Philippians 2:14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe 16 as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. 17 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. 18 So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.
Introduction
A Crooked and Depraved Generation
Verse 14 says that we are living in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation. Is there anyone who would argue with that? North Carolina passed a law that says if you go into a public bathroom, men have to go in the men’s room – they can’t go in the ladies’ room. That law has caused a huge uproar, and North Carolina is now being sued by the United States over it. The federal government is saying, “That’s a violation of the civil rights of those men.” They are claiming that the Constitution somehow requires that we let the men go in the women’s locker room and showers if they want to.
At Mt Holyoke Women's College, when you go to fill out the application and you get to the question that asks your gender, there are eight options. This is a statement from their website:
The following academically qualified students can apply for admission consideration:
? Biologically born female; identifies as a woman
? Biologically born female; identifies as a man
? Biologically born female; identifies as other
? Biologically born female; does not identify as either woman or man
? Biologically born male; identifies as woman
? Biologically born male; identifies as other
? Biologically born with both male and female anatomy; identifies as a woman
The following academically qualified students cannot apply for admission consideration:
? Biologically born male; identifies as man.
If you’re a man and you know it, you can’t go. But men who think they are women, or who don’t know what they are – they are welcome.
And if you think eight gender options sounds like too many, on Facebook, when you fill out your profile, there are 58 possible gender options. And not to be outdone by the US, in England there are 71, because the 58 just weren’t inclusive enough. I think our generation qualifies as a twisted and perverted generation. Many of our highest public officials cannot bring themselves to agree with the statement, “All lives matter.” Pornography is speech – valuable, protected free speech, but the Word of God must be banned from schools and all public life, lest we violate that precious wall of separation between us and God. We have laws against discrimination on the basis of skin color, ethnicity, age, or gender, but not location. If you happen to be located in your mother’s womb, there is no protection at all. You can be tortured and killed, and it’s perfectly legal. There are absolutely no absolutes, and it’s wrong to say anything is wrong, and the only immorality is for you to say something is immoral. People march and protest and fight to preserve the right to use the Lord’s name in vain on TV and in school and government, and fight even harder against anyone using his name not in vain.
We Are to Shine
How much more twisted could the culture become? Why are they like that?
Romans 8:7 The sinful mind is hostile to God.
The reason they are so twisted and perverse is because of a deep seated hostility toward God, and toward the way God does things. That is the darkness of our world. And what the Lord Jesus Christ wants is to have a people of his own who stand out in stark contrast to that. Look at verse 15. He wants us to become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe. When God looks down, he wants to see the same thing we see when we look up – a whole bunch of lights against a black background. He wants to see his people shining like bright lights in a depraved, dark generation.
And what is it that will bring us to that point? How can we get so that we are holy and separate and completely different from the world - children of God, set apart from their wickedness and evil, shining like lights in the darkness? Do what verse 14 says. Look at the first two words of verse 15 - so that.
15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God…
We should do what verse 14 says so that we might be lights. And what does verse 14 say? What would you expect it to say? If someone asked you, “How could we become faultless, blameless, and pure, children of God, shining like lights in the dark and crooked and depraved generation? What would be the first thing that would come to your mind? Stand up for the sanctity of life? Speak out against homosexuality and gender confusion? Help the poor? Or maybe preach the gospel? Share your faith? What does verse 14 say we need to do in order to become blameless and pure and shine like lights?
14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure…
Wow – didn’t see that coming. I hate complaining, I’ve preached many times about the evil of complaining, I’ve known this principle all my life, and yet still, if we weren’t studying this passage right now and you asked me, “Darrell, how can we really shine like lights in a dark world so that it’s obvious that we are offspring of God?” refraining from complaining and arguing would have been way, way down on the list of things that would have come to my mind – which just goes to show how much farther I still need to go in developing a Christian worldview and thinking God’s thoughts after him.
Complaining
The Root of Corruption: Rejection of God’s Will
So how can we connect the dots between verses 14 and 15? How does avoiding complaining make us different from this dark, depraved, twisted world? Here’s how: think about the reason why the world is the way they are. I pointed out a minute ago that it’s because they are hostile toward God and his law. They are in rebellion against God’s law. But here is what we need to understand: the beginning point of rebellion against God’s law, is rebellion against God’s will. And complaining is the voice of that rebellion. Complaining is an indication that you are already on the road that goes in the direction of becoming twisted and depraved because the complaining heart is a heart that is in rebellion against divine providence. The beginning point of murder is anger. The beginning point of adultery is lust. The beginning point of addiction is covetousness. And the beginning point of that hostility toward God and the way he does things is not adultery and homosexuality and murder. That is the end point. The beginning point is complaining, because complaining is a rejection of the providential work of God. And so if we want to shine like lights in the darkness, we need to steer off the world’s crooked path, not down there near the end point, but right at the beginning. There are two roads that go in opposite directions. One is marked “Gratitude to God,” and the other is marked “Complaining.” The way to be different from the world is not to drive alongside them on the complaining road and then exit right before the end. The way to be different from the world is to drive in the opposite direction.
Focusing on What God Hasn’t Given
And the opposite of complaining is gratitude – enjoyment of God’s love and his gifts. Complainers focus is mainly on what God hasn’t given them rather than on what he has given. If you walk through life with your focus on what God has given you, you will be full of gratitude and joy. If you walk through life with your focus on what God has not given you, there will be either self-pity or anger or both, and you’ll complain.
Recently Josiah was talking to a friend who was having a hard time with contentment, and so Josiah asked him, “Tell me about your day today.” The friend described a very difficult day. Josiah said, “I think I know what the problem is;” then Josiah went on to describe his day. After giving an account of all kinds of hardships, the friend said, “That sounds like a rough day.” Then Josiah said, “Now let me describe another day,” and went on to describe a day full of blessings and gifts from God.
“Wow, that sounds like a great day.”
Then Josiah said, “I just described the same day. Both of those were honest descriptions of how my day went today, but the first one focused on the gifts God didn’t give me, and the second one focused on the gifts he did give me.” You see, joy is always available to us if we become receptive and responsive to God’s gestures of love that happen 1000 different times during the day. But joy disappears completely when we ignore those gestures of love, because we have our eyes on different gestures of love that we think would have been better.
A Quiet Fit
Why do we do that? If God gives us countless wonderful gifts, why would we decide to focus on what is not given instead of on what was given? We do that, because we fall into the “not your will but mine be done” attitude. I want my will to be done, and so I notice every ingredient that is missing for the fulfillment of my will. God has given me all kinds of fantastic gifts, but it’s all stuff that has to do with his will, not necessarily mine. So if I care about my will more than his, I will always be looking at what he hasn’t given instead of what he has given.
While Tracy and I were on vacation, we were sitting in a nice restaurant and there was a little kid who was just running wild around the restaurant. He was darting in front of the servers, getting into cabinets, running up to tables and shouting at people – just disrupting everyone’s meal. Finally his mom came and took his hand and made him come with her back to their table. And the kid flew into a tantrum. He screamed as loud as he could, and used the most annoying voice he could muster to voice his displeasure. Most people see a kid like that and just shake our heads, and then look across the table at the person they are eating with and do what? Complain. We complain about a kid like that, and we fail to see that we are doing the very same thing that kid is doing, except quietly. That is what complaining is. Complaining is throwing a fit calmly. If you throw a fit loudly, that’s a tantrum. If you do it quietly and calmly, that’s complaining – but at the root, it is the same thing, and it’s done for the same reason.
Not Your Will but Mine be Done
The reason we complain is the same reason that kid threw a fit. He threw the fit because he wasn’t getting his way. The reason we complain is because we have an attitude that says to God. “Not your will, but mine be done.” Not your will God – my will. My plan. That is the attitude that makes us focus on what God hasn’t given instead of what he has given. Because what he has given is all about his will and his plan, not necessarily ours.
Complaining Intensifies Suffering
We pursue our will above God’s because we think that will make us happy. But it is exactly the opposite. Pursuing your own will above God’s will cause you to focus on what you don’t have instead of on what God has given you, and that kind of lifestyle feeds on itself and becomes worse and worse until you make yourself absolutely miserable. It’s like in Psalm 42 when David says “Why do you cast yourself down, O my soul?” (That is the literal translation.) When we are downcast, so often it’s because we cast ourselves down. Every time you complain, you intensify your own suffering. Complaining looks at a hard situation and finds the worst things about it, and then just fixes all its attention on that until it makes you miserable. Your heart says, “Oh, here’s a new thing in my life. Let me just feel around a bit and see where the sharpest edges are. Oh, there’s a really sharp edge; let me just press that into my skin as forcefully as I can to see how much pain I can inflict on myself.” Complaining is rubbing your face in your own troubles, while ignoring your blessings.
That kid in the restaurant could have enjoyed an incredible meal. That was, no doubt, his parents’ will for him. But his attitude was, “Not your will, but my will be done,” and his will was to run around, yelling and screaming. And when that was denied him, he had no joy at all because his heart refused to enjoy the good thing his parents willed for him. So he was miserable in a place where everyone else was enjoying one of the most pleasurable aspects of life – really, really good food. That is what we do every time we complain.
Disguised Complaining
And then we try to justify ourselves by disguising it. We turn it into sarcasm and then say, “Oh, I wasn’t complaining – I was just joking around.” But even if that were true, what good is “humor” that focuses on the negative and drags everyone down?
Another way we disguise it is by renaming it.
“Are you complaining?”
“No, I’m just venting.”
Think of how misleading that word is. Venting – as if discontent is like some kind of exhaust that builds up and just needs to be expelled. That does not fit reality at all. Complaining is nothing like ventilating. Discontent is an attitude of the heart, and attitudes don’t leave your heart when you express them with words. Just the opposite – attitudes of the heart intensify when you express them. If you are happy and thankful, and you verbalize that, your happiness and gratitude increase. And if you are discontented or angry or feeling self-pity, and you express that with words, those feelings increase. The only way that complaining resembles ventilation is if you think of discontent as being like a fire, and when you open your mouth and talk about it, that’s like opening the windows to allow oxygen to come in and feed the fire even more.
Contagious
And complaining really is a lot like fire, because it spreads like wildfire. It is contagious. If you ever want to get everyone to agree with you, just complain. If you want to have power and influence in the church, just start grumbling and blaming and pointing out faults in the leadership and the people who are doing ministries, and you will have a following in no time. Whenever there’s a conversation and someone says, “I hate it when…,” and they start going off on their latest pet peeve, complaining etiquette is for everyone in the conversation to go ahead and agree. “Oh yeah, that’s the worst,” even if it’s something that doesn’t really bother that much or you have never even thought about before. Nothing is easier than getting other people on board with negativity. That’s how politicians win elections – get everyone stirred up about everything that’s wrong. There are some people in the church who are complaint magnets – they just attract all the discontented people, and they all start feeding on each other’s discontent.
When God brought the Israelites to the Promised Land, before they crossed over to take it, they all started grumbling (Numbers 14:2-4). Why are they grumbling? How do they even know to complain about the land – they haven’t even seen it yet! They are complaining based on the negative report they got from ten of the spies that went to scout the land.
Numbers 13:31 … “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored.
A handful of men start spreading a bad report, and immediately the entire nation is agreeing with them. But two of the spies were Joshua and Caleb, and they speak up in verse 8.
8 …he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. 9 Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us.
So there is a negative report and a positive report. So how are the people going to respond to the positive, faith-filled report from Joshua and Caleb?
10 But the whole assembly talked about stoning them.
One of the most dangerous things you can do is get in the way of a bunch of complainers by saying something positive. It is really, really easy to drag people down. It takes absolutely no leadership skill at all. It is much harder to lift people up and inspire them.
So what happened? The people don’t trust God, they don’t believe his promises, they keep saying, “We’re going to die, we’re going to die.” So how does God respond?
27 "How long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites. 28 So tell them, `As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you the very things I heard you say: 29 In this desert your bodies will fall--every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me. 30 Not one of you will enter the land
They say, “We’re going to die in the desert, we’re going to die in the desert” and finally God says, “OK, you’re going to die in the desert.” Be careful about pessimism. You can talk yourself right into being judged with the very things you are being pessimistic about.
Arguing
Complaining Leads to Arguing
And even without any external consequence, a complaining people will destroy themselves. Any time a group of people begins to grumble and complain, you will see that organization self-destruct, because they will turn against one another. That is why in verse 14 Paul says Do everything without complaining or arguing. One of the main purposes of this book was to address the disunity problem they were having at Philippi. They were arguing and quarreling with one another, and here we see the connection between that and the sin of complaining. A grumbling attitude about circumstances will inevitably result in quarreling among ourselves. When you love God, you will tend to love his people as well. But it works just as much in the other direction. When your soul rebels against God’s providence, that hostility will eventually play itself out against the people who are around you. No one likes being around a grumbler. Why? Because in their hostility against what God is doing, they tend to be hostile toward you as well. Complaining about circumstances, which is really complaining against God, will always spill over into complaining against one another. In fact, most of the time when the word “complaining’ is used in the New Testament, it is complaining against people.
Acts 6:1 …the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews
Matthew 20:11 … they began to grumble against the landowner.
James 5:9 Don’t grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged.
This is the direction grumbling tends to go, because when I have a “my will be done” attitude, and something interferes with my will being done, my natural reaction will be to look for someone to blame. When you stub your toe, it’s usually not just, “Oh, woe is me – I stubbed my toe.” Usually it’s more like, “Who left this thing laying here where people could stub their toe on it?”
“Who is the moron who designed this car this way?”
“I overslept – why didn’t someone wake me up?”
“I burnt the food – why do people insist on talking to me while I’m trying to cook supper?”
Some people have just trained themselves, as soon as anything goes wrong, their very first, knee-jerk reflex is to start searching their mind for who might be at fault.
“If so-and-so had been doing his job, this never would have happened.”
“If he would have been more careful, (or more thoughtful, or more diligent, or whatever), my will would be being done right now.”
And they will keep biting and devouring each other until they destroy one another.
Leadership
And it usually begins with attacking the leadership. That is what happened with ancient Israel. Whenever things got hard, they would begin grumbling, and the object of their grumbling always ended up being Moses. Ultimately they were grumbling against God, but the form that took was to grumble against Moses. When people want to start passing around blame, the leaders are the most obvious target, because they are in charge. And you get the sense that that may have been happening in Philippi. That would explain why Paul goes out of his way to mention the overseers and deacons in his opening greeting. When there is disunity and complaining in the church, most of it tends to be targeted towards the elders and deacons.
Love Covers Faults
Now, if it is your job to evaluate a particular leader, or if you are the one who needs to do a performance review for that leader, then you need to pay attention to the things they do wrong. Or if you have some advice or counsel that can help that leader improve, then it would make sense to address what they are doing wrong. The same goes for non-leaders. When something goes wrong, if you are the supervisor then you need to get to the bottom of it. But if you are not the supervisor, then what value is there in figuring out who’s to blame? Doesn’t love cover over things like that? Isn’t that one of the main characteristics of love? Instead of exposing what people have done wrong, to cover over people’s wrongs?
Maybe they did do something wrong. Maybe they did drop the ball, but we are a team. There are teams that point fingers and pass blame, but they aren’t the ones who make it to the playoffs. On a winning team, when one person makes a mistake, and the rest of the team compensates.
We are a team. In fact, more than that, we are a body. When one of your limbs stops working, the rest of the body doesn’t turn around and attack it. They pick up the slack and compensate for it.
I am going to make mistakes that will cause you to suffer. And you are going to make mistakes that will cause other people to suffer. None of our goals as a church are going to be achieved if we just sit around and point out each other’s mistakes and failures. But God will do great things through us if, with gladness and love, we cover over one another’s faults, and clean up after one another, and compensate for each other’s weaknesses. That is what it looks like to do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility considering others more important than yourself. That is the kind of selfless, loving humility that God promises to bless.
We can do that, or we can complain and grumble about circumstances, and blame and attack and argue amongst ourselves and tear each other down until we destroy ourselves as a church. Then, one by one, we can throw up our hands and say, “This church is no good,” and go off to find another church to destroy.
Debate
So Paul commands us to do everything without complaining or arguing. And that’s a little tricky, because when it says “no arguing” – what are we supposed to do with our disagreements? Just sweep them under the rug and pretend they don’t exist? No, we can’t do that. If you believe one thing, and I believe the opposite, one of us is wrong. And if it’s me, I want to discover that so I can change. And if it’s you, I want to help you discover the truth.
1 Corinthians 11:19 … there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.
When we have differences, we need to debate so that we can figure which view is right and which is wrong and we can all arrive at the truth. So at what point does helpful debate cross the line into sinful arguing? I did a little study about arguing in the New Testament, and in the passages that talk about it, there are four principles that I found helpful in trying to get a definition of arguing. First, healthy debate turns into sinful arguing when there is an attitude of anger of combativeness.
Definition of Arguing:
Anger and Combativeness
1 Timothy 2:8 I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.
So the kind of disputing that is forbidden is the kind that is connected with anger. And that’s easy to spot because it is devoid of kindness.
2 Timothy 2:24 the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind…
We can debate things vigorously without arguing if we are kind and respectful in the way we speak. But you can hear it, the moment when kindness goes by the wayside in a discussion. As soon as kindness disappears, now our friendly debate just turned into a sinful argument.
And very often that happens when people start to take the debate personally. They identify their views with themselves, so that if you attack their view, you are attacking them. So no matter how kind and respectful you are about it, they take it as a personal attack and it makes them mad. If you are one of those people you need to learn that you are not your views. Our views change as we grow and learn. Some of the views and opinions that you hold right now are wrong, and you should be thankful when someone comes along and helps you spot one of them so you can get it corrected.
When There is More Talking than Listening
So, one of the points where a debate turns into an argument is when kindness goes by the wayside or there is anger or hostility. And when that happens, it’s best to end the discussion until you can get the relationship reconciled. Another time when it’s wise to end the discussion is when one party starts behaving like a fool.
Proverbs 26:4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.
If you get into a debate with a fool, and you try to address his folly and point out where he is wrong, he will become so belligerent and argumentative that it will tend to draw you in so that the next thing you know, you’re fighting back. And you’ll notice that there is a whole lot more talking than listening. When somebody is teaching and nobody is learning – that is an argument, not a debate. And no good comes from that.
When the Goal is to Defeat
Another mark of an argument is when one party just has the goal of defeating the other party. They aren’t even concerned about truth. The other party might make a valid point, but they will never acknowledge it because it would weaken their position. Usually, when two people are in a debate, both sides have some valid points. And if you get to where one person can never acknowledge any validity to any of the other person’s points, that is when you know the person just wants to win. And winning means defeating the other person. And when it gets to that point, a lot of times they will try to bring other people in on the discussion, so that they can get other people on their side. That kind of arguing causes division in the church, and we are instructed to take strong action against it.
Titus 3:9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. 10 Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him.
Pressing an Issue beyond Its Level of Importance
One more marker of arguing – a debate becomes an argument when one party presses an issue beyond its level of importance. You take little things and make them big things. There are some people who think that every single doctrinal position they hold is one of the essentials of the gospel. So if you disagree with them on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, you are a heretic. These are the people who will go on and on about which Bible version is the best, or the timing of the rapture, or some political opinion they have, and if you don’t agree with them – it’s questionable whether you are even saved. Be careful not to major on non-essentials.
1 Timothy 1:3 … command certain men not to… 4 devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work—which is by faith.
2 Timothy 2:14 … Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen. … 16 Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.
23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. 24 And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel
Lights in the World
And so we shine like lights in the night sky. If you are new here, you may be wondering about the three banners we have up. We put those up to remind us of the three big goals we are currently working on as a church. The elders spent about a year seeking God’s guidance on what he wanted us to focus on the most as a church right now and there were four things that emerged.
1) Unity
2) Joyful servanthood
3) Developing a culture of encouragement
We haven’t put the banner up for the fourth one because I haven’t preached on that one yet. That one has to do with discipleship. But take a look at that Culture of Encouragement one. One of the slogans that goes alone with that is the phrase “grumble-free zone.” It’s not on the banner, but we’ve used that phrase, and some of you may have wondered why that is. If we are talking about the big, high-level, super important issues, why is there a statement about the church being a grumble free zone? Is that just the leadership trying to keep people from criticizing us? No. It’s on there because a culture of encouragement in the church will be absolutely impossible if the church becomes infected with the complaining virus. If we are going to be a legitimate church, we have to be a grumble-free zone in a depraved, complaining generation that rejects God’s will. We have to be a place where the people trust God, rather than constantly rebuking God for what he is doing. We have to be a place that submits to him, rather than trying to school God on what would be a better way of running the universe. And so we don’t complain. Instead, we love God, and are thankful for what he does, and are content with what he gives us, so instead of complaining, there is thanksgiving. Instead of griping there is praise. Instead of bellyaching, there is worship. Instead of moaning, there is gratitude, and instead of whining there is singing.
And when we take that kind of pleasure in who God is and what he does, and we exhibit that kind of contentment and faith in the goodness of God, in the midst of the crookedness and twisted perversion of the world’s hostility toward God’s will, we shine like stars and we light up this dark world.
Matthew 5:14 You are the light of the world.
When all we do is complain about the darkness of the world, we are really indicting ourselves. Think about it. When the sun goes down you don’t criticize the house for being dark. You just ask, “Why aren’t the lamps on?” And that is especially true if you’re the lamp! Why would a lamp complain about how dark the room is? A friend of mine once said, “If we are the light of the world, the world is dark only by our permission.” There is a lot of truth in that. Obviously you as a single individual are not responsible for lighting up the entire population of the world. However, each time we are tempted to complain about the darkness of the world I think we would do well to ask ourselves, “Am I at least lighting up the area around me?”
When you start to get overwhelmed by the evil of this dark world, be encouraged by the fact that you are a light. And darkness has no defense against light. If you open a door between a dark room and room with a bright light, what happens? Does the darkness shine into the light room? Or the other way around? Light wins over darkness every time. It is an amazing thing to think that the extremes of wickedness in this world can be overcome by something as simple as us just enjoying God’s love and speaking words of gratitude. And by reconciling broken relationships in the church, speaking to one another with kindness. Listening instead of arguing. That is what will stem the tide of evil in this world, and we can do it. We can do everything he calls us to do through him who strengthens us.
Benediction: 2 Thessalonians 3:16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.
Application Questions (James 1:25)
1) You probably have an accepting, submissive attitude toward many of the hardships of life. But most of us have certain hardships we are prone to complain about. What are some of the kinds of hardships you do well with? And where are your weak points in the area of complaining?
2) Most of us tend to be quite reasonable in most areas, but in a few areas we tend towards becoming argumentative. Can you identify any areas like that in your life? And do you have any idea why you are tempted to argue on those points?
3) Do you know someone who really shines like a light by having a positive, thankful, cheerful attitude? Describe what that person is like.
