October 3 rd 2022 Monday Night @ First B
First B Jackson
2022-10-04

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Okay. Hello, church family. I am happy that we are here this morning. I mean, tonight. I work at Smith this morning.

That's why. Will you please stand and let's worship the Lord. Amen? Amen. Psalm one zero four verse, Psalm 100 verse four says, enter his gates with thanksgiving, go into his courts with praise, give thanks to him, and praise his name.

Amen? Amen. I am thankful for the privilege we have to be here, worship the Lord, having such a good food, and oh, Felix in Guadalupe. Thank you. May the Lord bless you.

We are fed well but now let let's fed ourselves with the good spiritual stuff. Amen? Amen. I want everybody here to be to to feel blessed tonight. Amen.

Just as you are just as you are Amen. I love this verse right here. Still the greatest treasure remains for those who who gladly choose you now. If you know Christ, hallelujah to that. Amen?

If you know Jesus as a person who's saved, hallelujah. But if you are here tonight and for some reason, you're questioning, I don't know who he is. Please invite him in your heart and have that secure salvation in your heart that one day, you will spend eternity with him. Amen? Amen.

Ashamed of the gospel I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ this is my life Amen. Praise the Lord. Gospel. What is the gospel? The good news that Jesus Christ came, died for our sins, and he's alive in heaven with the father.

Amen? And he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except by me. If we say in sincerity, Lord, I wanna know you. I wanna accept you in my life.

Please save me. I'm a sinner. I need you, Lord. He will do that. Amen?

Amen. Amen. And how? Through his blood. When he when he died on the cross, his blood was the was the payment for our sins, and that's why he chose the songs.

Amen. Praise the Lord. Brad, please come.

Okay. We're good there. Hi. There we go. Alright.

So I'll open with a question. Who here has been in the Delivery Room when a baby was being born? It's actually a trick question because it's all of you. But as an adult, like room. Are you glad you did it?

And if your kids are in here, don't, Anna, don't say no. But but generally, it's it's it's something that's celebrated. And so I think we're gonna use that as an example for today that we're gonna see in Philippians three that it's really powerful to have the end goal in mind. That's true of running a race. That's true of birthing a child, and it's certainly true of the Christian walk.

So let's see if I can do the clicker. I'm gonna do my best ray impression here in just a second. Oh, there we go. So that's Natalie and our first and our firstborn Jack. Oh, no.

There we go, Blake. Thank you. So, just to kind of tie it tie it in a little bit. So, there she is and he's at Awana. So, here's our text for today.

Philippians three twelve to four one. So, if you can all get out your phones, get out your bibles, whatever you've got just so you can see I'm not making any of this up. I'm gonna quote a lot of scripture. So would anybody like to read this for us so that you don't have to hear that much three and a half more minutes of my voice? No?

Okay. Well then. If there's no volunteers, then, you know, the beatings will continue until morale improves. Who's it? There we go.

Please.

Following Paul's example. All of us then who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too may God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have made already already attained. Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.

For as I often told you before and now tell you again, even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction. Their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transfer our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Closing appeal for a steadfast and unity. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in

the Lord in this way, dear friends. Thank you. So before we get into unpacking all of that, couple of disclaimers. One is you guys have well figured out by now. I'm not a professional.

I'm only a priest insofar as Peter calls us all to be kingdom of priests. But it it it I I love teaching and sharing God's word. So thank you for this privilege. But a couple of ways that you guys can help me out. Insofar as you're capable, take notes.

So so I would love feedback in terms of what what worked for you and then also what didn't. But then the other way that you can help me is you can give me nonverbals as as we go. So nod your head as as things are working, and then raise your hand. If if if I just completely jump the tracks and I need to come back and and circle back to something, raise your hand. I'm this is more open perhaps than raise authoritarian control of a Sunday would allow.

So I'm gonna ask you guys to pray real quick. We're just gonna I'm gonna give you a prompt and let you guys pray silently for a little bit. So I'm gonna ask that you guys pray silently for me for a moment that I would share God's worth faith words faithfully. Go ahead. Now, I'm gonna ask that you guys similarly would all pray that God would focus your hearts and your minds on his word.

So Carl's been leading us through Philippians for a few weeks now. And just to kind of give you some context for where we are in Philippians, I'm getting, like, every other click. So this is gonna be fun. So this is a a quick review of how we got to where we are in Philippians three. In verse one, Paul has called them to rejoice in the Lord, not in worldly circumstances, not in any other identity, just in the Lord.

Verse two through three, Paul has warned them about opponents to the gospel. Those are inside the church. And verses four through 11, basically, Paul has said, compared to his opponents, he has given up any ethical or spiritual advantage that he might have been by being born a Jew. And he's gladly done it all for the sake of Christ. So that lands us where we are today.

So we'll start with verse 12. So Paul starts our section today clarifying that he has not yet arrived at his goal, but he wants to work towards it nonetheless. This is what the church has long called progressive sanctification. Progressive and that is a continual, ongoing, never ceasing work. Thank you, Florian.

Sanctification in that we are constantly becoming free from sin. We are becoming purified. But again, this is not this is not a goal that we reach in this life as Paul is well saying in in in verse 12. This is basically the idea that once we become Christians, once we have that, very salient moment where we realize our own need for a savior and it becomes personal knowledge to us, that moment and only at that moment do we begin the work of progressive sanctification. And our goal is to become more like Christ.

This is something that Christ himself called us to constantly in the gospels, not by these terms. But in I've got three examples for us. Matthew 28, the great commission. We all hear, therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. What we tend to ignore is teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

So that's that's just that's constantly working towards it. Luke six forty six, Jesus rebukes those around him and says, why do you call me lord, lord, and do not do what I say? And these are verses that should sit heavy with all of us. They certainly sat heavy with me when I was preparing for this. Nope.

One too far. You and I both did it. Okay. Well, Matthew seven, therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Jesus is clearly and these are just three really easy examples.

Jesus is clearly time and time and time again, making it just blatantly obvious to anyone that listens to him that not only is there a belief function, but there is also it's not the instrument of our salvation, but it is a fruit of our salvation that we will do what he told us to do. And that's something that we work on constantly for the rest of our lives. If you've been in church for a while, you know that this is not a smooth or a straight line. There are plateau plateaus. There are peaks.

There are valleys. But progress is measured not in days or in weeks, but in years and decades. That said, if you look back on your Christian walk two years, five years, ten years, and you're not seeing market progress in the way that God has grown you spiritually, then it's probably time to change something up. And even Paul himself discusses this a little bit in his in his famous passage in Romans seven where he's talking about that he's constantly battling against the flesh, that he's doing the things that he does not want to do, and that he does things and and that he doesn't do the things that he does want to do. And so even though we are filled by the spirit, we are still battling against the flesh.

And that is one way of thinking about sanctification as we move forward is that we're starting to listen more to the spirit and less to our own flesh and desires. Another way of thinking about this, there's a famous quote, I I don't know where it's attributed to, is I am not yet who I want to be, but thank God I'm not who I was. And that should be that should be true all along our course of of life and of ministry because every single one of us have ministry. So there are seasons where we're growing, where our our ministry is producing fruit, where we feel close to the Lord, but there's also seasons where we struggle, where we don't feel like we're growing. And the crazy thing is as long as we stay faithful in those, those are just as much a work of the spirit as those moments where we feel like we're soaring from the mountaintop and flying high.

And then one last important part before I move on is that all of this is only possible, like I said, if you have been born again. So as Jesus told Nicodemus in John three, you cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you have been born again. So the work of progressive sanctification is not some moralism that we're working towards. It's not behavior modification. It is constantly desiring to want more of Jesus and to want to be more like Jesus.

So moving on to verse 14 and as I may have mentioned at the onset, I don't have any clever mnemonic devices today. I don't have like a three point outline. So this is kind of a failure of a Baptist teaching but because this text is so dense, we're just gonna kinda work through it verse by verse. I prefer the cleverness because then I get to like show off or something but we're we're doing this in humility today. So as we get to verse 14, Paul's gonna continue to unpack the same idea.

Presses on towards the goal, not so that he can feel better, be wealthier, whatever it might be, but because that is the very reason why God has called him in Jesus Christ. One thing that I've I've noticed in the modern western church is we kinda have this amazing narcissism. We have a a what I would call like a very anthropocentric view of our soteriology. That's just a fancy way of saying that we are too self centered in our view of salvation. And and the way that that lens affects everything that we do is really broad.

And so what we can do is we can always come back and we can refocus ourselves, not think what is God doing for me in this, but what is God doing for his kingdom? What is God doing for his glory? And I would encourage you guys, and this is something that I work on every time I'm in the Bible, every Sunday, every time I hear a message, especially if there's a hard truth, not to think of somebody else in the room or maybe worse, not in the room, but to just draw a circle around ourselves and just and just work on that bit. So I'm very much preaching to myself with all of this. I'm not just throwing throwing ninja stars at you guys so that I can laugh my way out of here.

But the cure for this for this kind of self centered view of our salvation is, I think, threefold for today's purposes. One is Romans eight twenty eight. We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined. And we usually get hung up on that phrase.

But we're predestined to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. So the idea is when we're called, we're called into something. We're not just called out of our sin. We are called into something. So this is the sanctification part again.

In that, we are going to be conformed to the image of his son. Secondly, and I think this is another great cure for it, is remembering that all of Jesus' Jesus' closest friends and basically all of his believing family, they were all brutally murdered except for Saint John who got boiled alive. He survived. It freaked everybody out, so they exiled him to the Isle Of Patmos. But I don't think any of us are praying for that as our outcome today.

But but just think about that. And and I I I I think, thirdly, we can think about the writer of this very letter. Paul wrung himself out for the gospel constantly. And he was persecuted, he was wrongly imprisoned, and then he had his head chopped off before he could complete his his missionary objectives. Again, this is just this is just cure to kind of the hogwash that we hear in in the modern western church in a lot of ways and that once we become a believer, God is gonna make us healthy, gonna make us wealthy, anything like that.

So God doesn't want anything other than for us to glorify him. If my if my mom, she had to leave, but if she were here, she'd be a great person to talk to about how God can use your suffering and can use your physical circumstances even late in life, to bring about salvation and to bring about God's glory. If you don't know my mom, you should meet her before she leaves in a couple of weeks to head back to Dallas for the winter because making her tell her story is good for her, and it's probably good for you too. So the the prize that Paul speaks of in verse 14 oh, oh, no. I blew it.

But he but he's talking about we don't we don't get the prize in this life. It's in heaven. And that's the important thing to read to think about when we're when we're reading this letter. In John 15, Jesus says, if the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. And so these are the sorts of ideas that Jesus was talking about constantly.

He was correcting the ideas of those around him in terms of the messiah that they were expecting. They were expecting a Davidic king that was going to sack Rome and and bring about the glory of Israel, and Jesus is constantly saying, that's that's not for me yet. And instead he's saying, I'm gonna have to die. And so that's just something for us to remind ourselves constantly of. So we'll move on to verse 17.

Help us there. Got it. So I've been talking for a few minutes now. So sent since we read first the the passage. So I'll go ahead and read this all the way through again just so that we know exactly where we are.

So this is Philippians three seventeen. Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters. And just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. For as I have often told you before and now tell you again, even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.

Their mind is set on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everybody under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. So Paul is saying in many ways here that the simplest, not the easiest, but the simplest way to emulate Christ is to emulate Paul. Paul clarifies this a little bit in first Corinthians 11 where he says, follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. What Paul is saying here is not that Paul is perfect.

He he, of all people, knows that that would be heresy. But Paul is saying, insofar as you see me following Jesus, follow me. And if we look at his body of work, it's a pretty good one to follow. But we can take that same concept in terms of Paul making a a a a really lofty goal more attainable. We can do that same thing when he says, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.

He's getting at the heart of discipleship there. So this is not declaring that any leader, anybody that's going to disciple you is any way perfect, but you can look for someone to follow that leads with humility and has done so with endurance. In light of the Matthew 28 great commission that we mentioned earlier, if you're not actively participating in a discipling relationship, you're missing out on one of the great promises that the gospel has for you. And it's a blessing that's available within this church. And and so what are the marks to look for in a discipler?

Paul lays these out for criteria in first Timothy three and Titus one. Now keep in mind, these are the criteria for an elder, so these are lofty goals. But this is oh, I'm gonna unpack something here. This is primarily for men. Don't shoot me.

But these are these are lofty goals. But the the way to summarize this is we're looking for fruit. We're looking for the fruit of faithfulness. And more importantly, what we can look at is what's not on this list, are the things that we tend to think about when we're looking for somebody to be a leader. We tend to think wealth.

We tend to think charisma, number of followers, cleverness, any of these sorts of things. What we don't tend to think of is just the long arc of humility and faithfulness. So an even bigger shortcut is the church has already appointed men that they've approved under this. So when we're saying when Paul's saying keep your eyes on those who live as we do, he could be saying join together in following the example of Ray, of Carl, of Mike, of Florine, of of any of the men that have been appointed into to leadership in this church. These are these are good models for us to follow in so far as they follow Christ.

So that doesn't mean that we have to, cut our hair like Ray or or anything like that, but it does mean that insofar as he is seeking Christ and that he is modeling Christ's behavior, we get to follow him. So and and one last thing on discipleship, that can look a lot of different ways. It can look like intentional conversations, early morning coffee, but a lot of times one of the most effective ways for discipleship is just to follow them and see what they're doing. So if you're gonna follow Ray, if you're gonna follow Carl, you're gonna enter into a lot of broken conversations. You're gonna spend time at the hospital, spend time at the jail, spend time helping people that really need it.

At the junkyard. Yeah. Maybe even fixing a car and and and leaving some skin underneath the nineteen eighties Land Cruiser? Yeah. So moving on then.

This is one of the things that I both enjoy and and kind of loathe at the same time about Paul's writing is he'll unpack some really deep theological thing and he'll talk about something at length and then he'll circle back to it. Well, when we're going verse by verse, that's really inconvenient because he's just gonna drop this. He's gonna pull the pin on this grenade, basically, and talk about enemies in the church, and he does it in, like, a verse and a half and then moves on. So the problem is he's warning us constantly about false doctrine and false teaching, so we have to do it too. So it's not the primary thrust of today's message, so I'll I'll move on quickly.

But if we're taking it I'm not worried about the teaching that goes on within within the context of this church. But if we're taking in teaching from outside this church, we need to be careful. I have seen personally a lot of believers get pulled off sides by listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos, especially that crazy YouTube algorithm that also doesn't understand core orthodoxy, but may actually be trying to pull off pull us outside. But we just need to be careful with that. And so while we can name names and we can think about the the the obvious ones that are perhaps part of the prosperity gospel or the emerging church or the deconstructionist movement.

We just need to constantly be careful and just think about, okay. Is this coming from the Bible? Is this a a faithful interpretation? Or are they cherry picking stuff out and creating a pet doctrine that actually doesn't make any context any sense in context? A really big clue is when people shout what the Bible whispers, that's a problem.

Instead, we can always look towards Jesus. So, you know, the flow would be a lot better if I was any good with this clicker. I feel your pain, Ray. So I'll close with this. That the fact that we are Paul reminds us that our citizenship is not of this world, but it's of heaven.

And our as I was talking about babies earlier, our king, that baby that Mary birthed, he's coming back. And when he does, all the wrongs in this world will be made so right, it will be as if they were never wrong. Same as Ganji Ganji at the end of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series, he wakes up in this bed and there's been this terrible fight and he sees Gandalf standing over him. And he just asked Gandalf, he says, is everything sad going to come untrue? And I just love that as a model for heaven.

We get hung up and, like, there gonna be dogs in heaven? Is there gonna be filet mignon? You know, like, what is how does it work if there's no sun and if there's no rain? But, like, we can we can dwell on that fact that the world will be made so right, it will be as if it were never wrong. So as we're thinking about this, the goal is important and our goal is Christ.

Our citizenship is in heaven. And this is so important to our psychology. How silly would it be for me to redecorate a hotel room? Right? Like, even Natalie and all of her decorating proclivities, when we've stayed at a hotel room, she's never worried about the upholstery on the chair.

And even one of our first fights as a married couple was about side tables, so this isn't totally arbitrary. Arbitrary. But but, like, it it would just be insanity for somebody to redecorate a hotel room. And yet, we do we tend to do a little bit of that here. It's a longer stay.

We're around, and we tend to focus on, well, what's the upholstery of the chair instead of what effect are we having on the people around us. So similarly, when we know that this world is not our home, we can not only tolerate, but we can endure hardship and we can celebrate it for the sake of Christ. We can think of ourselves as ambassadors. We wanna be good residents for our host nation, and we wanna work for the good of it, but our ultimate loyalty is not here. So in review, we'll get this done.

We talked about progressive sanctification. It's neither steady nor smooth, but the arc and goal of a lifetime is towards Christ likeness. That regardless of circumstances, we press on for the kingdom of God, not for shortsighted gain, but with an eternal perspective. That we should pursue discipleship, but that we should do so wisely, and that we are ambassadors in a foreign nation. Our king is coming back, and he has promised that he will make all things new.

No. I'm not singing. I'm not singing. I think I had first Corinthians fifteen fifty eight as kind of a closing passage. But real quick closing application.

What would our lives look like if we really believed the truth of the gospel every single day when we woke up? If we really believe that our citizenship was not of this earth but of heaven. That's all I got for you today.

Will you please stand and let's worship the Lord with one more song? And as you can, if you heard God's voice tonight, please respond. If you know Christ, please do please walk with him. And if you don't know him, invite him in the this this this

midst crisis. Of

That was a gypsy Romanian ending. I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. We gotta be joyful in his presence. Amen?

How about this for our benediction? Press on to reach to the end of the race and to receive the heavenly prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us. Lord, would you lead us, lord? Would you empower us? Would you guide us to wake up each day having put yesterday behind us knowing that you were with us but that you will be with us in this day, lord.

I pray that you'd allow us the grace to be able to live in the moment and to walk in victory in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Amen. May the Lord bless you and have a good week with Jesus. Amen.