Confidence in the Gospel

Prayer

Genesis 50:15–21 ESV

15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” 16 So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: 17 ‘Say to Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.” ’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18 His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” 19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? 20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. 21 So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

Genesis 50: 15-21

Introduction

Have you ever read a book or letter by a Christian who was imprisoned at the time they wrote it? Or maybe you’ve read a book like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs that chronicles the deaths of the apostles and other Christians throughout history. Or maybe you’ve heard about the difficulties that modern missionaries are going through or have recently gone through. Perhaps you heard the story of Jim Elliot and his team of missionaries who were killed while trying to share the Gospel with an unreached people group. In a seemingly backwards way, these types of stories tend to encourage us, and make us want to emulate those people – to live for a higher cause.

Phil. 1:12-18

Philippians 1:12–18a 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. Yes, and I will rejoice,

Scripture

Our passage this morning is . If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word. We do this to show appreciation to God for His Word and in recognition that these Words are among the most important we could possible hear today. says,

Philippians 1:12–18a 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. Yes, and I will rejoice,

“I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.”

Thank you, you may be seated.

Paul is in prison. Likely chained to a rotating set of guards, constantly. He is not free to travel or preach in the square or synagogues. Many would look at Paul’s situation and say, “Welp, he had a good run, but his evangelism days are over. His days of serving Christ are complete – good job Paul, you did well.”

That is exactly what he does not want the Philippians to think, so he starts getting into the meat of his letter by saying, “I want you to know, brothers.” This is an attention getting device. Everyone uses attention getting devices in their daily lives, especially when doing any kind of public speaking. Every now and then, you have to recapture people’s attention. Sometimes it is done through a raising of the voice, or an inflection or an analogy or simple the statement of “listen to this”.

That is what Paul is doing here, he is saying, “Listen up, this is important.” “I want you to know this!” “All that has happened to me, this whole imprisonment thing, it is all for good.”

Now, I know that there are only 4 points on your outline, but we are going to camp out on this one for a little bit because really it is central to Paul’s thought through this passage and in the rest of Philippians. All of these things that were happening to Paul, weren’t really so bad after all. In fact, they were good.

In verse 12 where Paul says what has happened to him as really served to advance the Gospel, that word really is sometimes translated as actually or rather, and it acts as a contradiction to what you would expect. You might think that my imprisonment has hindered the Gospel, but rather it has served to advance it. It actually, it really has served to advance the Gospel. Contrary to popular believe. Contrary to earthly logic and wisdom, this is a good thing.

Before we get into the different ways that Paul shows that this is really a good situation, I want to take a minute to think through bad things happening. A lot of times in our lives, things go badly, and we all know that says “All things work together for good for those who love God and are the called according to His purpose.”

I think that sometimes we have in our minds that God is sitting in Heaven looking down when suddenly suffering happens. Then God is frantically trying to figure out a way to turn this bad thing into something good.

Brothers and sisters, that is not how the God of Scripture works. Nothing sneaks up on God and surprises Him. God is not passive; God is active not reactive. tells us “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”

Let me go one step further. Suffering in the life of the believer is never random; it comes as a grace from the hand of God. Look again at our Scripture reading passage from earlier. , specifically verses 19 and 20. “But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

In the same way and in the same act that Joseph’s brothers premeditated and acted out evil against Joseph, God premeditated and acted out good. That doesn’t excuse Joseph’s brothers at all, but it does show that Joseph’s suffering was from the hand of God and it was good.

Or we can look at the story of Job. There’s a guy who faced intense and deep suffering. And before you say that Satan was the one who did all the bad things to Job, I’d encourage you to try to find him mentioned after the second chapter. And also remember that God had put Satan on Job’s trail. More importantly than that is at the very end of Job. The narrator is telling about Job’s restoration and says this in , “Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him.” It was not Satan who was ultimately responsible for Job’s suffering. It was Yahweh, and it was good.

The reality is that this truth is taught right here in . First of all, remember from our Wednesday night study through Acts that Paul was being directed and led by the Spirit. Paul knew what suffering was in store for him because God had shown him. God had superintended every aspect of Paul’s missionary work – the Philippians knew it, and Paul was reminding them that this imprisonment was no different. Look at verse 16 with me. Speaking of his imprisonment, Paul says that he is “put here for the defense of the gospel.” Literally he has been placed or set where he is. So, who put him there? One could say the Jews or Romans put him in prison, and there is some truth to that, but that ignores the second part of the phrase. “for the defense of the Gospel”. They didn’t put Paul there to defend the Gospel. God put Paul there to defend the Gospel.

And this is right in line with what Paul has already been saying. Look at . Writing to the Philippians, Paul says, “You are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.” Look carefully at that verse. Partakers of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel. Paul considers his imprisonment to be a grace. They partook in all aspects of the grace Paul was. And Paul is clear that two of those aspects were imprisonment and the defense of the Gospel. Paul’s imprisonment – Paul’s suffering was a grace from the good hand of God.

This would have resonated with the Philippians because Paul was imprisoned in Philippi and it resulted in the jailer and his whole household to come to faith in Christ. They had seen how God had ordained for good to come out of imprisonment.

By God’s grace of Paul’s imprisonment, the entire imperial guard has heard the Gospel, Most of the brothers have become confident to share the Gospel. – the Gospel is advancing, not in spite of Paul’s imprisonment, but because of it.

And Paul does not merely view these things as silver linings on really nasty thunderclouds. Paul is not telling us to just look on the bright side of things. No, not at all. Paul has a radical (at least radical to us) view of God. Paul knows that everything that happens to him is good because everything that happens to Him comes from the hand of almighty God who is in the Heavens and does as He pleases. God does as He wills. Caesar has no power, only that which has been given to him by God. Paul isn’t in chains to Rome – he is, but not ultimately. Paul is in chains to Christ – a servant to Jesus Christ. And as such, he has been put in the prison by his Master, and it is good.

Paul doesn’t ignore some of the difficulties and trials he is facing while in prison. He recognizes that even among those who are emboldened by his arrest, that some of them are proclaiming the gospel with impure motives. These guys are proclaiming the gospel out of envy and selfish ambition, hoping to add to Paul’s affliction. And now that we are seeing suffering the same way Paul sees it, their attempts are silly and futile.

It is hard to say exactly what is going on that would cause their preaching to afflict Paul. I think most likely what is going on is some rivalry. Perhaps some of these guys were jealous of Paul’s success and popularity in Philippi, and so now that he is in prison, they hope to gain a following, and in so doing make Paul feel bad since he can’t be out there amassing a following like they can. Of course, Paul could not care less. Paul’s goal is not to get people to follow him. Paul’s goal is to get people to follow Christ.

What then? Literally Paul says, So what! What does it matter? As long as Jesus is being proclaimed, I’m going to rejoice. To be clear, these guys who were trying to afflict Paul, were actual Christians who were preaching the true gospel. They weren’t false teachers or anything like that. They had faulty motives, and that is bad, but it doesn’t do any harm to Paul.

And the reason it doesn’t harm Paul is because it is all for Christ. Every moment of Paul’s affliction. Every missionary step. Every beating and shipwreck. All of it was for Christ. If Christ is proclaimed, then Paul shouts amen.

Application

I want to spend a few minutes now trying to apply what we’ve talked about, because there are tons of ways that we can apply what we’ve heard. We could hear of Paul’s imprisonment and his godly response to it and it could cause us to take heart. To want to go proclaim the gospel. We might go home and read the story of Jim Elliot and be encouraged to do whatever it takes to preach Christ to those who have never heard, and those are good and important things to do. Those are awesome applications.

But if we do those things (which we should be doing) if we do them without a biblical understanding of suffering, we will not respond well. We might find ourselves doing it out of selfish ambition instead of for the glory of Christ.

When suffering and sorrow comes, how will you respond? The answer to that depends largely on how you view suffering to begin with. If suffering is something to be avoided. If you think Jesus died to make your life all flowers and rainbows, then when suffering happens your response will be anger. Anger towards God, anger towards others. Despair can creep in. Feelings of futility and uselessness and pointlessness. questions like, “Why Me?!” We get upset because we think God isn’t holding up His end of the bargain, when in reality, He is showering us with His grace.

Grace of imprisonment and chains maybe. Grace of being marginalized and mocked perhaps. Grace of cancer or chronic pain. Did that hit too close to home? Again let me point you to the boils that God sent Job’s way. If we can’t see the good in our suffering, then we aren’t seeing through God’s eyes.

Let’s think about that for a second. How can we have cancer to the glory of Christ? Even saying that is uncomfortable, right? Our flesh hates it, but shall we accept good from God and not evil? How can a Christian glorify Christ in their cancer?

Have you been to a doctor’s office? Almost everyone there is frowning. Think about how different a believer is who suffers the difficulties of cancer with joy. You think the nurses can’t tell the difference between a bitter person and a joyful one? What an awesome opportunity to share the hope that is in you! And the Gospel of Christ shines in a place of despair. Much like it did in the imperial guard when Paul was imprisoned there.

There is another thing that suffering well does. When we suffer to the glory of Christ, we encourage other brothers and sisters to face their suffering or potential suffering with joy also. That is what we see in this passage. Paul’s suffering – his imprisonment gave strength to other believers. It emboldened them.

If you are suffering right now, know that it is not without purpose. God is using it to glorify Christ by making you more like Christ, by growing His kingdom through your suffering, by strengthening and emboldening your brothers and sisters and in innumerable other ways that we will never know on this side of glory.

Conclusion

Let me wrap all this up. If you are here, and you are not a believer, you should know that your suffering has a different purpose. It is intended to make you fear God. To cause you to want to repent. Because all the bad things that happen in this life, are nothing compared to the eternal wrath of God. Every hardship God is putting in your life is a command and call to repent. To flee to Christ. To live a life that is concerned with His glory and not your own. IF you want to discuss what all of that means, I’d be happy to do that after the service.

To my brothers and sisters, if you are suffering right now, I want you to know that you are loved and you are not alone. Your siblings in Christ want to be partakers of your grace of suffering. Again, know that it is not without purpose. You are being made more like Christ. If Christ suffered, how on earth can we, His servants and disciples expect not to? Keep you confidence in Christ and in His Gospel. Finally, I want to read . It says,

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

We are about to transition into a time of worship through response. We believe that any time a person hears the Word of God, they respond either in rebellion or in worship. Do not kick against the goad. Worship God for all that He has done, even – especially in the suffering for His glory.

I will be on the front row worshipping with you. If you need someone to talk to or pray with, I’d be happy to do that. I’ll also be around after the service if you would like to talk then. You are also welcomed to pray up front. Let’s pray and continue worshipping our Mighty Lord.