[SERMON] Joy in Chains | Philippians 1

• In this message from Philippians 1, Pastor Cyle explores one of the most counterintuitive truths in Scripture: the gospel travels well in chains. Writing from house arrest in Rome, Paul didn't just survive hardship — he used it. The guards assigned to watch him heard the gospel. His imprisonment emboldened other believers. What looked like a setback became a setup.
• Pastor Cyle walks through the "prisons" we all carry — addiction, bitterness, comparison, shame, depression, unforgiveness, spiritual apathy — and challenges us with a powerful question: What if the very thing you wish God would remove is the very thing He wants to use?
• Key takeaway: Mature believers stop making everything about themselves. Joy is possible before the breakthrough comes — because it comes from Christ, not circumstances.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Today we are uh we're in between series, kind of getting into uh a new season with this summer, which is uh um our what we normally do in the summer is we bring our children in with us at all services, which should be fun at this service because it's gonna be super packed. Um but we do Hodlewood, which we look at, which is Heart of the Lakes and Hollywood blended together. I gotta start saying that because then everybody knows. Uh so that's why we call it Hoddlewood, because we like to put hodl in everything, which is Heart of the Lakes. Yes, it should be hodl. It's still Hodle because that's what they called it before I got here, and that's what it is. So it doesn't make sense, but I love it. Uh so we mash that into everything we can. So we'll have Hoddlewood, which we will be looking at the cultural vernacular of our time, movies, that to we're gonna be uncovering the gospel truth contained within movies, because God's truth is God's truth wherever you find it in the world. And if you find it in movies, guess what? Still God's truth, because God's truth is God's truth. And so it's unchanging. And so we bring the kids in and we kind of look at clips of movies and we talk about the themes of those movies that kind of point back to God's truth. And so we'll have different for different generations, and it'll just be a time we can be the church. But until we get there, we are gonna spend four weeks in the book of Philippians. We're gonna go through each of the four chapters of Philippians, and so today we're going through the book of Philippians. Uh, the responsive reading that we did earlier, that Ryan led you guys through, was from the first part of Philippians. We're gonna start a little bit later in the chapter today for what we're gonna go through. And that was a gift. The responsive reading was a gift to one of my friends from my life group who said he misses responsive readings because they come from Ohio from a different church. And so I said, I got you. And so we did a responsive reading today. We're gonna do one every week. That one was for him. I told him last service, the rest of them will be for you. So uh yeah. Uh we are a church and our culture of honors care about what the people you care about care about, and he said, Hey, I miss those and said, I got you, so we'll do one. So, and we're gonna do four, actually. So, for all of you who like responsive readings, if you don't like them, tough. So, uh yeah. Read them anyways. So I guess what it is. But we're gonna get into Philippians, and I want to give you some background about Philippians. In Philippians, Paul is likely writing this under house arrest. That's what we believe, as scholars believe, in Rome around the years 80, 60, and 62. This is about 30 years after Christ uh died on the cross. Paul's been doing ministry, he's been traveling the world, and so Paul finds himself in Rome, and here's what's happening. Paul is a Roman citizen. He was born in Turkey, which was a Roman territory, and so he was Roman, also a Jew, but he was not from Israel, and so his identity was a Jewish Roman. And so he was a Roman citizen, and if you if you were a citizen of Rome, you were had certain um allowances that the non-citizens didn't have. And so Paul was also quite well known after many years of ministry, traveling the globe, sharing uh the pretty much all across the known world, uh, shipwrecks, imprisonments, all these things. Paul finds himself at odds with kind of the leadership of the church and of different areas. And so what they do is they arrest him, and Paul actually makes an appeal to Rome himself, and so he gets sent to Rome to appeal to Caesar. He actually appeals to Caesar. Now, this is a pretty crazy thing back then, just as it would be today. Now, I don't know if you know this, but if I got a speed ticket, I wouldn't say, Oh, I would like to talk to the president about this. So, like, and they would say, Yes, sure, go to Washington and you could talk to Trump about it. So that's like what this would be. Paul was not just some Roman citizen, he was somebody who kind of had established this religion across the globe, and he'd become known. So, and as a Roman citizen, he would appeal to Rome, and they like allowed him to go have this kind of appeal to Caesar. So he finds himself in Rome and he finds himself under house arrest. Anyone ever been under house arrest? Okay. Nobody. Yeah, COVID, I guess, yeah. Sorry, depending on your political things. No, you weren't. Yes, you were. Okay, we're in the middle. So uh political lanings aside. Uh I asked that in the first service. Nobody there admitted to it either. So, um, yeah. But Paul finds himself under house arrest. And house arrest for him was house arrest. But he was chained, they didn't have ankle monitors, so he's literally chained to another human being, a Roman guard. That was house arrest. So they've chained him. We I don't know really what that looked like. How I don't know how much chain there was in between them, but they were chained to someone else. Uh anyone ever been chained to someone else before? Okay. Listen, you all have. I had handcuffs as a kid, and I had handcuffs as a kid, and my brother was one of those mean guys who would hide the key from me, and we'd I'd be chained to somebody else until we find the key, or until my mom made him because we were mad and fighting, and then and then so made him get back. So anyone have that kind of incident happen? Okay, well, you just had better childhoods than I had, okay? It is what it is. Anyone ever been in a three-legged race? Okay, so you know kind of what it's like. You know, if you're not on the same page, you don't get a go, you fall, you don't win the race, that kind of thing. Uh so that's that's what happened. That's not what happened to uh, you know, Malin. She fell out of a camper, not three-legged race, just so you know. So just be careful. But um, but ultimately, uh Paul's finding himself in Rome, kind of appealing to Caesar, and this is his first imprisonment in Rome. I've actually been to his prison in Rome called the Mamitime Prison, which was the last one he was in prison, and it was not good. So it's a bad hole in the ground with a hole in the ceiling, and it's wet, mildewy, damp. They would just kind of like pour your food in over this gray. It's awful. No light. That is the prison he was in at the end, because as his ministry grew, they got kind of more mad at him. And so at the end, it was it was really bad. But it's not that point yet when he's writing this. And so he's writing from prison to the church in Philippi. And Philippi, that's why it's Philippians, and a lot of the letters in the Bible were written to churches. So Paul's letter to the we call it the book of Colossians, was to the church of Colosse. Um, with the Thessalonica was the book of Thessalonians, Philippians is the is to the church and Philippi. And so he's writing to a church that he had done ministry in, and he's kind of writing to his people. And so that's what's happening here. And so we find this moment described in Acts 28. Now we're not going to be in Acts 28, but we can just kind of show you in the history of Acts is kind of a record of the early church which we find Paul in. And it says in Acts 28, and when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself with the soldier who guarded him. And so we know he was chained. We believe this is the time period when he's writing the book of Philippians, when he's chained to another Roman soldier. And Paul was likely chained wrist to wrist with a rotating series of Roman soldiers. So, like when they would get off shift, they would take off the chains, put on the next guy, and they would kind of just rotate their shift, and so they would they would guard uh Paul. And so, sort of like you, you know, we have that kind of same thing now in our jail system. They rotate guards, they were rotating people. But for Paul, um, while he was in prison, Paul wrote Philippians, uh, but it became one of the most joy-filled books in the Bible. So when you want to tell people where to go in the Bible to find joy, go to Philippians. Like, if you want to learn more about joy, go read the book of Philippians and it'll teach you about how to have more joy or where we find our joy. But the funny thing is, Paul's writing that book while in prison, while he's chained up in jail. And so, for a lot of us, that changes the perspective. Like in a bad situation, Paul finds himself in great joy. This wasn't the first time he was in jail. He was in jail with Silas, and they sang, they sang praises, and they sang songs, and earthquake came and broke the wall so they could get out. They didn't go because they didn't want to, they were had been preaching to the guards, they didn't want the guards to get in trouble because these are now their brothers in Christ. So they wanted to stay here so they didn't get in trouble. So Paul found joy in some of the most tragic situations. He'd been shipwrecked a lot of times, almost died a lot of times. People hated him all over the place, yet he still found joy in Jesus. And so you can find joy in life. And I so I've I've been guilty of having too much joy on many occasions. I regularly, I told the last service this, about twice a year, I had people have sit-down conversations with me and say, say, you are annoyingly positive, and I don't like it, and you need to stop. So this is a thing. I always think I'm just trying to be like the Bible says, but I get accused of this quite often. I'm guilty of it, so I will say I'm guilty of it. But I do believe that comes from a place of joy that we need to be positive in all of our situations because the scriptures tell us to. Like we see Paul. Paul was not some person who went from place to place. Oh, woe is me. I gotta tell people about Jesus again. I'm gonna almost die again. Like, no, he went with joy into those situations because he loved the Lord. That's the ministry. And really, the book of Philippians tells us some about that. And so we also know that every guard assigned to watch Paul heard the gospel. So not only did he just find joy in the situation, he took it, he took the opportunity to say, hey, if you're gonna guard me, you're gonna hear about Jesus. Like, I'm gonna tell you about my Lord, my God, the God I serve. And so uh that's what's happening when he's doing this. And uh, you know, I Mary Baird does this when she goes to the hospital, like, right? That's what you just said to her, wasn't it? Yeah. She's like, like you, and like when you and you go to the hospital. Yeah. That's literally Mary Baird. And like uh, Mary Baird, one of the great things about Mary Baird is she she goes to the hospital and helps people, but that's just who she is in that situation. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you about Jesus. And so uh I've heard this from nurses, as we have quite a few. There's something special about Christians when they come and they face terrible situations and tragedy and health issues when they actually live out their faith, and then there's the Christians that come out and don't live out their faith, right? They're like they're miserable, they're awful, they treat them bad. That's not really Christ you're showing, that's yourself. Something when Christ really is changing your heart and you have joy, it changes the way that you deal with those situations. Because some prisons become pulpits. Paul, his actual prison, became a pulpit with which he tells the gospel to all those he came in contact with. Like when Mary goes to the hospital. She takes it, that's a prison, so what? You're in you're there, they keep they weren't gonna let you out until they want you to leave. And so you take a moment to share the gospel, right? Many of you do this, I know, because I go to the hospital, and people tell me, Oh, yeah, this is the most positive person here ever. Uh, it's great. But that's the kind of people that we need to be. And we're all often in different prisons in life. Not actual chains, not actual hospital rooms, although many of us have those moments, but there are things that imprison us, and we'll talk about. But I want to jump into Paul, Phil Philippians, where Paul says, I want to go jump down to verse 12, kind of after what our responsive reading was mostly about. And I want to talk about this. It says, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. So he's he's writing and saying, Hey, I'm in jail. But this is great because I can tell people about Jesus. And it's going to advance the gospel. Now, do you live your life that way? When bad things happen, do you think, oh, this is great. I'm so glad this is happening. Now I can tell people about Jesus. Anyone guilty of that? No. Okay, okay. Paul was guilty of that. I had this moment last uh week, so Rob Freeman, who's the chairman of our governance board, he got up last week and he's the guy that read the letter at Thank Me for 10 years, and it was very great. But he left for vacation, right? Like right after that, he left Sunday night or money more. I think it was Sunday night. And so leading up into that, he had had a horrible week and a horrible few days. And on Friday, he was uh rushing to complete some tasks. Uh Julie's car is Julie's husband. So you guys just got back?

unknown 11:36

No, I they're gone.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

They're gone. He's gone with Maya. Julie's still here. But they've got multiple broken cars. Julie's car's broken, his truck. So he had a truck that's working, puts a pallet at the back of his truck, didn't secure it down because he was busy and you know, as all things, he's driving, and all of a sudden someone pulls out in front of him, he slams on the brake. And guess what happened to that pallet? Back window just smashed. Um and so, and so he he called, it was the end of the day, so he's calling companies to try to fix it. Nobody can fix it until like Tuesday, but he's gone out of town, so he likes suram wraps the whole thing or whatever. And it's it rained all weekend. It's terrible. So he's telling me he's at church on Sunday, and then no joke, late that night, I get a text from Rob, and he's on the way to the airport, and a deer jumps in front of the car, smashes the car, right? It's it's a mess. Now, just one, two, three, all this stuff. Now, I lived through a year and a half of that. This is Julie. Yeah, I lived through a year and a half of that. Like, hey, we're gonna be positive about this, we're gonna have joy. And so Rob's Rob's final text was a you can't do anything but just laugh. That that's that's but like that's that's the difference between joy being in your heart. Yeah, it's not fun. He had a horrible week. Um, but when you have joy, those things that happen, they advance the gospel, right? You can utilize those for the good. And that's just a silly kind of real life example, but we all have those things that we go through with health, finances, friends, relationships, you name it. We all have those moments. Paul shows us how he went through a very difficult situation, which the risk was going to Rome. They could kill you. They could stick you in a Colosseum, right? They could, you could, that could be the end. You could fight tigers, and that's it. And so ultimately, the reality is Paul is using every moment for the good of the gospel. And what looked like a setback for Paul became a setup for the gospel. What about in your life? Are this are the setbacks setups for the gospel for you? Or are they like, oh, woe is me, here's another one. Like it's perspective. And Philippians continues on and says this. Remember, you guys get the yellow part. That's you, if you don't, if you don't know that. Uh, so that has become known throughout the whole imperial guard into all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. So what Paul is saying is, you lock me up. I don't care. I'll just tell the guards about Jesus, watch them become Christians, and then watch them go tell the other guards about Jesus, watch them become Christians, and good luck, right? You can't stop the gospel, you can't stop Jesus. And so Paul is telling the Philippians, they thought they were locking me up. They were just doing me a favor. Now they gave me influence in the capital in Rome. And so your suffering that you may be going through may actually be strengthening someone else's faith. Real, real followers of Christ, when you suffer and you do it publicly, and people see how you do it well because you have joy that comes from within, it changes people. It changes them. I've seen people pass on from this world as church who are just men and women of profound faith, and it it rocks me to the core because I'm like, am I gonna go out like that? Am I gonna still love Jesus with every breath and use every moment to tell the nurses about Jesus while I know I'm with my cognitive right mind to know that I'm gonna pass at any moment? Would I be glorifying God all the way out? I mean, we have people that have just met Jesus with a with just, they were sold out. It it rocks me. I've been a pastor for 28 years. Would you go out the same way? Loving the Lord? Would you go through your hospital situations and health diagnoses and your and your breakups and your frustrations and your financial issues? Are you praising the Lord and having joy in the midst of the struggle? So people who are watching you can be strengthened in their faith? I I was fortunate this week to have a conversation with somebody, and they said the reason they were meeting with me, because last week, during the thank you video to me, Maylin over, or not Maylin, Anna, not Maylin, uh Anna said in the video, they were going through a really rough time in their marriage, and she they met with me and it helped them through it. What they've been very public about that over the years, got up on stage, shared that with people. It's super helpful for people. So the person watched the video last week and said, Hey, I want to talk with you. And so we talked about it and said, Hey, because that video, I just thought maybe you could help me. That's how you go through a struggle and you use the joy of Christ to say, hey, God did something in me and he's doing something to me, and I want to help other people, even though I'm struggling, I want to see what God can do through it. It's profound, it's powerful. They didn't let that become a prison that they like didn't want people to know they struggled because guess what? We all struggle, especially if you're married, right? Marriage is a struggle. Parenting is a struggle, right? Life is a struggle, right? High school is a struggle, right? So ultimately, we want to use those struggles to strengthen someone else's faith. And some of us, we are we're in chains. And some people are chained by addiction. Some of us are, you know, actual addiction, but we always think addiction. We think, oh, those people are bad or drugs, alcohol. How about addiction to food, right? Addiction to video games, television, media, right? Yeah. He's volunteering. Video games, right here. I love it. Right? Yeah, it's not a good thing, right? So I love it. I love it. I love it. Roblox! Right? Um, yeah, I love it. But addiction, what is your addiction? To your craft, your hobby, to your comfort, right? Uh, to you to your negativity. There's a lot of addictions that we don't want to admit because that addiction word is a bad word, right? What about what about we're chained by our anger, our anxiety, our bitterness. One of our things in our culture of honor, it's on the wall over there, is to release bitterness because so many people are chained to bitterness. So bitter about the world, I'm so bitter about my situation, I'm so bitter about my health, I'm so bitter about my looks, so bitter about my way. Whatever it may be, we're bitter and we're chained by it and we're in prison. Loneliness? How about the the chains of comparison that I'm not like so-and-so, I don't have the money of so-and-so, or I don't have the time of so-and-so, or I don't look like so-and-so. How about the comparison chains? What about the chains of financial pressure? Or the chains from shame from your past. Who of you are just imprisoned by your past? The person that you were. Let me just I'll just tell you this. This is kind of this is a biblical truth. You can't undo what has been done. Whatever you've done, you've done. Move forward. I do not care your sins. People all the time don't tell the pastor, I don't want the pastor now. I don't care. I might like you more that you sinned, because you at least you were honest about it. So, like, because truthfully, we all have we all have pasts. You can't undo anything that you've ever done. The only thing you can actually do is move forward from this moment. That's it. And so you can use your past to glorify God, saying, I'm not that person anymore. I died that old life, I'm dead, I'm buried, and I rose and was born again in Jesus Christ. And I'm not, that's no longer me. And I want to share with you how I'm new, I'm different, I'm better because of Jesus. But some of us are chained and imprisoned by it. What about our fear of failure? Are you imprisoned by your fear of failure? You don't want to try anything new or different because I what if I might fail? Well, guess what? Failure is just one step in the process of figuring out a new way or better way to do something. Like failure, who cares? We fail all the time here at church. We regularly will say, Let's try it. If it doesn't work, we'll try something different. That's failure. We don't care. You guys might say, look at this guys, they always mess up. Like, no, we just figure out we'll try it. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else. Because ultimately, we want to keep moving forward and showing people the joy and good news of Christ, and there's different ways to try to do that. What about the chains of pornography? Now, all of you out there thinking, oh, it's not me. 70% or more of men in church look at pornography and 55% of women. That's the new statistics that have come out. So that chains of pornography is a lot of people in this room, probably. Depression. What about the chains of depression? Or what about the chains of secret sin? No one knows my sin. And because they don't know, it's chained me, it's imprisoned me. What about uh the chains of comfort? I just want to be comfortable all the time. I want to just relax and have the best future and the best retirement. I just want to be comfortable and enjoy my life. That's a prison. Because that's hard to keep up with all the time and keep other things at bay. What about the chains of unforgiveness, the chains of guilt, the chains of trying to control everything? Typically in a marriage, there's one, there's 50% of the people in marriages want to control something, right? What about the chains of just trying to control everything in your life, every situation, every outcome? It's a prison. What about the chains of spiritual apathy? This one's big for the church. Where people think they know everything and they've learned everything. I hate this one. This one's a pet peeve to me. Where people, I've been in church for so long, I've heard it all. You haven't heard it all. You're a liar because I've been in ministry 28 years, and I still learn new things every day when I look at the Bible. There are thousands and thousands, 86,000, I think, words in the Bible. There's thousands of verses. I don't know at all. I was lucky last week to have two nights in a row where I was at the Hoddle House, one night with my life group, but we didn't have a lot of people show up because they were out, whatever. And so we had a small group. And so with small group people, you get it, you get to go deeper. And so we were just sitting around talking about baptisms, we were talking about questions about we want God to answer, or we were talking about Adam and Eve because my Bible study was talking about the Garden of Eden the week before. So I was telling them about it. We were just talking about the things we want to know. Like there's so many things I don't know that I would love to know, and I'm never gonna know until I get to heaven. So we're the spiritual apathy is convincing ourselves that we know everything, and we just we are so knowledgeable when we're not, and it makes us apathetic in our spiritual relationship. So that was Sunday night. The Monday night, I gotta meet with my friends on my dinner with friends group. Now, if you've not done this, you're missing out. Dinner with friends is something that Amy and Stacey started. They'll open it up again. It's they take people who do not know each other, they put them together, they assign you a group, and then you have to have dinner with them four times, one a month, and then you'll switch groups. It's been awesome. The ribs we had, the cookies that PJ made, oh my goodness, they were insane, I'm not giving my group up. So I'm keeping them. Custom cookies, best ribs I think ever, besides Rob's rib, they're up there. So it's it's tight. But like when it comes down to it, like we just did the same thing. We talked about baptisms, we talked about questions like about the Bible and stuff. It was phenomenal. But what if you're not doing that kind of stuff, you become spiritually apathetic. Ah, blase. Life is so whatever. Like Jesus, uh, you know. That's what happens, but that becomes a prison for people. And we say we don't do it, but we do. Because if you're not excited about God and his word, his church and his people and serving him, you're spiritually apathetic. If life's about you, you're spiritually apathetic. If life is about him and you're making sacrifices regularly for him and his word and his people, you're not spiritually apathetic. What about the chains of the approval of others? That's a hard one. I want people to like me. I want people to care about me, know about me. Some of the ones I don't have in here, what about the chains of like health situations, health diagnoses, and what are the chains of broken relationships or relationship problems? Those are chains. And some of you, you know, right now, you're like, oh, that's my chain. That's my chain. Some of you, maybe you got three or four. And some chains are visible. We can see them, and some chains are hidden behind smiles. That's a tough one. This morning I went to say hi to Lana as she was doing greetings and doing bulletins. And um I said, How you doing? She says, I'm not gonna say fine. And I'm like, she's like, I read an article that church people say I'm fine, that's one of the greatest sins. And I actually agree with her because people say I'm fine all the time, put a smile on, I'm fine. You're not fine, right? I can tell by your creepy smile, you're not fine, right? Like, like you're not hiding anything, right? I'm fine. No, you're not, you're not. Like, look like a joker. So um we're not fine. That's the truth. A lot of us we're in we're in prison, we're chained to something. So, what are you gonna do to change that? And so just hiding behind a smile, maybe say, I'm not fine. And then when someone says I'm not fine, say, Hey, want to grab a coffee? Wanna wanna wanna get together? But we don't do that because we're spiritually apathetic. We want people to lie to us and say that I'm fine, so it does not put me in an inconvenience. How many times you walk away from somebody and you know they're not fine, like, oh, I'm glad they didn't tell me because I don't want to deal with that. So, like, I'm gonna miss out on my shows. I'm not gonna be able to have my me time. Um, you know, I don't want to deal with that. Because it is, I've been there before in the past, and I work really hard not to do that, especially as your pastor. Like, I don't care, call me whenever. I'll answer. Right? I'll try. If I see it, I have to see the phone call first. But ultimately, like those are things, those moments, like we become people who just want to lie to each other instead of saying, I'm I'm struggling, I'm in a prison, I'm chained to something, and I need help. And I think the truth is the gospel travels well in chains. That's the thing that we learn in Philippians. Paul's in chains, and the gospel travels well in chains because people are always watching how Christians are handling the imprisonment, the chains, the bondage. Philippians goes on in the next verse. And it says this some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition. Not sincerely, uh, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. What Paul's saying is, hey, there are other preachers. There are other preachers talking about Jesus, but they're doing it for the wrong reasons. They're doing it for selfish ambition. They're trying to gain. What he's saying, I don't want to gain anything, I'm in prison. I just want people to know about the good news of Jesus. Now, I'm there's the reality of there are a lot of preachers out there, and a lot of them do it for the wrong reasons. I believe this. I'm not a fan of preachers in general, because I live, I do a job that other preachers do, and I got I have some pet peeves about how they do it. So, but there are people who there's the selfish gain for being a preacher. Now, in America, preachers are usually underpaid, they're not very well off. But that's not the way it is in the rest of the world. When you go to other countries, people usually want to attain to be a pastor because the community come together and they bring their work resources and they take care of their pastor. They want to give him double honor, they live it out. And so the pastor is usually one of the most well-off people in the community. And so uh I've had some moments where I am a white American rather large pastor. So when I and they're usually well fed in these other countries, so when I go to like places like Haiti where they're malnourished, and they find out, hey, there's this large white guy here that looks like none of us. And like he's a pastor, so he must be really, really rich. Because if you're that large as a pastor, you must be really well off. So, and so I had to go around Haiti saying, like, listen, guys, it's not the same in America. But in Haiti, pastors are the well-off people in the community because people take care of their pastor, they give them honor. And so, like, there is a reason that people would go and do ministry for selfish ambition. And Paul's saying, I'm not one of those people. That's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because the joy comes from Christ, and I'm in prison, but I just want it to be about him, not about me. Who cares about me? Do it. I do this for the Lord. And see, because Paul cared more about Christ being preached than himself being praised. The reason that we live in the world is because we're here to know Christ and make him known. I know what the purpose of life is. It's super simple. We've been teaching it and teaching it and teaching it. The purpose of life, why you exist on this planet, is to know Christ and to make him known. That's it. You have no other purpose in life. It's not to get rich, it's not to have a nice house, nice car, it's not any of those things. It's to know Christ, make him known. That is it. The Bible makes it clear over and over and over again. Paul is just saying in Philippians, hey, that's that's my purpose. Everything I do, whether I'm tormented by storms, waves, shipwrecks, people, jail, I'm gonna tell people about Jesus. I'm gonna tell them about him, I'm gonna praise him, I'm gonna glorify him. Do you live that way? Do you live that way? Or does one problem just, oh, my whole life's over. Woe is me. My life's so miserable. Or do you flip it and say, no, I'm just gonna keep pointing people back to Jesus. No matter what I'm going through, I'm gonna keep pointing people back to Jesus. And so here's this next slide. I put times three on here. One, because I think this is profound. When I was putting this all together, I was like, wow, that's that's a powerful, powerful statement. But the reason I put times three is we're gonna read this together out loud three times. Because I think this needs to be something that we all know and understand. So here's the slide. Ready? Read this with me. Mature believers stop making everything about themselves. Times two. Mature believers stop making everything about themselves. And one more time, mature believers stop making everything about themselves. If you get this, it'll change everything. If you want to be a mature believer, then stop making everything about you. Over here on the wall it says John 3 30. He must become greater, I must become less. That's maturity. You want to become a mature believer? Make it about Jesus all the time. Everything you're doing. The why behind why you work, why you have fun, why you have relationships, it's about Jesus. It's about Jesus. If you want to know why you're struggling with joy, it's because it's about you. It's about you. There's an acronym that people love in the church and they love to put on like little kids' bracelets and shirts and stuff. It's called joy. Jesus, others, you. If you want to know how to have joy, Jesus first, then others, then you. The problem is when you flip it, it's yodj, it becomes about you. And if you don't get what you want or you don't get everything you need for you, then you're not gonna be happy, you're not gonna have joy because it's all about you. But if you're giving everything you can to serve Jesus and you're giving everything you can to serve others, you can find joy easy. Because that's the purpose of why we exist: to know him and make him known. Because mature believers stop making everything about themselves. Paul understood this, he preached it. Philippians 1 continues on, and it says, Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance. Paul believed, I don't, I'm in jail, but it's gonna be fine. I'm gonna be delivered. One way or another. He's gonna be delivered to heaven or he's gonna be delivered into freedom. But he wasn't overly worried about God's got a plan. I'll be delivered. Do you believe that? That everything's gonna work out for your good, no matter how it works out, no matter if it looks like it's bad, it's still gonna work out for the glory of God. See, joy is possible before the breakthrough comes. You don't have to have to say, well, God, if you don't give me what I want, I'm not gonna be happy, I'm not gonna have joy because you're not answering my prayer the way I want. It's not the way it works. Paul was in jail and had joy. Not one time, but many times. Paul was shipwrecked and almost died. I don't know about you, but floating in the Mediterranean thinking you're gonna meet God any moment. That's pretty hard to have joy, but yet he seemed to figure it out. Right? Three times he was shipwrecked. That's scary. That would be awful. That would make you have PTSD. I would never get on a ship again after the first time. He kept doing it. See, joy is possible before the breakthrough comes if you've got Jesus in your heart. There's an old church song that's I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. Where? Yeah. Yeah. We're not gonna sing the whole thing. So there's a reason why that song is this, because if you have joy deep down in your heart, nothing can rock it. Not health, not life, not relationships, not situations, not politics, not the gas price, none of it. Because you got joy. You got joy. It comes from somewhere else. It comes from the Holy Spirit. Joy and happiness are not the same thing. You can happiness is fleeting, it's a momentary thing. It's my team won a game and I'm happy. That's happy. That's not joy. Joy comes from within. It's in a state of peace with everything in the world, and that God, you know, I have the hope that all God's promises will be true and everything will turn out okay. And my satisfaction, my hope is in him, not in the world, in the stuff of the world, not in my situations. Happiness is situational based on situations. You can you can have happiness and not have joy. But I don't think you can have joy, real joy, and not be happy. Because that comes deep from within your heart. And Philippians continues on. And it says, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now, as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by or by life or by death. Paul says, Hey, my life can honor God, my death will honor God. Either way. Either way, I can win. Either way he does. I could die tomorrow. I live for the Lord. I'm I'm okay. If I die tomorrow, I'm gonna be in heaven. Have a party. Because I want God to be glorified. I've I've left my kids, I've already told them many times. If I die, there better be board games, there better be Taco Bell, there better be not clowns. Not clowns. That's Cody's party. Uh but I want a party. I want people to remember and honor God. Like I live for Him. I don't want people to be sad. I was recently, I told you a couple weeks ago, I was at a lady's funeral. I didn't know her until the, you know, after she passed, Nancy Jean Peterson, and like her kids honored her. They they told me how amazing it was. And then people spoke about her at her funeral. They just said she loved the Lord and she just loved the Lord. She lived for him. She would start phone calls with praise the Lord, and then she would say, I love you. Then the phone call, like they knew her life was lived to honor the Lord. There was a joy with which she had, which that came from, and then her death also honors him because she's gonna be with him. I'm gonna meet Nancy. I'm excited about that one day. It'll be the first time I meet her, is in heaven. It'll be awesome. But Paul also figured that out that there's this joy that we have. It doesn't matter, life or death doesn't matter because I'm gonna be his. See, the goal of our life, it's not comfort. The goal is Christ honored. The problem with us as modern-day Christians is we're living for comfort. I want better house, better things, comfier couch. How many of you complain about, oh, my couch is too hard? I need a new couch, right? Anybody? Yeah, yeah, I've been there, right? Oh no. Right? I need to get a car that makes less noise when it's driving down the road, right? Anyone? No. If you drive a Jeep, you you've probably said that. Uh so, yeah. But the truth is, like, we we are all about comfort when we should be about Christ. Everything should be pointing back to Christ, bringing him the glory, not ourselves. And so for us, we have to change our mindset. Philippians continues on in the next verse to say this. It's a famous verse. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is. Paul's like, I have to die to myself to gain Christ. Like it should be about him, to know him and to make him known. That's my only job in the world. The problem is we want to focus on all this other stuff that's about us, serving our selfish ambitions, serving our desire for comfort. And Paul said, That is not. That is not the focus. All you're living for is your own personal gain. Now, I'm not saying you can't have nice stuff, but where is Christ in all of it? Where is he? Is the nice stuff all that matters? Is that your focus in life? And does God get the scraps? Does Jesus get your scraps? A lot of times Jesus gets the leftovers, not the main course in your life. To die is gain. If if Christ is in your life, nothing can truly take your joy. I believe this. I believe this. We all should be guilty. We should, we all of you need those two times of your conversations where people say, You're way too positive and you have too much joy. Cut it back, right? Like turn it off. Like we all need to be guilty of that because we should be living in such a way that no matter what situation, health situation, relationship problem, financial issue, that you're just pointing it back to Christ, pointing it back to Christ. Cody and I, we've actually had we've known each other a long time, we've had lots of conversations about this, and he's walked through some difficult stuff, especially with his health recently. And once he got over like the lung issues and he's healthful again, I actually just called him yesterday and said, Hey, um, I don't know if you know this, that Kyle Bush died. He's a race car driver, and some many of you may know he's like died at 41 of pneumonia, similar to what Cody had. So I called Cody and said, Hey, you made it through this. Praise the Lord. Like, this is something that is affecting a lot of people right now, and like you won, right? So I was like, this is a great thing. And like when he got when he got healthy, he said, Hey, you can use this to share like like about Christ. And like, and he's like, Yeah, yeah, I can tell people. And so uh he got up on stage and shared kind of the struggle here and at other places and said, Hey, this is what I've been walking through, some of like the way it affected him just mentally as he was thinking about life and death. And so you can use those moments, even though it's scary, to glorify God and for the good news of the gospel. And we we watched Cody do that. As if you were here those Sundays he shared at youth group or on Sunday service. Like all of those moments can still point people back to God. I even know the nurses when Cody was in the hospital, he just kept telling them he was kind and thankful, he's intentional about being a Christian that did it well, even though it was life and death, and made sure that he was honoring the Lord. That's the way Paul is telling us to live in Scripture. Are you living that way in all of your situations and all of your chains in life? Or is it just like, oh, woe is me, life is terrible all the time. I'm just a horrible person in a horrible world. Like, or is it like, no, God is good no matter what, and I'm gonna glorify him, even in my chaos, even with my broken past, I'm gonna use it to glorify the Lord. Because Christ is in your life, nothing, nothing can steal your joy. But some of us are at that place, and that's why we need the church, and that's why we need each other, because we're not all at that place, right? Some of us are the place where my joy is missing, and that's how you have to find it in Christ. And you can. You can get there, and it requires a lot of conversations, it requires getting into the word, it requires the Holy Spirit changing and shaping you, and sometimes it takes time as people have to grow and mature in Jesus Christ, because when you mature, it becomes about Him and not about you. See, Rome, they thought that by imprisoning Paul and putting him under guard that that would fix things. In reality, they allowed the gospel to infiltrate Rome. They actually helped the cause through the bad situation. And your bad situation may be helping the cause for Christ for somebody else who's watching how you handle that situation. How you handle your imprisonment, your chains, your bondage to whatever that thing is as you overcome and glorify God. See, our circumstances, they reveal what we truly worship. They do. Do your circumstances and your life, are they revealing Christ? Or are they revealing you? See, Philippians, I'm gonna jump a few verses just for sake of time. Down to 27. And it says this only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. Are you living in a way that people would say that person was worthy of the gospel of Christ? When you die, are people gonna stand up at your funeral and they're gonna celebrate the Christ that lived in you? Or are they just gonna be sad, well, I'll miss, I'll miss them. Oh well. Or is it really just gonna be all about Christ and the Christ that they saw in you in all of those tough situations, and are gonna use it for the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the good news. See, your response to suffering, it preaches, and it preaches a sermon. You are all ministers of the gospel, whether you like it or not, just because you're not up here doesn't mean you're free from being a minister of the gospel. We are all called to go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them everything that the Lord had told us. That's a call for everyone, not just me, because I'm up here. So that your response to suffering, your response to difficulty, your response to rough situations, broken marriages, um health issues, financial issues, depression, loneliness, despair, bitterness, all your response to overcoming that stuff is what shows people how Christians really glorify the Lord or not. And it preaches. So, what does this mean for you? Why are we taking time to talk about this? I think here's some things. We need to stop waiting for perfect circumstances to have joy. You are never gonna have a perfect life, and you are never gonna have a perfect circumstances. If I had a perfect life, I'd be in Tuscany right now. So, right? I love all of you, but I do love Tuscany. So I would just take all of you with me. It'd be great. So you're never gonna have perfect circumstances to have joy. It's not all gonna work out. There's never gonna be this time where just gonna you're gonna look back on life and say, everything has worked out perfectly right now, and life is perfect. It's just never the way it is. I've never met anyone that's ever been able to say that. There's always something that's off, or there's always some bondage, there's always some imprisonment, there's always something going on. Like, even if life was perfect, we still live in a world that's falling apart around us. So, like, it's never gonna be perfect. So stop waiting for things to be perfect or to get fixed and just start experiencing joy. The life you have is the life you have. You can't change your past, you can't change your circumstances, you can't change your situations, but you can change how you move forward with Christ. You can have joy, it's a perspective. See, God can use painful seasons for eternal purposes. He can. We've all got them. I've buried two children. This is the worst moments of my life. God has done amazing things. Last Sunday, I think it was before third service, um, there's this little girl that comes in and she comes in and she gives me a big hug. She gave me two hugs last week. And now I don't like hugs. I'll give hugs to kids because they they don't know I don't like hugs. It's fine. Um but she brings in a teddy bear. It's a teddy bear that my wife and I give out through our nonprofit because someone gave us a teddy bear when our during my when my wife was delivering our baby uh at full term. She the day she was supposed to come in the world, she left the world. So when they were right when we were like 16-hour delivery, right before we had we had her at the very end, someone comes in and says, Hey, I want this too, it was awful. Someone gave me a teddy bear, I'm gonna give you a teddy bear. It changed everything for us. It was like that moment God spoke to us and said, I got you. Right? It brought so much, so much healing and peace in that moment of just the worst tragedy in our life. So, what we did is we started a nonprofit, and we've given out thousands of teddy bears all over the world, all over the country, uh, to families in similar situations. Well, the girl that came in, she brings the teddy bear that they got because they had a loss. And she gives me a hug. And it's powerful because those painful seasons have eternal purposes. Yeah, I can be sad. I'm sad my daughter turned 21 this year. It's something I always remember. But watching her come in and seeing how that moment has impacted her is transformative for the Lord. Are you living that way? Are you? Or is it just well as me? See, your attitude during hardship, it influences others always. How are you handling the pallet smashing into your window? Alright, the deer hitting your car? How are you handling that you lost your job? How are you handling that you found out your spouse was cheating on you? How are you handling the failed test? How are you handling all the bad stuff that happens? How are you handling that the gas price is five bucks? How are you handling it? Are you handling it with joy? So here's my view of the gas prices. Gas prices are high. Great. None of you can go anywhere. You're gonna be a church. It's awesome. Yay! Praise the Lord. Literally, I've said that like three times this week. See, Christ must become greater than our comfort. He must become our everything. And that's the path to joy. Chains cannot stop a believer who surrendered to Christ. That's the truth. That's the truth. Are you tired of being in chains? Because chains cannot stop a believer surrender to Christ. They just can't. So let me ask you this last question and then we'll pray. Ask yourself this: what if the very thing you wish God would remove is the very thing He wants to use in your life? That chain, that prison, what if that's the thing God wanted to use in your life to just drastically change other people's lives? What if your Chris and Anna struggle in your relationship impacted profoundly so many other people's relationships and they do better and they figure it out because look what God did for them. What if that's how you used it? For God's glory. What if that thing you're struggling with, depression, loneliness, bitterness, anger, whatever it is that binds you up is the thing you're going to tell people that God got you through and give him the glory for? I want you to think about that question. I want you to take that to the Lord and ask him, Lord, let me use that thing I'm I know I'm chained up with for your glory. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we just pray that we as a church, we recognize who we are in you. We recognize that for all of us we got chains. We're imprisoned to something, Lord, in this world. Something on the list that was shared, something that maybe we just recognized and it wasn't shared, but it's it's our prison. Lord, we just pray that we can be people who recognize that our past is our past and it can't change, but our future, it's all before us, and that can glorify you, and we can glorify you in everything that we do as we know you and we make you known. We can be transformed from who we were into who we are in Christ and allow that to bring glory to you. I just pray that anyone here is struggling, they know they're in a prison. Lord, they just they have the knowledge, the wisdom to say, I'm done. I'm done being a prisoner. And I want to glorify the Lord in my situation, and I want to see the joy that comes from it and the hope that only comes from knowing Jesus Christ be realized. We thank you for this. We make this our prayer, not only individually but corporately, that we can be a church that in every situation that we're dealing with, we bring glory to you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.