Sermon Cloud

When Will I Be Happy with Others?

When I’m Free to Complain

Philippians 2:12-18 

INTRODUCTION

This series in Philippians has been all about how to be happy.  This is a challenge for us today because so many people have given up on being happy.  Some are convinced that happiness is a luxury that I realize I’m going to have to live without.  These are folks who are being forced to accept a reality they don’t want. 

The biggest problem in trying to address this—showing people that happiness is possible is that you’re fighting against all kinds of evidence and life experiences that keep us down. 

But, despite all the evidence, everyone still pursues it.  No matter how dark life gets, everyone still squints through the darkness looking for a glimmer of hope.   

The question is, where are you looking?  We’re looking specifically at the issue of learning to be happy with others.   

How are you pursuing happiness with others?  Many people, without even realizing it, choose to pursue happiness with others by complaining.  They’ve given up hope that others might make them happy, and so they try to squeeze happiness out by finding other people they can complain to.  They check out of marriages, families, and friendships, they build walls… and they find someone or some group they can gripe to—and they think that is the best they can do in terms of experiencing happiness.   

Today Paul addresses two ways to pursue happiness:  seeking through complaining vs. the seeking the work God wants to do in our lives.   

I.The Chains of Complaining (v14-16) 

II.Working Out the Complaining Heart (v12-13) 

III. Relationships that Bring Happiness Not Complaint (v17-18)   

So it’s How not to do it, How to do it, and Applying it to relationships. 

1. The Chains of Complaining (v14-16)  How not to be happy

Grumbling in v14 means, “Making remarks in a low tone of voice.  Behind the scenes talk.”  These are great images of complaining. 

Questioning here doesn’t mean to be unthinking.  I think we should always be asking questions to better understand what we really believe and what the Bible really teaches.  But this is referring to defiantly overthrowing an authority in our lives.  In a word, it’s complaining.  We do it in all areas, not just with relationships.   

In the Pixar Movie—UP, the main character was an old man who grew bitter when his wife died.  He grew inward, isolated himself from the world and justified his isolation by complaining about everything—about people, about the world, about the circumstances of his life, about what was happening to his city.  He was incredibly bitter.   

This is where the road to complaining leads us too. 

Why do we Complain?  We think it will make us happy.

Complaining is a way to make ourselves look better by putting others down.

Complaining is revenge against others or against God

Complaining is backlash against not having control

Complaining is us saying we deserve better in our lives.

Complaining is demoralizing—it puts a rain cloud over our entire lives, and makes us unpleasant to be around. 

Complaining is enslaving—it puts us in a vicious cycle spiraling downward and inward until it controls us completely.   

Paul speaks about the “crooked and twisted generation” in v15.  And this is the result of a generation that complains.  This word twisted can also be translated “misled,” which is interesting because it highlights the reality that for most, complaining is an effort to find happiness. We’ve been lied to.  There is no lasting happiness down the road of complaining. 

xiv—In an old episode of the I Love Lucy show, Ricky comes home to find Lucy crawling around the living room on all fours.  When he asks her what she’s doing she explains that she has lost her earrings.  “You lost your earrings in the living room?” Ricky asks.  Lucy replies, “No, I lost them in the bedroom—but the light is much better out here.”  The generation we live has been misled—and so it encourages people to find happiness in complaining.   

Complaining is striving for more and more control, but soon we’re left with a life that isn’t worth controlling.   

The greatest image of this is from the Old Testament.  In this passage, there are no less than 6 allusions to the Old Testament.  The primary one that underlies his command not to grumble and complain comes from Dt. 32:5.  This is part of a speech that Moses gave at the end of his life (which is interesting because it’s the same place Paul is in).  He is confronting Israel: 

Deuteronomy 32:5  Israel has dealt corruptly with God; they are no longer his children because they are blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation.  

Ph 2:15 is quoting this verse.  This might not hit you right between the eyes, but it would have struck them.  The greatest act of salvation in the whole Old Testament was the Israel’s exodus from Egypt.  God proved he was real, he overthrew the political power that was keeping Israel enslaved.  He gave them their freedom, their independence, and set them on the road to inherit the Promised Land, a land that was heaven on earth, where they could build a new life.   

But the whole way through the desert from Egypt to Israel, all the people did was grumble and complain against God. 

Paul is saying grumbling and complaining is being just like Israel who stared all of God’s blessings in the face and said, “We don’t want you, we want to go back to slavery in Egypt.”   

So Paul is warning us that to live that way will mean to suffer the fate of that generation.  What happened to them?  They came right up to the edge of the Promised Land, but they didn’t inherit it.  They died in the desert, the very place where they complained.

They didn’t inherit God’s blessings because through their complaining they cut themselves off from God, so they cut themselves off from his blessings.  This is what happens to people today.  If we spend our lives complaining, we will die in the place where we complain.   

If you’re here in this place—Christian or not—this is why we need Jesus.  We need to come to him, confessing both our complaining and our need for control that fuels our complaints.  If you come, he will forgive you.  Jesus leads us in a new Exodus—freedom from sin and healing our brokenness. 

This means we can be different.  POINT 2… 

2. Working Out the Complaining Heart (v12-13)  How to Be Happy

Our response to God isn’t to live grumbling and questioning, but rather v12—we are to work out our salvation.  This means simply that we are to live as people who have been saved.  Saved from the brokenness and deception of life.   

This is often the problem that non-Christians have with the church—people who claim to know and follow Jesus, but who don’t seem to be living out their salvation.  **In this the world is right:  is it possible for someone to be freed from the power of sin and brokenness and have it make no difference in your life?   

Paul says that if you avoid this kind of a lifestyle you will be v15—children of God.  We’ll look like him.  Gratitude, appreciation for God and his work. 

When Paul thinks about this how to do this, to him it’s about holding fast to God’s word—it’s the word that gives life.   That word gives life.  That word is what brings light to the darkness.   

Figure out how your salvation impacts your life.  The Philippians must grow into maturity and take responsibility for their lives.   

How does your salvation change you?  How should it change us as a church?  What should this salvation look like in our lives and our city? 

Does this mean that our works earn our Salvation? 

No.  We can’t earn salvation.   

Because of the word “Therefore”(v12).  It’s because of the work of Jesus in you that you are to work out your salvation. 

John the Baptist in Mt 3:8 “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”  Bring forth a lifestyle that fits your salvation. 

We do good works not to be saved, but because we are saved.  If you believe in Jesus, you’ve already been saved, you’re already freed from slavery to sin.  Now Paul is saying live as people who are free!  Put your salvation into practice.  Don’t keep living as slaves, because you’re not anymore! 

How do we do this?  By the power of God at work in us. V13. 

God works it in you, you work it out.  God empowers your doing and your willing.  Residential Real estate in East Village.  How many buildings are built but empty?  Either unrented or even unfinished?  This is what Paul is speaking against.  Salvation comes with power and energy designed to fill the world with light!  To show the world that there is another way to live.  To seek to fix what is crooked and twisted in this generation.  It’s a shame not to put it into practice. 

When you sit here, don’t you feel the desire to live out your salvation?  Being reminded that you have been set free, don’t you want to live this out?  To put this on display to show how wonderful God is?  That is God working in you!   

3. Relationships that Bring Happiness Not Complaint (v17-18).  Applying this to relationships.

In v17 Paul calls himself a drink offering.  Drink offerings are associated with joy. They were cups or bottles of wine poured out to accompany a burnt offering (Num 28:1-15).   

Drink offerings were a way of saying—yes, God I’m devoting myself to you, and I’m happy about it.  I’m devoting myself to you—let’s drink to that! 

So Paul is saying to the Philippians, you are the burnt offering, I am added as the joy-filled drink offering.  If I die in this upcoming trial, I won’t be dismayed by my suffering.  I will see my suffering as my joy-filled contribution to your suffering. 

Suffering together brings people together.  It brings support, that brings happiness—even in the midst of the suffering! 

But not only this, remember Paul has just finished talking about why all this suffering matters—because it connects him to Jesus, who’s suffering brought salvation to the world.  This is what gives meaning to Paul’s suffering, and to the Philippians’ suffering, and to your suffering.  Paul’s living this out.  And he invites us to join him.   

CONCLUSION:  On our vacation last week, we spent time at a river north of Sacramento—it’s a great place to swim, there are rocks to jump off, and some white water rapids.  Some of the rapids are very tame, the kind that you could float down on an inner tube, but one in particular was dangerous:  the water was fast, turned a bend, and flowed right into two huge rocks.  We steered clear of it.   

So we had fun going down the tame rapids.  Then Jaimie (my oldest daughter) didn’t get out of the current quickly enough and she found herself drifting toward the dangerous rapids.  I told her to calm down and get to the place where she could stand up before the big dangerous rapids began.  She did, but the current was too strong and it was pulling her into the rapids.  Meanwhile I was moving quickly to help her.  When I finally got her hand, her feet were sliding, the current was pulling us both too strong, and after aout 8 seconds of fighting to get to the side of the river, we were swept down into the rapids.  And we weren’t on our inner tubes, we were hanging on to our inner tubes, heading for the rocks.   

The fact that I’m standing here now and Jaimie is here relieves some of the tension of the story—we made it through okay.  But let me tell you.  Until we got past those two rocks, I was trying really hard not to panic.  I was scared for both of us.  I knew that I had to get my feet planted on those rocks to absorb the blow and push us away.  Other than two nice gashes on my left leg, we emerged shaken, but thankfully fine. 

I asked Jaimie if she was freaked out while we were going down the river, and you know what she said?  “Not really, because you were with me.”  She had faith in me.  She was convinced she was safe because I would see her through it.   

For her, some of her confidence was an illusion, but not for us when we see that this pictures our faith in Jesus.   Our faith in Jesus is even more sure because he has gone through the rapids before us—he has made it through.  The dangers of life he has lived, to the point of him being executed.  He was forced on the rocks of death on the cross, and he emerged victorious through it in his resurrection.  So now he comes to us in our suffering, in our hard times, and he takes us by the hand and pushes us through to safety.  We don’t hit the rocks because he hit the rocks.  And he didn’t plant just his feet on the rocks, but he put his hands and feet and his side against the rock—he gave his life, so that we might be saved.  That is good news.  That is a faith that conquers our complaining.  That is good news that God works into us so that we can work it out in love to others.   

Coming to the Lord’s Table

But what if you’re going through the rapids right now in your life, and you look around but don’t sense that Jesus is near?  If you want to experience closeness with Jesus, you come to the Lord’s table today.  In this meal, you have the chance to reach out and take the hand of Jesus, you can hold him in your hand, you take him close to you so you can touch him and then know that he is in you, he is holding onto you, and he’s given himself so that he can see you through whatever you’re dealing with.  As you reach out and grab the bread, that is how real Jesus’ reach is to you, he is holding you, he is with you.