Our Gospel lesson text this morning is from Philippians chapter 2. That's found on page 831 in the Bibles that are in your seats. Please turn there so you can follow along during the reading and during the preaching of God's Word as well. Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 12, continuing through to verse 18. This is God's Word, eternally true. Therefore my dear friends, as you have always obeyed not only in my presence but now much more in my absence, continued to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pureed children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which he is trying like stars in the universe as you hold out the Word of life in order that I made boast on the day of Christ that they did not run or labor for nothing but even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you so you too should be glad and rejoice with me. Let us now respond to the Lord in thankfulness, you have an imprinted in your bulletin or response, the word of the Lord, let us pray, our God we are thankful to you for your word, it instructs us, it guides us, tells us who you are and we are wowed. Help us to respond to who you are and to how you have treated us in the gospel, grant us understanding by your Spirit, Jesus preached to us, cause us to listen to this your word as you speak through it. Amen. You've heard the expression so and so that ship off the old block, maybe you were told or have been told or are being told that you are just like your father in a certain way or that you are just like your mother in a certain way, whether it is a thing by your DNA and you look like your father or your mother or both or whether it is a thing that you have just picked up personality wise or the way your temperament is, the way you are oriented toward handling different things, that is a very common thing in a family, that you grow up in many ways to be like your father or your mother, the DNA implanted in you both in a physical sense and a personality sense by the way you were raised, the way you were treated, the way you were taught, the way you saw things done, that this bears itself out in your life as you grow. Paul speaks of this DNA kind of effect in this passage this morning in Philippians 2. He talks about something becoming evident outwardly, that is true inwardly. This morning we have three points, three things that God wants you to hear this morning and the first thing God says to you this morning is to work out your salvation, work out your salvation. If you would like to fill out outlines, you have got an outline here if you do not, you can leave it behind and just listen. God says to you this morning, work out your salvation, know what does he mean by this? Paul talks to us about obeying in this passage as well, doesn't he? Paul has talked about obeying prior to this passage, immediately prior. The question is obey what? What are we to obey? Well there is always an important aspect as we read scripture of remembering the context of not separating one verse from the verses that preceded or that post-seated. We look at what the author of scripture in a particular section is talking about in order to help us interpret what he's saying at the present verse. Paul is not giving us a generic and specific obey here, although we can say obey the Lord and everything, okay? We said it, but Paul is talking about a specific kind of obedience. He's on a specific topic here. Question is what is it? Paul is talking about something for us to do and he says for us to obey. Do this thing Paul says that I've been talking about in these preceding verses. The question is what has he been talking about? What does he tell us to obey? Look up at verse 2 of chapter 2. Paul has just commanded us to be like-minded, have the same love for each other, be one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should not look- should look not only to your own interest but also to the interest of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. These are all commands that Paul is giving us. Who being in the very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing. Paul tells us all these things that were to be- were to be for the sake of unity as we've talked about as we've worked through Philippians, for the sake of unity to be humble, to regard others, to love others, to consider others before ourselves. And he's given us the example of Jesus who did these very things. Made himself nothing for our sake. And Paul tells us to obey. How does Paul describe this obedience? Well, he describes it in our passage here as working out your salvation, working out your salvation in fear and trembling. Notice Paul doesn't say work for at the blank for you. He doesn't say work for your salvation. Okay, this would contradict everything else we see in scripture about how a person comes to be a child of God. We read about that in Ephesians 2 this morning. It's by grace, unmerited favor that you're rescued from your sin. So Paul doesn't say something contradicting himself in Ephesians and other places or even in Philippians here. He doesn't say work for your salvation. Rather, he says work out your salvation. That is work out that the blank work out the salvation you already have. Work out the salvation you already have. It talks about this in terms of DNA. Okay, when you see a little baby born, sometimes you see right away. Oh, they've got so-and-so's nose or so-and-so's ears. But sometimes it takes a lot longer for these things to develop. I think chief among these things are kind of your weight. How much you weigh. Those things develop as you get older, I think. But this is the idea. It's a working from inside out. Some people say when you have garlic and have experiences. When you have a lot of garlic in your meal, then when you sweat, you smell like garlic. It's garlic sweat. I don't know if that's true or not. People have told me it is. Or perhaps people have told you when you're kind on the back end of a cold or a flu, they say go exercise and work it out. Sweat it out of you. I don't know if that works either. But this is the idea that Paul is getting at. There's something inside you that you are to work out. The question is what is inside us? And it's this. It's the gospel. The gospel that's your black. The gospel is inside us. Jesus talked about this in the illustration of the the sower and the seed. The seed is the word of God. It's the gospel going out. Some people believe it. Some people believe it for a little while and leave. And some people don't believe it at all. But if you're a true believer in Christ, if you're part of his family, you have this gospel seed planted in you. It's gospel DNA. And Paul is telling you, work it out. Have this come out of you. Have this spill out from the inside into your life and into your character. James spoke about the word of God, the message of the gospel. And this way too, he talked about it being a seed and planted enough. That is to evidence itself. The character of this seed of the gospel is to show itself in the character of our lines. If you have an acorn and you plant it or maybe you don't plant it, it's just in your yard and it opens up and it starts to grow roots and it goes from being an acorn to being just a sprout and a sapling and a young tree to finally where you have this mature oak tree. Paul is saying that is the way it is with the Christian life. The plant, the fruit is determined by the seed. You have a pumpkin seed and you don't know what it is and your plant it, it's going to grow a pumpkin. No matter if you think it's a watermelon seed or an oak tree seed or whatever, if it's a pumpkin seed, you're going to grow a pumpkin or if it's a watermelon seed and you spit it off your deck, you may have a watermelon growing in your yard this year. That's the way the gospel is. Paul phrases it this way. When he talks about the gospel being inside us, verse 6 from chapter 1, look there. He talks about a partnership or a fellowship that we have in the gospel, a partnership or a fellowship that we have in the gospel. We share together as believers in the gospel and this sharing together of the same thing unites every believer, every other one. Verse 7, Paul talks about us sharing in grace with him. We share verse 6 in the gospel. We share verse 7 in grace. And as Paul speaks of the gospel, there's some interchangeability with speaking with grace, of grace. Grace in the gospel overlap, don't they? They're hard to, very hard to separate and Paul uses them interchangeably. Paul also uses them interchangeably with the term salvation, which we have here in this passage. Grace, the gospel salvation. There's overlap in all of those terms. We have salvation by God's grace, which we took hold of when we heard and believed the gospel, salvation, grace, gospel. We see this interchangeably, interchangeability of these terms in another way. In this passage, Paul talks about these things having an identical effect. If we want to see if Paul is using these terms interchangeably, we can see if Paul speaks of these three terms independently having the same effect. So suppose we could call a pumpkin seed, three different things, pumpkin seed, and then some Latin name, and then something else in French, and we wanted to know if somebody was speaking of the same thing, we could look and see if they all three grow a pumpkin. That's what Paul's doing here. He uses all three of these terms and says, if you've got grace inside you, if you've got the gospel inside you, if you've got salvation inside you, it's going to spill out in the same kind of way. Paul talks about these things having an identical effect. Peter does as well. The second Peter, Peter talks about growing in grace. Grace is something that causes growth, maturity in us. Paul, in verse six of chapter one, that we looked at just a second ago. In talking about us sharing the gospel, he immediately says, talks about God who began a good work in you, carrying it out until the day of Christ Jesus. You've got the gospel in you and it's going to be carried out. It is going to grow. You've got grace that's going to grow in you until the day of Christ Jesus. That is all your life. It's going to grow. It's a progressive thing. Paul talks about in verse 26 of chapter one, how the gospel is progressing in you and Paul is going to stay around. He's going to stay alive. He's going to be released from prison. He was convinced for the sake of the gospel growing in those believers in Philippi. That's verse 25, rather, progress in the gospel. In verse 27 of chapter one, he turns it this way, conducting oneself in a manner worthy of the gospel. If you have the gospel in you, then you will grow in the gospel. Then you will progress in the gospel. Then you will conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel. Your DNA is going to show. And Paul exhorts us here, let your DNA show. Here in this passage, Paul speaks of the process of the gospel and us individually growing and making us mature in new terms. He calls it working out our salvation. Verse 13, called it, God, working in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
This is all the same thing in different words. Growing in grace, God's gospel, working being carried out to completion in us, progress in the gospel, conducting our lives worthy of the gospel and now working out our salvation. Identical terms. In other words, the idea of working out our salvation is the same as synonymous with working out the gospel. You want the gospel to work out to show itself in your life, show the world what's been planted in you, not a tulip bulb, not an apple tree, but the gospel. We work out the gospel in our lives. We conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel. We work at our salvation. We progress in the gospel. We grow in grace. Now, what about the gospel? What is the gospel that might work itself out in our conduct? What is Paul talking about? Well, he's told us certain things in verses 1 through 11 and chapter 2. Certain gospel things, certain things that are true of the gospel that saved us. He tells us here to live out our lives according to this truth, according to this gospel pattern that saved us. He's given us the pattern in verses 1 through 11. The pattern was demonstrated by Jesus, the pattern of humbling ourselves for the sake of others, regarding others first before ourselves, the pattern of loving others, the pattern of serving others as Christ came to this earth in humility, loving us, serving us. That's the pattern. That's the gospel. This is what is to work itself out in our lives with the people around us. Paul is telling us, don't leave the gospel behind post-initial faith in Jesus. Don't think you believe, you believe the gospel, you got saved and you can leave the gospel behind. Paul says here that that's the key. We're to conduct our lives worthy of the gospel. We're to work out our salvation. We're to work out the gospel in our lives. Don't leave it behind. It's the key to growth. It's the key to maturity in Christ. Put this way. The gospel is not only the gospel that saves, that's your blank. The gospel is not only a gospel that saves us. The gospel is good news that matures us, that matures us in Christ. After the gospel saves us from divine punishment for the bad things we've done for our ignoring God and what we say and what we think and what we do, we're to conform the rest of our lives to the gospel pattern that Jesus has shown us in his incarnation. We're to conform our lives to the truth of the gospel message. We're to grow in the gospel, to progress in it, to work it out, to see it carried to completion, to see God working in us to will and to act according to his good purpose. We're to conduct our lives in a manner that is worthy of this gospel. It's what is to characterize a life that is lived out in a way worthy of the gospel in what form as our salvation worked out. Well, this passage above versus 2 through 11 show us that it's a pattern, it's something characterized by unity that we as believers are to be unified together. This unity is we've heard from the Lord in the past couple of weeks is brought about by us serving each other by us giving up our status becoming nothing as Jesus became nothing turning to each other considering others interests before our own loving others when they don't deserve our love as Christ loved us and came to earth to die for us when we didn't deserve his love. So God says this this morning, work out this salvation within you. Work out in your life what you saw in Christ when he accomplished your salvation. Work out, progress in the love, the humility, the abandoning of former status. Work out the regard for others that you see present in Christ in his coming to earth and dying for our sins. Grow in these gospel characteristics and you'll see unity in the church. Secondly, Paul says to us something that can be a surefire killer to this unity. We've seen a couple of surefire killers already. In verse three, he mentions selfish ambition and vain conceit. Don't have these things in you. God says to us through Paul they will kill unity in the church but now Paul lists two more unity killers and he says to you this morning, do everything without complaining or arguing. That's your point number two. Do everything without complaining or arguing. Verse 14, complaining or grumbling is some translations put it. We saw how great gods people were in Exodus 16. They grumbled, grumbled, grumbled. Then they say oh God thank you for delivering us from slavery. Thank you that we're free. Thank you that we're on our way to the promised land. They said boy when we were back in Egypt we had posse meat. They could sit around and eat all we wanted to. They grumble. They grumble against Moses and Aaron against God's leadership and the people are told in that passage in Exodus 16 you're not grumbling against Moses and Aaron you're grumbling against God. You are discontent with the things that he has given you. We're not to be people that complain or argue. Perhaps complaining is a little bit more inward. Our thoughts, our attitude, our hearts. Perhaps arguing is a little more external, overt, confrontational arguing with somebody. We understand why these things are contrary to unity in the church. How they can destroy a church very quickly. If a church is going in a certain direction in the leadership of the church is doing best and so and all of a sudden all takes as one person to grumble or to complain about a particular thing and then it spreads like wildfire and pretty seeing you got a church-wide crisis. Everybody was fine. Everybody was content and all of a sudden one person grumbles about a particular thing and boom all of a sudden you've got this distance between leadership and the church who are now on the defensive and now aren't focused on ministering to you but are focused on defending themselves are focused on on have I done something wrong or all this stuff as the writer Hebrew says obey your leaders and submit them for it is of your own advantage it is of no advantage to you Hebrew's 1317 to cause trouble for your leaders to grumble against them. You will be shepherded less if there's grumbling going on in the church because that grumbling takes a whole mess of time for the leadership in the church to approach it to deal with in a Christ-like way if there's arguing of course that's that's even worse but this is not only true between a congregation the people of God and its leadership it's true among the congregation of God. If somebody is grumbling against you or you're grumbling against somebody else or arguing with him or her about a particular thing all of a sudden all the energy that you could have put into building up others in the body of Christ using your gifts your spiritual gifts in the gift God has given you to build up Christ's body for his glory all of a sudden all that energy all that oof is gone in defending yourself and in seeking to to reconcile this relationship and to respond to this complaint against you in a Christ-like way arguing and grumbling is a very difficult thing you've ever been around a bunch of it you know it just it it pulls your spirit down it's hard to be around I'm a channel flipper on TV and one of the things I one of the shows I love is all in the family satirically taken all the family boy what a great show but the thing is unless I am 100% focused on that show I can't have it on because that shows just full the whole 30 minutes is arguing you know arch you with Edith and Archie with Meathead and and Gloria with her dad and Gloria with her husband and all this stuff it's just arguing for 30 minutes and if you're 100% focused and you don't have anyone else talking you don't have to listen to anything else or someone's trying to have a conversation with you I'm fine with it but I tell you I can't take it is background noise if somebody's trying to talk with me or if I've got something else to do it's just disruptive you know I'm hearing the voices raised and the arguing the confrontation going on it's disruptive in my soul and I have to turn it off or flip to another channel and that's the way complaining and arguing functions in our life and in our community as a church it's disruptive it makes peace flees peace flees when there's a viewing and complaining going on now why does complaining make no sense in the church why does complaining make no sense in the church while the answer is located in the gospel because in the church if the church was completely terrible I mean every church you could possibly go to it was just agony the worship service was agony the people in the church were agony I mean it's just awful to go to but God said to you you know what if you want to be saved you're going to be a member of this and you can't separate the two you can't be saved be rescued from your sins and have eternal life apart from membership in the body of Christ and so if you want to be saved you've got to be a member and so you're given that option hypothetically you know what we don't take that option wouldn't we even if the church was terrible even if it was a every local church was a hard thing to do every week and throughout the week we would do it because we say boy I've got how many years of my life left 60 50 40 2010 it's worth that long of having things be miserable in order to have blessedness all my eternity life forever more it's a good wager so to speak if God said to us I give you a miserable life for 50 years but at the end of it I'll give you eternal life we'd be crazy not to take them out 50 years versus eternity just do the math we realize in the church here's your blank that we're just blessed to be here we're blessed to be here and so when there's stuff we don't particularly like or we do things another way or somebody does something the kind of bugs us or whatever we take a step back and we say you know what I'm just blessed to be here I'm fortunate or lucky those are bad theological terms to be here I'm just glad to you know what I'll put up with everything because being here means I'm in the kingdom of God being here means that Jesus loves me being here means my sins are taken care of on the cross being here means I have life forever so you know what I'm not gonna argue complain I'm gonna be here no arguing in everything do it without complaining or arguing this means parents don't complain about your kids this means kids don't complain about your parents don't argue with them do everything without complaining and arguing doesn't do your family any good to complain or argue means those of you who have a boss do everything without complaining without arguing doesn't do your boss any good in fact it's gonna make your boss kind of turn against it boy this guy this woman complain I don't want to be around them you know what if I have this this pie task to get to somebody just a joy task to give somebody to do I'm not gonna give to this guy this guy causes me trouble this woman causes me trouble do everything without complaining or arguing but why secondly your B point does complaining make no sense in the church it makes no sense because it's uncharacteristic of the gospel it's uncharacteristic of the gospel so first of all we say I'm just blessed to be here so I'm not gonna complain or argue I'm gonna keep my trap shut when I got an opinion that's gonna cause harm but secondly I don't complain or argue because it's uncharacteristic of the gospel verse 14 look there pulses do everything without complaining or arguing so that there's a result here in order that to the result that you may become an ever increasing measure measure that it may become ever increasingly evident that you're a you're a blameless impure child of God without fault why do everything without complaining they're arguing so that you might be as a child of God what is characteristic of children of God pulses here it's that we progress in applying the gospel to our lives it's that we do everything without complaining or arguing here he equates these two things hey if you're a child of God let it show by not complaining and arguing because we've received the gospel there's a contentedness in our lives we can say boy in our in our minds and say boy this isn't this sure isn't the way I'd want it to be but I've got eternal life I've got the creator of all things who loves me and on scale of things this thing that I kind of like really doesn't matter when's it gonna pass in a day in a week in 10 years I don't care I've got the gospel I've got eternal life because we've received the gospel we're not to live so to be characterized as a complainer or as argumentative or as if we haven't been affected by the gospel we'll hear more on why complaining and arguing is inappropriate for the believer in the next point which is now God says to you this morning as well point number three here don't complain or argue shine the gospel don't complain or argue shine the gospel Paul gives us a result here he says that as we refuse to complain or argue as we refuse to complain or argue we are showing ourselves not only to be children of God verse 15 but also refusing to complain or argue we are shining the gospel shining the stars in the universe Paul says how so what does God mean here notice that he contrasts not complaining and not arguing with being part of a crooked and depraved generation what's the significance of this Paul's pointing out here the world is not of this pattern that's a blank for you the world is not of this pattern when something goes wrong and you don't have the gospel you're just out there in the world you're not in the church what do you do you complain and you argue that's just the norm that's how life works out in the world complaining and arguing over and over so when we don't we shine when people see wrong done to us and we don't complain about it when they see people being obnoxious to us and we don't argue back that shines it stands out as stars in the black sky of the universe but what do we shine we shine the character that's a blank for you we are shining the character of our Lord Jesus the character that he put on display and coming to earth and accomplishing the gospel accomplishing salvation for us it's this way in a number of ways one when Jesus was mistreated Peter points out to us and first Peter two Jesus like a lamb to the slaughter did not open his mouth when he was abused he did not abuse in return he did not when he was reviled he did not revile in return he closed his mouth and he received the abuse so when we close close our mouths and we don't grumble we don't complain we don't argue against things that are done wrong to us we are acting like Jesus we are showing what our Savior Jesus is like we are shining forth the gospel but there's another way in which this was true if we look contextually just up above in this passage 2 through 11 we see that Jesus there is no evidence that when the Father said my son I have picked out of people for myself but they cannot be in my presence because of their sin I need somebody to go to earth to take their place to become man and to bear the sins of these people that I've picked out but doing this means great abuse doing these means me turning my face from you doing this means people thinking that you're less than you are people not acknowledging you as they should for the status that is rightly yours but Jesus comes willingly
and he lives as a man and he takes abuse and he dies for us he didn't complain or argue with his Father when told to come to earth but for the joys that before him Hebrews 2 he endured the cross though he despised the shame Jesus and hearing this from the Father obeyed he obeyed his Father in what is called in theology the covenant of redemption he obeyed his Father to come to earth to bear our sins and to take care of everything we needed he obeyed remember Paul's instruction to us at the front of this passage obey now in my absence like you do when I'm present obey in this obey in conforming yourself that's your blank obey in conforming yourself to this pattern of humbling yourself of emptying yourself of status of loving others of considering others first obey in this because we need it for unity and if you don't obey in this it will be as this Paul says here my work in you was in vain counted for nothing obey in this for this is what our God Jesus Christ did in accomplishing the gospel he did all these things he gave us this pattern and it's vastly different of vastly different pattern from what's normal that's your blank from what's normal in the world so it shines it stands out I had lunch with Bob Erickson this week over Quiznos and as we were leaving we're both getting in our cars and we and we heard over at the stop sign kind of as you look toward a rock and comet from Quiznos two people were apparently someone didn't stop at a stop sign that there's something like that and we hear this honking and people angry at each other we just kind of look at each other and laugh that's that's the norm you know someone does something and it inconveniences you and you complain or you argue with your horn you strike out at that other person everyone in this world is fighting for themselves and for their own interests but we are called to the gospel pattern to put our interests aside to look at the interests of others to love them to regard them first and this is what Paul does for the Philippians look at this passages end verses 17 and 18 Paul says I don't care about my own life if I die for your sake and my life is spilled out for the sake of your faith for the sake of you folks serving each other and serving the Lord your offering to the Lord your worship of him your service to him and to each other if my life is spilled out as a drink offering for you whether by my death spilled out or in my life if my energy is spilled out for this sake but you serve each other you love each other you are a humble around each other you give up your status for each other so be it I rejoice and you rejoice with me Paul says this is a stark contrast to the normal pattern of what we see in day to day life so when we refuse to complain and argue we not only maintain the unity that is to be ours because we share together in the gospel we also shine forth the gospel we're weird in the world in a good way for the gospel message is the message of a divine son who didn't complain or argue with his father but who humbled himself who loved people us that should have been complained about and regarded our interests above his own don't complain or argue shine forth the gospel shine forth our God shine forth the character of our Savior Jesus shine forth the character of our gospel shine forth the character of this salvation which God has implanted in you work it out as it grows and reveals itself for what it is in your life let's pray