Last week we were hit with some pretty humbling stuff. We looked at a passage that painted a very vivid picture of what Jesus endured on our behalf. We saw that his humiliation wasn’t just over a period of a few days leading up to his crucifixion, but lasted his entire earthly life. And we were called by Paul to have Jesus’ mindset or attitude of being a servant. With this example of Jesus’ humility and the subsequent call to serve in the front of the minds of the Philippians, Paul moves on to make a charge to the Christians there. You see, this is quite possibly the last time that he will speak with this beloved congregation. He speaks of his coming absence and his being poured out like a drink offering. Paul knows that even if he escapes his current imprisonment, that his time on this earth is closer to its end that it’s beginning. And he wants to make sure that the Philippians understand the importance of the task that they will now be entrusted with in its entirety once he is gone.
While we may want to look at this and say that it is a simple call for the Philippians to carry on with the spread of the gospel and being a light in the darkness, there are a few things that we must notice and pay special attention to as we look throughout this text today. The first is the phrase, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Notice that it is “work OUT your own salvation;” it isn’t work FOR or work TOWARDS your own salvation. It’s a call to live out that which God has already earned for you. Paul makes that very clear by not stopping for one second and immediately saying, “for it is God who works in you.” You see, it isn’t us, it isn’t our works, but it’s God who does all the working. And God’s work begins with our wills. Paul plainly tells us here that He works in us first to will, then to act out his good purposes. Our willing to do something must come before our doing. It’s quite simple; you must first determine that something must be done before doing it.
And maybe I’m sticking my hand in a hornet’s nest of questions here, but I think that it’s important for us to deal with this. I had a professor in seminary who had 40+ years of ministry experience say that if either the preacher or the hearers weren’t sweating, then you aren’t doing your job as a pastor. Maybe it’s my turn to sweat a little. But as we look back to our passage and our study of it, we will never understand the doctrine of God’s working to form a person’s will until we realize that apart from the work of God in a person’s heart through Jesus Christ, he or she does not have free will as far as spiritual things are concerned. I know, I know; red flags. I can read minds this morning and they are saying, “What! Do you mean to tell me that I can’t do anything I want to?” My answer to that question is quite simply, “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. You can’t do ANYTHING that you want.” Now don’t get me wrong, you have free will to do certain things, but not all things. You can decide to go to work or call in sick, you can choose to keep or exceed the speed limit, or you can choose whether or not to pay attention to the rest of this sermon. But you can’t decide that you’re going to raise your IQ by 50 percent. You can’t just decide that you have the ability to sing and sing well all of a sudden. You can’t decide that you want a million dollars and instantly have it. All of these areas are things that we can work at and we can try and improve. We can read and study more. We can take singing lessons. We can work harder or find a better job, but there are a lot of things that must “fall our way” so-to-speak.
And quite simply, spiritually speaking, you and I don’t have the power to choose God. Adam did, but he lost it, and every person since hasn’t had the ability to choose God and to choose good on their own. That is the effect that sin has had on man since the Garden. This is the concept or doctrine in Christian theology known as original sin. Think of it as if sin were a mud hole. When God created Adam and Eve they were on the edge of that mud hole. They were standing on firm, dry ground looking in at the darkness below. They could choose to jump in or they could choose to stay out. They jumped in, and man has been struggling to climb up the slippery slopes of that hole ever since. But none of us have the strength to get out. Someone must lower the rope, and God is the only who can do it. Romans 3 tells us, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.” If you have come to God, it isn’t because of you. It is only because God has first entered your life by his Holy Spirit to quicken your will, to open your eyes to the truth, and to draw to irresistibly to himself. And only after He has done all of this, can we choose the path that He sets before us. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works (that is human working), so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works (that is, the result of God’s working), which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:8-10
So, God has saved us. Despite all other questions that we may have about how this is done, there is no denying that it is God and God alone who has saved us. The question for us now becomes, “What next?” In other words, since God has saved us, how are we to respond?
I don’t know where the notion began that the greater the devotion to Christ the more secluded you must become. In the early days of the church, a Syrian monk named Simon Stylites sat on top of a pillar that stood 50 feet above the ground. He did this to avoid contact with the world below so that he wouldn’t be contaminated by the sin below. He was thought to be highly spiritual primarily because of his withdrawal. Scripture in no way supports this type of spirituality. There isn’t anything wrong with spending time alone with God. In fact, we are told that we are to do so on a regular basis. But the Bible never allows us to think that meditation has achieved its purpose for us unless it results in practical application. James Boice says of this, “Truth leads to action, and there is no value to a mountaintop experience unless it helps us to live in the valleys.”
Back in 2006, I had just begun working at Grace Chapel Presbyterian Church in Madison, MS. At the time, we had these church-wide events every-so-often on Sunday evenings. We called them Chapel Nights. These events were a chance for us to gather as a church family outside of the context of worship. The very first one of these Chapel Nights that we had after I started working there was a concert by a guy named Charlie Dodrill. Now, Charlie was a little bit different than most Christian musicians that you have seen or heard of. Charlie didn’t know any worship songs. Yeah, you heard me right. The beautiful songs that we sing to begin each worship service, Charlie didn’t sing any of those. He sang and played only songs that he had written. You see, several years prior to Charlie being there with us he had spent two years in solitude in the mountains of Utah. He spent two years in a cabin with no real possessions other than a Bible and his guitar. What he discovered during this two year span was that there was a part of his heart that seemed to open up only when he was singing praises to God. Not only that, Charlie also realized that he had a gift. He had a gift that was to be shared with all of God’s people. He wasn’t to keep it to himself, but to take it to the rest of the world. And that’s what he did, and that’s what he’s still doing to this very day.
You see, Charlie came to truly understand a very simple biblical principle, “Get up and Go!” It’s as simple as that. What good does it do us to have all of the answers if we aren’t going to share them with anyone? We are to be in the world, but not of it. We are to take that good news that we know to be true and put it to work. We are to live for Jesus Christ. We are to live for God, but this isn’t always easy in our world today. You see, we have to understand that the world as we know it in many ways is broken. It’s hard for us to understand that and remember that sometimes. When it’s a nice temperature outside, little to no clouds overhead, spending time with friends and family, reeling in fish left-and-right, sinking a 30 foot putt to beat your buddy; yeah, it’s hard to think of the world as broken during times like that. We don’t think of it as dark at all, we think of it as a beautiful thing. But the reason for this is that the light of God is being deflected in the atmosphere by Christians so that some Christian virtues are sprinkled about so that the world doesn’t look quite so bad. But the darkness is still there. The world still has its own priorities and goals: pleasure, success, physical love, money, and fame. These are not the goals of a Christian. Christians know that all of these things are gifts from God in their purest sense, but they should never be the goal. There’s nothing wrong with being successful, with having nice things, or even being secure financially. The problem comes when we place these things as our goal above living for Christ Jesus.
How do we do this? How do we live with Christ as the goal instead of these worldly goals? Well Paul has a few suggestions. The first is to do everything without grumbling and complaining. Now despite your best wishes, this is not a call for husbands to stop complaining when the trash needs to be taken out or there is a leak that needs to be tended to in the house. No, this is a specific reference to Israel’s grumbling and complaining. They complained while they were in Egypt. They complained while they were in the wilderness. They complained they were hungry. When God gave them manna, they complained that they had no meat. They complained even after God delivered them into the Promised Land. And this is like many of us. We complain no matter how richly blessed we may be. Do you realize how foolish we must sound to other countries complaining because we can’t take a vacation because it costs us so much to put gas in our own personal cars. Instead of complaining about how things don’t work in our lives, I want all of us to try a new approach. I want all of us to thank God for all that we have that does work in our lives. Why, I bet that if we did this then we would quickly realize just how blessed we truly are.
Paul also tells us here that we are to be blameless and innocent. We are to be without blemish. Do you know that more harm comes to the gospel because of the actions of Christians than of any other group? It’s true. Those groups out there who would love nothing more than to see Christianity fail will tell you that more damage is done when a person who claims Jesus Christ fails. Think about it, there is nothing like when there is a scandal in the pulpit. When a pastor, priest, or any other prominent church member is caught doing something wrong, the news spreads like wildfire. We only want to talk about it because it’s something bad. We have to remember that as Christians we represent the name of Christ. We can’t corrupt our witness and testimony in order to achieve one of those earthly goals.
The last thing that Paul tells us here is that we are to grow. We are to “cling to the word of life.” And this is a process that goes on throughout the entire life of the Christian. I don’t care who you are, there is always room for improvement. We think that it’s true in many other aspects of life and work, and our faith is no exception. In fact, our faith is the one area where I can tell you that you will never reach a perfect score. But the beauty of it all is that we aren’t alone in our growth. We’re not expected to grow in our faith all by ourselves. Just as God has to lower the rope to get us out of the mudhole that is sin, God must work growth in us. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
So what do all these verses mean? What are they trying to tell us? Well, they are telling us that we are incapable of living out the kind of life that God requires of us, but that God is capable of living out that life in a person who yields to his Spirit. God comes to us and He penetrates our hearts with His Word. When He does so, a new life begins to grow inside of us just as a new life grows inside an expecting mother. At some point, our faith becomes an outward expression just like the birth of a new baby. From that point forward, there is a continuous learning period full of education, guidance, and nurturing. Finally, the child goes forth to live in a way that honors his Father; in a way that honors THE Father. We are to submit to his Spirit and allow God to use us as light that penetrates the darkness of this world.
Friends, the darkness is much closer than you think. We are all thankful that God has called each and every one of us to Himself. But we still mourn for our friends, our neighbors, and our family members who God has yet to call. We must continue to strive for the gospel and pray that God will work through us to speak to those around us so that we may help point them to the cross. The darkness isn’t only in some far off mission field, but is embedded within our own community. We must continue to strive forward and be a light that points to Christ through the darkness of this world.
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