Every Team has a NAME

A team that plays any organized sport has a name. It may be on their jerseys, it may be on the bus they drive up in, or on the scoreboard. It’s what the fans chant from the stands.

Usually this name represents where they are from! A country, a state, a city, or a town. By wearing that name on their jersey, they represent the place itself!

It’s why it was such a big deal in 2016 when four USA swimmers lied about a situation in which they were caught urinating in the parking lot of a gas station and vandalizing a poster hanging on the wall. They were all suspended from the training facilities for a period and were not allowed to come to the award banquet that year for swimmers called the Golden Goggles.

You see, they were not just some Americans in Brazil who had too much to drink. They were USA Olympic swimmers. They bore the name of their country in their sport! That was a high level of accountability!

But it works on a small level too! Our senior year, in a small town, we squeezed into the first round of the playoffs in football. We had people from Ardmore coming out to that game at Dora who had never watched us play at home! But we had put on our pads and jerseys each week and had done our best to not just make our coaches proud or our parents proud. I feel like we represented the whole town well!

Just as every team has a NAME that they represent, we too, as Christians, bear a name. We will see what that looks like as we read from Philippians chapter 1 this morning. Just looking at verse 27...

Philippians 1:27 CSB

Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel,

PRAY

Last week, Paul helped us see that for unity to be a part of who we are, we have to have a common REASON. We saw that Paul presented his own two purposes for life: The Glory of Christ and the Good of the Church.

After finishing that part of the conversation in verse 26, Paul gets his readers attention. He starts by saying “Just one thing...” If you have a different translation of the Bible from me, yours may say something different. But the point is the same. This is Paul saying, “If you don’t hear anything else...” One theologian said we should imagine Paul holding up a finger and leaning in...

And says, “As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the Gospel of Christ.”

I want to take that piece by piece.

1. Believers are citizens of heaven.

This is a really cool truth, but kind of creepy to think about, right? How can we be citizens of a place we don’t live in?

Paul explains this idea a little later in chapter 3...

Philippians 3:20 CSB

Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul uses this imagery as contrast to those living as “enemies of the cross.” Of these people, Paul says that the outcome of their rebellion is destruction. The god they worship and follow is their stomach (which is to say that they blindly follow their instincts and desires.) They are full of shame and they are focused on every type of earthly things.

It’s against this backdrop that Paul is essentially saying, “But the same is not true of us! Our citizenship is in heaven!”

Paul is using this citizenship idea because it is said of Philippi during this time had been built up to be a “little Rome.” It would have looked similar to the big city and its people were all in on the Roman Empire! They were devoted citizens seeking to honor the emperor.

The city acted as if the emperor was God or at least the savior. They followed him blindly and believed he could do no wrong. I mean they had bumper stickers on their horses and hats to celebrate the emperor. They would argue at their workplace all the time with people who disagreed with the emperor’s policies. And the biggest thing they did was blast all the snowflakes on Facebook who didn’t like the emperor, and call them names.

But Paul spoke into that mess and said, “Church, our citizenship is in heaven not any place on earth.” Paul is challenging them that their allegiance is not first and foremost to any ruling authority or empire on earth. Their devotion must be solely centered around who Jesus is, and that alone.

If there has ever been a reminder that we needed in 2020… Our citizenship is in heaven.

The question for us, just at this point,

Do you look more like the group that is consumed with earthly matters and issues? Or are you recognizing your heavenly citizenship by thinking about spiritual things?

That’s the question we need to ask ourselves often and regularly before we are consumed into the culture around us.

Amen?

If you aren’t challenged yet, hang on...

Believers are citizens of heaven

2. Believers should live worthy of the Gospel

Paul says that, as citizens of heaven, we should live WORTHY of the Gospel of Christ.

God had saved each of the believers who were worshiping at the house churches in Philippi; however, some of them were no doubt struggling to live different from the world around them.

Anybody testify that we can even as believers find ourselves doing dumb things sometimes? Alright. Same thing here in Philippi!

But Paul speaks into that and challenges them to LIVE DIFFERENT! He says, You belong to a new team! You represent a new kingdom! You represent GOD!

Go back to the USA swim team again… They were Americans staying in a place that was not their home. And they had a real opportunity to represent their country well. But they failed badly. They didn’t live worthy of the name on their speedos and swim caps.

As believers, as citizens of heaven, you and I have been called out to live differently as well. God has saved us to follow him and not the path that we will choose because of sin.

What Paul doesn’t do is lay out five simple steps of how to live worthy of the Gospel.. But he does give us some hint as to what he means by this. We need only slow down and read the way the scripture reads.

Philippians 1:27 CSB

Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel,

As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the Gospel of Christ. THEN...

Then is a connecting word! It connects two sentences or ideas together.

Here, it’s a cause and effect time idea...

If you live your life worthy of the Gospel, THEN I will hear!

Paul knows that if he ever gets out of this prison he is writing from, he will continue with his world travels and will no doubt check in on this great church family. But even if he doesn’t, he believes there will be time for another letter in the future. He believes that either way, He will hear about what’s going on in Philippi.

Well what is the effect of living life worthy of the Gospel? There are two parts of it and it is very interesting...

Paul doesn’t show what an individuals life would look like if he lives worthy of the Gospel! He shows what the church as a whole would look like.

Let me take a moment here to teach a bit.

It can be very easy for me as a Self-centered 21st century american to read the Bible as if Paul is speaking directly to me alone. But that’s not the case! Paul is addressing the WHOLE church of Philippi, and the best application we can make would have to keep that same brush stroke. We need to think in terms of the collective!

Evidence here...

Paul didn’t write in English. It wouldn’t be invented as a language until centuries later. Paul wrote in Greek. In Greek, there are two forms of the word “you.” One is singular, for one person. The other is plural. You could think of it more as “y’all” if that helps. So as you are reading the English translation of the New Testament, it may not always be clear if a “you” is a “you” or a “y’all.”

But here’s a good rule of thumb: Paul is using speaking collectively as to many people. He is using the “y’all.” In fact, I didn a quick word study with a bible study software I have (because I don’t know Greek!) and I found that Paul uses the plural “you” 52 times in the book of Philippians and only uses the singular one time. That one time is not until chapter 4 I think...

So when Paul says, Live worthy of the Gospel, he isn’t speaking to the church at Philippi as individuals. He is speaking to them as a whole! That’s further evidenced by the fact that he follows it with how it looks:

- Standing Together (the stance we take)

You see, we can stand for a lot of things as individuals. You can take up any cause you want. You can donate money to a political campaign. You can boycott the NFL, Chick-fil-a, or Target. But the things that we talk about standing together for and against as a church family must be clear Gospel issues!

You see, Lindsay Lane East can’t lean right or left politically because we are leaning on Jesus not on a party! You won’t be told to boycott a company because we are people of grace. We won’t jump on every social media movement that comes up because those things are polarizing and full of hidden agendas that may contradict God’s Word.

However, there will be things in the future that we stand together for and against! But each one of them will be rooted clearly in the Bible! The stance we take as a church must be honoring to God above man.

Amen?

The second thing Paul says he would find if they lived worthy of the Gospel is...

- Contending Together (the move we make)

Contending is not really a word I use with any sort of regularity. But the Greek word that Paul uses is where we get our word “athlete.” It means to compete, mostly used in Greek in relation to wrestling.

(We are talking about the sport of wrestling here not Rasslin like WWE. Alright? Just want to be clear.)

Paul challenges the church in Philippi to CONTEND Together. This refers to the MOVE WE MAKE together.

You see, the problem we must avoid as a church is one that many churches do not seem to have figured out. The Christian church in America is known very well for where we stand! We have sadly boycotted and Facebook posted ourselves in a very clear picture of the things we stand for.

But what makes us move?

Those two things are very different, aren’t they? The stance you take and the move you make?

We can put a statement out that clearly defines how we feel about every single thing going on in our world. But words won’t change much. We need to move. We need to get out into the broken world that we fuss about so much and do something in it and for it!

What makes us as a church act on behalf of other people?

What are the things that make us MOVE together, contend together!?

You’ve heard it before, “Churches are not more for what they are against than what they are for.” Well, I don’t just want our community to know what we are for; I want them to know we love them, because we are in the community and loving the community through service TOGETHER!

I thought of this challenge this week: May our love for the community be more clear than our doctrinal statement. God may it be so and continue as so!

That’s a real Christ-Centered Church!

We will pick up this conversation mid-sentence next week. There’s more!

But today, let me remind of this one thing… You can’t live your life worthy of the Gospel without the local church. Paul says the very way we live like this is through the stance we take and the move we make!

Are you in this thing? Are you with us? Are you ready to stand for the biblical things we need to stand for, and contend for the things that require action and compassion?

I want to give us time as individuals to search our hearts. The quarantine time has in many ways been a disconnected and lonely time for people. But do you see your need for this local body? Do you see the encouragement that comes from and for one another? Do you see the common tasks that God has laid out for us in His Word? Do you see why we need each other!?

Today, I want to ask you to pray a prayer of thankfulness for what God has done to bring this body together. And a prayer of commitment for the future as we partner together as citizens of heaven to live together, worthy of the Gospel!

As always, if you have not committed your life to Christ and would like to talk with someone about that, we would love to share with you! That’s the means by which we become citizens of heaven!

If you have been saved but not been baptized, we can talk with you about that and get you lined up for baptism very soon.

You can also talk with us about officially joining the church, we have our new members class coming up in a few weeks, now’s a good time to have that talk as well.

Or you can always just come for prayer.

However God leads you to respond during this time, you be obedient!

Let’s Pray