. You might be right. Timing's wrong. Really wrong. But we don't show the joy. A Christian comedian years and
years ago said that a lot of times people in their evangelism,
they're talking about the gospel, and they're sharing their faith,
and they're talking about the glory of Christ, but people know them. And they
know them, and they're complaining and arguing, and I'll just tell
you, I don't ever get to have any fun, and I'm at church seven
days a week, and those people at church drive me nuts, and
this and that and the other, and I'm just so tired, and my
husband's aggravated, and my wife's this and all this, and
the children never behave, and I'm just tired of that preacher
and all this other kind of stuff. Now, do you want to get saved?
Join me in my misery? No. So at minimum, when we complain
and grumble about walking in Christ, what does it say to the
world? What is it? What are we should
what should we be known for? We are to call out evil. We are
to fight against the opposition of the gospel. But it's supposed
to be done in a way that is that is Christ like. How did Christ
fight against death? He died. And raised to life. How did Christ defend himself
against the accusations of being a fraud? He burst out of the
grave. He raised Lazarus from the dead.
He didn't go, nanny, nanny, boo boo, look at that, I told you. Lazarus came out, he walked down
there and says, hey, Lazarus, dead rotting guy, come out of
the grave. And he waddled out with his grave
clothes still intact, and Jesus says these incredibly prophetic
words, unbind him and let him go. I hope you can hear that. Because that's what the gospel
does. It unbinds us and lets us go. The scriptures say that
when the Son sets you free, you're free. And ironically, being free
by the Son of God, it means that we're a slave to righteousness.
And righteousness by its fruit, Galatians 5 says, is kindness
and gentleness and respect, long-suffering patience, kind words, joy, Humility,
you know, the. The fruit of Christ and the fruit
of the work of God produces this type of stuff, and every one
of us are going, oh, we're in big trouble. Put it on. and put it on. And when our brothers
and sisters need to vent, let them vent. And then touch them
gently on the shoulder and say, I understand where you are, but
you need to put your heart in check that you would find joy
and that your mouth would respond in a praise of thanksgiving rather
than a problem. Do all things without grumbling
and disputing. Pray at all times without ceasing. Rejoice in all ways, brothers. In every type of persecution,
James says. That's one of the number one
questions in counseling that I've had in the last 20 years.
How am I supposed to be thankful in the midst of pain? In the
midst of suffering? In the midst of what I consider
a hopeless situation? Number one, repent of your failure
to believe. And Christ and the power of God
to take what you think is hopeless and make absolutely certain. If God can save you. From just
from judgment, if God can raise Christ from the dead, he can
change a marriage. If your depression is too big for God, there's no
hope for you. If your financial setbacks are
just going to take your joy from you, then God's too big for that,
too. I mean, it's too big for God.
He's not. But when we complain and complain,
what it does is it shows a sense of unbelief in our hearts. It
shows a sense of ingratitude. We forget that all good things,
we learned this two weeks ago, all good things come from the
Father of lights. All good things come from above.
All good things. And we see that Paul teaches
that all things that come to the children of God are good
and for our good, even if they themselves are not good. So if
someone gives you a pile of trash and they know just a few minutes
later that that pile of trash is worthwhile for your good,
it's not a bad gift, is it? We do all things. So that we
are blameless and innocent children of God. In some sense, Paul is
saying, as you go, as you now put yourself in the Philippians
shoes. We have this thing in our culture
in the last 10 years or so called first world problems. My microwave
is. Too old. or the cable is out. And if you watch social media
streams, you'll see the Facebook and the Twitter streams and you'll
see Pinterest and you'll see things like that. And you'll
see people complain. And now it's so ironic that they
even will tag it first world problems. My Evian is hot. Three, you know, thirty five
dollars a gallon for water. First world problems. My shoes
are outdated. My car's dirty. It's so hot my
air condition barely catches up. See, those complaints. What would it sound like to someone?
I don't know. What would it sound like to a
Palestinian refugee right now? What would it sound like This is a first world problem
to Paul. Man, I got a tear in my Bible.
I can't believe that guy tore my Bible when I was street preaching.
It can happen, can't it, Jesse? That's why I use cheap Bibles.
They'll grab it and throw it. What would it sound like for
the Philippians to complain? They would say, Paul, they took
my house from me. They ran into my home and they
snatched us out. They took my kids away and they put them in
the back of this chariot and they took them away. Where did
they go? Where are my children? Where's my home? Where am I going
to live? Paul, they arrested my brother and he's in chains
here in Philippi and they're going to beat him tomorrow. They're
going to take that captain. I'm going to rip the flesh off
his back. That will be a complaint. And you told us if we just keep
preaching the gospel that we would be vindicated. Where is
this vindication? Now you're in prison and now
we're going to prison. What's going to happen, Paul?
Is God going to open the prison doors like he did with you in
Silas when you were here? What if he doesn't? Paul, our whole neighborhood's
on fire. They found some of your writings in my bedroom and they
burned down our neighborhood. They burned our house. They burned
our neighbor's house down and killed two of their children
because they just did. They just thought they were part
of the church. What are we supposed to do? We have no food. We have
no money. We have nothing but what's on
our back and we're running for our lives. We're out in the middle
of the desert. We've no water. We're fighting here. We're trying
to stay under the radar. But our hearts compel us to preach
the gospel. So we go into the streets and
we preach. And a group of us stays back to take care of our
wives and our children, to keep them safe for just a little few
more days. See, that would be the complaints
of the Philippians. And Paul says, everything you do, do without
grumbling. You die without complaining. You lose your home without complaining.
You lose your freedom without complaining. You give up all
that you have for the sake of Christ and Him alone. For to
live is Christ and to die is gain. Paul wasn't just saying,
he was living. and do it without grumbling,
do it without being frustrated, do it without being aggravated,
do it without being pitied, so that we are blameless, so
that we are innocent children of God in the midst of a crooked
and twisted generation. See, here's the ultimate power
behind it all. Here's the ultimate purpose,
if you will, that it will, that it pleases God to will His people
to live in such a way because the world looks in and goes,
there's no way I could be like that. There's no way I could
have this joy. There's no way I could have this
resolve. There's no way something supernatural is happening in
the lives of these people. And whether they see the gospel
or not, they'll witness it. Many people would follow the
Christians in Philippi during this season, mostly poor people
who had really nothing to lose. At least we've got a reason to
live. And they'd follow the church, not necessarily the Christ. And then eventually they'd fall
away, and that's what it means to taste the power of the word
and the kingdom and the spirit, and then to walk off. Here we are to be blameless and
innocent. We are to walk in such a way. That we be blameless, Paul does
not say that this obedience and lack of complaining and lack
of questioning, why God, why is this happening? Why is this
happening to me? Why not? What did the apostles
do when they came out of the out of prison? They said, don't
you dare ever preach in the name of Jesus again or we'll beat
you again. They walked out the cell into the courtyard of the
prison and begin to preach Christ. And then they went out into the
streets and they were rejoicing. And they said, we were found
worthy to be beaten for the sake of the gospel. Hallelujah. That's
what it looks like. It's absurd. It looks insane
to our humanity. It looks insane to our flesh.
It looks insane when we think about it and we pay it, we play
it out. But God has put it in us and
this is what it looks like. And it doesn't mean that sometimes
we don't make a defense on things, but we do it as though no defense
is necessary. We do it in such a way that it's
a very small thing. We write the one letter or we
make the one phone call or we have the one meeting and then
let God deal with it. God doesn't need us to be the
avengers of truth. He is the truth. We don't have
to undergird His superiority or His supremacy. He doesn't
need a flank of us pawns standing before Him like a chessboard.
He's not dependent upon our move and missions and evangelism.
He's not worried. Oh, no, James, you took the wrong
turn. He's not concerned with my wrong
turn, for if my turn is wrong, it will be right. Not so that we would become blameless,
so that we would be seen blameless. So that we would be seen innocent. Let's turn on the news. There's nothing good to see. I say this often, that there's
two things that are absolutely common unto man. Depravity and
suffering. Saints are the reprobate. The
lost, the saved. The righteous, the unrighteous.
We're all sinners in need of salvation and we're all going
to suffer. Period. Are we going to suffer
and give glory to God that the world may see us as blameless? How would it have been had Paul
got into the face of the Philippian guards and said, you touch me,
I'll have your job. Paul didn't want their job, he
wanted Christ to take their soul. I have a right Well, we do have
rights. And you know what? Sometimes
we need to exercise those rights when they're taken away from
us because they're commands of God, not because they're in the
Constitution, but be willing to suffer the consequences of
them. We are seen as innocent. Why
does it matter? Because we're in the middle,
as you see there, of a crooked and twisted generation. You're
in the midst of a crooked and twisted. Who is that? All the
lost. The Church of Jesus Christ as a whole lives in the darkness
in the world. But they shine because they've
been brought to light. We we are lights. In darkness. And if we're light and all we
do is sound like darkness, then we're darkness. We're just a
brighter darkness. We bring attention to darkness.
We reflect, we say Christ is sufficient. The gospel is all
powerful and friends, and I'm not preaching at you. I'm talking
to you and I'm sharing with you. This is all of our problems. But God is all of our answer.
The gospel is sufficient. We see that the darkness encroaches. The world is crooked. The world is twisted. The church
is not, is supposed to be in, but not of. We live among the
world, but we're not the product of it. We're the product of Christ,
we're the product of the gospel. And so that we are showing ourselves
innocent. We are showing ourselves blameless.
We are showing ourselves glorious because we are showing our Savior.
How can you do how can you have that's one of the greatest opportunities
in the world is that as we suffer, we can give praise to God through
in the midst of and because of the suffering. And the people
around us would so how can you do this? And we can say because
Christ, though he was equal with God, did not take equality with
God, something to be grasped, but made himself nothing obedient
as a slave unto death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted
him. That's how I can do it. Because
the mind of Christ is in me. We shine as light church. Why? To give glory to our Father who
is in heaven. Let your light so shine before men that they
see your good deeds and give, what? Glorify your Father who
is in heaven. We don't get the praise. Matter
of fact, people hate us when we live righteously. But they
know that God is at work. Whether they admit it or not,
they know that God is at work. And they hate us all the more.
But every now and then, as we see the gospel go out, God calls
some to join us in that effort. God calls some to partner in
grace. God calls some to partner in
obedience and to suffer well with the saints together that
we are one people, the body of our Lord shining bright. And so I would say that don't
don't pigeonhole yourself just in the issues of problems, but
I think we ought to shine. We ought to do things without
grumbling and disputing when we pray. Because I believe when
we pray genuinely, it reflects the nature of our heart, and
the nature of our heart should be like Christ. So when we see
the model prayer that Christ teaches us, pray in this manner,
we should pray almost to the letter in that way, and the essence
of it, and the spirit of it. And most importantly, we should
pray like Christ prayed. We shine as light as we learn.
We shine as light when we learn the Word of God, when we devour
the Gospel, when we live involved and in love with the Word of
God, so that the Gospel, the Word of God, which gives us the
Gospel, is producing continual fruit in our lives. We shine
as light. It perplexes me to see Christians,
and not everybody has the time that everybody else has, but
Christians who've been in churches for decades, ought to have a
very well-rounded foundation of doctrine and theology. They
ought to know what the Bible teaches about God and Jesus Christ
and salvation. They ought to know about the
authority of God's Word because it's taught everywhere in Scripture. But yet, they don't. And they
don't shine as light. And the only response they have
for the world when it hurts is, hang in there. And the only thing
they can share on a Facebook post is that picture of that
egret standing in the pond, half-swallowed a frog, and the frog's got his
hands around the bird's throat. Hang on. That's not it, folks. That's funny. It's interesting. But that's not the end. That's
not power. Your world turns upside down.
and your neighbor or your family or your spouse has deserted you
and hurt you and your body is dying, a frog with his hands
around a bird's throat is not going to help you. Maybe two
minutes. Isn't that funny? But where's
the metaphor? Because that's nowhere near the
gospel. So if we're not shining as light in the learning of the
word of God, we have no light to give. We can't give what we
don't have. We can't give what we don't practice. We can't give
what we're not growing inside of us. We cannot share our salvation
if we're not working it out with fear and trembling. We shine as light when we love,
when we engage in true love, speak the truth in love. We call
sin sin because we want people to see that without Jesus Christ
and his propitiation and his justification and his atoning
sacrifice. They have no hope against judgment,
not because we want them to change their lives and be moral. We
want them to see their need for a savior that through the hearing
of the words of Christ, they may come to faith. We shine as
light as we engage with our culture, with our community, with our
people of the world. We shine as light as we partner
in the gospel with other Christians on mission. As we preach the
gospel, as we live the gospel. And we start to see here how
Paul says that it actually fleshes itself out as lights in the world,
holding first 16 fast to the word of life so that in the day
of Christ, I may be proud I did not run in vain or labor in vain. What does it mean? What does
it mean to hold fast to the word of life? I thought about just
doing a whole sermon on that verse, and I may. I probably
should, I may next week. Holding fast to the word of life
is living out the gospel. It is clinging not to the throat
of our enemies, but to the cross of Calvary through the Savior. with a living faith. The woman
in the crowd, who we talked about Tuesday night in her class, touched
the hem of the garment of Jesus. She was one of thousands who
touched Jesus. She did not even touch His body,
but she knew with all certainty that all she had to do was get
the hem of His robe. Her faith was in such a way that
she held fast to the Word of Life. She held fast to the one
who is the life. She held fast to Christ. And this is evidence, friends,
by obedience in the times of stress, in the times of suffering,
in the times when it's easier to give in to sin, which includes
despair, guilt, pity, depression, frustration, isolation, all of
these things. That is sin. And holding fast to the word
of life means that when all this around me, myself included, is
dying and it seems that darkness has invaded the very orifice
of my soul, I choose life. I hold to Christ. I will obey
His commands at the cost of anything. I will stand. Because disobedience
is really unbelief. It's refusing Jesus Christ. Hesitation is really a refusal
of the reality that we know as Jesus. It really doesn't matter
what we say with our mouths, if our lives do not follow, we
confess or profess in vain. And so Paul is saying, hold fast
to the word of life, hold on, because if you don't hold on,
you never had hold of. If you don't hold on, He never
had hold of you. If you go to the flesh and to
the world and you ignore the gospel and you push Jesus Christ
away during these times, you are not His. No matter how much
you may walk in a pattern of Christlikeness, if you're not
born of God, it's of no consequence. But those of us who are born
of God, we hold fast to Christ, we obey, our mind is that of
Christ, our heart is like Christ, and we strive to be holy, we
strive to live, we strive to partner for the gospel. And because
of this, we profess Christ and our bodies and our lives as we
live is Christ. And it proves that Jesus is truly
saved us. It proves that we are the people
of God. And in return, the gospel is seen by the world. It's seen
by the church. Preaching is effective for salvation.
The saints are united in Christ and the church is pleasing to
God. Otherwise. Otherwise, Paul said,
I have preached in vain. I have run this race for you
in vain. I rebuked a man in Oklahoma.
Two weeks ago, by that very nature, by that very text to which the
response was that I was extremely arrogant to request that a man
of God, a pastor of a large church, was behooved to obey the Lord. Friends, it is good for us to
obey the Lord. And when we don't obey the Lord
and someone says it is in your right interest to obey the Lord,
we go, you're right. Why? Because we belong to him.
And if our cat jumps up and reads the Bible to us, we obey God.
Because the Bible is read. It is not the authority of the
person reading, it's the authority of what is read. That's why the Bible, the scripture,
that's why God is clear on who and who is not in authority over
the church. Because it is the word of God
that yields it, not me. Many people run the race of the
Christian life. And they're running in vain.
But we who are in Christ run for the purpose of the glory
of God. We run that it may be clearly seen that our works have
been carried out in God, we walk in such a way that, as Paul would
say to the Ephesians. For you are God's workmanship.
created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared
beforehand for you to walk in. You see how serious that is?
Because when we don't take hold of the word of life and walk
in such a way that we strive to follow after Christ, especially
when times are hard. Friends, we can be as Christian
as we want to be when life is good. Some of us. But when we stand, we prove God
true. And when we don't stand and hold
fast to the gospel, we. Are either saying that we're
proving ourselves a liar or God, a liar, and who is the liar?
Not God. I guess the question would be
in our closing, where do you stand? To what do you hold? For whom do you obey? Paul? Me? Neighbor? Church member? How is our attitude? How are
we in the context of our day when things are not going our
way? Are we walking and doing all
things with no grumbling? No complaining? Are we proving
the gospel by the way we live our lives? No. Well, maybe it
hasn't come to you. But it has today. The gospels
come to your ears today. You've heard that without Christ,
his life, his death, his resurrection, you have no hope. You've heard
that without God's intervention through the gospel of Jesus Christ,
that there is no place for you in eternity. You've heard that
Christ alone is the only righteous man who has ever lived in this
world. And he gave himself that you might have eternal life.
You've heard it. So it has come to you. Is it
your gospel? Or will you still continue to
work and labor in vain to effect your own righteousness? Or will
you surrender everything you are to the power of Christ and
see that His righteousness is displayed? Believe the gospel
of Jesus. It's not a one-time thing. It's
a present reality. It's not a point ten years ago.
It's right this moment. For the saints of all the world,
we believe in the gospel right now. Not yesterday. Now. And tomorrow when we wake
up, we may have to continually believe we continue to believe
we hold fast to the word of life when we think that our faith
was something that was affected way back yonder than maybe we've
lost it altogether and never had it. Do you have faith in
Jesus this moment? My prayer is that you do. that
you have that assurance to know that nothing you or I or anyone
else can do can affect salvation, except that which the God man
has already done for you, who died and who was raised to life
so that you might be forgiven of your sins. Let's pray. Lord, it does so good for us
to hear your word. It does so good for us to hear. The gospel. So that we don't lose sight of
it so often, we as Christians think the gospel is just for
the lost father, it's only for the saved. For the gospel reaching
the lost transforms that one into one of your children. You
bring them into light that the gospel is effective not just
for justification, but for holiness and righteousness and salvation
and glorification. Father, you are a mighty God
who certainly saves your own. So, God, as we confess to you
that we are yours. Lord, we long for assurance that
your spirit testifies to ours, that we are yours. In Christ. We are yours. Father, we are
grateful. We are grateful. We thank you, Father, for the
salvation that comes only by your kindness. Help us to forever
and continue to hold fast to the word of life. Help us to
be gentle with those who persecute us. Help us to trust in you in
the times of suffering, help us to be unmovable in our faith
when the world around us has shaken from beneath us. Because ultimately, it is pleasing
to you to see your work in us, help us to show you your work
as you work in us. To work and to will for your
good pleasure, the gospel of Jesus. For the souls of your
children. Save. The lost. To teach us to go and teach others
to obey Christ. So that you might save many more.
In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.