God's Sovereignty & Providence (Philippians 1:15-26 Ivan Solero)

Worship and Psalm 33 Call to Praise

Who could just describe the goodness of who you are, Lord? We rejoice in you, and we thank you in Jesus' name, amen.

Will you stand with me? With admiration, patience, who is like the Lord, our God? Is like the Lord, our God. Redeem his kind, will keep us in adoration. In dark grief, to gladness, who is the Lord, our God?

Our God. And holy beside with that, our God, our grief, our God, our God. There is no one, there is our God. It's great to sing praises to his name this morning. It says in Psalm 33, verse 4 and 5. For the word of the Lord is right and true.

He is faithful in all he does. The Lord loves righteousness and justice. The earth is filled with his unfailing love. Of a thousand burning suns blazing in the heavens, there is only one, he is our God.

Building up and tearing down his rivals, there is only one, the King on the throne, who was and is to come, and to the Lamb who was slain, be all glory. Now to the King on the throne, who was and is to come, and to the Lamb who was slain, be all glory.

That's blessing your glory. Lord, we stand before you knowing that you are holy. We stand before your throne undeserving. But Lord, we come and sing praises to your name. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name.

Bring an offering and come before him. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. You are holy. You are mighty. You are worthy. Worthy of praise. I will follow. I will listen. I will love you. All of my days.

I will sing. Satan does not like when we cry out to him in the power of his name and in his holiness. We can defeat Satan this morning by singing out to him,. You are holy. You are holy. You are mighty.

You are worthy of praise. I will follow. I will listen. All of my days. Sing out with me. Prince of peace, and I will live my life for you. You're my prince of peace, and I will live my life for you.

Sovereignty, Providence, and the Setting of Philippians

It is wonderful to be here. It's a privilege to come and speak to you about Paul, our Lord, the inerrancy of scripture. And Pastor John had started the whole theme of sovereignty and what does sovereignty mean for all of us.

How does it impact our lives and what does that mean? And we're going to continue in Philippians, not just what sovereignty is about, but what providence comes about and how the Lord uses that. But before we go there, I want to just give some house rules.

I was given some house rules, all right? Just got to be honest with you. So my wife, Joyce, my beautiful bride, she gave me a coaching thing this morning, and she said, look, you're going to go up there.

You can't talk fast, all right?

You really don't do that, okay?

I said, all right, okay.

And she goes, you know all that apologetic stuff that you always talk about? Anytime someone asks you a question, you start going down this path of, oh, yeah, and the history of this, and this is what's going on, and the verse over there, and she goes, try not to do too much of that, all right?

People just want to learn certain things. It's good advice. I had to rearrange certain hard wiring in my head when I was beginning to put this all together, and there's a purpose there. My name is Ivan Solero.

I'm one of the elders here. I teach with my brother, Matt, and Drew. He's not here right now, but we teach apologetics here. I also help with John Detoli, and my brother John, and then Rod. He's out there somewhere in another space with the agape class, and the Lord has been so good to us, good to this church, good to people, even in the worst of times that we're living in.

I truly believe that God has a hand on this church, and with Jeff, and with John, the rest of the deacons, it's just an amazing group of people. All the teachers here, we're very, very blessed to have that.

And with that, I wanted to just do some platforming right now.

I'm gonna be good,.

Not to go down the path of too much, but I wanted to give a sense of what sovereignty means, and then what providence means. In God's sovereignty, there's absolutely nothing that happens in the universe that is outside of God's influence and authority.

One would say,.

Well, there's the back of that.

In Revelations 21 .6,.

It says,.

God is above all things, before all things. He's the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is immortal. He is present everywhere so that everyone can know him. In Colossians, Paul reiterates, he says, God created all things.

All things together, both in heaven and on earth, both visible and invisible. And so the beginning part of Philippians, what Pastor John was talking to you about is getting an understanding of how God's sovereignty oversees everything that's happening there.

And while we have free will to make choices there, he is overseeing it.

He is everywhere. He's constant.

Now, as we get into verse 15, Paul starts to switch gears and he starts to put in his opinion through the Holy Spirit.

About God's providence.

And how God uses different people, different groups for his purpose, for his will. And to have a clear understanding of what God's providence means for all of us is.

It's a divine providence,.

It's the governance, governance of God by which he with wisdom,.

Love,.

Cares for, and directs all things in the university. The doctrine of divine providence asserts that God is in complete control of all things. So you have two things that are going on simultaneously. So you have God's sovereignty and you have his providence that's happening there.

And we know a lot about the providence part because it's written in scripture. We have many examples of that. One being Joseph, when he was sold.

Later,.

He saved Israel, basically saved mankind.

From the famine.

What he told his brothers, what you thought was evil, God would use for good.

There was Moses.

Confronting Pharaoh. He had the Israelites leave Egypt.

Rahab,.

Who let the red sash out of the window.

Or whatever was there.

To help the messengers and protect their family.

And to finally.

Take over Jericho. Job in his suffering to show God's authority and his providence.

The amazing truth about Judas.

It was Judas' betrayal that allows us to have salvation. That's a crazy thought when you think about that. And in John 17, 11, and 12, as Jesus is praying to God and he's asking for protection for the disciples but they foreknew that Judas was going to do this according to what the scripture is going to say.

And if it wasn't for his betrayal we would not be here as a church as a family of believers brothers and sisters in Christ.

Which is crazy when you really think about that.

And then from that point you jump over to Paul who saw the persecutor before his conversion on the road to Damascus and who ends up being one of the greatest Bible writers, teachers and evangelists.

The world has ever seen.

His truths that he has in his different books still impact people today and they guide people to the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 8, 28 explains it this way. And we know that for those, and catch this for those who love God all things work together for good for those.

Who are called.

According to his purpose. And Paul sets up this premise in Philippians in having the church of Philippi which is the first church to really understand what the Bible and what God's word really means and how it's going to penetrate the good news there.

So.

Before we start this part, let's pray. Father we thank you so much.

For your word.

We thank you Lord for this church for the people that are here. We thank you Lord that the Holy Spirit is here that we have leadership here that we have people that are wanting to learn.

That are opening their hearts.

And their minds to have you in their hearts Lord. We pray that the words that come out of me Lord they're not about me, they're about you Lord that everything I say and everything we talk about edifies you, glorifies you.

Worships you Lord.

We pray that these words will penetrate Lord that these words are true. We ask this in your name's name, Amen. So today's sermon is God's Providence in Joy and Suffering and it really talks about what type of believer.

You are.

In the politics class we make a big big deal about the idea of belief versus.

Faith. There's.

People that believe things and then there's actual faith that's intrinsic. Believing can be the mind. The faith is the mind.

The heart, the action.

And so we kind of.

Go back and forth and Paul references.

This in the beginning part there. Some quick facts that I want to share with you. Paul's conversion happened somewhere between 33 AD and 35 AD. If you go to Acts 9 to the road Damascus he is approached by Jesus, a bright light and.

You know.

Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?

And in that moment he is.

Converted. And his ministry lasted about.

33 years.

A lot of people don't realize that, how long it was. But it was 33 years. He wrote the first book, the prison epistle, Philippians was the first book that he wrote. It was the first church in Asia Minor.

And he was.

Under house arrest. There were four books in total that he wrote. Ephesians, Galatians, Colossians, Philippians.

And he.

Did this in a house arrest being chained to a Roman guard 24 hours a day. He was allowed to have visitors, he was allowed to have people come and go. Obviously he was passing out the letters as that happened.

He.

Did not know what his life was going to be like in the.

Next.

Months or what have you.

But whatever happened that was going to be happening there.

He was going to rejoice.

And he says this throughout.

In his letter to the Philippians.

There.

He could have cried out for release. He could have done something like why are you doing this to me Lord? It changed my whole life.

But he never did.

And the letter to the church of Philippi is one of full, full rejoicing. It's only 104 verses. Four brief chapters. But it's amazingly profound.

And.

It's really a poignant epistle from the jail's apostle.

To the beloved.

Supporting church that loved him, that he was shepherding, discipling.

And.

It kind of gives a glimpse of who he was in his intense passion for the love that he had for the people and the love that he had for Jesus Christ and the love that he had for the ministry.

That he was doing.

He also points out in the beginning part here the motives of people who were trying to undercut him, trying to make him not to be who he said he was. So.

There's a number of layers.

That happens through all this. But probably the thing that's starting to change and what we need to identify with.

Is that.

In our belief in Jesus Christ we are not just here to be.

Kind of stagnant.

But to change this world and to change it for the purpose of telling the truth. C .S. Lewis saw it this way, to be ignorant and simple now, not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground would be to throw down our weapons and betray our uneducated brethren who have under God no defense, but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen, good philosophy.

Must exist.

If for no other reason because bad philosophy needs to be answered.

And Paul talks.

About this. He.

Realizes that as he's beginning with the book of Philippians that he is laying out how the gospel of Jesus Christ is going to be penetrating.

Through people who are believers.

But through other people that not necessarily believe but just want to undercut him or say something about him. And it is a mark for us to take this seriously as a biblical plan to defend the faith. And Paul was wonderful in defending the faith everywhere he went.

So the church of Philippi, just briefly here, was started and it's in Macedonia around 49 -50 A .D. It was the first church established.

On European soil.

It's beginnings were documented in Acts 16 .11 -40.

And.

With his companions of Silas and Timothy they visited Philippi, encountered several key individuals including Lydia, the prominent business woman who really was the person that gave the financial support to go ahead and start the church.

And so throughout.

The book of.

Philippians, it's about unity, humility, joy, providing guidance and living out the Christian faith. Alright? But Paul was in prison. And what does that mean? So Rome knew that something was happening.

This group called the People of the Way was out there. And there was some undercutting that was starting to happen. So he was moved around a number of times, kept under house arrest, Acts 28 -30. And the form of detention that they had to give him was more lenient than a dungeon like I was saying before.

And he worked through that in terms of getting the inspiration through the Holy Spirit and through the people who were coming by to start writing and writing and writing. So let's read the text and see where we're at.

We're at the point now where he's in prison, he's thanked the church for their support. He thanks everyone that.

Sees where.

He's hoping the church will go to. And now he's starting to switch gears. He's pointing out the different groups that are after him and for him and the reason why that's okay and that he rejoices in that.

So starting in verse 15 he says, Some indeed preach Christ for envy and rivalry, but others for goodwill. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaims Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. In that, I rejoice. He continues, Yes, I will rejoice,.

For I know that through your.

Prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be ashamed and that with full courage, now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether be life or by death.

For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, yet which I shall choose, I cannot tell. I am hard-pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

Convinced of this,.

I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the face, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus because of my.

Coming to you again.

Opposition, Motives, and the Defense of the Gospel

So Paul's laying out now that there are challenges and there are tests in this. It's a lesson for us in terms of.

Being.

A believer in Jesus Christ. The road of being a believer is not a comfortable road. In fact, it's a warning sign if you're too comfortable being in Christ. If you're claiming in Christ and you're comfortable,.

You better do it.

Self-examination, it doesn't work that way. Paul's attesting to that, that there are people that are going to try to push them to various different directions. It's similar in our lives. We continue to try to proclaim the truth of what's happening there.

Other people that you think are friends, acquaintances that may know you, will try to stop you. It is the nature of our spiritual warfare that we're involved in and how we go ahead and address that and be able to show love and joy through the whole process.

For him, he was dealing with the Hellenistic culture trying to rival God's truth.

Through their own Greek deities.

At the same time. Of course, he had to deal with the Judaizers that were strictly going with the law. Then there were the false teachers that were coming into the church. We look back.

At the Church of Corinth and.

Paul had to deal with all the type of undercuttings from the sexual immorality in the church to the false doctrines that are being preached there. Then there were groups that were mixing the pagan ideologies with what the gospel was about and doing it within the church itself.

He was dealing with that part too. At the same time, he was having travel problems, personalities he had to deal with. Finally, there was Rome. Rome was at the point now where his penetration with the people of the way is getting to the place where these various different governors and other political facets that were involved in society are taking notice there.

They wanted to squash Jesus' rebellion. The other part of this was the animosity. That came.

From within the church.

How do you deal with animosity in the church?

He.

Starts to.

Break it out.

I put names to them.

There were three different groups that were very distinct. There was the casual observers which were the Paul voyeurs, the people who.

Knew Paul before he was Paul.

It was Saul, the persecutor.

He was an oddity. Who is this guy who.

Converted and now he's out there and he's pushing the gospel into these different areas of the world. They followed to see what's going on.

They believed.

That something had happened.

But they really didn't have faith.

In what was going on there. Even though the gospel was being preached and you had this guy here who got converted, they didn't know what to make of it. He was just an oddity to them. Then you had the second group which I'll call cultural announcers.

They believe also.

But also they didn't have.

Deep faith. They relied on the law and customs.

Paul was definitely pushing against that. He was talking about grace.

Talking about how.

God's grace through the death and the cross and the resurrection is salvation. It was totally opposite to what they were speaking about. Then the third group was these committed believers that were willing to die for Jesus.

All three played a role and God used all three through his providence to spread the good news all over. If we go into verse 15, it says some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry but others from goodwill.

Everybody was speaking about Christ but they didn't know Christ. Most of them didn't know Christ.

Within the pagan.

Society, many who were claiming to know Christ but their motives for preaching were different. There was an economic motive that was underneath that. There was a reputation motive that they were trying to do.

There was.

The motive of undercutting what Paul was doing. Since he's in prison, what a better time to go ahead and do this. Paul recognized.

This.

Back in the church of Ephesus, Paul faced the same opposition. It was not because of what he said because he was speaking truth but it was because of how he said it and what he looked like saying it. Isn't that funny how.

That works?

You can meet people out in the real world.

And they're telling you exactly what the truth is but the delivery.

May not be exactly what you like.

And they don't.

Have a presence and.

Who are you? Who are you to tell me.

Anything? We're very fortunate because in this church here we have, we call him Phil the Evangelist. It's a wonderful evangelism class and I would encourage everyone to attend it. Phil was just telling me after the first service that in a couple weeks he's going to start it up again.

So.

We're all, yeah. I got you stuck in that one.

He's going to do it again.

But but but.

What's interesting is that.

It's not.

A conversation you're going to have that you don't feel like people are just going to easily bend over especially in the world we live in right now. They're going to push back.

And they're going to push back hard.

And so.

Our defense to this thing is to know scripture and to know what the gospel means for them. And so when Paul's talking about this he's thinking about the different types of motives that people have there and.

There's a lesson in here.

When we see someone speak in truth.

Automatically assume that you're going to be suspect which gives you more reason why you need to have your defense ready to explain it, to explain the good news.

Jealousy.

Can and will motivate. That's what a lot of these people are doing.

And.

They motivate to enjoy the person falling down. And that's what they're looking for with us too as believers. They want to see us trip up. The downside is that jealousy works when it deprives others of their own selfish gain.

It never builds up, it only tears down. And Proverbs 3 is very explicit about the motives of this. It says, they all have turned aside, together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one.

So even in our sin nature our innate nature we don't have the capacity.

Without the Holy Spirit.

To go ahead and understand and our natural tendency is to go ahead and tear it down. Verse 16 goes the latter, they do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. And Paul states very clearly that he and others have a mission.

The mission is to spread the gospel everywhere anywhere they can. These are the committed believers who are willing to die in the defense of the gospel. And so out of this love that we have, we have a sense of understanding where God wants us to go and that our love should be paramount in doing that.

That it's not a situation of just going ahead and being punitive about the gospel, but saying that we are living this image of the Lord and that you.

Want part of that.

So God uses everything for his purpose and when there's a rogue element out there spreading lies and gossip, the vicious rhetoric, God will show others the caliber of that rogue soul. And that happens.

How often does that happen with us? That we're talking to people and we even people that seem to be saying, well, you know, I understand the whole Christ thing and everything else like this. And after a while God reveals the natural motivations of what these people do.

And all we can do is.

Pray for them. In some cases we have.

To forgive them. But our.

Job is to go ahead and spread the good news.

To there.

And Paul sees a light in all this. In verse 18 he goes, what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed and that I rejoice. So in his perspective of what is happening, no matter what is happening, as long as the word of Jesus Christ is coming out there in some.

Form, it's okay.

The word of mouth is everything at that time. And if people are talking about Jesus Christ, there can be some traction that's going to happen from that. And he was fine with that. And so he calls out the motives of there.

And there were two. You know, the what then or so what he poses to us in pretense, meaning what their real motive was.

And then in truth,.

Christ is being spoken of. And Paul did not approve of the motives, but for him, the salvation of souls was paramount.

And that should be our call.

That it doesn't matter like if we have it down tight. As long as we're sending the message of Jesus Christ out there, something will stick.

Something will happen.

The Holy Spirit can use that and do that. And God can and will turn whatever cursing into blessing. And his providence is at work all the time there.

Which.

Segues me into really explaining what the three groups are.

So we have this.

Casual observer. And who are they? Who is the casual observer?

Random visitors.

They saw a podcast.

Church jumpers.

Pew potatoes. Are there pew potatoes? They hang out.

They just hang out. They kind of love the church.

Thing. They love the God thing.

And.

The group we have this group here today. Back then, they view people the way as an oddity. They went against the Judaism and Hellenistic belief of that day. Like I said before, his reputation preceded him.

And so they just wanted to see this oddity.

And.

His immense.

Reputation as Saul, a persecutor that was actually killing Christians was really a dynamic story of his conversion. Like how can that possibly happen? People wanted to see that. But the church of Philippi was small.

It wasn't really that large of a church. It was about 100 congregants. They even saw the people of the way there were making such differences.

Within the country.

And the surrounding areas. That people stood up and noticed.

Cultural Christianity, Compromise, and Legalism

So.

How does that reflect for today? So in 2019, a Pew research study claims that approximately 65 of adults in the U .S. identify as Christian. Think about that for a minute. 65 in this country say they're Christian.

And what has happened is that Christian here is more of a brand as a separator.

I'm not Hindu or Islam or Muslim.

Or Buddhist. I'm a Christian. It's not really an identifier as it should be in being in Christ. It breaks down like this. 43 of Protestants are Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians. 20 are Catholic.

1 are Orthodox Christians and 1 are other Christians. If we had true in Christ believers, 65 of this country, you wouldn't recognize this place. It wouldn't be.

What we're saying it is. So we have a problem there already.

And this is a church problem. This isn't a problem about the world itself. This is inside the churches.

Themselves.

We have two different demographics that we're dealing with. Those who absolutely do not know the Lord and those who sort of claim to know the Lord.

But don't have faith in the Lord. And that's what Paul is referring to.

So you have these people that claim they know something but they have no faith in that. And it's up to us as part of our mandate as a believer in Jesus Christ to go ahead into there. Into our churches and into everywhere that we can see to spread the good news.

The second group are the cultural warriors. This is the temptation.

Of compromise.

And there are two significant types in this. The religion of wounded theology is where we're at right now. This is a form of paganism. We talk about it in an apologetics class. We call it tribal spiritualism.

This is the one where we're seeing all the time where.

Survivor.

Victimhood becomes the rite of passage in the religion of survivorship.

It's all about justice.

And victimization. And you've seen it. All of you have seen it. The religion's central focus is the transference from victim to survivor i .e. the gay movement, Black Lives Matter, CRT,.

Transgenderism,.

A sense of moralism, women pastors, social justice, abortion, to name a few. And they're perverting grace to go.

Between what sin really.

Is about.

And the people who advocate this truly believe Jesus represents this. It's not a question of like well, I'm admitting that I'm doing something absolutely wrong. They believe and they change the gospel to fit that narrative.

They change scripture to fit that. They're not interested in truth and they express their truth only in fairness, freedom, and justice instead of pursuing God's truth. Political conformity underscores their own ideology and replaces biblical truth by bending scripture to fit their own narrative.

In the end,.

It's all about power and it's.