Cultivating A Relevant Faith

Tonight is somewhat of an introduction, but I also want to make some very important foundational points as we look into Philippians, and we'll be reading through as we go so we don't need to read the whole text to start out. We're in Philippians tonight. Someone wrote me a little note over the weekend and said, now, when you tell us where to turn, give us more time and tell us where it is. So it's in the very near the end of your Bibles. So only about my Bible, it's only about 100 pages or so from the end, so there it is. How many of you believe God directs your steps? How many of you have ever been in a situation where the Lord led you to do something that you weren't really counting on doing? All right. I want to submit to you tonight, this entire book of Philippians came out of one of those kinds of strange leadings where God sovereignly touched a man who didn't really know what he was going to do when he heard the Lord tell him to do it. The Christian life is supposed to be so exciting, and we have a way of so compartmentalizing it, analyzing it, structuring it, that we miss the adventure of it. Now, I'm going to challenge you, as we study through this book over the next weeks, I was told I could have at least three to do the book, and there'll be probably more than that before we're done, and we're going to go and read carefully about all the adventures that are implicitly involved here in the book of Philippians. Now, of all the New Testament letters, Philippians is the most warm and personal. It's as though Paul just sat down at his little carved desk, you know, and took a quill pen and just kind of wrote out a letter on his own little station there. That's all I did. The problem is he was in prison when he wrote, so it probably wasn't real lovely, but it's the most personal. It's not like Romans. How many of you were with us when we studied Romans? Let me see your hand real quick. See, Romans is a, I mean, it's a treatise. It's theology plus. It's the kind of things that theology students salivate over because it's so deep and, I mean, complicated, and we, of course, made mincemeat of that theory, didn't we? But Philippians is a warm, personal letter, and yet, I have to do this. I wasn't going to do it. I'm going to have to. How many of you would say, of all the New Testament letters, this is your favorite? How many don't even know what I'm talking about yet, okay? Well, you should have a favorite or two of all these. Many people would say, many people would say, we had about 15 or 20 hands here, that this little letter combines so much of the heart of this great apostle and of God's truth, and here's what I like about it. When I remember it so clearly, I was a new Christian, it was short, all right? I mean, it was four chapters. I mean, the whole thing in like 10 minutes. Now, I like that. Maybe it'll become your favorite after tonight. I can see that. All right. Now, there's three specific reasons why I believe the Lord would have us to study this book in depth, and I mean we're really going to mine out some stuff. Three reasons. This is the first three blanks. I'm cutting down on the number of blanks because I used to get confused, but here they are. First of all, the practicality of truth. We're going to get real practical before this is over, all right? Secondly, the spirituality of truth. If you don't think there's some deep stuff in here, get ready for Philippians 2 as we talk about the seven marks of downward mobility in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And thirdly, the reality of truth. We're going to talk about stuff that's everyday and right up front and livable, and that's why this is going to be an exciting study. It's going to have some deep stuff to challenge the meat eaters. It's going to have some practical stuff to help those of us who fumble through the day, and all of it's going to be real. No masks here in Philippians. This is kind of how it is. But it's achievable, and we'll get through it long before the rapture, provided it doesn't happen here. You know, it could be something where Edward Wisson thinks there's 91 reasons why Jesus will come in 91, but he's the guy that wrote 88 reasons in 88, so he's still shooting. Okay. Just so you know a little bit about how this book came to be, and I'm going to resist the temptation to really get into this, there's very little history about how the other books and other churches even were established in the New Testament, but there's a lot on how Philippians the book was written and on how the church at Philippi was established. To kind of recap the story rather than work my way through it, Paul is asking God how he can best utilize his zeal and the companions that have committed themselves to him, including Timothy and others, and so he launches out on this second missionary journey. And he starts out, and he wants so bad to go off into Asia and take off, and he gets kind of to the border, and the Holy Spirit says, just before he's about to go into what's called Bithynia, or Bithynia, depending on how you want to say it, and don't ever get hung up, by the way, on how you say those, who cares, right? You say it tomato, and I'll say tomato, and you say Bithynia, and I'll say Bithynia, okay? It doesn't matter. And he's about to jump right into this, and the Holy Spirit says, no, don't do it. Now, Paul had the wisdom, when the Holy Spirit said, no, don't do it, not to say why I want to do it. This is my life. Let me live it. Don't bother me. He said, okay. Paul didn't go ahead. He waited, and that night he had a dream. Actually, it was called a vision, and in the vision, he saw a man in Macedonia, which is a province, kind of the other direction, saying what? Come over and help us. Now, Paul's a pretty bright guy. He discerned, well, that must be the Lord speaking to him. And so, that next day, he got his folks together. They booked a flight over to Macedonia, and a little colony, and by the way, when they booked flights then, they were wild ones, all right? And he jumped on over, it took him a couple of days by ship and all to get to Macedonia, and in Macedonia, there's a little Roman colony called Philippi, and by the way, when the Romans planted a colony, it was like they took a part of Rome. All the people, of course, there weren't Romans, but the Romans had won the world, and so they sent out a colony, and they set up the Roman shop, and they had the Roman customs in this little place, and they had the Roman numerals, you know? They had everything. They really set it up right. It was all Roman, and Paul arrives in this city with Timothy and this little band of people. Now, understand one important fact just before I go on, because I'll forget it otherwise. It just so happens that Philippi sits in the valley that separates between where there's some mountains which separate Asia from Eastern Europe, and what's modern-day Turkey right now, okay? And basically, what God was doing when he directed Paul away from Asia and off to Europe was getting you saved, all right? He was moving the gospel into Europe. This was the first step of that happening. Now, when Paul arrives there, of course, he didn't know anybody. He's like us. I mean, he had not been there before. This was raw evangelism. So, it says that he went out to the river, and I think he went out to the river. He'd been there a few days. Nothing was happening. Went out to the river and said, what's going on here? And a woman comes by. What's her name? Lydia. Lydia happens to be a fairly successful woman, business lady, seller of purple. She sits down with Paul, and you know, Paul is not shy when it came to evangelism. Right away, he shared the gospel with her, and she, the Bible says, I love this, the Bible says, the Lord had prepared her heart. You know, you can drop gospel bombs and tracts until you just about pass out. If the Lord hasn't prepared their heart, you know, just, it's not going to go anywhere. If he has, sometimes you can fumble your way through the worst testimony you can imagine, you know. You know, quoting Hezekiah and everything, just all these verses coming up, and God will use it. But here's the thing. The thing is, we don't know when God's prepared the heart. You see, this is where he's sovereign, so we've got to kind of trust him in that. Paul shared, the Lord prepared her heart, and boom, right then she said, this is unbelievable. I mean, this is believable. I'm going to come to Christ. And the people with her came to Christ. Paul had his first convert, first new church member right there. So he was cooking. He's getting excited, and he started moving around and doing some other things and doing some more sharing. And this demon-possessed slave girl who had a spirit of divination following him around and kept screaming things out loud, this man has the spirit of God. I mean, they go into a little, you know, Roman restaurant, order a little Roman dinner. And this slave girl's like, this man has the spirit of God. And finally, the Bible says, well, Paul got a little ticked off. Doesn't say that exactly, but he was upset, turned around, and what did he do? Buked the demon. The girl was set free. Great news, right? Well, it was for her, but it wasn't for her owners. So her owner said, well, this is terrible. Then went to the magistrate and said, this man is sowing rebellion and discord, and besides that, he's taking away our livelihood. Well, they didn't even ask any questions, you know. Threw him right into jail. Well, in fact, it says, worse than that, he was severely flogged. He and Timothy were severely flogged. I mean, and that was bad news. And then they put him in stocks in the lower prison. And I don't know about you, but, you know, we have this kind of image that those times couldn't have been quite as harsh as we would think of today's things. And folks, they were far worse, all right? Worse. So he's down in this cold, damp prison with Timothy, you know, in stocks, suffering, and it's unimaginable what's going through his mind. I mean, what would you be thinking right then about, you know, who was that guy sowing that vision, you know? Wouldn't you be wondering if, had I really heard? Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever done something and it's gone south in a hurry? And what do you think? Well, you know, if you're like me, you say, oh, did I really hear God, you know? And of course, the devil wants to ask you that question. And you start questioning him. Well, so they're in there, and he's in that time when he's waiting for God. Remember Sunday? It's Paul and Silas, not Paul and Timothy, Paul and Silas, okay? And lo and behold, they turn their waiting for God into what? Waiting on God. They begin to sing hymns and praise the Lord. Well, the Bible says, when they turn their waiting for God and their waiting on God, God got, he got fired up, sent an earthquake. I mean, the whole place broke open while, you know, the jailhouse rock, whatever, and the place just opened up, and unbelievable things happened. The jailer, the Philippian jailer said, this is awful. He runs in, he pulls out his sword, he's going to kill himself. Why? Because he's going to get killed by the Roman authorities for letting all the prisoners get free. And just about to do that, Paul says, don't do that. We're still here. Well, then Paul has an opportunity. Here he is, you know, back's probably still bleeding or at least terribly painful in stocks. I don't know about you, but I would have been real tempted to say, you know, someone else would get this guy saved. Let's get out of here. You know, not Paul. He spends the time. He witnesses to the jailer. The jailer said, this is unbelievable. No, he said, I believe this. And he accepted Christ and his whole family. They were baptized. And Paul had his next convert. Now, I'd say he went through an awful lot, you know, for two church members. I don't know. But others came along. The next day, he went back into the jail. Why? Yeah, he went back into the jail so that the Roman authorities would have to take responsibility for having improperly jailed a Roman citizen. They weren't allowed to do that. You know, Paul had some, he was really, I mean, this is it. I mean, he was, he had some character. So he made him pay. And then after that, things got really stirred up and Paul left. But he left only after he'd established this little church with one woman and one jailer and their families and probably some others that heard about all this and said, this is really amazing. That wasn't a long time to get this little church started. But something had bonded in his heart, as we're going to see. Something had happened between the people that was an incredible bonding. And one of my prayers about this whole series and this message tonight in particular is that we'd see, folks, that we aren't just some random assembling of people. Our hearts are bonded in the love of God because of something unique that he's doing right here in this church. I mean, Paul loved these people so much that when he finally did write this letter several years later, here's what he says. Verse 7, it is right for me to feel this way about all of you since I have you in my heart. For whether I'm in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you sharing God's grace with me. God can testify, now look at this, how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. I'll talk a little bit more about this in a moment. But I just want you to see that he loved these people deeply because something at the initiation of this church had happened to bond them together. It was profound. To our knowledge, Paul only visited them two other times. Once on his way back in his third journey and then one other time as he was on his way to Jerusalem to be tried. And in that short span of time, he was bonded to the hearts of these people. Now, let me talk to you and share with you three things. First of all, what Paul talks about is the privilege, the privilege of believing. Let's back up to verse 1. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons. First of all, just for those of you who are new, what does it mean to be a saint? Did you grow up in a tradition where saints were something that you had statues of or put on your dashboard or somehow venerated them? And so you could never imagine, well, if he's writing to saints here, he's certainly not writing to me. But the word saint means set apart one, holy one. It means out of the normal. It doesn't necessarily mean totally sanctified. It means that you're different. Now, how many of you are different? I thought so. We can get everyone included. But you are rightly a saint of God. Now, turn to someone right now and tell them your name and put the word saint in front of them. Hi, I'm Saint. And you tell them your name. All right. Some of these go really well. Some of them are a little corny. I mean, right up here, right up here, I had Saint Mark. It's pretty awesome. We have a Saint John here. I did this a while back, and we had a Saint Bernard, and he's back there. But we are rightfully saints, set apart unto God. Don't ever forget that. Now, the best use of this, of course, is collectively. But it's appropriate to say, you know, we are set apart unto the Lord. And notice that the church obviously had grown because now they had structure. Can you imagine that? That seems so ungodly to me. But they had overseers and deacons. Ooh, look at that. The word overseer is a word for bishop or elder. So they were organized. Folks, I know it's painful. We'd love to sometimes think that the church would just merrily go along without any structure, and that way we wouldn't have any authority hassles. Well, apparently that wasn't God's idea. Because here, this little church had grown to the place where now they had elders and deacons, and things were really in order. And then Paul says, Grace and peace to you. And you could do long studies, and should, on both of those words. Grace and peace. Grace, of course, is God's ability to do what He requires. God's riches at Christ's expense, if you prefer the acronym. It's God giving to you from His storehouse of power what He requires of you. Whether it's for right living, or salvation, or whatever. The word for peace there, by the way, doesn't just mean absence of conflict. It means state of well-being. So Paul's saying, I'm wishing these things upon the people. These are all privileges that come. And then he says, I thank my God every time I remember you. Now, think about it a second. When you look around you, let's do it. What do you say when you remember? What do you say when you remember Tim, and Barb, and Peggy, and Carl? When you remember them, what do you say? Is the first thing out of your heart and out of your mouth thanksgiving to God, or is it frustration, disappointment, anger? You see, Paul realized that God had done something miraculous with this church. And I want to go back to what I said a few minutes ago. Folks, we need to realize God's doing something quite miraculous here. Now, this isn't the only place in this city. It's not the only place in this state or this country. But from what I can tell, He's doing something quite miraculous. And we ought to recognize the reality of that and realize that if He's called you to be part of it, He must obviously desire for something to be happening between us. And I want you to know that I share with Paul that same sense of deep longing and remembrance. You know, I think back to 10 years ago. We're going to have our 10th birthday coming up here. We're already planning for it and all. And I look out here and I see, you know, guys like Gene Rink who, before we were, I mean, Gene was there to say, I'm with you. And others, there was only eight other men and their wives who were willing to say that at that time. And I think back and see God's done a bonding there that no matter what happens, I mean, if no matter what the Lord chooses to do in the future, there'll always be something there. There's a love that's there that can't be erased. It's an affection that's of Christ. And even if you're newer to North Way, I want you to believe that God wants to weave you into that affection. Look, folks, what's going to draw people to Christ is love. Doesn't the Bible say, by this all men will know that you're my disciples. And what our church needs, what every church needs is for that love to be generated amongst people who are looking for the best in each other because God has built a bond of love between them. You're not just staking up their territory or looking for chinks in the armor or letting frustrations and disappointments overwhelm. It's a privilege that we share. And you are blessed. Folks, I get letters every month, a couple of them every month, from people who move away from here, go somewhere else and can't find a place where they fit in, where they sense the presence of God or the life of God. Folks, you're blessed. Not that we're better. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, are we special? Yes, we're special. And it's something that God's working in us and desiring to multiply in us by His Spirit. You know what I'm talking about, that special bond. How many of you are in a, don't put your hand up, but you're in a group of people right now where you feel that closeness to? I know there's some home groups that just, I mean, they are so close that they think about each other and how they can bless each other. There are some ministry groups that get together now and then. Just because they love each other and they, you know, they sacrifice. You know when you sacrifice and you suffer and you sweat together? You start to care for each other and that's the way it should be. It's a great privilege that we share. Something that God doesn't give to everyone. Number two, he says that there's also a promise in their believing in Christ. Paul says something here in a way that I think is unique to most of the New Testament. He says, verse six, Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Let's just pick that apart a minute. He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion in the day of Christ Jesus. Now remember, Paul here is writing from a prison. He's writing to a church that's under a lot of persecution. So things don't look all that rosy necessarily. And by the way, the Philippian church was a poor one, as we'll read in 2 Corinthians chapter 8. When they took up an offering, the Bible says they hardly had anything to give, but they gave out of their lack. That's the kind of church that it was. So, folks, he's not talking about God necessarily fulfilling all prosperity in terms of financial blessing. He's saying, your circumstances might be lousy, but God's at work completing things. I want us to know tonight, maybe you're in a circumstance that isn't all that great. Maybe you're suffering, maybe your body's hurting, maybe your marriage is strained, maybe your job is disappointing you and frustrating you. Maybe you don't even know why spiritually you're in a rut. You know, I've talked to people, too many people lately, that concern me because their spiritual lives are in a rut and they feel like it's been the same stuff for too many months and years in a row. They want something new. Well, Paul writes this. He says, he who began a good work... First of all, who began it? Didn't you begin it? Didn't you come to Christ? That's one of the things I think we misrepresent in our theology. Choose for Christ. You come to God. Well, yeah, Will is there, but who's working long before you come to choose? How many of you know God up there in His sovereign wisdom is orchestrating things in our lives right now to bring us to a point we don't even see yet where we're going to make a choice that we think we're pretty cool about. And we're going to get blessed in. Notice that it says here, He began it. And if He's at the beginning of it, I've always contended, if God's at the beginning of it, guess who's going to get all the way through it with you and guess who's going to be at the end. The problem with many of us, including myself, is God's not always in the stuff I start into. If He begins it, I'm confident, Paul writes, that He's going to carry it on through to the end. And I want to say, first of all, that's talking about my salvation and your salvation. Some of us come from backgrounds where we were never sure, and so we came running up to the altar every Sunday night to get saved again. This Word says to me that you can know with certainty that your salvation is dependent upon God being able to get you through. How many of you think God can make it with you? Even if you've fallen into discouragement and disappointment and hard times, and many of us do. And some of us have even fallen back. Ten days from now, I'm going to have a message on the crisis of falling away. I want you to be praying now about who you can invite who's fallen away from God. And God wants to carry us on. He wants us to know that... Folks, hear me now. I need to just confess, if it was up to me and my ability to stay pure and God-pleasing and righteous and be your good pastor, I would fail the test. I would fail the test. I am dependent upon God seeing me through to the end. I said this Sunday, but I love because He first loved me. I forgive because He first forgave me. I wait because He first waited for me. And I'm going to make it because He is the One that started with me. And you can know that too. It's very important. Some of you who come out of addictive backgrounds and you know you're into a pattern where you fall back again. As soon as you get a hold of grace in your life and realize God's at work in you, my sister, and you're not going to stay in that hole. As soon as you get a hold of that grace in your life, Hebrews teaches that it's faith in grace that saves us through. See, what happens is we get faith in our works and that disappoints and disappoints and so we get up out of the hole and fall back in the hole. And this isn't even in my notes. God just wants someone to hear this right now. See, it's faith in grace. It's not faith in how good a person you are or how hard you try or how many times you said to God, I'll never do it again. It's faith in grace. But you don't know grace until you know that He who began this good work in you is able to complete it. I'm confident, Paul says, I'm confident. I'm confident in some of you tonight. I want to go right out now and put my arms around some of you and say I'm confident God's going to see you through. Now trust Him. Put your faith in His grace. Now that will free you tonight if you get a hold of it. I'm confident, Paul writes. And that's a promise that we can take with us. There's a promise in prayer, but I'll come to that in a minute. I'd rather go on to the third point. Paul says there's also, go ahead, number three, a partnership. A partnership of believing. Here's what he says. Verse 4, In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now. The first partnership I want us to see here is the partnership of participating in the Gospel. And the word, by the way, to participate there or partnership in verse 5 is the word koinonia. Koinonia. How many people were ever in a koinonia group? Most of you converted Presbyterians know that. You know, that's an old Presbyterian term. I guess the Episcopalians tried it too. You know, that was kind of the buzz word in the late 60s, early 70s. Koinonia groups or K groups or circle Ks or corns balls or something. You know, just goofy things. The people did it. But koinonia means to participate in or to share in. And Paul is saying two things about participation. The first one I'll just touch on. And that is, he says to them, Thank you, Philippians, for participating in the Gospel with me. Now, how did they do that? Well, they did it by believing themselves. They did it by receiving Paul. They did it by sharing with those around them. And they did it by giving. And I don't want to take us into a long sidetrack here, but I want to urge you. Just make a little note on your notes right now. Read 2 Corinthians chapter 8. And you'll read how much Paul loved this church because of its sacrificial nature and willingness to give. He said that no one else gave but you. And he said, and you didn't even have anything to give and you gave anyhow. And in fact, the letter was written because of a gift. We'll see in chapter 4. He was responding to a gift. And so they participated by their giving. Now, let me just say something here. We need to understand something. The Gospel is God's message of salvation. And we participate in that by giving whatever of ourselves we have. I want to underscore something. You may think that what you have to give is minimal. I know that it can be intimidating. You hear someone come up who's very articulate in sharing their testimony, or maybe someone who sings, or maybe you'll get Keith Craft up here, and you say, well, I can't break bricks or ice. And so you think, I don't have any skills, and how can God use me? Folks, we've said it before, but I don't think it gets through. We all have something to give. We can all participate by just sharing what ability we have, what perceptions we have, what gifts God has given us. And I don't know how to get this through. Our greatest frustration, and I'll just dump it right out here, okay? Now you're in an elders meeting at North Way. Our greatest frustration is getting all of you to move in your gifts and be what God wants you to be. I'll just turn to someone and say, I just heard an elder meeting report, okay? That's it, right there. Some of you have gifts of hospitality and gifts of serving and gifts of compassion and mercy, and some of you have gifts of giving, and some of you have gifts of leadership, and we're not tapping them. I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm saying we're not getting there, and it's not easy. I mean, it's a big group, but we want to see it happen. And if you'll just keep pressing, and you'll keep saying, I'm going to try this, and if you fail once, don't get discouraged. Participate. Nobody here is, you know, you'll never get run out of this church, I promise you, by flopping in a ministry, okay? It'll never happen to you. Just pick you up and dust you off. Send you into another direction. Hit that wall? I hate hitting that wall. It's my problem. Once you find where God wants you, how many of you know it's the most rewarding, wonderful thing? Participate. Second thing he says here, and this is really the key to the first one, he says, verse 7, It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart. And by the way, I didn't mention this the first time I read it, but the commentators that I studied on this said, this sentence right here, verse 7, It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart. That phrase is the most emotionally packed, tender, warmest, endearing expression that Paul penned in all the New Testament. Nothing more personal, nothing more warm, nothing more friend to friend in all of his writings. Wouldn't it be wonderful to say, I feel love for you in my heart to every person that you know here. Now look, for whether I'm in chains or defending and confirming the Gospel, as we'll see later on next week, all of you share in God's grace with me. This is the second part of participating. Participating or sharing in God's grace with me. I want to kind of come to a conclusion here by saying that there's two ways to translate that from the original language. One is, as the King James says, if you have a King James, it will say, you are all partakers of my grace. Anyone have that in their Bible? Do you have a King James Bible? You're a partaker of my grace. Another way to translate it is by saying, we all partake of the same grace. Both are basically saying the same thing. Here's what I want you to hear. Folks, the reason why God's going to see you through, the reason why we're going to have love in our hearts for each other, the reason why this church can get beyond where it is is because we all share in one another's grace. Now get a hold of what I'm saying here. We all share in one another's abilities from God. So what I lack of compassion and mercy, or what I lack of faith and power, or what I lack of discipline, I can get from you. What I need to make it through, I can get from you. What I need to get over my next hurdle, I can draw from you over the lunch table as you minister to me. What I need to understand my problem, I can get from you as we sit down and break God's Word, because God maybe gave you the grace of wisdom. Do you see what I'm saying? We participate. We partake of one another's grace. A while back, just a few weeks ago, it was one of those days where my back was really hurting, and one of the elders, we had a meeting and he left, and the next day he came in and he gave me a letter. And he said, this is just something from the Lord, it was the time to give it to you. The Lord gave it to him, I guess at an earlier date, and he just sat on it for a while and he gave it to him. And he just, the little one page letter, all it was, was a statement of his faith for my healing. And I have to tell you, what I did for the next couple of weeks, was I participated in His grace. Because my faith was getting kind of weak, because my body kept saying, you're getting older, you're getting older, and I kept hearing that. But I participated. He shared His grace with me. Dear ones, do you understand the power that's in that? Say something. Yes, thank you. Okay. It's so important. That's why this whole thing of loving each other is real, because, hey, let's face it, some of you tonight, you desperately need some of my grace for the thing you're facing. But much more than that, you need the grace that A.D. has, or you need the grace that John has, or the grace that Norm has. We need each other. And we draw on that, and that's what enables us to love each other and to make it through to the end. And why this book is so powerful is Paul's going to show us along the way how we can do that. And then he says, you know what the byproduct of sharing one another's grace is? It's love an