From Distraction to Devotion | Philippians 1:12-20

Philippians 1:12-20  |  James Allison

Transcript

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I think we all know that we live in an age of constant distraction, right? There's streaming and scrolling and binging all around us. And there's breaking news all around us, too. I mean, if you look at the news, you're always reading about an earthquake or uh some kind of fire or snowstorm or hurricane, right? And there's Iran and Gaza and Ukraine and Washington, D.C. And you're expected to keep up with the latest fashion and the latest devices and the latest cars and the latest advice and the latest shows, all of the advice on how to get better sleep and how to lose weight and how to have less stress, right? And be on the lookout for inflation and rising crime and AI. And did you know that there's a flu A and a flu B now? All the while that you've forgot to text them back and you're late to drop them off, and you haven't finished that project yet, and you still got the laundry and the dishes and dinner, and you still haven't scheduled that vacation yet. In the middle of all the noise of life, you didn't suddenly stop believing that God is good. You didn't suddenly reject his word altogether. You just lost focus. And that's one of the greatest strategies of the enemy, not to get us to deny God outright, but just to keep us from stepping into the life that God has designed for us. You see, distraction has a way of stealing our joy by dividing our focus. And that's what I want to see here in the book of Philippians this morning. Paul is writing to real people. They're experiencing real hardship. They're living under Roman pressure, they're marginalized, they're being persecuted for their allegiance to Christ. These were real threats, demanding their attention. And in the middle of all of it, Paul doesn't minimize that. He doesn't try to explain it away. He doesn't tiptoe around it. What he says is, while he's writing this letter in chains, he's saying, you can still experience durable joy, even when the hardship of life is pressing in all around you. That's the first thing I want us to see here as we look at Philippians chapter 1. The wrong focus will always lead to the wrong perspective. So there's a really interesting verse if you look at Romans chapter 15, verse 23 and 24. Paul's writing to the Romans, and he says, For years, for years I have longed to come and see you. For years I've been dreaming of a trip to Spain. I'm planning it out. And on my way to Spain, I'm going to stop, and we're finally going to be able to spend time together. We're finally going to be able to fellowship face to face. This is something he had been longing for for years. This was a deep desire of his. And if you know anything about Paul's life, that's not what happened. Pretty much everything except that happened. The scripture says that he was beaten and he was mocked and he was shipwrecked three times. He received the 40 lashes minus one five times. It was minus one because they believed that 40 lashes would kill a man. He was stoned and left for dead. He was arrested and arrested again and finally arrested a final time. And so when Paul finally arrived in Rome, it wasn't to visit with the Romans, it was as a prisoner being transported. So you can imagine there's a whole lot to process there. There's dreams unrealized, there's desires that were unfulfilled. In the middle of all of that, Paul says something really crazy. He could have taken that opportunity to look inward, he could have used that opportunity to be angry or complain. But instead, he takes the opportunity to redirect the focus of the church to something else. And this is what he says. Look here in verse 12. He says, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. I mean, this is just crazy what he's saying. There's been explosive growth in the part of the world in which the church is just growing like crazy. And Paul is at the forefront of this growth. He's planning churches and he's spreading the gospel. And now he's been placed in chains, right? You would think that that would probably work to slow down that movement. You would think that that would probably put that whole plan on pause. But look at what Paul's saying here. He's actually saying, I want you to know that this has actually served to advance the gospel. Look at that word. Advance the gospel. So what's happening here? Well, he says, all throughout the world, all throughout, the whole Imperial Guard and the rest of my imprisonment, they're getting to see that this is actually for Christ. There's a couple things that are happening here that I think are just fascinating. So Paul's under house arrest while he's writing this letter here in Rome, and he's chained to a Roman guard 24 hours a day. There's an 18-inch chain that is connecting him to a Roman guard 24 hours a day. He's chained to a Praetorian guard specifically. So think like the Secret Service of that day, except they had way more authority. These people were trained to protect the emperor himself. And we saw in Acts 28, where Paul is under house arrest there, people would come to his house and he would teach them the word of God and he would proclaim the gospel. And so you can imagine every new soldier, every shift change, there is a captive audience for the gospel. And we actually read later in Philippians 4 22 that members of the emperor's own household are coming to faith. That's members of Nero, Emperor Nero, who's famous for hunting Christians, members of his inner circle are now coming to faith. So you see what's happening here. This is beautiful. I love this. This is what God does. Rome thought that they were chaining Paul to a prison cell, but God was chaining Rome to the gospel. And that's what God does, right? That's what he does. He takes what the enemy means for evil and he makes it work for good, right? Even in the middle of the hardship, even in the middle of the struggle, he's always working. That's what I love about this. That God is always working. And we can trust that even when we don't see it, he's at work. But we have to be honest, right? Because sometimes we don't see it, especially in the middle of the hardship, right? It's not always easy to see what God is doing when the pressure is real and when our plans fall apart. And when it looks like nothing that we prayed for, it's easy to lose focus. Here's what begins to happen. When our focus shifts away from what we know about God and it shifts to our circumstances around us, we begin to misinterpret our suffering. Right? Suddenly old ways of thinking start creeping in. If God is working, then why is this so hard? If God loves me, then why is this happening? And slowly, without realizing it, we allow our suffering to tell us about God instead of letting God's word interpret our suffering. We let discomfort tell us what God ought to be doing. And when we stop looking for meaning in the middle of the hardship, then we start looking for escape. So if comfort becomes our expectation, then every hardship will feel like a contradiction of God's love. Every delay will feel like neglect. Every difficulty will begin to feel like distance. And joy will start to feel like it's out of reach. And over time, suffering stops being seen as a place where we know God is working, and it starts being seen as the evidence that something has gone terribly wrong. Which is why I have to say this clearly. It's the assumption that life should be comfortable. Jesus said in his own words, he said, In this world, you will have trouble. It's coming. You can expect it. Don't be surprised by this fiery trial that's coming upon you, Peter says. You will have trouble. But then he says something else. He zooms out and he says, Take heart. I have overcome the world. He zooms out to say, I want you to see a bigger picture here. And that's what Paul's saying. He's saying, I want you to see the bigger picture. I want you to know that even when our plans fall apart, even when the heartache is real, even when the struggle is real, God has designed you to flourish even in the midst of it. And there's purpose in it. This is what Paul's saying. Look at verse 13. He's saying, I want you to know that this purpose is for Christ. This is the whole point of everything. You see, if we can begin to identify with Christ in his suffering, then we can begin to see suffering not as a window to pain, but a window to God's love. A window into the love that God has for us. And this is what I mean by that. Jesus faced a lot of trouble, right? He suffered in a way that we can't even begin to imagine. He suffered for you and he suffered for me. He suffered because his love was so personal, his love was so relational. He was determined to bring us back to himself at any cost. And that's the depth of God's love. It's not always a love that removes hardship, but a love that enters into the hardship. He suffers with us. We can relate to him in his suffering and we can understand him deeper in our suffering as he's there with us. Because he enters into it for our redemption. So when Christ is not at the center of our focus, then suffering starts to look more like an interruption than an invitation. But when Christ is our comfort, then even chains can have purpose, right? Suffering becomes something about changing and shaping something in us. It becomes more about what God wants to see happen around us, and trials begin to deepen our joy, not steal it. God may be doing some of his deepest work in the play, the very place that you would have never chosen. Maybe you're dealing with a terrible situation at work, a terrible hardship. Maybe you feel chained to that situation. Could it be that God is also chaining your coworkers to the gospel? You might be struggling with an unbearable health struggle. Could it be that God might be chaining the people working in that clinic, the people working in that hospital to the gospel? The people working in in your own family as they come and visit you to the gospel. I don't know what you're going through. You might be going through something that's truly unbearable. But could it be that God wants to chain you to his perspective to grow something in you? It certainly wasn't the plan that Paul would have chosen, right? But God was strategically advancing the gospel into the very heart of Rome. And if you know what happens, over the next 200 years, Rome becomes a place that is the center of persecution, to the place that becomes not only a Christian city that legalizes Christianity, but becomes one of the epicenters of pushing Christianity out to the rest of the world. God was strategically advancing, pushing beyond military force into new areas. But here's the danger. When we lose focus on the one who is working, fear is the natural result. The wrong perspective will always lead to fear. And here's what we need we know about fear. Fear has a way of magnifying whatever it is that we focus our attention on, right? It predicts only negative outcomes. It only foresees negative things happening. And fear can be really loud. It's louder than all the other voices, right? So when our comfort is threatened, when when we stop feeling safe or when we life stops feeling predictable, fear begins to magnify the circumstances around us, right? So if our focus is only on feeling strong and stable and in control, then fear will always grow louder than the truth. And that's what it means to be discouraged, right? You're drained of God's truth. You're drained of courage from the truth of who God is, right? Now here's what's fascinating about Philippians chapter 1. As we've said, Paul is facing real uncertainty. He's facing a real trial. There's a real possibility that he would be executed. And the early Christians, they're watching all of this and they're going, Are we next? So you would imagine this is an opportunity for fear to be running rampant through the church, right? But instead, something surprising happens. Look at verse 14. He says, And most of the brothers have become confident in the Lord. By my imprisonment, they are much more bold to speak the word without fear, right? Something crazy is happening. Paul's chains did not spread panic, but it in fact spread it, spread courage. They were being encouraged as they believed in God, as Paul was acting out his faith. This is not pretending that the hardship isn't there, that the suffering isn't real. The frustration is real, the uncertainty is obviously real, but he's refusing to let what is wrong with the circumstances drown out what is right with God. He's refusing to let what's happening around him drown out what is right with God. He's believing and he's trusting God. He's being filled with God's truth. And when Jesus becomes the center of your focus, fear begins to lose its power. Paul's courage leads to boldness and confidence in others, right? Healthy faith is contagious. Just like Holly was saying earlier with the saint that visited her in the parking lot. Healthy faith is contagious. We see it in other people. Boldness inspires boldness in us to stand for Christ. See, all this is amazing because Paul, he was dealing with a lot, not just imprisonment. He was actually dealing with people actively trying to ruin his reputation. Look at verse 15. I'm gonna read all the way through this. Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do it out of love. This is what they know. They know that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. So what's interesting here is as Paul's taken out of the spotlight as the church is exploding in its growth and its movement, other people saw it as an opportunity to make a name for themselves. And Paul was dealing with all kinds of conflict. He was dealing with envy, and he was dealing with opposition and rivalry. He was dealing with criticism in the middle of his suffering. I mean, his ministry was being sabotaged. This would have been very easy for him to get defensive and bitter and fearful about his reputation and fearful about what was going to happen. Because that's usually what happens when the outcome that we want is threatened. That's usually what happens when what we want in life becomes threatened. Our fear usually intensifies when a goal or a dream or our comfort or our desires or our happiness is threatened, right? Politicians have made a they've won a lot of elections by saying, hey, that thing that you love, they're gonna take it away unless you vote for me, right? News channels have actually made a lot of money by saying, hey, you know that thing that you love? That thing that you want? It's under attack. Come read more. Advertisers have made a ton of money by saying, hey, you're never gonna be happy in life unless you get this thing. You're never gonna get what you want unless you pay for this thing, right? It's ultimately about what we want. But Paul's focus isn't about his reputation. That's not what he wants. His focus isn't on his comfort. He wasn't even focused on whether or not his plan was gonna work out. He was focused on an even greater reality. Look at verse 18. He says, What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that I rejoice. Right? So what's he saying here? Do you see his perspective? He's saying, I can find joy, because joy is not the absence of hardship. Hebrews 12 tells us, Jesus said, For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, right? Joy is the awareness of God's presence, even in the middle of the hardship. And then Paul goes on to clarify this even more emphatically in verse 20. He says, It is my eager expectation, I have hope that I will not be ashamed, that with full courage, now as as always, Christ will be magnified. Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death, whether I live, whether I die, Paul is saying, My circumstances may be uncertain, my reputation may be attacked, my future may be unclear, but my purpose is crystal clear. I want others to see Jesus in me. That is the point. That is the whole point of this Christian life, right? And that's the point in our suffering, is for others to see Jesus in us. What is Jesus doing in our lives? And it becomes so much more clear in our suffering, too. See, the word magnified here is a really interesting word. It's only used one time in this particular tense in the Greek in the entire New Testament. And it means exactly what you think it means. It means to magnify, to make something larger. But it really means to make something more clear, to make something more central. Uh it's like what we see in a telescope, right? You go and look at the night star and you see all these stars way off in the distance, and you get a really, really nice telescope, and you zoom in. It didn't make the star any bigger, but it allowed you to see it as bigger. It became more clear. You begin to experience the brilliance of it in more detail. You begin to see the brilliance of its glory more fully, right? And that is the point of the Christian life. We are supposed to be like a telescope to everyone around us to help them see Jesus, to help them see Jesus working in us, to see Jesus in the middle of all of the hardship. So your focus will always determine what others see as magnified in your life. Fear, it really magnifies the problem. But faith, faith magnifies Christ, right? When we look at the problem, it only gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But when we look at Jesus, it changes the whole story, right? When we fix our eyes on the problem, it's only gonna get worse, right? We fix our eyes on Christ, our courage grows inside of us, right? And that's what we fight fear. This is the way that we do it. We fight fear with faith. Let me tell you what fear says. Fear says God will fail. That's what fear says. It's what worry says. God is going to fail in some way, God will fail. But you know what scripture tells us? It says, do not be afraid, because God is with you and he cannot fail. He cannot fail. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. So why do we need to regularly read the word? Why do we need to regularly pray the word? Why do we regularly need to sing the word? Why do we need to come to the Lord's table? Because we need to be reminded. It's not our natural tendency to remember who God is and what he's done for us and the promises that he's made to us. We need to remember, because fear forgets everything that God has ever done. Right? Do you realize that in a moment? When you're fearful, you're forgetting everything that God has ever done. But faith, faith remembers God's past faithfulness. Faith trusts in who God says that he is. We see when we begin to see God as bigger, we remember him as more glorious. We begin to believe that he's more powerful, and we begin to trust that God is going to be God. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Every single time the Lord has been faithful. He's faithful now and he will be faithful in the future. Everything that he needs, everything that we need in our life is already in his hands. I know that the Lord will provide because he's told me he will. Right? We can begin to trust what he says. And when our focus shifts to Jesus, then fear just starts losing its grip, right? Paul's confidence is not built on what's going to happen to him, but on others seeing Jesus in him. He is confident that that will happen, right? But here's the danger for all of us. I think this sounds good, but here's the danger for all of us. When we lose focus, and it's so easy to lose focus in the world of distractions, when we lose focus, our natural instinct is not surrender, it's control. The wrong perspective will always lead to us wanting to control something. I think all of us gravitate towards control if we're honest, right? We try to control the outcome, we try to control the timeline, we try to control the image that we project, we try to control the circumstances, because control feels safe, right? If we can manage it, if we can fix it, if we can hold it all together, then maybe we won't have to feel the fear, right? But look at Paul. He has no control over his trial, no control over the outcome of his life, no control over whether he lives or whether he dies, and yet he's not spiraling, he's not panicking, he's not grasping for control. Why? Because Paul understands something that we all really struggle to understand. He understands that we're limited, he understands that we're all limited. We don't have enough strength to win every fight. We don't have all the wisdom that we need for every decision. We're not designed to do this life on our own. It's part of how God has designed us. And that's not a flaw. That's part of being human, right? Fear often exposes our limitations. It points to all the things that we lack, but those limitations are often the very place that God is inviting us into deeper dependence on Him. And that's the point, right? Not that we can get it all together and do all the things and turn it in on time. It's that we can depend on God to be God, right? Listen to what Paul says in verse 19. He says this, and yes, I rejoice. He finds joy in this. For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance, right? Notice what he does not say. He does not say, I know this will be easy. He does not say, I know this will end quickly. He does not say, everything is going to go exactly to my plan, right? No, he anchors his confidence in three things. Do you see it here in the text? He anchors his confidence in the prayers of the church, the help of the Spirit, and that God is at work, right? That God is going to work in this problem. Which means courage is not something that we produce in ourselves. We are not designed to carry all of the things of life by ourselves. See, control says, I have to have this all together. But surrender says, without God, I can't hold any of this together. Right? You see the difference there? This is not weakness, this is faith working its way out. Woving into your calling by God is an inability to do everything that God has called you to do without Him. We simply don't have what it takes without Him. He's the one who supplies, He's the one who enables, He's the one who empowers. And I want you to hear me. This sermon is not about, I want you to focus harder. The sermon is not try harder to focus, okay? This is what I'm saying is you cannot try hard enough. All right? You cannot produce joy through white knuckles. Joy is not the reward of control. Joy is the fruit of surrender. Joy is the fruit of surrender through prayer, through the working of God's Spirit, through faith. Which means joy is not found in controlling your life. Joy is found in surrendering it, right? But we have to be honest. Surrender starts with being honest. We have to be honest with where we're at, right? Honest with God, honest with one another, honest with ourselves. We have to be honest about where we struggle. As studying fear this week, I really started to think through all the different areas of my life where I was experiencing fear. Maybe not like big capital F fear where I'm shaking in my boots, but like, you know, lowercase F fear, where I'm just experiencing the low hum of anxiety, where I'm just like clearly not trusting God in this area of my life. I clearly haven't even sorted or processed this problem in my life with God. I'm still trying to figure out how to manage it, still trying to figure out how to control it, still trying to figure out how to manufacture an outcome. But God does not ask us to put on a mask and pretend that we are strong. It's not what he does. He invites us to run to him like a child does to a loving father, right? Somewhere along the way, many of us have forgotten that the Christian life is not about managing our image. The Christian life is about dying to self daily and picking up our cross daily. It's about abiding in Christ daily. Wants to see a set of verses. This is what Jesus talked about on the night that he would give his life up. He said in John chapter 15, talking to his disciples, he said, This is how my father's glorified that you would bear much fruit. We want to bear fruit in this life. And so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I love you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. This is what I want us to get here today. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. Jesus kind of outlines a pattern here for us to experience the fullness of joy. It isn't in trying to work through and navigate and manufacture outcomes. It isn't in being smarter or being more clever or having a better strategy or having the most information. It isn't in any of those things. It's through surrender and abiding in him. Not striving, not controlling, not performing, abiding, right? Like a vine and a branch. The branch cannot produce fruit by trying harder. James Mosley used to say something all the time that just pops into my mind. He just said, Imagine that I'm a banana and I'm just saying, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, right? If you're a little plant or a tree and you're just saying, produce fruit, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I'll always remember him saying that. That's not how it works, right? God works in us and through us as we surrender and abide. When we abide in Jesus, we begin to see things from his perspective, right? Trust in his promises, and we begin to rely on his power. And then suddenly the pressure to control everything begins to loosen. I don't know if you ever got a chance to go to California and begin to see where some of the best vines in the world are grown. But if you ever get a chance to go and see it, it's really remarkable. There's several things that you wouldn't expect as you're looking at a vineyard. First of all, what we see here in this text is that the fruit of the vine, it doesn't actually grow when the soil is nice and fresh. Really, what they found is they have to produce rocky soil. It has to create hardship for the vine. In fact, the vine has to actually become near death for it to even begin to produce any fruit at all. I think that if we study the vine in the vineyard, you begin to see that that's exactly what Jesus is talking about. He's like, I have designed you to need me. The Christian life is about dependence on the vine that wants to supply you with every single thing that you would need in Christ Jesus. Right? And there's a picture of this vine that says, I can't actually produce any fruit unless there's a death involved. Unless I get out of the way and connect to the true source that wants to work through me. Because the branch doesn't have any life in itself, right? It has to stay connected to the source. And maybe you're in a season of pruning. It feels like pain, it feels like it hurts. It feels like loss, right? But Jesus says, I'm always making room for something better. That's what he's doing as he's working in our lives in that way. Fruit is the byproduct, not the goal. So it comes from intimacy with Jesus, right? Dependence on Christ. When we're connected, we bear much fruit. And this is the fruit of God's Spirit working in us. When we yield to God's Spirit, we produce the fruit of the Spirit, joy. So again, joy is not the absence of hardship. Joy is the awareness of God's presence in the middle of our hardship. Joy is the fruit that is born by abiding in Jesus. We begin to see from his perspective, we begin to believe in his promise and surrender to his power, right? So even when you forgot to text them back, even when you're late for the drop-off, even when you still haven't finished the project, and you still have the laundry and the dishes and the bills, and you still have to plan that vacation, even when the fear sets in, even when the desire to control sets in, the desire for comfort sets in, when all the distractions of life are flying at you, Jesus says, here is the way. You are designed to flourish by trusting in me. Let go. Give it to me. Abide in me, surrender to me, even in the hardship. Because God's not trying to crush you in the trial. He wants to develop something in you through it. He wants you to have joy. He wants you to have joy that endures. And it begins with running to Jesus, clinging to Jesus, and surrendering to Jesus. Let's pray.