How to Sing in Prison | Philippians 1:3-11

Philippians 1:3-11  |  Cody Hale

Transcript

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Philippians chapter 1, beginning in verse 3, God's word says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, all making my prayer with joy. Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, and for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in mine and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. Let's pray the Lord together. Father, this morning, if anything is to be said with any impact or effect at all, you have to say it. If any heart is to receive your word, and that word is to take root and bring transformation, you have to prepare that heart. And so, Lord, I pray through a broken preacher you would say what only you have to say, and that you would say it with the impact of the Spirit of God. I pray that you would prepare the heart of every hearer this morning, that you would cultivate them and convict their sin and draw them into grace and bring rest to their striving. And that, Lord, in all of these things, that Lord, we would begin to see even more clearly how good you are, how with us you are, and Lord, why it is that we can praise and sing to the glory of your name despite what we're facing here on the earth. Lord, we come to you now, we submit ourselves to you in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Nick Ripkin, in his book, The Insanity of God, tells the story of a Russian pastor by the name of Dmitri. Dimitri was arrested and thrown into prison in the Soviet Union for 17 years because he was leading what was considered to be an illegal house church. And when he was thrown into prison, he just developed a spiritual discipline that he began to practice regularly. That every morning at daybreak, there in his prison cell, he would stand and he would face the east and he would sing a hymn of praise to God. All the other prisoners, they reviled him for it. They would beat and clank on the bars of their jail cell, trying to drown him out. They would mock him and curse him and revile him and do everything they could to let him know their displeasure with what he was doing. Well, after 17 years being in prison, he was being escorted out by a guard. Dimitri and everyone else that's in the prison there believes that he's being escorted out toward his execution. And as he's walking down the corridor of the prison, every guard that was there, all of the guards, all of the inmates that had reviled him, all of the inmates that had cursed him, all of the inmates that had mocked him, they all stood in unison and faced the east. And they began to sing the same praise of him, the hymn of praise that they had heard Demetri sing so many times before. The guard was astonished by this, and he looks at Demetri and he says, Who are you, man? Demetri stood up tall and he says, I am a son of the living God, and his name is Jesus Christ. When we come to the book of Philippians, we're seeing a similar picture with the Apostle Paul. Paul, at the founding of the church of Philippi, you can read in Acts chapter 16, is thrown into prison for casting out the demon of a slave girl. But he and Silas are said to be at midnight, and they are standing and they are singing a song of praise. And here we are, years later, the church is flourishing, but Paul's ministry appears to be floundering because he's in prison yet again. And though he is in prison, he is still praising God. This morning, what I want us to see together is how it is that we can sing in prison. Now, for you, it's probably not a literal prison, but a metaphorical one. It can be the depression that you find yourselves in. It can be the loneliness that can't seem to be shaken. It can be the marriage that doesn't seem to be healing. It can be the despair that you feel is coloring and shading all of your life. It can be the difficulty that you're having with your children. For whatever reason it is that you're in prison, what I want us to ask this morning is how is it that we can sing when everything in our lives seems to tell us we shouldn't be able to? We'll see how Paul did it. First, for Paul, he recognizes that he isn't alone. He recognizes that he isn't alone. Forgive us, our slides are not working this morning. You know, when you're alone, things that ordinarily wouldn't be scary are scarier, aren't they? Everything's scarier when you're alone. You hear a pipe creak, you hear a branch snap, and you assume you're on a criminal minds episode, right? But the opposite is also true. When you have company, when you have somebody that's there with you, things that would terrify you alone don't seem nearly as scary. Early in my ministry at my previous church, things were not going particularly well. I felt like every single thing that I touched just turned to dust. I don't know if you've ever gone through a season of your life that way, but it seemed like anything that I thought of, anything that I did, it all went the wrong way. And the church was in decline and life was stressful. And to be honest with you, I was feeling like a continual and perpetual failure. And I remember wondering like, maybe I'm not really cut out for this. Maybe I've missed the call of God on my life. Like, like, maybe I ought to start exploring other thoughts of vocation and figuring out how it is I'm gonna provide for my family because this doesn't seem to be the way. And I had a group of senior adult ladies in my church. They set an appointment to come and sit down and talk with me. I was scared to death. I I thought this is the end, right? And this group of senior adult ladies, they all came in mass and sat down in my office. And this is what they said to me, Cody, right now is a hard time. But you're gonna make it. Because we're gonna make sure that you make it. I'll tell you what, y'all. I walked out taller. I felt emboldened. I felt ready to face the difficulties that we were facing in the church. Why? Because I knew I had the support. I knew that I wasn't by myself. This is how Paul is interpreting his experience here in prison. That Paul is able to sing because Paul recognizes that he isn't alone. In fact, he recognizes that he isn't alone on two different dimensions. First of all, Paul recognizes that he is the possession of God. Notice what he says. He says it there in verses three through five, and then again in verses seven and eight. He says, I think my God in all my remembrance of you. My God. Then in verse eight, he says, For God is my witness. Do you know how personal this is? These are personal possessive pronouns, aren't they? That for Paul, it's not that there's a God out there somewhere that gives him some kind of hope. It's not that there's a man upstairs. It's not that there's some ethereal floating in the air, abstract power, hopefully D is out there somewhere somehow that's bringing some kind of hope. It's my God. He's close to me. I know him. His hope isn't that in some way he'll be justified in some court of law somewhere. His hope isn't that somebody will recognize him and vindicate his name. His hope is that God is my witness. Like I know this God, and this God knows me, and this God knows that what I'm doing is honorable. This God knows that what I'm doing is true, that I know him, and because I know him, I have hope. I can recognize that I'm not alone. That we see Paul here, and he's talking with the kind of conviction that a person talks with that when they recognize that when they're praying, they're not just talking to the ceiling. But that God is there and God is listening and God cares about them and is concerned with them. You know, really when you think about it, Paul had every reason to believe the contrary, didn't he? He had every reason to believe that. Paul is in prison, not for the first time, but again. Paul has been forsaken again. Paul is at hardship again. He's one of those guys, it's like he can't win for losing, right? You ever felt like that? This is Paul. Paul has every reason to think, like, Lord, I feel like I'm doing everything I can to honor you. I feel like I'm doing everything that you would have me to do, and every right thing I do seems to be rewarded with all the wrong kinds of consequences. That's easy for us to identify with, isn't it? It's really easy for us to identify with. We go in and we think, man, I'm still alone. I still don't have the baby that I've been waiting for. I still don't have the marriage that I've been waiting for. I still don't have the job that I've been waiting for. I still don't have the health that I've been waiting for. Lord, I've prayed to you and I've sought you and I've tried to do all the right things. But it seems like even though I'm doing all the right things that I'm reaping all of the wrong results and all of the wrong consequences in my life. Well, how is it that Paul was able to sustain? How was he not just able to sustain, but sustain in his joy so that he could sing while he's there and praise them, praise God while he's in the midst of the cell? Well, he again, it goes back to his my God, my witness. Paul's using the possessive there not to say that he possesses God. He's not picturing God as some little wooden rabbit's foot or uh statue that he has in his pocket that he can pull out that's gonna give him some kind of good luck at a moment's notice. No, he's saying that because it's the strongest way for him to be able to articulate not that he possesses God, but that God possesses him. That is Paul's way of saying that he is in the grip of his God, that the prison hasn't loosened God's grip, it's clarified it, even intensified it. It's made him more aware of it, that he's become more and more convinced that he is in the hand of God and being in the hand of God, that he's gonna be fine. He recognizes that he isn't all there's a second dimension. He doesn't just recognize that he is the possession of God, he recognizes that he has partners in the gospel. He basically restates the same point twice. He says in verse five, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And then he says in verse seven, it is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart, for you were all partakers with me of grace. Partnership in the gospel, partakers with me of grace. They're communicating the same thing. In fact, uh, partner and partaker, they have the same root word, koine. It means a common bond, a common unity. That it's a it's about a shared life, a shared vision, a shared hope. And what is the shared life? What is the shared hope that they have? Well, it's the gospel, it's grace. They are fellow partners in the gospel, they are fellow partakers of grace, that God has done a work in them that has brought them together. Here's how Paul's processing this Paul recognizes that he's able to see that God cares for him personally because the church at Philippi had cared for him practically. In other words, Paul would pray. He would say, God, I'm hungry. I need you to provide for me food. He was a normal person. And how would God provide him food? The church of Philippi would send him food. But Paul would be struggling. He didn't know how he was gonna make ends meet. He didn't know how he was gonna be able to take care of all the responsibilities that he had. And so he would pray, God, God, would you provide for me? And how would God provide for him? He would send the support through the church at Philippi. Paul would get discouraged in his ministry. He would find himself downtrodden, he would find himself often on the wrong side of the law and often on the wrong side of everybody else's opinion. And he would feel himself in despair, and yet here he is in prison. And how does God answer his prayer for encouragement? He has Philippi send a Paphroditus with a love package to come and to say, Paul, you are not out of sight, you are not out of mind. We love you, we care for you. And it would lift up Paul's spirits. That in other words, in other words, that when he says in verse 5, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, he's remembering that God has sustained him in the past through Philippi, God is sustaining him right now through Philippi, and God is gonna sustain him in the future through Philippi. That he is seeing this reality of the kindness of God through the presence of the church and the practical outpouring of their gifts to him. And it's a reminder, he's not by himself. It's a reminder that he's gonna be okay, that he can keep singing and he can keep praising because God has not forsaken him, and the people of God have not forsaken him. Earlier in my ministry, I had a man who was in my discipleship group, and his wife had been pregnant, and they were so excited. And he said he sends me a text, and he says, Cody, we're we're on the way to the hospital as a family of two, we're coming home as a family of three, pray for us. And we were all so excited and thrilled to death. They go to the hospital and they're delivering a healthy, beautiful baby girl when the umbilical cord wraps around the baby's neck and strangles her and she dies. And I had the honor of being able to officiate the funeral and walking through the ceremony. And this is what I remember them telling me. Cody, at Avery's funeral, we want it to be a worship service. We want it to be filled with singing. The request struck me, and I remember us sitting there, and I'm about to stand and deliver one of the hardest sermons in all of my life when I look over, and the whole church has stood up. There's a grieving mama and a grieving daddy, and there are tears pouring down their faces, and their hands are lifted high, and they're singing praises to God. You know, those praises weren't because life was good, those praises were a declaration of faith that even though their life wasn't good, their God was good, it was a declaration of their hope of where they were gonna find their way through. And and it was a reminder as you looked around, and there were hundreds of people standing, and hundreds of people with tears pouring out of their eyes, and praise flowing out of their mouths, that here among the people of God, they were not alone, they were gonna have the support that they needed. This is how Paul's able to sing. This is how Paul's able to sing, and this is how you're able to sing. You're able to sing in spite of what you're like, what you're facing in your life, because you are in the grip of the Almighty and you are not alone within the church. Paul recognizes that he isn't alone, and then Paul recognizes that his case is airtight. His case is airtight. I delayed taking Greek in seminary to the very end, and it was because I had genuine, like real life anxiety over it. And so I go into Greek and I'm I'm waking up at night in fight or flight thinking about Greek paradigms. The only thing that I knew to do was just to take my anxiety, and I had a little notebook, and I would write those paradigms over and over every spare minute that I had. And my brain was catastrophizing the whole thing. I don't know if you've ever, I'm sure you have experienced something like that. Where you're like, this is gonna be the evidence that I can't stand in 2,000 in line with 2,000 years of other pastors that have done this, right? Like, this is gonna be the evidence that I've always assumed is true, that I'm really not qualified by the Lord to be able to do what I've been trying to do. This is gonna be the proof that I really, I really can't do this. And so I would just write them over and over and over. But there was a change that took place about halfway toward my first exam that I started doing a little bit better on the quizzes that we were taking every week. And the concept started sticking with me a little bit. And then by the time the test came, the momentum had completely shifted. And now it was like, oh, bring the test on, man. I'm gonna show you I know Greek, baby. You know what I mean? Paul's going through something like this here. You would think that the prison, the test and the trial of the prison would undermine his faith and undermine his confidence in the gospel. But the momentum is such that what he takes is he believes that the prison is actually validating and verifying the gospel to in his mind. That he sees it as the proving that the gospel is true and not the other way around. That if you notice in the text, think about the context in which Paul is writing this. Paul's facing a trial, like a literal trial, where he's gonna go stand before a judge, and that judge is gonna decide whether he lives or dies. That judge is gonna decide whether the evidence says he should be condemned, imprisoned, dead, or released. Okay? And he uses a lot of these legal terms. He uses four, in fact. He says, both in my imprisonment, there's one, and in the defense, there's two, and in the confirmation, there's three of the gospel, for God is my witness, there's four, right? That you have these four legal terms, and it makes sense because this is in the framework that Paul is thinking. But what Paul is saying here, he's saying, I may be on trial, but in my mind, the gospel is not on trial. That's what I've seen is that the gospel has been both confirmed and defended by the church at Philippi. The word defense there, it's the word apologia. It's the word from which we get our word apologetics. So it's the the idea there is it's uh something that's a well-reasoned defense. It's a clear and compelling argument to make the case. It's a justification in the eyes of a jury, or a justification in the eyes of a judge. Now, what's the defense? What's the well-reasoned argument that Paul is able to make about the truth of the gospel? Well, the well-reasoned argument that he's able to make is the lives of the Philippians. That what he's seen in the Philippians is he has seen in them the transformation of their lives, the spreading of the kingdom, the building of the church, the injuries, the love that they've displayed, the generosity that they've displayed, the missional fervor that they've displayed, that what he's witnessed in the Philippians has proven to him that his suffering is not in vain. Think about what's happened here. Remember in Acts chapter 16 when the church is founded, in the middle of doing all of that, Paul's thrown into prison. He's been through this before, he's experienced this before, he knows what this feels like, and he knows what this looks like. And so he's in prison, and yet being in prison, now he's able to remember back. And he's like, Man, do you remember how God saved that guard? Do you remember how the earthquake came and the doors opened and the shackles fell off and how the Lord used that to establish his church? Now look at the church. Look at how they're flourishing, look at how they're growing, look at how they're grow they're partnering with me in the gospel, look at how they're how they're encouraging me. And what he's saying is, do I not think it'll be the same this time? If God delivered me previously, do I not think that that God's gonna do this again? Do I not see what he's done in the past and assume that today it's gonna be exactly the same? That you can understand why he says in verse 7, that I hold you in my heart. That he holds the Philippians in his heart, because the Philippians are the verification that Paul is not wasting his life. See, if the gospel's not true, if the gospel can't be defended, if the gospel is not confirmed, nobody's wasted their life more than Paul has. But if the gospel is true, if if grace is real, if it really does transform, if it really does make all the difference, if it really does change your position before the Almighty, then what? If the gospel is true, there's no better way to spend your life. See, the way that Paul was able to sing in prison was determined by how he interpreted the evidence. See, there was certain evidence that Paul could interpret, and if he interpreted that evidence, it would stifle him, it would discourage him, it would undermine him. He could look at the prison, he could look at the rations, he could look at the fact that his life was not going any which of way. You know, we could do the same thing. The enemy has a series of evidences in your life, and those evidences are intended, intended to demoralize you. That you can look at your circumstances, your circumstances probably aren't ideal. Your job may not be what you want it to be, or your family may not be what you want it to be, or your health may not be what you want it to be. And you can look at that and you can say, This is proof that God isn't good. This is proof that God hasn't been good to me. A lot of people do that way, right? This is how the enemy intends it. But Paul instead focused on a different set, a different aspect of the evidence. Paul didn't look at his circumstances, Paul looked at the kindness of God. Paul looked at the past history of God, at the past faithfulness of God. That Paul recognizes by looking at what God has done in the church at Philippi that seeing. What's happened in their lives is evidence that everything else that he's doing is really worth it. And that it's an offering to the Lord, and that the Lord is receiving it, the Lord is blessing it, and that it's just the first fruits of what is to come. And the same is true in your life. You know, you can look at your circumstances, or you can remember how God has worked in those circumstances in the past. How God has sustained you through other times that you didn't think that you were going to make it. You can look at your ministry, can't you? Maybe you work with teenage guys and you look across the table at a bunch of teenage guys and they just look stone faced. And you just wonder, man, is any of this taking? But then you can think about your life, can't you? And you used to be one of those teenagers. And you used to have the same stone look on your face, didn't you? And yet you know that people investing the gospel in you changed your life and transformed your life. Maybe driving to church this morning, man, you work hard, you're like me, like you want to do family devotions, you do the best you can, like you never really wonder if it's working. And then you're driving to church, and then you and you get frustrated with your kids, and you think, okay, I made a mistake this morning that just literally undid every good thing I've tried to sow in the hearts of my kids all week long, right? Well, that's demoralizing. But can't you remember grace? Can't you remember that God has already saved you in spite of what you've done? That God is already changing you in spite of what you've done? And God has worked in your life through imperfect people too? So he can do the same in the lives of your children? Brothers and sisters, if we look at the evidence, what we'll find is that the gospel is proven and the gospel is worth it, and we have no reason to fret. If we saw Jesus hanging on the cross, what we would see is a young man who appeared to be wasting his life until the resurrection. And at the moment of the resurrection, what is proven was that the case is airtight. Jesus had not wasted his life, Jesus had invested his life and spent his life for something that was ultimately worthy. And that's why you can sing too. That's why you can sing too. Because the resurrection has validated and verified your case before the judge, and your case is airtight. Paul recognizes that he isn't alone. He recognizes that his case is airtight. And he recognizes that his future is secure. That his future is secure. You'll notice in our text that the future is very much on Paul's mind. In verse 6, he ends with the phrase, at the day of Jesus Christ. In verse 10, he does the same, and blameless for the day of Christ. He has the future in his mind. And we think a lot about the future, don't we? Because the future threatens us, doesn't it? It's in the future where anxiety lives. It's in the future where all of our worries are. That it feels like lurking around the corner, everywhere we look, down the road of life, it appears as though there is a threat that is huffing and puffing and threatening to blow our house down. That the future says that you're not just alone right now, but that you're gonna stay alone. The future says that you're not just unwell right now, your health is gonna deteriorate even more. The future tells you about the death of your spouse and the loss of your child and the hardship of your parents. The future tells you that your retirement funding is gonna run out and you're gonna lose your house. The future tells you that your job may not be here 10 years from now. The future is always yelling at you, and the future is always threatening you. And so Paul, as he looks to the future, speaks with a confidence that all of us are longing for. Notice what he says. He says, I am sure of this. Wouldn't it be nice to look at the future with surety? I am sure of this. That he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. I am sure of what the future holds. I am sure of what tomorrow looks like. I am sure of what it's going to be when we stand before the judge. I am sure of this, that God who began a good work in you will, not might, not hopefully, will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. There's an interesting interplay there with verb tenses, if you'll notice that, right? That if you'll look in verse 6, it says that he who began a good work, that's past tense, isn't it? Well, look at the beginning. He says, and I am sure of this. This is present tense, isn't it? And then he says, will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. That's future tense, isn't it? That here in one verse, you have this fluid usage of tenses. Now, what is Paul saying? What Paul's saying is that the confidence that I have in tomorrow is what God did yesterday. That, yeah, the future threatens me, but the past and my experiences with the Lord assure me that I have certainty about what's going to happen tomorrow because of what God did yesterday. And so I stand by faith today, knowing what God did yesterday, trusting in what God will do tomorrow. Y'all, that's what joy is. That's what joy is. We talk about here about joy is not a feeling, is it? Joy is an exercising of faith. Joy is remembering God's past faithfulness and giving him thanks for it. Joy is trusting in God's future faithfulness and giving him hope in it. Joy is trusting, is rejoicing in God's past faithfulness, trusting in God's future faithfulness. Andrew Brunson was an American missionary to Turkey. And he's there, and he's obviously in a Muslim country that's very hard soil to till, and he's sowing the gospel and he's planting the church, and God is doing a great work when suddenly he's thrown into prison unexpectedly. And he said, I thought when I went to prison that I would have one of these experiences where it was like I would be in the prison cell and it would feel like God had never been closer to me at any other point in my life. He said, But if I'm honest with you, that was not my experience at all. He said, I went into prison and I could think of nothing else but God, where are you? God didn't feel closer to me. He felt more distant to me. It didn't seem like God was sitting in the prison cell with me there. It felt as though God were a million miles away, completely indifferent to what I was going through. He said, He got so low that he began to contemplate taking his own life to be able to end the suffering. He said, He said, I was sitting there in the prison cell and he said I started remembering, I started remembering that rejoicing in the Lord and praising the Lord was a commandment that was given and it wasn't circumstantial. That it was a commandment to rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice, delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. That singing this day, a new song unto the Lord. He says, So there, in the height of my despair, in a Turkish prison for doing what I thought I was supposed to do, he said, I started a discipline. He said, I began to dance five minutes every day before the Lord. He said, and I would sit there in that dungeon, and the last thing I wanted to do was to stand up and to dance, but I would stand there and I would dance, and it was a dance of defiance, a dance of defiance against the despair that I knew, a dance of defiance against the captors that I had, a dance of defiance against the unbelief that was in my life. It was a dance in defiance by faith that God eventually would deliver me and that I would have a reason to dance. Eventually, Brunson would be released. And he would go on and he would talk about how the Lord used that experience to strengthen his faith and to galvanize the hope that he had, not in this life, but in the life to come. This morning, brothers and sisters, it may very well be true today. It certainly will be true sometime in the future that you have to dance in defiance by faith. That's what Paul's doing when he sings in the prison. That's what Paul does as he's praising God. And that's what Paul is calling for us to do to sing, to sing in the empty nurseries that we have, to sing in the hospital rooms that we find ourselves in, to sing in the funeral homes and at the cemetery, to sing in the midst of our depression, not because life is good, but because we aren't alone. Because the gospel is proven and because he who began a great work in us will find it to completion, will see it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. Let me pray for us this morning.