LIVING TOGETHER TO ADVANCE THE GOSPEL
Philippians 1:12-18
INTRODUCTION
A. Three German Christian preachers who stood out as preachers in WWII Germany:
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who joined a movement to overthrow Hitler, lectured in the US during a period of time in which his life was threatened in Germany. He had offers to stay in the US, but refused them in order to stand with his brothers in Germany against Naziism. He was arrested, spent his last years in prison, and was executed in April 1945, just before Germany’s defeat.
2. Martin Niemoller, who also stood against Hitler when he saw the atrocities he was committing, was arrested two different times. He spent time in concentration camps and, at one time, Hitler made him his personal prisoner. Tradition says that Hitler gave a standing order that no soldier could guard him twice because his testimony was so powerful, and Hitler feared his soldiers might become Christians. He eventually was freed when the Allies freed Germany, and became quite well known as a preacher all over the world, often facing criticism for his views.
3. Helmut Thielicke, who also opposed Hitler, but was never arrested and did not face major criticism. He preached and wrote widely on living as a Christian in the face of death.
• Here we have three men in a similar environment, but all working through different means to advance the Gospel.
B. Paul lived this way as he shows us in this text.
1. More than anything else, he desired to go to Rome to preach the Gospel. It was the key city of its day, the hub of the empire, and to preach there would mean reaching millions for Christ — Acts 19:21; Romans 1:15.
2. But now instead of going to Rome as a preacher he went as a prisoner. Vs. 12 refers to all the things that happened that brought about that result.
a. The Philippians knew the facts, but they were worried about Paul because they had not seen him for four years and had heard rumors about what had happened to him.
b. They had heard many reports of his condition and could not help but wonder if they were true.
c. Moreover they wondered if the years of turmoil and political bartering, frustration, delay, and physical suffering was worth it.
3. Paul said he did not find his circumstance ideal, but they had resulted in the advance of the Gospel.
a. The word "advance" means, "pioneer advance."
b. It is a Greek military term referring to the army engineers who go before the troops to open the way into new territory.
c. Instead of finding himself confined as a prisoner, Paul discovered that his circumstances opened new areas of ministry.
C. What circumstances do you face?
1. The real question is what is your real desire? Is it to advance the Gospel?
2. Will you live to advance the Gospel, to take it into new areas that your situation opens up for you?
KEY STATEMENT
God often uses strange tools to help us advance the Gospel as pioneers. From Paul, we see two of those tools.
GOD USES OUR...
I. ...CIRCUMSTANCES TO ADVANCE THE GOSPEL — Vss. 12-14.
• Americans do not deal very well with negative circumstances as Charles Colson points out in his BreakPoint Commentary for 01/10/2002: Playing Solomon in Today’s Legal Culture: The Victims Fund and Great Expectations.
Kenneth Feinberg has one of the most thankless jobs imaginable. Feinberg is the Special Master in charge of the Victims Compensation Fund created by Congress in the wake of September 11. The Fund is intended to compensate the victims and their families.
The Fund embraces the idea that, whatever the negligence of the airlines and their contractors, the hijackings themselves were the reason for the three thousand-plus deaths on September 11.
Under Feinberg’s proposals, awards would range from $350,000 for the family of a single man earning $10,000 to approximately $3.8 million for the family of a married man with two kids who is earning $225,000. The average award would be $1.65 million.
These proposals, as well as the ideas they reflect, run counter to some of the ideas most responsible for the outrageously huge jury verdicts that have become part of our legal landscape. And victims and their lawyers didn’t waste any time expressing displeasure.
One widow told the SEATTLE TIMES that she was "ready to throw up" after learning that she would "only" receive $1.5 million under Feinberg’s proposal. A representative of Families of September 11 unfavorably compared the plan to the "$2 million to $5 million or more . . ." that other plaintiffs in aviation cases and terrorism cases have gotten. And one trial lawyer, who won $17 million for the widow of a man killed on Pan Am 103, called the plan "absolutely terrible."
Feinberg calls the criticism "incorrect but perfectly understandable." It is understandable, but not just for the reasons he gives. Changes in our legal system have transformed our expectations and beliefs about suffering and loss profoundly. Americans have come to believe that every injury must have a remedy.
It doesn’t matter if the circumstances were scarcely foreseeable or, as in the events of September 11, the direct result of an act of war. Blame must find its way to someone with assets. This is a complete reversal of the historic understanding of tort law, which taught that insurers or owners weren’t responsible for damages that resulted from unforeseeable causes, like some natural disaster. In other words, people couldn’t recover unless someone was culpable.
This reversal has created a sense of entitlement. It’s not enough to compensate victims for their financial losses. Rather, any damage award or compensation must amount to a windfall for the victims and their family. Tort law has helped turn tragedy and loss into a lottery ticket -- one that’s guaranteed to pay big.
Similarly, there’s no sense of law’s limits, or of its inability to compensate for some losses, such as those that occurred on September 11.
All of this is the result of separating our legal system from its moral roots. The great legal scholar Sir William Blackstone once said that the genius of the Anglo-American common law was that it reflected the beliefs of people infused with the spirit of Christ. Not anymore. Law is now the ticket for greed and the playground for social engineers.
And that’s what makes Feinberg’s task so thankless. Acting justly in these circumstances is hard enough. Doing it while working in a system that’s forgotten what makes being just possible is nearly impossible.
Copyright (c) 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries
• No one imagined that Charles Dutton would have achieved anything, for he spent many years imprisoned for manslaughter. But when someone asked this now-successful Broadway star of "The Piano Lesson" how he managed to make such a remarkable transition, he replied, "Unlike the other prisoners, I never decorated my cell." Dutton had resolved never to regard his cell as home.
• Paul did not let his circumstances to control him.
• Little did the Romans realize that Paul’s chains would release him instead of bind him. He later wrote just this during his second Roman imprisonment — 2 Timothy 2:9. He did not complain about his circumstances, which saw him in chains, but asked God to use the chains the advance of the Gospel.
• Notice the two groups of people our circumstances can allow us to influence as shown by Paul:
A. Our circumstances give us contact with the lost.
1. Paul was chained to a guard 24 hours a day. The shifts changed every six hours, which meant he could witness to at least four men each day. Imagine what it would have been like for those soldiers as they sat there with a man who was always interested in someone’s spiritual condition and as he wrote letters to (usually by dictation) Christians and churches all across the empire. Some of those soldiers put their faith in Christ, and Paul had taken the Gospel into the palace guard. He could not have done that had he been free.
2. Not only that, but his chains gave him contact with the officials in Caesar’s court. He was in Rome as an official prisoner. His case was an important one. The Roman government was going to determine the official status of this new religion. Was it merely a sect of the Jews? Or was it something new and dangerous? That forced court officials to study the doctrines of Christianity.
3. Everyone who knew of Paul’s imprisonment knew why he was in prison.
4. God can use our chains, our worse than the best circumstances, to advance the Gospel into places it would never go otherwise.
a. Charles Spurgeon’s wife, Susannah became an invalid early in their married life. That limited her ministry, but God gave her a burden to share her husband’s books with preachers who were unable to purchase them. This burden led to the founding of the "Book Fund." That fund provided thousands of pastors with tools for their work. It was supervised by Mrs. Spurgeon from her home.
b. Susannah Wesley was the mother of 19 children, before the days of labor-saving devices and disposable diapers. Out of her family came John and Charles Wesley, whose combined ministries shook the British Isles.
c. Fanny Crosby became blind at six weeks of age, but she determined not to be confined by her chains of darkness. She became a mighty force for God through her hymns and Gospel songs.
5. What are the chains, the circumstances, that limit your life. We can learn from Paul to use to contact the lost.
B. Our circumstances give courage to the saved.
1. Many of the believers in Rome had become intimidated by government pressure to not speak about Christ, and they had become strangely quiet. Now they saw Paul’s great testimony even from prison — he was in more danger than they were — and they took fresh courage to speak without fear.
a. This word "speak" does not refer to preaching, but to everyday conversation.
b. I suspect there was talk around Rome about Paul’s case. Legal matters like this created great interest in Rome. As Christians got involved in these discussions, they began to speak about Jesus.
2. I have had this happen at the side of a hospital bed. I have gone in to see someone with a serious disease, and they have encouraged me even as I sought to encourage them.
• This happened with Christine when we went to visit Rosella Ransom when she was facing a mastectomy.
3. Encouragement has a way of spreading just as discouragement does. Use your circumstances to encourage others.
Tim Bowden, in his book One Crowded Hour about cameraman Neil Davis, tells about an incident that happened in Borneo during the confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia in 1964. A group of Gurkhas from Nepal were asked if they would be willing to jump from transport planes into combat against the Indonesians if the need arose. The Gurkhas had the right to turn down the request because they had never been trained as paratroopers. Bowden quotes Davis’s account of the story:
"Now the Gurkhas usually agreed to anything, but on this occasion they provisionally rejected the plan. But the next day one of their NCO’s sought out the British officer who made the request and said they had discussed the matter further and would be prepared to jump under certain conditions.
"’What are they?’ asked the British officer.
"The Gurkhas told him they would jump if the land was marshy or reasonably soft with no rocky outcrops, because they were inexperienced in falling. The British officer considered this, and said that the dropping area would almost certainly be over jungle, and there would not be rocky outcrops, so that seemed all right. Was there anything else?
"Yes, said the Gurkhas. They wanted the plane to fly as slowly as possible and no more than one hundred feet high. The British officer pointed out the planes always did fly as slowly as possible when dropping troops, but to jump from one hundred feet was impossible, because the parachutes would not open in time from that height.
"’Oh,’ said the Gurkhas, ’that’s all right, then. We’ll jump with parachutes anywhere. You didn’t mention parachutes before!’"
The Gurkhas were willing to jump despite the circumstances. That is the kind of commitment and courage to advance the Gospel we should have — despite our circumstances, because God can use our circumstances to advance the Gospel.
II. ...CRITICS TO ADVANCE THE GOSPEL — Vss. 15-18.
A. Critics have selfish ambition.
1. Some of the people around Paul were preaching Christ out of envy and rivalry, selfish ambition. Paul was out of their way; he had dominated things in the church, but now he couldn’t, so they moved in.
a. These people only thought of how they could benefit from their church work.
b. Paul’s word ambition is interesting. It means "to canvass for office, to get people to support you." Paul’s critics were not seeking a following for Christ, but for themselves.
c. These people were not even trying to stir up more trouble for Paul while he was in prison. Here was a man in prison for preaching, and they were trying to make his conditions even more miserable.
d. A second century church father, Clement, even believed that Paul was eventually executed due to the jealousy, strife, and selfish ambition of Roman Christians.
2. Those conditions still exist today far too often.
a. There is jealousy between churches as well as within churches. There is jealousy of nationally know Christian leaders.
b. There is strife: Some Christians believe they are not doing God’s work unless they are fighting someone. Some preachers take that approach with their church leaders.
c. This can all happen for the sake of selfish ambition.
- How should we deal with such critics? They will be there
B. We need spiritual ambition: ambition free of motives.
1. A general of the US Army demonstrated this once:
A US President asked this general a question about another officer. Overhearing his reply (which praised the other), a friend approached him afterwards and said, "General, do you know that the man of whom you spoke is one of your most bitter enemies and misses no opportunity to malign you?" "Yes," replied the officer, "but the President asked my opinion of him; he did not ask for his opinion of me."
2. There were others in Rome who had this kind of ambition.
a. They preached out of good will.
b. They preached out of love, knowing that Paul was in prison for defending the Gospel.
3. Paul says that was his desire; it made no difference to him why the Gospel was preached, only that it was, even if some of it was done for the wrong reasons. It is still the Gospel. That is how to deal with critics.
a. When he speaks of false motives, he uses a word that in Mark 12:40 is used of the prayers of the Pharisees.
b. Paul says that even when some of the preaching was a pretext, used to camouflage attacks on him, they could still be ignored, provided that the Gospel was preached.
4. We need to seek that kind of ambition if the Gospel is to be advanced.
a. Jasper Brown’s response to the praise he received for rescuing an 8 year old-boy.
Jasper Brown, a 19 year-old former Largo (FL) High School football player, climbed through the window of a neighbor’s burning house to rescue an 8 year-old boy. He received a surprise letter from President Ronald Reagan stating, "You have justly earned the gratitude and high praise that the citizens of your community have for you, for the shining example you have set for others.
Others also commended the efforts of Brown. Largo Mayor George McGough nominated Brown for the Carnegie Hero Fund Medal which carries a $2,000 award. Brown was recommended for the United States Department of Justice award for bravery, but he was told he was not eligible because he was older than 18 at the time of the incident.
Brown said that he was proud that President Reagan acknowledged his deed and that he was nominated by the other groups, but he never expected to received anything. "The kid’s living, that’s all that counts." Brown said, "All that matters to me is that Robert was saved. But if someone wants to give me a reward, I’ll take it."
b. We had this same spirit with the two great English evangelists, John Wesley and George Whitefield:
They disagreed on doctrinal matters. Both of them were very successful, preaching to thousands and seeing multitudes come to Christ. Somebody asked Wesley if he expected to see Whitefield in heaven and he replied, "No, I do not." "Then you do not think Whitefield is a converted man?" "Of course he is a converted man! "Wesley replied. "But I do not expect to see him in heaven--because he will be so close to the throne of God and I so far away that I will not be able to see him!" They differed, but Wesley did not oppose Whitefield.
c. Seek to have a spiritual ambition, and to allow God to advance the Gospel even through your critics. They might even make you a better Christian and messenger for Christ.
CONCLUSION
A. We will have difficult circumstances and we will have critics, but we live together for a greater reason: to advance the Gospel.
B. E. Stanley Jones once wrote: "The early Christians did not say in dismay: ’Look what the world has come to,’ but in delight, ’Look what has come to the world.."
C. Joseph Ton demonstrated a commitment to advancing the Gospel in Romania under the persecution of the Communists:
Joseph Ton was pastor of Second Baptist Church, Oradea, Rumania, until he was exiled by the Rumanian government in 1981. In Pastoral Renewal, he writes of his experience:
"Years ago I ran away from my country to study theology at Oxford. In 1972, when I was ready to go back to Rumania, I discussed my plans with some fellow students. They pointed out that I might be arrested at the border. One student asked, ’Jospeh, what chances do you have of successfully implementing your plans?’"
He asked God about it, and God brought to mind Matthew 10:16 -- "I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves" -- and seemed to say, "Tell me, what chance does a sheep surrounded by wolves have of surviving five minutes, let alone of converting the wolves? Joseph, that’s how I send you: totally defenseless and without a reasonable hope of success. If you are willing to go like that, go. If you are not willing to be in that position, don’t go."
Ton writes: "After our return, as I preached uninhibitedly, harassment and arrests came. One day during interrogation an officer threatened to kill me. Then I said, ’Sir, your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying. Sir, you know my sermons are all over the country on tapes now. If you kill me, I will be sprinkling them with my blood. Whoever listens to them after that will say, "I’d better listen. This man sealed it with his blood." They will speak ten times louder than before. So, go on and kill me. I win the supreme victory then.’"
The officer sent him home. "That gave me pause. For years I was a Christian who was cautious because I wanted to survive. I had accepted all the restrictions the authorities put on me because I wanted to live. Now I wanted to die, and they wouldn’t oblige. Now I could do whatever I wanted in Rumania. For years I wanted to save my life, and I was losing it. Now that I wanted to lose it, I was winning it."
D. That is why God has brought his church together, to take the Gospel to the world. Will you work for that?
