Sermon Cloud

We’re having a look at our second chunk of the book of Philippians as we look at what Christians and churches are supposed to be like. In the first part of the letter last week, if you were here you’ll remember that we had Paul telling his friends the Philippians that he wanted them to trust in what they knew and not what they felt, and this week, we’ll hear how things were going for Paul.

There are times aren’t there, when life just doesn’t go the way we think it should:

• Two animal rights protesters were picketing a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly two thousand pigs escaped through a broken fence and trampled the protesters to death.

• Do you remember years ago when the Exxon Valdez ran aground, spilling oil in Alaska. People sent cash and rushed in to help save the wildlife contaminated by the spill. The average cost  was £40,000 a seal. At a special ceremony, two were released back into the wild with cheers from onlookers. A minute later they were both eaten by a killer whale.

• A woman came home and saw her husband, shaking wildly with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the kettle. Trying to push him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a chair, breaking his arm in two places. 'Til that moment he had been happily listening to his MP3 player.

• Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb – yep you guessed...

Video

discussion. Any queries from last week or What’s your gut reaction when things look grim?

Reading:

Philippians – 1: 12 – 26 Page 899 in church bibles

 ¹² And I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News. ¹³ For everyone here, including the whole palace guard, knows that I am in chains because of Christ. ¹⁴ And because of my imprisonment, most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speak God’s message without fear.

 ¹⁵ It’s true that some are preaching out of jealousy and rivalry. But others preach about Christ with pure motives. ¹⁶ They preach because they love me, for they know I have been appointed to defend the Good News. ¹⁷ Those others do not have pure motives as they preach about Christ. They preach with selfish ambition, not sincerely, intending to make my chains more painful to me. ¹⁸ But that doesn’t matter. Whether their motives are false or genuine, the message about Christ is being preached either way, so I rejoice. And I will continue to rejoice. ¹⁹ For I know that as you pray for me and the Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance.

 ²⁰ For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed, but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past. And I trust that my life will bring honour to Christ, whether I live or die. ²¹ For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better. ²² But if I live, I can do more fruitful work for Christ. So I really don’t know which is better. ²³ I’m torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me. ²⁴ But for your sakes, it is better that I continue to live.

 ²⁵ Knowing this, I am convinced that I will remain alive so I can continue to help all of you grow and experience the joy of your faith. ²⁶ And when I come to you again, you will have even more reason to take pride in Christ Jesus because of what he is doing through me.

So what have we got here then? Can this really tell us what a Church is meant to be like?

Well we can see now why Paul was saying it’s important to know what really matters, cos he’s not exactly in the best of situations – or at least we might think that – Paul’s ended up in clink, and not just any old remand prison, but in the “care” of the Emperor’s Guard.

Now just to fill you in with a bit of background, old Paul was no stranger to jails, in fact the first time he was in jail was in Philippi and it was then that He told the jailer and a few others about Jesus. And since then he’d seen the inside of a few different cells, but this time it was the biggy, and his friends in Philippi were concerned about him so they’d sent a bloke called Epaphroditus with some cash to try and help him. [just a bit of an aside as well – did you know that the books written by Dr Luke, that’s Luke and Acts, were most likely written as Paul’s defence of the trumped up charges against him?]

Anyhow, back to the point. So Paul was telling his mates what was happening, was he depressed and feeling dejected and worried in prison, as you might reasonably be?

No He’s excited, he’s raving, not raving mad, but raving about the things he’s doing...

The Philippians were probably expecting a serious, grave letter, or no letter and news that the church in Rome was being demolished by the authorities, but that wasn’t what they got at all.

What they got was the most encouraging letter you could imagine, written by a bloke who was in a serious hole. And in this part Paul tells them about his Chains, then his critics, and lastly the conflict in his mind as he tosses around the thoughts of being with Jesus straightaway, or hanging around for a bit longer – depending on the outcome of his trial.

So those chains then, Paul is chained to an elite guard for 24 hours a day, is he phased by this? No of course he’s not, a different guard each six hours means he managed to talk to the whole legion within a week or two, I mean there was no escape for those guards and history tells that a huge number of them and others in the royal palace, became Christians – Pauls chains weren’t a hindrance to Him, he just accepted where he was and asked God to show him what to do...now there’s a lesson here for you and me. When things don’t go how we think they should, don’t get knocked down and feel dejected and assume God’s not in control, grab whatever He puts your way, and though at the time you won’t always see it, when you look back you’ll see that God can do amazing things in the worst of situations.

"Two buckets met at a well one day...One bucket had a big smile on its face. The other had a big frown. "Why are you frowning?" asked the happy bucket. "Well, no matter how full I am when I leave the well, I always end up empty." complained the sad bucket. "And why are you always smiling?" asked the sad bucket. "No matter how empty I am when I come to the well, I always leave full!!" replied the happy bucket. 

When you’re empty let God fill you up, do you think Old Paul felt that good about prison? No I doubt it, but he knew that God had a plan for him, and as soon as he accepted that he saw God in action and just like James Brown, boy did he feel good.

He felt good cos he was able to be even more effective than he could have imagined considering his weird situation, but not only was he banged up, but he had some serious critics, and these critics weren’t the traditional enemy, they were other Christians – look at verse 15 It’s true that some are preaching out of jealousy and rivalry. But others preach about Christ with pure motives. ¹⁶ They preach because they love me, for they know I have been appointed to defend the Good News. ¹⁷ Those others do not have pure motives as they preach about Christ. They preach with selfish ambition, not sincerely, intending to make my chains more painful to me.  now what’s that about? Why would people do that? Well maybe it was that they thought Paul must be bad, because God would never let someone who was good suffer the way Paul was?

The lesson for us here is that often people still get that wrong idea today, people will say, God will give you all the health and wealth you WANT – That’s not true…

You see God will take every situation we go through good or bad and use it to get us ready for eternity; our life here and now is to prepare us for a perfect future.

The other reason that some were driven to preach more and more is that they saw it as a competition, they didn’t dislike Paul, but they were jealous of him, they saw Christianity as a competition, it is not a competition, we aren’t competing with the cathedral or the Methodists or St Mary’s or the Countess, and never should we. Like Paul and the Philippians, we should see ourselves as equal partners, all doing church in different ways, but doing all we do as God leads us.

So Paul had his critics, but was he bothered, no way, he said it doesn’t matter. Whatever their motives the message about Jesus is getting out, so I rejoice. And I will continue to rejoice.

Rejoice is a word we’ll read a lot in this letter, but what does it mean, is Paul just quite happy about this, is it making him feel a bit better?

No this word is the Greek word xaiðrw and it means to be elated, it means to be incredibly happy physically and emotionally, so happy that you want to jump up and punch the air  - can you imagine being a soldier chained to Paul when he’s dictating this letter? Wow.

So Paul’s in chains, he has his critics, but also he’s got a bit of a conflict going on in his heart.

As we come to look at that, I wonder what you think about this quote “If you have nothing worth dying for, you’ll have nothing worth living for” …mmm….

 If you’ve still got a bible open look again at verse 21 For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better. Now as we’ve just seen, Paul is in a really dodgy situation, but he’s far from suicidal he’s not wishing himself dead, it’s almost as if he’s thinking, “well I wonder what’s gonna happen next?” well quite honestly it’s going to go one of two ways, he’ll either get a complete pardon from the emperor or, he’ll end up as a bit of sport for the lions – so he’s tossing up in his mind which do I fancy most.

There are plenty of lessons here for us but here’s the one I want to leave us with as individuals and as a church.

We shouldn’t fear life and we shouldn’t fear death, but in every difficult situation we should grab God by the hand and say, OK Lord, I didn’t expect to be here, so what do we do now, I’ll follow you.