The Gospel Lens
Notes
Transcript
The Gospel Lens
The Gospel Lens
Intro Stuff...
Hey all welcome and welcome back…if you’re new here...
We’ve begun our series in the book of Philippians…written by Paul...
First we was context, last week was about partnership and partaking in the gospel in a message titled “a lot of questions...”
Today’s message finds us in Philippians 1, verses 12-18.
Go ahead and turn there if you’re not already…and I’ll read it. You follow along.
Philippians 1:12–18 (ESV)
12 I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, 13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. 14 And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. 16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. 18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.
So, tonight I’m going to call this message…The Gospel Lens.
The Gospel Lens
Let me explain for you why I chose this wording…and it starts with a discussion on worldview.
I want you to take a moment and think about what you think the definition of worldview is.
Oxford Dictionary describes a worldview as..
Worldview: A particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.
You get that? It’s the way you view, or conceive the world.
And there a lot of things that impact our worldview. Family…friends…community....education level…age…current events…and so on.
Let me give you a simple and personal example of how worldview impacts our lives..so we can stay away from all the political and socio economic discussions that are laced with the discussion of worldview..
Brittany and I and our relation to the word “sorry”...
So this whole example shows us how a worldview can shape you. My worldview is impacted by my experience with my father…and so I view certain things through it. Brittany’s is impacted by her experience with her father…and so she views things a certain way through it.
Our worldview impacts how we view and interact with the world.
In fact, our worldview is just like the lens on a camera.
The lens that we look through, impacts how we perceive what we see.
Sometimes, that lens can cause us to see things in a distorted fashion…like a fisheye lens..
Fisheye Lens...
Other times…the lens we put on…if it has the right filters…can allow us to see more clearly, perceive what’s actually there...
Lens Filter Picture...
You see, our worldview is the lens we put on to perceive the world…and in the passage we are in tonight…we see Paul looking at his situation through the Gospel Lens…
And our main point of application for tonight as we go through this....is put on the gospel lens. Look at the world through the gospel.
As we say it here often in College Min. - Center your life on Christ. That’s what we are seeing here…is Paul’s situation, viewed through a life centered on Christ....his situation viewed through the gospel lens…and the first thing we see is...
Through the gospel lens we see...
…hard times have gospel purpose. (v.12-14)
12 I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, 13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. 14 And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
So the hard time that we see Paul going through right now…is his imprisonment. We covered this last week in verse 7, you see it there.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.
And what we know about this imprisonment is that it’s most likely near the end of Paul’s life. In fact, as far as we know…there’s a good chance that Paul was martyred, that is killed for the cause of Christ, within the year of him writing this letter. More on that when we get to the end of chapter 2…but let’s just put ourselves in any kind of place near him...
How we would feel being Paul...
So Paul is at a low point in life…a hardship…a rough time…whatever you want to call it. And what the gospel allows us to understand, is that hard times…including his, have a purpose. Through the gospel lens…we see that hard times…have a purpose.
And Paul actually lists what the two purposes are for his imprisonment.
To advance the gospel through the imperial guard
To give boldness to the proclamation of the gospel
So how does Paul’s imprisonment advance the gospel to the imperial Guard?…by him being Paul...
He was a man on mission…a man who’s life was sold out for the gospel...
And how does his imprisonment give boldness to other believers. Because it gave them a rally call...
If Paul can preach while in chains, I can preach while I’m not....If Paul is willing to die for this cause, then I am too.
So the imprisonment of Paul clearly had Gospel purpose. And in fact, when we view our lives through the lens of the Gospel, we can often see the ways that God was working to bring about amazing purpose and fruit in the midst of struggle and hardship.
If Brittany and I had never gone through infertility, we never would have adopted our three beautiful older children...
If a close friend of mine hadn’t died, the events that sent me down to Coram Deo would not have been set in a motion (more on that sometime later)..
But I know you can see things in your life…if you look at it through he lens of the gospel…that God has used to move you and others into closer relationship with him and better proclamation of the gospel.
And if you can’t see the purpose of the hard things you have gone through, or are going through…then I encourage you to put on the lens of the gospel. Look at it through the cause of Christ. Look at how the kingdom could be built with what you’re going through or how people could be encouraged...
Or…put on the lens of the gospel and see that you have a reason for hope in trouble times…BECAUSE God uses them for a grander purpose than what we see.
Pray, Lord, allow us the blessing and honor to understand the purpose of our hard times or see the fruit played out...
Let’s keep going. Paul after talking about how others have been encouraged to preach more boldy because of his imprisonment…goes on to say this.
15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. 16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.
Here’s what we see from this aspect of the gospel lens...
...godly actions can have sinful motivations. (v.15-17)
This needs to be, for us, a stunning and sobering reality. Because the gospel lens reveals…shows us that godly things can be done…and even achieve Godly purposes…but can have sinful motivations.
The reason this is sobering is because it means that we need to constantly check ourselves.
We need to constantly look at ourselves through the gospel lens.
And it’s sobering because accountability is really hard on this. Because, the only ones who can truly know your heart, are you and God.
We can’t rely on how people perceive us, or view our actions…because people can’t see the heart…they can’t judge the heart motivation unless they see some form of action…
We learned this in our series on King David. Remember?
7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Guys…I can only trust. Trust that when I preach things like this, that you’re not just changing your actions…but you’re allowing god to do heart work.
Because, it’s impossible for even me as your pastor to know what is truly going on in your heart and mind. I can only read your actions.
At some point…when you come in early to help set something up, or you stay late to tear down with us after a community event…I can only trust that it’s out of a sincere desire to glorify God by serving, rather than a desire to look good and be seen as Godly.
Even our leaders in this ministry. Whether they lead a C-Group or community time, or leadership development…I can only TRUST that what they are doing is desiring to use their gifts to glorify God, rather than be seen as important…authoritative…smart....or well put-together.
I can never truly know…because I’m not God.
In fact…the same is true about me. This passage is talking about those that preach Christ, but do it for ungodly reasons…guys…that could be me. I could be doing that right now.
I could be preaching to you to change your lives for my glory not God’s. I could be preaching to you to fulfill my deep need for love and belonging, rather than for you to know God’s love and his calling on your lives.
I could be that preacher, that does godly things with sinful motivation. And I want to ask that you guys always pray for me, that the godly motivation would be true, and not the sinful one. I want you to pray that I would be humble enough to submit to God when I have the wrong reason for being in ministry.
And so I want to encourage you tonight....if you’ve got sinful motivation for doing Godly things…stop waiting around for someone to call you on it…and start getting right with God right now.
If your desire is to be here because you want to pick up a significant other, rather than be formed into a Godly person…stop waiting around for someone to see it in you....or say something to you…because you and I both know that if you’re really good at being deceitful…this will go on for years…no one will call this out of you…except right now.
This is me. Calling you out.
This is the Lord, giving you a chance to respond to his word.
Giving you a chance to confess your sinful motivations to him…and begin doing Godly things for GODLY reasons.
This is your chance, before the Lord brings it out of you in a different way…to allow sanctification to happen.
This is your chance…to put on the gospel lens…see yourself for who you truly are…and say “you know what, this isn’t okay.” And pray that God would teach you and give you the strength and opportunity to change.
Because that’s the beauty of the gospel lens. When we view our lives through it…we see not only where we need to change, but we see that the strength to change it comes from a humble heart and a powerful God.
So, that’s the second thing we see through the gospel lens. The third is..
…we can rejoice in any situation. (v.18)
18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.
Yes, and I will rejoice,
So Paul at the beginning of this verse, asks the question. What Then? Meaning…so how am I to respond to this? What should my reaction be to the fact that some are preaching Christ with sinful motivations…wanting to hurt me and rub it in… What should I do?
And then he answers the question. I’ll rejoice. Because…of Christ. Because Christ is being proclaimed, no matter what I’m going through…no matter what the motivation is…the Gospel causes me to rejoice.
That’s what Paul is saying.
Paul is looking at this situation through the gospel lens…and when he evaluates it in light of the gospel…he’s a man who rejoices.
Because that’s what the gospel does…the gospel results in joy.
Don’t believe me.
Galatians 5:22–23 (ESV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
When we are saved by Christ, we are given his spirit to live within us....and one of the things that that spirit brings, that the Holy Spirit brings…is joy.
Joy…despite circumstances. Like in 1 Peter...
6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,
Or another famous passage, James…urging his readers in being doers of the word rather just hearers of it says that doers do this..
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
So we see that if you’re looking at your life through the lens of the gospel, you can have joy in all circumstances. But how do you do that? How do you have joy?
A pep-talk and then some practicals.
A pep-talk:
Before the creation of the world, God chose you for his own.
He predestined you, his chosen treasure, to be his child, conformed finally to his son.
At a point in your life - you may or may not remember it - God called you out of spiritual darkness into life.
The Spirit of God was given to you.
You are acquitted of all your sins, past, present, future.
God poured in you his Holy Spirit in an overflowing way. He is present in you. Not only as a promise of things to come…but as a great helper in times of need.
You have the hope of glory.
God has given you promises in his word, unspeakable great promises.