growing in participation

Phil. 1: 3-11

As we continue in our study of Philippians, you may remember that last week we looked at the first 6 verses of chapter one and the subject of our message was partnership in ministry.  And this subject of partnership was presented in verse 3, which says, “in view of your participation in the gospel.”  Today we are going to build on that idea as we look at growing in participation.  Participation in ministry is the means of growth, it’s the means to our maturity in Christ, to becoming all that God intends us to become in Christ. 

In fact, in verse 6 Paul says that God’s plan is to complete in us that work that God began through the gospel.   God will  bring us to maturity through our  participation in the gospel.  In other words, as we are participating in the work of the gospel, God will work in us to complete us, to mature us, until the day that Christ returns for His church, His bride. 

And in verse 7 Paul says it is only natural for me to feel confident and joyful about you because of your participation in the gospel.  Because, He says, you are all partakers of this grace with me.  Whether Paul was imprisoned, or defending the gospel, or in his corroboration/ confirmation of the gospel, his proving the gospel, whatever he was doing, the church at Philippi was partaking in that as well through their participation.

Paul commends the church at Philippi because they are exemplary in their commitment to the furtherance of the gospel.  And so there should be this understanding on our part as we apply this passage to our lives, that this passage is based on the presupposition that the  church is participating in the gospel.  Participation in the gospel is a prerequisite for Christian blessing.   And it was happening in Philippi. 

However, I don’t think that today in the church we are seeing participation in the gospel to the degree that it was then.  Today I feel that many modern churches are so far removed from the truth of the gospel that people in them can hardly even come to an understanding and acceptance of simple salvation.  And even when they do come to salvation, then that’s as far as most church goers seem to want to go.

But Christianity doesn’t stop with being forgiven, it doesn’t stop with receiving salvation.  Rather, salvation is merely the beginning of our Christianity.  That’s why it’s called the new birth.  We are given birth at salvation but that is merely the beginning.  But a lot of Christians want to stop right at forgiven, stop right at grace.  They want to stay in the breast feeding, new birth stage for the rest of their life. It’s nice and warm there, it’s comfortable there, and everything is supplied for you.  But God doesn’t want you to stay spiritually infantile, living in a world of self fulfillment and self gratification.   God wants us to grow in maturity.  And that happens when we  start living a life of agape love towards others.  Participating in His work in the kingdom.  You’ve been given new birth?  Great!  Wonderful!  Now let’s start growing in maturity.  You’ve been saved?  Wonderful!  Now let’s get to work for the kingdom.  Once we are saved, God gives  us a job, a stewardship, and responsibilities and He expects us to fulfill them.  And He has given us the Holy Spirit to live in us, to strengthen us and guide us and equip us in that work He has given us to do.

Paul says I am only right in feeling this way about you, feeling confident about you,  because you are partakers of grace with me.  The church of Philippi’s deeds showed their commitment to the gospel.  They weren’t just giving lip service to God, but they were putting action to their faith.  And Paul is saying your participation in this grace is evidence that God is working in you.

Paul says these Philippians have given him great joy because of their participation in the gospel.  Paul planted this church, and nothing gives a pastor more joy than to see his work, that is the people in the church, walking in the truth. The apostle John said something similar in 3 John 1:3            “For I was very glad when brethren came and testified to your truth, that is, how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth.”  Notice, not just knowing the truth, but walking in the truth.  Not just lip service, but showing by their deeds.

See, love is not just a one way street.  It’s not just God loving us, but us loving God by loving those that He loves.  John tells us in 2 John that if we say we love God then we should love one another.  2John 1:6  You say you love God?  “This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.”  And the commandment was to love one another as you love yourself.  That’s a lot by the way.

Many people find great solace in thinking that God loves us.  And there should indeed be great solace in  the fact of God’s love towards us.  But many times I think we secretly imagine that God loves us because we are in fact so loveable.  And God loving us merely confirms to us that we are actually pretty lovable people after all.  But actually, the Bible tells us that  God loved us even though we are vile, wretched, unloving, selfish, prideful, hateful people who are actually unlovable.  Have you ever taken a real inventory of your sins?  If we honestly saw ourselves  the way a holy, righteous God saw us, then maybe we would have a more realistic idea of how onerous in God’s eyes we really are. God knows everything I have done, and everything I have even thought of.  Things I try to forget.  I know that no one could really love me if they really knew me the way God knows me.  It takes a supernatural kind of love to overcome my sin, and yet still love me.

I know I probably seem like the most unromantic person in the world to some of you.  I sometimes tend to be  critical of emotional things and focus on the harder, more practical aspects of our relationship to God.  And I admit maybe I’m not as romantic as I should be.  But perhaps my excuse is that in so many cases I think man’s concept of modern love does such a disservice to God’s concept  of agape love. 

Paul says in verse 8 that he longs for the church with the affection of Christ Jesus.  We should all be familiar by now with Christ’s love for us;  He loved us so much that He gave up His throne in heaven, gave up all His glory, to suffer shame and reproach and even a horrific death on the cross so that we might be saved.   We should all be familiar with that love by now, though we should never take it for granted.  And Paul says he has that kind of love for the church, the kind of love that Christ had, whereby Eph. 5:25 says “He gave himself up for the church.”  That’s Christ’s concept of love.

But then Paul gives us the other side of love, our side, what our love for Christ should look like.  It’s not enough that Christ loves us, but in a relationship love is reciprocal.  Look at what our love is supposed to look like.  Vs. 9: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;  having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

One of the most beautiful love stories in the Bible illustrates our kind of love I think very well.  It is set in the time of Abraham and his son Isaac.  And when Abraham became old, he took aside his servant and told him to go to the land of Haran where Abraham was from and find a wife for his son.  And Abraham gave him strict orders.  And so the servant traveled many days to Abraham’s homeland and prayed that God would reveal the woman that would become Isaac’s wife.  And according to the prayer of the servant, when he arrived a beautiful young woman named Rebekah came out to draw water. The servant asked her for a drink, and in answer to his prayer the woman gave him a drink and then offered to water his camels as well. 

So the servant knew that this woman was the one that God had appointed for Isaac.  So he went through the customs of meeting the girl’s relatives, and then he stated his business.  He had come on behalf of Abraham to seek a wife for his son Isaac, and according to his prayer, Rebekah had been shown to be the chosen one of the Lord.  And so once he had explained how Abraham had sent him and who Isaac was and so forth they asked Rebekah if she would be willing to go with him to become the wife of Isaac. Gen 24:58  “Then they called Rebekah and said to her, "Will you go with this man?" And she said, "I will go." The next day, the young woman packs up her things, leaves all that she knows,  her home and her family, and goes with the servant to the land of Abraham to become the wife of Isaac. 

And in the evening, Isaac goes into the fields to meditate and he sees the camel caravan coming. Gen 24:64            Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she dismounted from the camel.  She said to the servant, "Who is that man walking in the field to meet us?" And the servant said, "He is my master." Then she took her veil and covered herself.  The servant told Isaac all the things that he had done.

Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; thus Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.”  What we find so amazing about this story is that Rebekah’s love for Isaac wasn’t based on a feeling.  It wasn’t even based on romance.  It was based on a commitment.  And faith in a promise.  Faith in really God’s promise to Abraham.

It’s a beautiful love story, but there is more to it than just a love story.  Abraham is a picture of God the Father, and He was seeking a bride for His Son.  And so God sent his servants into the world to find the future bride of Christ.  And by the foreknowledge of the Father, a bride is found in accordance to His will.   And the servant, the prophets, the Apostles, the preachers of the Father’s word, present the gospel to this bride and ask, “Will you come to Christ?  Will you forsake the world, all that you hold dear and come to Christ to live with Him and serve Him for the rest of your days?”  And the church, the bride of Christ’s answer was “Yes, I will go.”  I’ll give up everything for the sake of Christ.  I Peter 1:8 says, “and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.”

I hope you are a participant in that love story.  I hope that the truth of the gospel has grabbed hold of your heart, and in faith you have given your life to live for Christ. I hope you have forsaken the world and the things of this world for faith in another world promised by God for those that love Him.  And though you have never seen Him, you love Him.  And though you do not see Him now, yet you believe in Him, obtaining as the outcome of your faith your salvation of your soul.  And I hope because you love Him, you love what He loves and you keep His commandments. 

 Over the years that I have been in ministry, I’ve  seen a lot of people come in and out of the church.  Perhaps they reach the point where life has left them cold.  They are in some crisis, or they are lonely, or they realize that there has to be something more and are seeking the truth.  And so they come to church like a person coming up to a campfire.  It looks warm and inviting, and they are cold and in need of comfort.  And so this person stands there next to the fire for a while, and they can feel the heat.  They like the way it looks, perhaps.  They are attracted for a while.  But after a time, they are warm and the crisis passes, and they don’t feel quite so lonely now, and so they begin to move away.  Once in awhile they feel a need to come back over to the fire and warm up again.  And that seems to be the pattern for their lives.  They come and go.  They sidle up to the fire from time to time and get a little of the glow, get a little of the warmth.  But they fail to recognize that true Christianity, mature Christianity, is not just warming up next to the fire once in a while, but jumping into the fire.  Becoming part of that fire that serves as a light in the darkness, that offers comfort to the hurting, and hope to the lost.  We are called to lay down our lives in service for the brethren.  Even as Christ gave his life for the church, so should we. 

Vs. 9 again,  “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;  having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”  Note that true love for God results in growing in knowledge and discernment.  It comes from subjecting yourself to the teaching of the truth of God’s word.  It doesn’t result in a superficial, skin deep, goose pimpled spirituality, but as we apply ourselves to the discipline of the gospel, in obedience to the gospel, then God gives us more and more knowledge and the scripture gives us discernment in knowing truth from error.  We preach a gospel here not based on what you feel is right, or what I feel is right, or what our culture feels is right, or what society tells us is right.  But we preach the full gospel, which is able to give you discernment.

As we are obedient, we gain discernment.   Folks, if there is one big, glaring deficiency in the church today it is discernment.  We accept everything today.  We hold no fundamental beliefs anymore.  Like Eph. 4 says, we’re tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine.  And the enemy knows we have no firm foundation and that we are ripe for the plucking.   Hebrews 5: 12  “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.  For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.  But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”   Notice a couple of important things about this verse.  They are not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.  Isn’t that the case today in the church? People don’t know what the word says.  They just arbitrarily decide what’s appropriate or righteous based on what seems right to them, or what they may have seen on TV or a movie or read in a book.  But most can’t tell you what the scripture says.

And note another point.  Because of practice they have their senses trained to discern good and evil.  What does that mean?  It means that the mature are obedient to the things that God clearly shows in his word.  They practice what they preach.  To go back to what John said they walk according to His commandments.  They just don’t give lip service, they don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk.

V. 10, “so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;  having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

You know what blameless means there in this scripture?  It comes from the Greek word “a pos kee poss”.  And what it means is not causing others to stumble.  Not putting a stumbling block in front of others.  Not leading or causing others to sin.  We need to be practicing discernment so that we don’t cause another person to stumble.  Jesus said, there would be stumbling blocks in this world, but woe to that person whom through stumbling blocks should come.  It would be better for that person to be tied with a millstone around their neck and thrown in the middle of the ocean. 

And I’m afraid I’ve witnessed a lot of stumbling blocks in the church.  Some of them are going to come, maybe they can’t even be helped.  But some of them come from men and women that should know better by now.  They should have been elders or deacons or teachers or preachers by now, but they are so self centered, so self focused, that they throw stumbling blocks here and there without any concern for how many people are falling because of their testimony.  But God will hold us accountable for being a stumbling block.

In closing, Paul says we are to be blameless, practicing what we preach, producing the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ which results in bringing glory to God.    See, when we put on Jesus Christ, when we are not only clothed in His righteousness, but we are also practicing His commandments, when we are walking according to the Spirit of righteousness, when we are serving the body of Christ in agape love, then that kind of life brings glory to God.  We’re not to be about trying to bring glory to ourselves. But as John the Baptist said, He must increase, and I must decrease.  And as we learn to live as Christ lived, and love what Christ loved, to participate in His gospel and His church, then one day when we are ushered into His glory as the bride of Christ, we will share in His glory.  May you be found blameless until He comes. Let’s pray.