Mission Festival
October 15 Mission Festival
Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly. It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Philippians 1:12-18a
Keep the Number One Thing Number One
Right after we came here, I made a mistake that I’m still hearing about. I said in Bible class that pastors don’t like doing weddings. The mistake was letting you know that, because I’m not sure that what I meant was well understood. Pastors love seeing two people commit their lives together before God. Pastors love sharing what God’s Word says about marriage with a couple to give them the blessings God wants them to have. But we don’t like it when the wedding gets lost in the trappings. I always tell couples that the most important thing that will happen on their wedding day is that they will get married. If that happens, the day was a success, no matter what else went wrong. If that doesn’t happen, no matter how nice the service was or how well the reception was planned, the day was a failure. But so often the number one thing -- making a promise before God to unite to each other for as long as you both shall live -- gets lost in arguments about music and candles and soloists. So often the joy is sucked out by overbearing relatives and stress over things that won’t change whether that bride and groom make that promise or not. So my advice to couples for their wedding day is simple: keep the number one thing number one. That advice is true for our entire lives. Every day of your lives, you will be pulled in fifty different directions by fifty different needs in your family and your job and your church. You can’t possibly satisfy all of them. While all those things are important, only one thing can be the most important. God says that one thing is the gospel. Keep the number one thing number one.
I.
The apostle Paul gives us a good example of that from his own life. He says, Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. Maybe four years before he wrote these words, a mob in Jerusalem had tried to kill him. The Roman garrison there had rescued him by arresting him. He had spent more than two years in prison in Caesarea, having one hearing after another. Finally, he had appealed to Caesar. We he finally got to Rome, Paul spent at least two more years under house arrest, waiting for his case to come up. That’s what had happened to him. Who could have blamed him if he had felt sorry for himself? If he had gotten angry with God? But Paul didn’t do those things. Instead, he saw the purpose in all of it. The gospel was advanced. He says that the whole palace guard knew he was in chains because of Christ. That probably means that these soldiers’ first real acquaintance with Jesus came from taking turns guarding Paul. Paul says that many other brothers were encouraged by his imprisonment to preach the gospel all the more courageously. God gave them an example of a Christian standing up under persecution. That moved them to preach even though the same thing could have happened to them at any time.
What had happened to Paul did advance the gospel. But does that make it all worth it? You only get so many years on this earth, and spending four or five of them in jail for nothing seems like a pretty high price to pay. But Paul realized that the gospel was more important than he was. If the best way to advance the gospel was for him to spend years in jail -- in fact, if it was for him to die -- then Paul was ready to suffer those things. He knew that if he died, he would be with Christ, which is better by far. So whatever he suffered here wouldn’t matter. He knew that advancing the gospel is the only way to give other people that same gift of eternal life. Getting others into heaven was worth every day and hour and minute that he was chained or imprisoned. Do we share that attitude? Everything in our lives also serves to advance the gospel. Maybe not as dramatically as in Paul’s life, but God is still in charge. Why do we live in this place, at this time and under these circumstances? There are a thousand reasons we could give. But the real reason is because being here and now is the best way to advance the gospel, for us personally in our own faith and for our families and for the community and the world around us. What disappointments in your life have brought here? What losses, what pain have kept you here? God worked through those. For today at least, this is the best place for you to hear the gospel and this congregation is the best place for you to share it. When God balances his ledger and puts all the opportunity to grow in the gospel here and to bring others to heaven here on one side and all the pain and all the disappointments on the other, there’s no question. You and the gospel come out way ahead.
Do we trust God enough to acknowledge that the gospel is more important than we are? God never promises that we’ll be able to say, “I see that all this happened to advance the gospel in this way,” like Paul did. We may just have to accept on faith that it did because God promises that all things work together for good for those who love him. That isn’t easy for us to do. If we can see the good, maybe we can accept the bad. But when God works behind our suffering to advance the kingdom in ways that we never even see, our sinful human pride struggles. It’s easy to feel sorry for ourselves. It’s easy to get angry with God because he just isn’t taking care of us. That attitude is a sin. It’s a lack of trust. We should go to hell because we don’t trust nearly enough that God is doing everything to advance the gospel for us and for all people.
But that very gospel says that God won’t send us to hell. That’s why God has brought us to his house today. There are a million other places you could be this morning, but you are here because God wants you to know that you are forgiven for all the failings in your trust. God wants you to see Jesus today. He wants you to see Jesus’ trust. More than anyone else who ever lived, Jesus put God’s plan ahead of himself. That’s why he came down from heaven. That’s why he hid his glory and didn’t have angels running around, catering to his every whim. Jesus trusted his Father enough to put the gospel ahead of himself. To sacrifice his life, his comfort, his body for us. Today, when God looks at us, he sees that perfect trust, that perfect sacrifice, that perfect love of Christ. In God’s eyes, we have put the gospel ahead of ourselves every minute of every day of our lives, because Jesus did. God wants us to see Jesus dying on the cross for all the pride that keeps us from really living the way that God sees us living. All too often, we do moan and complain. We do put what we want ahead of God wants. But Jesus paid for all that sin on the cross. He suffered our hell. That takes it all away. On Easter Sunday morning, we rose with Christ. The gospel says you are forgiven. The gospel says your pride is wiped away. The gospel says that you are perfect and you will live with Christ forever.
Today, God has brought us to hear that gospel again so that we can do what those brothers of St. Paul did. Encouraged by his chains, we can preach the gospel fearlessly. Not because we’re so strong or becuase we’re better Christains than others are. But because the Holy Spirit fills our hearts as we hear that we’re forgiven. God promises to give us the power to share his gospel here, in this place, to the people around us. I don’t think any of us will ever go to jail for that. But we may well suffer. We may pay a real price. But that price only lasts for as long as we are here, and then it’s done. In heaven, it will be erased. In heaven, there will only be the joy of seeing all the others who made it there with us because the gospel advanced. Nothing is more important than hearing gospel. Nothing is more important than sharing gospel. The gospel is the reason that our congregation exists. It’s the reason we stand where and when and how we stand today. How will we keep the gospel number one? By remembering that the gospel is more important than we are.
II.
It was a great comfort to Paul to see how God was using his hardships to further the gospel. But there was a fly in the ointment. Those brothers who were doing the work he couldn’t weren’t all doing it for the same reason. Some of them preached his message out of love. But some of them preached “out of rivalry.” They were tired of being compared to the great apostle Paul. They saw this as an opportunity to “move up” in the church, to build a following while he was “out of the picture.” It hardly sounds Christian to use preaching the gospel to serve your own pride. But it does happen. That strife among the workers, that anguish over why the were preaching, that attempt to steal the church’s love could have ruined Paul’s joy at what God was doing. He could have grown bitter -- if leadership and position were the things he cared about. But they weren’t. Even as sinful human beings perverted the most noble task on earth and preached the gospel for personal gain, Paul rejoiced because they were preaching the gospel. He understood that what makes the gospel the gospel is not who’s preaching it. The Holy Spirit makes the gospel what it is. Paul rejoiced at how God could just shake off the sinful pride of his rivals and reach out to claim the lost.
As we look around today, we see churches that bring in more people than we do. How are we going to react to that? We could get jealous. That could lead us to make bitter, biting comments about them. But that wouldn’t be the spirit Paul reflects here. We WELS Lutherans need to recognize that we aren’t the only Christians preaching the gospel. Others are, too. Many people are coming to faith through their efforts. God wants us to rejoice at every sinner who repents. At the same time, we can’t just ignore the things that separate us. Paul rejoiced because Christ was preached. He didn’t rejoice over the errors or the false motives. We, too, rejoice that Christ is preached. But we recognize that errors threaten to erase the message they’re trying so hard to preach. So we do what God commands: we separate from them. But we cannot let the need to separate rob us of our joy over every sinner who repents. We rejoice over every sinner who stands up here and confesses his or her faith in Christ, when our young people are confirmed and when new adults take their places among us. We rejoice at every baptism that we see here. We rejoice at the work going on around the world. Throughout our country and throughout the world our synod is proclaiming Christ to people who have never heard or understood that message. I have had the opportunity to go and do that. And it is a wonderful gift of God. Whether we will ever get to physcially go overseas to share the gospel or not, what a joy it is to know what God is doing! And we do rejoice that God works in spite of the errors and the false teachings that so many other Christian bodies pollute the gospel with. We rejoice that God is still able to shine the light of Christ through that pollution and make people believers all over the world, no matter what else is happening in those churches.
Do we have that kind of spiritual maturity? Can we balance our need to separate with our joy at what God does, day after day and year after year? Or do we retreat into a “WELS shell” that sees only bad in other churches? Or do we chafe under God’s command to separate and wish we could all just be one big happy family? All those feelings show how good our sinful hearts are at missing the big picture. The gospel is preached in every corner of the world. When we can’t rejoice at that because we’re jealous of other church’s numbers or because we’re frustrated by God’s command to separate, we sin. We need Jesus to straighten our hearts out and give us the maturity Paul had. We need him to come to us personally and remind us that he not only knows how confused and perverse our sinful hearts are, he came to solve that problem. He came to pay for all the times and all the ways we let our sinful hearts ruin our joy at what God is doing. He rose to tell us that we are forgiven. That forgiveness is the true source of joy and maturity. When you understand that you are forgiven, you do rejoice at every way God brings that message to sinners. You are mature enough to follow his will, even when he commands us to separate from Christians who aren’t preaching the gospel purely.
Once we are filled with real Christian joy at being forgiven, we understand that God has put us here to serve that gospel message. First of all, by making sure we grow in our own joy by hearing how much God has loved us in Christ. We serve the gospel when we take personal responsibility for sharing it with our children. We serve the gospel when we work for our congregation, so the people sitting with you hear that message. And of course, on our Mission Festival, we want to remember all the people right outside our doors who still need Jesus to come into their lives. The joy of seeing what he has done for us, the joy of being forgiven for our own pride and our own sin makes us roll up our sleeves and share that gospel with others. The gospel is the number one thing in our lives. How can we keep it number one? By not letting other things steal our joy.
The most important thing that happens here Sunday after Sunday is that the gospel is preached. Most Sundays, it isn’t preached here to people who don’t know it. It’s preached here to people who do. We do that so that you can experience Jesus’ forgiveness again and remember that the gospel is more important than any one of us is. We do that so that when you hear about Christ, you will rejoice, no matter how many distractions there are. Rejoice in your eternal life. Then commit yourself to sharing that life with others. Amen.
