First off, happy Father’s Day. Be nice to your Father’s today. I’m told that flashing electric ties are nice presents, at least that’s what my dad told me the first time I got him one, so that’s been his gift ever since. Just a handy last minute gift idea from your caring pastor.
Have you ever had something given to you to make your own? Sometimes people give us things, whether they are jobs, or hobbies or passions, they give us these things and then we need to make them our own. There is something to taking a hobby or a gift and making in our own. I tried to think of the best example of that in my life. Perhaps it was my fraternity. The fraternity was at Pepperdine before me. I was accepted in, and learned about the fraternity, but then I set about to make the fraternity mine. I had to jump in and learn how my talents fit with the rest of the fraternity. I had to realize what talents I had, and how they could be used to benefit the whole group. I had to incorporate the fraternity into my life, into my thinking. It had to become part of me, and I had to become part of it.
The guys that went before me in the fraternity handed me something very precious, their dreams, their hopes, and their goals for the fraternity. It was my job, mine and my friend’s to make the fraternity ours. Am I being clear? Maybe you have better examples. For people who are married, or who have been, you were given a precious arrangement by God. But you still had to take the marriage and make it your own; how the two people live together, communicate, set goals and live together is something that had to be done on your own. What was handed down needed to be made your own, a part of who you are. Paul is talking to the Philippians about something similar. Phil 2:12-end. The sermon will focus on the first section, but I want you to know all of Scripture, so we’ll read the second part as well.
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
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.
Timothy and Epaphroditus
19 I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I receive news about you. 20 I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. 21 For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. 22 But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel. 23 I hope, therefore, to send him as soon as I see how things go with me. 24 And I am confident in the Lord that I myself will come soon.
25 But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs. 26 For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. 27 Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. 28 Therefore I am all the more eager to send him, so that when you see him again you may be glad and I may have less anxiety. 29 Welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor men like him, 30 because he almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you could not give me.
Let’s pray.
You will certainly recall, as we have been going through Philippians, that the Apostle Paul is writing this holy letter to a congregation he planted. These are people he knows; he knows their pasts, where they came from religiously previously, what their jobs are, what their personalities are like and so forth. Paul knows the people individually, and he knows how they function together as the church. Paul knows these people, and he knows they are good. They remember his teachings and haven’t strayed from them, they haven’t tried to mix and match this new religion, this following Christ, Christianity, with any of the other religions they had previously followed. The Philippian Christians have completely dropped their worship of idols, their worship of the emperor, their worship of false gods and their seeking after secret knowledge. They have dropped all that in order to follow the true God. All this, Paul knows. Paul knows these are faithful people, seeking after God with their lives.
Because of their faith, they give Paul great joy. This is a joyous letter that Paul writes as he waits in prison, most likely in Rome, waiting for an audience before Caesar himself so that Paul can plead his case. Paul has been arrested in Israel, but invoked his right as a Roman citizen to have his case heard before Caesar. So he waits. And he writes to be beloved Philippians, whom he has heard good news about. He does not yell at them like he does other churches, this is a church that gives him joy and hope. Given that this letter is likely one of the last Paul wrote, scholars put the date of this letter somewhere in the early 60’s, just fyi.
Like I said previously, we are going to concentrate on the first half of the text this morning. It starts off with Paul writing this to the Philippians:
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
The “therefore” at the start means Paul is connecting this new thought to the previous one. Allow me to remind you what just previously Paul covered. Two weeks ago we talked about Christ’s attitude, the way Jesus humbled himself and became a real human being. Even more, in that humbleness he was also obedient to the Father, all the way to the cross of Calvary. Paul gave the Philippians a hymn or a creed to remind them of what Christ did on their behalf. So the “therefore” connects this new part of the letter to the previous part. Therefore, or because of this…
Because you know this, says Paul, you have always acted in a way that reflecting that sacrifice. Continue to do so, says Paul. Continue doing things well, doing the things you know you should be doing. Continues to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Fear and trembling is the way people approach a ruler on a throne. With that kind of care, says Paul, take the faith you were given by me and continue to make it your own. Work out your salvation doesn’t mean save yourself. The whole gospels point to our complete inability to save ourselves through the Law of the OT. Work out your salvation doesn’t mean “save yourself”. It means take this faith and make it your own. This is now your faith.
It is your faith, not the faith of your father or mother, not the faith of your spouse, but it is your faith. Christianity has always had the interesting aspect that it is highly individualized, but functions best corporately. Our faith is your faith. We need to own it, have it become part of who we are. And we do that carefully. With fear and trembling, we incorporate Christianity, we incorporate Christ into our hearts and lives. The faith becomes ours as we say yes to Jesus; yes, you did on my behalf. Yes, I failed, yes I confess those failings. Yes, I want you to change me into your image. Yes, I want to follow you, pray to you, read your Word, all the days of my life. Yes, this is who I am.
Paul has reminded them of what Christ has done for them, of the majesty and wonder of the saving grace they have found, have been given. We have to work out our response to this wondrous gift. Some people here have become quiet prayer warriors, praying for this church, praying for the ministries of this church, praying for the leadership of this church. Some people become evangelists, dragging folks to church. Some people find their niche in meeting the needs of others, of caring for people both within and beyond the church into the community. We are each created differently, uniquely. We are all unique. The way we each make our faith our own and not the faith of our parents, or the faith of any of the people who have taught us in our lives, is that we take who we are, who God created us to be, with our likes and dislikes, our bumps and bruises, and we take the faith handed to us and make it our own.
Because you are unique, how we worship God with our lives will also be unique. There are of course, certain parameters. Just like in my fraternity there were rules and traditions handed down, just like in a marriage there are parameters like there will be no one else involved in the relationship, there are parameters in faith. Our faith is built on Scripture; we cannot go around it if it says something uncomfortable, we cannot ignore it. Our boundaries are found in Scripture. But even within Scripture, there are huge areas where each of us can individually discover the unique ministry we have. Our interests and talents, our passion and creativity lead us to discover our gifts. We work out our response to God, His love and saving grace, with fear and trembling. But we have found something exciting. God’s love is life transforming and totally exciting. And so the way we respond is out of love, out of excitement for what we have been given.
The funny thing is that it isn’t just about us. Only we can make our faith concrete, every day in our lives, living for God, but at the same time God is working through us to accomplish all this. This is where is there is a wonderful and confusing combination of our free will and God’s sovereignty. God will be working through us to accomplish His ends, His goals, to His glory. And at the same time, we have a part to play in that. Christianity is not a passive religion. If it is real faith, there will be a desire to respond to God through the sharing of our faith, through the using of our spiritual gifts, through time spent with God in prayer. A commentator I was reading used this example: it’s like falling in love. We have to show up when we’re falling in love, but at the same time, its something we can’t help. There is this wonderful confusion about falling in love, and about living life in God. God is at work in us, but we still have to be present, working out our faith with fear and trembling.
We have to take our faith and make it our own. No one can walk your Christian walk for you. Neither can you walk for anyone else. Faith has to be taken, grasped, and incorporated into our lives. How are we doing that? How are you doing that?
Paul continues:
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.
There is an image here. The image is of these new Christians heading out into a dangerous world, a crooked (devious, twisted) and depraved (highly trained in evil) world; innocent children heading out into a world that is looking to gobble them up. It is the image of so many fairy tales, maybe like Hansel and Gretel, heading innocently into the forest where they don’t know the dangers, don’t know the evils that are waiting for them. Blameless and pure, or in the process of being purified, we head into the world every week. Trying to shine in our universe, shine like the stars, except that we are just reflecting the light, rather than generating it. We go out into the fallen world trying to shine like the stars. We try to shine like our star, Jesus himself.
How do we do that? Without complaining or arguing. We haven been given a huge task. We are to be faithful to God, seek His face, and at the same time we are to reach the world with His message of reconciliation through Jesus. In the face of such a daunting task, it is easy to complain. We might have the desire to sit it out and complain that the task is too big. And it is too big for any one person. But we are in this together. We can’t catch all the fish in the sea. We can’t reach everyone. But we can do the task that is right in front of us. Any huge task can be broken into smaller tasks so we can accomplish something without getting overwhelmed. Don’t be a complainer, I tell myself, and you all. I wish I could preach less sermons where I felt convicted myself. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Don’t complain because it doesn’t solve anything. It just lowers morale, and going into the battle of each week in the world, we need to have high morale.
Don’t complain so you will be blameless and pure. Don’t complain so that God’s light will reflect off you that much more brightly. We want people to see Jesus living in us. If we are complaining all the time, it gets harder and harder for people to see the love of Christ in our lives. All they see and hear is complaining. When we do our jobs, whatever they are, without complaining, in a small way we reflect who Christ was. I think Christ was the ultimate non-complainer. He had to do a unique job in God’s plan of salvation, a horrible job, horribly painful and awful. And yet, he did not complain. When God made it clear He would not remove the cup from Jesus, then Jesus set his face and set out to accomplish His Father’s will.
Jesus is my image of the ultimate non-complainer. We aren’t to complain for two reasons: first to imitate Christ and how he responded to the requests placed on Him by the Father, and two, because we want to reflect that same attitude to the world around us. Our job is to bring others to Jesus. We want them to know this is a good thing, that God through Jesus has changed our lives. But it is hard to see that change after hearing a lot of complaining. We are asked to do a hard thing each week. I want to affirm that. We are asked to go back, sent back into a world that is hostile to Christians. We are told to go with good attitudes, to bring some folks back to hear and learn about Christ. We are all asked to do hard things, so don’t complain that your lot is tougher than anyone else’s. That just means God is trusting you with a harder job.
Paul wants them to hold onto God’s word so that his suffering, his labors were not in vain. Paul is completely focused on God’s people. He desires to know that they still clung to the faith he passed to them. No one wants their life’s work to be all for naught. Paul wants his life to have made a difference, that the purpose God had for his life was fulfilled. We know that Paul did not labor in vain, even though he didn’t live to know it completely. In the same way, we want to be living lives of meaning. We want our lives to count for something in the long run. This is the exact reason why I went into ministry. I wanted my life to mean something, I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives because people are the only permanent things in the universe. We want our lives to have eternal significance, and that can only happen when we bring people to Christ.
Then comes that last line about being poured out like a drink offering. There were many types of offerings at the Temple; in addition to animal offerings there were grain offerings and drink offerings. The drink offerings were poured over the altar. So the image here is of Paul, his blood poured out over the altar, Paul sacrificed for the early church.
Here is the evidence that Paul is thinking he may not survive this encounter with Caesar. He may not see Caesar and live to tell the tale. But that is okay with Paul. Paul is ready to meet His maker. Paul is ready to be sacrificed if it means the Word of God goes forward. There were several graduates of Wheaton college, a college I attended for a couple years in Chicago until I got too cold. In any situation, several of them were missionaries together in the Amazon, trying to reach a fierce tribe, one previously unreached. When they thought they had developed enough trust with the tribe, they canoed into the territory of this tribe. And they were all killed. But their wives continued to try and reach this tribe. Eventually, the tribe were reached with the gospel of Christ, and converted. The missionaries lives were poured out like a drink offering, like Paul’s life was poured out as well.
But the effect of being poured out was that the tribe in the Amazon, the people in Philippi made the faith their own. They took what they had been given, the good news of Jesus Christ, and made it their own.
My question is this: have you done that? Have you made the faith your own, or are you depending on a spouse for spiritual maturity, are you depending on the faith of your parents? Or have you made the faith your own? No one can do that for you. We all have to commit our lives to Christ, one at a time, and decide to say yes to Jesus Christ, and ask Him into our hearts. No one can do that for you, but if you need to do that today, it will be my joy to help.
Let’s pray.
