Philippians: Paul's Gospel Ministry
Philippians: Paul's Gospel Ministry
by Sean Kelly
We're back in Philippians again this morning. Philippians one look at I call this Paul's Gospel Ministry. He kind of talks about what's going on in his life a little bit.
Last week we're talking about Paul's prayer as he was praying for the Philippian church. Now he's letting them know the kind of what's happening in his life, how he views it, his theological mind behind the circumstances that he's in. It's very instructive for us because I think we can learn a lot from it.
It's going to probably work a little bit in with what Ryan was teaching about this morning, which is not surprising because he taught all the same books. So you'd think it would work a little bit together. So we'll take a look at that and then hopefully learn something here that we can put to practice.
Let's go ahead and open in prayer. Josiah, would you open us in prayer? Lord, I thank you for all the people who were able to make it to church this morning. To hear Brian would be amen.
One side note here before we kind of dig in is that if you want to pray for me for anything I've had a lingering cough that stuck around about four and a half weeks now. I feel fine otherwise, but out of the blue I'll start coughing. So if I do that during the lesson, just excuse me and just be patient.
I'll get back to where I'm going. But you can be praying for that. I don't know what's going on.
Like I said, I don't feel like there's I don't have any soreness from being sick or Olivia said, oh, maybe you have pneumonia. I'm like, well, no, I'm breathing fine. Usually pneumonia comes with labored breathing and stuff like that.
I don't feel bad, just this annoying cough that I have. So you just got to pray about that. So this morning, like I said, we're in Philippians one.
We're going to look at verses twelve through 18 this morning. Let's go ahead and read those. They're at the top of your notes about to Abigail.
But I want you to know, brother, so that it has become evident to the whole house guard and to all the rest, that my chains are in Christ, and most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chain, are much more bold to speak the Word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ, even from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill. The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely supposing bad affliction to my chain, but the latter out of love, knowing that I am acquainted for the defense of the Gospel.
What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. And in this I rejoice. Yes.
And so Paul, after expressing his concern for the church and his prayers for them, turns his attention to the circumstances he is in. Paul here wants to reassure the church that all is according to plan and that a little thing like imprisonment doesn't thwart what God is doing. I say a little thing like imprisonment, we don't think of that as a little thing, but in Paul's view and the nature of who God is and what God's doing, imprisonment is not really a big deal because he's still serving God and doing what God wants him to do.
And we're going to see that as we study through this. So first one, we're going to look first point here, and I've given you two words for each of these points this morning, so I'm going to be grabbing my notes and bringing them up with me so I remember the words Paul's circumstances lead to the gospel opportunities. I think you could say if you want to apply this in your life, you could say that your circumstances lead to any service type opportunities here Paul's focusing on the gospel because this is the main ministry he's been given by Christ.
Verse twelve says, I want you to know, brethren, the things which happen to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel, Paul's circumstances here, he desires the church to know what's going on. Now, one of the reasons for this might be because they've probably heard about Paul's imprisonment, they probably have heard that Paul's been arrested in Rome and there's probably concern, there's probably worry there, there's probably even some people that might be thinking, well, God's not really taking care of Paul because he's in prison. Now if God really cared and was really helping Paul out, he would be out there doing what he's supposed to be doing.
And Paul's goal is to reassure them that, no, wait a second, the circumstances don't dictate what God's doing, god uses the circumstances for his glory. It's not a bad thing that I'm in prison because God is working through that. So he wants the church to know this word.
Know is the same word as in verse nine. It's this kind of idea of this full knowledge, this complete knowledge. Paul wants the church to have an accurate picture of what's going on, he wants them to understand, to see what the purpose is and what's going on in his life.
So it's his full knowledge. Paul wants the church to understand how God has orchestrated the circumstances so that Paul could serve, how God wants him to serve. Paul doesn't see his imprisonment as well.
This is an awful thing, this is a terrible thing, I can't do what I need to do. Paul sees it as God's put me here for a specific purpose, to do what God has planned all along for him to do. So what has happened to Paul? And we're already talking about this, Paul's in prison again.
We think about things that happen in our lives when we think this is a terrible circumstance, how could this happen? Paul doesn't see it that way. Paul's in prison going, this is where God wants me to be. So the result of the circumstances here, the result is that there's been a furtherance of the gospel.
Paul's been able to use the opportunity of being imprisoned to proclaim the gospel and to see the gospel working and affecting people and changing people and seeing people saved. And so there's been a furtherance of the gospel because of what God has done here probably with people that Paul may not have ever had a chance to proclaim the gospel to otherwise. So looking at a couple of these verses I have here, let's look at two Corinthians, twelve, nine through ten.
Nathan, go ahead. And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness, therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities and needs, persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake.
For when I am weak, when I am strong in this passage, Paul here is talking about some kind of infirmity that he has. And he prayed to God. And in fact, in this passage tells he prayed three times to God, god, take this away from me.
Some commentators think this might have something to do with his eyes because at one point he says that the church would pluck out their own eyes for him. Whatever it is, it's something that distresses Paul. It's something that's hard to deal with.
It's not an easy thing in his life. He's prayed for God to take it away. God's response is, My grace is sufficient for you.
We talked about if you were here on Wednesday, we talked about God's grace in our lives and how God's grace helps us as Christians, as safe people to walk and do what God wants them to do. Here's Paul's or God is saying to Paul, my grace is sufficient. My grace can give you all that you need to do what you need to do, whether you have this infirmity or not.
He goes on to say, my strength is made perfect in weakness. Okay, you're weak, that's great, because I can show you my strength now, I can work through you. And then Paul talks about he most gladly boasts in his infirmities that the power of Christ may rest on me.
Paul can say, It's not of me, it's God working through me. Now, verse ten here, because this is talking about a physical infirmity, something he has wrong with his body. Verse ten goes on to say that if I have infirmities, if I have reproaches, if I have needs, if I have persecutions, if I have distresses, that's great for Christ's sake.
Because of these things, I have opportunity to do what God wants me to do and I have opportunity to see God work through me. I think as he's in prison here, he's not seeing this as, wow, I'm chained. I can't go anywhere.
I'm stuck under house arrest here. He's seeing it as God's going to work through me in this because I'm in a weak place. I'm in a place where I don't have freedom.
I'm in a place where I can't do what I want to. Let's see what God does. Let's see how God works and shows his strength through me.
So a result of the circumstances here is that he can see God work in his time of need, his time of persecution. Acts 2022 through 24. Who wants to read that? Josiah.
Now I go abound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing that anything that will happen to me there except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulations await me. But none of these things move me, nor do I count my life here to myself that I may finish my race with joy. And the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus testifies the gospel of the grace of God.
So Paul has a unique situation here. God's letting Paul know what's going to happen ahead of time. He says, you're going to Jerusalem and you're going to be bound in chains.
You're going to be arrested, you're going to be imprisoned, you're not going to have your own freedom. And this is right before Philippians that this is happening here, right before that time frame. And notice what Paul's attitude is in verse 24.
None of these things move me. It doesn't change my mind. It doesn't matter that God says I'm going to be imprisoned because what he wants to do is finish his race.
He wants to do what God has given for him to do. He wants to finish his race with joy. He wants to minister with the ministry he received from Jesus to testify of the Gospel, the grace of God.
He's saying, It doesn't matter what happens to me. It doesn't matter what happens in my life. I am going to do the things that God wants me to do.
I am going to share the Gospel. I am going to minister to people. This is what God's given me to do.
So whether I'm freed or roam around or I'm imprisoned, his attitude doesn't change in that. So the result of his circumstances, the result of his imprisonment, is that these things turned out to the furtherance of the Gospel, and partially because Paul sees that his strength is in Christ and that whatever situation he's in, he still has an obligation to do what God wants him to do. This word furtherance in this passage here means the progress, the advancement of the Gospel.
So again, like I said, I think that Paul had a unique opportunity here to reach people that maybe he normally would never have a chance to share the Gospel with. And this is furthering the Gospel. The Gospel is doing what's supposed to do in this case, people are being saved.
They're coming to Christ as their savior. And he sees the furtherance of the gospel. Talking briefly about the gospel, that's a word that we use often.
It comes from the Greek euangelion, which literally means good message. The EU part at the beginning, that's good. And then if you look, you kind of see the word angel in there, right? Angels are messengers.
So this is a good message or the good news. One Corinthians 15, one through four I have found you can keep reading because it goes on. But First Corinthians 15 is probably the best definition that Paul gives of the gospel.
If somebody asks you, what is the gospel? I would encourage you to say, hey, let me open up to One Corinthians 15 and read that with them, because that's going to give what Paul believes, what Paul knows as the gospel. So First Corinthians 15, one through four, let's read that. Who wants to read? Brian, is that your hand that went up? Yes.
Okay. Yeah, you kind of stuck it up really quick. I didn't know if you were flinching or first Corinthians 15, verse one says, moreover, I declare to you the gospel which I preach, also you receive, by which you also are saved, for I delivered to you.
First of all, Christ died for our sins according to the prescription, and that he was buried. So here in this passage, Paul starts off by saying, you know the gospel, I gave it to you. I proclaimed it to you.
You believed on it kind of as a preamble to verse three, he's saying, this is what I delivered to you. And the message of the gospel is that Christ died, he was buried and he rose again. That's the gospel.
And for our sins, Christ died for our sins according to scripture, he was buried and he rose again on the third day. That's the essence of the gospel. So if you need a place to go, say what, give me a definition of the gospel.
There's the gospel right there. That's what it is, that message right there. So we looked at first Paul's circumstances led to gospel opportunities.
Verse 13, we'll see that Paul's witness leads to gospel. Evidence in verse 13 says, so it has become evident to the whole palace guard and to all the rest that my chains are in Christ. He starts out by saying, here it's become evident, it's become known, it's become plain, it's become visible.
There is an undeniable acknowledgment of what is going on with Paul that this imprisonment of his has happened because God wants him to share the gospel there. It's for the furtherance of the gospel. This is just as plain as day.
Paul says, you can ask the people around me, you can ask the people that are here, they see it. And it's to all who Paul's in contact with. He brings out the whole palace guard the palace guard.
As Paul is under house arrest, guards were assigned him 24 hours a day. They were to stay with Paul and make sure Paul did not leave. You know what Paul saw this as? This is a captive audience.
They're stuck with me. They get to hear the gospel. So he took that opportunity to share about Jesus Christ with the people that were guarding him.
He also says in here that this has become evident not only to the palace guard, but to all the rest. Well, who's all the rest? Well, everyone else, right? Not just soldiers, but everyone else Paul came in contact with. There's visitors, friends, whoever showed up, etcetera.
How do I know that? We'll go to Acts 28, verses 30 and 31. Let's read that. Olivia, go ahead.
This is interesting. Paul had to rent his own house when he was in prison here under house arrest. We should make our prisoners pay for their own prison accommodations.
Might save our government a little money anyway. Besides that, that's kind of a side point. Just ignore that.
But it says Paul Dwelt in his own rented house. This is what it's talking about. This is where he is when he writes Philippians.
And he received all who came to him while people were allowed to come and go. And so he received them. What did he do when he received them? He preached the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence.
No one forbidding him. So they came and he said, hey, more opportunity to share the gospel. I'm going to talk about Jesus.
I'm going to talk about the kingdom of God. I'm going to talk about what these people need to know. So it wasn't just the palace guard.
It wasn't just the people he was chained to. It was anybody who came by. Paul was open and ready to share the gospel with them.
And what is evident here? So it became evident to the whole palace guards arrest. That what? My chains are in Christ. Well, what does that mean, my chains are in Christ? It seems like his chains are in Rome because the Romans arrested him.
Right? So Paul was incarcerated, but to him, it was playing that Jesus wanted him in this exact situation. His chains are in Christ so that he would have the opportunity to share the gospel. Paul doesn't see this as Rome came in and exerted their will.
He's seeing God's plan in action. And God is using Rome to arrest Paul, to put him in this place that he can share the gospel with the people who are in Rome. Could we turn this down just slightly? There's a little echo going on here, and it's bugging me.
So let's look at a couple of verses here first. Peter 314 through 16. Nathan, go ahead.
But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you are blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Having a good conscience.
That when they defame you as evildoers. Those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. So you look at what Peter's talking about here, and this is Peter, not Paul.
But it's the same attitude you see in Paul if you should suffer for righteousness sake. Well, why was Paul imprisoned? Paul was imprisoned because he was sharing the gospel, because he was doing what God wanted to do. So he's doing what's right, he's doing what's good, and he's suffering for that.
So verse 15, it says, when that happens. And verse 14 tells us, don't be afraid of threats. Don't be troubled.
This is an idea that God is sovereign over this. He's in control of this situation. But when this happens, sanctify the Lord.
Set aside the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you for the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. What is Paul doing? He's giving a defense for what he believes, what he's been doing. I'm sharing the gospel.
This is what I believe in. Now, the word defense, here's a Greek word, apologia. What does that look like? Yeah, we take apology.
Like, if someone gives an apology, we're like that they've done something wrong and they're saying, I'm sorry. Right? But the idea of the word is a logical, well reasoned defense. This is where we get the word apologetics from.
You may have heard of that. It's a defense of Christianity. It's a defense of the Bible apologetics.
Here you can see the logia. We get logic from it, but it's the word word. But it has the idea of a message.
Jesus was the word, the message. He's God's message to us of salvation. So that's what that means there, to give a well reasoned defense, a well thought out logic to what is going on.
And that's what Paul is doing. And you can imagine that he's getting chained to these guards and they're like, okay, what are you in for? I'm in for sharing the gospel. What's the gospel? Let me tell you about the gospel.
And there's opportunity to share the gospel. Someone else getting his groceries. Okay, let's go to your point.
Someone else is getting groceries because that's probably true. So somebody's bringing him food and they're like, oh, Paul, we're so sorry this happened to you. Don't be sorry about this.
I'm sharing the gospel with people. This is where God's put me so I can do his will right here. And so that's Paul's attitude here.
He's not troubled. He's not afraid of Rome. What he's going to do is be ready to share what God has given him to share in verse 16, tells having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.
The result is they may say, well, you're a troublemaker, you're an evildoer. That's what they accuse Paul of. He's causing trouble.
But in the end, they see Paul's righteous living the way God has, or Paul has sanctified his heart towards God, the way Paul is sticking to his message and to his faith. And it makes their threats or their accusations that you're a troublemaker seem really ridiculous, because he's not a troublemaker. He's a guy who loves God.
And so they become ashamed at that, and they come to realize the truth of the gospel. So looking at that first Corinthians 16 nine, another verse, nice short one. If you're not a big reader, okay, Josiah, you're a big reader.
But great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adverse so Paul's talking about even ministering to others here, and he says, a great and effective door has opened to me. And look at what he adds at the end here. There are many adversaries, there's trouble, there's troublemakers, there's people that are going to try to harm and persecute Paul.
But Paul doesn't care. He sees the open door. He's ready to do what God wants him to do.
Two Timothy, two eight through ten. Isabelle, you want that one? I saw your hand go up just as I called on Josiah last time. So remember, that Jesus Christ, but the word of God also.
So here in verse eight, you see a portion of that gospel that we talked about in one Corinthians 15, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. According to my gospel, if you're raised from the dead, you have to die. So it assumes the rest of the gospel there and then he says, for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer.
Well, this apparently this Timothy is written much later. This is still going on. People are still persecuting Paul.
Paul says, even to the point of chains, he's imprisoned again, this time in a real prison. But the word of God is not chained. Here's his attitude I may be in prison, I may be trapped here by the Roman government, but the word of God is still going out.
The word of God is still effective. The word of God is not chained. You can't hold it back.
So in his attitude here, verse ten, look at this. Therefore endure all things. What are all things? Well, he's talking about persecution, he's talking about imprisonment.
In fact, in Two Timothy, he tells Timothy he's already going to be being poured out as a drink offering. He sees his death at hand. He knows that they're going to execute him.
That's the natural outcome of what's going on here. So he endures all these things for the sake of the elect, and you can think of this as elect. When you see this, you can think of this as the people that God has chosen to be saved or the people that God knows are going to be saved.
It's not that we don't have free will, it's just that God knows all things God's sovereign. So in that sense, they're elect anyway. The elect is a saved people that they also may obtain salvation, which is Christ Jesus with eternal his.
His point here is that all these things that he goes through, all this hardship, all this trouble, all this persecution, all the beatings, all the shipwrecks, everything that's bad that's happening to him, he's doing it because he wants to see people saved. He wants to see people hear the gospel and come to know Christ as their savior. That's his goal.
He doesn't care what else is going on in his life. He doesn't care what other hardships he's going through because his goal is to serve Christ in this way. His chains are in Christ.
It's not the Roman government that's in chains him. Christ has put him there to share the gospel so that people would be saved. So Paul's witness led to gospel evidence, and everybody here, the palace guard, everybody else who has shown up has seen that this is true, that there's gospel evidence in Paul's life.
Let's look at number three here. So Paul's testimony led to gospel confidence. As I say this, it's not Paul's confidence that's led to let's read the verse.
And most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Yeah. As all the believers here.
So most of the brethren not only was Paul's gospel ministry evident to those who were unsaved, the palace guard and whoever else was around, but even believers were affected by Paul having this right attitude while he was imprisoned and sharing the gospel and seeing God work in his life, that it was encouraging other believers. So there's a growing confidence in them. This word confident means to be persuaded.
Convinced or won over that again, the natural inclination might be here to say, oh, no, if Paul's in prison, he was doing great work for God. He's in prison. Oh, no, that's terrible.
And now they're seeing, no, God allowed this to happen. And Paul's being faithful. He's doing good things.
You know what? I need to be like Paul. I need to be faithful in sharing the gospel. I need to not worry about what my circumstances are.
Oh, no, Rome doesn't like it. They're going to arrest me. Who cares? I'm going to share the gospel because Paul's done it and it's working.
It's doing what God wants it to do, and he's been faithful in doing that. So they've been won over by this. They've been won over by his chains.
Not that Paul was imprisoned. I don't think any one of these people, even in the first century. And certainly we wouldn't say, yeah, I'd like to be in prison for the gospel.
That's not what our goal is, right? We'd rather be free to just share and do whatever. We don't want to be in prison so they're not won over by his imprisonment. But what God was using Paul, that God was using Paul so greatly, even while being imprisoned, that they're seeing that the circumstances don't matter, doesn't stop God from doing what God's going to do.
And they were learning to trust God. They were learning to share the gospel as Paul was doing. So they have a renewed boldness.
They have become bold, and bold means to dare or to be brave. Let's look at first Thessalonians two two. Another reader, Eric, go ahead.
As you know, we were bold our God. So here he's talking about being in Philippi. I picked out this verse kind of for that.
He was in Philippi, and he says, we were spitefully treated. We've suffered. But guess what? That didn't stop us.
When we came to Thessalonica, we were still bold to share the gospel. That doesn't bother us. We might have gotten the same or worse treatment in Thessalonica doesn't matter.
God wants to share the gospel, we're going to share the gospel. The circumstances didn't matter to Paul, and so he was bold, and it was showing the believers, you too can be bold. You too.
Can trust God. Look what God's doing through Paul, through these hard circumstances. Your circumstances aren't going to stop God from working in your life.
Your circumstances aren't going to stop God from using you if you allow Him to do it. So they were bold to speak the word. So they're sharing the gospel with others, and it's without oblivious.
There are obvious consequences, and they can look at Paul. Paul's in prison. That's an obvious consequence of what sharing the gospel brought about at that time.
But they see from Paul that proclaiming the truth is of greater reward than any negative results that can happen. And so Paul's being an example to them. And because of Paul's example, believers were emboldened to say, I can do that too.
I can share the gospel. I don't have to worry about what's going to happen. God's in control.
God's taking care of me. Again, going back to that verse in Two Timothy two, eight and nine, Paul wasn't even worried about dying for it. All his concern was that I want people to hear the gospel so that they can trust Christ as their savior.
That was Paul's desire. So Paul's testimony led to gospel confidence. So I was going to separate these two originally, but I didn't think there was quite enough, so I put them together.
So Paul takes a different turn here. Now. And I have this.
As Paul defines two types of gospel preachers. So Paul defines two types of gospel preachers. Now, this I found very interesting here.
And I had to think through this quite a bit. I think I understand where it's going here. So we'll see some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill.
The former preached Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my chains, but the later out of love, knowing that I'm appointed for the defense of the Gospel. So we see two types of preachers here I probably could have left blanks here, but the first type is the selfish preachers, their motivation, and he gives four things in these three verses here. They preach first of all from envy.
One commentator defined envy as the desire to deprive others of what is rightfully theirs. Who would they be envious in this situation? Yes, other preachers, but specifically Paul. Paul again, you think back on Paul.
Paul started out, we first are introduced to Paul in Acts, and Paul is going around arresting and killing church people and thinking he was doing God a favor by destroying this new sect that was following this Jesus Christ. Suddenly, Paul meets Christ on the road. He's converted.
He spends three years training. All of a sudden he's this great preacher who's going around all over the world planting churches, seeing people come to know Christ as their Savior. That brings about some envy in some people.
Some people look at that and go, I want that, I should be like that. I'm a better speaker than Paul. Paul at one point talks about how he didn't come to them in even powerful speech.
It almost seems like Paul wasn't that great of an orator as far as delivery. He obviously had the content down pretty good, so he had that. But he wasn't necessarily the most pleasant to listen to.
He wasn't like this great orator who he got up and just swayed you with his words. He was just bringing the good news of Jesus Christ, of what's in the Bible. And so maybe even some of them said, he's not that great of a speaker.
I could do better. There's some envy going on here also. There's strife, there's contention, there's enmity.
I wanted to bring up the passage about that. Some follow Apollos and some follow Paul, and some follow Cephas, and some follow Christ. Contention is something that naturally happens when people aren't focused on the right thing.
And so again, if they're envious of Paul and stuff, it's going to bring about contention we're following someone else, people should follow me, whatever. So there's envy, there's strife, there's selfish ambition. This word originally had the idea of working for hire.
Someone who came in and said, hey, I'll do the job for you if you pay me this much. I thought I was going like, oh, this is the mercenary type idea. But they said that later.
It just came to mean looking out for their own interest, somebody who looks out for their own interests. They're only doing it to get what they want to get out of it. So there's people with selfish ambition that they're trying to get something out of sharing the gospel.
They're trying to get something out of for themselves, makes them look good, makes them feel good, gives them a reputation, whatever it is, that there's some kind of selfish reason for doing it. Lynn, is there hand up? Yeah, it could be like that. And hopefully in all those situations, you're finding somebody who loves the Lord and is going to do what's right anyway.
But it's somebody who says, I'm going to do this, but what am I getting out of it basically their own calling. Does that give them pride, advantage? Yeah, it could be that. That could be definitely one area here where maybe again, look at how many people I've saved, look how many people are following me now, look how many people are listening to my ministry.
There's kind of that selfish idea to it, that self centeredness, and then it's not sincerely, they're not doing it. And this is kind of a generic not for the right reasons here, they're not doing for the right reasons. And the results here, and interesting results.
They're hoping to add affliction to Paul's chains. This is a hard concept. How do you add affliction to Paul's chains? Well, maybe they're like the more I increase, the less know is recognized, the more difficult his ministry is.
Whatever it is that they want to hurt Paul in his ministry, that's their desire. So there's these selfish preachers. Then he also outlines on the second group, and that's the loving preachers, their motivation is goodwill, desiring what is best for others.
These people are looking at it like, here's somebody that needs to hear the gospel, here's somebody who's on their way to hell. I need to share the gospel with them because they need to be saved. That would be why you would preach the gospel.
They're not looking at who they're preaching to. What kind of person is, do I really want this to talk to this person? They're saying, here's a person that has a need and I'm going to share it. And there's an idea of love, here a genuine caring for people.
That's their motivation. And then I gave the reasoning, because it's not really results. The reasoning was here at the end, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel.
I think this has the idea that they're participating in what Paul's doing. They're participating in Paul's ministry as Paul's serving the Lord. They get to be a part of that because they're doing the same thing Paul is doing.
And so it's not necessarily that they're connected to Paul. Like, this is Paul's second assistant, third assistant, fourth, but they're in the same business as Paul. The idea we're sharing the gospel, we're doing like Paul, we're serving others, we want people to be saved just like Paul.
We don't care what the circumstances are because the gospel needs to go out just like Paul. And they're sharing in Paul's ministry, knowing that Paul was appointed for the defense of the gospel, I want to be part of that too. I want to defend the gospel, I want to share with others.
So I think that's what this means here, that knowing that I appointed for the defense of the gospel, they want to be a part of that. They want to do the same thing Paul is doing. Galatians 115 and 16, who would like to read Ted to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among the Gentiles I did not be able to question.
And this is just Paul's calling, as you say, he's been appointed for the defense of the gospel. Paul talks about in Galatians that God, even from the time that he was in his mother's womb, had already picked out Paul to be this guy to share the gospel. And that after his son was revealed in him that his goal, his mission from God was to share the gospel with that's.
Again, as people see Paul and they see them doing that, doing that faithfully and say, I want to serve God that way, I want to do that too. I want to share the gospel with people like Paul is. And it's again a motivation here.
Ephesians three, six and seven. Brian, go ahead. That the Gentiles should be followed, of which I become a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of his power.
So he's talking about the Gentiles become fellow heirs to accept the gospel, to know everything about Christ and that and he says he became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God. It was God who worked in him. It was God who chose him to do this.
And by the effective working of his power, it's God who's empowered him to do this. Again, I think that these loving preachers, they're doing it for the right reasons, but they're also seeing what Paul's doing and saying, that's great that God's used him. I want God to use me that way, too.
And so there's the idea that they know that Paul was appointed for the defense of the gospel. I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of that team and be defending the gospel and sharing the gospel.
And I think of people in Paul's life like Timothy and later on in his life, John Mark, people that were faithful, that they probably looked at Paul's example and know, I want God to use me like God is using. Know it may not be in the exact same situation or the exact same thing, but that God would just fill me with his power, fill me with his spirit, help me to do what he wants me to. And so there's these two types of preachers, the selfish preachers and the loving preachers.
Now what do we do with them? Because now Paul gave us that some preach the gospel from envy and strife and they're doing it for selfish gain and some are preaching out of love. What do you do with that? Our natural human is say, those evil selfish preachers, we got to put them down. We got to make sure that they stop doing this.
They need to get right with God. So we need to do everything we can. That means we have to ostracize them from the church or whatever.
We got to do this to get them on the right track because they're just doing the wrong thing. And the loving preachers, yeah, we'll accept them and we'll embrace them. Paul has a different solution.
Here Paul, I'm using the wrong color, could do red. But here Paul emphasizes, emphasizes the priority of the gospel. So here's Paul's solution.
What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. And in this I rejoice and yes, will rejoice. So Paul doesn't say, go find these guys, hunt them down and get them out of the gospel ministry.
Paul says, what do we do with it? Well, they're preaching the gospel, people are getting saved. Great. That's the important thing.
That's the primary thing. That's the top thing. The top goal here is that the gospel is preached.
So Paul letter A here disregards the motivation. He disregards the motivation and then this. Paul's not excusing their motivation, by the way.
He's not saying, oh, that's fine, they can have whatever attitude they have. God doesn't care. No, that's not what he's saying here.
He's not saying that they're right in having selfish motivation in sharing the gospel. What he's saying is that in the overall scheme of things and what God's doing, that's not the important thing. The important thing is that the gospel is being shared.
So he's not saying that they are not wrong to preach selfishly. In fact, other passages, other places, all these things, envy, strife, selfish, ambition, insincerity, these are all bad things. These are all things that Christians should avoid and turn away from.
And we could go and look at 50 or 60 other passages in the Bible that tell us this. So he's not excusing it, but he's saying that based upon what the goal is, the motivation is secondary. His goal is to see that the gospel is preached.
And again, he's concerned about them. He wants them to be doing what's right. But I think if you look at it this way too, Paul can't go out and change their motivation.
Paul can tell them this is wrong, but he can't pick out how they act or pick out what they're thinking. He can't force them to do that. So Paul's not going to worry about that.
Paul's going to worry about that. The gospel is being preached, and he's going to do everything in his power to do it the right way, because he wants to do what's right. He can't worry about what others are doing.
His goal is to share the gospel. So the goal here that Christ is preached, Paul's so focused on the gospel being shared, that does not concern him with people's motivation. Again, not that he doesn't care, not that if he was talking to one of them, he'd say, look, your attitude is wrong here.
You got to get right with God. He would tell him that, but he's not going to go out of his way to hunt down these people and say, let's stop them from preaching the gospel. He says, My job is to share the gospel.
My job is that the gospel is being preached. And if they're getting the gospel out, even if it's from the wrong motivation, and if they're getting the message out and people are being saved, well, God's using that, too. And so it's a tough concept because we want to say, no, absolutely not.
That's not what they should be doing. It doesn't mean we have to follow them either. It doesn't mean we have to listen to them.
So if they were like a pastor and they had wrong motivation, even if they're sharing the gospel, it doesn't mean we say, well, I'll go to that church anyways. It doesn't matter. Everything else is wrong.
They're sharing the gospel. No, you want to find someplace good that's teaching the right things, but I'm not going to go pick at their church because your motivation is wrong. You're a selfish person.
You shouldn't be preaching the gospel. That's not my concern. My concern is doing what I need to do for God and what God wants me to do.
In fact, Paul here says, even with these selfish preachers, that Christ is preached. And he says, in this, I rejoice, and yes, will rejoice. So Paul rejoices in the gospel being shared.
Here's a quote from John MacArthur. I snuck one in right at the end here. John MacArthur says, absolutely nothing could steal Paul's God given joy.
His own privacy and freedom were incidental, and he cared nothing for personal recognition or credit. Neither the painful chains of Rome nor even the more painful criticism of fellow Christians could keep him from rejoicing because Christ was being proclaimed and his church was growing and maturing. That's Paul's attitude.
That's, again, looking at it kind of summarizes this whole lesson here, that it doesn't matter what circumstances I'm in, it doesn't matter what other people are saying about them, that there's these selfish preachers that are envious, that they're cutting me down, whatever. I just want to see the gospel preach. I want to see the people being saved.
I want to see the church grow. That's what he wants and that's what he's going to take joy in. MacArthur said two Corinthians six one through ten is a great summary of Paul's attitude to the Gospel.
So I put it in here. We're going to read it. It's a long passage, so strong reader, I'm going to let Josiah do it.
I use my David duty. So we'll let Josiah do it. We then, as workers together with him, also plead with you not to receive the grace of God.
For he says, in acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have come to you. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
We give no offenses of anything that our ministry may not be blamed, but in all things. We commend ourselves as ministers of God in much patience and tribulations and distresses, in stripes and imprisonment, in fault, in labors and sleeplessness and fasting, by purity, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil reports and good reports as deceivers and yet true, as unknown and yet well known as dying. And behold, we live as chastened and yet not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich as having nothing and yet possessing all things.
And you look at this. Verse one says, we, as workers with him, workers together with him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. And so he's talking about his Gospel ministry.
He's pleading with them, he's encouraging them. Verse two, he makes it clear, in the acceptable time, I've heard you, in day of salvation, I've helped you. And he says, behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.
And then he gives this whole list. I'm not going to go through everything here, but you see all the troubles, all the turmoils, all the things know there's good reports, there's bad reports in his life, there's sorrow, but yet he's joyful. He doesn't have anything, but he's making people rich spiritually.
All this stuff is going on. And Paul's focus is just on that. Verse one and two there just sharing the Gospel, sharing his life with people around him.
That's what Paul wanted to do. It didn't matter what the circumstances are. It didn't matter what people were saying about him.
It didn't matter what else was going on. His focus was to do what God wanted him to do. I got four takeaways this morning.
I'm going to go through these quickly here number one. When we go through difficult circumstances or trials or tribulations, do we complain about our circumstances or feel sorry for ourselves or get angry or frustrated? Ryan kind of brought this up a little bit in his sermon. He was talking about flat tires on cars.
He was talking about eating food that you didn't want to eat for lunch. You could have a situation where your family's in a car accident and your wife dies. I know it doesn't happen often, but it can happen.
Oh, wait, that's what happened to me. How am I going to respond to that? Is there woe is me. God allowed my wife to die, allowed my daughter to be hospitalized and in a wheelchair for ten weeks.
And this has totally affected our life, affected our finances. Is that the attitude I have? Or do we get here or in these times, do we see that God has allowed the circumstances to happen? He wants us to serve Him and he wants to use us for his glory, even in difficult times. One of the best things I think happened as a result of Sue's passing was her memorial service because I had Pastor Kevin's preach, and my kids did a good job of this, too.
And Ted did an excellent job when he got up there and spoke. But I said, I want the gospel to go out. I want people to hear the gospel.
I want at least people that are there to not have to say, I've never heard the gospel. And he preached the gospel beautifully. Ted's testimony was great.
My kids said some wonderful things about how God's in control and how God's using the situation. And the whole service, I felt just glorified god, well, that's the proper attitude. That's how we have to have.
And it's not just a memorial service, but I have to go through my life, people who know me and ask, how are you doing? Well, how am I doing? I'm hurting, but God's good. God's in control. God has allowed this to happen.
I'm going to continue serving Him. I'm going to do what God wants me to do. Paul's sitting here in prison, and Paul could have had the, hey, guys, I'm running your church of Philippi.
I'm in prison. This stinks. I'm stuck in this rented house.
I've changed the guards day and night. This is the worst situation. You guys need to start praying for me that God would let me out of this situation so I can do what I'm supposed to do because I just can't do it right here.
This is cramping my style. He could have said that. He didn't because his focus is on the gospel and he sees the situation.
God's put me in this situation. I got this great opportunity to share the gospel I've been sharing with Caesar's own guards. Awesome.
Later on, he talks about another passage. I don't remember which book it's in, but he talks about that even the household of Caesar greets you, greets the church, which makes it sound like, hey, there's people in Caesar's own household. And this wouldn't be like Caesar's kids or stuff.
Probably his servants or whatever that were working on that heard the gospel from Paul were saved, and now we're walking with Christ, who has that kind of opportunity. Did you guys hang around the White House and get to share with the president and his heads of state and stuff like that? No, we don't get that opportunity. Paul had that opportunity because God put him in prison and allowed him to interact with these people.
So what do we do with those situations? Do we get this woe is me type attitude or we say, yes, God, you've put me here, use me, help me to do what you want me to do. Help me to share the gospel, help me to minister to people around me. Help me to do what's right.
And that's the attitude we ought to have audience. We know that there are family members there that are still lost. They weren't going to be run out in the middle of the funeral.
Yeah, we didn't chain them to our chairs. But most most people aren't going to walk out in the middle of funeral situation. Besides that, I know that I've mentioned this before, we were praying for opportunities that we saw.
That wasn't the way that any of us would have chose, but that was God's way. Just never know what's in store or who you're going to talk to at work or on the street sometimes. Don't be afraid to share the gospel.
I have been in time. Other times I've been bold. But just encouragement to everybody.
Take the opportunity. Yeah, definitely. Thank you.
When your hand went up. Yeah. I was going to say we got married.
Yeah. And wedding is another one of those cabinet situations. Most people aren't going to leave a wedding, especially if you're going to give them some food or something afterwards.
They'll generally stay for that. So you have great opportunities. So there's always opportunities.
The wedding I'm hoping is not a trial or a tribulation. I'm hoping you're actually excited about that. But same kind of idea there.
Right. Okay. When we persevere through difficult times, doing what's right, even when life is hard or we are hurting, people will notice.
I go back to first Peter, chapter three, that they ask you for the reason of the hope that is in you. They'll see that shining through just as kind of like what Lynn just said. Our lives become a testimony to unbelievers and encouragement to the church.
Paul said that he's able to speak to the guards and all the rest and then the church became more bold because of what he's doing. So our lives do matter. People notice.
People are watching us. They're seeing how we react to these situations. And we can be a conviction to unsaved people.
We can be an encouragement to save people. It matters how we respond to difficulty in our lives. It very much matters.
Everybody has their moments. Over the last year, I've had days where I've like, I don't want to even get out of bed. I don't want to talk to anybody.
I just want to curl up in a ball and cry. Sorry. So we have our moments.
But overall, how do we respond to these difficulties, these trials, these hardships in our life? And if we think that nobody cares, people care. People are watching. Number three, are we so motivated by the gospel being shared that we rejoice whenever it's proclaimed? Does that show in our lives because we are sharing the gospel? Now, this idea of the selfish preachers is kind of where I got this from.
I was trying to think of like a modern day example. Who would these people be? I had a hard time thinking about it because part of me said, well, the TV evangelists, a lot of times they get a bad rap because they're asking for money, which I think is the wrong thing to do, or they're promoting themselves. But a lot of them don't have a good theology and don't even share a good gospel.
So that was hard for me to say that these people I rejoice that they're at least doing something because most of them aren't even doing the right thing in that. So I'm not going to give an example so much. But we need to be careful that we're not envious, we're not jealous, we're not criticizing other people for doing what God's having them do, whether we agree 100% with them or not.
We need to worry about what we're doing, that we're being biblical, that we have the right attitude, that we're sharing the gospel the way we're supposed to, that we're serving others the way we're supposed to it we have enough to worry about with ourselves. We don't need to be worrying about what other people are doing. Now, if you get in a situation you can talk to somebody and you know that they're doing wrong, yes, the Bible says you're supposed to admonish them.
But we don't need to go out of our way to be on a witch hunt to take down everybody who's not being biblical. We need to worry about what we're doing and serve Christ the way God wants us to. Finally, here are our motivations, right, in how we serve Christ.
So this is kind of that other side of that. Are you looking at yourself? Examine yourself. While Paul rejoices that the gospel is being claimed, he is not excusing the wrong motivations of the selfish preachers.
God is concerned with our motivations. So the other thing you can take out of this is looking at that if there's two types of preachers, which one are you? If there's two types of ministers, which one are you? It's a good time to examine ourselves and say, okay, am I serving God the way God wants me to? Do I have the right attitudes? Do I have the right motivations? Or is there something I'm trying to get out of it? Am I being selfish? Am I jealous of others? Am I causing strife by what I'm doing? We need to reflect on that. As good as we can be, we can also be very bad because we all have wicked hearts and the sin nature in us, and it's very easy to fall back on that.
And so it's just a constant examination, evaluation does us good. So any thoughts or questions? Josiah, when you talk about Acts 23 to 31, where it says that maybe some people would see that as, like, traveling to Paul kind of as a pilgrimage, basically going to Paul to get some sort of yeah, that's that's possible, being there for two years. Yeah.
And I think there are people that were probably there to serve and minister to Paul because jokingly, but kind of the truth, and he couldn't even go out and get his own food. Somebody had to bring that for him. There were people who probably knew Paul, knew what he was teaching, said, I want to learn from Paul, or coming there and knew where he was, he wasn't going anyplace.
So good opportunity. And there are probably people that were just curious, like, okay, let's see what's going on with Paul. I'm going to go pay him a visit and see what this Paul's really like, see what he's really up to.
And I think there Paul would have had opportunity to say, hey, I got a message for you. Here's the gospel. So I think it's a little bit of all that, but I think that's true.
I think that obviously Paul had people there ministering with him. Timothy was there for a while. I believe some of the other associates would have been there also, so there would have been some training going on, too.
Ryan, was your hand up earlier? Okay. I thought I saw somebody in that role, but maybe I'm just seeing things. You're good? I'm good.
Anyone else? Yeah. See, you're making me feel like I'm seeing things, and then you're like, oh, yeah, wait a second. Yeah, I did have something.
I think the tickle should see a lot of parallels. Yeah, I saw that, too. While you were preaching.
I was like, oh, this will fit in nicely. And even that last point where he rejoices in that it's about having God's joy in our life and being thankful and just praising God for what's going on. Even like I said, even if these people aren't motivated, right.
Paul's saying people are being saved, people are being added to the church. That's a good thing. And I'm going to rejoice in that, and it doesn't steal his joy.
And it's so hard for us as humans because we're so stinking selfish. So we need to align our thoughts and our motivations with Christ. In fact, chapter two talks a lot about let this mind be you that was also in Christ.
So there is a command even that we need to get thinking the same way that God is thinking and having that same thought process, those motivations, those. Same desires that Christ had. So it's definitely something that Paul goes on and on in this book and talks about that.
So we'll get to that in a few weeks. Anything else I'm going to have? Ryan, do you want to close this prayer, please?