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Prayer
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
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,
“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.
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