Having an Eternal Mindset

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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This is a message that was delivered back last September in the

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Equip NorCal. This was in Redwood City, California and we hope that you enjoy this.

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This was a message I delivered on the issue of having an eternal perspective which is essential when we want to deal with things in life, deal with things of trials and tribulations and calamity.

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And this message may be one that will help you as you try to gain an eternal perspective on life.

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Welcome to the Rap Report with Andrew Rapoport where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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I teach an online class which means I'm a teacher. I will be grading you at the end of today on your notes.

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There will be a pop quiz, no, there won't be a pop quiz, maybe. But if you would turn to chapter 1 of Philippians, Philippians chapter 1, and maybe it's my tradition or maybe it's just more out of reverence for the

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Word of God, I'll ask you when you get to Philippians 1 if you would rise for the reading of God's Word. And I'm going to start, so we have some context,

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I'm going to start in verse 12. It's always good to read the Bible in context. We're going to focus on 19 and following, but I want to start in verse 12.

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I'm going to read aloud. I'm going to read out of the ESV which I have before me. But as I read, follow along whichever translation you have.

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But Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote this in Philippians 1, verse 12.

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I want you to know, my brothers, that whatever has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.

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And most of the brothers have become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

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But some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill.

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The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.

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The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

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What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth,

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Christ is proclaimed and in that I will rejoice. Yes, I will rejoice.

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For I know that through your prayer 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 at all ashamed, but that with full courage, now as always,

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Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

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For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

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If I am to live in the flesh, that means more fruitful labor for me.

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Yet which I shall choose, I cannot tell. I'm hard pressed between the two.

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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.

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

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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are so amazed at the attitude that Paul would have in the situation that he was in.

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There are probably more than a few in this building right now who are struggling.

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Some maybe even a severe struggle. You never promised that we would be without struggle.

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But we look at Paul's life, we see that he had a perspective that was eternal.

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Lord, as we may be struggling even greatly with things in our life, that we have trouble putting those things aside.

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Even in this hour of the proclamation of your word, we ask that you would bring the words of Paul to life to our minds through the power of the

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Holy Spirit that we would understand his writings. Understand your word and that you, in the power of the

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Holy Spirit, would apply it to our lives, to the struggles that each of us have that may be different from one another, that you would apply your word so that we would have the perspective that Paul had.

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That even imprisonment would be something we can rejoice in. We ask this in your name.

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Amen. You may be seated. I want to give you some context for this book quickly.

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It's always important to understand who the author is, when he has written, who he's writing to, the circumstances of the writing.

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It's a general rule you always want to know whenever you deal with a book of scripture. The author of this book is

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Paul. He is writing to the Philippians because of the fact, and you don't get to see this until chapter four, but Paul was imprisoned and he had

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Epaphroditus who comes and he's taking care of him. Prison back then was not like prison like you and I think of.

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They didn't have satellite dish and wait systems. Prison back then meant that you barely got a substance to live off of unless you had someone on the outside paying guards to bring you food and other things that you would need.

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So without that help, Paul was in trouble and this Philippian church, which had some wealth to it, was sent this man to take care of Paul, but he got so sick, almost to the point of death.

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He had to go back. Paul sends him back. Paul sending this letter because he knows when he's sending them back, he's sending back his help.

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He knows what's at stake and he knows the Philippians are going to be upset with him. So he's kind of saying, hey, I'm sending them back.

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Here's why. He also knew about some conflicts in the church and he wants to set that straight too.

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So that's the purpose of his writing. He understands something about conflict.

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Now, Philippi is a really interesting town. Philippi is a very special town.

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Philippi was a place where if you were in the army, you would serve your term.

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You can get up to being a general. If you retired as a general, the Roman government gave you citizenship and land.

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See, back then you weren't a citizen just because you were born in a country. You had slaves, you had freemen, and you had citizens.

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There were rules for citizens that didn't apply to everybody else. And so here in Philippi is where all the generals like to retire to.

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You got a large military brain in Philippi with lots of money and Roman citizenship.

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Philippi is the only city outside of Rome where if you were born in Philippi, you were a

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Roman citizen. So this is a big deal, this city. And Paul is going to write that and he's going to talk about things like obedience and he's going to talk about unity because his main emphasis is the unity of the church here.

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But here's something that you may not see when you go through this. Here he's writing to a church. He's sending this person back and he's in prison.

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Now, if I was to ask for a raise of hands, how many of you would like to go to prison? Even in our prison, we'd probably say no.

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Would you be rejoicing if we had to go to prison? Probably not, especially when we know we're innocent.

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Right? As Americans, we want to fight for our rights. And we even think we have rights that we really don't have, but we still fight for them anyway.

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And so here's Paul and he's in prison for the cause of Christ. He says the entire imperial guard knows that.

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It's a really interesting thing of history. In some historical documents, we saw that these guards that were referenced, it said that they had to keep changing them often.

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Now, Paul was actually chained to guards throughout the day and they had to keep changing them.

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That wasn't a normal routine that they would change these guards up with a prisoner. The theory is that Paul looked at two guys that he's chained to and said,

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Hey, I got a captive audience. Let me tell you about Christ. And they became Christians and would be kept getting changed out.

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That's kind of tough to do when you have a guard that can beat you for any reason. Oh, wait, he was a

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Roman citizen. They couldn't do that. You see, even though he was imprisoned, he didn't have his trial yet.

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There are certain things they could not do to Paul because he was a Roman citizen. And so you look at this.

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Here he is. He starts talking at the passage that we really started to read. I want to look at verse 15, just to give you some of this context.

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Because I don't know if you've ever had the experience where someone is slandering you.

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They're completely lying. You know it. They know it.

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But they do it anyway. That's Paul. He is in prison. And he says that these people, he's saying that because his imprisonment, because he's in prison, he's sharing the gospel with the guards.

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Everyone is hearing this. Everybody knows why he's imprisoned. And here he is.

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And he has these people that are getting emboldened to share the gospel. Some of you came out with us yesterday after the conference ended.

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And we went into Redwood City just to hand out gospel tracks. And I know some that were just like, hey,

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I'm just here to observe. But isn't it so much easier to just hand out that gospel track when everyone else is with you?

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And everyone else is doing that? It was so much easier. That's basically the encouragement that Paul was giving to these people.

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It's just so much easier. When you look at Paul, and he's still sharing the gospel even in prison.

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Well, I'm not in prison. I can do this. And then he starts saying that he realizes that he's emboldening some.

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But there's others who are doing it because they love him. There's others, he says, that are doing it because, he says, they're doing it out of selfish ambition and rivalry.

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Out of pretense, out of falsehood. Why? He says they're to afflict him in his imprisonment.

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They're doing this specifically because of the fact that they want to afflict him.

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And they know it's false. And they know it's selfishness. Now, how do we feel?

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This is a problem, actually, we have as Americans. We love our individualness.

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We love our rights. And we fight for those things. Paul is rejoicing in people that are slandering him because it's making the gospel go out further.

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Is that the mindset we would have? Okay, maybe not. Whenever I come to this passage,

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I think of a friend of mine. I was a counselor at an addiction recovery center, a live -in center.

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And one of the other guys that worked there, he wasn't always a Christian. He had gone through the center. And he went back to Washington State to visit his mother.

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And it's the night before he flies out. He had a very early flight. We hadn't actually heard from him for like a week.

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He was supposed to come back and no one heard anything. And so what ended up happening was, it was a holiday weekend.

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He was supposed to fly out first thing in the morning. So he figured he'd left his mom's house not to wake her up too early.

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If you need to get a hotel right by the airport, just pick up a shuttle to the airport. And he figured he'd go get a cup of coffee before he packed in for the night.

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So he goes, gets coffee. Guy comes up to him, walks up and says, you know, ask him like if he has a light for a cigarette.

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And he said no. And two bicycle policemen come riding right up to him, right at that moment.

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And they asked these two guys to empty their pockets. My friend was like, okay, sure, whatever.

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He was watching this homeless guy that was asking for a light and some money. Empty his pockets.

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He found a, you know, crack pipe. Found some marijuana. Found some blank credit cards that could be used to, you know, to make fake credit cards.

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And my friend said he was sitting there looking at this guy and goes, boy, is this guy in trouble. And then all of a sudden he heard the other officer say, let that guy go.

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We want him pointing to my friend. We have an arrest warrant for him. My friend's like, say what?

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And they put him in prison. He was in over because it was a holiday weekend. He was there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

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They had a full court on Tuesday. So he wasn't heard until Wednesday. So he gets into the prison.

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He's sitting there and there's one bed open and there's a Bible there and it was open to Romans.

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So he gets there and he starts reading aloud the book of Romans and expounding on its meaning.

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And so he was there those several days and it came time for his arraignment. And before they brought him up, they were looking through the docket and the judge said, excuse me, what is this one?

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We have no case for here. We have no record of this person and any arrest warrant.

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Why is he in prison? And so the guards came down to free him to let him know there's no case here.

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We don't know what happened. We don't know why you were arrested. We can't explain it. And my friend said, excuse me, can you hold on a minute?

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I'm not done. I'm sharing the gospel with someone. You have to wait. Four people had gotten saved through his imprisonment.

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Two more he kept in touch with after he got out. He has no idea if people would say why he was imprisoned.

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He says, oh, no, I know I was imprisoned. Because four people needed to hear the gospel and two more

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I needed to continue talking with. He could have been very beat up and felt like, you know, why is this happening to me?

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That wasn't him. He said, God, you got me here. What do you got me here for? Let's see what you're going to do.

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That's Paul. That's Paul. Paul's like, what do you have me here for? People are going to slander me.

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Okay, that's what it is. Now, how could Paul have an attitude like that?

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What gives a person to when their reputation is being destroyed, they can say,

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I can rejoice. Sorry, Pastor Steve knows

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I'm kind of going through this in my own life right now. So unplanned by the time that I had determined this, sometimes you have to be careful what you plan to preach.

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But here's the thing. Look at what he says in verse 19, because starting in 19 is going to give you what it is that allows

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Paul to go through something like this and rejoice in people that are slandering him, even though the gospel is going forth.

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This is actually the heartbeat of striving for eternity.

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This is where we got the idea of the name. Well, actually, we were going to call the ministry,

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I was going to call the ministry Eternal Perspectives. I was supposed to put the paperwork in Monday. And I went to a conference on Friday and met

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Randy Alcorn. And he introduced himself to me. I'm Randy Alcorn from Eternal Perspectives.

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Oops. Okay, we're changing the name. And at the time, the website was striving for eternity.

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So we went with that. But the thing is that what it is, what

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I see in Paul's life here is this is what he was doing. He was striving for eternity, for an eternal perspective.

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Eternity meant more to him than this temporal life. And when you can get to that point in your life,

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I don't know that I'll ever get there. I'm not like Paul. But if you can get there, you could deal with what Paul dealt with and have the attitude that Paul had.

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Whatever suffering we have in our life, we can get through that when our mindset is fixated on being with Christ, not on earth.

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It doesn't mean we're looking to just ignore it. You know, you've heard the phrase, so heavenly minded, no earthly good.

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Don't be that way. That's usually someone that is like, if you notice,

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Paul had some earthly good. You see, he was so heavenly minded that he was earthly good.

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That's the proper way it should be. We shouldn't be so earthly minded that we're no heavenly good.

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And we shouldn't be so heavenly minded we're no earthly good. We should be like Paul, who is so heavenly minded that he is earthly good.

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You know, John MacArthur says that there's, he says, there's folks in his church that he's going to see in heaven one day. He just hopes he'll recognize them.

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That when they're glorified, they haven't changed so much that he doesn't recognize who they are. And, you know, we want to keep growing in our walk.

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Keep in mind, Paul did not get to the point where he writes us in Philippians in a day.

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This was a slow development over time. If any of you have read the autobiography of George Mueller, people read that book and they're just like, oh man,

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I wish I had faith like that guy. I mean, he would just pray, Lord, we got no food for the orphans.

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Provide some food and a milk truck breaks down or a bread truck breaks down right outside the orphanage and people like, wow,

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I wish I had faith like that. People often don't read the introduction to that book where George Mueller explains the reason he started an orphanage because he said,

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Lord, I want people to see what living by faith is like. What's the greatest thing that I could do in my culture to that would be the most extreme way where I have to be completely dependent upon you.

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And he started orphanages. But the thing is, he also says in there that he didn't have that faith always.

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He says, I'm putting this autobiography out. He says, I'm putting this out so people would know that that faith came slowly, taking one step after another.

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And that's how faith is developed. Paul did not have this faith from the beginning. It was developed over time, over those smaller trials that he had.

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And he had great trials and they prepared him for this. And there's trials in our life that if we're going to be honest, we would like to avoid, wouldn't we?

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We kind of want to skirt around those difficult times, but it is usually going through a storm that we grow, that we mature.

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Paul went through those storms of life and matured through that. And to a point where he has this perspective that we see, he ends up saying, he's saying to the

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Philippians that he knows that their prayers are going to help him for his deliverance.

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Now, this is one of the last letters he writes. This is his second imprisonment. If you know much about Paul, was he delivered from that second imprisonment?

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History tells us he lost his head. By the way, why do we think he lost his head and not crucified?

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Because he was a Roman citizen. Roman citizens don't get crucified. See, citizenship's a big deal.

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And what you end up seeing is that he never got out of this imprisonment. And he'll say later on, he was confident that he would get out.

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And guess what? He didn't. He lost his life while in imprisonment.

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People go, oh, see, he was wrong. Well, God never told him he was going to get out.

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This is Paul's confidence. Little thing when we read scripture, we have to read and understand that God used writers to write in such a way that they use their own style of writing, their own personality.

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This is Paul's personality coming out. And it's accurate to what Paul believed. God never gave him a confirmation that he would be free from that imprison.

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And some would argue, why would he ever have that confidence when he was told in Acts that he would be bound and brought before a judge?

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He was prophesied. I think that he was convinced that he would go before Caesar.

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And that before Caesar, he would be let free. That's what I believe was his conclusion.

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And I think he thought that God wanted him to continue to serve the different churches, Philippians being one of them.

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And what we end up seeing is that sometimes we have an idea of what we think. And we can be very confident in that. We think we know what

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God's will is. And sometimes we're wrong. Sometimes people get very upset at that because we often make our will

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God's will. What we always have to be doing is aligning our will with God's will.

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And Paul is having a confidence, but it turns out as we know history, we're looking in hindsight that that confidence was misplaced in a sense.

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Because he wasn't free. He didn't go free. But that doesn't change his own heart.

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But let's look at verse 20, because this is where we really want to focus. He says, my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but with full courage now as always be honored in my body, whether life or death.

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So this is the thing we're going to deal with the issue of life and death. You see that he's confident in his body.

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Why would he say that? Well, you know, he's got marks on his body that show his confidence. He had been beaten.

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He'd been whipped 39 times. In case you don't know why they'd whip someone 39 when the punishment was 40.

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You were not allowed to exceed 40 lashes in the old testament. So they would do 39 just in case they miscounted.

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Because the thought is if you go too far, you'll kill a person. So going just to the point of death.

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And he had that a couple of times. He suffered many things. And when you end up seeing here, he's going to now talk about this issue of life or death.

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Many of us do a lot of things to try to stay alive, right? We want to extend our life.

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Some of us try to stay fit. Okay, some of us don't. I've been joking with pastor.

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I really, I've been motivated to get fit all of a sudden. And I probably wouldn't be if it wasn't for one simple thing.

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I had this date, November 11th, where I have to fit into a tux for my daughter's wedding. And I am going to fit into that tux, right?

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There are things that could motivate us. And there's plenty of people that are motivated to extend their life.

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And they focus so much on their life now, whether it be in trying to be financially stable or in keeping their body fit to have longer life, or making sure that everything medically is, they stay healthy.

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And so many people spend their time trying to live. They don't think about death. I'm going to argue that wasn't

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Paul's mindset. Now, I know when we look at verse 21, many people memorize this and they apply it.

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And I'm going to give you a warning upfront. I'm sorry if I ruin like your life verse, and I tell you what it actually means, forgive me.

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But we want to be accurate with Scripture. Because this is how a lot of people read this. They read verse 21, for me to live is

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Christ, right? And they focus on for me to live is

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Christ. They focus on that living part. But as we read the context here, that is not

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Paul's mindset. He would read it for me to live is

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Christ, but to die is gain. His mindset is he wants to be with Christ so badly that it's a gain.

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He prefers death over life. Now he's not suicidal.

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It's not that he's trying to end his suffering in prison. That's a misunderstanding of the text.

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I heard one pastor preach it that way. He got the context right and the application wrong. It is not that Paul was sick of being imprisoned and he just wanted to be over with life.

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It is that Paul had such a love for Jesus Christ, the one who left heaven, came to earth and died on a cross on his behalf as a payment for his sin.

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That one he can't wait to see. That one who he loves so much that he wants to be with him.

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Someone asked R .C. Sproul whether if he got to heaven and found out Christ wasn't there, would he want to go?

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And he said, no, I want to go where my Lord is. That's Paul's mindset.

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How do I know that? Well, when we look at this context, he says, if I am to live in the flesh, it means fruitful labor for me, right?

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But then look what it says yet, which I should choose. I just don't know. I don't know which one to choose.

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I have two good choices. I have a choice of living on in the flesh and being a fruitful labor for you, the

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Philippians and other churches. Or I have on the other side here, death, where I get to be with Christ, the one who

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I love so much. I can't choose between those two. In fact, he makes it even more.

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In verse 23, he says, I am hard pressed between the two. And you're going, okay, yeah, she's hard pressed.

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No, no, let me explain that word hard pressed in the Greek. My brother Tim here has got the Greek. He's going to check me out now.

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But here's this word hard pressed. This is a Greek word that was used for basically when butchers would, sorry,

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I'm going to get a little graphic, but when butchers would slaughter an animal, it is the term to refer to these two guardrails that they'd have on either side.

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And at one end, they'd be very wide. And as the animal walked further down, it got more and more narrow until they were hard pressed between the two, where they couldn't move to the right or to the left.

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Now, the butchers would do this so that, well, the butcher wouldn't get hurt. And so the animal wouldn't get hurt when they, sorry, slit its throat.

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So what it would be is it would be wedged in to where you can't move.

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That is the word Paul is using to describe the situation he is in. He is like an animal being wedged in between two guardrails, and he can't move between choosing life or death.

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For many of us that, if we're going to be honest, it's an easy decision. We choose life. Paul's saying it wasn't an easy decision.

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He wants to serve the Philippians. He wants to see them grow in their spiritual maturity.

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But he wants to be dead, not because of the suffering that he's going through. He was rejoicing in that.

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I mean, he's rejoicing in the guards' arm chained to his arms and just being able to share the gospel with them.

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Now, that's an evangelist. I don't know that I'd be doing that. Dr. Sebestro might, you know. He'd probably be evangelizing to the guards.

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I'd be looking for a way out. I'm really good at picking locks now. Right. I mean, think about this.

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Paul is sitting here and he is stuck.

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Have you ever been in a position where you're really stuck? You just don't know which of two decisions to make.

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Usually, when we're stuck in a position like that, it's usually because we're looking at the negatives of either side. Or we see one we really want, but we know we shouldn't choose that.

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We want to choose this one. We know it's bad for us. We know we should do this one. And that becomes a dilemma, we think.

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But this is a different dilemma. See, Paul wants both. He knows both are right.

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This is the thing people sometimes are trying to find God's will. I never knew it was lost. But, you know,

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I guess maybe it must be because everybody seems to be looking for it. You know, it's the one thing that's, you know, never seems to be found.

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The reality is, look at Paul. He is, he's saying he is two good things. How does he determine God's will?

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He looks at the wisdom of scripture. He looks at principles that he has. He looks at the arguments before him.

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And Paul, in his thinking, said, well, it seems that God's will is for me to live. Wasn't.

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But all the wisdom that he had led him to that conclusion. And that's why he was hard pressed between the two.

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He was confident that God would have him live and serve the churches because he's been such a blessing to churches.

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Maybe some of you guys know of the name Nabil Quresh. He recently passed away. And people are like, he's so young.

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He had this very short life as a Christian. I mean, he became a Christian. His testimony went literally around the world.

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And it just, he had a ministry. It just like kind of blew up overnight. And then all of a sudden he gets sick and he's gone.

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And the Muslim world is rejoicing, saying that this is God's judgment. See, because he converted from Islam.

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And yet what you end up seeing is that the testimony left behind has led many

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Muslims to Christ, even after his death. Because there was Muslims who did not know who

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Nabil Quresh was until he died. And the Muslim world was praising his death that people said, who is this guy?

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And people say, well, how could his life be so short? Because God had different plans.

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And in his death, that's where he'd gone. Now, unfortunately for Nabil, toward the end of his life, he started questioning.

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He wanted life. And he did start questioning a bit and trying to get involved with Bethel and trying to get healing because he really wanted to live.

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And he did. I think if he had gone through enough things, if he did mature, like with Paul, I think he would have gotten to a point to say, like,

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Paul, you want me to die? OK, that's great. I'm looking forward to it. That's where Paul was at.

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Now, I know that some of us may turn to 2 Corinthians 5. It's a great passage as I get older.

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I appreciate it more and more where he talks about this body, this temple of God that we have. He refers to it as a tent, this flesh.

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And how as it fails, we desire to be to heaven more. Some of us can identify with that, right?

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As things don't work like they used to. You know, I started doing jujitsu.

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And it's just my body doesn't work like it did when I was in my 20s. You know, I'm rolling on the ground with these 20 and 30 year old guys.

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And they get up and have no problem. And I go, oh, that hurts. And I don't even know why it hurts.

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I don't know what I did. I didn't feel anything pop out of shape or something. As we get older, we kind of have this desire like this body is failing.

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I can't wait for that glorified body. But that is not what Paul is saying here.

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Paul's not saying I want to be dead because of the fact that I want this life to end.

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He's saying I'm confident that I will live. But I would rather be dead because in death,

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I get to be with Christ. Look at what he says. Verse 23, I am hard pressed between the two.

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My desire is to depart and be with Christ for that is far better.

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Not a little better, far better. It is far better to be with Christ.

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There are some like on social media in America today, they would probably look at this and go, oh, no, no, no,

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Paul, I mean, your platform is just starting. You got to build that up. Get those Twitter followers and the likes on your comments.

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That's how everything in America seems to be, right? It's all about building a platform and a name for yourself. You know,

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Striving for Dreaming has a very strange business model, if you'd call it a business model. I don't know what else to call it.

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It's a ministry model. Yeah, a lot of churches, they want to go to the big churches. They want to speak at the big churches where there's lots of people or they want to go to conferences where there's other big name people.

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Many years ago, when I first got into this traveling and speaking, when I stepped down as being a pastor,

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I was out the first year, I think 48 or 49 weeks, the first year out of my home church, which really doesn't make it a home church, does it?

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I was at my church the first two years on average of three times a year, Christmas, Resurrection Sunday, and usually once there was a

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Sunday that I wasn't speaking somewhere. And I realized that's a problem. I'd see these other speakers, their conference speakers, national speakers.

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They just travel every week going to churches. They have no accountability in their life. When you're a conference speaker, you know what you get out of boys?

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If I mess up on the sermon today, you know who you complain to? Pastor Steve, I don't hear it. I know that because I used to be in Pastor Steve's shoes.

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You bring a guest speaker and you hear if there's complaints. You know, you don't get to hear the compliments until you're out on the road at someone else's church.

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And so I ended up, we made a decision on our board of directors. We said, nope, this isn't healthy for me as a Christian.

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Won't be healthy for ministry long term. We said, we're cutting the speaking. We cut it in half so that I wouldn't be traveling and speaking.

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So I could serve in a local church. So I could be teaching in a local church. I could have accountability in a local church. Well, that just cut our funding in half because that's how we made money.

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So we ended up having this model where we started to say, well, we'll look at monthly donors. Okay. You know what that ended up doing?

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That actually changed everything. I'll tell you why. What it allowed us to do is what other ministries don't do.

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We love to go into smaller churches to teach, to do seminars.

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I was telling Pastor Steve, we went into a church, the pastor, the guy invited me in. He's like, hey, can you come in and teach?

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I feel it's going to be really small. I said, that's okay. No, no, it's really going to be small. I said, that's okay.

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You know, we have monthly donors. I'll support it. He's like, no, it's really going to be small. I'm like, okay.

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He's like, no, I'm talking like maybe five people. I'm like, okay. He was right. The max we saw was five people.

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One session had seven. One session had two. Me, the pastor, and two other people. You know, that's okay.

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We don't care. You know, and this is the thing. There are people you see on social media in America today, they want to build a name for themselves.

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You know what we want to do? We want to be like Paul from this verse. We want to build the name of Christ. So that even if people are slandering us, we could praise

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God because the gospel is going forth. So that we would, my heart's desire,

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I'm not there yet. My heart's desire is to be like Paul. That I could say I am hard pressed between life and death.

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Okay. Right now that would be, I'm kind of leaning toward life. I got November 11th, my daughter's wedding.

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I'm like, you know, I have not seen her in the dress either.

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So her husband's not going to be the only one to wait till the wedding. She's my little girl.

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But you know, here's the thing. There's things in our life that we could be like, this really ties us to this world.

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I used to be a mountain climber when I was growing up. Well, actually a race climber, where you actually race your way up a mountain.

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I used to think it was a lot of fun until I remember I got in, I was in second place in one race. And one of the guys that came in last was talking about the view.

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And I went, I never even noticed it. I'm hanging off a mountain with this beautiful view. And I never even noticed because I was more interested in winning.

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And it kind of changed it for me. But I was, I was up on a, for our 10th wedding anniversary, we went to Alaska and I'm up on a glacier.

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Glacier climbing is very different. It was one of the things I always wanted to do. I'm up on a glacier. And what was going through my mind,

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I don't have life insurance. Who's going to walk my daughter down the aisle? I was very, all of a sudden

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I got very pinned to this world. It actually completely ruined that climb.

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There was no excitement in it for me. Now we just sang a little bit ago words, and you should never just sing words without meditating on them and thinking through them.

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You know, Psalms, this may surprise you, but do you know where you get most of your theology from? The book of Psalms.

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Why? Because they would sing theology. One of the reasons I love this church, you guys sing theology still.

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Most churches I go to, they sing about me. I am so wonderful, God. I'm glad you chose me.

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It's like our theology should be put to song so we remember it.

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You sang a song, and I don't have lyrics memorized, but it's basically, you may find it, put it up and get it right.

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But Lord, bind my heart to thee. I'm prone to wander. Lord, I feel it.

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Have you felt that? You just want to be close to the Lord, but you just feel your heart wander.

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That happens. I believe that happened earlier in Paul's life.

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We can get tied to the things of this world. And so prone to wander,

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Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. My heart,

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Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for where? It's thy courts.

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Where are his courts? That's after death. Seal it for thy courts above. You see, the writer of this understood some of what

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Paul was going through, is that there are times where we feel this pull for this world. But our desire, our desire is to be with God, is it not?

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It should be. And we struggle with that. That is the constant struggle that we have as Christians throughout life.

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And Paul is to a point where things have been taken away. And this is one of the things, if you do a lot of foreign travel in missions, you end up seeing,

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I was a pastor of a Chinese church. So I was very interested in the Chinese church, not just in America, but also in China.

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And Voice of Martyrs did a study on the Chinese church in China, why it was growing. And they did a study, because here is a church where the life of a pastor is about two years.

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It's kind of like the term in America, the average pastor is usually about two years before he gets up and moves to a new church.

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Oh, wait, no, in China, that two -year life was actually the life sentence. As soon as you are identified as the pastor, they hauled you off into prison, into a work camp for the rest of your life, or they killed you.

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So who becomes the next pastor? Whoever knows the Bible the best. And they would keep stepping up to that, knowing that once they get identified, it was about two years on average before the government found out who the pastor was and hauled them off.

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And so I look at that, and it's like, wow, you know, that's not exactly a job you want to sign up for, right?

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But what is it that they said was helping the church to grow? This study ended up saying this. This was the number one thing, that the church in China, the fact that everything was taken away from them, they had no material things to hold them down.

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They had an eternal perspective on life. Everything for them was what is eternal, what's going to last, not the here and now.

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You know, when I would counsel with the guys who were the addicts when I was a counselor, here was the interesting thing.

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I would tell them, you guys, having had an addiction, understand what

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Paul is saying here better than most Christians sitting in a church. Because you understand what it means to sell your entire life out and give everything for one thing.

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Had a guy who had a $12 million company blown away because of cocaine.

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His job gone, his company gone, bankrupted. His wife gone, his kids won't even talk to him.

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Everything gone. Now he comes to Christ. Some people have to go through that.

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Some people have to lose everything because this life just pulls them in. And here

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Paul is saying, there's nothing in this life holding me down other than you, being able to minister to you

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Philippians. That's the only thing holding him in this world.

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Everything else is gone to him. One passage, he calls it rubbish.

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No, for him, it is in death. He says to remain in the flesh is more necessary on their account.

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But that's not his desire, is it? His desire is to be with Christ.

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And when we can get to a point that we so desire to be with Christ, that we want

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Christ so much, it is at that point that the trials we go through, the suffering we go through, it will fade.

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It'd be vaguely dim, as the hymnist wrote. My heart's desire for you.

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I don't know what you may be suffering with, what your struggles may be, what your trials may be. But if I could leave you with this, that we would strive to have this kind of mindset, that we'd strive for eternity, that we'd strive to be like Paul, where even in death we see our greatest love,

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Christ. And if you don't know Christ, I don't know how some people go through suffering in this life without him.

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Because what do you live for? Self, pride, things of this world.

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Your brand new car, that's a rust heap waiting to happen. That beautiful house you just got built, is someone's secondhand or handyman special, waiting to happen.

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All the things of this life will pass, but the things of Christ, that will last.

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Had a thing with someone this week where something had happened and he came to ask my forgiveness.

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It wasn't even a big deal, it was nothing. I said, brother, 10 ,000 years from now, you and I aren't even gonna remember this.

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He's like, I never thought of it that way. He thought it was a big deal. Are we thinking about what things are gonna be like 10 ,000 years from now, not tomorrow?

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Let's pray and then I'll explain some of the stuff that's in the back. Lord, heavenly father, we are so grateful that you died for us, that you provide for us eternal life.

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We could never repay it. We could never, ever come to an end of praising you for what you have done in our life.

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You've given us eternal life. Help us, Lord, help us to have the mindset, help us to be like Paul in this way.

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Just, it's amazing the love he had for you. Help us to have that mindset that we'd strive for eternity.

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God's name, amen. Just to let you guys know, in the back are some books. I would really appreciate you helping me.

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I came out here with two 70 -pound bags, a 50 -pound bag, and a 40 -pound bag. I'd love to go back with a 20 -pound bag.

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Going through the airport was a lot of fun. But I did get a workout in. There's several books back there.

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You can go back, and there is a computer back there to sign up for our newsletter to find out what's happening.

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It's striving for eternity if you so want to do that. We do have, we send updates.

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I have a podcast if you want to listen. Today's podcast, we have a weekly that comes out on Sunday.

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Today's was on the Sabbath, not something Baptists talk about very often. But I had a Presbyterian come on with me, and we discussed it.

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Last week, we dealt with the issue of depression. Then I have a daily podcast. It's two minutes long, so you get the choice.

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If you're like short attention span like me, two minutes is great. Get it done, and you're done with the day. If you have a longer attention span, the hour, just listen to that one, you get a choice.

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We have some books back there on world religions. We have a book back there on Christian theology. If you want to learn how to better evangelize and learn about creation, if you like that, that covers that.

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We have a book on how to evangelize to Mormons. So that's some of the stuff back there. You could talk to my beautiful bride.