We Are The Church: Part 3

We Are The Church: Part 3

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, we are on our last week of our series for We Are The Church, and I'm really excited for what we're gonna talk about today but before we dive into that, I just wanna give you guys a reminder that at the beginning of this series, we talked about the Church Pulse Assessment that has been sent out to you through our email list and I believe there's even a text going out this afternoon as another reminder, but we would just really appreciate if all of you would take probably 10, 15 minutes to just go through that assessment. It'll help us as a leadership team to know where we can grow, what areas of weakness and strengths that we have, what you are looking for in your church body, but this is just something that we are going to have you go through, have everyone go through so that it will help us as we focus in on this next year. So if you would take some time to do that, we would really appreciate our goal is to get everyone to do that, so we would love for you to help us out with that.

We as a leadership team have a desire to see Spring Valley Church, really the global church, but specifically for us here at Spring Valley, for it to be your third place. Now, what is the third place? Well, in our culture, we often have three places. We have our home, we have our work, and then we have a third place, wherever you spend a lot of time. So for some people, maybe it's a coffee shop. I actually think Starbucks is the one who coined this term, who started this idea of a third place 'cause they wanted you to come be at their stores. But maybe it's a coffee shop or a bookstore. Maybe it is the library. Perhaps it's a really close friend's house or the home that you grew up in that your parents still live in. Wherever it is that if you're not at home or work or school, you are at this third place. And we just, we kind of have this dream or this vision that we would be your third place. Now, even if it's not the church building itself, although we have a lot of events and things here, obviously we hold our church services here, even if it's not here specifically, that the body, the people, our SVC family, wherever you may be gathering would be your third place. We hope that it's a place that when service is over, you stay and you talk, you linger. That's why we got the picnic tables outside. That's why we try to have an all-church meal regularly so we can stay after and fellowship and be with each other. Maybe it's this idea of when the check has been paid, maybe you've gone out to lunch after service or you meet up with some church friends on a Friday night, that after the check has been paid, you don't rush off, but you stay. And you continue to be together. We want it to be a place where we are in each other's business, we're in each other's lives regularly. That is our hope. And honestly, that's what a big part of what we're celebrating today, is the fact that people have chosen to make Spring Valley their church family or their third place. And we are so excited about what God is doing here. So we're gonna look more into that, about what that means for us individually and corporately as a church body.

There was a Harvard study done that said that one in three people believe the following. It says that, they said, "You have needs in your life "and no one to meet them. "You have hurts to share and no one to listen to them. "You have love to give and no one to receive it." So one of the 36 of Americans are enduring ongoing feelings of loneliness, isolation and longing to be loved and to love. 36%. Honestly, I would imagine that's actually kind of low, to some degree. 'Cause it's not God's design or His intention for His kids. That's not how He made us, to be enduring feelings of loneliness, isolation and wanting to love and be loved. We're actually on a pause from our Genesis series for this We Are the Church series, but I'm actually gonna take us to Genesis again. 'Cause I think it's a really good reminder of why we are built for community. So in Genesis one, God, we see creation. God made order out of chaos and He created the world. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and He said, "It is good." Let there be light, light was good. Stars, planets, fish, plants, birds, animals. All of it, He said, was good. But then God said something wasn't good. After He made man, made Adam, and He saw that Adam had no one to do life with, had no one to laugh with or cry with or spend time with or share experiences with, He said, "This isn't good." Genesis 2:18 says, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good "'for the man to be alone. "'I will make a helper suitable for him.’"

And then moving on to 22, "Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib "He had taken out of the man "and He brought her to the man. "The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones "'and flesh of my flesh. "'She shall be called woman "'for she was taken out of the man.'" It wasn't good for him to be alone. God designed them to be together, to be in community. We know this because of what we've also talked about in our Genesis series of what came before man was made. What did God say before He made humans? Genesis 1:26, "Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness. "Let us make them in our image." That's plural language. So we see that the Trinity exists in community. We have Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. There's this perfect community that exists, distinct persons, but united as one. Now, God didn't create us because He was lonely. We see that because He was in community. He wasn't lonely and God doesn't need anything. So He didn't create us because He was lonely. He created us because He is love. Love isn't what God did, it's who He is. And He wanted to make us, to be in relationship with us. That's where we get the greatest commandment. Matthew 22, Jesus says, "The greatest commandment "is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, "and love your neighbor as yourself." So out of His love, He created us and then He gave us each other so that we can love Him and love each other. We were made for community.

The early church that we see in the book of Acts is really embraced this idea. They understood it. They knew that they needed each other. If you'll turn with me to Acts 2 in your Bibles or your phones, we'll also have it up on the screen. Acts 2:46-47, we see this picture of the early church embracing their community. It says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching "and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, "and to prayer. "Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs "performed by the apostles. "All the believers were together "and had everything in common. "They sold property and possessions to give "to anyone who had need." Verse 46, "Every day they continued to meet together "in the temple courts. "They broke bread in their homes and ate together "with glad and sincere hearts, praising God "and enjoying the favor of all the people. "And the Lord added to their number daily "those who were being saved." Every day they were together. They met together, they spent time together, they made food together, they ate and did life, they took care of each other. It was more than just physical proximity, although that was very important, but it created a spiritual intimacy and an emotional unity.

Why did they gather so often? Well, they needed each other and they knew they needed each other. They were aware of it, so they did something about it. Many believers, all believers, need that community too, but I think, especially in our modern day, we've forgotten it. We have forgotten how much we need each other. Maybe we have our immediate family, maybe we have our best friend or our spouse, but then beyond that, we forget that we need other people. A lot of us have embraced this, an isolating existence, maybe not even intentionally, but with the way of technology and advancement in conveniences, we work and shop and play online. We have social media that's not actually that social. We think it is, we pretend it is. And don't get me wrong, you can make real, I have made friendships with people online, but it's different, it's different when you are in person. We watch sermons, we listen to podcasts, we listen to audiobooks, all online. We think we don't need anything else, we don't need to go out or be with people. These are not bad things, please hear me on that. I do all of those things myself, these are not bad things. But I think we've lost the thread when it comes to truly living in community with other people, of seeing others and being seen by them. You can't do that when you're alone, you can't do that when you're just behind a screen, you can't do that when you're choosing to live in isolation. The reality is that as we all know, relationships can be messy. It can be scary to be vulnerable, to open ourselves up to people, to risk being hurt, 'cause we're all imperfect, we're all gonna mess up. And honestly, I think sometimes it's just inconvenient. We have work, we have our homes, we have our families, we have things we've gotta do, and so to put those on pause, to go be with other people can be really inconvenient, or even to invite people into that can be really inconvenient. So we don't, or we limit it. But see, being with each other is so good for us. It's good for our mental health, as science shows. It is good for the joy of our lives, it adds so much joy. It provides opportunity for encouragement and accountability. It helps breathe spiritual growth like nothing else does. You need each other, we need each other. Acts says that they met together daily, in person, in their homes, they went to each other's houses. They were all up in each other's business. They saw each other parenting, they saw their marriages, they saw what happens when they were stressed. And the thing with those kinds of relationships and that kind of community, it doesn't stay at surface level for very long, it can't. When you see who someone is when they are stressed out, you know who they are. I mean, if you think about what do we do when we have a loved one or someone we care about that suffers a tragedy or a loss? Maybe we send a text, hey, thinking about you, praying for you, let me know how I can help. Maybe we send flowers or drop off a meal on their porch. These are all good things, don't stop those things, do those things. But may I encourage you to pick up the phone. I think I'm probably more talking to my generation and younger, we have like an allergy to phone calls. Right, pick up the phone, let them hear your voice. Or, and hang with me here, go to them. Go be with them. Show up on their porch with a hot pizza and a hug and you are just ready to practice the ministry of presence. You are just there for them. You're a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry in, you don't have to say anything.

Sometimes people just wanna know that they are seen and they are known and they're not alone. I think sometimes we don't feel like we've maybe built up the relational equity needed to do that, needed to step into someone's space or to invite them into ours. But do you know where that relational equity is built? In regular, intentional community. When we are intentional about being with each other, it builds that relational equity so that we can show up for each other. Having Christian community, being the church, having this be your third place will not happen by accident. It has to be done intentionally. But when it is, it's what combats the loneliness. It's what fights against the things we talked about earlier from the Harvard study. It says, it's gonna provide someone who can help you meet your needs. It's going to give you someone whom you can share your hurt with, who will listen to you and pray for you. It's gonna give you someone to love and who will love you. When we commit to being in relationship with others, it combats the loneliness, it pushes it back in our own lives, but also in the lives of others. When we are committing to Christian community, we're creating the opportunity for ourselves to be in community, but also for others. What if, at least to some extent, God is asking you to live in Christian community, not for yourself, but for someone else? Maybe you're one of the two out of three that isn't struggling with loneliness or isolation right now. You still need community because other people need you. Someone else may need you to be there, to show up. And I promise you, one day, you're gonna be on the receiving end of that, but you have to be engaged consistently and intentionally in the body of Christ.

Our leadership team here has worked really hard to try to create some of these spaces and places for you to come and be a part of that. Our monthly men's and women's events, the guys just had an awesome time at ax throwing on Friday night. Yeah, I heard it was so much fun. Ladies, should we go ax throwing, maybe? No, okay. I'm just saying, the guys had so much fun. Well, we have our men's and women's events, we have our weekly Bible studies, we have youth on Monday nights for our students, family fun night we got coming up on Friday, and we want to create more. We're working to gather more opportunities for us to come together in addition to our Sunday morning. But we do this because like the early church, we know that we need each other. But here's where I might step on some toes. We can provide the place, but you have to choose it. You have to prioritize it. Just like we often choose things that cause us to live in isolation, sometimes we choose things that prevent us from engaging in that Christian community, from being there when we know we should be. And sometimes it's as simple as we over schedule. We say yes to too many things, not necessarily bad things, but we just say yes to too many things. Maybe we have all the kids' extracurricular activities or sports, maybe we take all the overtime shifts that we can. Maybe we just are hiding. Instead of opening ourselves up to other people, we would rather hide. We'd rather stay isolated. We'd rather protect ourselves. We don't want to be inconvenienced. 'Cause it is, it can be inconvenient. But it is so vital to our Christian life, to our spiritual growth and to our walk with Christ to do so alongside other believers. That is why we gather. The early church knew that and we can model our life after that. So what do we want our Christian community to be like? Well, I think there's many things, but we're gonna look at four things that we want our Christian community here at Spring Valley Church, your third place to be.

Number one, we want it to be full of grace. Acts 20:32, Paul is talking to the believers in the church and he says, "Now I commit you to God "and to the word of His grace, which can build you up "and give you an inheritance among all those "who are sanctified." We are given God's grace for the purpose of our sanctification, which means we are just being more, made more and more like Jesus. But because we have been given His grace, we can extend that grace to other people. So when someone walks in, it is not a place of judgment. Everyone is welcome. Come as you are. Jesus called people to Him. He didn't say, "Go clean yourself up first." He said, "Come follow me." So just like we have been given so much grace, we live in that grace and we extend that grace to other people. So we want our community to be a place that is full of grace. And all of these things require your participation. I can say these things all day long, but all of us have to embrace these practices so that we are all participating in this community, in this way. So we gotta be full of grace.

Number two, we want our community to be a place of healing. I read a pastor's quote this week. He says, "Confess to God for forgiveness. "Confess to people for healing." Now, we can be healed. God is the one who does the healing. But there is something supernatural that happens when we confess to someone else. James 5:16 says, "Therefore, confess your sins "to each other and pray for each other "so that you may be healed. "The prayer of a righteous person "is powerful and effective." I've said it before and I'll say it again, revival will not happen without confession and repentance. We cannot have revival in our own hearts or in our church until we confess and repent and turn away from what breaks the heart of God. Now, confessing often just means confessing your sin, admitting the sin you've had. You take it to God and you ask for forgiveness. But when I talk about confessing to other people, I'm talking about sharing that with someone, expressing that struggle to them so they can pray for you, so they can hold you accountable, so that they can be there for you. But it can also mean confessing something else that you are going through. Maybe it is a struggle, maybe it is a past hurt or trauma that you've never shared with anyone and you can't experience healing because it is keeping you in bondage 'cause you've never told anyone. When we practice confession with other people, when we surround ourselves with people that will pray for us and will intercede for us on our behalf, we experience freedom from bondage. Chains are broken, supernatural and spiritual healing comes through confession. So we wanna be a place of healing.

Number three, we wanna be unified in our mission. We wanna be on the same page when it comes to what we are called to as a body. Acts 2, again, 46 through 47 says, "Every day they continue to meet together "in the temple courts. "They broke bread in their homes "and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, "praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people "and all the Lord added to their number daily, "those who were being saved." Our mission is to spread the gospel. That's our number one goal, is to point people to Jesus and make heaven crowded. We want to see our community saturated with the glory of God. That's our mission, is to be filled up here and then go out and overflow to the world. When we are operating in community regularly, we become more unified in that mission. Are we adding to our number daily, those who are being saved? No, but we are growing. And again, that's something we're gonna celebrate this afternoon. That we are seeing numbers being added to us daily. And we don't celebrate them just for the sake of bigger numbers and seeing those numbers grow. We are celebrating souls that were lost that have now been found. Lives that have been surrendered to Christ. People that have joined our Christian community and chosen to be part of our Spring Valley family. That is what we are celebrating. But again, it's because we meet together regularly that we build up the body, that we become clear in our mission. That we're in it together, that we're stronger together and that it builds our faith and it builds our relationships so that we can be more effective for His kingdom.

Number four, it is where we become battle ready. Our time and community makes us ready for the spiritual battles that we face every day. In the church in America, I think we really downplay the spirit realm, spiritual warfare. And I think part of it is we're afraid of sounding a little crazy or even of running the risk of over spiritualizing things. But at the risk of over spiritualizing it, I'm gonna tell you there is a spiritual battle. We all face those battles. And so when we come together, it is an equipping of the saints. It is getting us battle ready for when we go out and we face those spiritual battles. The Bible says we don't fight against flesh and blood, but against powers and authorities and principalities of the dark world. We're not gonna be very good at fighting spiritual battles if we have not become ready, if we have not armored up and been prepared. So we come together and we're equipped through worship, through the teaching of God's word, through fellowship. Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, "so one person sharpens another." You can't sharpen something without contact. It has to come into contact in order to be sharpened. But when it's sharp, we become dangerous to the enemy. Through community, we are given the tools we need to combat, to combat the enemy, to combat in spiritual warfare, and we are just stronger in numbers.

Paul talks about this in Ephesians when he tells us to put on the full armor of God. When he's writing this, he's referring to the Roman soldier's armor. And he talks about the shield of faith, that that is the main form of protection. And the Roman soldiers would have a giant shield that would, basically big enough to hide behind. But when the enemy was sending flaming arrows arcing over into their territory, they would circle up and lift up their shields to create a shell. So not only was it protecting them, it was protecting their fellow soldier. So when we become battle ready, not only is it going to help us and prepare us to fight a spiritual battle, it's gonna protect our brothers and sisters. We have a couple guys in our church who are ex-military, and they have tattoos that say I-G-Y-6 And I asked them about it. I said, "What does I-G-Y -6 stand for?" And they said, "I got your six." Meaning, I've got your back. Paul talks a lot about soldiers and being ready and armoring up and military language. So just like our men and women in uniform, we as the body of believers, we have each other's backs. We can say that because we are operating in community, I got your six, I've got your back. But we can't do that if we don't know each other, if we aren't spending time together, if we aren't with each other.

When we live life together and have real conversations, when we open ourselves up to vulnerability, when we get equipped, we're gonna be more prepared to defend against the devil schemes. Friends, there's a lot of darkness in this world. We are not ignorant to that. We've seen that time and time again. More school shootings than I'd like to count. Oh, immigrant woman being brutally murdered on public transportation. Charlie Kirk being assassinated over and over. There are stories of terrible things. Evil is rampant in our world. But I'm here to tell you that the church of Jesus Christ is alive and well. But we have to get ready. When we are full of grace, when we are a place of confession that leads to healing, when we are unified in our mission, in our battle ready, we will together be able to push back that darkness. We'll be able to stand firm with clarity and courage against the lies of the enemy. We can push back against tribalism and division. Then we get to offer peace to the world, the peace of Christ. We get to be the peace bearers that go out and point people to Jesus. Our loneliness will be our downfall. Our isolation from each other will be our downfall. But Matthew 18:20 says, for where two or three gather in the name of the Lord, He will be there with us. So maybe loneliness and isolation will be our downfall, but victory through Jesus will happen and be found in community. So we are the church. Who's ready to commit to being a part of the body of Christ, to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Sign me up for that. Sign me up for that.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you that you made us for community, that you made us for relationships, that you put us together so that we can make each other better, so that we could sharpen each other, so that we wouldn't be lonely or trying to do this life in isolation. God, thank you for our church family. Thank you for this place that we can call our church home, that we can come together and fellowship with each other, that we can be with each other in the lows and celebrate in the highs. We praise you for designing us this way, for knowing that we would need each other. Help us to lean into that. Help us to be vulnerable. Help us to be open. Help us to be committed to where you have placed us in the body of Christ. We praise you. We thank you. We love you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

We Are The Church: Part 2

We Are The Church: Part 2

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, my name is Andrei, I'm one of the pastors here and we're glad that we're all together this Sunday. We are taking a break, as was said, from our Genesis series. We're doing the We Are The Church series. I want to remind you that we sent out an assessment, a church assessment via text, via email this past week and many of you have taken it, we really appreciate that. If you haven't yet, don't you worry, you're getting another text and another email and another opportunity to take that church assessment. And again, it's all to help us as a church and our leadership to understand where we're at and to move forward with the best steps possible. So if you could take some time this week, if you haven't yet, to take that church assessment, we would really appreciate that.

Last week, Pastor Chris started off our series, We Are The Church, and he had three mindsets for us, to be more devoted, to be more generous, and to share the love of Jesus, which we're going to talk about more today. But he ended with the encouragement to change the object of our devotion by taking one step. And he said maybe that is to begin tithing or to increase your tithing, to begin volunteering at church, to pray daily, and whatever that step was for you, I pray that God has been stirring within you clarity over what the step is to take and that you guys are taking those steps every day and these weeks ahead. So we are excited about what this series is going to mean for us individually and us as a church.

Today we're going to be talking about a question, why are we the church? Why are we the church? And while the verbiage may be different from every church that you go to generally, there are two things that are hidden in every kind of mission statement or vision statement for a church, and that is to bring glory to God and to bring people to Jesus. So those two things, to bring glory to God, to bring people to Jesus, this is why the church exists. We say it, it's on our wall here at Spring Valley, to see our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. So you can see in there we're trying to bring glory to God, and we're also trying to bring people to Jesus. Sometimes that can go from the forefront of our minds to the back, and we tend to forget why we are the church, why we're Christians and what our purpose is and why we gather together, even when it is a huge font on the side of our sanctuary. Sometimes we forget.

This reminds me of a story. When I was a pastor at a former church at East Parkway, there was a group. As I was pastoring, the group started coming to church, and it was eight to ten people, and they all came in this big van, this big 12-passenger van, and they were people who were in recovery or homeless, and they all came from a shelter up the road. They came from a long ways away, men and women, all dealing with, again, some point in their recovery, and they would drive over an hour to be here because someone, the person who was bringing them, had gone through recovery and seen the importance of church. They had a family member that went to that church, and so he was like, "Hey, I'm going to church now, and I think all these other people should also go to church." In order to be on time, I can give you the setting here, they would get there really early because they were driving far away, and so they'd often just be there in the parking lot for more than a half hour just chilling. For those who didn't know their story, it kind of looked a little odd. There's a group of 10 or 11 people, eight to ten, whatever, people sitting in the parking lot, smoking a lot of cigarettes, and not looking maybe like everyone else at the church. They were dressed in their best, but sometimes you go to a certain church setting, and there's just like, "Oh, well, we all look like this, and these people don't look like that." And again, it was a little off-putting for those who didn't know the story of why is there a group loitering in the parking lot and just smoking away, and then they come and they take all our brownies and cookies in the morning, and they keep drinking all the coffee. But for those who did know, it always put a smile on our faces to see that they were there. Why? Because we knew that this is why the church existed, to bring glory to God and to bring people to Jesus, and the person driving those people was bringing people to the house of God to go to church on Sundays. And as their story kind of came out over Sundays after Sundays, and people were asking, "Who are they? Who are they?" And then eventually the whole church knew, and the whole church, even if they didn't at first understand and see, but they were coming as they were, just love them as they were, and so the church had to learn to do the same.

And today we're going to be in a passage in Scripture where Jesus accepts someone just as they are, and the example that it is to us of why the church is the church. And so we're going to be in Mark 2. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along on the screen or on your phone. So we're going to be in Mark 2, and just to give a little background, Jesus has returned to home base, Capernaum, and he's teaching in a home, and there's no room left. As you can imagine, Jesus has quite the following, and when he comes into town, people want to hear, and so he comes to this house, and it is packed. It's like if Jesus showed up to one of your life groups, and you'd just be texting, like, "Hey, he's here, and you should get here," and your house was full. And this group at this house has got some pretty important people. You got everyone from the next-door neighbors to religious leaders who showed up to hear Jesus talk. From our passage, I want us to see the types of people that we see in this story and remind us that it's the very same types of people that we see in church today. So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to read. If you guys could bow your heads one more time with me. God, thank you for the chance to gather. We do not ever want to take this for granted. We can gather on a Sunday freely and worship you and hear your truth be preached. God, we pray for this message that you have prepared. I pray that it would reach our hearts, that it would draw us closer to you, that it would encourage us to give you everything we have and to live for you every moment of every day. And God, I pray that as we have a deeper understanding of who you are, we would have a deeper understanding of who we are and why we as a church exist. So be with us this morning. We give this time to you. We pray this in your name. Amen. All right. Let me go ahead and read our passage, starting in verse 1, Mark 2. A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Now some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Immediately, Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier, to say to this paralyzed man, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat, and walk?' But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." So he said to the man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home." He got up, took his mat, walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone, and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this.”

Another pastor, Pastor Greg Crochell, has some helpful insights into this passage, and I want to share some of those this morning. So we are going to look at five different types of people. In every church, you see five different types of people. The first is, you walk into a church, every church, you see someone in need. In our passage, it's the paralytic, in need of healing. Obviously, he has his friends there, but he needs something. He is living a life where he is not whole physically. And for that culture at that time, someone who was paralyzed, it was often associated with a generational sin. His parents must have done something, that he is now living a life like this. We won't get into all that right now, but this man is in need of physical healing. Today that could be in our church, someone battling depression, dealing with financial struggles, a single parent, someone feeling alone and hopeless, fighting anxiety. You come to church, and you are in need. There are people in our church today who are in need, in this room, who are in need. Sometimes that's us. We walk in, and we just need Jesus, and we need those other Christians in our lives. Other times, you go to church, and you're in a good place, you're experiencing a good season, God's blessing you, and you're able to think outside of yourselves, and you're aware of the needs around you, and that brings up our second person.

In every church, you will find someone who cares. In our passage, we see the four friends of this paralyzed man, who took it upon themselves to bring the man before Jesus. And they don't just stop once the house is filled. They didn't take him there like, "Hey, look, we couldn't get through. So sorry. Maybe we can meet Jesus next time, next week, at the Life Group, at this house." They care, they cared enough to keep going, determined to find a way to bring their friend to Jesus. Come back to that in a second. Today, in our church, there are people who care deeply for others, who have the capacity to care deeply. They are mindful of the lives that we are living, and people in need, and they want to do something about it. And maybe that's as simple as connecting with a person, sending them a text, "Hey, I know I was talking to this person on Sunday. I know they're going through a hard time. I'm going to reach out this week and just let them know that they're not alone. I'm thinking of them. I'm praying for them." Maybe that's meeting up for coffee and saying, "Hey, I know that they have a hard time getting out of the house. I'm going to go invite them to coffee. We're going to spend some time together." Maybe it's providing meals. Someone who's, "Hey, meal prepping is the thing that is very difficult right now. We're going to provide some meals for that person." Or maybe it's someone that we all cringe at, helping someone move. A classic, classic church help. And it's still good. We should all do it. We should help people move. It's a tough one. Maybe it's giving some money to someone who is in need and say, "Hey, I'm having a hard time this month. I'm doing my best, but it's just things aren't there." And there's someone who has the means to provide help. Whatever the need is, there are people in church who care. And I know, and I know that you guys know, I want to encourage us, there are people at Spring Valley who care, who have the capacity to care.

So you see, in church, you see someone in need, you see someone who cares, you also see someone who is preoccupied. In our passage, there's a whole house full of people, wall to wall, so full that four people could not get through. They had to dig a hole in the roof. I want to show, do we have the picture? There's a picture of a house. Can we put that up there? This is what they would have, something like this would have been what they were working with. So there's a kind of a courtyard, that was all full, just imagine that whole place packed with people. And the roof was made of some wooden beams, some straw and clay manure mixture, and then when it rained or if there was water put on top, that clay would kind of seal and harden. And so when it said they had to dig through the roof, they literally had to dig through some very hard materials to get through. And there was also like grass up there and people would work up there and just relax up there maybe after, I don't know. But there's, you could walk up on that roof, it was very strong. And so it was not a small thing to say, hey, we're just going to like put apart some straw. It was no, it was a whole material that they had to dig through. That's how committed these friends were, to get through all of that. And the friends could not get through that house. It was so packed. Even with, I imagine they were whispering, hey, we have someone here who needs to see Jesus. They're not just like, hey, we just want to go to the front. There's like, hey, we got something going on. Can we get through? And no one will let them through. They were all preoccupied. They had their backs turned to the person in need. I like how Pastor Craig says it in regards to how it can look today. It says there can be Christian circles that love Jesus. They have their Christian bumper stickers. They have their Christian language. They say, praise the Lord, hallelujah. They listen to KLOVE radio. They have their favorite podcast. And without knowing it, and without meaning it, just because they were preoccupied, their body language, their posture essentially says to people around them, you can go to hell as far as we're concerned, because we're doing our Jesus thing. They didn't mean to, but they can just have their little Christian thing going on, and it's a good thing. They all liked each other, but they didn't realize they were preoccupied and had their backs turned to someone who was in need. Are we too preoccupied that we don't see people in need? We all have our own needs. We're not denying that. But there's also, we need to be aware of the people that are sitting around us in this room that we encounter outside these walls in our lives that are needing Jesus. And even something good, like our own personal walk with God, should not deter us from lifting up our heads and saying, "Who's around me right now that may be needing Jesus? And can I participate in them seeing Jesus, meeting Jesus, hearing Jesus?" Those four friends, they didn't give up. They didn't let those circumstances stop them from getting their friend to Jesus. That's the kind of attitude and heart and action that we need to have as a church, willing to do anything short of sin to reach people who don't know Christ. Pastor Craig says to reach people no one is reaching, we'll have to do things no one is doing. Let's sink in for a second.

To reach people that no one is reaching, we might have to do some things that no one else is doing, to have the conversations that no one else is having, to go take the time and sacrifice our time to go spend it when no one else is doing it. The friends of the paralytic do that. They say, "You know what? We can dig a hole through the roof. No bad ideas. We are determined to get this man to Jesus. How are we going to do it? We're going to go up to the roof, we're going to dig a hole, we're going to lower our friend down to Jesus." Imagine the scene inside. You're sitting there, probably standing there, standing room only, shoulder to shoulder, trying to hear Jesus. All of a sudden, some dirt starts falling down from the roof. What is going on up there? And then a man, this gaping hole opens up, and there's a man being lowered down in front of Jesus. And I imagine Jesus with the biggest smile on his face as he sees what's happening. I think we know that Mark 2:5, it says, "When Jesus saw their faith," saw their faith. For those friends, faith wasn't just an internal belief. It was a strong enough belief that it led them to action. You ever know someone that had such a strong faith you could see it in their lives? I know I have. I've said this to people. I can see their faith in the way they serve. I can see their faith in the way they pray. I can see their faith in the way they love people who are really hard to love. I can see that person's faith in the way they give. I can see a person's faith in the way they have compassion with people. I can see a person's faith in the way they love, in the way they talk to their children as a parent. I can see a person's faith when they're talking with people who they disagree with, and they are loving them like Jesus. People can see the way, they can see our faith in the way that we live. And in moments throughout life when we are choosing to be like Jesus, those four friends had a faith that you could see. And Jesus says, "When I saw their faith, something amazing happened." I imagine the paralyzed man through all of this hoping and praying for physical healing. That's why he's there. His friends, that's why they're bringing him there for physical healing. I no longer want to be paralyzed. I want to walk. I want to be whole. And yet Jesus didn't just give him healing. In fact, he does something else first. Even though the man brought the paralytic to be healed, Jesus sees a need that is more important because Jesus can do that. He can see what we want but knows exactly what we need. Pastor Craig says it this way, "Sometimes God gives us what we need before he gives us what we want." The man is lowered down. It's probably clear what the situation is that he cannot walk. And before healing him, the first thing that Jesus says to him, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Sometimes God gives us what we need before he gives us what we want. The man wanted his body to be healed, but Jesus knew that his heart needed to be forgiven. Praise God that he can see what we truly need, not just what we want. And it's at this point though, there were some people in the house have issue with what's happening. And maybe it started with they got dirt in their face and they're a little upset by that. But definitely the healing of someone and claiming to be God, forgiving sins, is where some people got really upset.

And that brings us to the fourth type of person that we see in every church. It's the uncomfortable one. Brace yourselves. Someone who is critical. I don't mean like vitally important. I mean someone who is always critiquing what is happening in the church. Verses 6 through 7 say, "Now some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves, 'Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" They're saying, "Jesus, you can't do this. That's not how this is going to happen. It's not how this is done." In churches today, there can be...that is present. There can be a lot of that. Someone who is critical, someone who is unhappy with things in church that aren't aligned with their preferences. They might not call them preferences. People who never seem to say anything positive, only negative, and complain and choose to see things through a critical lens. People who choose to ignore the work of Jesus that is happening in a church and instead make it about themselves and how they think, "This is not how I would do it," which means this is not how it should be done. But Jesus doesn't stop for the critics. Verse 10 says, "But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the man, 'I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home.'" Take up your mat and go. You don't need it anymore. Jesus continues his work. And he might be saying today, "Maybe not take up your mat, but hey, leave your struggles here. Leave that financial struggle behind. Leave that anxiety here. Let go of your bad habits. Leave behind the shame. Go and follow me in your day-to-day life." That's what the paralytic did. Who's no longer a paralytic, a healed man. He gets up, healed by the power of Jesus, walks out in full view of all of them, and everyone's amazed. They've never seen anything like it before. This man's life was changed when he encountered Jesus, both internally and outwardly. And his physical, his body was healed, but his heart was forgiven. His sins were forgiven.

So, we'll see. In every church, someone in need, someone who cares, we have them all listed up here, someone who is preoccupied, and someone who is critical. Which one are you? Take a moment here. Look at that list. Assess your heart, where you're at in life. Maybe you're more than one. That's possible too. Maybe you go through different seasons, and so at one season you were this, but now you're in a season where, hey, now I'm this person. You might be someone in need. And if that's you, if you've said, hey, I'm the person in need, then this is the perfect place to be. You're exactly where you need to be, because in every church is someone who cares about your need. You are around people who care about what you're going through. Unfortunately, there are also those of us who are preoccupied. I've been there before. We put our heads down. We go to church. We say, hi, hey, hey, nice to see you, great, great. We go on with our day. We go on with our week. Yeah, I've got to go to church. And we're just going through the motions. We're in a rut. We're not bringing people to Jesus. We're kind of doing our own thing. We might have our backs turned to the people in our lives who need Jesus. And we may need Jesus to help us a bit more, to enable us to be considerate and caring to the people around us. Maybe there are those of us who are critical. Maybe we woke up on the wrong side of the bed one Sunday. Or maybe we need a good look at our heart, at what's going on inside of us. We need to ask Jesus, why am I thinking these things? Why am I saying these things? Which one are you? Someone in need, someone who cares, someone who's preoccupied, or someone who is critical? There's actually one more type. I said five types of people in every church. The last one is this. We in every church, we are all someone who can be changed. We are all someone who can be changed by the grace of God. All of us, every single one of us in this room, changed by the grace of Jesus. When you walk into a church, whether this church or you've been visiting other churches, you've been to other churches, when you walk into a church, who do you see all around you? But people who can be changed by God. Scripture tells us that if anyone, it doesn't matter who or what you've done, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old is gone and everything is being made new. If you are in Christ, you have freedom. Says he who the Son sets free is free indeed. We don't come here as perfect people. We don't come here as a social event. We don't come here to top off our spiritual tanks and be like, "I was just missing a little and now I'm back to being perfect again. I'm good to go out throughout my week." It's not how this works. We come here, whether you've known Jesus all your life or you just accepted him yesterday, we are all in need of Jesus and the life that he gives us and the grace that he bestows on us. We are all someone who can be changed by Jesus.

Now let me shift gears here. Who do we not see at church and who do we not see in this passage? Sounds tricky, but it's really simple, I promise. We don't see the people who aren't there. Gotcha. See, you see what I did there? We don't see the people who aren't there. Maybe in today's circumstances, maybe it's the woman who almost went but was too afraid because she had so much going on in her life and she was afraid that if anyone were to find out anything, that shame would keep her from making connections and being a part of that church. Maybe it's the guy who was interested but didn't want to miss the Sunday morning football games. I was just like, "Hey, no one's really invited me. I kind of thought about it, but I don't want to go." Maybe it's someone who before COVID was interested in going to church and then COVID happened and afterwards they never re-sparked that interest of going to church and no one's talked to them about going back to church. The list goes on and on and on about people and why they're not here. But what's needed is people who care, people who will invite them to church or invite them to have a conversation about Jesus. People who will care about not just what that person wants but what that person truly needs. I think of that group at my old church. They were only there because someone cared and because that person took action, they had a faith that led to action, said, "I'm going to get a van. I'm going to load all you up. I'm going to take you there every Sunday." This is why the church exists, to bring glory to God and to bring people to Jesus.

You guys should have got a card on your seat today. I want to pull that card out right now. It says, "I'm praying for an opportunity to share Jesus with someone." There's space for you to write a name down or a few names down. Just take a moment and think about who in your life needs to hear about Jesus. Write those names down, there's pens in the seats in front of you. I'll give you a moment to think about that. Who in your life needs to hear about Jesus? Family member, friends, neighbors, co-workers? Hopefully by now you've thought of someone, someone's come to mind. You guys should do me a favor. If you know someone who has not yet given their life to Jesus, who does not yet believe, would you guys mind raising your hand? If that's you, if you know someone who does not yet know, take a look around. Almost everyone in this room knows someone who needs to hear about Jesus. Every single one of us has someone in our lives who doesn't know him yet. We are called to be the church, to partner with Jesus in His kingdom work. We are the people that can share Jesus with others. You may be sitting there saying to yourself, "Yeah, but I don't know what to say. I don't have all the answers. What if they ask these really hard questions? And what am I supposed to say to that?" Well, I want to say this. It's okay, I'm giving you permission to say, "I don't know." That's a great question. I don't know. That's a really, I see what you're saying there. It's a really hard question you're asking and I'm not sure. I'll let you in on a, it's not a secret. I have a Bible minor, a Masters in Divinity, I'm ordained in the church. I don't know all the questions about the Bible. I put years and hours and I don't know. And I still say I don't know when I come to certain people and I have certain questions and I say, "That's a great, I don't know." And I lead them to what I do know. And this is the encouragement to you. You lead them to what you do know. So you have experience. If you are a believer in Jesus, if you've been following him in your life, then you have experience with Jesus and you share your experience. I don't know that answer that question, but what I do know is I've seen God work in my life. I've seen him provide for me. I've seen him work a miracle. I've seen him heal. I've seen him answer my prayers. I've seen him and how he loves me and I think he wants to love you. I know he wants to love you too. That right there, that's all you say, that is sharing Jesus with other people. And they may come back with, "But why did this happen?" I don't know. I have no idea. But I know that he loves you and he wants a relationship with you. That is sharing the gospel. It's what we're called to do. So the band comes back up for worship.

Hopefully you have someone on your card. And so, yeah, a couple of things. You have that card. You take that with you this week and put it somewhere where you're going to see it. You're going to be praying for that person, where it's going to be in front of you to say, "Hey, I'm praying for an opportunity." And maybe you're as bold as to walk right up and be like, "Hey, we haven't had a conversation yet. I need to talk to you about something." Or maybe you're just praying and you're waiting for the right opportune moment. And then maybe this week, it may be months from now where you have a chance to share. You may also be sitting there thinking, "This person's pretty hopeless and I've tried and I don't know if I'm going to be able to reach them." I want to say this. Sometimes those who look farthest from God are actually the closest because God is doing a work inside of them that we can't see. And sometimes it's at the lowest of lows where they're most open to hearing about Jesus. Even when people we'd love to see come to Jesus seem far away, we need to have hope and believe that God is the God who can do anything. And so you have those names. So I exhort you to look for an opportunity to share what you know, your experience of God with them. And we do this because we are the church. We exist here at Spring Valley to bring glory to God, to bring people to Jesus, to see our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. Do not forget your purpose. Don't leave these doors and this sanctuary thinking, "I just go back and I leave church behind me." No. You go into your life. You go into the people, your neighborhoods, your family, and you carry with you the burden and the desire and the urgency to say, "When I get the chance, when God opens that door, I'm going to share the truth. What's so important to me and what I want someone else to value too." We are all someone in need and we can all be someone who cares about someone by sharing Jesus with them. We're going to head into a time of prayer. We've done this once a month now and Pastor Lauren's going to be on this side. I'll be on this side. And in this next song, we want to invite you to do a couple of things. If you want to respond to what you've heard today in singing, we invite you to stand and sing and praise God. You have those names on those cards. If you want to just pray for those people and take this moment to pray for them and that opportunity to share them, I encourage you to do that. We're going to be on the sides here. If you want to bring those people up and we can pray with you about reaching those people. And if you just have stuff going on in life and you're like, "Look, I barely got here today. I got a lot of questions about what's going on in the world today and I would love some prayer." And please join us up here and we'd love to pray for you.

We Are The Church: Part 1

We Are The Church: Part 1

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

This morning we are doing a first part in a series called We Are The Church and I'm going to get to the sticker on your seat there in a moment for this series, but I want to give you a little peek behind the curtain, okay? Can I do that? As a pastor, let you guys understand a little bit here. There are times when being a pastor is a real struggle. And there are times when I first started studying to be a pastor in college and I moved across the United States. I grew up here in Northern California, Carmichael. I packed up a truck and I moved all the way to Indiana, thousands of miles away from anybody that I knew. At the time, my lovely girlfriend came with me, my now wife. She was there. I had a buddy from high school. He was there. So I had some people, Lauren, she had family in the area, but no family that I knew or that she knew. And it was kind of a struggle. And when we started, when we got to college, we both made a promise to each other that we were going to find a church and we were going to plug into a church and we were going to get connected. And this began probably, I don't know how many months of going and attending a church and then going out to lunch afterwards and going, "Okay, what did we think?" Because honestly, the reality was that we both grew up in really awesome churches and the bar was set so high for us that we found it a struggle to find a church. And as we went around to different churches and we got to know a lot of really cool people, I'm not saying these churches were horrible, it just, it was hard. Midwest church versus West Coast church is a lot different. Way different. And so we would go to a church and we'd go out to lunch and we'd be like, "Okay, we love this about this." We're like, "This is like, oh, that one, that one, that. Not too sure about that. Could we go there?" We kept going. We eventually found a church and we said, "We're not going to just attend until things got weird.”

Because here's the reality. When you go to attend a church, the church isn't batting a thousand every single Sunday. Like, let's be honest. Church isn't perfect every Sunday. The church isn't perfect. So newsflash, if you're searching for a perfect church, welcome, we're not perfect. But as we started attending a church, we said, "Okay, we're committed. This is where we're going to go." And so we started serving. I started serving on the worship team. My wife started serving in youth ministry. And we said, "We're committed to this church." And as we went through college and as I studied the Bible, I felt this hypertension because I realized when I read about scripture and the church and the Bible, the modern church of today didn't look the same. There were some big differences. And as a pastor, we spend a lot of time, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, okay? As a pastor, Pastor Andrei, myself, Pastor Lauren, we spend a lot of time during the week preparing for a weekend service. And we spend a lot of intention and thought and we try to do our best to think through all the details and we figure out the right songs. Andre spends every year, at the beginning of the year, he spends a good amount of time looking through, reading scripture, helping direct and plan our series for the year. We sit down together. We talk through these series of what each week is going to be like, what part of the scripture we focus on. What is the theme here? What do we want you guys to walk away from after you come to church? And I sit here and I still continue to look at the scriptures and I see, I go, "This church is different than what I see at the church and the Bible." And I think we do what I would hope, I think, a really good job here at Spring Valley, working to teach truth and teach theology and to teach the Word of God.

But when I look at, maybe, let's say outside of the church, I'm going to say Big C Church. You guys mean when I say Big C Church? I mean just the church in general. Let's say just the church in North America. I see churches that are sometimes playing it safe. Churches maybe that are disconnected. Some have slipped, maybe I dare say, into being boring. And I look at the calling of Jesus and the life that He lived. And as Christ followers, meaning we are to emulate Christ in our lives, there is nothing safe about Jesus, right? He touched lepers. He hung out with prostitutes. He called tax collectors to be on His team. There's nothing safe or comfortable about Jesus. And yet when I look at the church, sometimes I see comfortable. I see safe. I see not the picture of what the church was at the beginning. The church that Jesus established, that the Holy Spirit led, that brought down onto the disciples who became the apostles, who became the first pastors in the beginning when Jesus left and went back into heaven. I see a difference there. I see Jesus who was radical. He loved those who hated Him. He blessed those who persecuted Him. Jesus welcomed those who religion of the day had rejected. And this is where I struggle as a pastor sometimes. But not only as a pastor, but also as a disciple of Jesus as I read the Bible and I look at the church today, it pales in comparison to what once was. Jesus didn't come to condemn, it says, but He came to save the world. He came to bring life. And not just simple life, barely getting by life, but life that is full. Life that is vibrant. Life that is attractional to the outside world. And today, the next two weeks after, we're going to take three Sundays and we're going to seek to begin to please God as His church. Because here's the reality, it's not my church. It's not your church. Pastor Andre's church. Not the pastor who founded this church way back in the day. It's not their church. It's God's church. His church. And I want to look at specifically the beginning version of the church in Acts chapter 2 and to give us three mindset shifts. Mindset shifts. Easy for me to say, I speak for a living. For us to think about and walk away today and begin to really think through as we seek God and His church today.

I want to pray real quick. Jesus, we thank you for another wonderful Sunday. God, we thank you for today. God, a day to worship you, to give you praise, the honor and glory. Couldn't think of a better day of the week than right now, God, to gather together to worship you, to give you the praise. And everybody said? Amen.

Well, it says this, Acts chapter 2, if you want to flip there, it's going to be on the screens. You've got a Bible in front of you, a lot of people on your phone. That's awesome. But Acts chapter 2, we're going to start in verse 41, and it says this, "Those who accepted His message were baptized," being those that believed what people said were baptized. And they added to the church that day about 3,000 in all. Peter gathers together a giant group of people, and he begins to preach who Jesus was to these people. And 3,000 people that day say yes to Jesus. Whoa. I wouldn't even know what to do. Let's be honest. You have a program management pastor problem day one as a church. Don't get caught in that. Sorry, side note. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions and gave to anyone who had need." Every day, every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes, ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. The Lord added to their number weekly, monthly, yearly.

What was it? Shout it out. Let's go daily those who were being saved. Maybe I could just stop the sermon right here. A little bit different than today, right? A little bit different than Peter saying, "Hey, guys, we're going to meet temple courts Sunday 1030. Get your kids there at 1015. We'll check them into the side yard. We'll get them taken care of. And then service is over. You want to hang out. We're going to have some food. You can bring something to share. But we're going to be at Mary's house on Wednesday for a Bible study if you want to be over there." No, they met together daily. That's pretty awesome. Daily they're hanging out. And then they're Sabbath-ing together. They're having meals together. They're encouraging one another. Someone comes to them and says, "Hey, I need some help. I got it. What do you need? I'm here. Titus over here, he wants to hook you up. He'll take care of you. Just go see Titus." There's just this beautiful picture of this community in Acts chapter two.

So I thought it might be fun. Maybe look at the Big C church today and do today's translation or a modern-day version. This is me. I wrote this. Okay, I'm not saying. I'm not putting this in the Bible. But what if we wrote this about today? It may be something like this. Today's church, it says, "They devoted to their comfort, their happiness, their personal goals, their dream, their bucket list. No one really noticed the Christians because they were focused on themselves. Very few of the believers were together. And when we were, they fought over stupid things. If they sold anything, they used the money to buy something better for themselves. They claimed to love God, but they didn't even love each other. So they felt empty, alone, depressed. As a result, most people disliked them and very few lives were changed.”

Obviously, this isn't the picture that God has for His church. He wants something better for what the Scripture calls His bride, His love. And I think for us, there's been a lot of awesome, great churches and pastors. I don't want to discredit any of that. Okay? I'm here to just like, "Oh, church is so bad." But there has been a lot of things where we've gone astray in the church, right? And the only way that we can become better and to recognize where we can grow is to be honest with where we are at. If we want a different result, we have to have a different mindset. We have to change the way that we think, the way that we do church, the way that we live our lives because the reality is, as your sticker says, we don't just go to church, but we are the church. Say that with me. Say it. We are the church. The church isn't a building. The church isn't a campus on the corner of Sunset and Fairway or wherever in 123 America Boulevard USA. That's not where the church is. We are the church. They didn't have a building. I mean, they had 3,000 people and they didn't have a building. And yet what? God added daily those who are meeting Jesus and His saving grace for the very first time. So for us to become the best version of ourselves as the church, I see three things in this scripture about how the church operated, who they were, their priorities, and what they did. We will have to have three things changed in us to become more like the perfect version of the church from Acts chapter two.

The first thing we will have to be is we will have to be devoted. I just said we don't go to church. We are the church. There you go. You guys are catching. I'm proud of that. We will be devoted. We just don't go to church. We are the church. Oh yes. I love it. I love it. Acts 2:42, it says this, "They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, the teaching of Jesus and to fellowship, to community, to relationships, to breaking of bread, to food, to caring for one another, to loving each other, to prayer, to practically praying over each other by the power of the Holy Spirit, lifting one another up, going before God." And what the big fancy word would be, "intercession," which just means you're praying for somebody else so that God hears you praying for somebody else and that you love one another in the way that you care by taking time to think about them to say, "Hey God, I want to think about this person right now and what they're going through in their life." This is what the early church did. And when we look at this, I want us to focus in on that word, "devoted." I practiced this Greek word last night. My daughter came out. She's getting ready for bed and I'm literally online playing this Greek word to try to learn how to say it. So I'm about to butcher it real bad for you. But the Greek word for devoted means proskartereō. Yeah, see, you guys don't even know the difference. I love this. Proskartereō. And this word means devoted. It means to live in a constant state of relentless pursuit to be persistent, ongoing, obstinate, devotion. It's an imperfect tense. Ongoing action means it was and it is and it will be. Any English teachers in the room? I think I said that right. English was not my strength. But here's what this is. They were devoted. They were striving every single day to become more and more and more and more like Jesus. To be devoted to something is to strive to keep working at something. Consistency, repetition, habits, one after another after another becoming better and better and better even if it's an incy-binsy teensy-winsy little bit.

This weekend is the start of the NFL season. Okay, you knew I was coming here. You were waiting for it. And so for the past eight weeks, teams have been gathered together in what they call training camp. It's this ramp up period before the season actually starts. We started last Thursday night. And for the last eight weeks, players have done everything that they could to prepare for the season for one goal. One goal. To win a championship. And so for the past eight weeks, they have been obsessed, devoted, persistent with learning a playbook, developing their own personal strength, sharpening their skills, growing themselves hopefully to one time in February, I believe it is, to raise the Vince Lombardi trophy in victory with no other team standing. That's their obsession. And every day, they are persistent with their reps, repetitions. One rep after another after another. Because each rep builds on itself. Because then that begins a habit. And a habit develops a skill. And a skill will eventually show itself on the field when bullets are flying. They talk about some of these players who are just obsessed to a level that is probably unhealthy. Rep after rep after rep. Mental reps, not just physical reps, not just on the practice field or a preseason game or against a scrimmage against another team in a joint practice. But mental reps, too. On the field, off the field, in the classroom, with their coaches, in the weight room, at home, working out, studying their playbook on their own, watching videos of practice. Watching videos of practice. You guys realize that? They film all their practices and they go back and watch their practices again. Obsession. Each day. Because the most devoted, the most persistent are usually the players that are the best players. And they're the ones that can step up when their team is down, the game is on the line, and have ice in their veins and just go. But the players that settle never last long in the NFL. They just don't. Just don't make it. They might have all the skill in the world. I've seen some amazing football players come out of college that have all the skill in the world. But they're not devoted to the game.

And I think for us, it's easy to sit and to point at them and go, "Oh, look at them." But it's easy to settle, right? No, it's just a me thing? I think it's all of us in this room, if we were honest, deep down inside. We settle. But we don't think about settling. We think of just being too easily satisfied. We get to a point and go like, "Okay, I'm good. Life's good. Jobs, nah, not too bad. It's been worse. I'm doing okay. House is good. My marriage is fine. My finances are good. Life's good. I'm set. I don't need to think about anything." We get to a point where we're okay with just living life as it is in front of us, right? Here's the thing. We often settle for too little of God. We're good with a little bit of change of God in our life. And we're thankful for God's grace. Don't get me wrong there. We're thankful for God's grace, His love, and His mercy. Yet we become spiritually satisfied long before the grace of God has completed its work in us. See, I'll tell you today, right now in this moment, there are people in this room that have met Jesus very recently. And there's people in this room that have been following Jesus for a very long time. The truth about both of those people is God's not satisfied with where they are. He's not. And when I look at the early church and I see the apostles and those who follow Jesus and their devotion, their obsession with God and everything that God had for them, it wasn't like they had this big moment. Peter had this big Billy Graham crusade and prayed and 3,000 people came to know Jesus and he just gave them a high five and said, "Go with God." No, it didn't end there. That was just the beginning. And that's the same for us. That when we think about whether it was yesterday or a lot of yesterdays, the moment that we accepted Jesus in our heart, in our lives, we brought His salvation upon us, that was just the beginning. That was just day one of eternity. See the fact that God loves us so much that yes, He sent His Son to die for us on the cross, to give Himself for us so that we would have our sins forgiven. But God also loves us so much that He won't leave us as He found us. God is in the business of transformation, sanctification, and redemption. Now, I'm not talking about earning our salvation by the way that we live our lives and we have to do good and it outweighs. No, no, no, I'm talking about that. Your debt has been paid for eternity. But God's still got work to do in us. And when I look at the early church and I see this and their devotion and their commitment and their striving every single day as they met together in the temple courts, praising God and sharing everything that they had, breaking bread, loving one another, praying for each other, being with each other. I see a "proskartereō" see I said differently their time. I should have done that. Their whole selves in the early church was dissatisfied that they were looking and relentless pursuit for God to have more for them. This should be us too. This should be us. Church, I want to encourage you today, don't quit on the grace of God. It is not complete in you yet. Has God saved you, set your eternity in stone forever? Yes, your name is written in the book of life. You're good. But if you're still here, there's still work that God has for us. And I want us to be grateful for this. This isn't a discouragement thing. I want you to see that. It's just a mindset shift. It's not that we've done something horrible. It's a mindset shift for us to think about as we go forward that God is still working on His grace in our lives. And we are thankful that the Savior through the Holy Spirit continues to work even when we don't necessarily want the work. Okay, I'm done there. I'm done there.

The other thing we have to change is our mindset is that we will be generous. We will be generous. We are not spiritual contributors. We are spiritual contributors. We are not spiritual consumers. Acts 2:44-45 says, "All the believers were together and they had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need." It then says a couple chapters later, further on in the development of the early church. This wasn't just a moment in time right at the beginning. But it says, "And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all," okay, "continuing to work in them powerfully that there were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned land or houses sold them and brought money from the sales." See during this time in the Roman Empire, there were no government programs. There were no food stamps. There was no healthcare. There was no Section 8 housing. There were none of these things, which I think are good things. But those things that actually are now today actually originated in the church. They started in the church. Think about that. Could you imagine today that if the church came to the point where they stepped up, that they actually got rid of all of the welfare programs and all those things because they weren't needed anymore because the church was meeting all those needs? Whoa. That's why the church shined so bright. Because the reality was if you didn't have those things, you were probably homeless on the street and you probably died. That was the reality. Maybe you got sick. Maybe you never got any food. You're begging for your life. And the church shows up and says, "We got you." Everybody contributed. Big, small. And I want to be careful here because we think, "Oh, he's just talking about money.”

No, I'm talking about everything. I'm talking about our all. Yes, I'm talking about money. Let's just call it what it is. Talking about money. I'm also talking about time. You know, these early apostles and people in the church helped other people. Maybe it was fixing something in their home. Maybe it was going out to their farm. But they took time to do that. Maybe it was a skill, a talent that I believe the Holy Spirit gives each and every one of us. He's created us in a unique way to give back in that way. And together they all contributed in a way. They contributed with their money. They contributed with their time. They contributed with their gifts. And when I look at the church today, I don't know if we're all doing that. I don't know if we're all into that point because this idea at this time was completely countercultural. You think life is hard today. Think about life back then. Roman Empire was dog-eat-dog. It was kill the person next to you so you can take whatever they have so you can scrape by. It was ruthless. And the church comes along and says, "We got a better plan for that. The Holy Spirit, Jesus, has a better life for us to live together in community." To the point that no one ever had a need that went unmet. But I want you to catch some things here in these Scriptures. It wasn't that just a few of them had some resources in common. It was everyone. All the believers. Yes, it says in Acts 4 that some had their stuff. They had houses and land that they sold to give. That's great. But all the believers contributed in some meaningful way. Money, clothes, food. This is what it means to be a church. And that also means that all the believers went with less. Because this stuff just doesn't pop out of thin air, right? The extra clothes, the extra food. I don't know. It says they sold houses and land. Was that a second home? A vacation home? Was that development property that they inherited? I don't know. Maybe it was their only thing. And they said, "The gospel is more important than my property." Did I just say that? And because of that, they were able to provide tangible needs to the point that nobody was needy among them. Can I ask you a question today? I'm going to ask it anyway. If someone looked at the way that you spent your money, would they know that you're a Christian? Would they know that you're just a steward of what God has blessed you with? Would they see how you spend or give away or contribute? Would they go, "Yep, that person's a Christian. I can tell." How they spend their money shows their heart. But Chris, you don't get it. You've seen the cost of things lately. Inflation, the housing market. Have you seen everything going on? Yeah, I have. I'm living here too, guys. Did you see the economy and the world and the cost of things in the Roman Empire? The taxes? You think taxes are bad here. Taxes, like Roman Empire robbery, aka like... But they still had generosity. This past year as a church, we had some real financial struggles. I think you guys follow along in the program. But at the bottom on the back, we talk about our finances. And we want to be honest with you. We have budget presentations. We talk about how we spend all of our stuff.

And this last year, unfortunately, we were not able to contribute to certain things in ways that we had previously. Times where there were new churches starting that we knew about and they were planting. We wanted to contribute, but we weren't able to. They were contributing to education of future pastors and church leaders, and we weren't able to. There were times with missions. You guys remember Vivek from India. He came. We've had Shane and Sarah who are doing gathering of nomads. We wanted to contribute to them, but because financially, things were too tight. Here, we did not have enough. We weren't able to contribute to those. And I wrestle with this because I think, okay, it doesn't matter. We still need to contribute, right? We still need to give. Things are tight. Who cares? God's got it all. He's going to take care of it. But it's an us thing. And I will tell you, we have some incredibly generous people in this church. Gosh, guys, I am blown away. I don't know all the details of everything, but I know that there are people who give so much. They give the way the early church did. They go with less so that the church can have more, and they give, and they give, and they give. And it blows my mind. It's amazing. But all of us have a role to play. All of us have a peace to contribute. All of us probably are spending money, myself included, on ourselves in a month that should probably go towards the work of God in His kingdom rather than the work of Chris's kingdom. Relentless devotion. It's hard. I know it is, guys. I get it. But I also get on the other side of eternity, a lot of stuff that we're chasing after just doesn't matter. And the kingdom of God matters. God's work matters.

Final thought for us today as we close is that we will share the love of Jesus. We will be devoted. We will be generous. And we will share the love of Jesus. We are the church, and we exist for ourselves. No, we are the church, and we exist for the world. Acts 2:46-47 says, "Every day they continue to meet together in the temple courts." They're having Bible studies all day long. "They broke bread in their homes. They ate together, glad and sincere hearts. They praising God and enjoying the favor of all God's people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." See, here's the reality of Spring Valley Church. Spring Valley Church exists here for now, for this moment, for today, and for tomorrow, and for any other day that God continues to allow this church to be here on earth. But you think, "Oh, the big church right over there, big one. They got all the money. They got all the resources. Have you seen how many campuses that church has?" They're the ones that's going to be here. They're the ones that's going to reach everybody. No. There's people in your life that only you can reach. There's people that God has placed next door, the next cubicle, in that staff meeting, at that restaurant you love going to, a coffee shop, your family. Your best friend. God has placed them in your life for you to share Jesus with them. And you are the only person that can do that. You are plan A and there is no plan B. So when we think about why we exist, no one else is you. It is our desire to see our community saturated with the glory of God. But here's the thing about saturation. See, that was a very critical word we put in there. Saturated. Water. You guys remember probably back in the day, it's been a while, I might do the sponge sermon again. Let me bring that one back. But I had a sponge up here and I had this bucket of water and I splashed the sponge and I still got the water spots in my Bible from it. But I had this sponge and I took this sponge out and I squeezed it and all this water ran out. I said, God has given us for us to absorb who He is into us, so as we go through life we leave a little wet mark of Jesus with everybody that we meet. But here's the reality. That bottle of water that I poured over that sponge, I have to open that bottle to get the water out to saturate the sponge. Some of us are bottling up Jesus in our life and we're keeping Him on the shelf and He's great. We go see Him, we hang out with Him, we maybe drink a little bit, put the cap back on, send Him back on the shelf. God wants to rip that bottle off the top and dump it out in your life. Dump it out in the lives of your family, dump it out in your friends. He wants to flood their lives with His love to where things they have no idea are coming for Him. He wants to knock them down like a wave of the ocean with a kid not paying attention. That's what He wants to do to them. He wants to just all over them with His love. And you're the only person in their life to share that Jesus with them, to saturate them with His love and His glory.

Heard this quote this week from Paul David Tripp. He says, "This is your mission and every relationship in your life to make the grace of the invisible king visible." Spring Valley Church, we are going to be a faith-filled, big thinking, bet the farm risk takers we will never insult God with small thinking or safe living. Are we a small church? Absolutely. Are we the average in America? Absolutely. Does God have more for us than that? Absolutely. God is moving in this church in powerful ways, but it's gonna have to take all of us. It's gonna have to take all of our devotion. It's gonna have to take all of our generosity. And it's gonna have to take all of us sharing the love of Jesus with our worlds. We got a pretty cool group of pastors here. Can't do it all. God has that calling on your heart and your life. So what do you want me to do about it, Chris?

Here's the final closer here. I want to give an open invitation for each and every one of you to change the object of your devotion with one step. Change the object of your devotion with one step towards Jesus. What does that look like? Well, for you, it may be reading God's Word. You're gonna say, "Pastor Chris, I'm gonna commit. Every single day I'm gonna start reading God's Word." If you haven't, okay. No shame, no guilt, no nothing. Change. Do it. Go forward. But I want to give you a warning. You gotta be careful. Because the Word of God, as it says, is alive and is active and is living. It's gonna begin to change who you are. So be careful.

Maybe you need to start stepping up and serving in church. We just launched three classes today. It's awesome. We got three classrooms rocking. We have an amazing team back there, but we still don't have enough volunteers. We got other slots where we got holes and we're kind of putting things together. We're trying to make things happen because God's doing some amazing things here. And we don't want to just sit and wait for everything to fall into place perfect and then step forward. We got to step forward in faith. But I want to warn you, if you start serving in church, it's addictive. You start loving on people. You start loving on them. Start loving on people. Start helping kids. Start talking to people on a Sunday morning saying, "Hello, you want to talk to more people? You want to see how they're doing? You want to serve in a tangible way?" It'll be addictive.

Maybe some of us need to start tithing. When you start with our finances and our time and the talents that we've been given, we need to start tithing into God's church. But we got to be careful because your heart follows where you give. You start giving, you might want to start giving more and more. And you might hear about this need over here and go, "God, I want to take care of that." You might hear about this need. You might see this person in your life. "I want to do that. I want to do that. I want to do that." We gather up the ties and the offerings every week. We have the envelopes. You guys put your stuff in there. There's a guy in church he writes down, he says, "For God's work." Every week. And I love it. For God's work. Sometimes you think about, "Oh, the church just wants my money for the church to have my money." It's for God's work. It's for other churches to start, for more people to find Jesus. It's for more pastors to have the call, to be developed, to go out and to do more churches and to lead churches better. It's for God's work around the world and missions and missionaries putting their lives on the line in some of these places where they can't even talk about where they are. One of those is Vivek. We don't know where exactly he is. He can't tell us. Because he's had police show up on a Sunday morning and shut their church down. It's happening around the world, guys. What if together with our generosity we could change the world for God? That's something that's worth investing in, right?

Maybe you need to start praying daily. You go, "God, sometimes I just come to you when I need something. I need to come to you when I went just to be in your presence. I want to lift up my brothers and sisters in this family who are going through some really tough times right now." But I want to warn you, God, be careful. Because you're going to start seeing miracles and you're going to start praying more. And you're going to start seeing more miracles and more miracles and more things. You're going to see God moving in his church and in his family in powerful ways. You see lives transformed. Maybe you've seen some scary spiritual stuff happen in this realm. Maybe you start praying more. One thing I want to ask of you is the saffron of the Bible.

One thing I want to ask of you is this afternoon you're going to get a text from the church. And it's going to be an invite to answer some questions. And this is going to be what we call our church pulse assessment. And what it's going to do, it's going to take about eight to ten minutes of your time, maybe a little bit more. But it's going to ask you some questions about your personal focus with Christ. But it's also going to ask you about the church health. And this is going to be a critical tool for us as a team to be able to help lead and guide this church into the next seasons. And it's going to measure across seven dimensions. Not like weird matrix dimensions, but just like seven different ways. That makes sense. Seven different perspectives. We'll say perspectives instead of dimensions. But you're going to get this text. I'm going to ask of you. And the expectation is here. And this is what we want. We want each and every person in the church to answer this 100%. Honestly, there is no right or wrong answer. There isn't. But for us to be able to become forward and grow and to become the church that God, that He wants us to be, we have to address where we are and how we become better and areas of growth that we see in ourselves. And so you're going to get this text. You'll probably get a couple of these texts. We're going to bombard you over the next three weeks. I don't know about all apologize right now, but I'm not really apologetic. I want you to fill out this survey. So that we can help become the best church that God wants us to be.

The church is not a place to go. It is who we are. We're here to proclaim the good news that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. And I want to be honest. Come with your doubts. Chris will never go there. We'll never be there. Okay. God's a little bit bigger than that. But bring God your doubts. Bring Him your fears. Bring Him your anxiousness. Bring Him your brokenness. Bring Him your sin. Bring Him whatever. He's not too scared of it. He's not going to be pushed away by it. I want people to come to this church and when they come that they see Jesus. That's what I want. And I read the early church was the church that came and saw Jesus. I think we're doing a good job. But I know we can do better. I know we'll become better. I know we have places to grow.

Close with this scripture. Love the scripture. Ephesians 3:20. I'm just going to close out Pastor Andre if that's okay. We're just I'm just going to close this out. And I want us to just really look at this scripture. Can we put that on screens? Ephesians 3:20. And this is my prayer for this whole series, this whole time, for all of us that we're doing right here. And if you want to receive this as a benediction and just kind of a blessing as you go today, do that. You want to see receive this as encouragement. You want to receive this as like, let's go. I'm ready to go. I'm pumped. Get me out there, coach. I want to do this thing. Read it as that. But it says this, actually, let's read this. Just read this all together. Okay, here we go. “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine, according to His power that is work within us. To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.”

Amen. Amen. Go with God today. Excited to see you back next week, part two. Answer that assessment with the text later this afternoon, sometime this week. I love you guys. Go with Jesus. Amen. Thanks for listening. And if you would, please take a moment to subscribe and leave an encouraging review to help others find our podcasts on whatever platform you are listening on. We hope you have a wonderful day. We'll catch you next week.

Philippians: Part 8

Philippians: Part 8 - A Caring & Content Heart

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are wrapping up our series in Philippians today and I'm so thankful for the Spirit's leading through this series as he's provided us with truths that we needed to hear, and reminders that guide us through life and guide us to endure. And clearly, God knew what he was doing as he gave us. He led us to this series and led us to these words that I think we need more now, yeah, more than ever. And so it's a series that has, through it all, through the four chapters, has encouraged us to rely on Christ in every situation, to see the joy in all things, which means trying to see things from God's perspective. It's helped us to recognize the need we have for spiritual examples and spiritual role models in our lives, while also at the same time recognizing that we may be that for other people. It's encouraged us to shift our perspective to see the positive, to see the good, to see the work that that God might be doing. And it's a series that has called us to be honest with God and to lay before him our desires. As Paul wrote to the church in Philippi from his prison cell, we can be thankful that God gave him the clarity and the words to encourage the church that needed to hear the truth and the fact that we need to hear that truth today. So as we mourn through these times of sorrow, I think the words of Paul will help us in grieving and offer a glimpse of Jesus in the darkness.

Paul is wrapping up this letter, giving his final encouragement, signing off. As we know from the Apostle Paul from this series and really also from Romans, he likes to talk. He is a talker. He's a bit of a rambler. I learned in my marriage that when leaving some kind of function, my wife and I had different approaches. And at one point, it caused a bit of tension. We're very much now on the same page. But if we were to be somewhere and she said, "I'm ready to go," she could be in the car in five minutes. And what I didn't know is that she had already done all the prep to leave at that point. I would hear that and say, "Great!" And I would talk for another hour, and be there and be there and talking and wrapping up and all this stuff. And so I would linger, I would say goodbye, because I hadn't done that prep work. I would just--and even if I were to say, "Hey, I'm ready to go," I wouldn't mean right then. I would mean later on, I'd be ready to go. So I think Paul is kind of like me. I think he says something earlier. He's like, "Hey, we're coming to the end of this letter," but he just keeps going. He just keeps writing and he's getting more thoughts. And so we--even though we're wrapping up this letter, there are some new ideas, even in this conclusion that we're gonna dive into today. And so just pray with me one more time as we focus here on God's word. God, again, we come before you, Lord, and our desire is to know you and know your truth. So be with us as we read your word, give us insight and understanding. And God, I pray that you would help us to see how this truth right now is needed for our lives, for our church, but also for where we are individually. So God, we give this to you. Amen.

Alright, we are going to be going verse by verse through the rest of this chapter. We're starting in verse 10. You guys can follow along. I'm going to go ahead and read just this first verse. It says, "I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it." Pause right there. "Some of us are great at being ready. We leave the house and we are prepared for anything." I was a Boy Scout for one year, so always be prepared. So I'm kind of ready. I'm not super ready. I didn't go all the way, Eagle Scout or whatever. But some of you guys know you're ready. And so Paul is saying, you know, it is important to be ready as we walk by faith with Christ in our lives, to be ready to respond to God in any way that He may bring before us. And he's encouraging the church who was ready, who had the desire to help Paul, there just was no opportunity. So as we think again about this scripture and applying it to our lives, do you have desire? The first question is, do you have that desire to help? If God were to put an opportunity in front of you, do you have the desire to step up and meet that need? He says, "Now after desire, you still need that opportunity, right?" The church in Philippi didn't have that. Eventually they did, we'll get to that. But as you think about your life, again, just do a quick survey. Are there opportunities in your life that you're passing by, that God is bringing before you, to say, "Hey, you have the opportunity to help someone, to provide for someone, to be there for someone." And then when the opportunity did arrive, and we'll get to this in a little bit, the church did act, and they did step up. And as Pastor Chris said today, I want to encourage you, you have done this. You have done exactly this. And if Paul were writing about you, he would be full of praise, that this week you stepped up immensely for the Morgan family. Be encouraged. Feel the appreciation. And I also want to say with all grace and love, don't become complacent. Stay ready. When that next opportunity comes about, be just as ready as you were this time to give in whatever way that would mean. Don't become so callous that we no longer want to provide when God brings about that opportunity. Don't think, "Last time I did something, so someone else has turned to be God to those people, to be Jesus." Or, "Don't think, 'God, I'm dealing with so much stuff right now, so I just can't do that.' Can you have someone else provide for those people in need?" Again, we'll get some more of what that looks like, but I just want to encourage you to be ready. Stay concerned with God's people and caring for others, and be ready to step up when the time is right.

Paul continues in verse 11, he says, "I'm not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. Paul shares some of what God has taught him through his own life, which is to be content in all situations. This is back to back weeks now of really difficult positions of the heart that Paul is calling us to have as believers. A couple things about being content in all situations. One, it is learned. I want you to have grace with yourself. I think oftentimes we can beat ourselves up when we say, I'm just, I'm not content and therefore I'm a failure and therefore I'm not doing what God is calling me to do. But Paul says that he had to learn how to be content in all situations. This means going through experiences that will leave us feeling unfulfilled, empty, broken, confused, desiring more, and it is a process. Just as Paul talked about last week, as we lay our desires at the feet of Jesus, and we learn to surrender, and we walk with Him with those feelings, then we can learn to be content. But it's a process, it is learned. Secondly, he says, "Whatever the circumstances." This is an all-encompassing list. These could be the hard times, the bad situations that we face, like financial issues, mental health, poor friendships, loneliness, tough work situations, persecution, faith issues, loss of loved ones. And Paul's writing from experience, I mean, to his credit, in his time of following Jesus, He has experienced so much of this. But it's also in the good times, in the good experiences, in all situations. So this could be a better work situation where you got to raise a promotion, a better living situation, successful friendships, a new car, a vacation, a growing family, or a growing faith. And you may be wondering why would we need to be content or to learn to be content in the good times. Well, sometimes the good times grow that desire for more. And we're never content. We're never thankful. We're never praising God for what we have, but we're just continuing to reach and say, "This isn't good enough. And I want more of this." See, whether dealing with a lot or a little, the temptation of discontentment can be present, can be very real. And it can start so subtly, but it grows and grows quite rapidly. Paul knows this. He grew up in affluence and abundance, and after coming to saving faith, his life changed, but he still had moments of having a lot, but also having very little. And he learned to be content because he knew that God was everything that he needed, and would give him everything that he needed. be it physical food or spiritual guidance or mental fortitude or just provisions that he needed, Paul had experienced the love and the compassion, the provision of God, and had come to such a deep-rooted faith and trust in Christ.

To the point where he writes verse 13, which says, "I can do all this through him who gives me strength." You probably heard that verse before. It is well referenced, sometimes out of context. But we understand now reading this passage that that context is through all things, especially the hard times and especially in times when you have to endure. Paul lives with this assurance that he will get through anything because of Christ in him. the Creator of all, the King of kings, the giver of life, God the Father, Holy Spirit, the Comforter. Like it says in verse 9, "The God of peace is with him." God is with him through all those situations and has taught him to be content. But again, to reach this place of contentment, Paul had to endure some of the most difficult situations here on earth. And so it's just such a good reminder for us that as we strive to be content in Christ, one, we need Christ. We can't do it without Him. We need Christ to be content. And it will mean going through some of the hardest things we will ever face. And our goal at the end is, as we walk with Jesus, to become content. So as He endured, there was more and more opportunity for God to provide for Paul.

Let's continue in verse 14. He writes, "Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles." This can be so hard, because for Paul, he first had to share his troubles with the church. In order for the church to then respond and provide, Paul had to share, "Here's what's going on with me." And this is really hard, because, as you know, I know you have shared what's on your heart before, it can take a lot. There are often reasons why we don't want to share. And those voices can be really loud and sometimes we wait too long to share before we really enable others to reach us. But it requires us to be vulnerable, to be honest, and to trust with those whom we share. Because in our minds, there can be this fear, there can be this risk of being judged, of being ridiculed, of being condemned, of losing face or losing a friendship. And oftentimes, those things where we feel the affliction or the struggle are just things that we don't often talk about. Maybe it's finances or maybe it's relationships. It's usually some area of weakness or insecurity within us, where we don't want to appear weak. We don't want to appear in a certain way, and so we just hold it within. We say, "God, you and I can deal with this. I don't want anyone else to help me deal with this." And yet Paul recognized the need to share his troubles. So as we talked about earlier in the passage, by doing that, it provides an opportunity for God to work and to provide through other people. There can be miracles where just out of nowhere God will give something, but oftentimes He works through other people. And part of that may mean that we have to share. He continues to praise the church and Philippi that they had a desire to help. And as the opportunity came about, then they acted. And it was so good for them to practice being in a church in that way.

And so in verses 15, let's read about Paul's testimony of what happened. It says, "Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, "Except you only. For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. Not that I desired your gifts. What I desire is that more be credited to your account. I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied now that I have received from "Paphroditus, the gifts you sent, they are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God." So Paul shares that he's so thankful for the gifts that the church provided. He's being careful not to infer more. We read this and we were like, "Great, he doesn't need anything." In other cultures, once you compliment someone, they may have the response of just giving it to you, because maybe you would only compliment by saying, "I actually want that." And so Paul's just being careful to say, "Hey, thank you so much for the gifts. I don't need anymore. Don't send me anymore." But he's just trying to encourage them in the evidence of their growing faith. The fact that they did this shows evidence that the gospel took root in their lives and that God was working through them to provide for Paul. And at the end of verse 18, Paul describes all this support, all this provision, as a fragrant offering and acceptable sacrifice pleasing to God. And this language is pulled from the Old Testament in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Ezekiel, of moments of sacrifice. Moments in the Old Testament where they would have to slaughter an animal, put it on the altar, and burn it. It's a moment where the people in the Old Testament were making a sacrifice for their sins, coming before God to follow Him. And those sacrifices are an act of obedience and worship. And that smell of a burning carcass, which may not have been pleasant to anyone around, was so pleasing to God because of what it symbolized and what it meant. That His people, who were meant to love Him, who had gone away and sinned, we're coming back to Him and wanting to make right their relationship with Him. Obedience and worship to God. It's something so pleasing to God. It brings Him such joy. So Paul is reminding us that sincere Christian service, which at times means sacrifice for us or self-denial, not only spreads the gospel, but it strengthens those who serve. It's an act of worship to God. It's this picture of a moment where everything is right, where we are in God's will, doing just as Jesus did. Loving others, sometimes at the sacrifice of ourselves. It's accepting that partnership with Jesus on earth, and loving for God's kingdom.

Paul wrote something similar in Romans 12:1 which says, "Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship." And so we no longer are in the Old Testament. We don't have to go to a temple and bring an animal and sacrifice it on the altar. But the way that we live our lives, the way that we love other people, the way that we sacrifice and serve others and serve God is our way of worshiping and our way of making an aroma that is pleasing to God. So we should strive. We want to live a life that as we go about our day to day in our work, in our families, in our neighborhoods, the way that we're talking, the way that we're interacting, All of it is just a rising scent to God, an aroma that He's looking down saying, "Yes, that is pleasing to me. That is a life that is sacrificing for the gospel, for me, for my kingdom.”

Verse 19, Paul writes, "And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus." I love this because Paul gives the assurance that what God has done for him, God will do for the church in Philippi. We read this today and we know that God will do the same for us. Even if it means continuing to give, when we don't have a lot to give. It doesn't say that explicitly in our passage, but referencing other passages in the Old Testament, we come to know that the church in Philippi wasn't well off. They weren't giving from this like storehouse of excess saying, "Well, we got a lot. Just go ahead and take whatever you need." They were also struggling and yet they continued to give. It's that part of sacrifice. It took sacrifice on their part. And Paul is saying that God will meet your needs. I think we often struggle with that today. That we want to give from a place of security. We want to give when it doesn't mean a lot to give. We have a lot. We have extra. Yeah, it's easy. I got some extra things to give for the food pantry. the food pantry, that's fine, I'm not using that anyways. That's not the kind of giving that God talks about. There's no verse in the Bible that you'll find that says, "Hey, once you have extra, then I want you to start caring for others." He says, "Give, I will bring opportunities in front of you. I need you to step up. And as you do that, and as you trust me, I will also provide for you. You will give and you will still have need. Let me provide for you." Trust me that I will provide for you. That's hard. That means that we're not in control anymore and we often wanna be in control. I know that if I don't give, I will have enough, so God, I'm not gonna give. And maybe we can even justify it with some spirituality of saying, God, you wanted me to be a wise steward of what I had. So that means saying no to someone in need because I gotta take care of myself. I think Chris, Pastor Chris used this analogy earlier in the series of being on a flight, and I just flew this week, and I heard the safety protocols, and they say, you know, in case of when the mask drops, and you have someone that you take care of yourself first, and then put the mask on the person next to you, the child. You don't put it on a stranger, but the child. And I think that's how we go about our spiritual life. "God, let me make sure I'm good first, and then as I see need, I will then take care of other people." And that may work on a plane, but it does not work for the Christian life. Give. Be generous. Step up when God provides the opportunity. And watch God provide for you. I'm sure you know this or maybe have experienced this. I think some of the most generous people in life are those who have very little. I was talking with Becky this week and she brought up the point that it's probably because once you're in that place of having little, you know what it means to have very little. And so when you have anything to give, you know what it means to receive. And what a blessing that is. And you're just more likely to say, "Yes, I know that you need this right now." And what a blessing this will be for you. And I know that I'll be taken care of. will somehow provide for me. I think of a family at a previous church I worked at who just always lived within their means, but their means were very small. But whenever an opportunity at church arose, whether it be a meal train or someone was in need and we collected something to give, they were first. And they didn't necessarily give a lot, but they were so faithful to give. And it was just such an example to me that I knew that they had worries. We were praying for God to provide for them on the prayer team that we had for that church. And they were concerned about rent or whatever. And yet, whenever the call came in, they would be first to give. And it just exemplified a trust, a deep rooted faith, just like Paul, that God will provide. God is their biggest need. They need Him, and by their need in Him, they'll experience and witness God providing for them.

So this is what Paul wants us, this is how he wants us to live. To be generous no matter what we do or don't have, and as we give, that we can trust God and trust that He'll meet our needs. According to the riches of His glory. Because we know that He is sovereign, and He knows what we need and when we need it. There's this common thread through Philippians that as we go through our own hardship, we have to learn to trust God. And as we go through our own hardship, we are also still called to care for others. And if we're all doing that, despite what we're going through, we're still reaching out in whatever capacity we have. It may be very little, it may be a lot, but as we continue to rely on Him, love others, That is a beautiful picture of the church. That we're coming together, gathering on a Sunday, knowing that everyone here in this room is going through their own things. And yet we're receiving love from people, and we're giving love to others. And Christ is in the midst of all of it. And as we each, we have to each rely on Christ, because our tanks are finite. We'll run out of energy. We'll run out of love. We'll run out of just whatever to give. We'll just say, "I don't have anything to give." But if we are all relying on Christ as we walk, we can continue to support each other, to be there for each other, to encourage each other, and to just be the church for each other. I think that's happening here, and I love being a part of it.

As we end today, and as we end our series, I just want to ask a few questions. From verse 11, "What situation are you going through that you need to learn to be content in? I'm not saying you can't voice your frustration to God or to others, you can't share your discontentment with God, but are you continuing to work on surrendering and trusting Him? I shared about this last week that this is my situation, I'm learning to be content. And once we learn to be content in one situation, Sure enough, there's another situation where we're going to have to learn it all over again. But hopefully as we learn and more and more it becomes easier, and maybe we reach that place of surrender quicker. So what situation are you in where you are needing to learn to be content? Secondly, from verse 14, what trouble are you facing that you might need to share? Maybe you need to share with the church. Maybe you need to share with your spouse. You haven't even shared it with them yet. Maybe you need to share with that close, trusted group of friends. Maybe you need to share with some pastors. But it's going to require you to be vulnerable. It's going to require you to be honest and to trust. But then by doing that, you'll be opening yourself to seeing how God can work through others in your life. So what do you need to share with someone? Maybe this week your spirit is prompting you to say, "You've been keeping this in. You've been thinking that you can handle it. You didn't want to share. You don't want to be embarrassed. But now it's time. It's time to let other people know and let other people by the work of God come to support you." And lastly, from verse 19, where has God met your needs lately? It is so important to take time to pause and reflect and thank God for what He has done. The needs will be never-ending in life. We will always be in need, and so we'll always be praying, "God, I need this. God, there's another thing." But if we don't ever pause, if we don't ever just look back for a second and reflect, "God, I have seen how You have done so many things," those prayers become heavy and there can be doubt that works its way in and say, and say, "God, I don't know if you're working." But if we pause just for a moment and say, "God, I still have a lot of things that are concerning me, "but I have seen, I do recognize that you met this need, "that you loved me in this way, "that you met me in this place," it's so good for our hearts. It brings us closer to Him, and we're more likely to recognize the work of God in our day-to-day lives. Those mercies that are new every morning. I mean, that can be a prayer, just, "God, let me see you work today. Let me recognize something today, just one thing that is of you, and I can give you praise for it, as evidence for the faith that I have. That can be an encouragement, that can be an affirmation of following you. So as you reflect back on your week, on this month, on this last year, where has God met you? Where has He provided for you? And give Him praise.

Our goal in this series, as we just finished Philippians, was by the end of it, that we'd be able to connect and reinforce in our minds that being a Christian means in some way participating in the life of Jesus. Through every aspect of our lives, whether joy or sacrifice, that it could all be used for God's kingdom. And in that, that God would use whatever we go through, enduring hard times or the best of times, there's joy that we are a part of God's plan. That as we serve, as we give, as we're generous, that we are deeply transformed by the work of the Spirit. And so even though we're done with this series, there is an ongoing invitation to us to participate in the life of Christ, to partner with God and the work that He's doing. And so we started this series with a question, and we'll end with this question. Will you accept that invitation from Jesus to partner with Him in the work that He's doing in your life and in the lives of those around you? And that way we can endure with joy. Let's pray. God, Again, we come before you with probably a lot racing through our minds. And I pray that you would cut through all the noise to make clearly your voice and your truth. And God, through your spirit, you would put on our hearts so clearly the truth that we that we need to focus on, that we need to remember, that we need to grow, that we need to be more like You, or maybe that we need to implement this week.

God, I pray that You would make it clear to us the work that You've done in our lives. We do want to praise You. We want to see the things that are of You, so that we can recognize that You are at work. And God, I pray that you would help those here who are feeling alone, struggling with bearing the weight of their life all by themselves. It's not what you meant. That's not what you intended. So I pray that you would, through your Spirit again, that you would encourage them to share that burden with someone this week. Give them the confidence, the courage to share, knowing that they won't be judged, that they won't be condemned, that they won't lose face, but that they will be met with love. That they will be embraced and say, "Yes, I'm so glad that you said that. I would love to help you." And maybe we're on the other end of that, God, and maybe we're going to hear someone say that they need something. I pray that you would encourage us to step up and to provide. Granted, we have our own needs, and we may not know how those are going to be met. But as we serve others, as we meet others, God, I pray that you would encourage us and give us a peace, a deep, deep peace, that it will all be okay, that you will provide for us. God, we want to be your church. For each other, for those who are not yet believers, for those who are not yet in this church, we want to be Christ to others. So help us, guide us this week to do so. We love you and we give you all the praise and glory because you are deserving. Amen.

Philippians: Part 7

Philippians: Part 7 - Learning to Ask and Trust God

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Welcome this morning. Glad that you're with us. My name is Andre, I'm one of the pastors here, and excited to be together. Missing everyone who's streaming from home. I know there's a few of you, so welcome from afar. I want to begin today by going back in history for a second. November 22nd, 1873. Would anyone randomly know why that date would mean anything to anyone? I don't expect to. I didn't know this before this week. So it's a date that, on this date, a steamship was heading across the Atlantic, and on it, this man, Horatio Gates Spafford, had his family besides him, his wife and four daughters on this steamship. And tragically, another vessel, an iron vessel, collided with this steamship, and 226 people perished, including all four of Horatio's daughters. A couple weeks later, he finds out because his wife sends a telegram when she arrives at her destination across the Atlantic, sends a telegram back to Horatio that says, "Saved alone." He goes to fix another ship a couple weeks later, and he goes out to meet his grieving wife. And while he's on his journey, his ship crosses the point where his four daughters perished. And he was inspired in that moment to write the hymn, It is Well with My Soul. I wanna read the second verse of that hymn. It says, "When sorrows like sea billows roll, "though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, "let this blessed assurance control "that Christ has regarded my helpless estate "and has shed his own blood for my soul. "It is well with my soul." How could someone enduring such grief write the words, "It is well with my soul"? I believe it's only possible for Spafford to have written those words because of his deep, deep trust and faith in God. A faith that endured one of the most challenging moments of his life up to that point. And I'm sure Spafford had to ask God to sustain him daily, to carry him through each moment as he was grieving the loss of his children. I don't know if you've ever had to do that. If you've ever been in a place in life where you have to ask God daily just to get you through that day because of what you're going through, because of how little you feel you you have of your own energy, strength, confidence, whatever it may be, and you are depending on God saying, "I don't feel like doing anything, "so God, I need you to get me through the next minute, "the next hour." Have you ever, think of a time in your life when you've had to ask Him for that and then trust Him. You've had to ask and then wait in that trust that He will provide. Paul definitely has, the apostle Paul, who has written the book of Philippians, I think has gone through that multiple times in his life. We're getting to the end of our letter in Philippians, and he's wrapping things up. And as a reminder, our series is called "A Joy That Endures." Paul knows what that's all about from experience. He's in prison, unsure of his future, whether he's going to die soon, or if he's just gonna be kept in prison alive. But he's writing to the church of Philippi, persevering through his difficulties to continue the work of the gospel.

And I began with the story of Spafford, it is in this hymn, "It is well with my soul," because I wanted to preface this morning with the uncomfortable truth that for many of us, at some point, there is tension in our lives as we are devoted to following Jesus, and how that interplays between the realities that we face and what it means to follow Jesus. There can be tension in different seasons. Or maybe there's just, you're thinking like, I felt tension ever since I've been conscious and I just feel this tension of following Jesus and the world around me all the time. We are people who tend not to like tension. I don't know about you, I avoid it at all costs. I am very uncomfortable when it comes to tension, whether it's between another person or a situation is making, I feel the tension, I have to resolve it, or I have to do my part to get away from it, remove myself, or whatever it may be, but I don't like tension. Sometimes tension is good because it informs us that something's off and something needs to be addressed. But the uncomfortable truth is that other times, God wants us to just sit in tension. I think of the Psalms, and so many of the Psalmists have tension in those passages. There's deep despair and anguish, and yet they're also praising God. We'll get to more of that in a bit. If I'm being honest, one of the most frustrating parts of following Jesus in the day-to-day life is dealing with this tension. By the way, Jesus felt tension throughout his life, being fully man, fully God. There's a moment that I'm sure we recognize of when that tension becomes unbearable. It's in the Garden of Gethsemane. when he's praying to God, if there be any other way than what has to happen tomorrow or that morning, please let that happen. Jesus felt the tension. The tension in our Christian life too, doesn't have to be between just a bad thing and a good thing that's probably less tension. We just know that there's a clear cut right answer. There's a direction that God wants us to go. But sometimes the tension comes in two good things and trying to discern, God, What do you want me to do? Maybe you've been in situations where you're wondering, "God, is this a moment to humbly suffer for your kingdom, or do I stand up for justice here?" Or maybe it's, "God, are you calling me to my dream job across the country, or do I stay put in my community with my family?" Those are two good things. What is God calling you to do? There's tension in that. "God, do I continue in my friendship with a person who's not a believer, and I know that I am the only Christian friend they have, or do I distance myself because it's unhealthy for me?" "God, what do you want me to do?" Or maybe it's more focused on what we want to happen, like Paul might have prayed as he's sitting in prison. I think God had - or Paul had many prayers to God, thinking, "God, can you just either - can I join you in heaven? I'd rather be dead, can you just have them kill me so I can be with you in heaven, or have them release me so I can go about fulfilling my gospel mission. I don't like being here in prison. But sometimes the tension means sitting in silence, waiting to hear from God.

And although we feel the absence of clarity or direction, we can know that He is in the waiting with us. Oftentimes, our hearts experience the most transformation, the act of being molded by God in the midst of tension. So as we'll find out today, even in the midst of tension, of having to endure things, there is a call on our hearts to rejoice. What does that mean? Let me go ahead and pray. We're gonna dive into Philippians 4, and we're gonna find out what Paul's talking about. So would you guys pray with me again? God, thank you for our time this morning, And as we come before you, we pray that your word would illuminate our hearts to your truth and that we would understand better the life that you are calling us to. Speak to us through these words in Philippians, God, and I pray that we be encouraged and empowered to follow you with everything that we have. We pray this in your son's name. Amen. Well, if you have your Bibles, you can turn to Philippians 4. We're going to start in verse 2, or you can pay attention to the screen. I'm going to read the first couple of verses here. Paul writes, "I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the Gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the Book of Life." Paul is here admonishing them to seek and strive for unity. Again, this has been present throughout the entire book, But he wants the church, again, to understand that the biggest threat to God's church is divisiveness that comes from within. And one of the best ways to unify people is to get them together around a common cause. To unify them, have them have the same target in mind and say, "Hey, I need you to all to focus on this because you understand how good this is for the church." And so Paul tells them to have the same mind, there's unity, and then to help the women who have helped him. There's also a beautiful reminder here and request by Paul for the church to work out conflict as a community. And I love that picture and that idea.

The modern church for the past several decades has really emphasized an individual faith in Jesus, which is good. But sometimes they've emphasized it at the point of losing this communal aspect of our faith. And there are things that need to be done as a church, as a community. We just finished our community group about fasting, and in there we had a beautiful reminder too of the need to fast together as a church, and how that's different than just fasting alone. Jesus meant for the Christian life to be done in community, and so that includes conflict resolution sometimes. This is a part of bearing each other's burdens, of exercising love and compassion and understanding and forgiveness. So I want to remind us today that we at Spring Valley believe that, that if the situation were to arise and it was needed, we would be a church that would want to resolve whatever conflict together as a church. So that's Paul's little snippet there. And then we go into another final encouragement, summarizing the point of this whole entire and it's a lesson that is easier said than done. Let's go ahead and go to verse four. It says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. "I will say it again, rejoice." Guys, we could have a whole sermon on just this verse. I can't, I have to go through more verses, but this is, there's a lot to unpack here. This is easier said in the good times, right? Rejoice in the Lord. If you're in a good place in life, you're like, amen. I can do that. God's been blessing me, I'm in a great place, I'm feeling his provision, life is good, I'm gonna praise him. And you should, we should be praising God in the good times. But the reality is, the good times, I think, are one of the smallest percentages of our life. Pure, just great, a great time where there's nothing else that's going on in your life that's bringing you down, that's a very small percentage of your life.

The reality is, for many of us, it's not often - I would venture to say it's not often - that we just feel like rejoicing and praising God. More often, I think more likely, life is complex, full of difficult-to-parse situations where there is good, but there's also something else going on. All of our lives are connected, And so, when you feel stress, anxiety, disorder, or chaos in one area of life, it often affects the other areas of life too. So the question becomes, what does it look like to rejoice always in those times? How do I rejoice when maybe there's seemingly nothing to rejoice over? Hence the tension that I was talking about at the beginning. Well, I want to restate what we've talked about earlier in the series that rejoicing is not just being happy, having a smile on your face, though that may be what happens sometimes, but that's not what Paul is talking about here. Paul is saying to rejoice always and not in everything. He's not sitting there in prison saying, "Man, I'm a rejoicing guard. Can you give me another lashing? This is great. Love it here in prison." It's not what Paul is saying. He's saying, "Rejoice always." So what does that mean? And before you may quickly have this answer of like, "This is what it means," and that's good, hold that answer. I want to throw some scenarios at you, and I just want you to wrestle with maybe how you would answer. If this is someone you knew, and they were saying, "This is my situation. How should I rejoice?" So what does it mean to rejoice always when someone you love is slowly dying? What would it mean to rejoice always when a relationship in your life continues to cause you pain and hurt over and over again? What does it mean to rejoice always when your job is no longer feeling fulfilling and you're starting to feel the sense of loss? And just what am I supposed to be doing? What's my purpose? How do you rejoice always when you look at your budget and you're wondering how you're going to afford the necessities of life or how to provide for your family? What does it look like to rejoice when your faith in God starts to feel full of doubt and questions? I'm sure you have your own situations that you can fill in the blank there. How am I supposed to rejoice always, whatever you're going through or have gone through? Can I confess something to you? I'm still figuring this out. I mentioned tension in the Christian life earlier, and this is one of those areas that I feel tension. I don't always know what it means to rejoice always. There are situations we face where we may know we're supposed to rejoice, but as much as we want to muster it out of our own strength, there's just not, there's nothing there. Sometimes we may ask, "How do I bring myself to do that?" We may feel like we have conflicting emotions or desires within us. I do think we often think of emotions as all or nothing, in the sense of, "If I'm feeling happy, then I shouldn't be feeling sad. If I'm feeling this, then I can't be feeling this other thing." But you may already know this. I did some research this week. We, our human bodies, God created us to feel multiple emotions at the same time, hence more tension in our life.

For me, one of these situations where I feel this tension, People will ask how my dad, who has Alzheimer's, how he's doing and how I'm doing with it. And I love, I always appreciate people caring for me, but that is one of the hardest questions to answer. Because it's a mess inside for me. While I'm feeling so sad and grieving the loss of someone who's slowly dying and forgetting everything, I am also so happy and grateful to be getting time with Him, for that my family, my daughter, can be getting time with Him and making memories with Him. So the sadness I feel does not mean that there isn't any happiness, and the times that I am happy doesn't mean that I'm not deeply grieving. It's just both, and there's tension there as far as what I'm supposed to be feeling, and what I feel the most, and what I want God to do about it. I think rejoicing often means sitting in the tension of multiple emotions or desires and realizing that we aren't in control, that God is, and that the outcome that we may want, we can express to God, but ultimately we'll have to surrender it to God. most basic level, I think it means trying to see things from God's perspective and resting in His sovereignty. That's a working definition for me, so in a year I may have a different definition.

But there's so much and there's so much more we don't have time for. There are people, amazing pastors and theologians who write books on this about rejoicing always. So this is a very condensed version, but again down to its essence, I think a part of rejoicing always means rejoicing in the fact that we're trying to see God's perspective and we're resting in his sovereignty and the fact that he's in control. I think that could include praising him in that moment for who he is and what he's doing in our lives. It could mean rejoicing in the sacrifice that Christ made for us and the provision and the and the salvation that he offers us. It could mean rejoicing. Rejoicing could look like, well, we cannot see and understand everything. We serve a God who does see everything and understands everything. Rejoicing always could mean rejoicing in the temporary duration of this life and knowing that eternity is spent with God. Or rejoicing always just may mean thanking God for this day and that we're looking forward to the very next day. And that's it. And I understand that some of these things during the hardest times, if you were to say this to someone, it might sound cliche. It might sound like lip service. But at the very least, when someone hears this, hopefully, and even the mere attempt to do any of these things, to look at God's perspective, to try to see what God is doing, to try to rejoice, The mere attempt of this is turning our eyes and our hearts to Jesus. Even if we aren't successful in the sense that we don't start singing, maybe we don't start singing, maybe we don't become very happy in that situation, but we're at least looking in the right direction towards Christ. And we may not be bounding to Jesus, running to him, being, "Praise you, God, love you, everything's great." We may just be crawling. But even a slow crawl is us heading toward the Almighty. The implication of this verse, when Paul writes, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice," the implication is that we will be suffering in this life. He knows, that's why I think he says it twice, right? He's, "Rejoice always." They're like, "Yeah, yeah, good times, we're gonna rejoice." Again, I say, "Rejoice." See, your life as a Christian means suffering. Another pastor spoke on Matthew 16:24, where Jesus tells his followers to take up their cross and follow him. And the pastor pointed out that people don't often think about what that really means. If we were to pause and think about the journey that Jesus took with the cross, after being tortured, beaten, then he had to carry his own cross to the hill that he would die on. And Jesus says, "Take up your cross and follow me.”

That's not life is gonna be great, we're gonna be Christians, it's gonna be so happy. He's inviting us into suffering. He's inviting us into trials, difficult times. 1 Peter 4:12 says, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange was happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed." It's encouraging to know that both Peter and Paul are on the same page here. always, no matter what you are going through. Alright, we're not even close to halfway done. That was just one verse. The rest will go quickly, I think. Verse 5 says, "Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near." Paul is instructing the church in Philippi to continue in their compassion and love towards other people. It's one of the markings of the church, it should be something that stands out about a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is that they are prone to gentleness, to caring for other people, extending grace and mercy, as opposed to maybe the chaotic spirit as one who is prone to selfishness and stirring up strife and is all about their own pride and their own gain. Paul says, "Continue in gentleness. Be compassionate. Have a godly approach, a Christ-like approach. And he says the Lord is near trying to spur on urgency saying this is so important. We don't know when Jesus is coming back but you need to, he's coming back soon, so you need to live your life, this Christian life, with urgency. Don't slack off on this. Don't think you can push this off until like let me get some stuff figured and then I'll start being gentle and compassionate and gracious.

I think we need that reminder today. That this is, that life that we are called to live needs to be lived right away. All right, the next two verses bring us right back into the tension that we can feel as we walk with Jesus in the midst of difficult situations. It says, "Do not be anxious about anything, "but in every situation, by prayer and petition, "With thanksgiving, present your requests to God, "and the peace of God which transcends all understanding "will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." I hear this verse, and it makes sense to me on a head level. Like up here, I understand. I even have a piece of art over my desk that has Matthew 6:26, says, "Look at the birds of the air. "They do not sow or reap or store away any barns, and yet the Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Meaning God will provide. There's no need to worry because God will provide for you. God is in control. Do not be anxious about anything. That's what Paul says. That is so tough. That is really tough. Paul is writing this from prison. So it's not like I can say Paul you don't understand. He's in prison. He's got a lot going on. I think he's battling anxiety. Our series is about a joy that endures through all things. Oh man, Paul is writing this and he's well aware of the hardships that the church of Philippi is going through, just like God is very much aware of the things that we are going through. And yet, we are to trust and depend on Him daily. Another plug for the practice of fasting is part of the growth that I experience, I think others experience too, is in this practice of fasting, you're learning to trust God with something small. You skip a meal or a couple meals, and you are trusting that when you're hungry, when you're feeling low energy, He will provide for you. He will give you what you need. And by doing that, if you do that over and over again, it's like a muscle, right? It's easier for us to depend and trust in God so that when something difficult in life happens, We are ready, we are more prone to trust and depend on Him in that situation. So I think it's kind of what Paul's talking about here. Don't be anxious about anything. Trust in Him. As you do this more, it's going to get easier to not be anxious because you're going to realize all that you can trust Him with, which is everything.

The end of verse 6 instructs us to present our requests before God. Now, this is, again, I'm confessing a lot to you. I start to have trouble here. This is hard for me. I grew up learning to trust in God's sovereignty, like that Matthew verse, trust. God knows everything that I need, so why do I need to tell him? Why do I need to err? Like, "Hey, God, you know, you see me, "and you are gonna look out for me. "You say you're gonna provide for me. "I don't really need to tell you what I want "or what I need because you know. "So God, please just give me what I need." But recently in the last six months, in the last month a lot, I've been challenged with the thought of being specific with God in our prayers. Let your requests be made known to God. Now I know that God answers specific prayer. There's so many examples. I love being a part of the prayer chain here at this church because we see God answer prayer. I mean, just this morning we were talking about Arthur's housing situation. How God provided a place for him. Shelley, who's not here with us, but prayer came in that she was given notice for 90 days that they were going to have to move. And within five days of that notice, they found a new place, a better situation. Amazing! I know that God answers specific prayer. I even think of, we go back in church history, George Mueller in England who ran an orphanage And he started this orphanage and he didn't have anything. And daily he would pray, he's like, "I have no food for all these kids tomorrow. God, we're going to pray right now that you would provide a meal." And over and over again, the next day, someone would show up who had no relation, he had no idea, but there would be money or food to provide for these children. countless stories of God answering specific prayer. Even in the Bible, and this is a passage that I've just been dwelling on for a month now, it seems, Matthew 20:29, Jesus and the crowd are leaving Jericho, and he's walking along the path, and there's two blind men, and they cry out, "Jesus, have mercy on us!" And the crowd hushes them, says, "Hey, can you stop, knock it off? We're trying to listen to Jesus here." and they cry out even louder, "Jesus have mercy on us!" And Jesus says, "What do you want me to do?" And they answered, "We want our sight." And the verse says, "Jesus had compassion on them and healed them." Now I read that, and I say, "Why?" Jesus, you of all people would know what two blind people want. They probably want to see. Why are you asking them what do you want? And it starts to become clear to me, even though I'm wrestling with it, that it's a heart issue. God cares about our hearts and getting us to this place of trust and surrender. See, but putting all this is difficult for me.

We're not supposed have any anxiety and yet we naturally have expectations of what we want for life and what we want God to do for us. We hope that God will provide certain things. We are to pray for what we want and yet we are to trust that and surrender that He will just whatever God sees best. And mixing that all together is so difficult. God I'm supposed to pray specifically what I want and yet at the end of this prayer I'm supposed to come to a place where I just surrender if that happens or not I'm going to praise you?" I think the answer is yes. And some days I'm okay with that, and other days that's really frustrating to me. So how do we surrender our will and our desires to God? Trying to exercise trust and yet present requests before Him. Well, He says in verse 7, When you do this, when you present your request to God, it's like Paul knew what people are going to be wrestling with, then the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts. I love that phrase "transcends all understanding." I think that's a really fancy way of saying you're not going to understand. You're not going to get it. It's not going to make any sense to you. God's going to work in a way that you will not comprehend. I like to comprehend. I want things to make sense. This is challenging for me. But it is true that the peace of God will guard our hearts. See, I'm just formulaic. I want 2+2 to equal 4, and that's not how prayer works. It's not, "God, if I pray this, then I will receive this." If I present this request, and I surrender, then God will give me ultimately what I wanted. I think of Solomon and I'm like, "God, can I just have that? You offered him money, you offered him power, you offered him wisdom. He was supposed to choose wisdom and he got everything else. God, can I do the same thing? Can I get the wisdom and everything else if I got to that?" No. It's about this process of learning to trust God with our hearts, of surrendering our wills and saying, "God, your will be done," just as Jesus prayed. And as we voice our hearts when we're vulnerable with God, and we trust him that he'll provide however he sees fit, whether it's what we wanted originally or not, the peace of God will guard our hearts. Paul is bringing the imagery of a soldier guarding our hearts against fear, anxiety, and doubt. So when we pray, petition, we reach this place of surrender, then we trust Him, and then we can praise Him. Because we know that only He is in control, and we know God's character. And there is no one better to be in control of everything than God. And in there, there is room to praise Him. There is reason to praise Him. All right, I hope and pray that that made sense. Because that was a lot and it is still stuff that I am processing in life right now. as I wrestle with this passage. But we have this pattern developing here. Don't be worried, rejoice in all things. Don't be anxious, God will give you peace.

And then to help remain in Christ, Paul says do the following and we come to verse 8. "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you." Oh, we don't have enough time. There's so much good in here. Okay, this list, "True, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy." This is a good list. it has been proven that the most successful way to stop doing something that you don't want to do is to set yourself a new target, to focus on something new. For example, if you were to eat a donut every morning, and you want to stop eating a donut every morning, you couldn't just not eat anything. You need to replace that with something else and say, "I'm no longer going to do this. I'm instead, I'm going to do this." That's this list right here for Paul. He's giving us something new to focus on. If when you are living like Christ, if you need something, you're going to stop, you're going to refrain from doing these other things, here's what you want to try to do now. And he's also saying, "Look at how I have followed Jesus. Do as I do." Not in a boastful way. He's not saying, "Look, I'm really great at this. I'm kind of awesome at following Jesus." He's just saying, "I know it's helpful to have someone to model it for you." Jesus is ascended, He's in heaven. Look at me as an example of what it means to follow Christ, to live like Christ. And then it says, the most amazing part is that He assures us that God will be with you. Did you notice this? That earlier in our passage, it mentions that the peace of God, the peace of God will be with you. And now He assures you that God Himself will be with you, who we know to be the Holy Spirit. How amazing is that? Now we can have comfort and peace in our hearts knowing the Holy Spirit God is with us in everything we go through. Even more reason to not be anxious. God knows what we need and what we need is Him and He gives Himself to us. So in the midst of this tension we have the God of peace with us and as we wrap up I want I want us to reflect on what God is calling you to do and what areas of your life need to be re-centered around Christ.

And so I just have a couple of questions I'm gonna ask you. Just think of these things this week. Number one, what situation are you in right now that you need to rejoice in? Whether it's a good one and you need to praise God for what God is doing or whether it is one of the most challenging situations in your life. What is that situation? And what does it look like to rejoice always in that situation? Second question, what requests do you have that God needs to hear? Are you being specific with God? I'm asking myself that question every day. How can I be more specific with God? And then as you ask that, Are you trusting and surrendering your will to His? Saying, God, this is what my heart desires. I hope that this desire comes from you, that this is a godly desire, but ultimately your will be done, God. Third question is, who is your model? Paul was talking about him being a model. And I love that last week, Pastor Lauren brought up this idea of spiritual godfather God and mother, that we are an example to other people. I'm gonna flip it this week and say, who's your example? Who is your model of the Christian faith? If you don't have one, this week, this is your specific prayer, ask for one. God, give me someone I can follow in life. God, give me someone who has walked with you longer than I have, that will help encourage me, that I can go to in times of trouble, of anxiety, that I can lean on and depend on. And if you have one, I would encourage you to connect with them this week. If it's been a while, just ask them out to coffee. Text them, thank God for them. But who is your model? And then lastly, which one of this list from verse eight, the whole list of just good things to focus on, which one do you need to focus on in life this next week? Right, our hearts are prone to wander. And so we need to focus our hearts on something good, excellent, praiseworthy, noble, true, whatever that list. Pick one, pray about God, which one do you want me to focus on? Our prayer as a church, as a staff, as pastors, knowing that so many of you are going through difficult situations, is that you walk with Jesus in that tension, whatever tension you're feeling, and that you are trying to see things from God's perspective, and that you're able to rest in His sovereignty, and the fact that He is in control, and that ultimately that you can rejoice.

Let's go ahead and pray. God, we are so thankful for who you are, what you've done, and how gracious and patient you are with us. So much of this Christian life of trying to live like you, we don't do perfectly, we're trying to figure it out. We're wrestling with things of, what does this mean? How do I do this? And yet, I think that you love that we are trying our best to live like Jesus. And so as you empower us through your Holy Spirit to live like you, I just pray that you would also encourage us, God. There are so many things that are happening in this world, in our lives, that easily just bring us down, that bring discouragement, that bring discontentment. And God, we pray that as we surrender our expectations, that we lay our desires before You, that You would give us a peace that surpasses all understanding. and that You, God, that we would feel You with us. God, be with us this week in every situation. We love You and we trust You. We pray this in Your name, amen.

Philippians: Part 6

Philippians: Part 6 - Our righteousness only comes through Jesus

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas. I know that today can be difficult for some people for a variety of reasons, but I do want to make sure that we celebrate the moms and the grandmas and those that have children in their care. You all are amazing. And to those of the moms that aren't here, maybe you're streaming with us this morning, welcome, happy Mother's Day, or you're catching up later. We're just so glad you're here, and we hope you feel loved and honored and celebrated today. I got chosen to preach on Mother's Day as the resident mom here, I guess. I'm just kidding. It was, I volunteered. But I'm excited to be with us, be with you all today. It's not gonna be a traditional Mother's Day sermon. We are back in our Philippians series. So that is gonna be our focus, but I'll try to wrap in some mom stuff for us today.

So, Philippians, our series, The Joy That Endures. we're talking about, through this whole book, about how we can have joy in Christ and what that looks like. What does that look like for our everyday lives? The book, or Paul specifically, talks a lot about this throughout, how we can live this out, how we can find joy in Jesus, regardless of our circumstances. So we've covered chapters one and two. We're gonna be in chapter three today. So if you wanna get ahead and pull that up on your phones or your Bibles, There's Bibles underneath your seats. We'll also have it on this screen. And you can go to Philippians 3. But our buddy Paul here, the early church leader who wrote Philippians and much of the New Testament, packs a punch in this book. All right, we have only covered two chapters in the five weeks that we have been in this series. And we have already gone over partnering with God to spread the gospel, choosing joy and positive attitudes despite difficult circumstances, falling after Jesus, becoming more like him, pointing other people to Jesus, being an influence to those in our lives, and more that I'm sure that I miss. And that's just the first two chapters, all right? There's only four chapters in this book, but it is a lot.

Paul has a way of doing that. He just kinda just packs it in, has a lot of run-on sentences, if you've ever noticed, lots of therefores. He wants to get his point across. In chapter three, we're gonna cover the whole chapter today. We won't read it all, but we will cover it. And so just a little synopsis of the beginning verses. He is calling out legalism in this early church. Now, I'm a rule follower by nature. I don't know if it's just personality or being a firstborn or maybe a combination, but I am a rule follower. I like to police people. I like to know what is what, where I'm supposed to be. I want to do it the best. I want to be the best at it. And usually that requires following the rules. But I will say there is one particular area where I do not follow the rules. And that is my driving. I get it from my father. Completely honestly. But I like driving in the left lane. And if you are not going at least five over, please get out of the left lane. Can I get an amen? Okay, all right. Now here's the thing. The people in the left lane, we got places to go, right? I'm usually late, all right? So that's probably why I'm driving in the left lane. And I'm still a people pleaser, so I don't wanna be that late. So I'm trying to get there as least late as possible. Okay, so that's why I'm in the left lane. I'm just trying to get there quickly. People in the far right lane, I think you're holier than the rest of us, because you're following the rules, you're practicing road safety, we love you, we need you, do you? The people in the Middle East, I'm not sure what you're doing. I don't know. That's fine. I just don't understand it. But I just struggle to follow the rules. I haven't got a speeding ticket, though, so praise Jesus for that. (Laughter) Maybe I need one to learn my lesson. I don't know. The problem is not following rules. That's not a problem. That can actually be really beneficial when it comes to learning how to live rightly. There is a right and wrong way to live in a lot of issues that we see in the Bible. And so being a rule follower can be really helpful with that. The problem comes when we fall into legalism. Legalism is essentially where we are trying We need to follow the rules so closely that we lose sight of the end goal. It's to the detriment of the end goal. And the end goal as believers is to have a relationship with Jesus. And so if we are so caught up in legalism and following the rules that it is at the expense of our relationship with Jesus, we're missing the point. Paul here is addressing an issue where Jews at the time, Christian Jews, were telling Gentiles, these new Christian believers, that they had to become circumcised in order to be a Christ follower. They weren't truly a Christian if they weren't circumcised. And essentially they were saying, "You have to become a Jew before you can become a Christian."

They were adding to scripture, if you will. Now here's the thing, God used, in the Old Testament, when he was developing this nation of Israel, he chose circumcision as a way, as a sign, that the people would be set apart. Why he chose this particular sign, I am not really sure, but this was the sign, that they were a set apart people. They were different than the nations around them. So there was nothing wrong with the Jews choosing to follow that and be circumcised. The problem came when they were saying that it was required to be a Christ follower. were falling into this legalism. And Paul is flipping the script here and saying that those who follow Jesus who are Christians are the circumcision. They don't have to be circumcised, they are the circumcision. They are the ones set apart. They are set apart to God, Jew or Gentile. If they are a professing follower of Jesus, they are the circumcision. They are the set apart ones. See, what Paul knew is that if anyone could claim that following the rules would save you, it was him. He was like the best Jew. He grew up this good Jewish boy. He was a Pharisee, which was like the cream of the crop of the Jews, and they knew scripture inside and out. They followed all of the rules. They told everyone else how to follow all the rules. He was so passionate about following the law that he persecuted Christians in the early church because he believed they were going against the law. went to their homes and pulled them out to the street to be stoned, persecuted them. That's how passionate he was. That's how in line with the law he was. So he's saying, "If that doesn't earn me my salvation, if that doesn't earn me my righteousness, you have to understand that that's not it. No amount of legalism or keeping the law will justify us. We're not made right with God by anything we do, but only by the blood of Jesus. And that's just the first six verses of this chapter. Okay, three to jump into verse seven.

All right, so follow along with me. We'll have it on the screen. Verse seven of chapter three. "But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith." Our righteousness, our right standing with God comes from God by Jesus, by the sacrifice of Jesus. Paul knows that everything else, compared to being in Christ, everything else is trash. And that's the kind word, the kind version of that word. He uses a much stronger word in the Greek, but it's garbage. It means nothing compared to being in Christ. He's not trying to make rule followers out to be the bad guy, 'cause that's not the issue. The issue is not following the rules, it's when it's the only thing that's important. That's when it becomes a problem. We miss the mark when we are so focused on following the rules that we miss the relationship with Jesus. Romans 5:9 says, "Since we have now been justified by His blood, "how much more shall we be saved "from God's wrath through Him?" It doesn't say been justified by our works, been justified by circumcision, been justified by how good we follow the law, by how closely we follow all the rules, by how good of a Christian we look like, it says, "By his blood." Friends, that is good news, 'cause it's not on us. The thing is, if we believe that we can save ourselves, if we believe that legalism and following the rules to a T can save ourselves, we're gonna be in a world of hurt, 'cause one, we're gonna fail miserably and still not be reconciled to God. And two, we are in effect denying the sacrificial work of the cross of Christ. If we, we may not say we believe that, we may not actually even think we believe that, but our actions speak loud. And if we are living in such a way that we are saying that we believe that we can earn our justification, we can earn our salvation, we're saying that what Christ did on the cross isn't enough. I don't think we want either of those options in the Christian life. That's not what we're looking for. So how do we do this? How do we move away from legalism into the freedom that is found in Christ?

Well, Paul goes into this in verse 10. I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His and suffering, becoming like him in his death. And so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead, not that I have already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Paul's whole goal was to know and love Jesus, full stop. Nothing else mattered, nothing else compared to knowing Jesus. As Christians, we can be a Christian, we can say we follow Jesus and say we can know a lot about him without knowing him. We can look like a good Christian. We can go through the motions and follow all the rules and do all the right things and still not have a relationship with Jesus. Paul had his priorities straight. He knew that becoming more like Jesus was more important than just checking a box and following the rules. He knew his calling. He knew where he was going, and he understood the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here's the thing about this power. This resurrection power is what justifies us. The debt has been paid. The sentence that we are supposed to, that is put on us for our sins has been served. It's done. Can I get an amen? That is some good news, people. Thank you. Okay, we're awake. The sentence has been served. We are justified by His blood. That resurrection power has been given to us. The same power that rose Jesus from the dead is in us because if we profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, we have Holy Spirit in us. And so no amount of legalism, no amount of doing what we think is right will justify us because the work's already finished, friends.

Have you ever tried to give directions to someone who just took things a little too literally, maybe didn't quite understand, maybe it was a child, maybe it was a coworker, maybe it was your spouse, no judgment, I don't know. I think of my kids sometimes, I try to give directions, and it just doesn't quite go the way I hoped. Imagine you're giving directions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. To someone who's never made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before. So you say, "Okay, put the peanut butter on the bread." So they put the peanut butter on the bread. And then you realize, okay, you're gonna need to back up a little bit. So then you say, "Okay, no, take the bread out of the bag." So they take the bread out of the bag. Didn't actually tell them how to open it. Well, so next time maybe give the instruction to open at the seal, but it's fine. They follow the rule, right? So then you say, "Okay, put the knife in the peanut butter." Doesn't work so well this way. So you gotta tell them to take the lid off, and then they can put the knife in the peanut butter. And then you tell them to spread the peanut butter on the bread. And then you say, "Okay, now it's time for the jelly. "Put the jelly on the bread." So they do the same thing, 'cause you didn't give the explicit directions to take the lid off the jelly. "Yeah, will they make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? "Maybe eventually, but it's gonna be messy. "It's gonna be harder than it probably should be." But here's the thing, they followed all the directions. You said, "Put the peanut butter on the bread." They put the peanut butter on the bread. Now, okay, every analogy falls apart at some point. So, you know, God is much better at giving us directions than we are. But the point is that if we are following the directions to a T, but losing the forest for the trees, it doesn't do us any good. It's gonna be messy, it's not gonna be perfect, and there's no freedom, and the end result isn't what we thought it would be. 'Cause when we follow the rules, we live a good life. We live a right life. But at what cost? Are we getting the end result that we hoped we would? Might look a little messier than we thought.

The reality is that we are sinners and that sin separates us from God. God is holy. He is perfect. And so in order to be in relationship with him, we must also be made righteous. And we can't do that on our own. but thankfully we serve a God who loves us enough to send that sacrifice for us. And he sent Jesus to be that sacrifice. He was sinless, so he could pay the price. He served our sentence. The sacrifice has been made so that we could be reconciled back to God. Legalism can actually, contrary to what we may think, Legalism can actually keep us in bondage. But Jesus offers us freedom. Legalism is not freedom. Legalism is an obligation. It puts the work of salvation on us, which is a heavy load to bear. We can't handle it. We may think we can. We may try sometimes, but we cannot handle it. In fact, legalism can create so much bondage because it leads to other sins. It can lead to pride, thinking that we got this, we can handle it. It can lead to idolatry, that we are putting the rules up on this pedestal, or we are putting ourselves, we're making ourselves these little gods, if you will, that we are the one doing the work. Now, this doesn't mean we do whatever we want. This doesn't mean we just have free reign, forget the rules, throw them out the window. That's not what I'm trying to say here. And that's not what Paul's saying. But it means that our relationship with Jesus, out of that love for Him, we naturally start following the rules, because we want to, because we love Him so much that we want to live the way He tells us. We want to live the way that He commands us to. It's not out of obligation, but out of love and out of freedom. The joy, our joy is not found in following the rules or being the best Christian. There's no award for best Christian. Sorry. But our joy is in our relationship with Jesus. That's where we find our joy. And let's be clear, we get to live abundantly.

We get to live in freedom and abundance within the boundaries that we have been given. There's so much freedom there. God gives us a lot of free reign. And it's wonderful, we are promised an abundant life, not an easy life, not a carefree life, not one without hardship, but abundant, full, full of joy, full of peace, full of Him and His presence within those boundaries that He has given us. And when we walk in freedom, when we are walking in this abundant life within those boundaries, we look different naturally. We naturally look different and we point people to Jesus. Paul talks about this. So let's go on to verse 15. He says, "All of us then who are mature "should take such a view of things, "and if on some point you think differently, "that too God will make clear to you. "Only let us live up to what we have already attained. "Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, "and just as you have us as a model, "keep your eyes on those who live as we do. "For as I have often told you before, "and now tell you again, even with tears, "many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their God is in their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. And then he ends with chapter four, verse one, saying, "Therefore, my brothers and sisters, "You whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, "stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends." We get to be examples of Jesus to the world. And that may seem a little scary sometimes. I say we get to, some of you are like, "Do I have to? "Is that a requirement?" Yes, it is. We are all called to be ministers of the gospel. We are all called to be examples of Jesus to others. And Paul is saying here, I'm following Jesus and I've had some experience, I've had some real encounters with Him, so follow me as I follow Jesus. Let's figure this out together. Naturally with today, I think of mothers. Mothers are a great example of this. Christian moms disciple their children, they raise them up to follow Jesus. Their children model after them, for good or for bad. Sometimes it doesn't always work out the way we hoped, but we are modeling Jesus to our kids. I'm very blessed to have a mom that loved Jesus and taught us to love Jesus. I learned what it looked like to walk with Jesus from my parents. I was homeschooled, so I was with my mom more, but with both of them, Both of them love Jesus and modeled that for me. But whether you're a mom or not, whether you have biological children or not, you can still model that for others too.

Author and speaker Lisa Bevere calls these people godmothers or godfathers, these spiritual parents. Now, the idea of godparents is not unusual in our culture. many through the Catholic faith tradition or even just in close relationship with people, choose godparents for their kids. They identify them as someone that they want to pour into their children's lives or be there if something happens. But we can be spiritual godmothers and godfathers. We can model our faith to those who are maybe not as far along in their faith. Maybe they're not actually younger than us, but maybe they just are newer to their faith. And if you are newer to your faith journey, may I encourage you to find a godmother or a godfather. Ask them to lunch, buy them a coffee, spend some time with them, ask them questions. Watch them live their life. Watch them parent, watch them interact with their spouse. Watch how they talk to people, do life with them, and model after them. You're not worshiping them, you're not idolizing them, you're not putting them up on a pedestal because you and I both know they're not perfect and they know they're not perfect. But they've had some more life experiences, they've had some more encounters with Jesus. And sometimes as we're navigating life and learning to walk in faith the way Jesus did, it's helpful to have someone who's practically living that out, so we can learn how to do that ourselves. Paul wraps up this section of Philippians by acknowledging that there are enemies of Jesus. We know this. There are enemies of God. Take five minutes on social media and you will see it too. There are those that want to lead Christians astray or push their agenda. There are evildoers, as Paul called them earlier on in the chapter. They're ones that, maybe it's as simple as encouraging legalism, like the Jews were around circumcision, or maybe it's something more extreme, like things we're seeing in the Middle East. but there are enemies of Jesus. So he tells his people to stand firm. Stand firm.

Going back to the very end, chapter four, verse one. "Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, In what way? In the way He just laid out for them in the whole chapter. Choose freedom over legalism. Walk in the power of the resurrection and model a biblical and faith-filled lifestyle. That's how we stand firm. It doesn't have to be complicated. It's not always easy, but it doesn't have to be complicated. We have been given the word of God. We have been given a fellowship of other believers. We have been given everything we need for a godly life. And we just have to choose to stand firm in that. So this is how we stand firm. We won't do it perfectly, but we will do it out of freedom. Amen? Amen.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for the way you have given us everything we need for life and godliness, your word, your people, your spirit. God, we are so grateful for the sacrificial blood of Jesus that has justified us, that has saved us, that has taken the burden off of us so that we can be reconciled to you, not out of anything we do, not of our own strengths, not of our own efforts to earn, but simply by accepting your gift. God help us to walk in that freedom, help us to live in this abundant life that you have given us, and help us to model that for others. Lord, we thank you for moms. We thank you for those who have gone before us and who love us so deeply. May they be honored today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Philippians: Part 5

Philippians: Part 5 - Living A Life of Influence

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, good morning. It is my privilege to be with you. My name is Phil Stevens. I'm a friend of your pastor, and so he every now and then lets me come in and chat a little bit. So it's good to be with you. We are actually going to be going back. I know we took about four weeks off on a relationship series, and we started out in Philippians back in early February, I believe, or sometime in February. So I want to do a quick review of what we did in Philippians, up to the point where I am at this time. I think we have that on slide form up here so we can see that real quick. So first of all, week one, Philippians 1, 1 through 11, we talked about partnership. And partnership with each other is one of God's gifts to experience a joy that endures. Then we went on to the next part of Philippians chapter one and we talked about attitude, that we can choose to have a right attitude regardless of our circumstances. And then we moved on and we went into Philippians chapter two, we talked about imitation, We are to imitate Jesus for our entire life. And then week four, just before we took the break, we talked about being a beacon, be like a beacon, pointing the way to Jesus and a relationship that can be found with Him. And then we had the four-week hiatus, if you please, and then we come to where we're at this morning, and we're going to take a look at influence. What does it mean to be an influence to people for the gospel?

And we're going to be in Philippians chapter 2, verses 19 through 30. So we're kind of wrapping up chapter two. And we're going to start there and kind of take a look and see what God has for us in this area. Now, back in 1969, and now as soon as I say that here's what I know looking at here, some of you have no idea about 1969, okay? But it existed, okay? Some of you may not even been here yet or you were so young you don't recall 1969. Well, in 1969, there was a movie out called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And it was with Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Now, somebody was saying, who? Yeah, well, they were movie stars, OK? So anyway, this movie was actually based on a real story about two outlaws called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, interesting enough. And what happened is they were train robbers, and they had a train robbery that went wrong, and so they fled to South America. And that's where this story is all about what happened in South America. But, of course, they wanted them to be caught, so there was a special posse, or a group of people put together to chase them, to kind of capture them. And throughout the movie, one of the themes of that movie, or theme lines, was this. They would be trying to get away from this posse who was chasing them, and every now and then they would stop and they would look back and they would... the big, the kind of common theme line through this was this. Who are those guys? They weren't sure who they were. They'd be going this, do this, and all of a sudden they look, and they look down in this valley, and there they are, and they go, "Who are those guys?" They never could figure that out. So this morning, however, we're going to talk about who are those guys? Because in Philippians chapter 2, we are introduced to a couple of guys that are great examples to us. And we have a sense that there is one guy named Timothy, who we're going to look at. Paul introduces to us. And then the other one is Aphrodite.

Now, all of us in our professions, I believe this, or in school, whatever it might be, you get out, you go to school, you prepare for a certain profession, and then you get out into the workforce and you encounter some things, and you might find yourself saying, "How come they didn't tell me about this when I was in school?" Because they try their best. They just can't. And I gotta tell you, my background and my preparation as a pastor and being in ministry was, they never told us how to pronounce people's names. I wish they did, because you know, in the Bible, they go off the rails when it comes to names. Whatever happened, just, you know, like Timothy's a great name, but this other guy, you know, Aphro-phroditis, that's a whole, what is up with that? But anyway, that's just my own angst I wanted to share with you as we get into this. Well, first of all, before we find out some examples Timothy and Aphrodite said to us. Let's talk a little bit about them. Who were these guys? Real quick, Timothy was actually very well connected with Apostle Paul. We know in Scripture, back in Acts chapter 16 verses 1 and 4, that Paul went to this city of Lystra and there he encountered this young man whose name was Timothy. And he was very intrigued by this young man because he had a great reputation with those folks there, and as he started to talk to him, they had this common bond. And so he decided to invite Timothy to join him in his ministry, and he did, and they spent a lot of time together. We also know that Timothy really became a mentee, if you please, of Paul. Paul was his mentor. It says in 1st Timothy chapter 1 verse 2, he says, "I am writing to Timothy my true son in the faith." In fact, the whole two books, 1st Timothy and 2nd Timothy, are actually primarily letters from Paul to his mentee Timothy, who was leading a church in this area and he was instructing him about how to lead well. So they're very well connected. Now the other gentleman here, which we'll call "Epa," just because I don't want to try to pronounce that whole name, he only knew Paul by reputation. And so frankly what we know about him is that in Philippians chapter 4 verse 18, which you'll look at later, he was sent by the church in Philippi to bring gifts and some things to Paul to minister to him. And so when And when this young man showed up where Paul was in prison, they had never met before. He knew Paul by reputation. But yet he will find out, forged a unique relationship with Paul. In fact, it was Ephedra who actually took the letter that Paul has written that we now call the book of Philippians. And he took that letter with him back to the church in Philippi. So he was sent by the church in Philippi to take some gifts and represent that church to Paul, and then Paul, in turn, after a season, sent him back to the church in Philippi with this letter that we now have, again, as a book of Philippians.

Now, I'm gonna make a couple assumptions this morning. Actually, three assumptions. The first assumption is this. I think, I think, all of us here, we want to be people of influence. and what to influence other people. That's an assumption I'm making. A second assumption is this. We want to be people who others enjoy being around. No one likes to be around grumpy people. Well, maybe you do, I don't know. But for the most part, there are certain kinds of people that we just want to be around. We're kind of just attracted to them. And so I'm gonna make the assumption that we wanna be the kind of people others enjoy being around. And thirdly, I want to make this assumption. We want to influence people for the gospel. So those are three assumptions as we look at what I'm going to be sharing this morning, that we're gonna base it on those three assumptions. That we want to be people of influence, we want to be people who others enjoy being around, and we also want to influence people for the gospel. And so as we dig into this, let's talk about influence a little bit.

We said we want to influence people for the gospel. Well basically, if you want a formal definition of influence, here it is. To have an effect on the condition or development of something or someone. In other words, influence is you have an effect on something. You have an effect on someone. And influence basically has kind of two sides to it. We can influence others, but then at the same token sometimes others influence us. We understand that. And so as we look at this, we're going to see that Paul just as he's writing to the Philippi Church, he is talking about Timothy and Aphrodite, and he is describing a little bit about them. And in that, I believe that we can pull out some principles of of what it means to be people of influence. And so we're just going to kind of walk through Philippians chapter 2 verses 19 through 30 and we're going to just make some some observations. And the first thing is this, the first trait or characteristic, if we want to be people of influence is this, be genuinely concerned for others. In verse 19 through 21 we read this, "If the Lord Jesus is willing," Paul says, "I hope to send Timothy to you soon for a visit. Then he can cheer me up by telling me how you are getting along. I have no one else like Timothy," who, ready for this, "who genuinely cares about your welfare. All the others will care only for themselves and not for what matters to Jesus Christ." So influence then we need to genuinely care for others. Now there are times that we care for others and sometimes it's out of obligation, sometimes it's out of duty, or sometimes it's just completely out of necessity. But even under those circumstances we can still have a genuine concern for people. Now here's the reality. Not all of us are bent or more, I guess, drawn towards concern, towards mercy. And just about, I am not. Well we don't have that, this would be a personal testimony. I am not naturally drawn to being concerned for people. And sometimes I find myself just thinking, "Man, that's a terrible situation, I'm glad it's not me. But yet over the years, because I have, I think I might have shared when I shared with you last time, I just retired last July of 48 years in some form of pastoral ministry over the last 48 years. And early on in my ministry, I had, not only did I not have genuine concern, I had no concern for people sometimes. That was just my natural bent. But just because we are quote-unquote, "bent a certain way" or we have a certain propensity in our personality doesn't mean we're right and doesn't mean we shouldn't change. And so over the years God has been very gracious to me and helped me be drawn more to genuinely being concerned about other people. And it's still not an overly quick natural type thing. But yet you can do that and people know. People know if you're generally concerned for them. And when you care for others out of a genuine heart concern, you appreciate the situation to influence them because they know you care for them and ultimately you want the best for them.

The second thing is this, if we want to be people of influence, we have to be a person of integrity. It says in verse 22, "But you know how Timothy has proved himself. Like a son with his father he has served with me in preaching the good news." Integrity is proven over time. Integrity is when what we say and what we do match up. That we're in them for the most part in our life we are consistent in who we are and what we do. Integrity is simply being where we said we would be and doing what we said we would do. Integrity is simply being dependable. Paul tells us in, excuse me, James tells us in James chapter 5 verse 12, "But most of all my brothers and sisters, never take an oath by heaven or earth or anything else, just say a simple yes or no, so that you will not sin and be condemned. See that's integrity. Your yes is a yes, your no is a no. And sometimes we forget that but when people know they can depend on us, when people know that we are individuals of integrity, that if we say that we'll do something, we'll do it. Yet we're also honest that there's something we're unable to do, we'll tell them we're unable to do it. Then that builds us an opportunity to influence them because they know we can what? Be dependent on. Where we understand what we believe and we understand who we are and we want to live that way and it doesn't mean that we're perfect but we're consistent in our lives. We have to recognize that and see that.

The third thing is if we want to be people of influence we need to be trustworthy. Verse 23 and 24, "I hope to send him to you just as soon as I find out what is going to happen to me here and I have confidence from the Lord that I myself will come to see you soon. Why does that talk about being trustworthy? Because Paul knew that if he sent Timothy to this church of Philippi, actually a church that Paul himself started back in the day, you can read about that in the book of Acts, where he started this church himself in Philippi, and he can send Timothy, who is not the part of that started in that church, but yet he could send Timothy, who would represent him well. There is something to be said for people who are able to represent another individual well. And we can be trustworthy. We're worthy of trust. Here's what we really know deep down. We know this. Trust is a very difficult thing to attain. Sometimes it's simple to lose. And once it's lost, it takes a long time, if ever, to restore that sense of trust. And maybe you've had that in a relationship, that you were hurt badly in a relationship with somebody and they violated the trust that you had in them. And if you think about it, how long might it have took, if ever, were you able to restore that that trustworthy relationship with them. But when we know we can be trusted, when people know we can be trusted. Then we have influence in their life.

The fourth thing we see here, I believe, is that we need to be relational. Verse 25, "Meanwhile I thought I should send Epaphroditus back to you." Again, remember I told you the Philippi church sent him to Paul. "He is a true brother, co-worker, and fellow soldier, and he was your messenger to help me in my need. Why do I see that as relational observation? It's because of this. As I mentioned, Ephrodite did not know who Paul was. He knew him by reputation, never met him to my knowledge. Scripture doesn't indicate any way that he had. So he went there for the first time and he meets this giant of leadership in the early church. And as As Paul describes him as a brother, co-worker, fellow soldier, I'm thinking something happened in that time they got there. They built up this relationship with each other that I have to believe, and maybe I'm making some underlying jumping to conclusions on this, but they had to have times of just conversation of sharing with each other and sharing their hearts and their vision and their plans and what's going on. And as a result of that, all of a sudden this gentleman that Paul had not known until he came to him was able to embrace him as a brother, a co-worker, a fellow soldier. And then he's letting the church know when Ephraimus brings that letter back, that he had done his job well in representing the church. John Maxwell, who's a writer and a speaker, says there are friends, There is family, and then there are friends that become family. We understand that. There's relationships. We have friends, and we have family. And sometimes those friends that we have, they just become a part of our family. And as we build relationships with other people at different levels, we are going to be able to have influence in their lives through the relationship that we have built with them.

Next, if we wanna be people of influence, we need to be committed. Verse 26 and 27, "I am sending him "because he has been longing to see you," and I'm sending him back to you with this letter, "and he was very distressed that you heard he was ill. "And he certainly was ill, in fact, he almost died, "but God had mercy on him and also on me "so I would not have some sorrow after, "one sorrow after another." You see, it was his commitment to Paul. It was his commitment to bring this gift from the Philippian church. It was his commitment to them that he held, even in illness, even in distress, he still was gonna maintain his commitment to be there to represent the church of Philippi to Paul. You know, there are some things that we may be interested in but we're not committed to. And there's a difference. I had a friend who contacted me and he was going to, the church that he attends, they were gonna offer a Hebrew class. So he calls me on the phone, he says, "Hey, Phil, I'm gonna take this Hebrew class. "Would you like to join me?" And I said, "Well, that sounds interesting, "but no, thank you." Absolutely not am I gonna do that. You gotta be kidding me. They're not even real letters, at least what I'm aware of. And so there was something maybe I was interested in, but not really overly committed to. I'm interested in camping. Camping in concept sounds interesting, but I hate camping. In fact, last time I can remember I went camping, it was with Kevin and Cheryl Snyder, a long time ago. And they're experts at camping. And we went, had a good time, hate camping. They can attest to you that I would get up earlier than anybody else. We weren't where we were camping, was not too far from a town. I drive into the town, have coffee and read. Well, they were all sleeping. They come back when they were all getting up and that sound like a good idea to me. So anyway, we have that. We have things we think are interesting to us. We have things that seem like a good idea, but they're not. We all have those. But yet what we're talking about here is being committed to something. Committed no matter what. Committed because you said that you would do something. Committed because even though you are not maybe most enthusiastic on a certain day for certain things that you've committed to, you still do it because you're committed. And when you are committed, you can influence people because you're speaking out of that commitment.

Now, this next one is very important. It's be respected by those who know you best. If you want to be a person of influence, you have to be respected by those who know you best. It says in verse 28 and 29, "So I am all the more anxious to send Him back to you, for I know you will be glad to see Him, and that I will not be worried about you. Welcome Him in the Lord's love with great joy, and give Him the honor that people like Him deserve." You see, the people who knew him best, Aphrodite was the Philippian church. And Paul knew when he went is that he is coming back to you. And they were going to be enthusiastic and excited to see him. You know, we can impact people from a distance, but we can only influence people up close. And if the people who know you best don't respect you or don't see who you are really in your life, then it's going to be hard to influence other people. And since I started off with a blast from the past for some, I'm going to go back a little bit. There was a song out called "Cats in the Cradle." And it was a song roughly, exactly, about a little boy who wanted time with his dad, but his dad was too busy doing other things to other people-- his job, his career, his profession. He was just zooming on through his life. And it tells at the end of the song, of course, again, if you've heard it, if not, go ahead on YouTube. I'm sure you can find it at the very end of his life. In essence, he did influence his son because his son became just like him. And his son did not have time for his father because his father didn't have time for him. So no matter what his dad did, it made no difference because he had not neglected his family. He neglected the people who knew him best. And we best influence people as we are known and we're respected by those who know us best.

The last one is be authentic. Verse 30, for he risked his life for the work of Christ and he was at the point of death, while doing for me what you couldn't do from far away. He risked his life for the work of Christ. He did not merely have a good faith or talk a good faith, he lived a good faith. He was willing to risk his life for the work of Jesus. He was authentic in every way. Authenticity is something that, In our world today, people long to truly see. I read someplace, and it's one of those things, I either read it, I heard it, or I made it up. I'm gonna give it to you anyway. That the new leadership is authenticity. The more authentic you are with people, the more authentic you are, warts and all, with people. in essence, the more influence you have with them. Because if you're willing to share your life with people, as a fellow sojourner in the gospel with Jesus Christ, that influences other people. It was probably two weeks ago, maybe a bit longer ago, where on Facebook I saw this post about a gentleman named Keith Drury, who was a mentor of mine, really more influential in my life back in my early years, in my 20s, the 80s, long time ago. And he had passed away. Suddenly, 78 years old. And I got to tell you this. Some of you who are younger think, wow, that guy lived a good life. You get to be my age, you're thinking, dude, that's young. What's all going on? And so we found out he just had a stroke. Just boom, unexpected. For the most part, healthy and all that stuff. And I remember reading that post and I thought, oh my gosh. And I began to think about Keith Drury's influence in my life. And again, it was back when I was in my early 20s, I was early in ministry and this guy named Keith Drury who was in a leadership position in the Wesleyan church or the Wesleyan movement which Spring Valley is a part of. And he had a heart for the next generation. And so he gathered, I think there might have been about 30 or 40 of us. And he just reached out to us, and we were from all over the country. And most of us, frankly, were youth pastors. That in itself was a scary thing, okay? And he decided to gather us together, and he just decided to call us that we were in his cadre. And basically he said, "I'm going to pour into you, young men and women." And he used to tell us way back in the day, he used to say, "There's going to come a day where all of you are going to have some kind of a leadership position in the Wesleyan movement." And we would look at each other and think, "Who'd want to be a part of something we were in charge of?" Because we were young, we were brash, we were youth pastors, We were idiots in a lot of cases. And he just kept telling us that and then he kept pouring into us, and there's still things that he has said they learned. And you know what? He was right. Most of the individuals who are in that cadre back in the day, some of us like myself are already retired after all that. But we have led in certain areas of influence in the Wesleyan Movement, local church, wider district level, denominational level, whatever it might be. We had that. And I can remember all the accolades again pouring in, people talking about Keith and reminding each other about Keith. And frankly, over the last several years, probably the last 15 or so years, his influence primarily in my life, it still was there, was secondary through his writing. Before he relocated to Florida where he retired to, he lived in the Indianapolis area. When I was in the area, I'd go by and to visit with him and talk with him and just chat with him about things I was going through and struggling with and wondering about. And he always was very mindful and willing to take time for me. But there was a phrase he used to use. In fact, he used to sign off in all of his correspondence. I don't mean email. They didn't have it back then. Letters, notes, whatever it might be. But he had the same phrase he used to end up and you simply say this, keep on keeping on. Keep on keeping on. And I got to tell you, over the years when I got discouraged and disgruntled and disrupted, disruption in my life and different things going a certain way, I remember Keith saying, keep on keeping on. Because the influence they had in my life.

Every single one of you here has the ability and the opportunity to influence other people. Through some of the things that we just talked about this morning, about what it means to be a person of influence. You already are influencing people. It may be at your school, it may be in the workplace, it may be in your family, but you're influencing people. You're influencing people to make better choices. You're influencing people to have deeper meaning. You're influencing people toward a relationship with Jesus Christ. And here's the interesting thing, you don't know the influence you'll have in other people's lives that you don't know because the people you have influence now. As you influence people now, they will influence people. I can guarantee you there are people who I've had the opportunity and privilege to influence in their life and it's because of people like Keith Drury and they don't know Keith Drury, but it's the influence he had in my life, the influence the people I had and other people's life and I like to think that they'll influence other people who will have no idea who I am, who will influence them and it's the same for you. You can influence people in their lives right now and then you have no idea that ripple effect that influence is going to have throughout about generation after generation after generation. Be people of influence.

But before I wrap up, I have to ask this question. Do you know Jesus? We talk about influencing people for the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Do you know Jesus? And if you don't, this is the opportunity you have to recognize that you do not have a relationship with Jesus and you're short of the grace of God. And you grab a hold of that grace by simply telling, God, I need you. I'm a sinner. Forgive me. Come into my life. Transform my life. From this point on, I will walk with you. And if you haven't done that, I want to give you the opportunity right now to do that. We're not going to bow our heads. We're not going to close our eyes. We all kind of talk and think out loud, and our minds are wandering here and there. I'm sure some of you have wondered and since we've been talking up here. She's okay, I probably have to. But just take a moment right now, in your own way, in your own words, simply let God know. If you don't know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you know that you know. You may be religious, you may have some idea of religion, you may have some idea of Bible, but you don't really know Jesus as your Savior. Maybe you're like a friend of mine named Dan who was raised in the Catholic Church, disengaged. And I was, through a certain ministry, he came to know Jesus Christ as personal savior, and I had the privilege to disciple him. And as I was discipling him, his understanding of spiritual stuff and God was pretty incredible for a brand new person of faith, at least as far as relationship with Jesus. And I said to him, I said, "Dan, "how do you know all this stuff?" I hope I don't forget what he said to me. He said to me, "Oh, Phil, I always knew there was a God, "and I knew all this stuff about God. "I just didn't know I could know him personally. "That was a game changer for me." And maybe that's you. Maybe you know all these things about God, and you believe these things about God, but you've never walked into that personal relationship with him. That's what I'm asking you to consider this morning before we wrap up. Simply, do you genuinely, deeply know Jesus? And if not, just gonna pause for a short moment and give you the opportunity right where you are to ask Christ to come into your life, in your own way, in your own words, and receive him into your life.

Father, I just thank you and praise you for this morning. First of all, I want to thank you that we can be influencers for you, that we can see the example of Timothy and Aphrodite of what it means to be just influencers. We're normal people, nothing super supendous about us, we can just influence people in our lives. And Father, I do pray for anyone here who asked Christ to come unto their life for the very first time. They came to that point of decision this morning. Lord, I ask first of all that you would affirm that with your spirit. You would affirm that they are in your household now. That they are family and they've been forgiven. And Father, you would just give them that confirmation, affirmation through your spirit that you provide for us. We do give you honor and we give you praise and we ask you in Jesus' name, amen. And the last thing I'll say for Pastor Chris comes up here is if you prayed to Jesus and asked Christ to come into your life, tell somebody. Tell somebody. Tell 'em.

Philippians: Part 4

Philippians: Part 4 - Lights in the World

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Good morning. We are so glad you're here today. If I haven't met you, I am Pastor Lauren. and I'm just one of the teaching team here. I'm often back with the kiddos, but today I get to be in here with the grownup kiddos. So that's fun. So we are in our Philippians series. If you haven't been around yet, we are on our fourth week, and we're talking about the joy that endures. So really just, Paul talks a lot in Philippians about maintaining a joyful heart and letting that endure despite our circumstances. So some things we've covered. we talked about being grateful, just a general attitude of gratefulness. We talked about choosing joy despite our circumstances, that happiness is really circumstantially dependent, but joy is not, that is eternal. And then last week, Pastor Andre talked about imitating Christ and how he came as a human and he died on the cross, and so his obedience, we can imitate him in our obedience. So today, we are going to continue on with chapter two. and we're gonna be in verses 12 through 18, so if you wanna pull that up in the Bible or the app, we'll have it on the screen. We're gonna be jumping around to a bunch of different scriptures today, so we'll make sure we have them up on the screen for you, but if you wanna follow along in our Philippians passage, you can do that. Chapter two, 12 through 18. And we're just gonna kinda break down more of the how-to of imitating Christ.

So first off, before we get started, I'm just going to read the whole section of scripture for us, and then we're gonna dive deeper into it. So read along with me. Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So you too should be glad and rejoice with me." All right, so let's break this down.

All right, so verse 12, "Therefore, my dear friends, "as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, "but now much more in my absence, "continue to work out your salvation "with fear and trembling." If you haven't noticed, in a lot of Paul's writing, he likes the word therefore. He refers back often. Basically, the book of Romans is just a constant therefore over and over again. And same with Philippians. I was scrolling back up and I was like, "Okay, that section has a therefore, okay, that section." We're just gonna keep going all the way back to the beginning. But here, he is referring back to the earlier passage in chapter two that Pastor Andre talked about last week, the imitating Christ. And he's connecting it back because he wants us to make the connection that Christ's obedience should be connected to our obedience. Because of Christ's death and resurrection, because he was obedient to God's will, we too must be obedient to God's will. And we can choose obedience as we work out our salvation. Now notice this doesn't say work for your salvation. We're not doing a workspace salvation here, okay? We're not trying to earn our way to heaven. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourself. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast." It's by God's grace and through our faith in Him that we have been saved, even before we do a thing. We work out what God works in us. So God has done the work of salvation in our hearts. He has gifted us. It is a free gift that he has given to us. And we accept that gift. And then we go out of that gratefulness, out of that love, out of gratitude for the free gift. We work out our salvation. It's kind of like a muscle. If you don't work the muscle, it'll start to atrophy. Working out doesn't create muscle. It builds it. But if you don't work out, if you never use it, it's just, it's gonna atrophy and be not functional. Another word that we can use here is to activate. We are activating our salvation. We're living it out in our everyday lives. A kind of a churchy word here is holiness or sanctification where it is to be a part, to be set apart for God's purposes. Upon our salvation, we are consecrated to Him. We are set apart for Him and for His will. And then we activate our salvation by partnering with Him. We allow him to make us more like Christ. That is working out what God has worked in. And it goes on to say that we do this with fear and trembling. This isn't like a fear of failure or a fear of like punishment in hell. It is this all reverence of God. One commentator said, it's an awful reverence of God and a trembling with joy of an encounter with the glory of God. I loved that. You know, when you get so excited, you just like can't even handle it. That's how it is when we have an encounter with the glory of God. You should be different when you encounter God. God is working in us and He will never leave us the same.

Onto verse 13. It says, "For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." Again, God is working in us for his glory and for our good and the good of those around us. God is doing the work, but we are receiving his power in order to activate our salvation. Second Peter 1:3 says, "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness, everything we need. So by His grace, we are able to receive salvation. And then by His power, we are able to live it out. We are able to work out that salvation. So good news, guys, it's not up to us. It's not reliant on us. We don't have to be enough. He is enough. He's the one who gives us the grace and the power to live out what he has done in our hearts. John 14:18-20, just a paraphrase of what Jesus said. He said, "I will not leave you as orphans. I will be with you and you will realize that you are in me and I am in you." He has given us the Holy Spirit. We have our own work to do as followers of Jesus, but he gives us the power. He indwells us with the Holy Spirit so that we are able to work out our faith.

All right, now onto verse 14 and not gonna lie, it's a bit of a doozy, so hang with me here, okay? It's only six words, but it gets me every time, okay? Do everything without grumbling or arguing. Some translations say complaining or arguing. I'm gonna say it again. do everything without complaining or arguing which things? Everything, all of them, all the things. Do them without complaining or arguing. I recently had our kids memorize this verse and I memorized it with them. And if I could just tell you or show you the I rules that are in my house, when I bring up this verse and I remind them of this verse, when we start to complain, It stinks sometimes. It's easy to complain, right? It's easy to get caught up in what's going wrong or what's just frustrating or not right. First Thessalonians 5:18 says, "Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ." How many circumstances? All of them. All of them, every last one of them. Doesn't mean we're gonna like it all the time. Doesn't mean it's gonna feel good. I tell my kids all the time, you may not feel like doing something. You may not enjoy this particular thing, but hard doesn't mean bad necessarily. We can still give thanks. We can still choose gratitude. Psalm 119:1-2 says, "Joyful are people of integrity who follow the instructions of the Lord. Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts. Psalm 3:1-2. Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight. That's us. For those of us who have received the gift of salvation, this is us. Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty. Because we have been saved by Jesus, we always have a reason to be joyful. It doesn't mean it's always gonna be easy. We may have to be really intentional in choosing that joy, but we always have a reason for it. Why, why though? Why should we choose joy? Why should we give thanks in all circumstances and do everything without complaining or arguing?

Well, good news, Paul gives us the answer right here. Verse 15-16, "You may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life." It's so that you look different. As Christ followers, we're not supposed to look like everybody else. We're not supposed to look like the culture or the world around us. We're supposed to look different. These words blameless and pure, it's like the innocence of children, or it can also have this connotation of a sheep that doesn't have horns, a hornless sheep that can't even do harm if it wanted to. Our words, our complaining and grumbling could do harm, maybe to our own souls or maybe to those around us. So if we are blameless and pure, we can be like innocent sheep who are not doing harm. This even goes back to chapter one of Philippians, verse 27 says, "Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ." Complaining, arguing, grumbling, that is not in a manner worthy of Christ. Now, a little caveat here, this is different than processing. This is different than maybe stating facts for a situation that you may be experiencing. Sometimes we need to share what we're going through. Sometimes we need to process with someone. But there's a difference. When you are just complaining or whining or trying to be difficult or divisive, You're not looking for a solution. You just want to be upset. That's different than crying out to God. There's a whole book of the Bible called Lamentations where the author is lamenting to God. It's not called complaining, it's lamenting. He's pouring out his heart to God. There are seasons that we're gonna go because it hurts just plain hard. And we can lament, we can bring those things to Him. We can say, God, here's what is going on. Can you help me please? But we're looking for a solution. And more importantly, we're looking for more of Him. We're taking our circumstances to Him. We're taking our struggles. We're taking our list of complaints maybe, and saying, God, I really wanna complain about this, but can you help me with this? Be enough for me. Be with me in this situation. We don't have to look very far to find complaining. It's an election year. We don't have to look very far to find complaining, arguing, divisiveness. It's easy to find. But we're called to be different.

Paul here in this passage, there's quotation marks. I don't know if you've noticed in your Bible, what it says, in quotations, it says, "Children of God without fault "in a warped and crooked generation." Here he's quoting Deuteronomy 32:5. And this is Moses talking in the Deuteronomy passage. He's talking about the nation of Israel. At first I thought, just thinking, not without researching it, I thought, oh, he must be talking about the neighboring nations of Israel. No, no, no, no. He was talking about Israel, the chosen people of God. He was saying, "You are a warped and crooked generation." Because they were grumbling. Because they were constantly complaining to God and not trusting Him with their circumstances. Paul saying, "Don't be like rebellious Israel." The thing about complaining and arguing is that it's a form of rebellion in our hearts. When I was reading this passage and I realized that Paul was referring to the Israelites here, I thought, "Oh man, these are the people of God and they're complaining and they're rebelling." So when we complain, when we grumble, when we choose that over gratitude and over trusting God, it is a form of rebellion in our hearts and all that hurts, I hate that. because I can't tell you how many times I have a spirit of arguing and complaining and grumbling. But when we choose to be joyful, when we choose gratitude, when we flip the script and say, "I could very easily complain about this, but I'm gonna take it to God instead," we are pushing back against our innate bent towards rebellion. And then we stand out like stars, like light in a night sky. I love what a commentator wrote on this part of this passage. He said, "We are to fulfill our place as lights in the world." Lights are used to make things evident. Lights are used to guide. Lights are used as a warning. Lights are used to bring cheer. Lights are used to make things safe. Paul knew that the lights were in a bad place. Instead of excusing the lights for not shining, Paul knew that their position made it all the more important that they shine. Being in a dark place is a greater incentive to shine. We don't need an excuse to not shine. We need to go out into the dark world and be a light. I'm not talking about toxic positivity or brushing things under the rug because you wanna put on a face and look like you have it all together. I'm saying true joy, when we experience true life transformation, we shine. We can't help it. And we do this by holding firmly to the word of life. Scripture, the Bible. We have to be in the word, we have to study it, we have to know it. So when we are tempted to go towards that bent of rebellion, when we're tempted to complain or be divisive or argue, we have scripture to call upon. That's why I had my kids memorize it so that they know, oh no, I'm complaining or arguing, but no, I can choose a different option. We hold fast to it. We hold strongly to it and don't let it go. so that we are prepared and equipped to choose joy.

Paul wraps up this section by saying, "And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you." So you too should be glad and rejoice with me. Paul here is saying that if the people of Philippi, people he's writing to, the church he's writing to, if they choose joy over complaining and they continue to work out their faith, all of his sacrifice will be worth it. He has poured himself out. He has emptied himself for this ministry to spread the gospel and he's saying, I'm good. It's worth it because you're working out your salvation. you're paying it forward and spreading the gospel beyond what I can reach. He knew Christ was coming back. He didn't know when, but he knew that Jesus was coming back.

So his heart's desire was that the people that he ministered to would live out the heart transformation that God did in their lives. He hopes that whatever transformation and the therefore behavioral change that came of that, that they would go and continue to spread the gospel, that they would share what God did in their hearts and lives and that other people would hear about Jesus. So how do we have hope or sorry, how do we have joy that endures? We work out our faith like a muscle. We work out our salvation. We choose gratitude over complaining, even when it's hard and even when it's unpopular. It's easy to get caught up in the gossip or the complaining when you're hanging out with friends or when you post on social media and you just wanna jump in. So easy. Maybe unpopular to change the conversation or to not partake in it. But we can choose gratitude instead of complaining. And lastly, be a light to those around us. Like a star guiding others to Jesus, pointing them to Him. Because He's our joy. He is our joy regardless of our circumstances, regardless of what we're going through. So like Paul, we can know that Christ is coming back. And so therefore we should choose joy too. When we're working out our faith, when we're striving to be more like Christ, and then others around us will see it. Be like a beacon, like a lighthouse, pointing the way to Jesus and a relationship that can be found with Him.