Philippians 2:12-18 Complaining Can Cripple the Unity of the Church

We challenge the kind of grumbling and complaining that fractures a church and makes our mission harder than it needs to be. We walk through Philippians 2:12-18 to show how fear and trembling, Spirit-empowered obedience, and truth-shaped unity help us shine as lights. 
• grumbling and disputing as a direct threat to unity and mission 
• Paul’s “my beloved” tone and his pastoral urgency for obedience 
• working out salvation with fear and trembling as a lifestyle, not a moment 
• why “once saved, always saved” becomes dangerous when it excuses bad fruit 
• God working in us as both comfort and empowerment for real change 
• Israel’s wilderness complaints as a warning and a mirror for the church 
• Jesus’ prayer for oneness and how unity makes the gospel credible 
• the difference between superficial unity and unity aligned with Scripture 
• why the church must avoid giving the world easy ammunition 

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Transcript

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We all know when grumbling and complaining crosses a line. Crosses a line. It ruins a trip. It ruins a holiday. It ruins an event. It ruins uh uh the team dynamics and and it is it ends up costing you something. It costs the church something. Whenever the grumbling and complaining inside of a church stirs up so much issues that you're no

When Complaining Breaks Community

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longer united, and that's of great concern to what we've been reading about. It's of great concern to Paul, who has in fact written this book of Philippians in part to help deal with grumbling and complaining that is creating disunity in the church. Grumbling and complaining lead to disunity. And when the church is in a position of disunity, it hampers the mission and calling that we have been given. And that's what today's portion of scripture is all about. The church has a purpose, you know it, I know it. Are we going to fulfill it? Or are we going to get stuck grumbling and complaining and living a life of disunity? Philippians chapter two, verses twelve through eighteen. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be poor proud, and that I uh that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you also should be glad and rejoice with me. First, first, let me just say, um, how would you like if I started every sermon by calling all of you my beloved? Right? My beloved. My beloved. Paul does. Paul loves this church. He does. He just loves this church. Um, and this passage naturally connects to the material that that was right before it. Paul is uh basically directly

Paul’s Love And A Call To Obey

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directly connecting the humble example of Christ that we talked about last week to the immediate problem of the disunity and the dissension that the Philippian church is experiencing right now. Remember that this entire section started with Paul uh basically commanding the church to live in a manner worthy of the gospel. And one of the ways that you do that is to live in humility and in service. And by the way, Jesus Christ, the reason why we even have church, is the perfect example of service and humility. Therefore, Paul says, you could also translate that, because of all of that, remember to do this. Since all of that is true, since everything I've been talking about matters, and you know it matters, and you've done such a good job obeying up until this point, why don't you continue to obey? Why don't you continue to do this so that we can be united together so that we can end this journey with rejoicing? This being what we will break down in a minute. In light of all Paul has said up until this point, especially the very real and visceral example of Jesus Himself, the Philippian church should keep up the good work of obedience. Paul says, You've been doing a good job. Keep going. Don't make me waste my time. And then he narrows the focus. Stop the grumbling and the disputing. Uh fight for unity, get to unity and do it with fear and trembling. And finally, he ties the struggle to be blameless and pure to his own struggle and labor with them, so that in the very end, if they are obedient, his effort won't be wasted and they will land in a place where they can share joy, a joy that he will talk about again next week or the week after that. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. As a Pentecostal, I like this. I like this. I like this verse because it calls attention to the need for effort in your relationship with Christ. You gotta work. You gotta work. There is a phrase, and you've all heard this phrase in this room. Once saved, always saved. Raise

Fear And Trembling Vs Cheap Assurance

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your hand if you've heard it. Now, there's some caveats to this phrase and what I'm about to say. There's levels to this. Some people use this phrase and they break it down in a way that actually makes sense if you will listen to them. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who use this phrase, they don't go that far. And so it's very a surface level phrase. And what it ends up being, and you know, you know this in this room, it's like saying I got saved when I was 10 at VBS, which I got saved when I was at six at VBS. So that's there's nothing wrong with that. The problem happens is that that person takes that moment and then says, I'm good, even though they're a raging alcoholic. Or they say, I'm good, even though they gossip nonstop. They say, I'm good, even though they don't go to church, they don't pray, don't they read their scripture. And unfortunately, I'm not sure if that is good. I'm not sure if they are good, because I don't see that described in scripture as being good. You see the problem with it, at least the popular use of that phrase, it's not a very good view of what the gospel is. It's not healthy and does not produce good fruit, and you will be known by your fruit. So if you're not producing godly fruit, is God on the inside of you? I don't know. I'm not the judge and jury, but I'm gonna go and warn some people that you might need to reconsider some stuff in fear and trembling. It's okay to have a little fear and trembling in your relationship with God. I don't want to mess this up. I don't want to waste this opportunity God has given me. This relationship with God, it means something, and so I'm going to do something about it. I'm gonna do something with the good news in my life. That's why I like this verse. It puts some pressure on our side of the relationship with God. Here's what this scripture doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you produce your own salvation. That's not what this verse means. It doesn't mean that somehow you justify yourself before God. You can't do that. It doesn't mean that somehow you punch your own ticket to get to heaven. That's not that's not it. It doesn't mean it doesn't mean you're gonna live a perfect life. Doesn't mean that your your your efforts will be good enough. Here's what it means: it means that you appreciate and cherish the grace given to you so much that you work as if you could lose it. You see the difference? It's a mindset difference, it's an attitude difference. I want to live like I can lose it because it's gonna make it's gonna make me think about things a little more clearly. It's gonna make me pay attention to what I'm doing, what I'm watching, what I'm saying, uh, who I'm hanging out with, what does my life look like? Once saved, always saved, doesn't really matter when your attitude is I want to serve God every second of every day. And there's a little fear and trembling connected to that. There's a carefulness we must develop as we figure out what it means not just to be saved, but to live saved. Right? There's there's a difference between those two things. You can be saved, but are you living saved? Because you're not saved just to something, you're saved for something. You're saved for a different type of lifestyle, you're saved to to reconnect with God, you're saved for something. It's not just about one single moment, it's about a lifestyle. Lifestyle. Some people want to look at that fear and trembling, and I I read a couple of commentaries on this just to wrap my head around it, just to make sure I knew what we were talking about. And over over time, particular groups of people have tried to sort of make this less sharp.

God Supplies The Power To Change

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This fear and trembling thing. They try they try to they want to make sure they try to change the translation to sort of be less intense. Unfortunately, all the best scholarship says there's no way around it. This is an intense statement, this fear and trembling in relation to God. It's intense. It is intense. In fact, I think that's why right after this, Paul says and tells the church, right? God, right, fear and trembling, work out your salvation, fear and trembling, because God is working in you to do this for his own glory. Right? You're not doing this thing on your own. So, yes, fear and trembling is harsh. It is uh it's sharp, it is something that should make you pay attention. But right after this, Paul lays it out that it is God Himself who wants you to do this, it's God Himself who empowers you to do this, it's God Himself who is giving you the tools to do this. So, as hard as it might be to work out your salvation in fear and trembling, and that is your calling, God's not calling you to do something that He's not also equipping you to do Himself. Right? God is stepping into your life in grace and mercy and the work of the Holy Spirit, and he is giving you the eyes to see your life in a certain way. He is giving you literally the willpower that you need. He is giving you literally the changing of synapses in your brain. If you're dealing with addiction, he will change those things for you so that you can be a person who is working out their salvation in fear and trembling. Happy Father's Day, happy Father's Day. He will supply, he will supply our ability to do what he's called us to do. So if he's calling us to live a life of fear and trembling, he's gonna also supply us the ability to do that. So we're not doing it on our own. We can't do it on our own. I think that that's the trick, is to understanding that he calls us to do very difficult things, impossible things, but he doesn't ask us to do those things and just say, Well, good luck. Nothing more, Dave. I'm sure you've been to work sites before where they give you a task and you show up and nothing is there that you possibly needed. He ain't doing that to us. He's not doing that. Shannon, God is not taking and giving you a job description and then sends you on your workway and you get there and and there is nothing there for you to do. There's no phone, there's no camera, there's no computer. Good luck. Good luck making this video, Shannon. That's not what he's doing to us. So while fear and trembling is a sharp call, it's a hard call, it is comforting to me to know that the call comes from him and the ability to fulfill the job is also from him. And that's important because the call to unity, the call to stop grumbling and complaining is it's difficult. And that ties us back into the overarching point of what Paul has been preaching about, living in unity in the church. Since chapter one, he's been talking about this unity, be unified. And it takes work and it matters, and you have to try, and God will supply. Didn't mean to make that rhyme, but it did. Why does it matter that we're unified? Well, I won't go into too much detail here, but Paul here, it's hard to catch unless you really, really know the Old Testament, which a lot of people do. But the language Paul uses here is the same language that's used in the Old Testament to describe the Israelites. Paul is literally comparing the Philippian

Israel’s Pattern And Our Calling

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church to the historical Israel. It's a continuation in Paul's mind between the mission of Israel and the mission of the church. It's the same thing. What is one of the things that the children of Israel are famous for, in particular in the book of Exodus, as they are leaving Egypt? They're grumbling and complaining. God calls them a crooked and perverse generation because they're grumbling and complaining every step of the way. God delivers them, they're complaining. God splits the Red Sea, they're complaining. God gives them manna, they're complaining. God gives them quail, they're complaining, complaining, complaining, complaining, complaining, grumbling, and it keeps them from the promised land. It keeps them from being who they were called to be. What was the point of God calling out a people, calling out a nation out of the nations? Right? He had a purpose for that nation. In fact, it was very common knowledge to understand that the nation of Israel was called to be a light. And yet, they continually fell short of that command. Matter of fact, in the in the Sermon on the Mount, which we talked about, you know, probably about half a year ago or more, Paul or uh Jesus is teaching Jewish people, and he is telling them that you're going to be salt and light to the world. And already he was connecting historical Israel to the church, and the mission is the same. And so the mission is the same here. Be unified, be a light, don't be like the world, be like the kingdom of heaven. And Paul says to the church, hold on to that. Hold on to the word of life, he says, which is the gospel, and make me proud. Don't make me feel like I've wasted my time with all of you. And even in Paul's mind, even if he has to sacrifice himself, his very life for them, so that they live up to the standard that he has been preaching to them about, it will be a cause of rejoicing that he has to die for that. And if they do the right thing, if they live in obedience, it's a rejoicing they can be unified in and experience and share together. When we do the right things, when we live the right way, when the gospel is ahead of us and we are living in a manner worthy of the gospel, we walk into a season and an attitude of rejoicing that supersedes anything that we can experience. And this becomes important in a couple of weeks. In one of the last recorded prayers of Jesus in uh the gospel of John, he prays for his disciples and his followers. And he has a very interesting section in one of these prayers. Let me read it. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word. He's talking about the disciples and the people who would believe because of the disciples. And he's praying that they

Jesus Prays For Perfect Oneness

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may all be one. Just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. A lot of unification there. The glory that you have given me, I give to them, that they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and you and me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and love uh love them even as you love me. Perfect unity. Jesus is praying for perfect unity, just as he is unified with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. He is saying that the church should be unified in that process and we should be unified together. Why? Because there is a power uh in our unity to display who God is. It is because of the unification of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. There's a power there. There's a power in the disciples believing in that. There's a power in the church being unified underneath that that displays who we are. We are lights of the world, partially because we are unified like Jesus is unified. We are one like Jesus is one. But unity is not merely tied to people who just seem to get along. It's more than that. This is a unity born of fear and trembling, of figuring out what does salvation mean for me. Fear and trembling and trying to figure out what does it mean to follow Christ today that matters. I suppose the trap, and it is a trap, of using the word unity in a modern sense is that we sort of make that word mean something it doesn't really mean. Oh, uh we we just overlook issues and problems. We let people do whatever they want to do just to keep the peace. The group doesn't this group doesn't even believe

Unity With Truth Not Peacekeeping

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in in Jesus, but they call themselves a church, right? So in the name of unity, we're gonna be unified with them. It's unity for the sake of unity. And I get, I guess all that's okay. It's not. No, no, that's not the unity we're talking about. That's not healthy unity. We have the perfect example of God becoming man, being crucified, rising again in Jesus Christ, who is the Lord, capital T-H E, capital L-O-R-D. The Lord. He teaches us, he gives us instruction, not just in his life, but in the very words he spoke. And so in fear and trembling, fear and trembling, right? Are you catching this? Fear and trembling. You're we we should be afraid that we might get this thing wrong. In fear and trembling, we look at his example and we unify in that. We unify in Christ, we unify following his example, which is concrete. There is a concrete right and wrong in scripture. There's a concrete way that Paul preaches the gospel. There's a concrete way in which Peter preaches the gospel. There's a concrete way in which the gospel is given to us in the gospels themselves. And in fear and trembling, we latch onto that in unity. And in that unity, in that unity, we gain a power to be salt and light to the world. Unity cannot merely be superficial. If unity was super, if it was as easy as just saying, you know what, it's not worth it. You do whatever you want to do, I'll do whatever I want to do, and we'll call ourselves a church. If it was that simple, we wouldn't even have the letter of uh of Philippians. Paul wouldn't care. Just as so long as they called themselves a church and there was a loose connection to Jesus, that would have been enough. We wouldn't have half the New Testament. Peter's letters, John's letters, James. We wouldn't have those letters if uh superficial unity was enough. But it was a specific unity aligned to a specific message of the gospel and a specific and exact message, example of Jesus Christ that mattered. That's what we line up behind. That's what we unify under. Unity for the sake of unity is powerless. Unity aligned with the right, the correct understanding of the gospel. It's powerful. As I was reading this, I'm almost finished. As I was reading this, I got curious about this. Right? We're supposed to be the church is supposed to be an example. We are supposed to be something good, a force for good in our world. People might not like us, people might reject us, but the the attacks they bring against us should never be about our lack

Bad Church Headlines And Real Perspective

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of care or lack of integrity or our lack of connection or lack of unity. Again, not just a loose unity, but uh a unity uh aligned with the correct way of viewing things. And so I've thought about that, and then I've thought about over the past probably year and a half of all the negative stories reported in national news agencies about the church. And I thought, ooh, that's rough. And so I did some research, I did some digging, I used AI, I used Google, and I basically just there's basically like 28 major news stories, negative news stories about the church that made it to a national level, whether through the AP News or Fox News, MSNBC, but there are about 28 negative major news stories that were reported. Pretty bad ones, too. Now, some of these, right? Some were reported at the beginning of last year, and now they have clarity and it was not what it was actually intended to be. But it right that that's that that was the spiritual response. That was that was it. It's like, oh uh right, not good, especially if the church's calling is to be unified and to be an example. Well, that ain't it, right? What's my point in sharing this negativity with the church as a whole? Well, first of all. And and uh this took a little bit of reflection, and God helped me with it. For every one major story that was reported on a national level about a church doing something dumb or a pastor doing something dumb, or someone in a church doing something dumb, there are probably 3,000 churches who did the exact right thing in that in that area, in that region. One out of 3,000 ain't bad. Okay? And there's more than 3,000 churches in America. So it's never as bad as what you what you want to think it is. Every time something bad happens and you get that moment, just think in your head, okay, that's one church. And in that same town, there are probably 10 or 12 churches who are doing the exact right thing the right way. They're not perfect, but they are living good examples, okay? So that's the first thing I want you to understand whenever you think about some of the bad examples the church can set, is that it's it's one tiny glimpse, one tiny percentage of what's actually really happening in the world for the church. So never beat yourself up. Never never feel like the church is losing just because the world likes to elevate the negativity. The world doesn't care about the churches who are doing the right thing. If a church is doing the right thing, they're living the right way, they're not making news, they're not doing all kinds of stuff, guess what? The world doesn't care. They only care about elevating the negativity, they only care about the failures, they only care about the wrong. That's all they care about. And so never get trapped in believing the media's narrative about the effectiveness and the healthiness of the church, the global church. Yes, churches do the bad thing, but again, for every church that does something really bad, there are just so many churches doing the exact right thing in silence. Okay? So don't beat yourself up and don't get pulled into that trap. But the world does care, and it is our responsibility, partially as a church, to not give them any ammunition. Don't give the church ammunition. Right? Let's not be part of the problem. Let's be the solution so that whenever the world does attack us, when the world does put a microscope on us, when the world does want to dig into us and oh, they believe this, they believe that, what they will see on the inside is a unity. A unity aligned in Jesus Christ and his example, a unity aligned in Scripture, a unity aligned through the power of the Holy Spirit, and so that when they look at us, they see Jesus because that's what Jesus' prayer was. They will see your unity, they will see that you are one, and they will know my name, and they will know that you are God and that you love them just like you love me. We have a job to do as a church. We don't need another program, we don't need another building. Trust me, I want one. I want more programs. We don't need a bigger worship team, even though I'm sure Carrie and Dave would love that. We don't need anything else, no more technology. I don't need to preach better. Carrie doesn't need to sing better. What we need is unification so that whenever we rub elbows with the world, which we are called to do, the very unity, the very existence of this church declares the glory of God. Everything else on top of that is nice. But we got to start with being unified in Jesus Christ. Put away selfish ambition and conceit. Be unified in Christ, and in that unity walk into the world, displaying the glory of God. Now that's not easy. For our church, it probably is easy. It's it's smaller, we know each other, even if there are disagreements, we we work through it, we're good. But there's other churches out there. There's other churches out there who view things slightly different than we view things. This church believes this, this church believes that. At the end of the day, a good chunk of that doesn't really matter. It just doesn't matter. Now some does. There are some differences out there, and and we have every right as Bible-believing Christians to speak out against them. Paul spoke out against wrongness in the church. Right? The call to unity is not a call to let people do whatever they want to do. Paul is literally calling out wrong in church, okay? And yet he is unified with them. That's not what this unity is. So I that was the danger in preaching this. That was in the back of my mind as I preached the desire for unity. I didn't want anyone to walk away thinking and believing that, well, well, just I don't want to cause problems, so I'm just gonna leave this issue alone. Sometimes that's okay because it's not a salvific issue and it really doesn't matter all that much. But sometimes it absolutely matters. And we have every right to say, and I'll say from the stage, we have every right to say that people viewing homosexuality in a nonsenseful way is not correct. We have every right to look at a church that has no issue with people getting drunk as wrong. We have no right to look at another church member or group in a church and we know that they are gossiping up a storm. We have every right to address that and still be unified under Christ because it's the unity in Christ that gives us the authority and the framework to know that they're doing their wrong thing. So I just want you to understand that nuance. That nuance there. Unity is not a call to not have conflict. It's a call that, where possible, your own conceit and selfish ambition to put that aside, right? That's part of it. Some of the problems we have have nothing to do with scripture, everything to do with personality. And we gotta we gotta fix that. And God gives us the tools to do that. But sometimes unity is about holding on to the example of Jesus and pulling people along into that. That's what Paul is doing here. And elsewhere in Scripture. I should have written it down, the the references, but he basically calls people to follow his example as he follows Christ's example. There is a right and wrong way, be unified in the right way. And whenever we do that, we gain a power and an authority and an example to do what God has been calling the people of God to do from the very beginning, to be a light. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we love you. Holy Spirit, uh I pray even right now that you begin to convict our hearts and minds of any bit of just immaturity, selfishness, conceit that might be in our hearts and minds that is causing uh and there's no big issues in this church, but you know, there might be issues at home, or it

Prayer For Gratitude And Unity

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might be things I'm unaware of. So just convict us. Convict us, and then through your Holy Spirit and through your grace and mercy, let us get over it. I pray that we would be a church that does not grumble, but does not complain. Lord, let us have a spirit of thanksgiving. Let us have a spirit of appreciation, let us have uh a heart and mind aligned with who you are, and in that process, Lord, we just we throw aside a lot of things that might divide us. Help us, Lord. Help us, Lord. I pray that we would walk in our divine calling as a church. Lord, we don't need you to step into this place and give us a word of the Lord. We've got the word of the Lord. We're called to be salt and light. And Lord, I before I beg for a a spoken word of God, I pray that we would take your word seriously as it is. Help us, Lord. Holy Spirit, even right now, begin to anoint us for the task of being a good church. Lord, I pray that you pour out your gifts on every single person in this church. Gifts that edify the church, gifts that that make the church successful, Lord. Wisdom and understanding, leadership, hospitality, Lord, prophecy, teaching, giving. Lord, I pray that you just pour out your gifts on this place and that we would be a healthy, spirit-filled church. And Lord, I pray that you would develop the fruit of the Spirit in each and every individual's life, Lord, so that when we when we get out in the world, God, that we just, man, we just, we're different. We're different, and we draw people to you, Lord. Let us be unified in that, Lord. In Jesus' mighty name I pray, and we all set together. Amen.