Philippians chapter 1, and we'll
be looking at verses 12 through 20. In verses 12 and 13, Paul expresses
his desire for them to know the truth about his imprisonment
at Rome. He didn't want them to be ashamed
of him. wanted them to know the truth,
even though he felt in his heart they did know the truth. He didn't
want them to think that he was in there at his own fault or to be looked upon in any kind
of a negative fashion, but rather that God had put him there on
purpose. That his suffering and imprisonment
was because of what he preached. and the things that he stood
for. And he also wanted them to know that the gospel he preached
was not hindered by his imprisonment. Actually, he says here in these
verses that it was unto the furtherance of the gospel. Far from being
a deterrent, it was actually used of God as a furtherance
for the gospel. And I thought as I read these
verses, we serve an all-wise, all-knowing, almighty God. I don't know how much we really
think about that in our day. We live in a day of much confusion. We didn't have these kinds of
activities when I was just a young man. Life was a little slower. back in the 50s, a whole lot.
So we didn't have computers and we didn't have all these things.
And men and women, well, mostly men went to work. And the mothers
stayed home and fixed meals and things and the kids played in
the yard. Just life was slower. I don't
know any other word to describe it like that. But I wonder, in
this day of high-speed everything and constant turmoil and confusion,
I wonder how much we really think about our God. Our God is all-wise,
all-knowing, and He's almighty. And for sure, my generation don't
know that. All nations. Listen to the Scriptures
when they talk about God. This is God declaring Himself
to His people over in the book of Isaiah. I'll just read it
for you. This is over in Isaiah chapter 40. He said all nations
before Him are as nothing. Nations. United States and Russia
and England and all these powerful nations. He said the nations
before me are as nothing. Almighty. Listen to this scripture here
in Isaiah. He said, He frustrateth the tokens
of liars, and maketh diviners mad. He turneth wise men backward,
and maketh their knowledge foolish. He is all wise. Listen to this Scripture. Behold,
the Lord God will come with strong hand, and His arms shall rule
for Him. Behold, His reward is with Him,
and His work before Him. And this One who is to feed His
flock, and this One who is to gather His lambs in His arms,
He tells them this, is none other than He who measured the waters,
and we are talking about the oceans and the sea, in the hollow
of His hands. Do you think on your God that
way when you think about it? Huh? He measured the water in
the hollow of His hand, who meted out heaven with a span. Heaven
is not out there by accident. Heaven is not out there because
of some big bang. Heaven was meted out. It was
just like we are going to measure out and lay out this new facility
that we are working on up here. We are going to measure it out.
He meted out the heavens that way and comprehended the dust of
the earth with a measure. He said, the nations before Him
are as a drop of the bucket and like the small dust of the balance. And He said, none shall stay
His hand. He ruleth in the armies of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth. He worketh all things
after the counsel of His own will. When you think about God,
your God, the God we come here to worship, do you think on Him
that way? This is what Paul wanted them
to know. The God that we serve is all-wise,
all-mighty. And these individuals down here
that are trying to take advantage and lying and finagling things
around and trying to arrange things against you, and they
go behind your back and they take counsel and they, you know,
we're going to do this and we're going to do... He said, the Lord
will laugh. He'll laugh at them. He'll laugh
at them. All man scheming and lying and
arranging has no effect whatsoever on the God of glory. The heart
of the king, which king? Every king is in the hand of
the Lord, just like those rivers of waters. And he turneth it
whithersoever he will. The Lord of Glory laughs at all
those who plot and plan to alter His will, and He makes a public
laughing stock at them. He said, I'll have them in derision.
I'll expose them for the fools they are. And how many of these
fools have you seen in your lifetime on TV that God's made a public
laughing stock at them? Huh? My soul. God took the rejection
of a whole nation. and made it the open door for
the salvation of chosen sinners throughout the whole world. A
whole nation. Pharaoh plotted and planned to
kill the deliverer. He was going to overturn what
God had purposed to do. And God took his deliverer and
put him in a tarred basket and floated him down the river and
caused his daughter to pick that child out of the river hired
his mother as a nurse for him, and raised him in Pharaoh's palace.
These things had no effect on our God. And so it was in Paul's
case. His imprisonment only succeeded
in the spreading of the gospel into the very palace itself.
And then look here at verse 14. Philippians chapter 1, verse
14. And many of the brethren in the
Lord, waxing competent by my bonds, are much more bold to
speak the word without fear. When men see the effectual work
of God being carried out, it causes them to have confidence,
and it motivates them to be a part of it. They want to be a part
of it. When you see God working, you want to be a part of it.
And that's what they saw when they saw this imprisonment of
Paul and how it had no effect whatsoever on the work of God.
Paul just kept right on preaching. He was just preaching in prison
instead of out of prison. And he never one time ever said,
I'm a prisoner of Rome. He said, I'm a prisoner of the
Lord Jesus Christ. He put me here. Verse 15. Some indeed preach
Christ even of envy and strife, and some also of goodwill. The
one preached Christ of contention, not sincerely supposing to add
affliction to my bonds, but the other of love, knowing that I
am set for the defense of the gospel." Now, I think we can
safely assume that whosoever these men were, whoever they
were, they preach the gospel of God's redeeming grace in Christ
Jesus. Paul speaks with absolute certainty
in Galatians chapter 1 that anybody who don't preach this gospel
is to be counted accursed of God. And so when he's talking
about these men, he's not talking about these religious idiots
out here that are preaching works and free will and all this kind
of nonsense. He's not talking about that man.
He's talking about real preachers. He's talking about true preachers.
And these men preached. They did preach the gospel of
God's redeeming grace in Christ Jesus. They weren't Judaizers. They weren't legalists. And they
weren't ceremonialists. And they didn't preach the will
of man or works for salvation religion. Whoever they were,
they were not the enemies of the cross. They were, in the
eyes of this apostle, preachers of the gospel. And there's four
things here that he tells us about these. He mentions here
in these verses that are worth our while to consider. First
of all, he tells us that some of these men preach Christ in
envy. What's he talking about? They
envied Paul's gifts. Paul was an apostle. God gave
him gifts of spiritual discernment. These early apostles, they knew
when Ananias and Sapphira held back part of their money, he
could discern their spirits. They had a spiritual discernment.
That's a gift of God. Nobody else had that, but these
apostles did. These apostles had gifts of languages. They could speak in every language
known to man and speak it fluently, having not even studied it, not
even been aware of it. God just gifted them that way.
And these men saw His gifts and they saw His success. My soul! Peter preached and 3,000 souls
were saved with one sermon. I've never seen that in my lifetime.
I've seen a few here and there. But I haven't seen 3,000. And
these men envied. They envied their gifts. They
envied their success. They envied the applause of the
people, the admiration of the people for these men. They envied
those things. They were jealous. Now, I want
you to listen to me a minute. Preachers are just men. We're
just men, just like you are. We've all got weaknesses. We
all have faults. And there's pitfalls, my soul.
Those of you who have been around a while know this. There are
pitfalls everywhere. And sometimes we fall in. These
men were jealous. And now that Paul was in prison,
they hoped to gain the honor and applause of those who followed
after him. Now they're in prison. And now
they got their chance. And there was some of this going
on in the Corinthian church. You remember over there, they
were beginning to brag, well, I was saved under his ministry.
Well, I was saved under Paul's ministry. I was saved under Apollos'
ministry. And so on. The same thing. That's what was
going on. And Paul said to these men, he said, who maketh thee
to differ from another? Who made you to differ? Was that
Apollos? Did Apollos do that work in your
heart? Did Paul do that work in your heart? And what do you have that you
haven't received? Didn't you receive this thing
as a gift of God? I hope nobody here sits down
and says, well, I figured this thing out. No, no, that revelation
was given you of God. And if you received it, why do
you glory like you didn't? God sets apart certain men like
Henry Mahan and Scott Richardson and Don Fortner and some of these
other men, and their ministries far exceed a single pulpit. These men are called to preach
all over the world. Don's taking off today for England. Going over there and preaching.
He'll go to Ireland. in several places in England. The scope of their ministry just
reaches out to churches all over the world and they write books
and they preach on TV and they preach on the internet and they
travel all over the world preaching the Gospel. And multitudes go
to hear. Not all in one spot, but here
and there and yonder, they gather to hear. And while others, they
just tend to a single flock and they're rarely invited anywhere. Though sometimes jealousy creeps
in. And like these men, they began
to preach in envy. And then secondly, he said some
of these men preached in strife and contention. Now this contention
is not over the gospel. That wasn't what they were contentious
about. But their contention was over
words and practices and church government and prophecy and these
lesser understood doctrines. Mostly words. People in our day
get all caught up in this thing about words. And we just need to understand that
all preachers are not of the same level of understanding.
They're not of the same level of experience or background or
maturity. And in our day, we have strife
and contentions over things like eternal justification, and Christ
being made sin, and church government. And none of these things ought
to cause divisions among us, but they do. They do. And in certain practices. I was
asked this not too long ago. When we go to the sick to anoint
them, do we take a bottle of oil? Or do we don't take the
bottle of oil? What do we do? There's contentions
over things like that. There's contentions over a baptistry
like this. Because some people believe that
the preacher needs to go down there with the person into the
water. Well, if I was baptizing you in a river, I would. There's
no other way to baptize you. But if I have a baptistry here,
there's no point in me going down. And there's contentions about
that. There's all kinds of things that men have contentions about. What do we do with the leftover
bread? Oh, man, that was the biggest contention in the world
in this little church I used to go to. They'd have awful squabbles
over what to do with the leftover bread from the Lord's table. And I said, won't you just throw
it away? Oh, we don't do that. We have to take this out on a
certain day and bury it. It's just bread, honey. I don't want it after it gets
mold on, just throw it in the trash can. We'll make some more.
It's just bread. Should we actually break the
bread? Do we take it and break it? Or can we get those little
things already made that look like little biscuits? I mean,
contentions. And on and on it goes. There's
just no end to the list. And these men were preaching
in contention. They were always contending for
this or that. And then thirdly, some of these
men preached what Brother Mahan used to call a party spirit.
These men were not sincere. These men hope to gain attention
and recognition using Paul's bonds and imprisonment. And what
they do is they'll catch a man that they envy and trouble. And
they'll say, see? See what I've been telling you?
And now if he'd been more like me, he wouldn't be in prison.
These fellas, whatever they preached and however they preached it,
they didn't have a lot of contention. They weren't up there arresting
them. They weren't going through all these problems. Paul's out
on the front line. And you're going to get hurt
out on the front line if you're in battle. And Paul's in prison. Paul's suffered beatings. I mean,
there's no end to the sufferings that this man suffered. But he
was on the front line. It's where he wanted to be. Where
God put him. These guys are back here. But
as soon as something happens, then they say, see? See, I told
you. And they hoped to gain attention
and recognition using somebody else's bonds and troubles against
him. May have thought that Paul's
troubles were self-inflicted. They might feel like he brought
all these things on himself because of some personality flaw or something. Or maybe they thought if he did
things their way, he'd be better off. And then fourthly, some
preached of love knowing that Paul was said of God for the
defense of the gospel. Paul's imprisonment was due to
his calling of God. That's why he was there. That's
what he wanted these people to know. And he was called not only
to minister to men, but called also to the highest office in
the church. His authority was over all the
churches. And these letters that he wrote
were inspired of God. And he told them that. And he was said of God to address
kings and governors and hierarchy in his own nation. And one of
the greatest missionaries who ever lived, and he faced heathen
religion in its own land, and he called it what it was, an
abomination before God. Can you imagine going over to
Iraq, one man, and telling them that their gods are not gods
at all? And what they're doing is an
abomination before God. Huh? You better believe what
you're preaching if you do. I'll tell you that. And Paul
did. And he suffered for it. And any
man who dares to walk in the authority God gave him and preach
boldly and dogmatically the message of grace, he's going to suffer
for it. Listen to what our Lord said. He said, Remember the word
that I said unto you. The servant is not greater than
his Lord. If they persecuted me, they'll
also persecute you. If they've kept my saying, they'll
keep yours. And most preachers know and understand
when a fellow minister is suffering for the glory of God or when
he's suffering because of a bad personality. I think most of
them know that. I think they know that. And those
who know these men, they love these men, and they support these
men, and they see to their needs. And that's what this church was
doing. They sent their pastor down there to supply Paul with
whatever he needed. Alright, verse 18. What then? What should we do? How should we feel about these
things? What then? Notwithstanding every way. Whether in pretense or in truth,
Christ is preached. Christ is preached. And I therein
do rejoice. Yea, and I will rejoice. That didn't mean that he approved
of what they did. But what Paul, he overlooked
all of those things and he said, here's the thing. Here's why
I'm in prison for the preaching of the gospel. And these men
are preaching Christ. So I'll rejoice in that. I'll
rejoice in that. If Christ is preached in the
glory of His person, in the fullness of His grace, in the efficacy
of His sacrifice, and the power of His intercession, I ought
to be able, even under these controversies, to rejoice. Christ is preached. Satan will
use anything to divide, confuse, and take away the joy of God's
saints and their confidence in the Savior. Faith, hope, motivation,
and maturity come through gospel preaching. That's how it comes. And so long as His gospel is
being preached, we ought to, like Paul, rejoice. Let's just
rejoice. Let's don't pick up on their
bad habits. Let's don't follow after them in their bad habits.
But we can rejoice over this. They do preach Christ. I'll tell you something, I read
the end of the book. That's what Barnard said one time. He said,
I know how this thing is going to come out. I read the end of
the book. And I do too, and I can rejoice
over this. I can rejoice over this. Verse
19, Paul said, For I know that this shall turn to my salvation
through your prayer and supply the Holy Spirit, or supply the
Spirit of Jesus Christ. according to my earnest expectation
and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that
with all boldness as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified
in my body, whether it be by life or by death. And that's the thing. Our life
is hid with God in Christ. There's nothing this world can
do except punish this body, this spirit, is eternal. And this Spirit, this new man,
is going to dwell with Him. And even this body, though it
be burned, even this body, old Job said, though after my flesh
worms devour this body of mine, he said, I'm going to stand on
the earth in this body and see the Lord. So let's not fear what
men have to say and what men do and all their secret counsels. Just don't get too upset about
it. And don't get too upset about some of these divisions and these
practices that real gospel preachers have fallen into. But let's just
rejoice in this. The gospel is being preached. My friend, you and I are left
in the world for a testimony of Jesus Christ. We are here
by divine purpose and authority and as fellow laborers in the
Kingdom of God. And nothing this world can do
and nothing that men can say can stay the hand of God in this
work of redemption. Be patient and be confident,
knowing that no matter what comes your way, it will be turned for
your good to accomplish the purpose of God. That's what Paul is telling
this church. Don't be upset about this. God put me here. And He's using
me here to further His gospel.