A Burrito And The Gospel – Philippians 2:19-30

I love Mexican food. But when I look at the menu of Mexican food, I'm always surprised there's like fifty things on the menu. But there's only really four ingredients to Mexican food. Okay, there's a tortilla, there's meat, there's vegetables, and there's cheese. Now you can have it any way you want. But there's only four ingredients. Alright? So if you want it flat, you can have it…you know what that's called, right? A tostada. But if you want it smashed up and folded in half, it's a taco. If you want it rolled up, then it's a burrito. But now the burritos they have, they don't eat those kinds of burritos in Mexico. I mean, those burritos are so big. They're like a small newborn baby. There's just huge. So they have burritos. But apparently, someone dropped a burrito into a deep fryer in Arizona sometime back and now we have chimichangas that we can eat. If you don't like them rolled up that big, you can have them rolled up smaller and then they're called enchiladas. Right? And then if you don't want yours mixed up at all, you just want all the pieces you want to put it together yourself, that's a fajita. But anyway you do it, there's only four ingredients that they put together. Those four ingredients can be mixed up all kinds of different ways.

Now what does a burrito have to do with advancing the gospel? This is our passage today in Philippians 2. Do you see the word advancing the gospel there? What does that have to do? What does a burrito have to do with advancing the gospel? Well in the same way that there are only four ingredients for a burrito or Mexican food, there are three ingredients necessary to advance the gospel. And you might do it differently than you might do it. And you might do it differently than this person. And so it's different in those different places. But it's always the same three necessary ingredients that a person needs to advance the gospel. We're going to learn about that today.

The gospel is this package. It's this message that transforms a person's life. It's the message that God is in control and that people are sinful and that God wants to bring that together for this fruitful life. That's the gospel message and people need it. God wants that message passed on. And God uses people to pass on that message to other people.

Now there are three ingredients that we're going to look at today. You have those already. Now you and I might grow some more in those three areas. But we have those three ingredients primarily that any of us have and we're going to see those illustrated in two different guys (Timothy and Epaphroditus) and then, of course, in you and me.

What are the three ingredients? Well let's look at those just as a summary here. Three things needed in our lives to advance the gospel. Here's what they are. Number one: Compassion. Do you care? Number two: Faithful. Are you reliable? And number three: Available. Are you ready? Now if you have those three things…and you do! I'm not telling you go develop those things because you already have those. If you're a Christian growing in the Lord, you have those things already. God is looking for people who are available and reliable and who care to advance the gospel. He wants to give you the gospel to pass on to other people. We're going to look at two guys who did that.

Let's start with the first one in our passage, Philippians 2:19-30. Verse 19 says this: Now I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon. He's going to be our first guy. Now Timothy is a young man who got saved in Lystra on the first missionary journey of Paul and his first mission station as they were going along is Philippi. So he was there in Philippi with Paul, so they know who he is. Timothy is going to be a guy who's eventually going to pastor a church. But right now he's this guy who's learning what it means to serve the Lord, learning what it means to follow Christ, learning all those things. So I want you to see how he's described in this passage.

It says – Now I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I learn how you are doing. So Timothy's job is to go there and come back and report how the Philippians are doing so Paul can be encouraged in Rome.

Verse 20 – I have nobody else like him who will genuinely care for your needs. So in the next slide have highlighted the words there which say genuinely care for your needs. This is our first ingredient. Compassion. Genuinely care for your needs.