Remember and Rejoice
“I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.” Philippians 1:3-4, 12-19
Intro: Today I want to talk about reaffirming your faith and baptism.
Baptism is a necessary part of living as a Christian.
Reaffirming or renewing the vows of Baptism
is essential in the continued growth and experience of the believer.
It is important because as a Christian others need to see and hear what Jesus has done
and what God continues to do in your life.
It is equally important that you renew your commitment to the promises that were made to God
When you were first baptized.
It reminds us not only of who God is but who we are to be as a Christian.
You know God places certain people in our pathway and certain events in our life time
Who support and encourage us
and that helps sustain and build endurance and perseverance
so that when we are faced with difficulties
we are able to hold on to the promise of God through the storms of life.
After you survive the storm you have to figure out why you survived.
Life is difficult by design
That way when God brings you through a struggle or out of a problem
you want be confused about who is doing the great things in your life.
And you will give God the glory and the thanks and praise.
The Apostle Paul knew what it was like to be faced with hard times.
He had been accused of telling the Jews to disobey the Jewish laws.
And accused of defiling the Temple by bringing a Gentile into the church.
So he was arrested by the order of the Jewish High Priest
But because Paul was born a citizen of Rome the Jewish court had no authority to judge or pronounce sentence upon a Roman citizen and so Paul was being sent Rome to stand trial before Caesar.
What looks like a setback
Paul uses as an opportunity to share the Gospel of the cross, the tomb, and the risen Christ.
Later even when Paul is in prison, which we know was house arrest
But still Paul was limited in where he could go or what he could do
Paul continued to spread the Gospel
Did you ever wonder how Paul wrote so much of the New Testament?
He wrote the books of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon while under arrest.
Even the book of Acts which tells about the end of his mission work
was written while Paul was still in prison awaiting trial.
Paul didn’t tell the Jews to disobey the law.
Paul was saying that there is a huge difference between being religious and being a Christian.
Being religious is simply following a list of dos and don'ts,
usually whenever it is convenient
usually because you have been taught and live by a certain moral norm of acceptable behavior.
There was once a Pastor who preached a sermon and in the message he said
“It is time to stop playing church.”
Several weeks passed
and the Pastor learned that a member of the congregation was now going to another church.
So, the Pastor called to see what was going on.
And the church member said that they were offended by the statement
“It is time to stop playing church.”
The Pastor had explained that being a Christian means that everything you do or don’t do
is because you truly love the Lord and care whether or not you are pleasing to Him.
Being a Christian means that you want to be like Christ
And that you want to serve in the church and community and do the will and purposes of God.
Being a Christian means leaving your selfish, desires behind
and staying focused on Jesus,
what Jesus wants you to do,
and whom Jesus wants you to become.
There is a world of difference between being a Christian and just playing Christian.
First the parishioner didn’t even try to talk with the Pastor before leaving.
Second the parishioner refused reconciliation and forgiveness.
Which of these two do you believe was right?
The bible says in 2 Timothy 4:3
“For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching.
They will follow their own desires
and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.”
I want always tell you what you want to hear
I will preach the truth and the Word.
First to myself
And then to you.
The Apostle Paul had been arrest for telling people there is more to pleasing God
than just keeping a check list of do’s and don’ts.
1. Don’t eat pork
2. Give to those in need charity
3. Don’t touch and unclean sinner
4. Read and study the Torah which was the bible
5. Pray the Shema every day which was the Jewish Lords Prayer
Being a Christian is about being in a relationship with Jesus
Being a Christian is about having a relationship with other believers
It is less about a check list that makes us feel good
And more about listening to the Holy Spirit to lead guide and direct us
And about treating other with the same love and forgiveness that God has shown unto us.
God has forgiven you of your sin of that crucified His son on the cross
And if God can forgive you of crucifying His Son
Ought not the Holy Spirit convict our hearts to also be able to forgive one another?
I want to pick up on the Letter Paul wrote from the prison in Rome.
Starting at verse 1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons[a]:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 I thank my God every time I remember you.
4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy
Paul wanted to thank the believers for wanted to thank the believers for helping him when he was in need.
He also want to tell them why he could have joy even though he despite his imprisonment and upcoming trail.
So Paul writes them this letter about humility and unity and warns them
That spiritual growth is something that you have to allow God to continue to work on in your life.
That God won’t give up on you
But if you are not careful you will let things like differences of opinion rob you of your joy.
I want to skip on down to verse 12.
Paul goes on to talk about being in chains in prison but that he has not let the physical chains
Keep him from praising God and advancing the Gospel.
12 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters,
[b] that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.
13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard
[c] and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.
14 And because of my chains,
The very thing that you might pity me for as being a problem
Is the very thing God is using to release his message and using to reach people through.
Because of my chains,
Because of my confinement
There is a great purpose unfolding
14 And because of my chains,
most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord
and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.
15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. (LOVE)
When you understand that God is positioning you to do good
And to have a testimony about what God has brought you through
You don’t pay any attention to what others around you are saying or doing
Because you know God is about to use what is happening for something great.
There is not a situation that you will ever find yourself in that God will not show up in the midst of
Just ask those three Hebrew boys who were in the fiery furnace
if the when things really start to get heated up
if the fourth man want step in
just when it gets cranked up 7 times hotter than it is supposed to be
and the only thing that is going to burn up in the fire is the ropes that had you bound.
God allows you be in the fire in order to set you free.
16 The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.
17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely,
supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.
Now listen here comes the part that only a real Christian can say…
18 But what does it matter?
When you live long enough you will get a sense of priority in your life.
That will allow you to prioritize what is important
And what doesn’t matter.
There are a lot of people who let the little things in life rob them of joy
When you should be mature enough as a Christian to not get offended
Or not get discouraged and quit when things don’t go the way you planned.
You live long enough you realize that God has been there for you when you faced trouble
You live long enough and you will make worship and praise the priority in your life
Because of what God has brought you through.
I am not concerned about what they say,
I am not concerned about their motives
Because God’s intention is always more powerful than human motive.
The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.
And because of this I rejoice.
Yes, and I will continue to rejoice,
19 for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ
what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.[d]
I want you to get this.
Learn this lesson: What has happened to me has actually served to advance the Gospel.
Listen to what Paul is say…
Bad things happened…,
Troubles will come…
You will face persecution and trials and difficulties
There will be shipwreck and storms
And chains and prison.
But because of this I rejoice.
“Remember and Rejoice.”
This is two important things to learn as a believer
You need to Remember and Rejoice
What are the things that you remember the most?
We most of the time we remember the bad things that happen.
We dwell on the loss
We relive the wreck
We focus on the hurt and the suffering
But Paul says all the things that happen will turn out be my deliverance.
How can this be?
As you remember your past do you see it as God abandoning you
or do you see your past as God bringing you here today?
Think about this again:
As you think about your past do you see it as God forsakening you
Do you see God leaving you? God not caring about you or what happens to you.
Or do you see God has brought you here today to begin to do better and greater things in your life?
Let’s go back to the story of Noah and Ark.
An Atheist says, I will not worship a God who is so cruel as to destroy the whole world with water
Or I will not worship a God who is so full of judgment and wrath that somewhere out in the future He will bring down fire and brimstone on all those who don’t turn and worship him.
An Atheist remembers the story of Noah’s Ark and only see the destruction of world.
How could a good God allow all the animals…,
the squirrels and rabbits and creatures that never harmed anything to be destroyed.
How could God bring rain that would flood the whole earth
For forty days and nights there was nothing but darkness and rain.
And millions of men and women and even children to drown in the flood.
An Atheist would remember the flood as only a terrible time of suffering and destruction.
But when we look back through a different lens.
We remember that God found Noah
and God gave Noah the plans on how to build a great boat or Ark.
I saw an app the other day for your phone that you can use your camera on your phone
And just turn it around the walls of a room
And it will give you the exact measurements, the length and height of the walls
And tell you how many square feet are in the room.
It will calculate how much paint you will need to buy to prime and paint the room.
It will tell you how much carpet or flooring you will need to purchase
Noah didn’t have any of these kinds of things.
Yet God gave him the blue print and the showed him what type of materials he needed to use.
And how to build the ark and make it water tight.
How to store up enough food and water and seeds to survives until the flood waters went back down
God even sent two of every kind of animal to repopulate the species
And God spared Noah and his wife and their children’s wives and family.
God didn’t just judge the world one day and destroy it the next.
It took Noah 120 years to build the Ark.
All of this time Noah was preparing…
Noah was tell the people that they could also be saved
If they would just believe and trust in God
That he would spare them.
But the people refused to listen and refused forgiveness.
As Noah builds the ark, the bible tells us the crowds came to watch.
‘Hey, Noah,’ they cried, ‘are you building a new house, or store, or barn?’
Noah would say, ‘No, I’m building a ship….I’m building it because God told me to…’”
There is flood coming
God loves me and my family
And you can be sure that God loves you too.
God wants to spare you just as much.
if you will turn from your sins and be sorry for your sins,
and come into the Ark when I get it finished, you will be safe and protected also.
For 120 years Noah preached.
In the final days the people saw the animals coming to the Ark to be saved.
But in spite of all the preaching and signs and wonders of God.
The people refused and rejected God.
The people continued to mock.
Then it says, “As the last pair of animals disappeared from view into the huge ship,
Noah came to the door and again begged the people,
‘Please listen to the Lord’s message
—the world is going to be covered over with water and everything will be destroyed…
The only place of safety is in this Ark!
I plead with you to come in before it is forever too late!’
The crowd only laughed and hurled more insults at Noah.”
How do you remember the story of Noah’s Ark.
Do you remember it as a tragedy of God’s failure to care and protect his creation?
Do you think of it as God’s judgment and wrath?
Or do you think of it as God’s deliverance and grace?
God had a plan to save the world from a terrible flood that was coming.
God provided every warning
God gave them a messenger to preach the truth and to tell the people to prepare for what was coming.
God gave Noah the wood for the Ark
God provided everything necessary for salvation.
How do you see the storms and trials in your life.
Are they some cruel joke that God is playing on you?
Or with every problem hasn’t God provided for you a way out
And that he has brought you here today to give you one more chance?
How do you look at the cross?
Was the cross a cruel form of suffering and death
Or is it the means of salvation?
Is the cross God’s wrath upon man or God’s grace upon the world?
Has God not sent a messenger by the way John the Baptist
Preparing the way for the Lord?
Has God not given us over 2000 years to get ready for the coming judgment and destruction of the world
This time by fire?
How do you see the things that have happened to you?
You can either see them as things that make you feel resentment and anger and bitterness
Or you can see them as thing that took place
But God made a way.
We are often tempted to remember the bad that has happened to us
And to remember the bad to the point of blaming God.
But when you can remember what you have gone through
And realize you survived.
And that you survived for a reason.
Then you can “Remember and Rejoice.”
Baptism is a form of Remembering and Rejoicing.
We are remembering the betrayal of one of Jesus’s very own disciples Judas
Have you ever been betrayed by a friend?
We remember the arrest, the false witnesses who came and lied about Jesus.
The bible says they could not get any two the tell the exact same story
but the crimes that Jesus supposedly did was talked about facebook so it must have been true.
Turn to somebody and say everything you read online is not true.
But the Word of God is true..
The Word of God says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,
So that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
This is what we should Remember and Rejoice.
That God continues to put certain Philippians in our pathway
who will encourage us
and support us
and love on us
and be the Church.
Do you know the first thing Noah did after the flood waters went down?
He came out of the Ark and built and Altar.
“And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and every clean fowl,
and offered burnt offerings on the altar” Genesis 8:20
The appearance of the Hebrew word “altar” or “mizbeach” (Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance
from the primary root: “zabach” slaughter the flesh of an animal)
is surprisingly not found in the bible until Genesis 8:20.
Even though it is certainly implied in the actions of Cain and Abel, in the pre-Flood patriarchs
There is one word.
An important word.
That is the “Altar.”
I am thankful for those who use the altar.
But I am convinced the church today finds it more and more increasingly difficult to be corrected.
A time when people will not listen to a rebuke or warning.
A time when people will refuse to be told that there is a need for change.
Matthew 24:37 “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.”
Christ will come again.
We don’t know the day nor the hour.
If we did we might be tempted to wait until the last minute to get ready.
There is another word or words that we should pay attention to.
the words II. Holy Spirit
John the Baptist said “I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming ...
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" Luke 3:16.
I would like to see the words “Holy Spirit” make a comeback in the life of the church.
John’s baptism with water symbolized an attitude of repentance
or a decision to change that had already taken place in a person’s life.
Acts 2:38 says, “Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ
so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
The Holy Spirit empowers believers publicly proclaim Jesus’ resurrection
and God’s forgiveness and Amazing Grace of those who repent.
Lastly I want to mention Salvation and Baptism
The word Baptism
1. Director
2. Actor/Performer
3. Audience
Will you come forward to either repent of your sin and receive salvation for the very first time?
Or come forward to remember and rejoice over your baptism again?
