Philippians 2:12-18 - Pursuing Jesus By Treasuring His Gifts
Main Idea: God has richly blessed & honored you, so treasure the gifts He’s given you.
1. Treasure the gift of salvation (vs. 12-13)
a. Your salvation enables you to hear His voice.
b. Your salvation enables you to live a new life.
c. Your salvation enables you to see God change you.
2. Treasure the gift of representing God (vs. 14-16)
a. You are God’s image. Be grateful.
b. You are God’s child. Be different.
c. You are God’s handiwork. Be hopeful.
3. Treasure the gift of meaningful suffering (vs. 17-18)
a. Nothing you suffer is meaningless or irredeemable.
b. View your hardships as sacrifices to God.
c. How you go through suffering can help others.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna bring out a box. Might say, Pastor, what's in the box?
I'm not gonna tell you yet, gotta wait. We have been, if I was a cooler person, slash if I was perhaps not a male, I would have wrapped this up fancier. But I said, no, that'll just take more time, there'll be crinkly paper, utilitarian.
This is good. We have been in the book of Philippians since the beginning of the year, and walking through Paul's letter to the church at Philippi. They'd sent a gift to him.
He had received it from one of the pastors, Epaphroditus. And Epaphroditus got very sick.
Paul's writing back, he sends the letter, if I believe correctly, from next week, I think he sends it back with Timothy, and he says, all right, Timothy, tell them everything's good. Epaphroditus is all right. Everything's going well here.
But I have some spiritual encouragement to be able to give this church. And we've been traveling through having one pursuit, Jesus, that every week, as we've looked at these passages of scripture, that's Paul's emphasis.
He says, everything is about Jesus. Your life today is meant to be about pursuing Jesus. My life, even in prison, is about Jesus.
He says, when I think about eternity or about my future, I think about pursuing Jesus.
Last week, we learned, as we pursue Jesus, that we adopt his outlook on the world, which is while I am here, until such time as Jesus either returns or calls me home, I am going to live my life with a attitude of humility, because even Jesus himself,
the very God of gods, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. So if he humbled himself to death, I think I can humble myself and deal with the people in the church that he has given.
So we've seen all of that, and now we are in verse number 12. And today we're going to be looking at pursuing Jesus by treasuring his gifts.
How many of you recall the video from a couple of years ago where there was a young boy, probably not more than four or five, that he gets a present on Christmas morning.
It's kind of egg shaped and he opens it up and he pulls it out and he says, it's an avocado. Thanks. And he is so ecstatic about that avocado.
On the flip side, many of you have seen the videos or maybe personally experienced a time when a kid gets a gift that they don't want and they throw the biggest of all fits. What's the difference between the avocado and some amazing thing?
It's the appreciation of the gift. I've seen videos of kids getting expensive gaming systems and throwing a tantrum because it wasn't the one they wanted. And kids like myself that received a gift of underwear from my parents one year.
Don't worry, there was an actual present underneath the underwear. What makes the difference in joy and gratitude for what they got or whining and complaining? It is if the kid appreciates the gift.
In today's passage, Paul invites the Philippians to treasure some gifts that God has given them. And I'm going to be inviting us to do the same today as well. Today we're going to see God has richly blessed and honored us.
So we must treasure the gifts that He's given us. The gifts that He's given us convey honor on us. They give us purpose.
And so we must treasure and appreciate them, not take them for granted and not throw them away. The first of these gifts is treasuring the gift of salvation. And we can see this in verses 12 and 13.
First, if we're going to treasure the gift of salvation, we need to see that our salvation enables us to hear God's voice. So I've got some gifts today.
I'm going to start off with this pair of headphones, because our salvation enables us to hear God's voice. He says this in verse number 12, Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed.
This word here obeyed is kind of the job of a porter, not John Porter, different porter. You don't know him. This would be the servant that would listen for the knock at the door of their master.
That as soon as someone went, hey, I need a glass of water. Hey, I need you to run out and send a letter to so and so. This person was the attendant that was listening at the door.
How are we able to obey, to hear the voice of God? How were we placed in this position where we hear from God? You see, the Bible says that we were naturally alienated from God.
I joked about it earlier, but all of us would realize in our world today, people are not inherently naturally perfect. We do not always treat others with the love that we would want to be treated with.
We do not say to others what we would want them to say to us. People take advantage of others. They steal from others.
They malign and slander others. All of this is commonplace in our world today. There's none of those things that I mentioned that some of you went, Oh, I've never heard of anyone talking mean about another person before.
That's just not done. Or I can't believe there's crime in our world. It is a natural state for all of us.
Not all of us are as bad as we could be in the sense of not all of us have committed great atrocities, but inside each of us, there's something that the Bible calls sin.
It's what the Bible says is anything that we think, anything we say or anything we do that breaks God's law. Now, we think of laws and kind of take it or leave it type of fashion.
If I've seen some of the drivers here in Essex and in Middle River, if a sign says 35 miles an hour, most people are going 45, and there's always the one crazy person that I'm just trying to keep up with the flow of traffic, and they're going 10 to
15 past me, and I'm going 45 into 35. When we think of laws, we go, all right, well, that's kind of take it or leave it. We're fine. God views his law as the standard of perfection.
It echoes who he is. His nature, his character, his truthfulness, that he never lies. And so to lie is to go against the character of God.
To hate someone is to go against God's nature of love towards people. That when we slander others, God, think about this, God has never once talked bad about you. Think about that.
When we sin, we are embracing what is anti-God. So the Bible says, everyone has sinned and fallen short of God's glory. There's a standard of perfection.
It is the nature and character of God, and all of us are in the same boat. We've fallen short. Not only have we fallen short, the Bible also says that there is a judgment for sin.
That just as any good righteous judge would not allow criminals to run rampant without any repercussions for the crimes that they've committed, so too in our life, we are guilty of crimes against a holy God.
We have taken his world and his people and have done whatever we wanted with it. He has given us the breath in our lungs, and we use it to blaspheme, to curse, to malign people, to speak evil of those that are made in God's image.
All of our lives, naturally, we do not spend pursuing God, and so there is a punishment for sin.
The Bible says in Romans 6, 23, the wages for sin, what we get for what we've done is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Those of you that are regulars in church, you've heard this story before, the gospel, that Jesus, God himself, came down to earth. He did not allow us to go just the course of our own actions to suffer the punishment for our sin.
He came down, lived a perfect life, was punished in our place, and now offers all of his righteousness to be placed on our account that we who were completely bankrupt have been given a hundred million, billion, trillion dollars to be able to live a
new life with God. That when we die, there is no condemnation of hell, of that separation from God forever that the Bible talks about, but that we would be reconciled through accepting what Jesus has done, turning in faith to him and going his way
instead of our own way. So we were alienated from God. Jesus reconciled us to God, and Jesus gave us an all new job. Your job?
To be a listener and to be a teller.
That is to be a priest, that we hear from God's voice through his Holy Spirit, that when we turn to Christ, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, God himself, he comes and lives in our life.
That he guides us into all truth. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of their sin, of God's righteousness, and of the coming judgment. And then once he is in our life, then he guides us into all truth.
He reminds us of what Jesus has said in his word. We can listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. We can speak to God in prayer, that before we did not have that access to God, we were going our own way.
We weren't a child of God. But when we have accepted Christ as Savior, we become a child of God, that now he hears our prayers. When we turn to him in faith and we say, God, I'm asking you to work in this situation.
God, I am asking you to be with this person. God, I'm asking for this to be resolved. We can pray to God.
Now, it's not like he's the genie and just whatever we want, we can magically get from him. But the Bible says in 1 John, if we ask anything according to his will, we know that he hears us. So we listen to the Holy Spirit.
We communicate with him in prayer. We read in his word, the Bible, what he's like, what his passions are, what he wants us to do in the world that he's given us. And then he has given us a church.
Now the church isn't a building. The church is the people assembled. That God has given you the person across the aisle from you.
God has given you a pastor. God has given you deacons. God has given people into your life that you can hear from God through them.
That as they spiritually encourage you, it is the voice of God calling you to faithfulness in Christ. And here Paul says, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, it's listening for the voice of God.
Realize God has given you the gift of being able to hear him. Treasure it.
It's not something that we should take for granted, that we can talk to the Almighty God of the universe, the one who created all things, who upholds all of our world by his strength, by his might, that we can talk to the God who died for all
mankind. And yet we personally get to speak to him about, God, I've had a really bad day. This person said that I was dumb and I'm not dumb. We're able to go to him and say, God, I'm struggling with a hardship in my life right now.
I am alienated from this family member. This friendship is steering me in a bad direction. We get to talk to God about our everyday life.
And we don't just get to talk to him. We get to hear from him. His spirit lives in us.
We have his word that we don't have to walk in the dark. We don't have to guess, all right, I think I might hear the Holy Spirit, but he's telling me I need to go get Dunkin Donuts, or he's telling me I need to conquer a third world country.
I wonder if that's God. No, no, no. We know what God sounds like because we have his word.
So treasure the gift of salvation. Your salvation enables you to hear his voice, to communicate with him. But next we see that your salvation enables you to live a new life.
Continuing in verse 12, he says, You have always obeyed. So now, not only in my presence, but even more in my absence. He says you didn't just follow God when I was there.
It's not that Paul made the Philippian believers obey. He says God was really in you and God is really working and you're really hearing from him, not just when I was with you, but now that I'm gone.
So now he says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Now I want to clarify one thing here. The word work out your own salvation is not declaring.
You've got to do a bunch of works in order to be saved. You better figure this out on your own. You better work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Freak out, be scared that you might not have it right with God. You might not be reconciled. That's how what he's saying here.
This word workout would maybe be a little bit more colloquial, how we would say it nowadays. You work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. It is to work fully, to do that from which something results, to labor for fruit.
God says here, I want you to plant, to water, to continue cultivating your salvation. Your salvation does not end with you accepting Christ as Savior. Your salvation continues, it's supposed to continue, into your everyday life.
Because you've been saved, you're now able to live not just a moral life, but a Christian life. A life that mimics the words and actions and attitudes of Jesus himself.
You can think of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. That that is what God wants to grow in you, that you would allow that to happen.
He says, work out your own salvation, that the salvation that is in you, you would allow it to continue to grow and to emerge.
Think of 2 Peter 1, where he gives the list, add to your faith, virtue, and to virtue, knowledge, and to knowledge, excellence, and to excellence, patience, and to patience, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love.
He gives, hey, I want this to result in some things for your life. You are not just saved and done. All right, now go figure out life on your own.
No, no, no, God wants to continue that work of sanctification in your life. Some people have misunderstood, work out your own salvation to say, okay, you gotta make sure that you're maintaining your good works until the day that you die.
Otherwise, you will lose your salvation. I want to encourage us today, your salvation, if it's real, is forever. If you are truly in Christ, you will never be cast out or forsaken.
Scripture says that God has placed the Holy Spirit in your life as the down payment for God's redemption of you. That the only time God's gonna take the down payment is when he's done with the process, that you are going to be glorified forever.
You are eternally secure in Christ. Then we can see in verse number 13 that our salvation enables us to see God change us.
So not only does salvation enable us to hear his voice, not only does it enable us to live a new life, but it enables us to see God change us.
Verse number 13, for it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose. That you are not stuck with your faults and failures forever. God wants to change you.
God wants to renew you. With God, the hateful and scorning and judgmental and slanderers become filled with love. The anxious and worried and fretful become filled with peace.
The perpetually angry or despairing find themselves awash in the joy of knowing God and knowing his ways. Here it says God is working. He is operating.
He is putting out power in you.
It says both to will, to choose the right path, that sometimes we don't want to do the things that God wants us to do, but God is working in our life so that we would will, we would choose, we would delight to do what he wants us to do.
And then it says and to work, that not just would we want to do what is right, but that we can then follow in what was right.
I'm sure many of us over the years have seen people that were once addicted to substances, that through salvation, God has changed them.
I was hearing the testimony from Roger Keene just the other day along that exact same line that he had been an alcoholic, and yet after salvation, God changed in him, not just what he did, but what he wanted to do, that he no longer wanted that life.
He chose instead, delighted in what God wanted him to do. Can I encourage you if today you go, man, there is a sin that I'm struggling with because I really like it, I don't want to give it up, and I don't know that I can stop it on my own.
God is working in you both to will, to choose to delight, to do his will, and to actually accomplish it, to work according to his good purpose. Your sanctification is as much the work of God as your justification and glorification.
Turn to him with your failures, with your sins, with your lack of desire to fix what's broken in your desires and see him change you. God is working in your heart if you are saved. Allow him to work.
But can I warn you in one way, just as God does not justify anyone who does not turn to him in faith for salvation, God does not sanctify those who will not turn to him.
If you, like Judas, like Ananias and Sapphira, like Demas, reject God's gracious rule and lordship in your life, there's no other recourse for you in this life than him. There is no redemption, no lasting joy or peace found outside of God.
To reject him is to reject life itself.
And scripture would tell us if we habitually live in defiant sin, if we day after day, week after week, month after month, unrepentantly partake in a sin that we know God is against, then we ought to doubt if we are actually saved.
You might say, but I prayed a prayer when I was seven. 1 John 3, 6 through 10 says this, no one who abides in Jesus keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.
By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
What's the antidote to this judgment if we realize God is working in us both to will and to work of his good pleasure? If we go, okay, I don't have will or work right now, and I've been living in consistent defiance of God, what do I do?
How do we turn from willfully knowingly, knowingly, defiantly sinning against God? We do what we did at the beginning. We forsake our sin and attempts at self-righteousness, fixing it ourself, and we throw ourselves entirely on Jesus.
We realize that if God was the one to save us at the start, then he must be the one to save us today. That song that we sang, Lord, I need you. That bridge there.
So when temptation comes my way, when I cannot stand, I'll fall on you. Jesus, you are my hope and stay. That's the attitude that we ought to have.
So today, we ought to treasure the gift of salvation. The God has saved us. He's enabled us to hear his voice.
He has enabled us to live a new life. He's enabled us to see God change us, that we're not stuck the way we are right now. Some people would say, man, I've just always been like this.
I'll always be like this. I was just born this way. This is just who I am.
God wants to continue to mold us into the image of Jesus. He wants to continue to make us more like himself. Today, is there an area where you've not allowed your salvation to affect?
Is there an area you're holding back from God that you're saying, okay, God, you can have me choose, delight, will, work, all of that in all of these areas, but this one's mine. You can have everything else. This one's my corner.
You can't have it. Can I encourage you today? Listen to the voice of God.
Treasure the fact that you can hear him. Listen to his voice. Allow your salvation to work out, to bubble over into every other area of your life.
Secondly, treasure the gift of representing God. We can see this in verses 14 through 16. I'm going to show off something that you guys gave me a few weeks ago before everything went south.
I take partial responsibility for what happened. So here is a jersey for Justin Tucker. And if I wear this, I'm representing the Baltimore Ravens.
I'm repping the team. I'm saying, hey, I am with them. I'm for what they're doing.
I, you know, I'm paying money to see their things. I'm with them. And in verses 14 through 16, we see some different ways that God says, I have given you a gift of representing me.
The first of these is in verse number 14, you are God's image, be grateful. The verse says this, do everything without grumbling and arguing. That's a convicting verse, isn't it?
We love to grumble. We love to argue. Grumbling here is that secret displeasure.
It's that inside, I don't like that. That's not really great. And sometimes it bubbles over into other people too that we complain to them.
Some older translations would have this, do everything without murmuring and disputing. It's that complaining, that grumbling. He says this, arguing.
It's the inner dialogue that a person has as it's used in the New Testament. It's like when Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath and when he forgives someone's sin, and the Pharisees go, hey, who can forgive sin except God? Who does this guy think he is?
It's that inner dialogue. It's that arguing. It's that inner festering.
Do you realize that you represent God now to the world? If they're going to see who God is, what he's like, what his words are, they're going to look at you since you claim to be one of his.
Paul here is likely thinking of the Israelites given that exact same mission by God. They were called to represent God to the nations around them.
And yet the Israelites spent the next 40 years in the wilderness after God said, hey, you're my people, you're my nation. They spent the next 40 years complaining, grumbling, and arguing with God. God gives Israel food from heaven every day.
They complain that they want a different diet. The Israelites complain that God wants them to die of dehydration. He gives them water pouring out from a rock.
God promises to give them victory and a wonderful land. And they complain their opponents are just too tall and they want to go back to being slaves in Egypt. None of what he said, hey, I have wonderful plans for you.
I will provide for you. I will give for you. You represent me to the world.
So I'm going to take care of you so that you can represent God to those around you. And they complained and they argued and they murmured and grumbled. What's the difference here in Paul saying, I'm in prison and it's great.
Everybody's getting to hear about Jesus. And the Israelites experiencing literal daily miracles and complaining and rebelling? It's treasuring the gift.
Saying, yes, I'm happy I get to wear this no matter what the circumstances might be. Do you realize what a privilege it is to be God's image?
God could have chosen angels or the elite and the holiest people or even only Jesus himself to communicate to the world what he's like, but he chose you and me. You've been given the title of ambassador to Baltimore.
And if people want to know what the kingdom of heaven is like, how they dress in the kingdom, how they talk in the kingdom, what culture is like in the kingdom, God has them turn to you.
So let's not be like the Israelites in the wilderness, constantly inwardly grumbling or outwardly complaining when God's goodness is all around us. Instead, let's have a heart to follow the next portion of what God says.
He says, first, you're God's image, be grateful. Secondly, you are God's child, be different.
Verse number 15, so that you may be blameless and pure, you are children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world by holding firm to the word of life.
How many of you currently feel like after the past seven days, that blameless, pure, faultless and shining star are words that describe you? Yeah, me either. How could we embody that list?
How could that describe us? Only through holding to the word of life. James 1, 17 and 18 says this, that God has planted the seed of His word, His gospel in us, and it will cause us to become more like Him as we rely on it.
It says, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
By His own choice, He gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of firstfruits, that we would be that first crop that sprouts out of the ground, letting people know that the harvest is coming, that we are that first fruit, that
God has planted His word in us. He has given us His Holy Spirit. He has given us His church. He has given us His word, so that we could embody these things.
What's interesting in here is that Paul calls us shining stars in the world. He's not saying star like we would today. Someone that's skilled and on-ducing, oh man, that person is a star football player.
He's, Paul here is reminding us of Genesis 1. In the mindset of the ancient world, the stars weren't burning balls of gas. That's not how they pictured them.
They were indicative of the spiritual beings that lived far away. In scripture, we read about the hosts of heaven, the armies of heaven, the angelic armies.
And we read in Revelation 12 that Satan and a third of the angels abandoned their posts as beings that were supposed to bring glory to God. They were supposed to shine God's image in the world, and they did not.
So Paul tells them here, you shine like all the angels were supposed to shine. One day we will have new heavenly bodies like Christ, complete with their perfection, and we will rule and reign with Christ, is what scripture tells us.
Today, are you acting like someone condemned, impure, blemished, crooked, opposing God? Or someone blameless, pure, faultless, honest, and following God? You are God's child.
So be different. How can you be different? It's not through self-effort.
It's through relying on the God who works in us, both to desire and to accomplish what he wants, as we pay attention to his spirit, as we listen to his voice, as we read in scripture, as we encourage one another, we are conformed to the image of
Christ. And then we see in verse 17, you are God's handiwork. Be hopeful. It says in verse 17, then I can boast in the day of Christ that I didn't run or labor for nothing.
What was Paul's hope for the Philippians? That on the day Jesus returned, Paul would have started something that snowballed long after he was gone. Have you felt tired, exhausted, unsure of how much longer you can keep up the pace?
Don't worry, Christian, we are almost home. God has begun a good work in you, and he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. So hope and pray and wait for that day.
You are God's handiwork. His shone-off trophy, that's what he says in the verse previous, that he is going to make us blameless, pure, faultless, and shining stars. That's what he's going to make you.
So be hopeful. Don't have a despair when you look at your life and go, God, I could never embody what you call me to be in Scripture. No, no, no.
It's not about what you can accomplish, it's what he can accomplish. So be hopeful knowing that he will complete it.
I love this song came out a few years ago, and it calls us to this hope that because God is going to make us into his image, because he will glorify us, because our troubles are not forever, we can have hope for the future.
It says this, don't drop a single anchor. We're almost home. Through every toil and danger, we're almost home.
How many pilgrim saints have before us gone? No stopping now, we're almost home. That promised land is calling, we're almost home.
And not a tear shall fall there, we're almost home. Make ready now your souls for that kingdom come. No turning back, we're almost home.
This journey ours together, we're almost home. Unto that great forever, we're almost home. What songs anew will sing around that happy throne.
Come faint of heart, we're almost home. This life is just a vapor, we're almost home. That sun is setting yonder, we're almost home.
Take courage for this darkness shall break to dawn. Oh, lift your eyes, we're almost home. Almost home, we're almost home.
So press on toward that blessed shore. Well, praise the Lord, we're almost home. We are God's image.
Be grateful. He has chosen you to be the ambassador to Baltimore. You show people what Jesus is like.
Here at church, you are called to show other believers to those that do not know Christ yet that are here. You are called to show Jesus to them. You show them what he's like.
You show them what he talks like. You show them how he thinks about them. When you leave, when you go to your home, when you interact with your family, when you go grocery shopping, you are God's image.
Be grateful. If God causes you to walk through some of the same roads of suffering that Jesus did, embrace it. Don't grumble.
Don't complain. Don't argue about it. Say, God, if I'm going to suffer, then I'm going to suffer like Jesus, who said, not my will, but your will be done.
We're God's image. Be grateful. We are God's children.
Be different. Don't act as though we are in this crooked and perverted world. Act like the shining stars of God that he will make us.
And then we're God's handiwork. Be hopeful. You don't have to despair that you are not now what God will eventually have you become.
Don't despair. Continue turning to him. Continue calling out, Lord, I need you as you rely on him to change your desires and your actions as you yield to his Spirit.
As you say, God, I don't know how I'm going to do it today, but I want to follow you today. Allow him to make that change in you. And be hopeful that one day all of your sin, all of your struggles will be gone through what Jesus has promised us.
Will you choose this week to interact with others as a representative of God and not yourself? Realize this week, put on the little pin, Ambassador of Heaven to Baltimore.
Maybe don't have a literal pin, that might be a little weird, but a figurative pen in your mind that you put in there. I'm a representative of God, of Jesus. I don't represent myself.
Lastly, and we'll be done, treasure the gift of meaningful suffering. I didn't want to be stupid and take away my daughter's actual binky, so I brought along this Bible that I got for my son. It's not really one that he could read at the moment.
He's all of four. Cat in the Hat's a little more his speed. If you happen to know a Cat in the Hat Bible, great.
He's got a beginner's storybook Bible and some different things, but I got this Bible for my son when he was born. And labor is the gift that I think of when I think of treasuring the gift of meaningful suffering.
That here, Paul, he's going to say, hey, I'm going through some suffering, and I realize that this might not turn out the way that I'm hoping or expecting, but I want you to know that my suffering is meaningful.
And labor, I think, is a great parallel to that particular gift, that I don't think any lady in here would say, I really enjoy labor. That was just a wonderful time. I want to go through that again.
But all of us would recognize the joy that you have from your child coming into the world. You wouldn't trade that child for anything.
And so it is with the child of God when we suffer, that though we don't enjoy the process, God has given us the process so that we can come out of it on the other side with joy, with greater reliance on God and understanding of who he is and his
kindness and seeing him work, of him refining our lives and our emotions into, in the Book of Job, Job refers to it as, when I'm tried and purified, I will come forth as gold. That just as you would melt down the elements and turn everything into
liquid and it would be incredibly hot, and then you would scrape all of the excess off the top so that what was left was pure gold. That's what God wants to create in you. None of your suffering is meaningless or irredeemable.
Verse number 17, but even if I am poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith, he says there is a purpose to why I would be why I would be poured out as a drink offering.
I want us to realize if we're going to say nothing you suffer is meaningless or irredeemable, I am certain some of you right now are thinking, okay, but you don't know about this suffering, and this suffering is meaningless and irredeemable.
Nothing good could ever come into my life as a result of this suffering. The statement, it demands a biblical worldview.
If there is no life after death, if what Jesus has declared is the fact that this life's a vapor and all the rest of eternity is spent with God in the state of perfection, if that's not true, then yes, all of our suffering is meaningless and
irredeemable. But if God is truthful in what He has said about the future, about life after death, then we can believe that our, with Paul, that our momentary afflictions, our temporary sufferings, are not worthy to be compared with the glory that
will be revealed in us because of our suffering. Not only if nothing we suffer is meaningless or irredeemable, realizing that fixes our gaze on heaven, not on this earth, that our focus, our attention, our aim is, okay, if that's true, then I'm
playing for the long game. I'm not worried necessarily about right now and how I can make it out on top right here. Instead, I'm looking towards heaven and its goals. One day, every wrong will be made right.
And so we can patiently endure now, knowing that reward is coming. It's like Jesus in Hebrews 12, it says, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God on high.
Realizing that nothing we suffer is meaningless or redeemable, also positions suffering in light of God's purpose and His goodness.
If everything coming at us is for our good and for His glory, then it's not burying our head in the sand to be able to look at how situations and circumstances and events can point to God or to a happy future or to some meaningful result.
If nothing is meaningless or irredeemable, then we don't have to wallow in pain or hurt. We are able to look for a silver lining, not because we are ignoring the suffering. Jesus went through suffering.
He sweat great drops of blood because of the stress induced as a part of going through that suffering. The suffering was real, but He did it for the joy that was set before Him, that reconciling God and man.
So treasure the gift of meaningful suffering. Nothing we suffer is meaningless or irredeemable. We ought to view our hardships as sacrifice to God.
There in verse 17 again, He says, even if I am poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith. A drink offering was a precious given item in worship. It wasn't something that sometimes worship in ancient times.
It was okay, we're going to basically grill this lamb that you brought, or this goat, or this cow, or whatever. We're going to grill it.
It's an offering to the gods, and then we're going to take the meat afterwards, and we're going to give it to some of the priests. And that was one way in which they did something. The drink offering was, once you pour it out, like it's gone.
You're not scooping it back into the cup. Like the drink offering was gone.
David did one of these when he was on the run from Saul, that he really wished that he had water from the well at Bethlehem where he had grown up, where he said, Oh, man, I just really love that town water. This city water is nothing.
So he said, I really wish I had water from that well at Bethlehem. And some of his men overheard it, and they went, Okay, we're going to do this. And Bethlehem at that point was surrounded by a Philistine army.
And so they went through, they fought their way through, they got some water from the well, they made it all the way back to David. And David said, Oh, I can't drink this. Like, you guys risked your lives for this.
This is going to God instead. And he poured it out. Humanly, I'd be like, No, I just fought for that.
Why are you doing this? That's how we interact with suffering. That God is asking us to pour out something.
Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe it's a health diagnosis. Maybe it could be any number of things.
Then we go, God, like, this is just gone. It doesn't seem like there's any meaningful thing here. But Paul says, if I die, I'm being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith.
That, yes, you guys are losing something by pouring out the drink offering, but it's going to God. It's worshiping him. And viewing our losses as sacrifices to God.
If you view each situation in your life, not as happening by random chance, but coming directly from the hand of your loving heavenly father, then you can view your life through the lens of God consistently bringing you to a place of sacrifice.
A place where you lay down comforts, possessions, relationships, aspirations, and anything else he asks, because he's the one that gave all those things to you in the first place.
When we view hardships in that light, then we can begin to have the outlook Paul has in Philippians. You want my freedom, God? It's all yours.
You want my time while I'm in jail? I'll pour it out for you, telling the guards the gospel. You want my inward thoughts while I'm trapped here?
I will meditate on Job and Isaiah and Jesus, and pray for the believers in Philippi. Are you willing to sacrifice to God the things that He brings into your life to sacrifice? Then lastly, how you go through suffering can help others.
Verses 17 and 18, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. In the same way, you should also be glad and rejoice with me. Most of us don't think, okay, great, the death of Paul.
He says, I'm happy. I'm sharing my happiness with you. You guys should be happy.
Share your happiness with me. That's not how we think of the death of Paul. But how we go through suffering, he says, I'm going to suffer, but I'm going to suffer with gladness, with joy, with hope, and I'm going to send that your way.
This is how you should think about suffering. Sometimes when my daughter Evelyn falls down, because she's a toddler and clumsy, I laugh. She falls, I laugh, and I act like it's the funniest thing ever, because when I do, then she doesn't cry.
If she falls down and I go, then she knows, oh, okay, that was bad. I got to cry. But if I laugh when she falls, then she is happy.
My framing of the event as humorous made her think it wasn't quite as bad. How you go through your suffering can help others. If you go through it with joy, it can help others to be able to see joy.
If you go through it knowing that God is for you, that God is not against you, that He has a plan for you, that He is bringing things into your life for you to sacrifice in your role as a priest, and as you help others see, hey, yeah, I'm going
through a difficulty right now, but it's for God. God has placed this in my life, and I want to steward it well. I want to sacrifice what He's called me to sacrifice. As we do that, we help other people be able to see it as well.
Will you choose joy in your hardships this week and help others find joy in theirs? Today, we're called to treasure the gifts that God has given us.
He's given us first and foremost, the gift of salvation, of being able to hear from Him, to follow Him, that He is working in us both to choose and to accomplish what He wants for our life.
We've been given the gift of representing God, of carrying His name, His kingdom, His actions, His words to the world around us. And we've been called to the gift of meaningful suffering. We can choose today.
God, I don't want to represent You. God, I don't want Your salvation. I don't want it to affect anything more than it already has.
God, I don't want to go through meaningful suffering. I'd rather just go my own way and not have meaning in my suffering. Will you treasure His gifts today?
Have you accepted Jesus' gift of salvation and new life? Talked about it at the beginning. If you say, I've never turned to Jesus in faith, never turned from sin, never turned from my own way to Jesus alone, I would encourage you.
Talk to me right after the service. I'm going to be sitting in the back, right near where the giving box is. It's not to police you and make sure that you give in the giving box.
It's so that I can talk with you. But if you would like to talk about knowing that Jesus is your Savior, that you have a relationship with God, I would love to talk with you about that.
Is there an area of your life where you've not allowed your salvation to affect? That as you're working out your salvation, maybe you're continually skipping leg day, you're saying, there's this one area of my life, God, you're not touching this?
Allow, work out your salvation. Complete it fully, water all of the lawn, work out all of your spiritual muscles. Will you choose this week to interact with others as a representative of God, not yourself?
Will you choose joy in your hardships this week and help others find joy in theirs? God has richly blessed and honored us with these incredible gifts. Are we going to treasure them?
