Philippiians 1:12-30
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Intro
Hey y’all. Hows it going?
Everyone good?
Did everyone think it was gonna hit 78 today? Yikes
Anyways, lets get into it.
Tonight we are gonna talk about how we live our lives.
We talk about that a lot, but this passage we are in Philippians really hits on it. and the thing I want you to see right at the outset, that life is not about following a list of rules and regulations that an impersonal far away god has put in to place, but that life is about how we follow and sit at the feet of a God who is personal and we know His name, Jesus. And how we bring others to do the same. How we live our lives will have a direct impact in eternity.
We are to apprentice under Jesus, and learn to live as he lived, and to teach others to live as He lived.
We are apprentices and messengers.
There is this scene in Saving Private Ryan, lot of good scenes in that movie. But this scene shows the troops trying to get a message across the battlefield, its a blown out town, rubble everywhere, so they call for a runner, fast guy. They give him the message, and he takes off running, right in to machine gun fire and immediately drops. But then they keep shooting his body. and the troops who just sent the poor guy out there are losing it, “why do the keep shooting him??” and Tom Hanks character turns and says, “as long as he still has breath in his lungs, he carries the message.”
So, I want us to live in that world tonight.
This thought of, he still carries the message. If he is alive, he still carries the message.
Context
So tonight gonna be in Philippians 1:12-30 who needs a bible? Throw a hand up. Cool cool.
Last week we talked about saint hood, what a life of following Jesus results in, you become a saint. An wise sage of the faith. I mentioned Chuck and Berta these saints as I’d call them here at FBC. Faithfully following Jesus turns you in to someone who is like Jesus.
That’s the whole thing, thats the result of spiritual formation.
It’s like When you learned to read, you started by learning the basics, letters, what sounds they make, but eventually you started to learn words, you put the letters together, and you could pronounce words from the letters, then once you have become a fully formed reader you stop seeing letters and words but start to see thoughts and ideas. You see sentences become concepts. When you write stuff down, you aren’t writing just letters, you are writing thoughts, The letters and words become second nature.
you have formed your mind to be someone who can read.
Same thing with becoming a saint, the long process. The result of a life following Jesus.
Tonight, we are going to get in to the — what now, — what sort of attitude, — how does a person who becomes a saint view their life?
How is it structured to be like Jesus?
To live and to die like Him.
SO Phil. 1:12-30, let’s read the whole thing then we will get in to it. But before that, lets’s pray for our time in the word.
Pray
Read this with me.
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.
Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.
27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.
Okay, so normally how we operate in here is, we start at the beginning of the passage and work through
but sometimes whats in the middle of the text is where you work out of.
The hinge of this passage is verse 21.
This is a t-shirt verse. This is a coffee cup verse.
It’s a great verse,
and when we see what Paul is meaning by it, it gets better.
21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Paul here is defining his attitude in life, he is letting you know in the middle of this passage, that this is the central attitude of his life.
Back to the top now.
So the way this passage is set up the first part is 12-18, this is Paul showing what his outlook on life is.
P1
Paul when he is writing this is writing from prison. and he starts in verse 12 by saying all of this has happened has really served to advance the gospel.
He tells them, the entire imperial guard has heard the gospel.
any one know?
a low guess is that one imperial guard had about 4000 men in it at the time this was written.
One man in prison, 4000 people have heard the gospel.
Paul is preaching no matter what. These are the same dudes that probably also beat him.
Being in a roman prison was nothing cozy or warm, the romans were ruthless, lived hard, and died hard.
Life was cheap and there were no rights for a prisoner.
Paul is suffering. And Paul is still preaching the gospel and he counts it as joy.
So the first thing I want you to see is this,
In suffering preach the gospel. In joy preach the gospel. In all things preach the gospel.
And this is what will happen to you when you do that, two things,
Paul gives the example Phil 1:15-18
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.
Yes, and I will rejoice,
People will join you and people with mock you. Thats what this word pretense means in verse 18, in truth or in pretense.
It means pretender.
Have you ever heard someone say about some one they are pretentious?
It means they are pretending to be something they are not. People were mocking Paul by talking about Christ, but that just means even still Christ is being told about.
So this is what is going on here, Paul is living out what Jesus told the disciples what was going to happen in John 15:18-19
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
The world is going to hate you, the world is going to persecute you.
Then Jesus goes on to say just a few verses later that we will not do this alone, but we will have the Holy Spirit the helper. John 15:26-27
26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. 27 And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.
Paul is living this out in his life, he is bearing witness, and he is rejoicing.
So this is what I want you to think about.
This word witness is from the greek word martus, which is where we get our word for Martyr, a Martyr is one who witnesses, who bears witness.
Martyr in the 1 century especially in the church morphed to not just mean a witness, but someone whose whole life bore witness to Christ was raised from the dead and gave up their life for that fact. So Paul is being and becoming a witness, because he will be martyred. that’s why they’re called martyrs
So see this— witness is not just something you do, when we think of witness we think of telling people about Jesus, and it is that, but it is so much more than that.
It’s more than what you do, it is something you become, you become a witness, and you cannot deny the fact that Christ is raised from the dead.
This is why in the early church so many people would be out to death for their belief.
If you read the accounts of the disciples after the gospels. They all die awful deaths, except for John, he is just left to die alone on an Island.
Peter is crucified upside down, Thomas is speared to death in India, Matthew is impaled in Ethiopia, and Bartholomew was flayed alive. thats not all of them.
But the bore witness and when they were asked to recant what they saw they said, i can’t I saw the man raised from the dead. No one dies for a lie like this.
The church exploded in growth because people were being martyred for their faith. The way they lived and died created a compelling reason to follow Jesus. Jesus was better.
Your life has to become a compelling vision for following Jesus. We do that by living and dying like Jesus.
Our whole life bears witness to who Christ is, and we live that out unto death.
The way we conduct our lives in suffering bears more weight to the truth of the gospel. Absolutely preach the gospel when times are good.
but this world we live in is going to really take note how we do it in suffering.
It is easy to preach good news when things are great. It is way harder to preach good news when the world is kicking you in the teeth, when the world around you is raging.
To grin, smile, and preach the gospel is what it means to become a saint and a witness.
Paul says in verse 20, “as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”
P2
Then he hits the Philippians with the t-shirt verse to sum it up.
21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
For me to live another day it is another day Christ can use me. If I die, I gain Christ himself, and see him in His full glory.
In my prayers this week I’ve meditated on Isaiah 10, sum it up, we are the axe, God is the tree cutter. I’m the axe, swing away.
If i’m to remain great, if I’m to die, great. Sola Deo Gloria.
This needs to be the outlook of our lives.
To live is Christ, to die is gain.
P3
Then Paul tells them, this is how you do this, this is your outlook, this is how you carry it out.
He starts in v. 27
27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,
So Lauralee when she worked Fuge in Nashville for the summer, this was the verse they lived by, in all they did, let it be worthy of the gospel.
Every time they prayed this was the prayer.
Is what you are doing good for the gospel or does it hurt the gospel. Does it hurt the witness, what sort of witness are you bearing towards the world.
Your life must be geared toward the gospel, it must be geared towards Christ and following him.
P2Christ
So how do we get there? how do we center our life on Him. How do we take on the attitude of to live is christ, to die is gain?
end of verse 27 says we do this together. We have to do this in community.
I’ve said this before and and i’ll keep saying it, there are no lone wolf christians. We are sheep following the shepherd home, by ourself we get eaten by the wolves.
Where is your community, who is discipling you? Everyone of you is being discipled by something, who or what is it? If it’s not jesus, why?
We must walk this road together.
One of the things that was said to students of Rabbi’s back in the day, was, “May the dust of your Rabbi be upon you”
Basically, follow your teacher so close that you have his dust on you, that you start to take on his form. Who are you kicking up dust with?
We gear our lives toward jesus in community.
And Then in community expect suffering and shoulder it together.
verse 28 and 29 tell us,
28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake,
We are going to suffer and we should be glad for the opportunity because in all things, Christ is preached. and the gospel is preached.
So what can you do right? Where do you start?
Find community and preach the gospel to yourself. Preach the good news to yourself.
In all of the new testament, the gospel is preached most to those already in the church, already followers of Jesus.
If you don’t preach the gospel to yourself first, you can’t preach it to anyone else.
the gospel will not be good news to anyone else if it is not good news to you first.
Take hope that Christ is risen from the dead. 2 Tim tells us, remember Christ risen from the dead.
This is where our hope comes from. Christ has defeated sin, and defeated death. He has made a way for us to have access to God almighty.
that the one on the throne would step off the throne and let us in the door. that is the good news, the King has won and want to know you. That no matter what, he has bought your way home.
No matter your sins, no matter your current state. Come and follow Him. Come see him as Christ on the throne.
If you are a follower of Christ, this text should give you boldness and confidence to truly live out your calling. To go in to this dark world knowing that no matter what happens, Christ is the better way, and Christ is with you. All of Christian history is with you. Jesus himself is taking part in your suffering.
If you are not a Christian, know that this world is broken, and there is nothing you can truly do in your own power to fix it. You might think you are in control, but you have none. this world owns you.
Christ is better. Christ is on the throne and whats to know you. Come and know Him.
I want to invite you in to the family, if you have never followed Jesus and you want to know more, come talk to me. Christ already knows everything about you and loves you still. Christ made a way.
Come see him as lord, come see him as king.
pray with me.