Christian Living 101 - Total Surrender

God Centered Theology

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And this will be the last week that we are dealing with the topic and subject of Christian Living 101.

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The remainder of the chapter in chapter 2 of Philippians verses 19 through 30 deals with a different subject matter and a different idea of what's going on, so we will move on from Christian Living beginning next week.

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And so I just want to quickly review before we get into today, if you will remember, so far we have covered through this section, and it began in chapter 2 of Philippians, and I told you that the sort of the theme and what's being covered is in a sense

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Christian Living 101. We've asked the question, how then shall we live? We have asked and answered the question, you know, who should we live like?

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Why Jesus alone is the goal? Last week we dealt with the fact that Christian Living 101 involves genuine character and effort.

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And today in this last one is in a sense a continuation from last week, because if you will remember last week when we dealt with genuine character and effort, we dealt with verses 12 and 13, which talked about how we are to work out our salvation.

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And if you will remember, we noted that the phrase and the word translated work out is not dealing with our justification, but is a word that means to put forth effort or to labor towards an intended conclusion.

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So the idea of working out our salvation is in terms of what we call sanctification, which is the progressive nature of growing in Christ likeness, which yes, does take genuine character and effort.

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And we also noticed last week that is both us that put forth this effort, but it is also

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God that is at work in us. So that brings us to verses 14 through 18 this week and the last segment that we will be dealing with Christian Living 101, which we will title today,

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Total Surrender, Total Surrender. And this is coming.

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We're not going to start here, but we will get here before the sermon's over. If you will notice in verse 17,

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Paul talks about how he is being poured out as a drink offering, poured out as a drink offering.

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That phrase in English, poured out as a drink offering, is translating a word that means in the spiritual sense, total surrender.

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And we will see here in verse 17, he says,

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I'm being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith.

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The word sacrifice meaning an offering, the word service here meaning a ministry.

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So what we're going to see is that not just for Paul, but all

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Christians have a sacrifice or an offering. If you will remember the harmony and consistency of scripture, remember

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Romans 12, talks about how we're to live or be living sacrifices to the

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Lord. So you see the consistency here in Paul's writing. Every Christian has that living sacrifice that they are to be, and every

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Christian has a ministry. Just in passing here, this will be a sermon for another day, but just in passing, let me say, and I don't think any of y 'all do this, but it does happen where people say,

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Oh, well, you know, pastors are in the ministry or missionaries are in the ministry.

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I mean, after all has the word mission right in their title, right? Missionaries or, you know, youth pastors or whatever, or someone that does it professionally or vocationally, that's the ministry.

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In a sense, there is a right way in which we say, yes, we're going into vocational ministry or something along those lines, but scripture knows nothing of this.

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Scripture, yes, identifies two roles of leadership in the church or one role of leadership and one role of service in the sense of elders, pastors as leaders and deacons as those that serve and assist the elders in this capacity.

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But when you get past those specific roles, everybody in the church does the work of ministry.

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There are no exclusions. Each and every one of you has a ministry in the household of God, in the church, in your

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Christian life. And so when Paul says, I'm being poured out as a drink offering for this sacrifice and ministry and service, he's saying,

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I am totally surrendered. I am totally invested.

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I am 100 % involved, or as the young people are saying today,

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I'm all in. Christian Living 101 is total surrender.

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Now let's see how this is brought out to us, verse of all and in verse, the first thing we want to notice this morning is that in order to work out our salvation, to put the correct amount of effort and labor into growing in Christ likeness in order to be totally surrendered.

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The first thing that we notice, number one, is that we must not grumble or dispute over our labor.

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Verse 14, do all things without grumbling or disputing.

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Now, when he says here, do all things, Paul has in mind what he just said.

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So when he tells us, work out your salvation and trembling and fear, knowing that it is

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God who is working in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

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As you're doing this, as you're putting forth effort and labor to live and to grow in Christ likeness, make sure you're doing it without grumbling or disputing.

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Why is this important? Because my friends, discontentment breeds frustration and anger and it always leads to emotional grumbling and intellectual disputing.

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See because these things he tells us not to do and he says do all things without these things. One of the biggest impediments to your growth as a

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Christian is grumbling and disputing. Grumbling is very basically and very literally that low, emotional, guttural, just that angst, you know, not really expressed in word or thought, it's just an emotional reaction.

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It's you basically saying, I don't want to do this, I don't want to be involved in this, I don't like this, and you don't express it so much, you're emotionally checked out, you're emotionally angry, you're emotionally discontent or depressed or some version of emotional angst and opposition to what you need to do, to what you've been asked to do, and what you should be doing, which is laboring in your salvation, not to justify yourself, remember, but in laboring in your salvation in the sense of growing in your

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Christian life. Grumbling will take you away from that. Grumbling in a sense of defining the

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English word is very simply complaining in a sort of bad -tempered way.

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It's primarily that emotional response. Now disputings is more of the intellectual sort.

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Disputing is an intellectual questioning and arguing.

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Now the word in the original language that's translated disputing here is just simply, it's simply the word where we get our

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English word dialogue. It just simply means dialoguing, conversing, but with the context and the form of how it's being used here, the ideas in the negative form intellectually of, and I've done this, so this hits home far too much than I care for, which is why you should know that when

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I'm up here preaching, it's not at you, it's with you because I'm in the boat with you. I'm very good at coming up with all these reasons why

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I shouldn't have to or can't do what God wants me to do. Well, you know, I gotta do this, or I don't have enough money, or I don't have the resources.

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I could come up with all the best reasons why he picked the wrong person, why he has not equipped me thusly so so I can do it.

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That's what we're dealing with here. We're arguing, contesting, dialoguing, intellectually expressing why

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I don't want to work out my salvation in fear and trembling. I don't want God to work in me the way which he's choosing.

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Basically, I'm discontent. I'm not happy. I don't want it to go this way.

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Oh, and by the way, God, I'm gonna let you know about it. This is why I'm not happy.

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You're not, you haven't given me what I want. You are not doing things the way I want you to, and therefore,

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I'm just not gonna be happy. That's not a way to live. I was just talking recently and said, you know,

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I think 2023 may be the first year in my life where I think I've actually exercised true, consistent, biblical contentment.

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Gina can attest to this. It's like things I would normally get very angry about. I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, hey, you win some, you lose some.

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It's no big deal. It'll be all right. She's like, who are you? Who are you and what have you done with my husband?

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He's usually an angry, discontented soul, and now you're just like, oh, you know, hey, things happen.

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It's all right. Just like, what is going on here? This man is like, clearly, he's lost his mind.

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Something is wrong. I fed him some bad potatoes. Something is going on here, but no, it's, look, let me tell you something.

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You don't get to a place, and look, I've still got work to do. And if you've gone through these things where you've spent your life in discontentment and had to learn contentment, you know as well as I do, it's no easy chore.

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It takes, as Paul was talking about in context here, labor, genuine effort, which is now you're seeing how last week's sermons fit with this one.

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It takes that genuine character, effort, labor because it's not easy.

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One of the, and I, you know, y 'all know me well enough now know I'm not a big fan of cliches because cliches usually aren't really, they don't, not really true for what they sound like they're saying, but there are some that make a lot of sense.

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One of the cliches I think is very true is, if it were easy, everybody'd be doing it.

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Well, that's one of our English cliches that's pretty much true all the time.

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I don't doubt there's exceptions somewhere, but for the most part, we can say with pretty good confidence, if it were easy, everybody'd be doing it.

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It's like, I can't stand it. You see these commercials come on TV and they're telling you how everybody can, you can be rich by doing this, that, and the other,

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I'm like, yeah, sure, because if it was that easy, why are there so many poor people?

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Clearly if it's that easy, the poor people, including myself, would just do whatever that TV's telling me to do and I'd have all the money.

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So clearly if it's that easy, it isn't that easy, everybody would be doing it.

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That's the truth of the Christian life, y 'all. I mean, I wish I could tell you, oh man, it's not so easy.

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You just wake up in the morning and God zaps you and you're 2 % more

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Christ -like and you just go out and live your life and everything's roses and everything's great, you never hurt or have pains and work just goes easy and you always get raises and, you know, there's always money in the bank when you go and look and, you know, you always have full cupboards and just everything's, it's just not so.

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And I'm certainly not going to lie to you and y 'all certainly probably know better than I do or at least we equally know that life's just not that way.

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Another cliche, like I said, I'm full of them today and I'm usually not a big fan of them, but I'm full of them, cliches today.

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Another one that makes a lot of sense, I'm sure y 'all have said it, anything worth doing is going to take effort, it's just a fact of life, y 'all.

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Anything, and I'm going to, I say this a lot too so I'm going to say it again, when it comes to your life, it's the truest thing in the world.

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I don't know if I've said this yet in a sermon here, if I have and I will at some point, but think about this, if you were going to go to a service and sit in front of somebody, what's going to be a more meaningful testimony?

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Someone that tells you, man, I've had it easy, I always have money, never been hurt, never had a surgery,

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I always had the best job in the world, all my kids are grown and great and I just, I just breezed through life, that literally does nothing for me.

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I mean, look, God bless, I'm happy for you, it's just not going to move me very much.

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You get somebody up there that says, I've had a hard life, I've had this surgery or this deformity or this mental illness or this physical ailment or I've lost jobs or had people die in my family, all sorts of different things,

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I mean, it could go any number of ways and they sit there and tell you, but I still believe

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God, he's got me through it, I'm stronger because of it and now

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I'm equipped to help other people like me that are going through it because think about it, when you're going through something and that person that's been there, done that, helps you through it and now you've become that person that's going to help someone else through it because you've been there, done that, so overwhelmingly so more meaningful, that's why

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God says, I've created each one of you in such a way and I've crafted sovereignly your life to where you can bring

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God the maximum amount of glory and for whatever reason,

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I can't wait to discuss it with him one day and it'll be interesting to me anyway to see when he pulls back that curtain and says,

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Andy, this is why, this is why, this is why, I want to know,

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God, why these particular things I either went through or these things about me, why, oh, maximum glory because think about it, who's going to bring

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God more glory, someone that he never has to challenge or work in or craft or sanctify or chasten or someone that's been there, done that, been through it, is still going through it, has had a hard life but they don't give up, they keep going, they get up every day, put one foot in front of the other, despite all the challenges, despite all the heartaches and what you find, at least what

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I have found, is that through those things you gain a deeper love for God, a deeper need for God, you can't say, well,

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I need God, well, how do you know you need God, well, I don't know, I just know I need him, no, if you've been through something, you say,

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I know I need God, why, because I need him to help me through this and sometimes he doesn't heal, sometimes he doesn't take the situation away, sometimes he does as Paul found out in 2

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Corinthians 12, 9, he just simply told Paul when he prayed to remove the storm to flesh, he said, look, man, and that's my

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Andy Kane 2023 paraphrase, of course, look, man, my grace is sufficient for you, okay, why, because God's power is perfected in weakness, not strength, it's in our frailty, it's in our weakness, even in the midst of that, that we totally surrender to God and say, here my

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Lord send me, use me, that God receives maximum glory and if you are living a life in discontentment with grumbling, with disputing, constant complaining,

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Paul says you won't get there, that is a hindrance to your sanctification, that is a hindrance to your growth, that is a hindrance to you being and becoming all that God wants you to be, so number one, we see that we must not grumble or dispute over our labor, number two, we are going to find that total surrender will equip us to live as we should, notice with me, it says do all things without grumbling or disputing, verse 15, so that you will be blameless, innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world, so let's unpack this, it says so that you will be blameless, this word blameless just simply means faultless, now this is not something where Paul is teaching sinless perfectionism, we still reside in flesh that has been tainted by sin, as Galatians 5 points out, our flesh, the spirit of God that resides in us are at war against one another, so that we have to actively pursue righteousness and avoid sin, that will be a fight that we will fight until we are redeemed from this body, but there is also a sense in which the

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Christian can reach that level of maturity where they can live and walk and exist in a faultless state in the sense of as first John says, he says

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I'm writing this to you children so that you may not sin, while we will not achieve sinless perfectionist life, it's also true that yes, you can live and not sin, we have the power of the spirit within us to live and not sin, and as first John points out, if we do sin, when you sin, because we will sin, we have a savior that will cleanse us from that unrighteousness, so the way

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I always put it is as you grow in your Christianity, you should be sinning less and less and less and less, not more and more and more and more, because you want to get to where we can live a faultless life, and what this means is if someone were to accuse you and say, well you know,

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Russell did such and such, those that know Russell are going to say, hold on now, now

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I don't know what you think you saw or think you know, but I know Russell and that's not Russell, that's what we're talking about, or I know

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Andy, no I'm telling you, there's no way, you know Andy's a lot of things, but he ain't that, that state of where people can't accuse and find fault in you, this innocent word here where it says blameless and innocent, this word translated innocent just simply means without spot, the idea is going back to in the old covenant when they had to find the right lamb, the right animal, clean, unblemished, no spots, living that innocent life, you want to live a spotless life, you want to live in this way, children of God, so that you will be without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

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Total surrender, pouring yourself out as a drink offering into your Christian life and ministry will get you to a place where you can live this way, faultless, and of course we're going to see here shining as a light in the midst, notice it doesn't say we get to escape all this, we're living in the midst of it, we are, and this is, like I said,

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I'm full of cliches today y 'all, so forgive me, you know the Christian cliche, we talk about being in the world but not of the world,

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I'm sure y 'all have heard that in church, that's what that cliche, the scriptural foundation for that statement comes from here.

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We're in the world, we're in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, now

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Paul obviously was speaking specifically to his audience and that generation referring to it as crooked and perverse, but yes there is application to our day, we still live in the midst of sinful, crooked culture and all these things, so we're in it, but remember he said you are so that, verse 15, you will be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of it, you're in it but not of it, that's not who you are.

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So total surrender equips us to live as we should in the midst of it, and this word crooked simply means what you think it means, curved, winding, you think of Proverbs right, what's the one of the more famous verses in Proverbs, Proverbs 3, 5, and 6

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I believe it is, talking about trusting the Lord with all your heart, leaning not on your own understanding but acknowledging the

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Lord in all your ways that he will make your paths straight, Matthew 7 talks about the straight narrow way versus the wide and crooked way, there is a lot of talk in language and scripture about the difference of the straight and narrow and the right path versus the crooked path because these crooked sinful ways mean you're going along, you encounter a challenge to be righteous, you're like I don't want anything to do with that, so let me come over here and go around, okay now that's in my rear view mirror,

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I'm going along, oh there's another challenge to be righteous, there's another command pointing out my sin,

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I don't really like this one either, so I'm just going to go around, it's crooked, it's perverse, it's sinful, that's what the world in which we find ourselves, but we can be equipped through the power of the

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Spirit, living and growing in Christ likeness through our effort and labor and God working in us so that we can live the correct way that we should in the midst of it,

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Matthew 16 24 comes to mind where Jesus tells his disciples if you want to be my disciple and there's an order here, you must first deny yourself, second take up your cross, then follow me, you see grumbling and disputing, discontentment is self -centered, it's man -centered, it's

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I don't want to do this, I don't want to be challenged in this way, I don't want to live like this,

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I want, I want, I want, discipleship, surrender, living in the midst of this world the way we are supposed to live is

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God -centered, God -focused, God -honoring, and God -glorifying, and the guarantee and the promise of Scripture we have is that if you put forth the effort and the labor and the concentrated focus on growing in Christ likeness that God will work in you to make you that you will reach that completed end of maturity and no matter what you face in life you can walk it and live it equipped in the way that you should be, so number one we should do things without grumbling or disputing, number two total surrender will equip us to live as we should, and finally this morning number three our last point what we're going to see here is that true joy is found in total surrender to serving

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God in whatever way He has called us to serve, that is where true joy is found, and if you will remember this entire book is about joy, we see that term repeated often throughout this book, joy, the

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Philippians joy, Paul's joy, we've already covered this in the first chapter when

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Paul says make my joy complete, make my joy full, this is a letter of encouragement, a letter about joy, and we see that here he says whom you shine as lights in the world verse 16 holding fast the word of life so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to boast because I did not run in vain nor labor in vain.

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Now two quick things to say about this before we move on to 1718 talk about joy, when

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Paul says reason to boast he's not talking about a sinful boasting, he's not talking about boasting before God about something he did, this is language we would use when we would say something like I'm proud of my daughter,

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I'm proud of my wife, or I'm proud of my church, or I'm proud, it's not a sinful thing, it's a and maybe in English we need to find a better word because you know

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I'm proud, pride we think sinful, but it's just that non -sinful pride and happiness and positive emotion we feel when we see people we love doing and living as they should, that's what's being said here because Paul while he wasn't in the sense of what we would call a pastor elder in the church, he was an apostle which was a specific role in the early church and that office is passed off the scene, the office for today is that what we call pastor elder, it's interchangeable names for the same office of pastor, but he's saying the same thing a pastor would, he says

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I want to hear basically that you're holding fast to the word, that you're living in this way, he says so I'll have reason to boast, what he's saying is

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I'm out and about, I'm in other places, or I'm in as he was when he wrote this letter, he was in prison, but he says

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I want to be able to tell people hey y 'all heard about them Philippian believers, y 'all heard about them, they're joyful, they're living as they should, they're doing well, makes my heart happy,

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I can't wait to tell you about them, so in a sense people always say well what can we do as church members to make and keep in mind here the goal is to make

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God happy not the pastor happy, if any pastor stands in front of you and says well you got to do what I say so you make me, you need to run out the building as fast as you can, the goal for the pastor and the church members were all to make

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God happy and no man happy, but in a sense a pastor can feel like Paul when he sees church members listening and applying it to your life and growing not in pastor likeness but in Christ likeness and that is a way a pastor can boast in a sense and feel good about the labor because we are as pastors to labor over the text and feed it in such a way that you can partake of it and apply it and I used to always think my mentor

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Pastor Jay would always tell me the greatest joy of the pastor and this was early on in my training so I had no life experience to really understand what he was saying he used to always tell me the greatest joy is when someone comes to me and says you remember when you preached such and such four months ago and he's like I don't know but you said such and such and I've been putting it into practice and the spirit has showed me this or I'm doing this he says that's the greatest joy there's nothing better and he's right and that's what

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Paul says I get no better joy because he goes right into it here in verse 17 he says even if I'm poured out like a drink offering even if I'm totally surrendered even if I'm poured out and surrendered for whatever sacrifice or ministry which yes included being imprisoned shipwrecked beaten betrayed and ultimately martyred even if I am that and do those things notice what he says

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I rejoice I rejoice and share my joy with you all but then he flips it he doesn't stop there he says and you remember his audience flipping believers you also rejoice notice in the same way and share your joy with me now what is he saying what is being said here is that as Christians put forth effort and labor to grow in Christ likeness to grow into maturity as a church fellowships and works together towards that end and as you as individual

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Christians myself included as we all as Christians learn to and actually surrender ourselves totally to Christ and to whatever ministry he puts before us as you do that Paul is saying there is mutual joy mutual joy there's not just joy for a pastor or like for Paul when he's saying

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I'm looking for reason to boast because I know that you're doing well yes those things could be true but there's not just joy for the pastor there's not just joy for the

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Christians there's not just joy for this church versus that church or whatever distinction you want to try to add

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Paul didn't say and you also if you're of this ethnicity or if you're of this countrymen or this status or this level of Christian maturity he just said you all all of you also rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me

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I'm sharing my joy with you which is I'm joyful that I'm hearing you're living this way but I also want to hear from you of the joy you're experiencing from living that way there's mutual joy in the household of God when his people live for him you say are you sure my friends have you lived through Thanksgiving what do most churches do they'll have some sort of Thanksgiving service and they'll give testimony to the goodness and greatness of God in their life through that through that year we did it at the church we were at every single

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Thanksgiving Eve and it would go on for an hour and a half usually because people would have this and this and this that's what's being talked about here mutual joy rejoice and ultimately the best news about it all is going back to verse 16 at the end when

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Paul says I can boast because why I know that I did not run in vain or labor in vain vain meaning empty meaning worthless my friends that's a promise of scripture

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I guarantee you and I promise you on the authority of scripture not on the authority of Andy or any pastor on the authority of scripture because scripture is the authority based on the authority of the divine author of scripture

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God himself he did not make a mistake when he wrote this and had a divinely inspired

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Paul to write this I guarantee you if you put forth the effort and labor to grow in Christ's likeness it will not be in vain and I'm preaching to myself here for a minute because so often in my life

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I've done things and I've thought nobody cares nobody saw that none of it mattered sound familiar if you ever done it yourself

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I've done it too pastors aren't exempt from having these feelings and these thoughts and I've had people in my life remind me you may not have seen it but if you did it for the right reasons you did not run or labor in vain