SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn with me to Philippians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully our Bibles are just starting to fall open there.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: We're just going to look at two verses today.
SPEAKER_00: Because I think they help explain so much of the Christian life and help us make sense of so much of our own experience.
SPEAKER_00: So Philippians chapter 2, we're just going to read verses 12 and 13 together.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence.
SPEAKER_00: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray the Lord together.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, this morning we come as those that you have saved, those that you have adopted and chosen to be in your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And God, we become humbly, become weary, become tired, become frustrated, become responsible, become impassioned.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, sometimes because these experiences and these feelings they seem to conflict with one another.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we find ourselves frustrated in our Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: And having difficulty in our Christian life and not knowing how we're gonna go forward and how we're gonna make it.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, we come today to ask that you would give us your word to keep us going one more day.
SPEAKER_00: Open up our minds to understand so that we can see it more clearly.
SPEAKER_00: Open up our hearts to receive Christ more completely, that we might love Him more deeply.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that today that we would leave deeper in Christ, more mature in our faith, stronger in our resolve than when we came in.
SPEAKER_00: We ask these things now in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: On June the 2nd, 1945, President Harry Truman placed the highest award that we give in the United States, the Medal of Honor, around the neck of a young 20-year-old army officer by the name of Audie Murphy.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Murphy would go on to be the single most decorated American combatant in the entire World War II conflict.
SPEAKER_00: But for Murphy, it started way before the day of his ceremony on a frozen field in France.
SPEAKER_00: The German offensive was pressing in around his company, and it seemed as though they were completely doomed.
SPEAKER_00: He called for everybody to stand back, but as his entire company stood back, Murphy stayed and he fought in the midst of all of the gunfire alone.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he was wounded and wounded.
SPEAKER_00: He climbed into a burning tank destroyer and he manned the machine gun.
SPEAKER_00: And for an hour, he personally and alone held off the entire German offensive, even calling down artillery upon his own position.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, he was able to stifle the German advance.
SPEAKER_00: And all of his company who had fallen back, he looked at them and he said, All right, guys, let's go forward.
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's launch our own offensive.
SPEAKER_00: And even though it was grave danger, and even though the bullets were whizzing past their heads, every single one of them followed him, and every single one of them was willing to go and put their life on the line.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he had done that for them.
SPEAKER_00: When someone is willing by their own courage, by their own expense, to potentially sacrifice their life on your behalf, when they tell you to follow them, you recognize that that's someone that you can trust.
SPEAKER_00: And you follow them every time.
SPEAKER_00: This helps us to understand what's happening in Philippians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: In Philippians chapter 2, we're following after, as we saw last week, this grace, this great Christ Hymn, which sings of Jim Jesus emptying himself and pouring himself out, becoming a servant, even to death upon a cross.
SPEAKER_00: And it follows in verses 9 and in verses 12 with a therefore.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the first, therefore, of verse 9 shows us God's response to Jesus' obedience.
SPEAKER_00: The second, therefore, in verse 12 shows us our intended response to Jesus' obedience.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we see is that God responds to Jesus' obedience by exalting him and giving him the name that is above every other name, the name which before which every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 12 shows us that we are meant to follow in the light of Jesus' obedience with our own obedience.
SPEAKER_00: That the way that we glorify Jesus and the way that we exalt Jesus is that we go and we lay down and obey in the way of Jesus, obey in the way of the one who came and obeyed even unto the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And in this way, what Paul does is I think he establishes for us what it looks like for us to live a life that actually imitates Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That if we're going to live a life that imitates Christ, we must first recognize that we have to work out, that we have to work out our own salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And he says it explicitly.
SPEAKER_00: That is, it shows us the right things to do by the right means and for the right reasons.
SPEAKER_00: And really that's what it means to imitate Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's to do the right things in the right way for the right purposes.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the specific what that Paul has in mind is he has in mind obedience.
SPEAKER_00: And it's obedience in the way of Jesus, as we've just seen in verses in verse 8 in the Christ hymn.
SPEAKER_00: That we are to be obedient like the one who was being obedient until the point of death, even death on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: My son Josiah has helped me to understand that there are two ways in which we can obey.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I can look to Josiah and I can say, Josiah, clean up all of your Spider-Man toys and take them to your room.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to be a compliant kid and he wants to be an obedient kid, but he's not always an enthusiastic one, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so he'll scoop up his Spider-Man toys and he'll slump over his shoulders, he'll shuffle off to his room, you know, grumbling under his breath, maybe a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a second way that I've seen him obey.
SPEAKER_00: That if I clarify what I'm asking him to do with a caveat, if I say, Josiah, go and pick up all of your Spider-Man toys and take them to your room.
SPEAKER_00: And when you do, your friends can come over.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I'm gonna go and buy some cookie dough ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: You know what he'll do?
SPEAKER_00: He will obey in his joy, as the Bible says, right?
SPEAKER_00: He will pick them up and he will dance off, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like now, what's interesting about that?
SPEAKER_00: The task is the same, but the heart is different.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this joyful obedience that is meant to mark the Christian life because we're following a Savior who endured and obeyed to the cross for the joy that was set before him, Hebrews 12 tells us.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul and Josiah teach us that if we're going to obey with joy, that we've got to understand something crucial.
SPEAKER_00: We have to understand that our obedience is a purposeful work.
SPEAKER_00: See, the difference in Josiah's attitude isn't the task.
SPEAKER_00: The difference in Josiah's attitude is the purpose that he sees in that task.
SPEAKER_00: And this is in Paul's mind when he says that you should work out your own salvation with fear and triveling.
SPEAKER_00: When Paul says work out your own salvation for a lot of us, it can be confused.
SPEAKER_00: It might be even disorienting or scary.
SPEAKER_00: It may seem contradictory to other things that we've heard because we all know that we can't work for our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: We all know that our salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: And so we hear Paul saying, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: And our immediate reflex might be, oh, wait a second.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't think I was supposed to work for my salvation.
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was the whole thing about Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: I thought this is what everybody's always talking about.
SPEAKER_00: But what we're supposed to understand is we're supposed to understand that our salvation has two different dimensions.
SPEAKER_00: The first dimension is the one that we typically think of, it's the dimension we call justification.
SPEAKER_00: It means that you have been declared righteous before the judge.
SPEAKER_00: You have been declared holy before the judge, that this is what Christ has made you to be in the person of Christ, and this is by grace alone, and this is ultimate and final and total.
SPEAKER_00: But the second dimension of our salvation is what we call sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: It's the ongoing work of the Spirit of God applying your salvation to every area of your life.
SPEAKER_00: It's bringing every area of your life into complete submission to the ways of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's being redeemed in every corner and every thought and every desire and every aspiration.
SPEAKER_00: It's the process of being matured more and more into the image of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So, in one sense, in the sense of justification, we have been saved.
SPEAKER_00: We have been justified.
SPEAKER_00: We have been declared righteous.
SPEAKER_00: We have already passed through the judgment, as John 5 teaches.
SPEAKER_00: But in this other sense, in the sense of sanctification, we are still being saved.
SPEAKER_00: God's salvation is yet, I don't know about y'all, but it is yet to reach every single corner of my heart and every single corner of my life and every single corner of my actions.
SPEAKER_00: And so we see that this work is still unfolding for us.
SPEAKER_00: That we can think of it like this: that justification is our position in Christ, sanctification is our progress in Christ, that justification is salvation by Christ's effort and Christ's contribution alone, but sanctification is the work in which we must participate with the power and the influence of the Spirit through our own contribution with his work.
SPEAKER_00: So it's the second sense, the sense of sanctification that Paul means when he says to work out your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: He's writing to believers who have always obeyed, and now what is he saying?
SPEAKER_00: I want you to not just obey, but obey much more, obey to a greater extent, to bring your life into greater submission and greater surrender to the word that God is doing.
SPEAKER_00: This phrasing of workout, this word workout, when he says to work out your salvation, what he's meaning by that, what that word means in its literal sense, is to take deliberate, intentional actions toward maturity.
SPEAKER_00: Intentional, deliberate actions toward growth, toward progress.
SPEAKER_00: That the invitation here is to press into the fullest experience of the salvation that you've been given.
SPEAKER_00: That he has made you someone new, and now he invites you more and more to experience the application and the fullness of what it means to be made new with a new nature.
SPEAKER_00: That God has brought you into his kingdom and he's thrown you the keys and he says, All right, y'all, go explore, go enjoy, go live in my kingdom like a citizen that actually belongs there.
SPEAKER_00: Kingdom citizenship is so much a theme of what Paul is saying here in the book of Philippians.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the purpose of the work when it calls you to work out your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: That's the purpose of the work that you've been called to.
SPEAKER_00: So we're meant to see that this is a purposeful work, and we're meant to know that this is a serious work.
SPEAKER_00: I'll change colors here so you can see it.
SPEAKER_00: This is where I get, I get this from the fear and the trembling.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Again, all of us might be triggered by this idea of us being afraid and being fearful.
SPEAKER_00: But what Paul is doing here is he's reminding us of the weight of that which we have been called to, right?
SPEAKER_00: So the idea of fear and trembling is not like Megan and I were driving home last week from Alabama, and all of a sudden we had a state trooper that swung across the median and got behind us.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, y'all know, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: You sit up a little bit straighter, you get a little bit closer to the steering wheel, you're you're like micromanaging every single mile per hour that you can, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because there's this anxiety, and so you're driving with fear and trembling, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is not the kind of fear and trembling that Paul is calling us to.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an anxious fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in chapter four, he will say, Do not be anxious about anything, but in all things, with prayer and supplication, give your thanksgiving to God.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, that that's not, that's not at all what Paul is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: What he's talking about is the kind of fear and trembling that comes with privilege, right?
SPEAKER_00: That the picture here is not a state trooper that gets behind you on the interstate.
SPEAKER_00: The picture here is that you're living homeless in Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden the president happens by and he says, Hey, come hang out with me in the White House for the day.
SPEAKER_00: You go, you hang out with him in the White House, and the day he says, you know, I kind of think you're a pretty cool cat.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what I'm gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make you the ambassador to the United Kingdom, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so literally, you were in the streets living on scraps, and now you're an ambassador living in an estate.
SPEAKER_00: That you would feel the weight of the honor of that, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_00: You would feel a sense of responsibility in that, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_00: You would recognize that your privilege is making you more aware of your actions.
SPEAKER_00: Your privilege is making you more aware of the responsibility that you've been given.
SPEAKER_00: Your privilege is making you more responsible, more aware of the calling that you've been given.
SPEAKER_00: And so you would want to do this well and you would want to do this uprightly, not because you have some some ogre overseeing you, but because you want to honor what you have been given.
SPEAKER_00: But because you want to more fully express your appreciation for the privilege that you received.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture here of what it means to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: It's a refusal to coast in your Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: It's a refusal to treat those things which are holy as though they are common and casual.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Paul understood the weight of what was going on.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of a story I heard about Michelangelo when he was painting the Sistine Chapel.
SPEAKER_00: He's up here at the Sistine Chapel, he's painting the ceiling, and it's 60 feet above the floor, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's 60 feet above the floor.
SPEAKER_00: And yet there would be little details that Michelangelo would spend days and weeks just agonizing over the smallest details.
SPEAKER_00: Details that you simply cannot see from the floor.
SPEAKER_00: So one day he was asked about this.
SPEAKER_00: He was asked, Michelangelo, why is it that you work so hard for those things that nobody else is ever going to see?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what he said?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Because I will see it.
SPEAKER_00: Because I will see it.
SPEAKER_00: See, he understood, like Paul is intending here, the weight of what he had been entrusted with.
SPEAKER_00: And so he dealt with it with great seriousness and with great care.
SPEAKER_00: See what Michelangelo understood is that you don't coast on a masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: And y'all, that's what God is making you to be through the Spirit of God, the accomplishment of the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: He's forming you into the masterpiece that he always intended for you to be in all eternity past.
SPEAKER_00: He's forging and forming in you the image of Christ, his own image, that you might more beautifully display his own glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what it means to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: It means to take seriously what God has entrusted to you, to labor carefully and deliberately, to refuse and reject casual Christianity, to give yourself, not to earn your place in his kingdom, but to most fully live in and enjoy the position that you have already been given and entrusted with inside of his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: It's to live with great purpose in light of great privilege that you've received from him.
SPEAKER_00: So if we're to imitate Christ, what we're supposed to recognize is that we have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: But not only do we work out our salvation, but we work out our salvation with God's energy.
SPEAKER_00: You know, everywhere that we look in American culture, where we can see people chasing after energy, can't we?
SPEAKER_00: It's obvious.
SPEAKER_00: You walk into any gas station this afternoon, and what you're gonna see is a little refrigerator there, probably as close to the register as they possibly can, with these little skinny, brightly colored cans, and all of them are making promises to you.
SPEAKER_00: All of them are promising to you that you're gonna have better focus and better endurance and optimal performance.
SPEAKER_00: And what's crazy is this desire for energy and this proliferation of energy drinks and energy supplements actually bears out in evidence in the stock market.
SPEAKER_00: This this statistic blew me away when I saw it.
SPEAKER_00: That if you look over the last 20 years, that monster energy drink has outperformed Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, and it's not even close.
SPEAKER_00: They've seen a 110,000% increase in their stock.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Because people are craving energy.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're tired, because we're stretched thin and we know it.
SPEAKER_00: Because we feel exhausted and we feel exasperated with our own lives.
SPEAKER_00: And so the message that we're sold is simple.
SPEAKER_00: Like, if you're gonna keep up, if you're gonna keep up with the other people at work, if you're gonna keep up with the other moms at the soccer field, if you're gonna keep up with the other kids in school, you're gonna have to have more energy.
SPEAKER_00: So now think about what Paul just said.
SPEAKER_00: You probably have already intuitively, almost second nature, you've probably already picked up on this a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: James is sipping coffee while I talk about it.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: So here's Paul, and Paul's like, y'all get to work, work out your salvation, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're like me, you look at that and you say, Where on earth am I gonna get the energy to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, how am I gonna make that happen?
SPEAKER_00: I I don't have enough energy to get through the car rider line.
SPEAKER_00: And you want me to work out my salvation with fear and trembling?
SPEAKER_00: And you want me to do it with no coasting, no casual Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's fair for us to ask, like, where on earth are we supposed to get the energy to do what Paul is calling for us to do?
SPEAKER_00: What the scriptures seem to be insisting.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know that there's enough monster energy drinks in all of Shelby County for me to accomplish that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, if verse 12 shows us the what of the Christian life, I think verse 13 lets us know the how of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: And the how is that God Himself enables us.
SPEAKER_00: God Himself enables us.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, my pen freaked out there for a second.
SPEAKER_00: That when we think about our lives, most of us are obsessed with output.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we chase espresso coffee with monster energy drinks.
SPEAKER_00: We feel the pressure to produce more, even while we're already running on empty.
SPEAKER_00: And so, even though we're on empty, we want to press through just a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00: One more workout, one more, one more meeting, one more interview.
SPEAKER_00: We feel pressure to produce even more, even though we're already running on empty.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we hear work out your own salvation, we're tempted to feel exhausted before it even gets here.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the good news of the four that we have.
SPEAKER_00: Let me switch back to yellow as easier to see.
SPEAKER_00: The four that we have there in verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: That what Paul is calling us to is not a self-generated or a self-actualized energy.
SPEAKER_00: That this is you working out what God has already worked into you.
SPEAKER_00: That it is God who works in you.
SPEAKER_00: And since he is working in you, you are not working for your salvation, you are working from your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So you're not here mustering up every little drop of energy that you can possibly muster from within yourself.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: You're channeling what he gives to you.
SPEAKER_00: You aren't expected to be the fountain, you're just expected to be the faucet.
SPEAKER_00: You aren't expected to be the power plant behind your life.
SPEAKER_00: You're just expected to be the lamp that turns on and shows his light.
SPEAKER_00: See, the word that's translated here as works is where we get our word energy.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word is literally intergon.
SPEAKER_00: And the point is that the God who spoke the universe into motion, who breathed life into Adam, is the God who now is working inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: That the one who animated dust in creation now animates the new birth and the new creation in you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's always been the promise of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The promise of the new covenant was not just a new forgiveness for you, it was a new capacity for you.
SPEAKER_00: That God gives to us that which he commands from us, that God pours in us that which he insists comes from us.
SPEAKER_00: This is why J.I.
SPEAKER_00: Packer, I think it may be the greatest book of the 20th century, in his book, Knowing God, says this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Those who know God have great energy for God.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what Packer is saying is that when God works in you, obedience isn't drudgery, it's desire.
SPEAKER_00: That you want to know God as well as you can and enjoy God as much as you can.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is the promise that every single new covenant prophecy promises us in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think there's a place of contemplation here.
SPEAKER_00: That if every promise in the old that speaks of the new covenant throughout the Old Testament talks about us having a new capacity, being made faithful, be given a new heart to want what we previously didn't want, to desire what we previously didn't desire, to now have energy to be able to serve the Lord and to honor the Lord and to keep the law of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a point of contemplation to say if we consider ourselves to be new covenant, new testament Christians, if we understand ourselves to be in union with Christ and filled and indwelt with the Spirit, if we understand ourselves to be the fulfillment of the promises that Jesus has made, then why is it that so much 21st century Christianity seems to be so doggone low energy?
SPEAKER_00: Why is it that we seem to live such lethargic Christian lives?
SPEAKER_00: See, what we have to realize is that God is in Enabling us and God is also reshaping us.
SPEAKER_00: That the question ought to be, and probably already is for us, is how is it that God energizes us to work at our salvation with fear and trembling?
SPEAKER_00: How does this actually come about in real life, what God, what Paul is writing about here?
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's actually the significance when he talks about both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: That he's letting us know how God works in us so that it ultimately works out of us.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Paul's saying: that God is at work in you to transform your will.
SPEAKER_00: And your will is all represents all the things that you want, all the things that you desire, all the things that you intend, the decisions that you make.
SPEAKER_00: All of this is encompassed by the will.
SPEAKER_00: And so God is at work in you to transform your will.
SPEAKER_00: And having transformed your will, now what does he do?
SPEAKER_00: He changes and transforms your works.
SPEAKER_00: This is how he brings this about.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're talking about when we're talking about new covenant transformation.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul is talking about is a transformation of the heart that leads to a transformation of the life, a transformation of the will that leads to the transformation of the works.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of will here is a reference to way we would describe the heart.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of works here is the way that we would describe our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And so God is at work in us to change our hearts that He might ultimately transform our works.
SPEAKER_00: All of this is really understood to be the Hebrew concept of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: When we as in America think of the heart, we typically think of our emotions, we think of what we feel, we think of what makes us feel warm inside and ooey and gooey.
SPEAKER_00: Not the Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrews understood the heart to be everything that you think and everything that you believed, and everything that you desired, and everything that you decided, and everything that you longed for.
SPEAKER_00: It was cognitive, it was effective, it was volitional.
SPEAKER_00: And so here is Paul, and he's saying, this is what God's been working on in you.
SPEAKER_00: As God works in you, he's transforming all of those things that are represented in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: That God is there and He is reforming your desires.
SPEAKER_00: He's reshaping your thoughts, He's redirecting all of your decisions.
SPEAKER_00: That God doesn't just want your hands and feet.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just want a mechanical obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just want from you output and hard work.
SPEAKER_00: What he wants is something that comes from within you, something that is from a transformed heart and transformed affections and transformed desires.
SPEAKER_00: And that is how he transformed, that's how he shapes your behaviors and your decisions and your reactions and your plans and your responses.
SPEAKER_00: That this is the way that Jesus brings about freedom in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: That Christian freedom is not the ability to do whatever it is that you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: That Christian freedom is wanting to do what is right, wanting to do what Christ would have you to do.
SPEAKER_00: And wanting to do it, it's you now doing it because you love to do it, because it's in your joy to do it.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I've been asked throughout my ministry that people are often looking for is how is it that I can discern God's will for my life?
SPEAKER_00: Most of the time when we talk about God's will for our life, we're not talking about his specific revealed will.
SPEAKER_00: There are things in the scripture that we know are definitively the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: He says, It is the will of God that you be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And it is the will of God that you be sanctified.
SPEAKER_00: You can read the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: First Thessalonians said, it is the will of God that you be sexually pure.
SPEAKER_00: It is the will of God that you be spirit-filled, it is the will of God that you live on mission.
SPEAKER_00: These things are explicitly saved, but that's not usually what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Usually what we're talking about is God's hidden will from us.
SPEAKER_00: What we're talking about is like, where do I go to school?
SPEAKER_00: Who do I marry?
SPEAKER_00: And like, who are my friends supposed to be?
SPEAKER_00: What job do I accept?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think what we're seeing here is the way that we're meant to understand it.
SPEAKER_00: That we are meant to take care and have everything that is God's will and to bring our will into alignment with God's will.
SPEAKER_00: So that now we begin to want what he wants and love what he loves and see what he sees and feel in the way that he feels and to view people in the way that he views people.
SPEAKER_00: And then when you with great energy learn to think like him and believe like him and want like him, when the big questions of life come about, do you know what you ought to do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, if your heart is in alignment with God's heart, if your will is in alignment with God's will, the works that you're gonna do are gonna naturally flow from that.
SPEAKER_00: So you know what you ought to do when you come to those questions?
SPEAKER_00: You ought to do whatever you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: The intention of the Bible is not to tell you who you to marry who you are to marry and and and what college you're supposed to go to or what job you're supposed to accept or not accept.
SPEAKER_00: But the calling of the Bible is to put yourself within the revealed will of God to align your will so closely with his that you know how he thinks intuitively and then go and live your life.
SPEAKER_00: Because who are you gonna marry if your will is in alignment with God's will?
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna marry the person that God would have you to marry.
SPEAKER_00: What job are you going to accept?
SPEAKER_00: The one that you want is the one that God wants for you.
SPEAKER_00: What school should you go to?
SPEAKER_00: Well, if your will is in alignment with God's will, then the works of your life are gonna bear out.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna end up in the school that God would have you to go.
SPEAKER_00: So the responsibility that we have is not to crack some Da Vinci code.
SPEAKER_00: The responsibility that we have is to bring our will in submission completely to the will of God so that now we think, act, believe, love the way that he does.
SPEAKER_00: That God enables you because he has reshaped you to will and to work for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: That's the transformation that we're after.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the new covenant is calling us to.
SPEAKER_00: That is how we imitate Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: We are to do so with God's energy.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, what we see is that we are to work for God's pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: We are to work for God's pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: That's what our text does now is it brings us to the great why of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: That we don't just need to know the what and the how, we need to know the why.
SPEAKER_00: Because life is complicated, man.
SPEAKER_00: And like if you're on, if we're all honest, I'm part of the complication, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm complicated.
SPEAKER_00: Like some days I don't even recognize myself from two days ago, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't even know how to relate to myself half the time.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we're honest, it can be really easy for us to lose sight of the bigger picture.
SPEAKER_00: It can be really easy for us to lose sight of what God is doing.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we believe that we're an ongoing work, then we have to admit something.
SPEAKER_00: That ongoing work, people that are maturing, people that are progressing, people that are growing, that means there's for us, there's gonna be some ongoing frustration.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Our character is still being forged, our patience is still being formed, our desires are still being trained, our instincts are not yet fully aligned.
SPEAKER_00: And so there are gonna be days in your life in which obedience feels right, it feels natural, it feels easy.
SPEAKER_00: And there are gonna be days in your life in which it feels like you are clawing and scratching and fighting just to do the simplest, kindest thing, like count others more significant than yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And so in the Christian life, because we are still being saved, because we are in this process of sanctification, there is a lot of room there for frustration.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of room for us to still reckon with old shame.
SPEAKER_00: There's still a lot of room there for us to reckon with old affections.
SPEAKER_00: There's still a lot of room there for us to reckon with old bad habits, there's still a lot of room there to for these competing affections and competing desires to come into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that we need to ask an honest question this morning.
SPEAKER_00: That means that, yes, the Christian ideal is that we are all called to honor Christ because we it's our joy and our delight to honor Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But what do we do when we don't want to do?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the question.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do we do when our energy feels low?
SPEAKER_00: What do we do when our joy feels distant?
SPEAKER_00: What do we do when we don't feel like working out our salvation with fear and trembling?
SPEAKER_00: What do we do when obedience feels a lot more like pressure than it does like privilege?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the secret is found in what Paul says when we are to work for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: That what he's calling for us to do is to focus on two different joys.
SPEAKER_00: First, we're supposed to focus on God's joy.
SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to focus on God's joy.
SPEAKER_00: When God, when Paul here speaks of God's good pleasure, he's reminding us of our breathtaking position, the security of that position.
SPEAKER_00: What he's wanting us to understand is that God is not compelled in his relationship with us.
SPEAKER_00: That he only operates, how?
SPEAKER_00: In accordance with his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: God only does what he sees fit, he only does that which is right and wise and desirable to him because he is sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: No one pressures him, no one advises him, no one forces his hand, he acts because he wants to.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: That means he saves us.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's according to his good pleasure, because he pleases him, but because he desires our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Do y'all feel the good news of that?
SPEAKER_00: For thousands of years, y'all, this has been the comfort of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: I think about Moses, he's there and he's talking to a generation of Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: All of their parents have died in the wilderness because they were unfaithful and wouldn't go into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: And here he is looking at them, and all they've ever known in all of their life is the is the judgment of God, living in the wilderness, hard thing after hard thing after hard thing.
SPEAKER_00: And he's preparing them to take them into the promised land that they can go and experience the fullness of God's promises for them.
SPEAKER_00: But the odds seem insurmountable.
SPEAKER_00: Here they are, a slave people existing subsistently out in the middle of the wilderness, and now they're supposed to go and overthrow fortified cities?
SPEAKER_00: It seems insurmountable.
SPEAKER_00: What does Moses say to them to encourage them?
SPEAKER_00: It's a refrain that begins to occur throughout the scriptures, a refrain that is repeated to us in the New Testament that now applies to us as God's children.
SPEAKER_00: It's what he says in Deuteronomy 7.7.
SPEAKER_00: It was not because you were more in number than any other that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all the peoples.
SPEAKER_00: This is the opposite of American logic.
SPEAKER_00: American logic is you're so special, you're so awesome, you're so this, you're so that.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you ought to not worry about your life.
SPEAKER_00: This is not what Moses said.
SPEAKER_00: He says, No, no, no, no, no, you're nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You're nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You had nothing to offer to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You had nothing to bring to the Lord, you contributed nothing to his goodness, you contributed nothing to his holiness, you contributed nothing to you have nothing to bring to him that is of any value because all things exist in himself.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he chose you, man.
SPEAKER_00: He chose you not because he needed you, you see, but because he wanted you, because he loved you, because he desired you, that he wanted you, and what God wants always comes to pass, that he wanted to set his love on you, to choose you, to bring you into his family, to give you to himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want you now to think about the implications of this reality.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Moses is getting at.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul is getting at.
SPEAKER_00: This is what all of Romans 8 is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: This is the purpose of John chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: This is what all of this is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Your position in Jesus' family and your position in Jesus' kingdom is not fragile.
SPEAKER_00: It's settled.
SPEAKER_00: It was decisive.
SPEAKER_00: Your position is secure because it rests on his good pleasure, not on your performance, not on your merit, not on your worthiness, but upon his grace.
SPEAKER_00: What is God's joy?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul tells us saving you.
SPEAKER_00: That's his joy.
SPEAKER_00: Choosing you, adopting you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, adoption is a paradox, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Adoption is a paradox.
SPEAKER_00: Adoption only exists because sin and brokenness exist in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the only reason that there are children that don't have safe homes for them to live in.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only reason that we need people to be able to bring them in, to be their family.
SPEAKER_00: So adoption exists because brokenness exists.
SPEAKER_00: And adoption only exists because love is decisive.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So it's a paradox.
SPEAKER_00: That adoption exists because someone looks at that child and says, I desire you.
SPEAKER_00: I want you.
SPEAKER_00: I choose to love you.
SPEAKER_00: Not because I'm compelled, and not because I have to, but because I want to.
SPEAKER_00: Christian, that is a picture of your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: That is a picture of who you are in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God did not take you in reluctantly.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't sigh and sign the adoption papers.
SPEAKER_00: He signed them according to his pleasure, and he signed them with his own son's blood.
SPEAKER_00: And he exulted because it was his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: So think about the application of this.
SPEAKER_00: When your energy wanes, when your passion's cool, when life is frustrating.
SPEAKER_00: What we're meant to remember is that it pleased God for me to be his child.
SPEAKER_00: It pleased God to bring me into his family.
SPEAKER_00: It pleased God to include me, me, in his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, let that steady your shaky obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Let that warm up your cold affections.
SPEAKER_00: Let that awaken your heart again.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: When your affections are cold, focus on God's joy.
SPEAKER_00: When your affections are cold, focus on your own joy.
SPEAKER_00: Paul doesn't just say that God operates according to his pleasure, does he?
SPEAKER_00: Though that's true.
SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't just say that God operates according to his pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: He said that he operates according to his what?
SPEAKER_00: His good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: That it isn't just that God's will will always come to pass.
SPEAKER_00: It's that God's will will always come to pass and it will always be judged to be qualitatively positive, qualitatively good, qualitatively wholesome.
SPEAKER_00: So when you don't know what you don't want, when you don't, when you should.
SPEAKER_00: So what should you do when you don't know what you should do?
SPEAKER_00: I cut it out that time.
SPEAKER_00: What should you do when you're low on energy?
SPEAKER_00: You should press on by faith.
SPEAKER_00: That God's way really is the better way.
SPEAKER_00: That God's way really is good even when it doesn't feel like it's good.
SPEAKER_00: That God's way is good even when it doesn't feel like it's best, that you're gonna believe that it's best because God operates according to his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, when you don't feel like it, that's really the exact opportunity for faith, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That's the moment for faith to work against what feels natural because you trust that God's way is best, to work against what feels good right now because you trust that his way is what leads to joy in the long run.
SPEAKER_00: It's living by faith that God's pleasure is actually what's best for you, and what's best for your teenager, and what's best, what's best for your marriage, and what's best for your retirement.
SPEAKER_00: It's that God's way is what's best, even though it's not what's easiest, even what though it may be what's even most frustrating in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: See, we remember on Palm Sunday that Jesus rode into Jerusalem willingly.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he went because it was his good pleasure to go.
SPEAKER_00: And that shows us how good he is, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That shows us how good he is.
SPEAKER_00: Because he would walk into Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of Hosanna, already knowing that soon enough they would change into crucifying Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so, like Audie Murphy, a soldier who risked everything and then said, Follow me, our king, our captain, not reluctantly but willingly went and endured the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And now he looks to every one of us and he says, Follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Follow me when it's hard, follow me when it's frustrating, follow me when it's scary.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because you can trust me, and I've proven it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray to the Lord together.