231112 GodInUs

The Philippians’ Obedience and Paul’s Pastoral Confidence

Well, the message this morning is based upon two verses, kind of in the middle of the book of Philippians, one of the freedoms that a pinch-hitter preacher as I have become in this church, joyfully become, is I can sort of pick out what is interesting to me in Scripture and going through a series is a wonderful thing, but I have that freedom of whatever kind of catches my spirit, and God willing it will catch yours as we look at Philippians chapter 2 and verses 12 and 13.

And we see how it is that the Lord moves within the church and how the Lord bends our will to His, and if you ever wonder how is it that I am to grow in holiness and sanctification, how is it that I become closer to Christ's image, further from sin, and nearer to the righteousness that God has revealed in His Son Jesus Christ, this is one of the answers, one of many answers in Scriptures, and just the one that we will look at this afternoon.

If you would stand for the reading, just for those two verses, Philippians chapter 2 verses 12 and 13, the Apostle Paul writes to the church there in Philippi and writes to us through all time, Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work, for His good pleasure. God bless the reading, and now the proclamation of His word. Please be seated. Well, let's just jump right into the text here.

We find Paul immediately says, therefore, my beloved, and we'll work on therefore in a moment. Good homiletics always ask, what is the therefore, therefore, and we'll touch on that a bit. But the Philippians, we need to understand first, they were Paul's beloved.

He calls them beloved, uses this term of endearment with them, because he was their father in.

The gospel.

He had gone to Philippi, and he had struggled there to found that church. In Philippi, you remember Paul faced down persecuting Jews. In Philippi, he stood firm for Christ. Remember when the demonized girl was prophesying and making money for her owners, and he commanded the demon out of her?

Well, then they saw that their hope for a prophet was lost, and they accused Paul before the magistrate. This is all in Acts chapter 16. And what happened there? Well, he was beaten by the lictors, L-I-C-T-O-R-S.

They had lictor's rods, which lacerate your back. This is a terrible beating. And then what happened? He was thrown in jail, and he was chained to the wall with his back lacerated, bruised back against the wall there, the stone wall, with his friend Silas, his partner in the.

Gospel.

And there in that Philippian jail, you recall that the doors burst open, the chains fell.

Off.

I love that from the hymn, And Can It Be? My chains fell off, my heart was free, but they stayed, and the Philippian jailer was.

Converted.

A beloved place for Paul. And he wrote this letter to them from prison. The great apostle looks at this beloved church, he calls them my beloved, and he reminds them that his physical presence there was unnecessary for their obedience.

Their obedience to the therefore, which will come to. And he rejoiced that he was confident it wouldn't be needed. He wouldn't have to be there, they would obey in any case. Now isn't it a parent's dream to know that they can leave, and that while they're gone, and not correcting in person, that the children are obeying?

I don't know how often we actually experience that, I've got a few smiles here, but wouldn't that be wonderful, and isn't that wonderful when it happens? This is Paul's confidence there in that church.

He says he knows that they will obey, even as he's absent. He was absent where? He was absent in prison once again. So let's look at the therefore for a moment. He says, therefore, my beloved, and we should just very quickly, though that's not the core of this message, but I want us to remember what the therefore is there for.

The verses I read, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my absence, excuse me, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation.

And he says, therefore, my beloved, you do this, and what's the therefore in that place.

About?

Well, it's everything that came before, and that's pretty simple. Verses chapter two, or chapter two, verses one through four, is where he says, do nothing from ambition, do nothing from conceit, but in humility, serve others, that's a command.

He has.

He says, therefore, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. That's part of the therefore. Verse three in that sequence could be read to stop doing things that way. Stop doing things from your own ambition, stop doing things from conceit, and so forth.

And then verses five through 11, the great parabola, as we call it, as it presents to us Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, who became man, he came down to earth to die for our sins. He humbled himself to the obedience of God, even to death, even death on a cross, and therefore God has highly exalted him.

So that's your parabola, from heaven to earth and back again. And that's verses five through 11. And that shows Jesus, his humility, serving others, and it's not just an example, it's more than an example.

Paul says, to have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. What mind? The mind of Jesus Christ that led him to follow the Father's will even to death on a cross. Have that mind in yourself that would serve others the way Christ Jesus served his people.

Have this mind because it's yours in Christ Jesus. In other words, Jesus' thought processes, his very way of thinking that led him to embrace the Father's will, that he should serve the Father by serving us, by the cross.

Have this mind among yourselves, and that's the therefore in verse 12. He gave us more than an example. By his Spirit and his Word, he's given us his mind. He's given us his very thought processes in the Word of God.

Now church, the call for us is the same as it was for the Philippians, to obey the gospel, to obey the Word of God. Our behavior as Christians has to be motivated, has to be designed after our Lord Jesus Christ, and especially his obedience in the cross.

So the example of the Lord Jesus Christ is a matter of historical fact. The gospels are historical records. They are factual records of the life of Jesus Christ, and sufficient as that is, and it gives us more.

He gives us the means to maintain our progress and holiness towards the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. He gives us this means in himself. Do you understand that as we come together as a body?

Do you understand what the means is by which we grow in the Lord, by which we are molded more and more into the image of Christ, away from ourselves and towards the image of God that he would have his people to be?

How does this happen? How does this occur? For it is God who dwells in you, both to work and to will for his good pleasure. Now Paul's confident that they're going to obey his prohibitive command, the conceit and rivalry ambition, the things we spoke of just a moment ago that came earlier.

All that will cease. He writes from prison, and so in any practical way, he can't be there to monitor or enforce.

Things.

So how is he so confident? How is he so confident that they will obey, that they will follow what he says, that they will stay in church, that they will be submissive to one another and serve one another and follow in gospel truth?

I think there's a couple of reasons here. The first is that he had seen their gospel obedience. He had been there. When he writes, as you have always obeyed, he's drawing on actual experience. Verse 1 -5, he writes of their partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

So first, he's confident because he knows his people. He's seen them. He's seen their gravity towards the Lord Jesus Christ. He's seen how seriously they take his word and with what high esteem they hold the gospel and understand that there are ethical implications of the fact that Christ Jesus died for your sins and that God gave you faith to believe that core message.

It implies something and it means something in our life and he had seen it in them firsthand while he was there. That's the first reason he's confident that they will obey even when he's not there. And the second is that Paul's confidence is founded on a certainty that the gospel took root in them by an act of God.

Understand this, that God finishes what he began. God finishes his work. And Paul even tells them earlier that I'm confident that he who began a good work in you will complete it at the day of Christ Jesus.

This is a confidence that Paul has. This is one of the reasons he says that he is sure that they will continue to obey even when he's not there. God finishes what he begins. He began that work in them as he began that work in you.

If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's not just, okay, I believe what's next. It's I believe and therefore I now have a gospel life, a life of repentance, a life of growth in the Lord Jesus Christ, a hard life, a cross bearing life.

There's more to it than just I believe, now let's get on with things. God finishes what he began. What he began when he gave you faith to believe, when he gave the Philippians faith to believe, is to work you to have worked them into the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

God finishes what he begins. We even begin the scripture this way. Think about this for just a moment. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God started something. And then at the end we have, just in that chapter, and God saw everything he made and behold, it was very good.

God finished what he started. And that's the idea behind he who began a good work in them will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. So this is what it means. Here's how this works. Live your life according to the precepts of the gospel, growing ever further from sin and closer to God, which you are able to do.

And why are you able to do it? Because it's God who's actually doing this work in you.

Working Out Salvation in the Life of the Church

In you.

A different preposition than among you. In you, by the very presence of his Holy Spirit, doing this work that you should will and others want to do something, have a desire for something, to work, to put effort, to put extreme labors into something, to will and to work towards a goal, his good pleasure.

That's what this is about here. So he says, therefore, my beloved, as you've always obeyed, so now not only in my presence, much more in my absence, and now this. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

And then what does it mean to work it out? Why should they fear and tremble as they do so? Why should we, when he says fear and tremble, does it mean I should go along in my Christian life with my hand over my head, being fearful that a lightning bolt's going to snipe me from heaven because of something I did wrong?

No, that's not the kind of fear that Paul has in mind here. That's being scared. That's being afraid. And in Christ, that kind of terror has been taken. No, that's not what he means at all by fear and trembling.

He doesn't either have eternal salvation in mind. He has in mind this ethical behavior of the church which has to flow out from us as a consequence of our eternity having been decided by the Son's cross.

The ethical behavior of this church towards one another primarily, primarily towards each other, that ethical behavior because of the cross of Christ, the implications of the gospel. That's what he means when he says work out your salvation, work out the implications, work out the meaning, work out the life force of the gospel within yourself.

Exert your energy, your physical effort, your mental exertion, the application of all your giftedness and your skills to the work of the gospel. And in this limited context, just these two verses, what does that work?

It's amongst each other. It's our growth together as a body, knit together as Paul says in Ephesians 2, so that together we grow and grow into the image of Christ together as a church and as a body. Now, too many Christians take this as an individual call that I can do this on my own as long as I've got that salvation.

Okay, what's next? What's next is I'm just going to go along on my own trajectory, decide what I think the Bible says, I'm going to do what I think is right and what I think makes Jesus happy and on and on.

It's just me, me, me, me, me, without the counsel of pastors, without the safety of many counselors. Now, too many Christians take this as an individual call and this is a problem exacerbated by the pandemic because that's when Zoom meetings and the online meetings and all this stuff came about and people who were tending towards individualism in the first place now found a great avenue for it.

Lone Ranger types found church in their screen of the laptop or on their phones or on their PC or wherever they wanted to be. I personally think Paul would be appalled, it suffices for church these days.

I think he would be appalled at it. Listen to this, you cannot grow in Christ by yourself. You cannot grow into the image of Jesus Christ alone. If that were possible, then Paul would have said so or John would have said so or Peter would have said so or James would have said so or Jesus would have said so.

If that were even possible, it's not. You grow in holiness and knowledge of the Lord the same way that the rest of us do, the way that God intends and we do it together. Paul doesn't say that God works in you, individual.

You Mary Jane or you John Paul, that's not what he says at all. He's speaking in plural here. We spur one another onto good works together. We edify one another. Look at all the one another's in the scripture.

We do this together. We admonish one another. We rebuke one another. We speak words of truth to one another in love. We encourage one another. We weep together. We rejoice together. It's all together that we grow.

There's a call to the church that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now by this do we deny individual responsibility to study, to pray, to repent, to grow yourself into the image of Christ by knowing what he says in scripture?

No.

By this we don't deny it. We establish it. And here's how I think it works. Let's take Joe Everyday Christian. And Joe Everyday Christian suddenly picks up something for easy reading like The Death of Death and the Death of Christ by John Owen.

And when he reads this book, suddenly a new vision of Christ and his cross comes to him and God's sovereignty just explodes into his mind as it were. And he takes a leap further into the image of Christ.

He's more awestruck by the cross. He sees more of God's love poured out on us and how that was done by Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, the eternal Son of God who came and became man for our sake. And by that his love of God and his growth into the image of Christ is accelerated.

So Joe Everyday Christian having done this, he grows a little bit. And now what does he do? He goes to church and he finds John Everyday Christian. And he says, hey brother, you know I just read this book.

Now it's not the Bible, but it talks about the Bible and it's by this guy who died years ago, centuries ago. And he explains it to him and he goes, I never thought of that. What a wonderful truth. You know, you just made Jesus a little bit bigger for me.

Thank you. God bless you for that. And then maybe he goes home and in family worship he has a little bit more excitement and the children see that Jesus is a little more real. And on it goes and on it goes.

Do you see how this works? All the pronouns that Paul uses here are plural. It doesn't deny, it exaggerates personal responsibility to learn yourself and to you yourself to grow and to come here and benefit all of us by your growth so that we all go together.

When Paul says, work out your own, he's using plural, not singular. He's using plural. For it is God who works in you, you, the plural, not the singular, the plural, to will and to work. And he has a mind that's mutually edifying body growing together.

Again, read Ephesians 2 and see this metaphor of this body being a building that's growing up as Jesus Christ builds his church by all of us together, working out this salvation, the ramifications, the implications of it as we together as a body learn how to live as a body according to the Word of God.

I learn and I grow that I might spur you on towards the upward call of God in Christ Jesus our Lord as you do me. As that person next to you does the person across the hall or the aisle. That's how this is supposed to work, that we come together.

There's something there in verse 13 that's of key importance and I want to argue that this thing that is of key importance here would be impossible in virtual church or any solitary lone wolf independence type of so-called worship because it ain't.

It's not worship that way. It's fear and trembling. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. This is the manner in which we work out this mutual salvation we have, fear and trembling, both of which are worth a little bit of explanation.

Now just as salvation we work out is not salvation unto eternal life, it's working out salvation speaking to those who know salvation unto eternal life. Fear and trembling here is not terror, is not frightful apprehension that God will destroy our body or soul and health forever because that was all decided on the cross.

Rather it is the fear which is a state of awestruck wonder that we have a God so wonderful and so wise and so just and so merciful and so holy and so other, a God so ineffable, a God so lofty and sublime as is our God that he should be with us, that he should actually be in us.

He's in us for he's God who works in you. No mere spectator of our worship, the Lord God by his Spirit because of the intercession of his Son Jesus Christ our Savior, he's more than with his people, though he is with us, but more than that he's in us.

Now this is a matter of fear. Work out that salvation with fear and trembling, brothers and sisters. Not fear that you're going to be condemned. Again, very important, Jesus determined that on the cross.

If you believe in that cross and what he accomplished for us on that cross, condemnation is a thing of the past. Fear that is that awestruck wonder that this God would deign to come from heaven and by his Spirit be with and in us.

He's in his people and then we have to tremble, tremble. As in Isaiah chapter 66 verse 5, hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word. And he's calling the people who tremble because they believe the word and they recognize the God who breathed that word out to them.

Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word. Ezra chapter 9 verse 4, then all who tremble at the words of the God of Israel because of the faithfulness of the returned exiles gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice, they trembled because they believed that word.

They were appalled because the word of God is living and active, is sharper than any two-edged sword, and that had pierced through them to the division of their soul and of their spirit, of their joints and of their marrow, and had discerned the thoughts and intentions of their heart.

Hard surgery, difficult surgery as it's often pictured to be, but good work and work that we could tremble at. Tremble not in fear that it's going to do me harm. Tremble that a God so holy and other than us would do this work in you, would give you the word, and by that word transform you.

Now, it's not tremble like I'm going to get smited from heaven. Jesus will smite on your behalf. It's trembling in this way of the awestruck wonder that I just can't wrap my mind around this. My spirit is too small to even conceive of a God like this.

It's like the old slave spiritual, when they look at the cross, it had the refrain, oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Do you remember that song? I'm not even going to try and sing it for you, I'd ruin it, but it's about looking at the cross.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? And sometimes it makes me tremble, tremble, tremble. It's like if you look at that cross and your love expands so much for a God who would have his Son be crucified on my behalf, it makes me tremble with emotion, makes me tremble with something deep inside that I can't even translate.

I go to Romans 8 and I say, Lord God, I pray to you about this and I don't even know what.

To say.

I pray the Holy Spirit to intercede for me and to bring my prayer to you because all I can do is tremble, tremble at a God like this. I don't intend my sermon to be a polemic against people who worship at home and I thank God that we live in a day of technology so that people who cannot be here can at least participate by watching.

My wife cannot be here today because the pain from her cancer rose up last night and so she's too tired to be here, but she can watch. I know she's watching right now. Thank God for that. Thank God when we're ill, we know that our brothers and sisters are tuned in and at least hearing and watching the progress.

But even you, who we love so much and are joined to this local body, I would argue you cannot fear and tremble at the Word of God from a distance the way you do when we're here face to face, together, physically in this place, which is what Paul had in mind, what Jesus had in mind, all the apostles, that it is a gathered church that is in mind.

Here.

Now, together we sing, together we pray, together we hear the Word, together we repent because of the Word, together we tremble in awestruck wonder as we know Christ's presence working in us to become like Him.

And if you tell me you can do that from the other side of the world or even from the other side of town, all I can say is there's more hope for a fool. Now, if you can't be here, please log on. Please use the means that we have available to us.

Paul says to the Epicureans and the Stoics in Acts chapter 17 that God determined our times and in our times we have that technology, but don't abuse it. And do not substitute the screen on whatever device you can think of for church.

And remember, when Paul says to work out your salvation, all of us together with fear and trembling, I don't think anyone can win the argument that they actually fear and tremble from such a distance, enough of that.

God’s Good Pleasure, the Spirit’s Work, and the Bent Will

So what then do we find at the end of our works? What are we working towards? What's the goal of this? The upward call of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, that's one way he puts it to the Philippians. And in this immediate context, chapter 2 verse 13, we work for his, that's God's, for his good pleasure.

This is what we're accomplishing. This is what God is accomplishing in us as he works in us, as he travels, as he dwells amongst us and in us and bends us all to his will, binds us all together as a church so that that will, that good pleasure of God is our common goal and we're all reaching out the same way to the same goal.

And by the diversity that we have, read 1 Corinthians 12, each of us having a part to play, a unique perspective, something that will bring me up a half a notch, and I can bring you up three quarters of a notch, and somebody brings up an eighth of a notch, and then we go two notches and we all together grow like this.

It's God who's doing this. It's God who works in us to will, to transform our desires, to make us want what he wants, to will and to work. Now that we have God's mind, now that we have a will that is God's will, now we're ready.

To work.

Our desires changed to his, the will of the heart, the desire of the flesh, which were once at one time one of the same. Do you remember when you were by nature a child of wrath? Can you look back to that time?

You had no conflict about the sins you committed. They were one and the same. Your spirit, your heart, the things you did, it was all coincided. God has changed that. It was will for his good pleasure.

And in that, he's given us a bit of a conflict, has he not? Read Galatians 5, 16 to 22, and we have the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. Two different words, by the way, and we're not going to go into that in any detail.

We have time. But read that to see the conflict. Here are the works of the flesh, here are the things that you desired to do. Here was your will when it had no conflict with your spirit. And then the fruit of the spirit, which is love, joy, peace, and the rest.

But now you're in some conflict because your flesh, your members, remember the sin. And every now and then make you want to reach out to it and your spirit, now that new spirit, that new heart God gave you, says, no, I don't want to do this.

I'm going to fight against it. I'm going to resist it more and more. And it's God who's given you that conflict, and it's God who is now working in you to change that will more and more to his will so we can do his work.

It was Jesus in his humanity who prayed three times, and that ended in, not my will, but yours. And that was after his third prayer. Now, Jesus' will and the Father's will were in perfect harmony. Yours and mine need some work, do they not?

Does not your will and my will need more and more to be conformed to God's, to Christ's? No, we do need to be changed. We do need God working in us to bend our will, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

And it's work that only God can do, and it's work that God intends by the apostolic word that we have that we do together, all of us together as a body, lifting one another up, pulling each other along, spurring one another on to good works.

If your will is not bent to God's will, then all that you do is what the apostle calls or what the prophet calls filthy rags. God works in you to soften that flint-hard forehead. His spirit applies to you the redemption you have in Christ Jesus.

He takes out the stony, cold, dense heart, the heart of stone that was in the first few verses of our chapter, the one that's bent towards rivalry and conceit and self-will and all the rest, and he gives a heart of flesh so that we can say with the apostle, and such were some of you and such was I.

But it is God working in you to change that will. It is God who gave you a heart that desires to know that will and to work towards it together with all of us as we as a body grow up into that image more and more.