Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

This morning we are continuing our series on the theme of joy from the book of Philippians.

If you have your Bibles turn with me to chapter 1, verses 18-26

Body

We are going to look at 3 reasons for joy from this passage:

Joy in the exaltation of Christ

Joy in living for Christ

Joy in our faith in Christ.

Last week, Pastor Sergio showed us how we can have joy during times of suffering by maintaining a divine perspective like the apostle Paul.

Now in order to have this divine perspective, we need to understand Paul’s attitude towards life and how he viewed his own personal relationship with God.

And what is evident in his writing, especially here in the book of Philippians, is the fact that Paul was completely sold out for Jesus and the Gospel, nothing else really mattered to him apart from that.

Not the discomfort of being imprisoned, nor the pain of being betrayed, nor even the threat of death, could take away the joy of seeing Jesus Christ being exalted and glorified.

There was a singular focus that Paul had in his life and that was Christ and Christ alone.

And whether other Christian leaders were preaching Christ in truth or pretense didn’t hinder Paul’s joy because the gospel was still being proclaimed.

In our current times, there is so much news about prominent pastors and Christian leaders that have fallen into scandal and allegations of abuse.

Names like Ravi Zacharias and Carl Lentz have become familiar to us for all the wrong reasons.

Some of these scandals have hit close to home for some of us.

Even within AMI we had one of our founding pastors fall into adultery and subsequently removed from his church because of his refusal to accept the required process of discipline and restoration.

We had a guest speaker at the last congregagtional retreat who we found out afterwards was part of a growing scandal at his church.

We were so angry that he wasn’t forthright about what was happening in his church.

Unfortunately, these things happen in our world because as Paul points out, not everyone has the right motivations for doing what they do and that includes Christian leaders in ministry.

But do these people with bad unintentions undo the good work that God is doing in our lives?

Absolutely not!

Now, I don’t want to minimize the emotional damage and hurt that some of us have experienced at the hands of abusive leaders especially if you have been impacted directly.

There is a lot of emotional and spiritual healing that you will have to go through to regain trust and we need to be absolutely sensitive to that .

I would suggest seeing a Christian counselor or at the least come and talk with someone on our pastoral staff.

But for those of us who are more on the sideline, observing these situations play out from afar, you can go in one of two directions.

You can either become jaded, cynical, and suspicious of Christianity and anyone who is a spiritual leader or you can take joy in the fact that even in the midst of great sin, God’s plan of redemption cannot be undone.

People are still being saved and Christ, somehow, against all odds is being exalted.

That is still something to rejoice in.

If your faith can be undone by these scandals that are bound to happen because of the mixed motives of people’s hearts then your faith is not anchored in the right place.

I know a number of Christians who were a part of churches that came apart at the seams.

Some fell away while others grew in their faith despite the difficulties and perhaps even because of them.

And I feel like the main difference was the simple fact the latter group could still rejoice in God for the good that He was doing even in the midst of bad situations.

Like the apostle Paul, our faith cannot be overly dependent on right circumstances or good leadership or having the right Christian resources.

Those things can be of help but in the end, there is nothing that matters more than Christ and His gospel.

And this leads us to our second point which is finding joy in the life of Christ.

In this passage, we see the reslience and the joyful attitude towards life that we can possess if we simply recognize the truth of what Jesus teaches us in the gospels.

In the life of the apostle Paul, we see someone that is a living proof of this spiritual principle.

In Christ, Paul has found the ultiamate reason for his life.

Which then begs the question for all of us, “What gives ultimate meaning to your life?”

Now there are many things that give meaning to our lives, our work, our children, our families, the good causes that we are passionate about but at the bottom line, what is the foundation that the entirety of your life is built on?

This morning if you are a Christian, we all know at least theoretically that the ultimate meaning of life is found in the person of Jesus Christ.

(Hopefully, you realize that!)

As Paul states succintly but profoundly, “For to me, to live is Christ”.

This is the very essence of Christianity and it unlocks the door to a life of joy and fulfillment.

(Now if you are non-believer today, I’m so glad that you are here with us to listen to this message because Christian or not, every single person has to come to terms with this question.

In order to be a functioning human being in society, everyone has to attach some reason for their existence and whatever you decide will inevitably shape the rest of your life here on earth but more importantly, it will dictate what happens for eternity.

Unless, you are an ardent atheist, the question of ultimate meaning and your eternal fate are closely linked together.

They cannot be independent events.

All the world religions including Jesus Christ makes this clear connection.)

Jesus states his case this way:

And as astounding as it may seem that anyone could attach the ultimate meaning of life to their relationship with Jesus Christ, Paul takes it even a step further and says, “To die is to gain.”

And it’s not becasue, he’ll enter into eternal bliss or escape all the pain of this world or receive some great heavenly reward but for the sole reason that he will finally be with Christ and see Him face to face.

Paul is so certain of this fact that he states that it is his genuine desire to depart, which is a nice way of saying that it’s better for him to die, to be executed so that he can be with his Savior.

And it’s not even a close comparison because in Paul’s mind and heart, to depart this world is far better for him personally.

Modern therapists would probably say that Paul was borderline depressive/delusional but ironically it’s exactly the opposite, in Paul’s pursuit of joy, death is simply a door that crosses into the fullnes of life with Christ.

This is why Paul could say emphatically:

But Paul also recognizes this is probably not the right time for him to depart because he still has work left to do with the Philippians.

He needs to be there to help them to mature spiritually and to find joy in the faith just like himself, which brings us to our last point finding joy in our faith in Christ.

As we mentioned in previous message, the Philippians were being persecuted for their faith and so their levels of joy were probably at a low.

So Paul wants to see them again so that they could have reason to have joy in their faith once again.

We know that the pursuit of joy is a universal human phenomena, everyone wants to be happy in life.

Misery might be our reality but joy is our goal and closely linked to this desire for happiness is our desire to find some meaning in life.

And I would argue that the one thing that gives meaning to our lives is love.

In this world that seems to offer so much pleasure, we assume that there are many sources of joy but I believe that the ancient philsophers correctly identified joy as the natural by product of love.

In other words, love is what gives meaning to our lives, and it becomes the source of our joy.

Now here is the caveat, what you love will determine the extent of the joy you have.

If your greatest love is I-phones and the latest gadgets, your joy will be as fleeting as the next release of updates.

If you love success, your joy will be as temporary as your next bad performance review or the next time someone jumps over you in a promotion.

Even if you love something as worthwhile as your children, your joy lasts about as long as they are willing to behave, which probably means your joy leaves when they become teenagers.

But if you set the core of your heart on loving Jesus, that love will produce in you joy that cannot be taken from you, joy that is not here today and gone tomorrow but one that remains.

This love of Christ leads to a type of joy that is described by the Greek word, plerow, which means complete, lacking in nothing, and to its fullest measure.

As you might imagine, Jesus does not give us an ordinary type of joy that the world gives but his desire is to release the fullness of joy into our lives.

If we keep the commandments of Christ out of deep love for him, we will experience incredible joy.

The Scriptures describe it as joy inexpressible, meaning a joy that cannot be described by the words of the most eloquent tongue.

The fullness of joy is not simply a theological truth that needs to be rationally understood, it is a spiritual reality that has to be experienced in the heart, mind, and soul.

Blaise Pascal, the famed French mathematician and philosopher is known for what has been called Pascal’s wager.

As a mathematician, he came up with this idea that our lives are like a wager on the existence of God.

If you live life as if God exists and He doesn’t, well you will then incur some finite losses.

But if you life as if God doesn’t exist and He does, well your losses then are infinite.

I think a good number of Christians live in this manner but if you think about it at any level, you can’t have a real relationship with God based on some cosmic wager on his existence.

And this attitude towards God, certainly can’t give you any sense of meaning.

In fact, even Blaise Pascal had a completely different experience in his personal journey of faith.

As he writes in his own memoirs:

“This day of grace 1654; from about half past ten at night, to about half after midnight.

Fire.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God Jacob, not of the philosophers and the wise.

Security, security.

Feeling, joy, peace.

God of Jesus Christ.

Thy God shall be my God.

O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known Thee.

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.”

Here is arguably one of the greatest minds in history and somehow this experience of God’s presence reduced him down into this inarticulate, blubbering mess.

It almost seems as if his spirit could hardly contain this fullness of joy that was being poured into him.

To give this a biblical framework, Pascal is simply experiencing what Peter describes in his first epistle and there we read this:

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

And again we see this connection between love and joy and what we can ultimately deduce from this is that where there is little joy, there is little love.