Philippians 1:3-6
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
6 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.
Projects! Are you a single project person or a multiple project person?
There are short projects - washing the car, mowing the lawn, doing the laundry,
There are long term projects - building or remodeling a house, planning a wedding, getting an education,
There are life-long projects - keeping fit, learning to recognize and modify poor behavior traits such as anger or being grouchy
What can cause projects to go unfinished?
Loss of interest - once you get into the project you find out that it is really not something you are interested in and do not want to continue
Distraction - you get sidetracked into another project that seems more appealing or productive
“It’s too hard” - discouragement - you find out that the project is taking way too long or it requires skills that you do not have
Ran out of money - you find out that the project will consume more money than you have or more money than your wife will let you spend on it
Someone else started the project with you and then they left and without them the motivation to continue is gone
The project was impossible to accomplish
There are some projects that just boggle the imagination such as the Great Wall of China - 5,500 miles long constructed over hundreds of years
Or the great pyramids of Egypt - modern scientists are still unable to explain how some of these were built with the technology that existed over 2,000 years before the birth of Christ!
So, just what does all of this talk about projects have to do with the Holy Scriptures found in the first chapter of Philippians?
Philippians 1:6b (NASB)
“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Once again, when we look at a Scripture, we are tempted to see ourselves as being the center of the issue being addressed. How will our spiritual natures be perfected or brought into completion?
Is it instantaneous or is it a life long project?
With a project such as a painting, once it is finished it is hung on the wall for all to admire.
This is not so with us. When the Lord has us as a project He seeks to continue improving or perfecting or completing us as long as we are alive on this earth or until He returns.
But, here’s the thing, when you push aside the notion of always looking for “what’s in it for me” and really take a look at the verse you can see that the central focus, the main thrust of the verse is God and what He is doing.
He - the Triune Godhead - The Holy Spirit working in our lives, calling us to salvation in Christ and thereby bringing us into a reconciled relationship with the Father.
OK. It’s all about God! He is the One who created Adam and Eve in sinless perfection and had personal fellowship with them in the Garden of Eden. He is the One who immediately came to look for them when they had sinned. He is the one who sent prophet after prophet to warn of the consequences of our rebellious hearts. He is the One who sent His one and only Son to be the perfect sacrifice that would enable us to be ransomed from sin, spiritual death and hell. He is the One who sent the Holy Spirit to draw us to Himself in repentance and faith.
God has a project and that project is the salvation of mankind and the restoration of a proper relationship with Him.
God doesn’t do His projects half way.
Just imagine if He did! We all know the story about God parting the waters of the Red Sea so that His people could pass through on dry ground in order to escape the army of the Egyptians.
Imagine if Exodus 14:21-22 went like this:
“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into waist deep water.
“The waters were divided, and Israel waded through the waist deep water to the other side of the Red Sea.”
True, that would be a miracle but kind of an odd one, don’t you think?
(Describe the Lord sending only enough manna to feed half of the Israelite nation)
How about this story from the Bible found in
Mark 10:46-52
“As Jesus and His disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside begging.
“When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
“Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.
“‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Jesus asked him. The blind man said, ‘Rabbi, I want to see.’ ‘Go,’ said Jesus, ‘your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight in his right eye but his left eye was still blind.”
Can you imagine that? Does Jesus do anything halfway???
Can you imagine Jesus performing the miracle of healing a leper and then only healing half of the leprosy on the person?
Can you imagine Jesus only feeding half of the 5,000?
We do no serve a half-way God!
God did not save us in order for us to be a bunch of half-baked Christians.
God wants to bring us to completion in Him! Why? Because the transformation of a vile, helpless sinner into a child of God glorifies Him and He has the right to be glorified!
Have you ever watched someone surfing?
Do you marvel at their skill? It is amazing, but, let’s look at the sport of surfing as an allegory to what this verse is about.
Philippians 1:6b
“He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Where would a surfer be without the wave? They’d just be a lonely person sitting on a surf board in a calm body of water. Just sitting there, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year turning into a prune.
God’s grace is the wave! For the surfer, God created that wave miles out to sea. In the same way, God’s grace was extended to us over 2,000 years ago when Jesus died on the cross for our sins and was raised to new life again. We would have no spiritual movement, no spiritual potential energy without God’s amazing wave of grace! Without the grace of God we would remain in our sin; just continuing in our rebellion against God hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year.
But that is absolutely NOT God’s plan for you or for me or for anyone else in the world. His desire is for all to be saved and to come to repentance!
But, like the surfer, we can ignore the wave. You’ve seen surfers sitting on the board and letting a wave pass underneath them. The wave is there but the surfer makes the choice to let it pass. Perhaps they don’t like the way it looks. Perhaps they don’t think it will be able to carry them to the shore. Perhaps they’re just resting, waiting to be eaten by a shark.
Many people of this world are like that. They are more like people in the ocean sitting in an inner tube. Wave after wave after wave of God’s grace passing beneath them or crashing over them and they just ignore it preferring to stay in the same situation.
They may think they are saved, they may have said the “sinner’s prayer” at some point in their lives, they may think they’ve gotten their “ticket to heaven” so they spend the rest of their lives with no visible evidence of being a child of God other than sitting in a church for an hour or so each week. Sitting in the inner tube, ignoring the waves of Grace and slowly drifting out to sea and spiritual death.
Or, perhaps they just have never been told that they can find freedom in Christ.
Now, here’s the thing, even though this verse seems to say that the entire thing is all up to God and not up to us we need to read the entire context because
verse 5 says that we have a partnership in the Gospel.
All through the Holy Bible God has required His people to be doing not just being.
Is a surfer a surfer if he just sits on the board and says, “I have a surf board and I’m sitting on it so I’m a surfer?”
No, he must paddle with the wave and once he has caught the wave he must constantly adjust his balance to keep the full momentum of the wave behind his run.
In the same way, once we come to know Christ we can’t just sit there and vegetate! With the help of God’s grace we can spiritually paddle to catch the wave of grace that God has put underneath us, to do what He wants us to do, when He wants us to do it and He will help us to adjust and balance to take full advantage of what He is doing in and through us!
It is a symbiotic relationship. This is made amazingly clear throughout the Bible. You will never find anyone growing in Christ without them putting in the effort to discover and submit to God’s will all of which is driven by God’s grace.
God gave the promised land to the Israelites but they needed to travel into the land and conquer the nations which were inhabiting the land under the direction of the Lord.
He could have cleared out the inhabitants of the land by Himself and caused all sorts of crops to spring up naturally year after year. He could have by the word of His mouth created self sustainable cities where the Israelites could have just rested and rested and rested. But, God is not on a permanent vacation. He is not retired. God is a doer and He created us to be doers as well!!!
We will never be happy unless we are doing and we will never be blessed unless our doing is in harmony with His will!
Just think of the surfer, paddling, catching a magnificent wave and getting to shore and proclaiming what an awesome wave that was!
Just think of the Christian, filled with the magnificent grace of God, making every effort to be obedient to His perfect will and giving the glory to God when bountiful fruit is produced for the Kingdom of God!
That is when you will find that God, who initiated the good work of salvation in you has been moving you along spiritually to the completion of a holy life until the day when Christ returns or the day when we go to be with Him.
Praise God that in the project of bringing you to completion in Him He never, loses interest in you, or finds that you are just too difficult of a task or that you are hopeless!
If you have been just sitting on your spiritual surf board doing nothing He is ready at any moment to help you become engaged in His great work of grace in this world. He will forgive your idleness and enable you to enjoy the blessedness of working with Him to bring lost souls to glory!
Today, before we partake of the Lord’s Supper, the remembrance of Christ’s great suffering and sacrifice on the cross of Calvary let’s take a few moments and examine our hearts to see if we have been disobedient or inattentive and neglectful of our great God and Savior in the recent past. Ask the Lord to show you where you may have sinned and ask for forgiveness and the strength to keep from sinning again.
