Stars in the Sky/Extra Nos
Notes
Transcript
12 So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose. 14 Do everything without grumbling and arguing, 15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world. 16 Hold firmly to the message of life. Then I can boast in the day of Christ that I didn’t run or labor for nothing. 17 But even if I am poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.
What’s the big idea today?
There is a weighty and glorious task for all who believe, but both the desire and the ability to accomplish it, come from outside of us.
Paul is continuing to unfold this letter of encouragement to the Philippian church.
We just worked through the beautiful “Christ poem” where Christ’s obedience and lordship were highlighted.
Because Christ is now Lord, Paul says,
Since Christ obeyed, so should you!
But he’s not coming at them in a corrective, authoritative, militaristic tone.
Have you ever had a boss, or unfortunately for some of us maybe a parent who whenever they needed to exercise authority,
bucks up with all their strength and maybe even adds in a dash of mean?
He is exhorting them to be sure, but he is softening the delivery with,
“my dear friends”
This has a warm pastoral tone to it.
It’s similar to how the apostle John writes letters to church’s that he is discipling,
“my little children.”
Think about how you address any child if you are hoping to reach their heart and not just simply command outward obedience.
We remind of identity first, then bring the instruction.
“Son, I love you. That is why I ask you to obey me.”
and he reminds them that they have already been obedient.
“Just as you have obeyed not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence.”
How did they obey when they were in his presence?
Well they weren’t obeying just him.
They were obeying God.
They heard the gospel and responded to it!
The gospel is not a neutral idea that can be assessed and then walked away from without consequence.
I had a long conversation with an atheist this past week.
He wanted to engage largely on the level of intellectual pondering, without considering the real life applications of what this could mean.
There is a danger of being like the philosophers at Mars Hill
“Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We shall hear from you [y]again concerning this.” 33 So Paul went out from among them.”
As we learned on pentecost, there is a command.
Repent and believe.
This is the gospel that Lydia heard by the riverside outside Philippi.
And she believed.
This is the gospel that the Philippian jailer heard,
and he believed.
When we hear the gospel, it commands a response.
Salvation by grace through faith alone, obedience by grace through faith alone
Salvation by grace through faith alone, obedience by grace through faith alone
12 So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose.
Continue to obey by working out your salvation with fear and trembling.
BECAUSE
it is actually God who is working in you.
For HIS good purpose.
Why does Paul say fear and trembling?
Aren’t those bad things?
The answer is no, because those are perfectly acceptable responses to being saved from certain death.
And that is the way this passage usually gets preached. That this is a call to consider each of our own individual salvation.
And that is a worthwhile thing to do.
But there is something even deeper going on here.
When Paul is saying “Work OUT, your salvation”,
He is not calling us to an intellectual activity where we discern how we are saved.
That’s the starting point of what he is asking for here,
but the end point is action based on this salvation.
A real outworking of the salvation.
So let’s start then with the salvation reality.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, 5 made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!
Amen.
As we read everything the Bible has to say about the human heart, and everything Paul and Jesus have to say about salvation, it becomes startlingly clear that the only thing we bring to our salvation is a dead body.
Faith is gift.
This is confirmed for us in Romans.
22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
EXTRA NOS (Outside of us)
A latin phrase that communicates the reality that salvation comes from outside of us and does not originate within the heart or mind of man.
Faith is given to us so that we might be changed.
At that point obedience also becomes a gift!
For it is God who is working in you,
“To will and act according to his good purpose.”
So the question is?
What is God’s good purpose?
Promise to Abraham.
“All people’s will be blessed through you.”
God chooses Abraham.
A man who previously did not have faith and worshipped idols,
is given the gift of faith.
He is chosen to be changed.
We call this election.
But the thing we miss when we right write volumes and volumes of books on election, is..
Just what is election for?
Election is for mission.
Abraham was chosen not just to be changed, but to be a blessing.
But he can’t be a blessing when he is in rebellion to God.
So God changes his heart.
God saves him.
Faith and regeneration are for mission.
This is actually the driving force of what Paul is communicating here.
Working out our salvation is the outworking of an inward act that’s already been accomplished.
“Work out what God has worked in you.”
That’s what baptism is after all.
Baptism is not ultimately us pointing to our own profession of faith,
Baptism is pointing to Christ and his promise keeping work on our behalf.
We are by definition pointing Extra Nos.
We are pointing outside of ourselves.
This is the bastard lie of the “self help” movement.
Of course there are things we can do to “help” ourselves.
But at the end of the day if we are looking inwardly for fulfillment and salvation,
we will die unsatisfied and unsaved.
So when we reject the humanistic notion that we can save ourselves, and we point to something outside of ourselves, we are beginning to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
But it doesn’t stop there at intellectualism.
It moves into the real outworking of salvation as we love God and our neighbor.
Martin Luther once said,
“God doesn’t need your good works but your neighbor does.”
And they certainly do.
What does Paul have to say about our neighbors?
Before we can get there, we need to deal with a stumbling block that was getting in the way for the Philippian church.
Contrast of the people of light and the people of dark
Contrast of the people of light and the people of dark
14 Do everything without grumbling and arguing,
Complaining and arguing, like rivalry and conceit, damage witness.
Prime example of this comes from Israel’s history.
2 The entire Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted. Instead, you brought us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of hunger!”
We have the same situation here.
It is damaging to our ability to witness to God’s saving power when our speech and actions to each other paint a picture that we haven’t been changed at all.
Taking Christians to court.
Philippians: An Introduction and Commentary d. Exhortation Applied, and the Example of Paul (2:12–18)
complaining, gongysmoi, an evil-sounding word, used also of a plague spot in the Corinthian community
Remember,
This is about forming the people of God.
15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world.
You are children of God.
People who are a part of the family of faith.
People who are now participating in this mission of blessing the nations.
So one way we could put this,
Identity has already been accomplished.
Action must now follow.
And that action is God working in you.
There must be contrast.
Philippians: An Introduction and Commentary d. Exhortation Applied, and the Example of Paul (2:12–18)
The aim of these exhortations and warnings is plain. The Philippians are called to set their own house in order so that God’s purpose for them as a witnessing community may be fulfilled
Every generation from Adam has been crooked and depraved.
Paul isn’t just picking on one generation here.
A cursory glance at human history will help you see that every generation has been dark.
The words here for crooked and perverted in the Greek both communicate a perversion of justice.
I read just this morning a quote from one of our Supreme court justices saying that just because people do bad things it doesn’t make them bad people.
This, while sounding nice, is both inconsistent with God’s word, but it’s simply inconsistent with the human experience.
In a sense this Justice was right, the bad things don’t make people bad.
In reality it’s bad people who make bad things.
Every generation is marked by a terrible curse passed down from their father Adam that defaults them as enemies of God.
Does that sound unfair to you?
It is unfair.
But this is where the gospel takes hold of us.
The height of “unfair” is what we read about last week in that Christ poem.
As Jesus, the high king, author and sustainer of the universe descends from heavens throneroom all the way to a manger,
but then pushes past that,
and descends even further
into a grave.
For you.
When we are baptized into Christ, we are changed.
We are no longer grave people.
We are light people.
Christlikeness makes the church shine like stars.
Tucson example.
Roosevelt Lake example.
Light pollution obstructs our view of the stars.
Paul is very gently pointing over and over to Christ as the antidote to the things that pollute our light.
Jesus, because of his godly humility did not operate out of rivalry or conceit, but put others before himself.
Jesus, because of his obedience to the Father did not engage in complaining or arguing and thus clouding his proclamation of the gospel.
Jesus shines as the brightest star in all of creation.
And we are called to be like him.
1 Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne.
So if all of this is true,
If Jesus is both source, and the perfecter of our faith.
We ought to cling to him.
And that is exactly what Paul preaches here.
B
Drink Offering Christianity is authentic Christianity
Drink Offering Christianity is authentic Christianity
16 Hold firmly to the message of life. Then I can boast in the day of Christ that I didn’t run or labor for nothing.
Paul has been burning the candle on both ends for a long time now.
He was a single man,
maybe divorced,
but with no kids,
and a singular focus on bringing the gospel to as many corners of the world as God would allow him.
The people in these churches were his kids.
Paul says that he wants to be able to boast on the day of Christ that these people held fast to Jesus.
4 I have no greater joy than this: to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
17 But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and rejoice with all of you.
Paul is talking about his death here.
The drink offerings in the Old Testament were used to essentially seal a sacrifice that had been made.
The sacrifice here is the faithful obedience of the Philippian church.
Paul is saying, listen, I’m dying for what I taught you.
Hold firm to Jesus.
I don’t want to die for nothing.
But because Paul is confident in Christ’s ability to finish the work he started in them he says this:
“Even though I am dying, I am glad and rejoice with you.”
Because my death will be a sign and seal of your sacrifice of faith.
Drink offering Christianity is authentic Christianity.
The pouring out of oneself for the sake of another.
David Brainerd was a christian missionary was born in 1718.
He was one of the first to travel into the wildernesses of New Jersey to preach the gospel to the native American tribes there.
He has a diary called “The Diary of David Brainerd.”
Published by his friend Jonathan Edwards.
When you read his diary, in his early twenties, while he was still in school,
he struggled with the question of whether or not he was saved.
He was constantly under great stress over this question.
Inspired by the preaching of George Whitefield, David spent all of his twenties striving to reach these Native tribes with the gospel.
He struggled with tuberculosis this whole time,
lived in terribly cold and damp conditions,
and died when he was 29 years old in the home of Jonathan Edwards.
When you read his diary, and you get towards the end,
he is talking as someone who is more sure of their own salvation than anyone you have ever heard.
Why?
Because he worked OUT his salvation with fear and trembling.
God worked salvation into the life of David Brainerd,
And David worked it out for the sake of others, patterned after the humility of Christ.
And the result that had for him was an unshakeable assurance.
David’s journal after being published has been highly instrumental in compelling many men and women to enter the global mission field,
including William Carey, and Jim Elliot.
May we never forget the glorious truths that God works from outside of us to accomplish salvation on our behalf, and then continues this work by working in and through us to accomplish his purposes.