"Philippians-A Manna Study" Week 2

Pastor Jake continued our sermon series "Philippians — A Manna Study" with “Must Be Nice,” showing how comparison steals joy while Christ anchors true contentment. Through Paul’s words, we were reminded that gratitude shifts our focus from envy to God’s provision. The message encouraged us to let go of “must be nice” thinking and rest in the sufficiency of Jesus.
 
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Manna Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world. We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before. Now, let's get to it.

unknown 0:27

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Thank you, Josh. Thank you, worship team. Man, how you guys doing today? Yes? Oh my goodness. How are you guys doing today? It's a good day to be a church, yeah? Josh is right. I'm excited. I had a great week. Any of you have a great week last week? Yes? I had a fantastic week. I got to go down to Charleston, South Kakalaca with a bunch of people from our church here. Anybody like Charleston? Yes. Great food, fantastic people. And we went down there to be a part of the ARK conference at Seacoast Church. And it was great. So if you guys don't know, ARK is a church planting organization. They train up and equip uh pastors and couples and teams to be able to go out and launch well. Started 25 years ago. This was their 25th anniversary. And so it's a fantastic organization. When they first launched, there was a guy who believed in a couple church planters, and he said, Look, I will I will make sure that your church is funded for the first year. I'll help you meet budget. This is what your monthly budget needs to be. I'll give you money to launch, and then every single month that you don't meet that budget, I will cover the gap. The only thing that I ask from you is that you find a way to give that forward to another church planter in the future. And so since then, that's actually how ARC was launched. Since then, ARK has launched 1,215 churches. That's awesome, y'all. That's great. And uh and we are actually ARC Church Plant 1026. So that's pretty cool. Uh we launched in February 2022 and they gave us some support. And I'm really excited to announce. Wasn't planning on this, but I was really excited this week while I was down there. I met with one of the guys who I get text messages from him and he kind of encourages me and we connected. And um I said, How close are we to paying off, like paying forward our gift to ARK? And he said, I don't know. Let me look. He pulls it up and he's like, Man, you guys are like right there. You know, the the gift you normally give us, if you just give it next month, you'll do it. I said, Well, can we just do it right now? Can I just give you the gift right here? And he's like, Absolutely. So, y'all, we have given back to ARK and given back to church planting just as much as they've given us, and we're gonna continue to support them. So that's really cool. I'm really excited about it. Really excited to continue to see other life-giving churches launched and do that actually from here. But today, we are going to talk about week two here in Philippians. I'm excited to give you another section in Paul's letter to the church at Philippi, and we're gonna cover something that every single one of us have dealt with in one way or another. And so, um, in fact, we've all dealt with it in lots of ways. So this morning, we're gonna spend a majority of our time covering the topic of jealousy. I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hands, but I know we've had jealousy, all of us, in one way, shape, or form. And it shows up in all kinds of circumstances home life, work life, social life. You just go shopping, and and it's it's intended to make you jealous. They show you images of people that are better looking than you, driving better vehicles than you, wearing nicer clothes than you, and you're expected to want what they want and be a little bit jealous of them. That that's that's how marketing works. Um, when you are at work, a lot of times, jealousy creeps in. You see somebody else get a promotion, you're like, I wanted that promotion. You see somebody else get recognized, you're like, I wish I was recognized. Maybe your boss, even. Your boss, you the team works really hard, does good work, you get something accomplished, and you see the boss in front of all the bigwigs at work, and they're like, Man, Joe did such a great job, and you're sitting there like, Joe didn't do anything. I did all the work, the team did all the work. I'm a little bit jealous. Why is he getting all this support? In fact, you know you're falling victim to this when you feel a need to kind of explain. When you see that Joe's getting the credit, and you're like, Well, you know he didn't actually do all that, right? You know there was a team and we did it, and you feel like you need to kind of cover it. Um, we we get jealous of other people's possessions. Uh, this is a hard one. We get jealous of other people's friendships, don't we? Anybody? Come on, you see other people, it's like they got their crew, they got their band of brothers, their circle of sisters, and you get a little jelly when you see it. You're like, man, why doesn't anybody want to be my friend? Why do they get to go hang out all the time? I never get invited to lunch. It even happens inside your family. We have a big family, and so jealousy is something that's easy to see spring up. My kids will ask, oftentimes, they'll say, Why did he get that and I didn't get it? I'll say, Well, because I love him more than you. And then I'll correct it. I'll be like, you know, that's silly, right? Because what they're asking is they're saying, I feel jealous right now. Why do I feel that way? Why are you making me feel jealous, Dad? Social media is the worst about this. It makes it so easy for us to experience jealousy because everybody feels the need to post about their most recent hangout with their best friend that we didn't get invited to, or their new car, their new house, or how amazing their spouse is. Right? We get this. And I'm not I'm not trying to dunk on anybody who loves their spouse. Maybe you had an anniversary recently. There's actually a study that shows that couples that post more about their relationship are actually less happy than po than couples that don't post. Crazy. Again, I didn't make the stat, it's just it's just out there. Um but they see this, and if we're honest, when we see other people's circumstances, we don't actually celebrate them very much, do we? We don't celebrate them maybe as often as they would like for us to celebrate them. In fact, a lot of times we envy them, and there are studies that show when people go on social media, the largest portion of social media interaction is passive consumption, which actually leads uh researchers to believe that comparison and envy is the primary motivation and reason people get on social media. They're just wanting to snoop, wanting to find out what's going on so that way they can be jealous and be envious and not actually be joyful. So this pops up all the time. In fact, some people even cultivate their social media feed because they're trying to curate jealousy almost in you. Look how great my life is. It's my highlight reel. If you think you're impervious to this, you are not. Every single one of us can fall victim to this. In fact, if you think maybe, like, is there some way that I might be falling victim to it? I'm gonna give you three words that you may or may not have said that will tell you if you've ever fallen victim to this. If you've ever said, must be nice. Anybody ever said that? Must be nice. Must be nice to go on vacation all the time. Must be nice to have a husband that loves you and you can celebrate them on your anniversary. Must be nice. That's a trigger word. I when I was uh a first grader, I had a must-be nice moment, a moment where I was getting jealous. Um, there was a little kid I was friends with, and his name was Cody. He was cool. He was in karate class, I was not in karate class. All right, but I was not about to get shown up by Cody. And the teacher, Miss Edmondson, God bless her, she left the room. Um, and it was not a wise choice on her part because I was a rotten kid when I was a first grader. And Cody was bragging to everybody about how he could kick really high. And he actually got out of his seat and he did this cool roundhouse kick and was like, it got sort of high. And I was like, I could do, I could do better than that. I was a little jealous because everybody was like congratulating him. So I stood up and I was like, watch this, Cody. I can kick over your head. He's like, Oh yeah? I'm like, yeah, he was kind of short, so it was. I thought it was gonna be easy. So I wound up, I went, BAM! I kicked him right in the side of the head. Cody falls down, he's crying. Everybody's screaming for the teacher, Miss Edmondson. She comes back in. You know what happened? Y'all, my my school in Kansas, we did it right. We didn't, we didn't get like, you know, oh, we're gonna call your parents and maybe you're gonna go home for the day. They had a paddle that had the teacher's name on it, and when you got busted, you got to sign the paddle. You better believe I have my name on lots of paddles at Central Elementary School in Baxter Springs, Kansas, because I got whipped for doing that. It was rough. All of that because of a little bit of jealousy in class. So today we're gonna spend time talking about how we deal with other people's jealousy of us and how we deal with jealousy in our own hearts. Amen. Sound good? Cool. And so backstory just really quick. We're in Philippians, we've read the first 11 verses. Paul has been to Philippi, it's the first church in Europe. He launched it, he met with this woman there, not a whole lot of Jewish people, but he started meeting with the Gentiles. He met with a woman named Lydia, she was a wealthy merchant, and she's the first convert in all of Europe. Ends up starting a church plant in her house. She's got um uh she's got Paul there, she's got Luke, she's got Silas, she's got Timothy there. They're all launching this church in her home. Then they cast out a demon out of this little slave girl. The owners of the slave girl get mad, they beat up Paul and Silas, throw them in jail. The jailer actually gets saved as a result. It's a crazy story. And so Paul's writing this from that context because guess what? He's in jail again. It's about 10 years later, he's in jail, and this is what he says. I want you to know, brothers, starting in verse 12, that what's happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. Like, get it, there's a different thing going on than what you see. So that what they have so that it has become known throughout the whole Imperial Guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. So, Paul, he's got a really great attitude here. He is reframing the situation in a positive light. And we're gonna find out exactly what he means here in just a minute. But um, what I get undertones of throughout this letter is there's almost a little bit of Paul defending himself. He's saying, Look, I'm in prison, I'm in jail, but trust me, it's a good thing. When bad things happen, it's easy to blame ourselves, isn't it? It's like, mmm, this bad thing happened to me. It's probably my fault. And when we experience trials, I mean, maybe, y'all, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one. Uh, there's shame that comes along with it. Like, ooh, this bad thing happened. I don't feel like I did anything to deserve it, but I still feel ashamed. I've personally I've experienced that more than I'd like to admit. Again, maybe it's just me. Everybody else, they're out there living their best life. They've got wins, promotions, successes with their kids, successes in relationships. They're just winning, winning, winning. And I'm over here on the struggle bus. Probably just me. And when that happens, I sometimes feel a need to explain or to justify. I remember when I lost my job. First time that ever happened to me, only time it ever happened to me, even just saying that. It's like I gotta justify. I only ever lost my job once. But saying it when it happened, I just felt icky. And I felt a need to kind of justify and explain. Like, hey, there's this didn't happen. I didn't deserve it. So Paul's in prison with criminals, not for the first time, not for the second time. He's in prison for the third time. In fact, Paul spent about five and a half years of his life in prison. Okay? Dude was a frequent flyer. He had that Hilton Honors number that he was plugging in in the prisons all over. All right? And he had to feel some sort of a need to justify himself before these other believers who were supposed to live above reproach, who were supposed to be like the best citizens in the Roman Empire. He had to feel a little bit of that. In fact, I bet Paul was tempted to say of all the people who were outside the jail more than once, must be nice. Must be nice. You get a you get to just read my letters and consume this gospel that I'm sharing with you. Must be nice to have that kind of faith. Man. Must be nice to not have to sacrifice anything for the gospel. Must be nice to not get beat up all the time so the gospel gets advanced. Must be nice to not have to be shipwrecked. Must be nice. Ooh, this is a hard one. Must be nice to be one of the giving Christians and not one of the going Christians. Must be nice. Paul could have said that. In fact, I think that's if I could pick the the struggle that the Lord, the next persecution that He's going to cause me to face, I feel like, Lord, I'm ready for the trial of extreme wealth and a life of ease and comfort and luxury. I think that's a cross I can bear for your name. Lord, I'm ready for it. Anyone else? Like, yeah, I I'm ready for that one, God. No. It would have been very easy for Paul to be jealous of people on the outside and start to chastise them and start to say, like, y'all need to do more for the kingdom. But this is what Paul does. It's so cool. And it's one of the things that we can do to guard against jealousy in our own heart. He sees where Jesus is working in his circumstance. He's like, Look, I'm in prison, but Jesus is working through this. I'm not going to get jealous of everybody else. Jesus is actually in my situation and he's working. And he says, Look, I don't know. It's actually serving a purpose, y'all. He goes on, and this is he explains how it's happening. He says, Most of the brothers, verse 14, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, my suffering, it's done something in their heart, and they're much more bold to speak the word without fear. So there's some people, they're just preaching the gospel now because they've seen me go to jail. It's increased their faith, it's increased their boldness. I will trade my freedom and I'll give myself chains if that's what's going to happen. That's what's going to be the result. That's a great trade. And what he's going to say next is a little bit weird, and we're going to have to unpack it because it's kind of strange and it's confusing. So we'll read the next passage here. Unfortunately, it's not too uncommon. Verse 15, he said, Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. So he's saying there's two kinds of people that are preaching now that I'm in chains. One has good motives, the other one has bad motives. That's that's super odd. Um, uh what in the world is he talking about? So, so Paul, you're meaning to tell me that there are people who are preaching the gospel, there are people who are living the Christian life, and they're doing it from a really good heart. They're serving, they're evangelizing, they're making disciples, and they're in a good spot. And are you saying that there are people who are doing the work of the kingdom, but their heart is bad? That's that's strange. That can't be what you're saying because I'm gonna tell you, every church person I've ever met, they're all great people, they're all perfect people, um, they all have perfect hearts, they never do anything from a bad place. I'm being a little bit sarcastic, y'all. Help me out, right? Like Paul's Paul's bringing this out. He's saying the quiet part out loud. Verse 16, he says, the latter do it out of love, knowing I'm put here for the defense of the gospel. The former, though, so strange. They proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. There are people preaching the gospel, thinking that they're gonna make it harder for Paul, the apostle, by the way, who started the dang church in Philippi. They're thinking it's gonna they're gonna make it harder for him. This is kind of crazy. So, so so there are some good people who are emboldened, they're friends of Paul, and there are literally jerks in the church with bad motives. Crazy. It must be a first century problem. It's not something in the American church we ever deal with, is it? Nobody ever gets jealous of another person's calling and tries to outserve them in the American church. Nobody ever gets jealous of the worship team, it's like, I can sing better than that person. Put me up there. I deserve to be there. Nobody ever gets jealous in a small group is like, I don't like this person's small group. I can do it better. I'm gonna go start my own small group. That never happens, right? Never happens in the American church, it happens all the time. And and here's what we we can't miss in the text here, because there's a lot of things that he says, but it's what he doesn't say that's really important, and it helps give us context. So, first off, these people are believers. These aren't like reprobates, far from God. These are believers. He's talking to people in the church that are preaching the the gospel, okay? Um, he's gonna talk about people who are far from God later in his letter. He's not talking about them here, it's different people. Number two, they're not peddling heresy or bad theology necessarily. Paul is super clear in his other letters. When someone's delivering bad theology, he drops the hammer on them. And he's like, No, this is wrong. Do not do not listen to what they say. He he he he just hammers them. He's not doing that here. It's kind of weird. Um the third thing we can see, this is kind of strange. But but just if you think about it and sit with it for a minute, it's like, oh yeah. Um there are people that don't like Paul. Paul has enemies in the church. The apostle Paul has enemies. Um, some people speculate when you read commentaries, they speculate that it's because he's in prison. And so that may be why he's kind of saying, like, hey, like, trust me, I'm not a bad guy. I'm in here because of the gospel. Um, there's some people that say there are folks angry at that, and so they're trying to like add affliction to him. I actually don't really land there personally, where I land is I think that they're jealous of his position. I think they were jealous of his prominence in the church and his role as a leader, and now that he's in prison, they can dunk on him and they can easily slip into his role and take over some of his authority in the church. And listen, this is the church. If jealousy, selfish ambition, envy, rivalry, if they're active here, don't think that we're impervious to this outside the church and all the other spheres we work, right? If we don't get this right in the church, I guarantee you do not get it right in your unit, in your family, in your workplace, in your neighborhood, in your social feed with all your followers. The church, the first church is not even getting this right. And some of you, you find yourself in situations like this. You've got people, they wear the same jersey as you, but it doesn't feel like they're on the same team as you. You work at the same office, maybe you share the same last name with them, even, and it feels like you're at odds with them all the time. There's contention, you question their motives, and you know they got some beef with you. There was a guy I worked with one of the one time back in the day, and he was always, always, always undermining me when I wasn't around. It was weird because we had the same goals. Um, when there was a contract that would come in, because I was a contractor, uh, business guy before I was a pastor, and anytime that there would be a deal, he would make sure to kind of gatekeep and keep me on the outside and make sure that he was gonna get the credit for it. And and and he would undermine me. He would throw me like late at night. I don't know if he would drink too much and and like just shoot off random emails, but it was just a really difficult situation, and I didn't understand it because he was competitive with me on everything, and it made it such a pain, it was such a mess all of the time. It's like, why are we at odds with one another? So, so so how do we respond to that? How do we do that? I'm glad you asked. Paul actually asked the same question, verse 18. He says, What then? What do I do about this? What do I do? Some people preach the gospel of good news, some people preach the gospel from a good heart, some people preach from a bad heart. What do I do? He says only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I will rejoice. Wow. I don't care how or why it gets done. Listen to this. I just want the job to get done. I want it to get done. It doesn't need to be done my way. I I don't need the credit. In fact, he's saying this is weird. I don't even care if it's done with a bad heart, I just want the mission accomplished. Second thing to keep you from being jealous about everybody else is be focused more on the mission than the means. The mission, the mission is paramount. I'm gonna hit you guys with a couple things here. Parenting, something. Times you're gonna be upset with your kids, you can be frustrated with those little monsters that God blessed you with. You have to be more committed to the mission of raising them than liking them. Seriously, sometimes it happens. Um sometimes in in the home, even um, parents, we want to take credit for being the better parent versus the other parent. It's like I did this, I did this really well. This was my idea. I was really careful. I I took I took the girls on a daddy-daughter date. Such a good dad. Their spiritual and emotional health is all due to me. Is that from a good motive? No. But you know what? My wife is like, I'm I'm just glad he took them out because they need time with their dad. Sometimes you gotta be more focused on the mission than the means. It's it's weird. In your marriage, there are times where you will not like your spouse. There are times where you might hate their motives for the things they're doing, and this is a hard word, but you gotta have your commitment to the covenant has to be greater than your commitment to the person and their personality sometimes. Y'all, I'm telling you, sometimes marriage is tough. But there's a mission, there's a covenant you made before God. It's like, I'm gonna fulfill this mission in work, man. If I would have quit because that guy, he was a pain, like a thorn in my flesh. All the time, for months, he ended up quitting. Have a mature stopping point where you outlast some of the quitters around you. Church hurt, man, it's a big deal. People get hurt in churches all the time. Be more committed to the mission of the church than maybe some of the personalities around you. All right, I'm not saying you abide heresy. Paul would never do that, but you got to be committed to the mission. One of the things God challenged me on one time was um, I always was like, Lord, man, I really want a prophetic gift. Daniel was always like, Yeah, I want a prophetic gift, God. And so the Lord's been blessing her like over the past few years, just kind of releasing this gift. You guys have heard me talk about it more. And so I was praying about it one time, not too long ago, and I was asking God, like, Lord, man, give me more of that. Give me a prophetic gift. And God, I clear as I'm talking to you right now, the Lord said to me, Would you be okay if I gave it to you in your wife? If she was the means by which I gave it to you. In other words, does it have to be you that gets it, or are you just good with her having it? And I thought about it for a second. It was a second, it wasn't that long, and I was like, Yes, actually. I'm good with that. I'm more committed to our church, to my family, to the people around me, getting that goodness of God than it having to come through me. And we're supposed to pray for gifts. We're supposed to pray for the read read the New Testament. Paul talks about this, eagerly desire the greater gifts. But I'm okay just as long as our church has got it. I'm okay. I don't care about the means, I care about the mission. It's amazing how much you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit. Another quick story. There's a church that back in the day they kind of broke off from the church I was at, and and church splits are so icky. So icky. And I remember when it happened, I did not like the motivations of that church. I did not like the motivations of some of the people that were involved in it. I had some serious, serious issues with the way they were doing things, some serious issues behind the heart of what they were doing and how they were doing it. And the Lord just super clearly again spoke to me and was like, they've now broken off. You need to be for them. Don't root for their failure. Don't root for their failure. And it was hard because my group of people, my young adults that I was leading, and their group of people were all young adults, and and there was a lot of enmeshment. And it was it was a challenge, but God clearly told me, do not root for their failure. Because they love, there was no question to me that they loved Jesus. They love Jesus, they they preached the gospel, they preached it a little differently than how I would preach it. They did things just a little different from how I would do it. I didn't like the way that they were honoring and dishonoring. In other words, they were human. Right? Here's I'm gonna fast forward now. There are so many people that I know that go to that church that has come out of that over a decade later, decade and a half later. So many people I know that go to that church. There are families that I know and love who their entire family has been baptized in that church. I shudder to think of what I could have done to undermine the work of the kingdom by letting my own jealousy and pride and selfish ambition get in the way of what they were doing. And maybe they were doing it for those reasons. I don't care. I just want the gospel to go forward. Amen? That's the mission. And Paul gives us the antidote for this. In here, he gives us the antidote. What's he say? What's he say? He says, rejoice. I don't care in any way, whatever happens. Just as long as the gospel is going forward, I'm gonna rejoice about it. They don't like me, they want me to suffer more in prison. Praise the Lord. What? Think about that. How committed are you to the mission? What's going on here? Verse 20. I'm sorry, verse 18, the end of it. He says, Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and my hope that I will not at all be ashamed. Again, he's he's he's like, I don't want to be ashamed. I think there's just undertones of it here, but that with full courage now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. And this is a hard one right here. Verse 21. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. This is not a must-be nice kind of attitude. That's not the approach that he's taking here. That would sound more like I know Jesus sees their motives and he sees mine. He's gonna make sure they get theirs, he's gonna make sure I get out of jail. That's not what he says. He's like, To live is Christ, to die is gained. He is divorcing himself so far from the the comfort and ease of life that to be jealous of somebody else, it's just not even in the same zip code. That's how he's thinking. He's like, if I live, it's Jesus, if I die, it's a win, it's a W. Being jealous of somebody else's circumstance, like you can't even what what are you talking about? I'm so far over here. I wonder, could you, with a clear conscience, this is something I just want you to evaluate, could you with a clear conscience say either side of the statement Paul is making here? Is living for you defined as Christ? When you just look at your life, you project it out a little bit, is like my life, man. To live for me, it's just Jesus. It's Jesus. Whatever condition, whatever he wants, how he plans to use you for however long. Can you actually say that? And and what does that even mean? Like to live is Christ. What does that mean? Verse 22, he explains it. He says, if I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Fruitful labor. Notice he doesn't say that living for Christ means success. He doesn't say it means comfort, he doesn't say it means peace. He says it's fruitful labor. Also, again, lest I lest I preach only one side of this, it doesn't also necessarily mean suffering. It doesn't necessarily mean persecution all the time. So I'm not suggesting that all of life when you follow Christ is going to be all bad. I certainly hope it's not all bad. What matters though, what it does mean is that your life, if your life to live is Christ, it means you're bearing fruit and that there is labor you are performing for him. Labor for him, not for you, not for your own gain. Like when you wake up, every breath I breathe, we sang that song, man. All my life you've been faithful. With every breath I'm able, I'll sing of the goodness of God. When you get up in the morning, are the breaths that you breathe for you, or are the breaths you breathe for him? To live is Christ for Paul. I had a uh a pastor back in the day when I told him, like, I think I was a Marine at the time, I was like, I think God's calling me into ministry. He actually said, Don't be a pastor, Jake. That would be a waste of your life. That'd be a waste of your talent. Do do something else. It didn't compute then, it still doesn't compute today. I had people tell me, like, why didn't you just stay in business? You could have done that. I I want to go into politics at one point. I actually went and served my senator up on Capitol Hill for a while. And until I had a moment of revelation and realized how unfruitful it was what I was doing, because you guys don't know this, but our country is run by 21-year-old interns. But uh but I realized in that same moment that there was a there was a young man who had stayed at my house until 3 a.m. the night before I was up there, and it was such fruitful labor just sitting with him. So I was like, no politics, no to business, no to all those things. My my um my old CO was like, man, you should stay in the military. You can go so far, you can do so many things. I just didn't feel like it was fruitful labor for me. And I'm not saying that all of those things, I'm not saying politics, I'm not saying the business world, I'm not saying the military, I'm not saying any of those things. Being a stay-at-home parent, any of those are not fruitful labor. They very well may be. But you, I'll tell you what, nobody asked me. Nobody said, what is God calling you to, Jake? Very few people ask me that. Because a lot of times we just do what we think. We pick a mission that we want to be on. We don't say, like, Jesus, what is the mission you're calling me to? For me to live is Christ. I'm just gonna do what he says. It's easy. It's just what he says. John Piper, he actually defines the statements this way. He says, Christ is most magnified in us when we are most satisfied in him, when we are more satisfied in him, even, than what we lose in death and what we have in life. Could you say the other side? To live is Christ, to die is gain. Do you actually believe that? Are you expectant about meeting Jesus and being with him forever? Do you think that dying at this point in your life is a promotion? I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hand. How many of you right now, not because you're just like, yeah, life is kind of rough. I want to be done, I want to tap out, not that. How many of you could say, I am eager to meet my Lord and Savior and live with him forever? Don't raise your hands because it's gonna hurt my soul, maybe. Think about that. Could you say that with a clear conscience? To die is gain. I don't, I do not think we have a comprehension of eternity. And because we don't, it's easy to let things like jealousy creep in. Because I'm competing with you, you're competing with me. Man. Paul goes on, verse 22. He says, if I'm to live in the flesh, it means fruitful labor. Yet which I shall choose, I can't tell. If you were to tell me, like, do you want to serve Jesus or do you want to, do you wanna to die and just go be with him in heaven? He's like, I don't know. I am hard pressed between the two. The Greek language actually uh has a more of a pulling type of a dynamic to it. Either way, it's there's pressure. I'm feeling pressure. Both of these options, man. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. He's got this uncanny outlook on life that most of us we just we'd miss. We we can't even go there, we can't comprehend things the same way he does. And this is why it's so easy, like I said, for him to ignore jealousy. It's because he's already dead. He's already accepted that death is a W for me. When my life is done here, I'm gonna live in such a way that when when when when the countdown timer goes off, it's like I made it. He's he already considers himself dead. To live is Christ, to die is gain. He's died to selfish gain, he's died to personal ambition, he's beyond all that. Those are all carnal things. If he's gonna continue on earth, he's like, I'm just gonna be here because you might need it. You might need me to serve you a little bit longer. So I'm confident that God's gonna keep me here because you need some service. Some of you parents, there may be times where you're like, man, this is rough. I know my kids need me though. Jesus still has work for you to do. Have you still got breath in your lungs? It's not time to tap out yet. To live is Christ. Chris Hodges, he wrote a recent book. The final chapter of it is actually titled, You Only Die Twice. He's tapping into this idea that as believers, there are two deaths we have. The first death that we have is a death to self. We say, I'm dying to all of this worldly carnal stuff, this competition, any of the sin nature, all of that. I am going to die to that. And at that point, to live is Christ. Because he's your Lord and you walk with him. And then the second death is actually the promotion. Then you die and you're with him in glory forever. Enjoying him, worshiping him, serving alongside of him. Some of us can't comprehend what that even means. For the believer, death, we think of it always negatively. Neither of these two deaths are bad. They're good things for all of us. Y'all, I got some stuff that I needed to die to before I accepted Jesus. Anybody with me? Yeah? Yes? So you can raise your hands on this one. We all had stuff we needed to die to. And I'm looking forward to the moment where I meet my Lord and Savior. Paul, he said this in Acts 20 when he was in one of his many times, he was getting ready to go to jail. This is the prophecy. He got a prophecy that he was actually going to go uh to Jerusalem. He was going to be restrained, and they were gonna take him, and he was gonna eventually stand before Caesar. That's what he was expecting. And this is how Paul framed that whole um prophecy. Acts 20, verse 22. He said, Now behold, I'm going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value, nor is precious to myself, if only I may finish the course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. For Paul dying was a promotion. A third thing that'll keep you from being jealous is if the only approval you care about is Jesus' approval. He's the one that's got my scorecard. He's the one that's keeping track of the wins and losses. He's the only one whose opinion I really, really care about. I think I'm gonna close there. Got a lot more in Philippians. We can go through and read. We can talk about pick up next week, finish chapter one, go into chapter two, chapter two. I'm telling you, if this one hit it all, chapter two is gonna be a biggie. It's super good, so much good stuff. But what I would just want to encourage us today is think about what it means for you to get a win. Like what is a win for you? Define that. If you haven't defined it yet, define it. Don't let your followers, don't even let your spouse all the time. Define what a win is. Don't let your boss define what a win is. Now, now I'm not saying be a bad spouse, I'm not saying be a bad parent, I'm not saying be a bad employee. Be like honor God with how we live and how we relate to people. Absolutely. But Jesus is the one that defines the win. What is his definition of a win for your life? And when you're looking at other people, yo, I want to give you one piece of homework today. All right? One piece of homework because people were jealous of Paul and they tried to dunk on him while he was in prison. You're probably jealous of some people. If you've ever said, must be nice. If you've ever thought, if you're you ever go to social media and you're just looking, you're not touching anything, like liking, commenting, oh, so happy for them. You're just snooping. If you're doing that, I want to encourage you with something today. And just seeing people's lives, can you rejoice for them? Can you celebrate for somebody that you might feel like I'm just a little bit jealous of them? There's an antidote that Paul gives us in this letter. Rejoice. And he says it again, rejoice. He says it again in chapter four. He talks about. We'll talk about it more. Like, rejoice. Can we celebrate some other people? Even if we feel like they might be enemies of us. Let's celebrate them. Amen? So I'm gonna invite the worship team back out here. I'm gonna pray for us, and we're gonna close with just a little bit of celebration. All right? We're gonna celebrate Jesus because he's the best thing in the world to celebrate. Amen. Let me pray for us today. Heavenly Father, Lord, we love you. We love you so much, God. You are so good, Lord. You give us so many reasons to celebrate. Father, may we find our lives hidden in you, Lord. I pray that every single person in the sound of my voice today, God, that your Holy Spirit would convict us towards righteousness, convict us towards good attitudes, convict us towards good goals, good ambitions, God. Lord, for us, would we be able to say with a clear conscience, to live is Jesus, to live is Christ. I just do what he tells me to do. And to die, man, that's a promotion. It's a win. Help us love big, God. Help us love other people well. Help us celebrate other people. And so, God, um, as we celebrate today, Lord, maybe just bring to mind some people that we maybe should be celebrating that we haven't. Maybe some people that we should be encouraging that we haven't, some people we should be high-fiving about things that we've been bitter or jealous or envious about, God. And Lord, would you break off the bondage of jealousy from us, Lord? Would you make us a grateful church? Make us a grateful people, make us a holy people. And Father, may your kingdom go forward in Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast. If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast. We would also love to meet you in person. If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m. We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.