Goal 2016: Committing to One Another

The Church’s New Year Focus on One Another

You may be seated. I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and open them to Philippians chapter 1. And I'll invite you to hold your place at verse 27. When we get to the Scripture reading, we're going to be reading to the end of chapter 1 and on into chapter 2.

We have quite a bit of text that we're going to be looking at today. Every year, on the Sunday before New Year, I preach a message which is intended to set the direction for the year to come. As you all know, that along with the elders, I have been charged by God to lead this body in accordance with Scripture.

And so, every year I preach a message which is sort of a State of the Union address. It's a call to something for us to look forward to in the future and a looking back over the year that's passed. You know, in 2015, it was beyond our borders was the subject of that message.

And what I said was we wanted to focus on evangelism. We wanted to focus on getting outside the church and reaching the community. I think we've really tried to do that this year. And we've seen God bless some of the things that we've done.

We've started the fishing hole ministry and we've seen God use that mightily in reaching people for Christ. We now are supporting and encouraging one of us to go and open air preach, which is something we've never done before and has even given me the opportunity to preach in the open air one time this year.

And while it was certainly not my comfort zone, it was something I was thankful to God for giving me the opportunity to do. We hosted our annual Bible conference and we used that as an opportunity for outreach and also for teaching.

Throughout this year we've seen several people join the church. We've seen a few even come to know Christ and be baptized. So the beyond our borders focus is not going to stop now. I just want you to know that just because I'm going to give you a new thought for a new year, it doesn't mean that what we have begun needs to end.

That needs to remain steadfast and strong and continue. But as I began to think and pray and ask God what it is that we need to be concerned for in the coming year, what it is we need to be focused on, what are we missing as a church?

One phrase kept coming back over and over in my mind. And the phrase was, one another. One another is the phrase that just kept coming back and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I want you to look around.

Yes, this is an actual request. I'm not asking you to look around. Really look. Now if you're a visitor or if this is only your first or second time being with us, you get to at least understand that I'm not talking to you directly right now.

Because I'm going to ask a question. And if you're brand new, then of course this wouldn't apply to you specifically. But we have a church, give or take around 100 people. Now today is kind of a low Sunday.

The Sunday after Christmas between New Years is always a low Sunday. So this might be the wrong time to ask, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. In looking around this room, even with probably a third of our congregation missing, how many people do you not know?

Okay, thank you. Thank you, brother. Alright, now I realize. I'm glad I got an answer. Now, how many of these people have you been in their homes? How many of these people have you had in your home? How many of them have you ever spoken to outside of the five minutes that you had before church and the five minutes that you have after church?

How many people in this church, if you saw them sinning, you would feel comfortable engaging them in a conversation about their need to repent? Now you might say, well, I don't have to have a good relationship with somebody to call someone to repentance.

I know. I know that. But what I'm asking you is, how many people in this room do you know well enough that you even know past a surface level conversation that you could talk about the deep things of God and the deep needs of their heart and it wouldn't be weird or awkward?

We probably wouldn't even know if each other were battling with sin battles because we don't know one another. The real problem is that we have confused coming to church with being the church. And we have confused being in this building with being in the body.

They are not the same. Coming to church is not being the church and being in this building is not being in the body. That's really the thesis of today's message. There's more to it than what we've been doing.

And if we're going to be the church that God has commanded us to be, we're going to have to begin making more of an investment in one another. We need to be asking ourselves, do we truly love the body of Christ?

And then follow with the very more important question, how are we showing that love? Love is action. How are we acting on the love that we proclaim to have? What actions are we taking to love one another?

Paul addresses the question of one anotherness in our passage this morning. Now I want to admit, he doesn't use the phrase one another even though that phrase is very common in Scripture. The phrase one another, alelone in the Greek, is used almost a hundred times in the New Testament.

And that's important for us to understand. That phrase is not in the text, but that phrase is what the text is about. How do we, as the church, become the one another that Christ has called us to be? And there's two things from the text I want us to see this morning that I hope will drive us to our knees and to repentance and to a better understanding of our walk with Christ in the year to come.

So let's begin by reading the text. As I said, it's a lot of text this morning. And it also shows that the chapter distinctions that we have are sort of artificial. You don't have to stop at chapter 1.

The thought that Paul has flows right into chapter 2. And so we're going to read from 127 to 211. As we give honored reverence to God's Word, let's stand to read. Chapter 1 of Philippians verse 27. And we're beginning sort of midstream here, but we're going to go back and catch the context in a bit.

But we'll just start right at verse 27. Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened by anything by your opponents.

This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in Him, but also suffer for His sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing.

Taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Amen. Father in heaven, I thank You for Your Word. I thank You for the truth. I pray that You would keep me from error. I pray that Your Holy Spirit would speak, and ultimately that You would use this message to confront the hearts of believers, to draw us, knit us closer together through the preaching of Your Word.

Help us to understand the call of one anothering that we are called to do. And Father, keep us from simply hearing this message and walking away unchanged. Lord, help this message change our hearts. And Father, if there are those here who have not heard the Gospel, who have never been saved by grace through faith, may they hear that Gospel clearly articulated today as we go through this message together.

In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. You may be seated. A lot of times when I'm preaching, I'll begin by giving an exposition of the text, and then I'll give you an outline of application. Today is a little bit different.

Today I'm actually going to make the outline part of the exposition of the text. So if you want to turn your worship folder over and see the outline, you'll see what two things we're going to look at from the text this morning.

You'll notice it begins with the phrase one another thinking. What do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is when Paul is calling us to be the church, and he's calling us to be concerned about one another, there's a thinking involved in that.

There's a mindset that's involved with that. And I believe that's what Paul is addressing here in the last part of Philippians 1 and the first part of Philippians 2. See, Paul begins his letter to the Philippians by talking about himself and giving us some autobiographical information.

He is writing this letter from prison apparently. He has been locked up for preaching the gospel, and along with Colossians and Ephesians and Philemon, he's writing this letter from prison. And he demonstrates, especially in this epistle, the ability to have joy even in difficult circumstances.

Even to have joy while being imprisoned for preaching the gospel. In fact, it's been often noted about Philippians that this is the joy epistle. It's the one that's focused on Christian joy. And it's amazing that the joy epistle comes not from a guy who's living in a mansion on a hill, but from a guy who's riding from the dark dungeon.

And toward the end of this chapter, as he talks about himself, he talks about the fact that he's in prison, he talks about the fact that God's blessing even what he's doing in prison because the guards are hearing the gospel, which is an amazing thing.

He hasn't stopped preaching even though he's been imprisoned for preaching. And he shifts from talking about himself to begin to talk about and to the church at Philippi. He wants them to understand that though he is not present with them, their ministry should not be hindered.

Just because he's in prison doesn't mean that they get to stop doing what they're supposed to do. You know, oftentimes that's the case. The whole when the cat's away, the mice will play kind of thing.

How many of you remember in school when the teacher would leave the room for a minute? Maybe if you're homeschooled, mama goes to the store. It's hang time, right? Well, Paul is imprisoned, right? And he said just because I'm not there doesn't mean it's time for a vacation.

In fact, quite the opposite. I want to see you continuing on. Be steadfast in your commitment to Christ and to one another. Make strides for the kingdom even if I'm not there. So I want to show you two things from this text that Paul addresses in regards to one another thinking.

Number one, one another thinking begins with a unity of purpose. It begins with a unity of purpose. Now, I'm not trying to use fad language this morning. I just want to mention that. You know, you hear the word purpose and you hear the word one anothering and all that.

That is sort of a common sort of fad language in American evangelicalism. And I'm the kind of guy when I hear 40 days of this or purpose driven that, I kind of recoil because that kind of stuff, I don't like.

We're not about fads. We're about the faith of the apostles. We're about the faith in Christ. We're not about fads. But the reality is we do have a purpose for being here. That's right. And Paul tells us what the purpose is.

I'm going to read it to you. Start at verse 27 again. He says, Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. That's it. The Evangelion. The gospel. And he goes on to say, So that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of what?

The gospel. Twice in just these two verses here, or three verses, he mentions the gospel. That's the unity of purpose that we have. We come together for the sake of the gospel. And the Bible says in this text in verse 30 here that we are to be striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.

That word, striving side by side, sun athlontes is the long word, but it comes from a root word, athleo, and it's where we get the word athlete. The athlon was the prize. The athlete was the man seeking the prize.

And that's where that word athlete comes from. And when you put the prefix sun at the beginning of athleo, it means to work together with something. So the idea that Paul is expressing when he talks about striving side by side is he's saying, look, we all have a goal.

We all have a purpose, and we're all in this together. We're all going toward the same thing, and we need to have the same mind to be looking toward the same direction. What is the gospel? Do you know it?

Often times I ask that question to people when I first meet them. Do you understand the gospel? I have a shirt that says that. We have a sign hanging in my office. Do you understand the gospel? We should always be seeking not only to understand it, but to understand it better.

I often wonder how many times people check out when I start going through the gospel. You know, people have been in church for a long time. I've heard, oh, he's talking about that ledger thing again. How our ledger is filled with sin, and Christ's ledger is filled with righteousness, and our ledger has no righteousness, and Christ's ledger has no sin, and when Christ was on the cross, all of our sin was charged to His ledger, and all of His righteousness.

And some of you right now, oh, here he goes again. You get bored with the gospel? Shame on you. That's the purpose we're here. The gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief, Paul says.

That should be the thing that drives all of us together. Why do we come together? Well, we come together to worship, we come together to fellowship, we come together to build one another up, to spur each other on to good works, but we also come together to work for the gospel.

The work of the gospel is our unifying purpose. God has not called you to shine a seat with your behind. We are called to be participants, not spectators. We are called to be soldiers in God's army. And we're to be unified in this thing called the gospel.

This includes understanding it and growing in our understanding of it. It also includes our sharing it with others. And this is the unifying purpose. It's our reason for being together. The gospel. But there are obstacles.

And Paul addresses in verse 28 one of the primary obstacles. He says, "...and not frightened in anything by your opponents.". Are there opponents to the gospel? Yeah, there's opponents to the gospel. In case you don't know, go share the gospel.

Make it your mission to go share the gospel with people. And be honest about their sin and their need for Christ and the fact that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone. You will find out very quickly there's opponents to the gospel.

Did you know there's opponents to the gospel in the church too? There are people in the church who would rather talk about anything else but the gospel. They would rather focus on anything else but the gospel.

You could get them to talk about car maintenance for days! Fishing for days! Sports for days! But you talk to them about the gospel. Crickets. Now am I offending you? I hope you're listening. Because Paul says there's opponents to this.

But he says something else. He says this is a clear sign to them of their destruction but of your salvation. Now what's he talking about there? Well, Paul's primary focus on the opponents are those who are actually imprisoning people over the gospel.

This has a context, remember? So the primary opponents that he's referring to here are these people who are coming after the people. The idea of prison for the gospel was actually a real thing in the first century.

And it's a real thing for people in our world today who live in other countries. To actually go to jail for the gospel was serious. And Paul knew that even though they're supposed to be striving for this unity of the gospel, there was always this fear that someone might come and overtake them because of their commitment to the gospel.

So he says look, here's the thing. All they're doing is proving their destruction and your salvation. If you are suffering for Christ, that's a demonstration of your faith in Him. And if they're making you suffer for Christ, that's a demonstration of their damnation.

All they're doing is proving what Christ said. That in this world, you will have trouble. In this world, you will have persecution. If you believe in Me, or if they hate you, know they hated Me first, Christ said.

It's just proof of what Christ has said. But you know what? He said earlier in verse 30, we're supposed to be striving side by side. We're supposed to be doing this work together, not alone. And you know what?

The one thing about standing against opponents, if you try to do it by yourself, you're probably not going to last very long. The church is about coming together and striving together for this work. It's kind of like a piece of paper.

If I hand a piece of paper to an infant, trust me, hope does it all the time. She'd tear it up. One piece of paper is nothing for hope. And she's three years old. If I hand her two sheets of paper, still easy.

Three sheets of paper, not a problem. If I handed her a book, she couldn't rip it in half. In fact, what do big strong men do to demonstrate their strength in these competitions? They tear books in half, phone books.

Why? Because that's actually pretty hard to do. And they're showing their strength. When we come, and we go out, and we're by ourselves, there is no call for lone wolf Christianity. People say, I don't need the church.

Au contraire. Don't tell me you don't need the church. Don't tell me you don't need the unified body of Christ. We do. We come together to worship and to serve and to strive together because we need one another.

We need to be spurred to good works. We need to be called to repentance. We need to be taught. And we need to be able to be together. One page torn apart. A book of pages is very strong. The same idea here.

We will stand against our opponents when we stand together. Verse 29, He says, For it has been granted to you for the sake of Christ that you not only believe in Him, but also that you suffer for His sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.

I really wish I had time just to do that passage. Because Paul says something here about our faith that's very important. He says faith is a gift. He said it's been granted to you not only to believe but also to suffer.

But what does that say about the belief? It was granted. So it actually speaks of our faith as a gift. And as a person who believes in Reformed Theology, as a person who believes that salvation is something that God gives me, it's not something I earn or something I procure, but something that I receive by God's giving it to me, that's an important passage.

Because it's been granted to me not only to believe but also to suffer, which tells me that belief has been granted. Like I said, time won't allow me to, because that would take me in a different direction and it would be unfair to do that.

But just know that that's there and it's important. But he moves on to verse 1 of chapter 2 and he stays in the same mindset because he says, So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, and being in full accord and of one mind.

What is Paul calling for here? He's calling for unity. Now here's the thing, and you've heard me say this, I've said on several occasions, we cannot have unity at the expense of truth. This is why we don't unify with Mormons.

It's why we don't unify with Jehovah Witnesses or even Roman Catholics. Because there's error, there's a fundamental rejection of the Gospel and so there's no unity there. But, just because we can't have unity and error, doesn't mean we can't have unity at all.

Paul calls us to unification. He calls us to unity. He tells us to be of one mind. The idea here is that we have the same thoughts, that we have shared thinking. We want to think like Christ thinks. This is what he says in verse 5, if you look at chapter 2 verse 5, he says, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ.

By the way, that word that he uses there, have the same mind as Christ, that's what the Greek says, is the exact same phrase he uses here in verse 2. He says we're to have the same mind as one another because we're to have the same mind as Christ.

Isn't that an interesting thought? We are to have similar thinking on the things that matter. This doesn't mean we can't have variations of opinions. And I'm not telling you to leave this place like 1984 where we're all drones and if you don't think the exact same way I think, then we're going to give you a lobotomy and take out part of your brain and that way everybody thinks exactly the same way about everything.

Okay? Not everybody thinks the same way about everything and that's not what Paul is calling us to. But he is calling us for unity in our thinking when it comes to the Gospel. He's calling us for unity in thinking when it comes to the issue of our direction as a church and the purpose for being here.

Because here's the deal, folks. If there's no unity in that, then we will never make any strides for the Kingdom because we're constantly going to be pulling in all different directions. If your hope is that this church will be a country club, then you're pulling in the opposite direction than I am.

If your hope is that this church would be some type of a commune, then you're pulling in a different direction than I am. You see, if your hope is that this church will become the local nightclub, I don't know anything.

If it ain't the Gospel, then it ain't the direction we're going. And all we're doing is pulling in all different directions. Paul says we have to have unity and a purpose and a direction and we have to be of one mind.

And I want to again challenge you with a thought based on what we talked about earlier. How can we have one mind and unity of direction if we don't know each other? How can we have one mind and unity of direction if we don't first have an understanding of what we understand the church to be?

Why do you think when you come to this church that I want to meet with you? Why do you think that I want to come to your house or go to a restaurant or have you come and sit in my office? Because I want you to understand the direction that we are trying to go and the purpose that Christ has given us in the Gospel.

I want you to understand that that we are in this together. You are not joining Sovereign Grace Country Club. We are coming together for the unity of the Gospel and the purpose of faith in the Gospel.

And if you've got other reasons, other directions, other ideas, then we call you to repent or move on. We cannot have unity if we don't understand what it's unity in. And it's unity in the purpose of the Gospel.

So that's the first thing. That's the first point. It's one another thinking begins with the unity of purpose. We've got to have that. But the second thing, I would say is even more important. One another thinking begins with the unity of purpose, but it builds, number two, on a humility of behavior.

Humility That Puts Others First

Look at verse 3. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Now, Scripture calls us to unity. It calls us to unity of purpose, unity with a shared purpose. But it must also be fostered by humbleness, which cares about one another, because unity must follow and be founded on humility, a group of prideful men will never be able to maintain unity because their pride will get in the way of that unity and ultimately cause it to be unable to continue.

Unity must follow and be founded on humility. Paul addresses in these two verses, verses 3 and 4, the birthplace of pride. Thinking ourselves more significant than we are and demanding our own interests be given priority.

Look at the word selfish ambition. He said, do nothing from selfish ambition. Selfish ambition. The verbal form of this word is derived from erathos, which means someone who works for hire or a politician.

Now, you all know what a politician is. And you know how politicians work. In fact, we're getting a good healthy dose of that at this particular time. We're watching how politicians work. And how do politicians work?

They do everything that they do to advance their own agenda. They do everything that they do out of selfish ambition, which is the idea that I'm focused on what I desire, what I want, and what I demand.

But they do so in such a way that it's sneaky and it's underhanded. They appear very encouraging to their constituents, but really it's all self-motivated. And that's the selfish ambition, the idea of a person who is partisan.

And guess what party he's of? Party of me. I'm a constituent for one party, and it's mine. The second word he uses is conceit. He says, Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. Now, this word conceit is very interesting.

Kenodoxion is the Greek word. And the root word is doxa. You might have heard of something called the doxology, right? It's a song. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. We know what the doxology is.

What does the word doxa mean? Glory. What is kenodoxion? Self-glory. The glorification of self. So he says, Do nothing from selfish ambition or self-glorification. Or conceit is the modern rendering.

Paul tells us that nothing that we do should be motivated by these two things. But beloved, I have to tell you, from experience, most of what we do is motivated by these things. Motivated by what I want, how I want it, when I want it, where I want it, and the way I want it.

How many I's are in that sentence? A bunch. I didn't count. Paul is telling us that pride is what is ultimately the danger. Here's the thing, the unspoken thing, is that the church at Philippi is a relatively good church.

When Paul writes to them, he writes to them in a positive tone, much different than the Corinthians, who he's constantly rebuking. He writes to the church at Philippi in a very loving, a very positive way, and yet he's still concerned about this one thing.

Pride. Spiritual pride can take a positive, good church and divide it right down the middle. Spiritual pride can destroy an otherwise positive church. Pride eeks into. Pride seeps in. A little bit at a time.

Most men that are prideful that I know didn't begin that way. It came as something that seeped into their life as more and more people began to judge them as more and more important than they really are and began to treat them like they're more precious than they really are and began to put them in positions that maybe they didn't even really deserve.

They begin in that pride. How many of you do plumbing? Anybody ever do plumbing work? I don't know if you do this. Every time I put pipes together, I always put a bucket under it and leave it for three days.

Now why? Why do I do that? Because water will find any way it can to seep out of those pipes. So whether I've used several gaskets and a lot of glue and I've pressed it in as hard as I can, I know just how easy it is for water to seep out of those pipes.

Beloved, that's the way pride is. It seeps in slowly. We get proud of ourselves for certain things and it takes over our thinking and it causes us to look down on other people because they don't do things the way we do.

We're pleased with the way we understand the Bible. We find somebody who doesn't understand everything just the way we do and that pride seeps in. And rather than trying to love them and help them and encourage them, we shun them and push them away and treat them like they're less.

We're pleased with our family structure and the way we raise our children and somebody else doesn't do it just the way we do it and we let that pride seep in. We're pleased with our personal devotions and the way we study our Bible and how much Bible we read and how much we do and we see somebody who doesn't do it like us and that pride seeps in.

We're pretty positive in the way we handle our money and we're pretty affluent because we've earned money. God has given us a job to earn money and we see somebody who doesn't earn as much as us and that pride seeps in.

Now here's the thing. I'm not saying we shouldn't seek for excellence in these things. We should be seeking for excellence in how we understand the Bible, how we raise our family, how we handle our finances.

These are all areas we should be seeking excellence in. But what I am saying is that when we begin to see ourselves as better than others, when we begin to see others as worse than ourselves, we begin to set ourselves up as the standard, essentially we are falling into the pit of pride and self-exaltation and that is devastating for the life of the church.

When you make yourself the standard, you cannot unify with someone else unless they are just like you. And because no one else is just like you, you're never going to be unified with anyone. You tighten the circle so tight that only you can stand there and even then it's on one foot.

Until we realize that Jesus Christ is the standard and not us, we will fail to have unity because we will constantly be focused on the wrong standard which is me. Now knowing Christ is the standard, Paul points to Him.

He points to Christ in verse 5 as the standard for humility knowing that humility is the standard for unity. He's called us to unity at the end of chapter 1, the beginning of verse 2. He's called us to humility at the second part of chapter 2.

And now he says, how do we know what humility is? Look at verse 5. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus who though He was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross.

And he goes on to talk about how every knee will bow to Christ and every tongue will confess Him. But this section here, I don't have time to do it justice. This is the Carmen Christi. This is a special section of Scripture which many scholars actually believe actually predate the writing of Paul's letter that he's actually quoting a hymn that the early church would have been very familiar with and he's using this hymn of understanding of Christ to explain what humility is.

And while I don't have time to really exegete every part of it, I do want you to understand how it fits into the overall context because what he's saying, he's saying church, you need to have humility and if you want to know what humility looks like, look at Jesus because He was God and He became a man.

And if there's nothing else in the world that's more humble than that, there is nothing more humble than the fact that the God of the universe wrapped Himself in flesh and came to this earth. He who held the world together by the word of His power came to the earth as a baby, grew up as a man, and died on a cross.

He was born in a stable. He was hung on a tree. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. And He's King of the universe. Who are you? Who are you? To exalt yourself when the God of this universe did not exalt Himself.

He said, I am one among you as one who serves. I have not come here to be served, to be served, but as one who serves. Who are you? Who am I? When my Lord and Savior came as one who serves, that I demand to be served.

Who am I that when my Lord and Savior came who was in all ways God, came in the flesh, and in doing so, it said He made Himself nothing. Now that doesn't mean He wasn't God anymore. That doesn't mean He gave up His position as God.