Is the gospel at work in you? Is it at work
in you? I think that is a question that
we should not just ask this morning, but ask every day. Every day
of our lives. There's a gravity that is seemingly
being washed away when it comes to the things of eternity in
our culture. We focus more on the suffering,
more on the luxuries, more on the remedial and temporal ideals
of life. We argue and debate in our philosophies
as they relate to our relative position in this world, rather
than focusing and dwelling and living to focus and be the people
that God has called us to be, and rather than focusing on that
which is sublime. and divine and eternal. We put
more stock into how we look than we do into how we live before
God. We put more stock into dealing
with what irritates us than we do to the point where people
can go to hell on never hearing the gospel and it seems to not
affect us. We care more about our paycheck
then we do giving of ourselves for the sake of the call of God.
And the list goes on. So the question is, is the gospel
working in us? Is it working in you? Is it working
in me? Is that, and better yet, a better
question would be, is the gospel at work in us? How do we know? How do we really
know if the gospel is at work in us? We see Paul writing to
these Philippian Christians and the position where he is in the
most horrific time of his life, being bound in chains because
of Christ. It would be easy for us to say
in the softness of our spirit, the gospel is not at work. The
gospel is not at work. Now, some would say, well, you
know, in the midst of suffering, in the midst of this life that
the gospel isn't work because it's helping us get through it. The old cliche of if God takes
you to it, he'll carry you through it. Sometimes the gospel takes
you to it because that's the point. And it's not about getting through
it, it's about dying in it. God has promised us nothing but
eternal life in Christ Jesus. The whole fullness of the glory
of God is ours face to face. We have seen Him. We see Him
now. We know Him. And one day we will see Him in
person. God has promised us that as we await for that day, we
have the full gifts of all the cosmos in the name of Jesus are
ours. All life is ours. And yet oftentimes we look past
it. We look past the most eternal
to find the most insignificant, most boring, silliest, minute, worthless thing. And we put our focus there. We
are guilty of these things. So what is the remedy then if
we are to look and see if the gospel is at work in us? How
is it that we see that? And what do we do if we don't?
Well, hopefully by seeing what Paul has experienced here, we
will see how we are to experience it. No, none of us are in chains
because of our faith, but I believe some of us are in chains in a
spiritual sense. None of us are being persecuted
because of the gospel, but I believe that some of us feel persecuted
because of the gospel. In review, what we looked at
last week and the weeks prior, as Paul is sharing his life with
these people, as he showed great resolve to be punished and to
be imprisoned for the sake of planting the gospel in Philippi,
yet he left there, left the gospel there, the church planted there,
and now he's in Rome and he's in prison. He went to prison
twice in Rome. We don't know which one of the
imprisonments this is, but it doesn't matter. What matters
is that these Philippian Christians, when they heard of Paul being
in prison, they went through several questions in their minds.
And the reason I know these questions are here in their minds is because
Paul addresses the very thing. Paul helps them answer the question,
wow, what's going to happen to Paul? What's happening to Paul? What's going on with Paul's ministry? We were a support to Paul. We
were a blessing to Paul. We were partnered with Paul.
Now Paul's in prison. What are we going to do? They also asked the question,
if that's happening to Paul, what's going to happen to us?
What's going to happen to us? What do we have to look forward
to? Oh no, the man that brought us the gospel is in prison. And
is his ministry over? Is the gospel failing? Has God
forsaken us? Or forsaken Paul? Now what's
going to happen to us? What's going to happen to our children?
What's going to happen to our livelihood? What's going to happen? We're
already suffering greatly. There's great persecution. What's
going to take place in our lives now that Paul is in prison? Thirdly, they probably ask, what
does it mean for the gospel? Oh no, is the church planning
effort over? What's going to happen here?
What are we to do for the sake of the gospel? How are we to
respond? Are we to burn the streets? Are we to charge the palace? Are we to go against the imperial
guard? What are we supposed to do? Because we are going to preach
the gospel. Now what's going to happen to
the gospel if it costs us our lives? Is it over? Is there power
in the gospel still? And I think finally they ask,
what are we going to do now? Now what? What difference does
it make? So what? Paul's in prison. So Paul answers
these things just in this first 14 verses. He answers this by
first letting the Christians know, this is his review, that
we are all slaves to Christ. So we are all bound in the chains
of righteousness as we are free from sin and death. And because
we're slaves to Christ, we are slaves one to each other. So
therefore, all that we do is the service to one another. Secondly,
that God has brought together a people that cannot be destroyed. We are one in Christ Jesus. We
are justified in Christ Jesus. We have joy in the work of God
in us and through us. There is nothing that's going
to stop God's work. He has divinely orchestrated
this. He has divinely purposed it,
and He is going to divinely see it to its right end. God has
declared the end, and God has declared the means to that end.
So do not worry, for Paul says, I am confident of this, that
the work that God has began in you will stay in you and be full
in you and you will be filled with all the righteousness that
comes from Jesus Christ to the praise and the glory of God at
the day of Christ when you stand before Him perfect. And Paul is clear, as we looked
last week, that this fruit of righteousness comes from Christ
alone. It's cultivated in Christ alone.
It's throughout their life. It's reflective of Christ. It's
not something that happens once. It's forever. We also learned
last week that even as we live with the greatest of holiness
and the greatest of morality and the greatest of worship,
that at the day we die, we're still chasms away from the glory
of God's holy perfection. But then at the moment, in the
moment of the resurrection, we are made just like Christ. And
the whole crux of the purpose of God's gospel is that He creates
a people to live in this world, pressing to that end that we
might be a people for His glory by His grace. That's why we're
here. That's why we work. That's why
we sleep. That's why we eat. That's why
we buy. That's why we spend. That's why
we save. That's why we cut grass. That's why we change the oil
in our cars. It's why we wash our hair. It's why we put glasses
on our eyes. That's why we study. Everything
we do is for the glory of God. The question is, is the gospel
at work in us so that all that we do truly gives glory to Him? I thought a lot about prayer
in the last few days, well, the last week, actually. I thought
to myself, what hinders my prayer life? You know the number one thing
that hinders my prayer life? Busyness. Busyness. It's this attitude of, I've got
to find time to pray. No, we've got to find time to
do everything else. And I say this very convicted
church. We should not find time to pray.
We should take time out of praying to do everything else. How much
time do we invest in the world that has no eternal value at
all and that we expect to find the joy and the perfection and
the satisfaction of the gospel when we're not even spending
time with our God? Oswald Chambers and C.H. Spurgeon's
devotions is not time with God. Thanking God for this food in
Jesus' name, amen, is not prayer. As a matter of fact, I would
suggest that most of us aren't truly praying when we say those
things anyway. So what's happening? The gospel
is at work in Paul. And the gospel is so at work
in Paul that it is the effectual agent of everything he's experiencing.
I want you to hear that. It is the effectual agent of
everything that he is experiencing. Everything. His thoughts, his
prayers, his attitude, his hope, his boldness, his courage, his
imprisonment, his suffering, his beatings, his discouragement,
if there is any. His focus, his words, everything. The gospel is the effectual agent
in it all. The gospel put him in Rome. The
gospel put him before the king. The gospel put him in chains.
The gospel did all of this. And it's at work in him. Look at verse 12. I want you to know, brothers,
that what has happened to me has really served to advance
the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial
guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.
And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord
by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without
fear. You hear that? There are several sermons there,
but for the sake of sanity, we're going to do it in one. I think. We'll couple back in. Paul says,
I want you to know. Now look at this phrase. Well,
is it just, I'm going to tell you something. Is Paul just relaying
information? Is Paul just saying, hey, here's
the next thing I want you to understand? No, Paul is doing more than that. Paul has a certain confidence
of God's work. Paul has an absolute unshakable
resolve toward the defense and the advancement of the gospel.
Paul is certain of things and he wants these Philippian Christians
not to just know the facts, he wants them to know intimately
the power of God in this issue. I want you to know. I want you
to be informed. I want you to have a foundation. I want you to be sure. I want
you to be certain. I want you to be absolutely without
doubt. I want you to see. See, that's
a better. I want you to see God's hand
here in this thing. so that you will take all these
doubts, all these questions, all these issues of uncertainty
and insecurities, and I want you to just throw them at the
foot of the cross. I want you to see that the gospel
has empowered us to do that which we're doing, and not only just
to do it, but has placed us in these places for the sake of
God's wisdom and power and glory. God purposed, beloved, that what
is happening to me has served to advance the Gospel. See, I
started just to preach that today. I want you to be certain of this. I want you to be informed. I
want you to know. Where do we see that other places
in Scripture? We see it in John's Gospel. several
places. One where Jesus says in His prayer
that this is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God
in Jesus, the Son He has sent. They know us. We see that in
John's Gospel where John writes, these things are written that
you may know that you have eternal life. Now Paul says, I want you to
know that God is at work so that you will not misunderstand my
suffering. I want you to know this so you
don't misunderstand this. You hear me say often, church,
don't hear what I have not said. Because that's what we do. We hear words and they create
thoughts and feelings and pictures and images and belief systems
and then we just go with them. You ever just sort of space out? I space out a lot. Sometimes I'm in a public place
and I'm spaced out and someone walks into my space line. You
ever been there? And then they're staring at you
but I don't see them. They're staring at me and they're
like, what you looking at? I'm like, sorry. Didn't mean
to stare in your general direction. But we get that sometimes. So,
we hear things, not just in preaching, but in anything. We hear it,
and all of a sudden we hear something that catches our mind, and next
thing we know, we're just, we're gone off into the wonderland
of thought. And then we come back and go,
wait a minute, are we still here? You ever done that in the car? We
listen to something, and paying good attention, and then 20 miles
later, like, where's my exit? I passed it. I'm in another state.
Oh my gosh, I've got to turn around. It happens. or be listening to something
and not miss your exit, but you're driving down the road or you're
sitting and you're listening to something and you're taking
notes. The next thing you know, 30 minutes have gone by. You've
got drool running down your chin and you've just forgotten where
you... I missed all of that. You have to rewind it. Friends, that's what humans do. We hear something and then we
misunderstand it because we don't continue to listen. We put an
assumption in the place of that whole, oh, what's he talking
about? That's what he's talking about. Instead of waiting to hear the answer,
we just go ahead and fill in the hole. We fill in the void
and then come up with our own ideas of what it means. Well,
this is what it means. Well, this is what it means. And then we just, we don't hear
anything else. We get on to our children for
that type of behavior, but we've not changed much. The difference
is there's nobody telling us what to do that we're not listening
to except God. And then we get angry because
they don't listen and they don't obey and we're not listening
and we're not obeying. But He's not around to paddle us or put
us in time out or take away our phone. So I want you to be informed
about what's happening to me so that you do not misunderstand
my suffering. So that you do not so that you
do not see it in the wrong way, so that you will absolutely see
that my ministry is not stagnant. Paul wants them to understand,
my ministry is not done, it's just getting started. And Paul in his prayers, I know
he had been praying for the Roman people. I know he had been praying,
God, in some way, in some means, would you send me to these Romans? Would you help me? Would you
help me get an audience with Caesar? How do you get an audience
with Caesar except stand before him in trial? And Caesar, unbeknownst to a
lot of people, was not the most powerful man in the world. His
guard was. There were 9,000 men in the Imperial
Guard. And when they had enough of a
Caesar, they'd take him out and put another one in. And when
they liked him, they defended him. People think it was an emperor. It wasn't. It was an emperor
at the will of the guard. Because if the army wants you
out, you're out. And history shows us that these
Roman soldiers sort of turned the ship of Rome's culture. I want you to see, Paul says,
my ministry's not stagnant. I want you to see so that you
will witness, listen to this, I want you to witness, I want
you to understand and to know these things, brothers, so that
you will witness the majesty of God's gospel in chains. They think they're locking God's
gospel up. And it's about to burst wide
open. That's the first thing. I want
you to know. Why else would he want them to
know? Because they were concerned about
what was happening to Paul. And second question, remember
what it is? Now what's going to happen to us? Paul wants them
to know these things so that they can be informed about what's
happening to him, but then also that they can apply it to their
own lives. Now, what about us? Because in reality, aren't we
a little bit selfish when it comes to what happens? Oh my
God, look what's happening to my neighbor. Lord, help him.
Oh, it's coming my way. Oops. I gotta go. It's survival. And only by God's
grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, with the truth of His
Word and the power of the Gospel, are we able to stand in place
in the face of everything. Listen to me, church. Paul is
teaching us here that everything that happens to him is orchestrated
before the world began. Now, we know Paul's doctrine
in other places. So there is nothing that man
has done to him, no beating, no shipwreck, no drowning, no
stoning, no imprisonment, nothing that God had not preordained
for the sake of the advancement of the gospel. And not just the advancement
of the gospel, the advancement of the worship of Paul. The advancement
of the worship of God through the suffering of His saints. So now let's put that in perspective
for our own lives before we move on. What is it that you would
wish that God would take away from your life? Stop asking God
to remove that which He ordained for your good. How do we pray? Another hindrance
that I've learned in our prayer lives is that we pray for God's
will to be done on one thing while praying against it in the
other. Your will be done over. Please, please, please, please,
please, please, please do this for me. Knowing surely and certainly
that that which we are experiencing is in the hand of the providence
of God. How are we to do both? We get bad reports. Friends,
let me tell you something. We're all going to die in this
body. So when is it that we stop? laboring in such a way that we're
fearful of death. We don't walk in fear of death.
Of course, if I see a fire and I think, well, nothing going
on, might as well die. That's silly. Why don't we spend more time
praying for longevity in this world? For what? If we're not seeing the gospel
at work in us, for the sake of advancing, defending the gospel,
we're really wasting our lives, aren't we? I want you to hear
this, church. Because this is the type of message that gets
really radical. And it causes us to do really
radical things and make really radical decisions based on sound
bites rather than solid meditation and prayer on God's Word. If
we're raising children, feeding pigs, painting houses, teaching
classes, or anything else, if we're not using those instruments
as a vehicle of God's gospel, then why do we do it? Well, I sit in a crane all day.
How am I supposed to glorify God by myself 400 feet in the
air? I don't know. Why don't you leave
50,000 tracks up there for the next guy? Spend those 12-hour shifts growing
in grace so that when you do get down off your lunch break,
you almost get into fisticuffs over Jesus. Didn't mean to throw
you under the bus there, brother. Because I can't think of another
job that any of us have on a day-to-day basis that's more isolated than
that. What do we do with our lives?
if they're not at the minimum. You'll be looking into some A.W.
Pink in the weeks to come on Tuesdays. That brother just went
to a cave for some time. He just, I'm done with all this,
just left. Isolation. And look what God
used it, how God used it. Paul, seemingly isolated from
the world in prison, John, seemingly isolated from the world in the
Isle of Patmos, and he gave us his gospel. He gave us a picture
of Jesus Christ that blows us into a place that's breathless. What's going to happen to me?
The Philippians would say. Paul says, I want you to see
what is happening to me has really served to advance the gospel
so that you will have hope for what is happening to you. Because
see how God is working in me? Now you can say that God will
do the same for you. God will work in you. Why? Why do we need to see this,
Paul? So you will rejoice as I am rejoicing. I rejoice. I thank my God always
in every prayer of mine for all of you making my prayer with
joy. I want you to see that there's hope for what's happening to
you in your life when you walk out of your door and the guard
is there. And they seize you and they put
you in prison. and they mock you, and they throw
you into the shackles, and they ridicule you. Who are you now?
Where is your God now? And the flesh that you have rises
up with the desire to prove them wrong and be justified. The gospel of grace works in
you. And you remember that what I
am suffering is for the sake of the advancement of the gospel.
So, in like manner, your suffering will advance the gospel also.
as you pray for your persecutors, as God delivers the gospel with
boldness through your lips, as you're able to pray for those
who harm you, pray for God to work in them, and then all of
a sudden rejoice in praise and celebration, seeing when God
does that which He promised to do. So you can rejoice. I want you
to see that you have hope for what is happening to you, so
that you will see God's plan from the beginning. When God
said, let there be light, it was so that we might experience
the suffering that we're experiencing so that the gospel may go out
and save more and more people. Friends, Christianity would be
absolutely universal. There'd be no cults. There'd
be no world religions. There'd be nothing but Christianity
if we walked around with no suffering, no poverty, no hunger, no nothing,
and said, this is the Jesus that we can give you, and then all
of a sudden everybody would want it. Would they not? And that's the gospel that most
people purvey. That's the gospel that most people
want. But it's not the gospel of Jesus
Christ. How is it that God steps out
of glory and suffers for the sake of His enemies and then
expects us to do differently? How do we partner with the death
of Jesus Christ if we're not dying in this world because of
Him? I've had many interesting conversations
in the last ten days on what's been called riots, especially
in the area of Baltimore. And there's a lot of views on
that. I'm going to speak not to the
issue until I can get my mind around the argument of the issue.
But I thought to myself in this way. The question was posed to
me, wonder if people would feel the same way about the Patriots
and the Tea Party and their riot, if you will,
against the crown by pouring tea over into the bay. Would
they call that rioting? And I thought to myself, well,
what about the apostles who laid their lives down with no fight
and were taken to the cross? What about Jesus, who's the God
of it all, who submitted willfully in obedience, passively to the
hands of men, orchestrated and delivered to them by the sovereignty
of God the Father without a fight? It's a confusing issue. Because our nationalism, not
that it's wrong, but it clouds the issue of biblical worldview. Because America has not ever
been nor ever will be the example of biblical worldview. Ever has,
never has. Morality, yes. Christian, no. I want you to see God's power
at work in us, Paul says. I want you to see that God's
power is at work. These people think they're suppressing
the gospel, and in their actions of putting us in prison, they
are actually expanding the gospel, advancing the gospel, so that
you will see God's providence. You'll see God's providence.
Even in the most wicked of schemes, even the most rebellious of peoples
and the most sinful of circumstances, God can take all that and use
it for good. Not just that he can, he will.
He always does. Now, we could look through history
and we could say, well, what about this? What about that?
What about this? What about that? And we could say, well, where's
the good in it? We don't know everything, do we? We can't tell
everything. God doesn't just send us a headline
after the situation's over and say, see what I did. Sometimes it's not known to us
as how God will work it out. Sometimes it's not known. But
we do know that He has already. We do know that He will. And
we do know that His immutability demands that it will work to
His providence, to His purpose. And in that we can have hope.
So what does it mean for the Gospel? What about the Gospel? Okay, so it's good for Paul,
it's good for us, we know that God will be with us in our suffering,
yes, we can rest in that. And that's a lot of times where
we stop, isn't it? We can just rest with assurance knowing that
God has everything under control. But what does it mean for the
gospel? Are we going to be able to share
the gospel? Are we going to be able to see the gospel advance?
What if they kill everybody who is Christian and there's no gospel?
It can't happen. If they purpose to do it, God
will not allow it. God has purposed a full church
of every nation, tongue, and tribe of all peoples, His one
body, to worship Him forever and ever and ever. And before
there was ever a star hanging in the cosmos of infinity, God
had established a people for Himself of all peoples. And the
church cannot be destroyed, the church cannot be thwarted, the
church cannot be pressed in such a way that it stops. It will
never be shut down because to shut the church down is to shut
God down. So what it means for the gospel
is just what Paul says. What has happened to me has really
served to advance the gospel. So I prayed, let's just speak
to Paul for a minute, that God would advance the gospel in Rome.
And in doing so, God allowed these people who hate him to
hate me. so that they would arrest me,
so that I would be in prison, so that the gospel would advance
in Rome. Why does that sound good but
seem wrong? Why does it sound good but seems
wrong? Because it's counterintuitive to the reality that we see Paul
in. Imagine it this way. public speaking, public preaching,
gospel preaching, tract laying, ministry, feeding the poor, praying
for the sick, going out doing benevolence in the name of Christ,
and we're sharing things and giving the gospels and we're
doing all sorts of stuff. And then all of a sudden, the
world looks at us or even the church looks at us and goes,
wow, that's a vibrant, growing, successful gospel ministry. And
then for some unknown cause, that person gets snatched up
and put in a cell by himself. We think, oh no, this must not
be the will of God because he had such a great ministry. God
was using him. Many millions of people were
hearing the gospel. Now what? Let's get him out of
jail. I think that's where the Philippians
were. And Paul says, I'm in chains
but the gospel isn't. Because you brothers who go to
the prison often, you know you just can't just walk up in there
like 7-Eleven. And the greatest gospel that
goes into the prisons are the ones who are locked up in there. So as God sends the church into
the prison, He plants a church in the prison. How many prisoners came to know
Christ through this imprisonment of Paul? How many guards stood
there? Paul would say the gospel is
not chained, but the gospel is snatching chains off men. These
men who are bound in chains to die in them are free because
I'm in chains. This gospel is the reason for
my chains. He says it. so that it has become
known throughout the entire imperial guard and to all the rest in
this prison that my imprisonment is for Christ. They know that I'm in chains
because the gospel is the reason that I'm suffering. And what
does this mean for the gospel? That it removes chains from bound
men. It removes chains from not only
those men suffering in chains for their crimes, but it removes
the chains of those men who oversee the state of Rome. And the gospel growth is God's
purpose for my chains or in my chains. And you've partnered with me,
Paul says, and I'm joyful for your partnership in my suffering,
for your partners in grace in my suffering and in the advance
and the defense of the gospel. Now you are still partnering
with me and the gospel is advancing in our partnership. You see? It is counterintuitive. It is
absolutely ridiculous. in our mind to see this the way
God has shown us this. It doesn't make sense to our
natural minds, but it makes perfect sense to the heart that God has
given us through the new birth. It makes perfect sense that God
has made us alive in Christ when we were dead in our trespasses
and sin. It makes great sense that God
has gifted us with the gift of faith and eyes to see that we
may behold the power of his majesty as the gospel is in chains. So the advance of the gospel.
Is the power of our partnership. We're partnered together and
now that I'm locked up, now God can continue to do the work that
He needs to do, that He purposed to do. The Gospel in the midst of this
darkness, this is what it does to the Gospel. What does it mean
for the Gospel? In the midst of the darkness,
in the midst of the suffering, in the midst of the unknowable,
in the midst of the pressure. I mean, just place your life
out for a moment. and see the dark areas of it. Not the sinfulness, not the things,
but I mean just how the world just comes and presses into our
lives. And what we want to hear in our
flesh is a gospel that takes away all of the suffering. But
what the Bible teaches is a gospel that is gloriously good in the
midst of suffering. A gospel that is not just gloriously
good, but that is going and growing powerfully at work in us, in
the midst of darkness. What are you doing here? I mean,
imagine the conversations that these guards, knowing Paul, Knowing
of his, I mean, my goodness, he's locked up all the time.
You know his names on every, you know, not a wanted poster,
but they've got a list. Oh, this is Paul, this troublemaker
running around Asia Minor here, running around all these places.
And he's stepping in Caesar's business with this Jesus stuff.
And they lock him up. And here's these guards. What
are you in here for? What did they get you for? And He says,
I am bound by these chains because of the sovereignty of my God
who is in heaven, who created you, yet you rebelled against
Him in your sinfulness. But in His mercy and kindness
toward you, He gave us the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is that
God came from heaven into the womb which He created, born of
a virgin, lived a perfect and holy life, willfully began to
preach the gospel of heaven. Then He died on the cross, as
an innocent man, and God raised Him from the dead, and He ascended
to the right hand of the Father, and He intercedes for you in
supplication, as propitiation, to satisfy the wrath of God against
you. That's why I'm in chains, so
that you would repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. What in the world? Can you imagine that guard? Okay. Sorry I asked. So what did you
do? I proclaimed that there's a God
in heaven and His name is Jesus Christ. And through Christ alone
can you be saved from the just wrath of God the Father. And
you killed Him, but He has been raised to life. All the Imperial Guard heard
it. Can you imagine that guy? Two
things. One of two things that he did.
How do we know this? Because we know human nature. He walks out into
his little barracks and he goes, you believe this cat in here?
He's lost his gourd. He's insane. He says Jesus was
God. Which God is he talking about?
Hey! You know, Romans. And just for kicks, and laughs,
they'd go in there every few days. Hey, bro, tell us about
your God again. And every now and then, in a
heart that God had prepared to hear and given ears to hear,
Romans 10, 17, Paul would give the same gospel and that brother
would break. And then he would go back in
there and he'd say, y'all, this man speaks truth. And they'd
laugh at him, and some would be thinking, now John's a, he's
not an idiot. He's saying this guy speaks to
me. And they're saying, you know, now they're sharing the gospel.
And then they're going home and they're sharing the gospel. And
then their wives are sharing the gospel. And their children are
sharing the gospel. And the prisoners are hearing the gospel. And men
who were sitting there agonizing over the death that was waiting
them on the cross because of their crimes now stood with joy. Imagine those who came to the
gospel during the imprisonment of Paul as they stood on the
hill waiting to die, as they looked up to heaven and said,
Oh, my life is about to begin. How baffled people must have
been. That's what it means for the
gospel, for the suffering of Paul. The final question. So now what
are we to do? And I believe that this answer
to this question comes also to our own application. What are
we to do? Well, none of us can relate to
Paul. I would suggest that even in
the story of Paul, as I shudder to think about it, I can't imagine
what it would be like to be put in a cage and told I would stay there until
my death. I can't imagine that. I don't want to experience that.
I'm not crazy. I don't like it. We can't relate. We have some brothers in our
fellowship who have served time in prisons. And one of them told
me last week, I don't even put my dog on a chain. He saw dogs
in my yard, he says, I couldn't put my dogs in that kennel. I
said, why? He goes, you ever been locked
in a cage? I went, nope. He goes, I don't
want to put an animal in there. It's not good. So we can't relate
to Paul in that way, can we? He can, but it wasn't for the
gospel. But there are people across the
world who can. There are people right now who the enemies of
the cross are marching against them in cities and in countrysides
and in underground churches and they are taking them and their
children with them and they are putting them to death for the
cross, for preaching the cross of Christ. And they sit in these boxes and
they wait. You talk about unjust, that's unjust. But God is the avenger of His
people. And Peter says in 1 Peter that
though they reviled Christ, He did not return, revile with revile,
but entrusted Himself to the one who was just. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. So in all of our suffering, our
aggravating neighbor, our frustrating government, Our wickedness comes
against us in the world. There is no justice in this side
of heaven that rights that wrong. Only God will give eternal justice. And here's the kick. The gravest
sin against us, God can forgive because Christ suffered. the greatest murderer that ever
lived, if God pleases, He can place the guilt of that murder
on Jesus. And as we know our theology,
if He intended it, it already has been paid for. You know what that does for me?
So what are we going to do now? You know what it does for me?
It aggravates me Because when I think of my sin and I compare
it to the heinous things that we see in this world, it looks
so much more tame, doesn't it? Certainly God wouldn't save and
forgive that vile murderer, that vile child molester, that vile
rapist. Yes, He can. And if it bothers us, what does
Jesus say? We are forgiven, therefore we
can forgive. And as much as we forgive, it's
directly related to how much we are forgiving and how much we are forgiven. So what else? We need to be informed
over and over and over again about the power of God and His
gospel. And as we relate to Paul in very,
what is the word, not parallel ways, but far off ways, we can see God's work in it. And just as you prayed, brother,
about so many jobs that keep people from us, from fellowshipping,
there is hope in that. God is powerful. So we rejoice and we wait. We need to be informed to know
the power of God. Secondly, what are we going to do now? We are
to be joyful. We are to be joyful and rejoice
in our sufferings, knowing that God's hand is in it all. Better yet, All of the suffering
is in the hand of God. There is nothing that we experience
in this life as His children that's outside of His providence. He will not forsake us. He will
not leave us. And if we believe that God is
true and not a liar, then we know that the suffering we experience
in this life is for a great, great reward. Thirdly, we ought to be prayerful. Prayerful. We ought to pray because
at the foundation of prayer is what? A trusting in the Lord. But yet we think more than we
pray, we talk to ourselves more than we talk to God, we get advice
from each other more than we think about what the Lord's Word
says. We cast our thoughts and our
feelings up on our social media so we can get some sound bite
to feel justified in our feelings. We fret. We wring our hands. We quench our teeth. And we sit
there and we wonder what in the world is going to come of all
this when we should know what is going to come of all this.
And that is God's unsurpassing grace is going to work His good
in the midst of it. Even if we die, Paul says to
the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, we live. So we pray. And we pray because
we trust in God for the outcome. Fourthly, what happens here? And most of the brothers, verse
14, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment,
and I see that. What is he saying there? that God put me in prison and
what you're going to do now is the same thing others have been
doing. They've become confident. Man, if Paul can take it, I can
take it. If God can use Paul, God can use me. God's at work. I thought Paul's ministry was
over. Now the gospel is going out quicker than it ever did.
So what do they do? They preach. They share. They
live the gospel. The gospel is at work in them
through the imprisonment of Paul. This is what Paul deals with
through the Ephesians when he says, the manifold wisdom of
God. It's multifaceted. It's many
wisdoms. It's unknowable in a simple context. It's just ineffable. And only God's wisdom can produce
such things. So, what are we to do? Be what? Confident. Be confident in the
Lord in our suffering. And friends, a lot of us are
in a prison of our own minds. A lot of us are in prison because
of our thoughts not focusing on the eternal things. That's
another thing that the Lord showed me today, or this week, about
what hinders our prayer life, is that our minds are so much
on worldly things. And when I say worldly, I mean
just temporal things that we can't even pray effectively because
we're not focused. How many hours a week do we spend
on things that are worthless? The beauty of the gospel, though,
is we just stop. Repentance looks like this in
our lives as Christians. Man, I have wasted the last 41
years of my life. Let me stop and not waste it
anymore. Starting now, not tomorrow. We
don't put it off. We start now. Because when God's
at work in our hearts, we don't say, well, next week I'll start
doing this. We just start doing it. We stand
up. We put away the childish things.
We put away the selfish things. We put away the earthly things.
We change our thinking by renewing our mind on that which is holy,
that which is eternal. His name is Jesus. We know Him
through His Word. And the outcome of that is that
we give our lives for the sake of each other. Trust. Be diligent. Stand for
truth. Be confident. And look at what
happened to these brothers who were confident. They are much
more bold to speak the Word without fear. Friends, if there's one thing
that is an evidence of your salvation, It is a strong desire to speak
boldly the gospel of Jesus at any cost. If we were to record our lives
last week, and see that there was no willful
sin in it, no wicked partakings, no anger, would we still see a life at
work focused on gospel living? Or will we spend more time dealing
with temporal things at the cost of that which is most essential. And I'm not going to list things, but I'm going to tell you something.
If you work hard and suffer in your labor, don't seek idols. Seek Christ as your rest. Because as we seek Christ as
our rest, we are able to speak the Word
boldly, first to our own lives. We preach to ourselves, this
suffering that I have, God has told me in His Word that it is
for this plan and purpose, so I embrace it. Paul tells young
Timothy to walk into suffering. Endure. You know what endure
is? Stand under. He didn't say dodge, block and
counter. He said stand under the suffering.
Walk and press into the suffering. Counter the suffering with joy. How? Endure these sufferings
by the grace given to you through Jesus Christ. When we say we
can't, we're telling Christ He's not enough. Be diligent and stand for truth
without fear, with boldness. Finally, as we couple back or
double back into what we've already learned, what are we to do now? We are to be righteous. God has made us righteous and
he has made us able to press into righteousness. So we live
for His glory by loving what is holy. Living in our justified
place as though we are justified. Knowing that even in the most
perfect of examples, we are still only saved by His grace. And
that our holiness is nothing but a reflection of God through
Jesus Christ in us. Is the gospel at work in us? Is it at work in us? If, if, if you know that your
only hope is Christ, And if your hope produces a faith that is
effectual unto holiness, unto affection, unto righteousness,
unto everything that we've seen here. The scripture says there's evidence
of your rebirth. Are you alive in Christ? See how tricky that can get?
Because if we leave here today with these sound bites in our
ears and we go, I'm going to start doing Christian things.
I'm going to start living Christianly. I'm going to start proclaiming
the gospel. Great resolutions. Go for it. And though they are evidences
of the new birth, is that what saves you? Christ alone saves you. Repent
of our self-sufficiency, repent of our self-righteousness, repent
of our sin, repent of our love for the world. Great! We can stop all these things,
all we want, but is our faith alive in Christ? If it is, it
will not be a one-time thing, it will be a present reality.
It will not be that point in history where you got saved.
It'll be the present assuredness that you are saved. It will not be that aisle that you
walked to decide to choose Christ. It'll be the fact that Christ
chose you and you're alive in him. There's hope in that church. I guarantee you not a marriage
that's ever taken place in this world has stood there with their
fingers crossed. I do. And in the back of their
mind, not a chance. Every altar, every participant
at a wedding altar means it with the fullness of their And when people come to faith
in Christ, is that the power that holds them to Him? Their
sincerity, their passion, their zeal, their affection. Let me
tell you about affection for Jesus. It can fly out the window
when they put shackles on your hands. It will come back. But if that's
what holds us to salvation, it is a it is a dangerous place. When the scripture teaches that
God has snatched us out of the domain of darkness into the light
of his glorious son. and that we are saved by grace
through faith. And this is not of your own doing,
but is a gift of God so that no one can boast. For we are
God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works
that God has prepared beforehand for us to walk in. Jesus says
the same thing in John 3 when He says, This is the judgment.
And then I'm done. You know I had to go to John. Because it all points back there.
It does. Every bit of it points back to
John. Paul got nothing on John. This is the judgment that people
love the darkness rather than the light because their works
are evil. Now put it in context. He's talking to Nicodemus, one
of the holiest men that ever walked the earth, in his works. Nicodemus, your study, your prayer,
your zeal, your sacrifices, your affections are wicked. Because you don't love me. If
you did love me, you'd come to me because I am the light of
the world. And you'd come to me and I would reveal my Father's
work in you. Your prayers would be effectual
for they'd be the work of my Father. Your worship would be
true because it would be in spirit. Your work would be purposeful
because it would be ordained by God. You would put yourself
in my light so that you would get no credit for your righteousness,
but all that you are and all that you do and all that you
are becoming would be evident as a reflection of my work on
the cross. I will be lifted up. But, Nicodemus, you stand condemned,
because you love your works of righteousness, which is darkness. Now, you see that. You might say to yourself, well,
I don't really want to live for Christ, and you are not in Him. At best, beloved, you better
be in war. You better be at war. over your
sin, lest you die in it. You can't have a hope of a hanger
in the closet that's the gospel that you'll just snatch when
the time comes. It's not going to be there. Today's
the day of salvation. You're not promised the next
five seconds. But for us who are in Christ,
we have everlasting life. And this light momentary affliction
is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. When the day of our communities
are gone, when the day of our nation is gone, when the day
of our world is over, there is one King and there is one Kingdom
and His name is Jesus Christ. Let's pray. We thank you Lord. for the great grace given to
us, for the love that you have given us through Jesus Christ,
because of your great love toward us and kindness toward us in
Christ, we are yours. Not just in name, but in essence. You have brought us to your Son
and you've given us to Him. And you have sealed us with your
Spirit. Work all this out for your glory. Work all this out for us to be
a people to grow. For your glory. And father, let
these prayers not be lip service with right words, but help them
to be heartfelt, soul seeded requests to your ears. Father, seal Your people. Save those who hear the gospel. Let Your will be done as You
prepare a people for Your own possession. In Jesus' name, Amen.