Philippians 2 - Prove yourself

There is an old question "If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?". It is something to give thought to, does the way you live your life show the world what you say you believe?
                                                  
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Transcript

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There was a little boy named Johnny who used to hang out at the local corner market. The owner didn't know what Johnny's problem was, but the boys were constantly teasing Johnny. They would always comment about how little Johnny was two bricks shy of a load or not playing with a full deck of cards. And to prove it, many times they would go up to Johnny and they would offer him his choice between a nickel and a dime. And Johnny would always take the nickel. And everybody said, he takes the nickel because he thinks it's bigger, therefore it's better. One day after Johnny grabbed the nickel, the store owner took Johnny aside and said, Johnny, you realize those boys are making fun of you? They think you don't understand that a dime is worth double what a nickel is. And they think you're grabbing the nickel just because you think it's bigger, therefore it's better. With a big grin on his face, Johnny slowly turned to the store owner and said, Well, he answered, if I ever took the dime, they'd stop doing it. And so far I've saved over $20. Just think who is the smartest one there. I've often thought about this story. I often wish someone had told it to me while I was a kid. I could probably have made some money and been rich by now. You know, sometimes we make judgments about others without knowing all the facts. Sometimes we make hasty judgments that prove to be our downfall. I remember a man one time I was up in a youth rally up in Oregon, and there was this man, he was talking to me, we were talking about different things, and he had come from the Seattle area. And he used to kick himself over and over because back when he was young, he answered a newspaper ad for help wanted somebody to be a secretary and enter data in. And so he went to it, knocked on the door, opened up the door, there was one desk and one chair, a guy sitting in shorts that were torn off and had holes in them, his shirt had holes in them. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor. And he walked in there, and the guy asked him, Well, can you enter in data and type? He said, Yeah. Well, I'd love to hire you as my secretary and do a bunch of stuff, but I can't afford to pay you. At least for six months. But if you do this, we'll sign an agreement, you can have half of my company. The guy's name was Bill Gates. He turned it down, said he needed cash, went somewhere else, and turned out that was Bill Gates, and this guy has kicked himself in the rear many times since. You make a judgment when you look at somebody and you dress, and I don't think the guy can ever come through, and it's not going to be valuable. You know, Paul, when he was writing to the saints, the Christians in Philippi, he wrote to them, he said, prove yourselves. Prove yourselves. There was a songwriter in the early 80s who picked up on that message. He wrote a song, If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Can you prove yourself? Today I want to look at this, this part of Philippians chapter 2, and uh look at what it says here about uh proving yourselves. But first let's begin with prayer. Lord, I do thank you for your love. I thank you for your blessings, and I ask, Lord, that we could prove ourselves. That we could show that we truly are Christians by the way we act and behave and talk. Lord, let us be the people you've called us to be. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. As I look at this passage from Philippians 2, which hopefully all of you have read this last week, I see Paul telling us at least four things that we need to do in order to prove ourselves to be true Christians. First of all, he talks about we must work out our salvation. Work out our salvation. In over 20 different versions, the reading is the same. Work out your salvation. Uh make sure you prove yourself and work out your salvation down there in verse 14, 15, down in there. Work it out. Now that seems kind of contradictory when you look at other places in the Word of God, like Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9. That we, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one should boast. So as the word of God that we need to work out our salvation, is that an error over here in Philippians chapter 2, or was Ephesians 2 wrong? I believe they're both right. Because Ephesians chapter 2 doesn't end with just verse 9. It goes on, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. And like I said before, and I will continue to say, as we go across the Bible, verse by verse, looking at it, Christianity is not a spectator sport. We don't come to church to watch Christianity. We don't come and leave our Bibles behind at the church building, then go back and just do whatever we want to do, go back to real life. But Christianity is to change us, starting from the inside of us to our very actions, so that we will walk in ways of the Lord that we would live out, we would work out our salvation, doing the good works of the Father that He has created us anew to do. And Christianity is not just a one-time decision for the Lord, that we go and to go forward and we get baptized and we start a new life as Christians, but then we go back to the old way. No. We get rid of those old selfish sin, we bury that person, we rise up as a new creature, and we're to change our lives, transforming daily our mind by the power of the Holy Spirit, washing and regeneration, so that we may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect, as it talks about in Romans chapter 12, verse 2. And here Paul specifically states down here in verse 15 that we are to prove ourselves, and we need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Well, why with fear and trembling? Who are we supposed to fear? What is it we're supposed to fear? If God is with us, who can be against us? Remember, that's what it says in Romans 8. I know that's not real popular to preach today, but I can't help but proclaim the word of God, and the whole reason we need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling is because if we aren't faithful until death, it tells us in Revelation chapter 2, verse 5, God will remove us from his presence. He will come and make war against us, Revelation 2, verse 16. He will kill us, Revelation 2, verses 21 through 23. He will erase our names from the Lamb's book of life, Revelation 3, verse 5. He will spew us out like vomit, Revelation chapter 3, verses 15 and 16. And the book of Hebrews points out that if we go back to our old sinful ways and sinful self and we reject Jesus, then we will find the same condemnation and death that the Israelites did when they rejected God and when they left Egypt, Hebrews chapter 3. We will be considered to be worthless, cursed, and end up burning. Hebrews chapter 6, verses 4 through 8. Or we will no longer have a sacrifice that covers our sins, the blood of Jesus, and therefore we will fall into the hands of an angry God with nothing to expect but a terrifying expectation of judgment and fire. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 26 through 29. Yes, I know the scripture that says nothing can remove us from the hand of God. But I also know the context of passages that proclaim such things. It is positively true that Satan can't remove us from the hand of God. Persecution can't remove us from the hand of God. Death and sorrow can't remove us from the hand of God. Nothing can drag us out of the hand of God, but there is a difference between having someone or something external pull us out of God's hand and us choosing to reject God and get up and walk away from God. I was trying to think of a good way to illustrate this, and basically, about the only thing I could say and think about was you know, if I tried to push Jacob or push Jared out of this church building, I probably can't do it. He's bigger and stronger than me. But if he wants to walk out of this church building, he certainly can't. There is nothing that can force him, but he could choose it. And every passage that warns about Christians losing their salvation warns not against Satan dragging us away nor persecution or death causing us to lose our salvation and the hope of eternal life. They warn us about us making a wrong decision and choosing to go back to our old sinful lifestyle that was outside of Christ. And that's why Paul tells us you need to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Realize that if you don't get active in your walk with the Lord, you could end up being one of those who are spewed forth out of the mouth of God like vomit and unclean and not able to enter into the kingdom of heaven. However, the great news about all this is that Paul further wrote that as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, he tells us to know that it is God who is at work in you. It is God who is at work in you. You don't have to do this alone. In fact, you can't do this alone. There is not one of us who would ever be good enough to earn our salvation. It's impossible with man. It's only possible with God. And with God, who is working inside of us, we can do this. He is willing to work in us. One of my favorite Bible passages coming from Ephesians is chapter 3, verses 20 and 21. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all we could ask or think, according to the power that works within us. Did you hear where that works? Works within us. To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. When we're trying to work out our salvation, it's not put upon our shoulders and our shoulders alone. God has promised to do the work in us, to be constantly renewing us by the power of his Holy Spirit working in us, able to do far exceedingly, abundantly beyond everything we could ever ask or think. He is amazing. And the thing is, are we willing to let God work in us? There's a lot of people who have started out on this walk with the Lord, but in the course of time, they have decided to give up. Jesus talked about a parable about planting seed. And some of it fell among a rocky soil, and some of it fell among weeds. And the weeds were representing the cares of this world that choke us out and the rocky soil. We didn't put down any roots deep enough. And some people have given up because of worries and cares of the world. They've let jobs and money and entertainment take first place and they drop God, one of the first things they'd like to drop. Others have given up because they missed their former way of life and the sinful things they were doing, and they're going, like, I want to get back to that. And instead of pleasing the Lord, they go back to pleasing themselves. Some have given up on the Lord because their lives did become difficult with persecution and problems and terror and all kinds of difficulties and problems. Although God's power was within them to help them overcome the difficulties and press on, they gave away their power. They turned away from God and they went the easy route. And Paul saw this even in the first century. And if you read the Old Testament, you see that in the Israelites. And Paul saw his friends and his co-workers in the Lord desert him. He writes about that sometimes. How that when things got rough, they left him and they deserted the Lord too. And that's why he warns us here in this book of Philippians to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Yet he encouraged us, reminding us that God is at work in us. We can do this. He also will encourage us to let God cause you to will, to desire and work for his good pleasure. God is the one who will motivate us to do this good work for him if we will let him do that. He's the voice that keeps encouraging us to do something good for others. He's the one who is telling us to go help that hurting person. You know, be the hands that can hold somebody else and help them, as we sang about. He's the one who tells us to be, go visit that sick person, call that person up. Even when Paul knew there were some of us who will close our ears and not listen, he was knowing and letting us know that God can cause us to desire to do what is right. And especially get us up and moving to do what is right. So prove yourselves to be true Christians by first of all working out your salvation. Second of all, he goes on in this chapter, that we must be above reproach. This is more than just writing the word reproach on a piece of paper, standing on it, because then you are literally above reproach. You know, that's a good dad joke. You know, there's some people, that's about the only way they're ever going to be, above reproach. But what it really means is living in a way that is pleasing to the Lord. And Paul even described it by what he meant by it, living by above reproach, because he tells us several things here. Some of them you probably won't like. First one, do all things without grumbling or disputing. Is that one of those passages we need to cut out of our Bibles? Some of you going, yeah. You know, Christians are not supposed to be argumentative and unhappy people. We're supposed to have a joy. Remember Jared's sermon last week about joy? That's what this book is about. Joy. We're to have a joy unspeakable and full of glory. We're supposed to be happy and loving and caring, and as far as possible, as far as it depends on us, be at peace with one another, according to Romans. No disputing, no grumbling, just living the peace and the joy of the Lord. And beyond this, Paul said, if you're going to be above reproach, you need to be blameless and innocent. No wonder Paul told us to work out our salvation, because it's a lot of work to try and be blameless and innocent. Even Paul wrote about this back in Romans chapter 7 when we had that. Remember the battle that's going on in him? His flesh wants to do evil, but his mind wants to do good, and he was at this constant battle that was going on in his life. We all face this constant and daily struggle that in our minds. We want to do what's right. We want to be blameless. We want to be innocent, but our flesh wants to go do these other things that are not innocent. But praise the Lord, God is willing to work in us to help us, to work towards being blameless and innocent. Best of all, when we mess up, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us all our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness when we confess those sins to Him. 1 John chapter 1. In other words, even if we mess up and we're not so innocent and blameless, God is willing to wipe our slates completely clean again, make us pure and holy, blameless and innocent before Him. That does not give us a license to go out and sin. Romans 6 dealt with that very severely. Do not do that. But rather it is a safeguard for when we fail to do what is right. It's there to help protect us. I always like to look at it this way. You ever drive down the highway and there's a guardrail? Are guardrails there so you can put it on cruise control and take a nap and it'll just take you down the road and keep you on there? No, that is not what they're for. It's not just let it hit it and keep it keeping you straight. Instead, it's so that if we do make a mistake, it's going to try to keep us on the road. And we're not supposed to just put the cruise control on and sleep in the car. It's for only when we do stray. In the same way with God's grace. It's not so we can just keep on sinning, smash the guardrail over and over and over. Yeah, it's not a bumper guard just to keep you going. You know, we're not playing bumper cars. We're supposed to drive down the road. We must be above reproach, not grumbling and disputing. Oh man, that's a tough one. Being blameless and innocent, that's pretty hard too. And he talks about living as lights in the midst of the darkness. We need to be different than the world we live in. When we give our word on something, it should be binding like a contract. I know that today when you buy something, you've got to sign paperwork after paperwork after paperwork after paperwork. Even if you're a Christian, they're going to make you sign a whole bunch of it because they're not trusting us, because there have been a lot of people, even Christians, who didn't keep their word. We need to be true to our word. When we go to work, our work ethics need to be better than other employees. We need to be working for the Lord. We shouldn't be the person who, as soon as the boss leaves the room, we sit down and drink our coffee. We should be working. Wherever we are, we need to live so that people can see Jesus in us. A little less of me, a lot more like Jesus. Some people refuse to come to churches because there are too many hypocrites in the churches. You know, sometimes they might be right, but we need to live in such a way that their cry comes out very hollow and empty. Our speech, whether we're at church, at work, at home, out and playing, needs to exemplify Christ and His love and His purity. Our conduct needs to be so above board that if any of us ever decided to run for president and the media is trying to find all the dirt they can on us, they wouldn't be able to find any. Wouldn't that be nice if we lived that way? I mean, now anybody who's in politics, they find dirt from 20, 30, 40 years. Let's try to live as light. We need to be as lights, and not loudspeakers only. You know what I mean? You know, there's some Christians who want to be a loudspeaker. They're gonna holler for Jesus, but they're not living as a light. They'd rather just yell and scream at people. They'd rather just yell, but not really be a light that would draw people, but a loudspeaker that makes everybody want to close their ears and walk away. Paul told us to prove ourselves, to work out our salvation, to be above reproach. Third, we must hold fast the word of life. Paul told the Philippians verse 16 to hold fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may have cause to glory, because I did not run in vain or nor toil in vain. Paul doesn't want our labor, don't let our labor and toil be in vain. I've already spent a lot of time speaking about that from point one, about working out our salvation, but Paul brings it up again. He reminds us that if we don't hold fast to the word of life, if we don't hold fast to Jesus and this great self, excuse me, great salvation we have been given, then all of his labor and toil of taking the gospel to them was going to be in vain. If they quit living for Jesus, it would be like a waste of his time to have been talking to them about Jesus, a waste of his energy. Well, how could that be? Well, because apparently, Paul points this out many places in his writings, and even in the scriptures here, if the Philippian Christians stopped holding on to Jesus and they returned to the former ways of life rather than the Word of God, they could lose that salvation, and thus Paul's preaching had been worthless, fruitless, no results. I think about this a lot as a minister, especially now as I'm getting closer and closer to retirement. I can think of a lot of people over these years that I have invested time and energy and preached the gospel to them. I have watched many of these people come to a belief in Jesus, repent of their sins, confess Him, be buried with Him in baptism, rise up as a new creature in Christ Jesus, and there's been a lot of people who, after that, you don't see them. Or you see them for a month, two months, six months, a year, and then they disappear. And ever, every time I've seen this, whether it was a young child or whether it was an adult, in every case, it still hurts. It hurts to think about how that you planted the seed, you watered the seed, you did everything you could. God and God to let us see the new growth in Christ Jesus, but then they walk away from Christ and His love, and it hurts to think about, unless they repent, they will come under that condemnation that it talks about in Revelation 2 and 3, when they're going to have God war against them and spew them out and erase their names from the Lance Book of Life, and they will slaughter them and he spend eternal punishment in hell. It even hurts to think about what a waste of time it was trying to talk to them about Jesus and God's great gift of salvation. And Paul was just like this. He pleaded with the Philippians, please, please, please make sure my labor and my toil with you was not in vain. Make sure you stay faithful to the gospel message. Hold fast to the word of life. I am so thankful that as I get ready to retire, I turn things over to the hands of Jared, and I know he's going to be faithful to the word of God. And I pray that he will continue to be faithful. And I pray that each one of you will do your best to encourage him to stay faithful and not lead him in the wrong directions. And Paul wanted to make sure that the church would stay faithful. He pleaded with the Philippians, please make sure you stay faithful. And then he urged them to be willing. Willing to be poured out as an offering, used completely up. He gave his own life as an example. Paul left the comforts of his home to travel the world, not on luxury ocean liners. He wasn't taking cruises, but by foot and by cargo ships, by caravans of merchants. He went business class and much lower. He was subjected to hunger and thirst. He suffered dangers of robbers and hostile foes and angry accusations. He suffered storms and shipwrecks and stonings. He considered his life as nothing and he was willing to use it up completely for the Lord, holding nothing back. Even today, I still admire and hold him up and regard such a person as selfless. And I think we would all do that. But we aren't just to admire such people, we're actually to be those kind of people. Be willing to be servants for other people. As you hold fast to the word of life to Jesus and you become willing to be poured out as an offering, are you willing to become a servant of others? Christianity isn't about me. It isn't about you. It's all about Jesus. And the sooner that we catch on to this, the sooner God can really use us as servants and really use His as His people and reach out all people. As long as we don't understand this, we're really kind of useless to the Lord. There's many cartoons, even comedy movies. Anybody ever watched the movie Love Bug? I always thought the Love Bug was funny. I love that movie. I love the sequels of it, every one of them. But I always thought it was kind of funny. Here's this machine that suddenly comes to life and no longer does whatever the owner wants it to do. That's a good picture of us sometimes. God created us for a specific purpose. Are we willing to let Him steer us and guide us? Or are we going to take over and say, tough luck, it's my body. You know, there's tools that do this. There's horror movies where something like this, some machine, some tool comes to life, starts killing everyone. That's in the movies. It's pretty bad sometimes. But in real life, I believe it's worse. When we do that to God and we aren't willing to serve as He's created us to serve. In order to prove ourselves to be true Christians, we need to hold fast to our salvation. We must be above reproach. We must hold fast to the Word of God. Fourth and finally, here, we must rejoice with others. I was so glad when Jared was preaching last week, he talked about joy, joy, joy. That's what this book's about. And Paul specifically wrote to the Christians, saying, I rejoice and share my joy with you that you also may rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me. In other words, he's telling us here, share with others their joy, and to share your joy with others. Very simply, Paul is saying to stop just thinking about yourself and pay attention to other people. Share with others their joy, and when they're having a great time, rejoice with them. Don't ever fall for the temptation of a monster that we we call jealousy. If someone can afford a new car, they get a new car, rejoice. Be excited with them. Be as happy as it was you could be if it was your new car. Don't be a downer or depressor. Rejoice when things go well for people around you. Corresponding to that, when things go well with you, why don't you share your joy with other people? I'm happy and excited what the Lord is doing in this congregation. We have many loving people here who are getting baptized and attendance is growing. We got two more people called today and said they want to place membership tomorrow. Praise the Lord. We have a wonderful associate minister. Soon will become your preaching minister. There's many reasons we can rejoice. And we ought to share our joy with others and give them reasons to be happy and joyous and share with others their joy and share their joy with you. Doing so will help us build even more excitement in the Lord as we see how great God is. But there's one last thought I want to mention from this passage and the rejoicing that Paul urges. Rejoice even when it's hard. Even when it's hard. From the way Paul is writing here about his joy and rejoicing, remember what Jared said? Where was he probably when he wrote this letter? In prison. And we're not talking about the sanitary prisons that we have in today's world. We're talking about horrible, dirty, dusty, horrible places that many times you didn't eat unless you had somebody on the outside who was going to bring you food. There was a filthy hole in the ground, there's vermin, there's other disgusting things there. They didn't have plumbing. Everything was just there. Many times there was no adequate ventilation. Yet, despite being imprisoned, despite suffering hardships, despite all the pressures and stress Paul had, he writes us a letter. Rejoice. Over and over. He says, rejoice. He rejoiced when it was hard. Can we? Do we? I know this much. I struggle with this. But here in this passage where Paul tells us to prove ourselves, he shows us that we must rejoice with others even when it is hard. See, we must learn to rejoice in the Lord always, even when we suffer hardships due to living for Him. Will we? Will we prove ourselves to be true Christians? In fact, as I looked at this chapter in this sermon, basically, I see four simple proofs he tells us about prove yourself to be true Christians. So basically it's a four question quiz. Now I don't know about you, but when I was in school, if the quiz only had four questions, I didn't rejoice. I got nervous. You realize if you have four questions and you miss one, you have missed 25%. The best grade you're going to get is a C. You miss two, you failed. Here's his four-point question here. Test. Are we working out our salvation with fear and trembling, letting the Lord God work in us to do his will and do his pleasure? I certainly hope we are. Number two, are we living above reproach without grumbling, without disputing? Blameless and innocent, appearing as lights in the darkness? Oh, can we skip that question? That's a tough one. We're having problems. Question three, are we holding fast the word of life so that the labors of others who have entrusted the gospel to us, their labors won't be in vain? But instead, we're staying faithful to the Word of God, pouring out our lives as drink offerings, and being used as a servant for other people. And fourth question, are we rejoicing with others, sharing in their joys, sharing our joys with them, and rejoicing even when it's hard? Ooh, I hate such questions like this. This is not a good quiz. This might be something, teacher, can I have a retake? Is there extra credit somewhere? You know, God wants us to measure up to the standard that belongs to the fullness of Christ. He understands when we're not perfect at it. And he says his power will work in us. Let's let his power work in us. Have you proved yourself to be true? Lord, I ask that you would help us. Forgive us for where we have messed up. And Lord, we have messed up in a lot of areas. There's a lot of things in this test, this quiz, that just, wow, they step on our toes and make us feel like we didn't do too well on this quiz. Lord, forgive us. Help us, Lord, to let your power of your Holy Spirit work in us to change us and transform us, to be the people you have called us to be. Let us truly prove ourselves to be true Christians in all areas. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.