LIVING TOGETHER IN OBEDIENCE
Philippians 2:12-18
INTRODUCTION
A. Sometimes we set the course, but we need to allow God to be the unchangeable standard that we obey:
1. Lighthouse illustration:
The captain of the ship looked into the dark night and saw faint lights in the distance. Immediately he told his signalman to send a message: "Alter your course ten degrees south." Promptly a return message was received: "Alter your course ten degrees north." The captain was angered; his command had been ignored. So he sent a second message: "Alter your course ten degrees south – I am the captain." Soon another message was received: "Alter your course ten degrees north – I am seaman third class Jones." Immediately the captain sent a third message, knowing the fear it would evoke: "Alter your course ten degrees south – I am a battleship." Then the reply came: "Alter your course ten degrees north – I am a lighthouse."
2. As we make our way through the maze of life, it often becomes easy to shout out all kinds of orders, to try to determine our own way in life.
3. In our text, Paul is calling for each of us to follow the one voice in life that can send us in the right direction.
a. Mark Twain said once, "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
b. Paul is calling for us to follow a good example. He begins the passage with "therefore." This matches the "therefore" of vs. 9. Paul is saying that just as God assessed and reacted to the worth of his Son’s life of obedience (vss. 9-11), so the Christian must ponder the example of Christ and determine a worthy response.
B. Obedience is the essence of how we are to live together in this regard.
1. On the one hand there needs to be unity and like mindedness in the church as we work together.
2. On the other hand, each individual needs to practice obedience in his or her own life.
3. The word obedience comes from the duties of a doorkeeper, whose duty it is to listen for signals of those who wish to enter and to let them in if they are entitled to; to simply open or answer.
• That is all we are, doorkeepers in the house of God. Our sole duty is to do God’s bidding.
4. That is clear in the use of this word for obedience as used elsewhere.
a. Jesus obeyed even to the point of death – 2:8.
b. In Sinai, however, the Israelites refused to obey God even though he was with them there – Acts 7:29.
c. Paul wrote to Corinth to see if they would stand the test and be obedient in everything – 2 Corinthians 2:9 – particularly in regard to forgiveness. They were simply to listen and obey.
5. Paul does not indicate by all this that we have not obeyed God previously,
but only encourages us to pursue our obedience all the more vigorously in the future.
a. Indeed the Philippians had obeyed God from the very first when Paul had gone there and made the first converts – Lydia and the jailor.
b. Moreover, he had witnessed them being obedient whenever he was there.
c. Now they could not depend on his presence with them anymore, so they needed to make all the more effort to obey God.
d. We too have obeyed God from the time we have accepted Christ.
e. Now that obedience needs to continue and grow; we cannot remain dependent on the victories of the past, but must forge new avenues ahead – both as a congregation and as individuals.
KEY STATEMENT
Paul gives us two requirements for living together in obedience to God.
WE OBEY GOD BY...
I. ...WORKING OUT OUR SALVATION – Vss. 12,13.
A. Making your salvation work.
1. Hard work can drive us too hard.
a. Many accidents occur in the middle of the night:
Our most notorious industrial accidents in recent years – Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the fatal navigational error of Korean Air Lines 007 – all occurred in the middle of the night.
When the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian A300 airbus killing all 290 people aboard, fatigue-stressed operators in the high tech Combat Information Center on the carrier misinterpreted radar data and repeatedly told their captain that the jet was descending as if to attack when in fact the airliner remained on a normal flight path.
In the Challenger space shuttle disaster, key NASA officials made the ill-fated decision to go ahead with the launch after working twenty hours straight and getting only two to three hours of sleep the night before. Their error in judgment cost the lives of seven astronauts and nearly killed the U.S. space program.
We ignore our need for rest and renewal at the peril of others and ourselves.
b. Perhaps we should appreciate more a part of a letter that William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, once received from his wife when he was on an extensive trip. She wrote:
“Your Tuesday’s notes arrived safe, and I rejoiced to hear of the continued prosperity of the work, though sorry you were so worn out; I fear the effect of all this excitement and exertion upon your health, and though I would not hinder your usefulness, I would caution you against an injudicious prodigality of your strength.”
2. This concept that Paul presents to us here is a difficult one to understand. Perhaps it is so because we have misunderstood it; we have taken it wrong.
a. We have the idea that God has a 100% standard of righteousness.
b. We know, however, that we cannot attain it, so we satisfy ourselves with 41% righteousness or 63% righteousness.
c. We thus wonder about our salvation far more than we ought to, thinking we might not be good enough, or we think if we get this right in our lives God will accept us.
3. That is all far from the idea Paul is expressing to us here, so if we are going to understand what he is saying we must first understand the nature of salvation.
a. It is clear in the Bible that all of us have sinned and there is no one who is righteous (Romans 3:10,23). We cannot work to obtain our salvation.
b. So in Ephesians 2:8,9, Paul says we are saved by God’s grace that is made active by our faith. There is no work we can do to earn our salvation, because then we would be boasting.
c. When that happens, though, we can know we have eternal life (1 John 5:13). We can sing "Blessed Assurance."
d. All of this is why Jack Cottrell wrote his little book, Being Good Enough Is not Good Enough.
4. So Paul does not say, "Work for your salvation, or toward your salvation, or at your salvation," but "work out your salvation."
a. The verb "work out" carries the meaning of "work to full completion," such as working out a problem in mathematics. In Paul’s day it was also used for "working a mine," that is, getting out of the mine all the valuable ore possible; or "working a field" so as to get the greatest harvest possible.
b. He is suggesting that obeying God means we are to put our salvation to work.
c. By virtue of the fact that God has saved us, we are to express this salvation in our conduct, always working to make ourselves better – illustration.
Carlyle had spent ten years preparing the manuscript of The French Revolution. During those years he and his wife lived in very hard times. After he had finished the immense task, writing it all on foolscap and making no copy, he took the manuscript to his friend, John Stuart Mill, who had promised to give it a thoroughly critical reading. Mill placed the enormous bundle of paper on a mantel, intending to begin reading it the next day. But when he came to get it, he saw it was gone. A housemaid, he discovered, had mistakenly tossed it in the fireplace.
With heavy heart Mill had to go to Carlyle’s home to tell him what had happened. After he had done so and left, Carlyle reported the catastrophe to his wife and mentioned how pale and shaken Mill had been about it. That night he recorded it in his diary and added: "It was as if my Invisible Schoolmaster had torn up my copy book when I showed it to him and said, ’No, boy, you must write it better.’" The next day he went to work writing it better.
d. We are to do so with fear and trembling, knowing the consequences of not obeying God.
e. It should not be done in fear of someone; the Philippines were to do so even more in Paul’s absence. It should be done in awe of God.
B. Letting God work in you.
1. We need the right attitude in working out our salvation. The verb changes from "you" to "God."
2. We are not left to ourselves for this task; for God is at work in us.
3. Paul suggests to us that just as we are saved only by the power of God, so we receive power for putting our salvation to work only from God. It is God working in us.
a. He literally suggests that God is the source of our energy for putting our salvation to work. Our English word energy comes from the word "works."
b. Paul constantly saw himself as empowered by God – Romans 15:18; 2 Corinthians 12:8-10.
c. Paul suggests it is God behind the gifts we have for ministry – 1 Corinthians 12:6.
d. In Ephesians, he defines something of that power – Ephesians 1:19, 20; 3:20.
4. God also works in us for his will and purpose, not our own.
a. Some might preach Christ out of good will (1:15), but it is God’s will that should determine how we serve in the church.
b. God adopted us according to his will – Ephesians 1:5.
c. God offers us rest from our weariness on the basis of his will – Matthew 11:28-30.
d. As we work out our salvation, then, we are to do so seeking for God’s will to be made known by our living lives worthy of the fact that we belong to him.
e. The question is not really so much what we are doing in working out our salvation, as it is whether it fits into God’s purpose to redeem a lost world. We ought to evaluate everything by that.
5. "When I am weak, then I am strong" illustration.
When Dr. Larry Stephenson arrived in Somalia to work among lepers there, he was instantly welcome. He wouldn’t have been, except for his weakness. Several years earlier in a farming accident, Larry lost all but the first knuckle of the four fingers of his left hand. It sometimes was a handicap for his work in the U.S. but it was his greatest asset in Somalia. The lepers spotted his crippled hand and concluded, "He’s one of us." He was able to achieve things among them that someone with a stronger left hand could not have." "When I am weak, then I am strong." We are to work out our salvation with God’s strength.
II. ...WORKING ON OUR PURITY – Vss. 14-18.
A. We are to work on this purity by not complaining or arguing.
1. Grandpa’s murmuring in his chair on Sunday morning about how hard it would be for them to put up with my staying there another summer. I decided not to.
a. That is complaining. It is outward. It can be easy to complain about everything.
b. There is a picture of complaining in the O.T. The Israelites had been freed from Egypt, but all through their time in the wilderness they grumbled and complained. So as Moses prepared to die, he warned them in Deuteronomy about being a bunch of complainers.
c. I heard Bob Russell say, "Critics don’t build churches; they inspect them."
2. We will be the kind of pure people God wants us to be when we learn to look for the good and encourage each other rather than complain and argue.
B. The result of not complaining is working on our purity in the world.
1. One of the more interesting characters in church history was Simon Stylites. He was a Syrian monk who at one time sat on top of a pillar fifty feet high to avoid contact with the world and to keep himself pure. He spent thirty years there. Before that he lived buried up to his neck in the ground for several months.
2. The founder of this type of thing, an Egyptian hermit named Anthony, sold his possessions when he was 20, gave the money to the poor, and moved to a cave to lead a life of meditation. Others followed his example by moving to the caves near him.
3. Another of these men lived in the field and grazed grass like cattle do. Another was known for his sanctity because he had never undressed or bathed after he became a hermit.
4. Some may try to be pure and live like that, but that is certainly not what Paul had in mind when he said we can become blameless and pure in obeying God.
a. He knew we have to stand apart from a world he called crooked and depraved. Perhaps it is even more so today.
b. By doing, we shine in our world like stars shine in the universe when we hold out the word of life to people. Paul is asking no more in this of us than he asked of himself. In 1:13 he said it had become clear throughout the palace guard that he was in chains for Christ; being clear has the same idea as shine and is from the same word.
5. We are to be pure, though, an idea for which Paul uses three words:
a. We are to be blameless or faultless. The word is used for metals that have all the alloys burned out; there is no mixture.
b. The word for pure means to be innocent in regard to evil. This is the qualification Jesus placed on the Twelve when he sent them out and told them to be "innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16).
c. Without fault suggests we are to be unblemished as the Jewish sacrifices had to be.
d. Perhaps the clearest example we can point to in this regard is Daniel during his life in Babylon. He lived in the midst of an ungodly world. He did not live in a corner, but in the king’s palace, and he worked for the king. The only fault his enemies could find in him was his worship of God (Daniel 6:5).
• Then we shine like stars in the universe; the gospel become clear to people.
C. Then we can boast about our Christian walk.
1. That is the essence of vs. 16. Paul was suggesting that all who live that way can boast, not just himself.
a. He could boast because these people he had won to the Lord have proved righteous and pure.
b. They could boast because they had proven themselves to be pure.
2. Paul was not boasting in himself, though, but in God.
a. In 1 Corinthians 9:16 he said he had nothing to boast about in preaching the Gospel.
b. All he sought was that his effort would be worth something for the Lord – 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.
c. He did not want his effort to be for nothing. Jesus had emptied himself (2:7), but Paul intended his effort to bring purity.
3. If we will work on our purity in the world by not complaining or arguing, then we can give God the glory for doing something in our lives and making our efforts worth something.
CONCLUSION
A. For Paul’s part obeying God might call for a sacrifice even of his life.
1. He saw himself being poured out as a sacrifice. The Philippians had sacrificed for him, yet his life may have to be poured out.
2. He could thus rejoice because he knew that although they were worried about him that their faith was the important thing, not his life.
B. So they could rejoice with him, but more so they could make the sacrifice necessary to obey God themselves.
C. That is where we are; through Paul God is calling for us to make the sacrifice necessary to obey God. After all, we are just his doorkeepers. Obedience brings salvation:
In July, 1976, Israeli commandos made a daring raid at an airport in Entebbe, Uganda, in which 103 Jewish hostages were freed. In less than fifteen minutes, the soldiers had killed all seven of the kidnapers and set the captives free.
As successful as the rescue was, however, three of the hostages were killed during the raid. As the commandos entered the terminal, they shouted in Hebrew, "Get down! Crawl!" The Jewish hostages understood and lay down on the floor, while the guerrillas, who did not speak Hebrew, were left standing. Quickly the rescuers shot the upright kidnapers.
But two of the hostages hesitated – perhaps to see what was happening – and were also cut down. One young man was lying down and actually stood up when the commandos entered the airport. He, too, was shot with the bullets meant for the enemy. Had these three heeded the soldiers command, they would have been freed with the rest of the captives.
Salvation is open to all, but we must heed Christ’s command and make him Lord. Then we will be saved: when we live together in obedience, working out our salvation and working on our purity.
