Putting action to our words

Philippians 1, please, and we’re going to read several verses in spite of the fact that the time is getting away from us. I think it’s important that you see the context of this passage. Philippians chapter two, and we will begin reading with verse 12, Philippians 2:12.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Do all things without murmurings and disputing, that you may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life, that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, nor labored in vain.

Yes, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all. For the same cause also do ye joy, and rejoice with me. I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy shortly to you, that I also may be of good comfort when I know your state.

For I have no man like-minded, who will naturally care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s. You know the proof of him, that as a son with the father, he has served with me in the gospel. Him therefore I hope to send presently, so soon as I shall see how it will go with me. But I trust in the Lord that I also shall come shortly.

Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellow soldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my need. For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he was sick nigh unto death, but God had mercy on him, and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful.

Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness, and hold such in reputation, because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me. Timothy J. McCarthy may or may not become a name in our history, I’m not sure, but at 31, he has become a well-disciplined and trained professional. And if being near the center light counts for anything, he ought to get some attention, at least during this last week.

That was when a love-sick loner opened fire on the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. It was Timothy J. McCarthy who turned toward the fire and absorbed the bullets marked for another man into his own body. The videotapes make it very clear that his decision was a deliberate volitional self-sacrifice, and that 31-year-old man, a family man, a Secret Service officer turned his body directly toward the flow of the bullets.

Some of you probably would sigh and say, “Well, that’s his job. He was simply doing what he was trained to do.” Exactly. My argument precisely. McCarthy’s life was instantly placed front and center to his calling, vulnerably placed, I might add, vulnerably placed at the highest arena to lay down his life, to sacrifice his own existence for purpose, for dedication.

The Christian life is meant to produce equally instant and visible proximity between our life and our testimony. The man who places Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior on the throne of his own heart is called upon by God to walk out so great a salvation by a consistent manner of behavior. That’s why I call this shoe-leather salvation or practical salvation, and the teaching of that experience abounds in this intimate New Testament book of Philippians.

You remember the arena of this entire book is summed up in two phrases. In Philippians chapter one, verse 12, Paul says, “Christ has been magnified in his circumstances.” The King James says, “in the things which happened unto me,” but that’s an idiomatic Greek expression saying, “in my circumstances, Christ has been magnified.” And then the 27th verse, as I pointed out to you last week, the same phrase appears only reversed to them. He says he wants to hear of their affairs, or in other words, he wants to hear concerning the circumstances of their life.

I once heard of a Scotsman who testified, “I am a Christian because the Reverend Marcus Dodds is a Christian.” Talk about the evidence of Christianity. Dodds is it. End of quote. What he was saying very specifically is that one man’s evidence of Christianity could be the way another man had lived out that experience, and the Bible nowhere lets us hide behind the dimension of saying, “Well, look to Jesus and not to me.” The Bible is very clear. There’s a vulnerable, transparent level in which the Christ life has to be manifested in shoe leather.

Last week we looked at the real danger for this Philippian church, which was disunity, and we moved into the most self-forgetting kind of passage that abides in the scripture, the most moving passage Paul ever wrote about Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:5-11, and you remember, we can quickly review verses 6, 7, and 8, or you can just look there. It’s the same chapter you have open right now as we’re studying together this morning. I’m sure Philippians 2:6-8 speaks about Jesus emptying himself and not holding onto his rights, but literally becoming an obedient slave to the purposes of God, that he might redeem us, dying, and not only dying, that wasn’t enough, but dying the death of the cross.

In verse 9, the humiliation and the kenosis ends. Here’s the other side of the coin. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him a name above all other names that at the name of Jesus Christ, every knee should bow and every tongue should confess him Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The use of the Greek article, the name is here in a definite sense, wherefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name, which is above all names, Jehovah Curios, Lord, a word that once had come to mean the Roman Emperor.

But a word that the translators of the Old Testament translated from the Greek word used to translate Jehovahs. There’s a common biblical idea that a new name is given at a definite stage in a man’s life. Abram became Abraham, and Jacob became Israel, and the risen Christ is given a new name, Lord. And he has won that position. Though he is God, he has won the right to lordship in our life by the obedience and commitment of himself to us. In fact, the most meaningful, and as far as I’m concerned, only Christian creed that exists is found in this passage: Jesus Christ is Lord. And if a man or woman can say, “For me, Jesus Christ is Lord,” that they are Christians. It doesn’t matter what kind of legalistic pronouncements you put around it or what kind of buildup you make through denominational adherences and bureaucratic orders, the scripture only knows one thing: that if a man or woman can say to me, “Christ is Lord, Jesus Christ holds that position,” that man is a Christian. It means for him Christ is unique, and he’s prepared to give Jesus the obedience and love and loyalty that he will give to no other person on this earth. Shoe leather salvation begins with such a commitment. When a man says, “Jesus Christ is my Lord,” it produces an instant kind of response and sacrifice.

Timothy McCarthy’s action this week to protect his President under fire is but a scenario of what ought to be instant, the involvement of a man who has said, “Christ is Lord.” Look with me to verse 12 just a moment. Therefore is always such a significant thing. Paul has just concluded this most moving passage of Jesus Christ and says, “Now on the basis of that, on the basis of the self-humiliation of Jesus Christ becoming obedient unto death, I argue in your life that you need to become responsible in carrying out the holy meaning of what it is to be saved.”

This verse, which is so often misread and misunderstood, is perhaps the most succinct and epigrammatical statement of salvation in the Bible. Look at its words: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” Now, obviously, some people would wrest this from context and come up with a Christian idea of works, that somehow you and I could work our way into an experience of salvation. That’s contrary to the whole message. If it were possible by any means that a man could be saved by works, then the death of Jesus Christ would have been such a waste. But God sent forth His Son to die the death of the cross, knowing that only that experience could make it possible for a sinful man to be involved with a holy God. And He made that commitment. This isn’t a call to works. It’s a call to work out something that is placed within you. But on the other hand, I would call your attention to this concept.

I suppose if I’m going to give you a whole outline, this is my first point, which has to do with responsibility: working out your salvation with fear and trembling, or Phillips says, and I love this, “working out your salvation with a proper sense of awe and of responsibility.” One writer, Lightfoot, said it should be with a nervous and trembling anxiety to do right. I reject that concept. I don’t think there’s any trembling involved, but there’s a holy awe that what God has put in me through Christ will not be wasted. All the thing that drove every man in the New Testament who had had a confrontation with Christ was that in no way he should prove to be worthless of that commitment. Modern evangelicals make it a question of heaven and hell, if I sin today, I’m lost, or if something goes on in my life that I’m somehow going to be discounted from the experience of salvation. That’s never the teaching of the New Testament. It isn’t a matter of losing your salvation, sir. It’s losing your purpose. And the great call of the Christian Church is that a man stands on tiptoes lest he fail to meet that commitment that Christ has destined for him, that he be sidelined, that he be benched, that he’d never be able to achieve the thing God had called him. And that’s why Paul says, “I fight to keep my body under lest having preached to others, I should be a castaway.”

The word “worketh,” “God worketh in you both to will and do of His good pleasure.” The word “work” and “to do” is the same in the Greek, “energein.” Again, “energy.” We would say God is both taking care of the action and of the effective purpose.

God works in you what’s necessary. The question is, are you willing to work it out? Salvation is of God. God works in us the will and desire to be saved. He awakens the desire for Himself. It’s true, as Augustine says, our hearts are restless until we come to be one with God. But it’s also true that the work of making us one with Him is entirely His work.

But with reverence and trepidation, we are to cultivate that salvation. Weymouth says we’re to labor earnestly. For God’s power creates within us the desire, but it must be His power that executes His gracious will. The continuance of this process, the willingness to let what God has put within us manifest itself, takes a commitment.

Can you imagine if the Secret Service agent I’ve talked about had done anything less? Can you imagine the replaying of video tape showing him cringing or retreating or hiding when he was called into a position and a unique place of responsibility to protect the life of the President of the United States?

I think to reverse that scenario would help us to understand what it is not to work out what God has worked within us. The offer of God is there. Without that offer, there could be no such thing as salvation. God even breathes into a man’s heart a desire and then fills him with that desire and meets that desire for Himself.

But then God expects us to manifest what He’s done within us to show it. There radiates here in verses 12 through 18 a number of what I will call radiance, and I mean that not with the “CE” at the end but radiant lines that come from a man’s salvation. Look at them quickly with me. First of all, a radiant of the process of salvation within us is that there will be continual obedience.

Verse 12: “You have as you have always obeyed, you can depend on people.”

You know, it gets to be a grievous thing for me to find Christians drawing the line and saying, “I’ve done that for 20 years, and I’m not going to do it anymore.” There is something about the Christian experience which says, “I obey and I live out that obedience.” Many times people have said to me, “Do you really have a word? You’re supposed to still be in Redwood City. Has God spoken to you about being in Redwood City recently?” My immediate answer is no. I’ve had no word since 10 years ago when God said, “Come,” and my experience with the things of God is that you’re not running around looking for earthquakes and lightning, but you’re doing what God has said to do.

It may not be very sensational sometimes and exciting, but God said to do it. And whether He has spoken again, it was 13 years between the last moment of God’s revelation to Abraham and the sending forth of the actual fulfillment. Some of us expect God to pop in and out of our life every two or three weeks with some new great dramatic expression, and God is saying, stand in continual obedience.

And then there’s effective progress here. You are working out this salvation that mentions fear and trembling, and that’s not a threat of punishment, but it’s reverence or awe. And then in verse 14, he says there’s a settled faithfulness to this kind of radiance, like a radiant line out of that center point of Christ’s lordship in our life.

“A settled malice,” according to verse 14. That means we do everything without murmuring or disputing. I’ve spent time teaching in this church on that. It is a poetic word, which simply means that the word here actually sounds like murmurings and disputing – two specific words that talk about useless, ill-natured disputing and debating, low-threatening discontent, mutterings of a mob.

A lot of people do things, but they do it with that. It’s kind of clear the way I’m gonna do this for Jesus, but I’m gonna leave devastation in my path. Listen, it isn’t just what you do, it’s the motive and spirit without murmurings and disputing. Fifth, there’s purity. This person that you are to be blameless and harmless.

I like that. Blameless is what the Christian is to the world, but harmless is what the Christian is to himself. The actual word “harmless” here, “res” or “el res,” means to be un-mixed, unadulterated, to be sincere, not to be a mixture of things that you have to keep sorting out, and you are to be without rebuke. This is what the Christian is in the sight of God: spotless and blameless, fit for God’s altar.

And then, of course, verse 16 is such an incredible testimony to what David has talked to us about this morning. In missions, you were to be holding forth the word of life, and why? Because you are to be luminous. I like this expression. You were to be a light shining. You were to be shining like lights in a darkened world. The actual Greek word here is “phosphorus,” from which we get phosphorus, or something that is literally luminous.

In a darkened and perverted and confused and totally out-of-control world, we are to be luminous and luminaries. It’s interesting when you read this passage of doing Christian work out of this kind of spirit, without disputing and so forth, you think of what you’ve seen so often in the testimony of the church.

I heard a joke the other day. I’ll tell it for a few of our friends who are here. I think it’s very interesting. As you know, the name of the English Anglican Church in the United States is the Protestant Episcopal Church. Recently, they were struggling in Korea to translate that name “Protestant Episcopal Church” because the literal translation in Korean comes out like this: “the society of disputing overseers.” Even the Koreans recognize that wasn’t the original intention. It might, however, be pretty vindictive or predictive of what often happens in Christian work, here holding forth the word of life out of luminary lamps that derive their light from the oil of the Spirit and burn forth in this marvelous presence of the Lord.

Look at all of these radiants. The last one I’ll mention to you in verses 16 and 18 is expend and identity. Again, so much the illustration that I began this message with, Paul says in verses 16 and 18, “I want to rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain,” and then turns and says, “I’m willing to be offered on the sacrifice and service of your faith.” And he uses a Greek word “spendo” which means “I am willing to be poured out as broken bread. I’m willing to be a libation offering to be crushed that your faith might be strengthened.” When you talk about these lines of this Christ, this Christ spirit within someone, you find a holy, pure, committed life that labors. In fact, the word Paul uses here for labor, “kopiao” in the Greek, is a word that means “to labor to the point of exhaustion.” And he says, “We’re born together. You’re standing in the Lord is proof of my ministry.” The inevitable connection is “I’m willing to be expendable for you. I’m willing to be poured out and broken.” Again, as we read these passages over and over again, the things that keep coming back and forth are you can’t live the Christian life in a box, and it takes a commitment, and you might as well know going in what it’s gonna cost.

One of the things that I absolutely rebel against in the evangelical mass media kind of concept, Madison Avenue Evangelism, that says, “Become a Christian, and you’re gonna be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Become a Christian, and whatever problems you have in your marriage or family are going to disappear.” That’s absolutely untrue. And so seldom do we say, as Jesus did to a man, “If you’re going to become a Christian, you must separate these relationships. You must understand what must be first. You must count the cost.” Jesus sent more people away packing their bags than he did those willing to follow him because he said, “These are the conditions.”

Now it’s a glorious life. This, as I’ve said over and over about this epistle, is an epistle of joy, but not joy that’s whipped up out of some kind of ethereal, “well, I really feel good when things are going right.” This is a joy that comes out of an experience that has things straight and, as a result, can manifest itself in any circumstance.

In the latter portion of this passage, which I want to end this message with, it’s talked about responsibility and the radiant or sign lines that come out of this experience, but it also talks about relationship.

I often read these words from Shakespeare. They’re some of my favorites, almost like theme lines for my life:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Happily I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

There is a simple foundational fact of life that finds its greatest expression in the Christian experience, and that is real relationship. If I were to tell you that’s automatic with being a Christian, I’d be as phony as a $3 bill. There are a lot of Christians I don’t even like being around, and many Christians I wouldn’t commit myself to in terms of transparency or vulnerability.

It isn’t automatically because you’re a good Christian that you’re a good friend, but it is automatic that the bedrock of evidential proof that you are in a Christian experience is that you’re willing to make a commitment to other people. Now, this passage abounds with it. Of course, it’s the passage which says, ‘even your life and your standing is evidence of my ministry.’

We are so intertwined that you couldn’t separate our relationship, no matter what you did. We’re bound together. He said, but then he ends the chapter by saying, “because I love you in that relationship, I’m going to tell you about two men who are friends.” One writer, a French writer, wrote, “The world’s misery lies in this, that a man hardly ever has a companion: women perhaps, and chance friendships. We are reckless in our use of the lovely word “friend.” In reality, we hardly have a single friend all through our lives. Rare, very rare are those men who have real friends. But the happiness of it is so great that it is impossible to live when they are gone. The friend filled the life of his friend, unbeknown to him.”

The friend goes unmarked, and life is empty. Not only the beloved is lost, but every reason for loving, every reason for having loved. Roland asks, “Why had he lived? Why had either lived?” Now, I don’t agree with the latter portion of that. The Christian finds a purpose in life through Jesus Christ. But I will say this: the book of Philippians sets forth for us something that we so rarely understand. The Christian life is to be lived out, not only in nice and total and complete religious commitment and in relationship to the unseen God and the Lordship of Jesus Christ, but it’s to be lived out in vulnerable, transparent, even difficult commitment to people.

Paul says, “I’m going to send to you, Timothy.” As you know, I staggered in reading the verse, and some of you probably thought I had missed my place, in which Paul says what I think are the saddest words in the New Testament. To me, I have no man like-minded who will naturally care for your state. What an incredible thing to have invested your life in ministry and to say, “I only have one,” he says about Timothy. He speaks first about Timothy being a sympathetic person who will care for your state. He says of being a selfless person, “he will not seek his own things but yours.” And then being a seasoned person, Paul’s able to say, “you know, the proof of him that he, with me as a father and a son, has shared the gospel in all of its dimensions.” But an incredible thing to be able to say that.

But there’s another man in this chapter whose name is Epaphroditus. Many of you know Epaphroditus. I suppose this church knows Epaphroditus better than anyone else because I’ve probably preached three sermons about that man, and that’s better than I’ve done in most of the great Bible characters in the 10 years I’ve been here.

Epaphroditus is the man the Philippian Church chose to send a goodie basket to Paul in prison. When the choice came to send this man over the countless miles between Philippi and Rome, they chose him because he wasn’t important. I mean, you can’t get by without the song leader, the elders, the deacons, the pianists, God help you if you try to get by without the pianist or the choir director or the ushers or the sound people. It couldn’t be any of them because no pastor could have gotten by the months that they would have had to have been gone. So somehow in choosing, the lot fell on dear Brother Epaphroditus. Everyone knew he did nothing very important in the church. He wasn’t a very significant person. He could be gone for months, and no one would miss him.

But when they came to him with this seemingly unappreciated and unimportant task of carrying some homemade preserves, jams, and cookies, perhaps a WMC knit blanket or quilt to Paul in prison, when they came to this little man, rather than being insulted, his eyes sparkled with joy and he said yes. When he got to the prison, he found Paul in such a broken and near-death state that he poured out his life in ministry to Paul to such a degree that Paul calls him in this passage an apostle, a brother, a fellow laborer, a minister, and a deacon.

Paul says that he is sending him back now because he became very ill while ministering and he doesn’t want to have the added responsibility of his death. Then Paul does something that is so rare, and it brings me to my conclusion. Paul uses a word that is used nowhere else in the New Testament. I like Paul. Paul enjoys moving out of the ritualistic use of acceptable Christian words and grabbing words from secular culture that must have jarred the teeth of the Christians. And one of the words he uses in the last verse about a paphitis is “gambler.”

The word appears nowhere else because it’s a secular word. It means exactly what it says: somebody who takes high risks. And Paul says that when this man gets back, he wants the Philippians to receive him with proper reputation because he’s a gambler. He understands the principle of the Christian life. It’s not a game, it’s not a religion, it’s not a baptism. It’s putting your life in the place of fire. And when the bullets start flying, you throw your body where they come. You understand the purpose, not warming a pew, signing a pledge card, or looking for warm spiritual emotions.

You understand that when a man says, “For me, Jesus Christ is Lord,” that changes the perspective of everything in his life, whether it’s carrying a goodie basket or surrendering your life to the life of an apostle like Paul until he can implant in you his same burden and ministry, so that he can later say, “This man is an exact replica of my spirit for you.” It’s understanding Christianity in shoe leather, where it counts and where it costs. Let’s pray.

“Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above. Before our Father’s throne, we pour united prayers; our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares. We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear. And when we at death must part, not like the world’s our pain, but one in Christ and one in heart, we part to meet again.”

Father, I pray that in this moment in which we have together broken and eaten the bread, and prayed and sipped of the cup, that you will allow the spirit of this first-century love letter to stir within us a response. Father, I would rather be a friend than have one. I would rather, Father, that someone could speak of me the words Paul spoke of Timothy, than to be the Paul writing the words concerning Timothy. And I pray across this auditorium that somehow there may be birthed in us out of the spirit of the Christ who emptied himself a self-forgetting commitment to working out our salvation in fear and trembling. I ask in Jesus’ name. Amen. Would you stand with me, please?

Thank you for being patient. We are five, seven minutes over, but this has been a very full service. I want to share with you before we end because we will take a special moment with it in the 11 o’clock service. This is the new book, Tents, Temples, and Palaces, which you made possible for me to write through the International Correspondent Institute Ministry in Brussels, Belgium. I am told by the people who rushed this into publication because of its great need that there will be several hundred thousand students the first year.

It is already being translated in five major languages and is destined for 18 other languages within the next year.

Together, as Paul and Timothy had a relationship with the Philippians that produced this, from which we grow, you have been involved with us. Would you just take a hand with someone there, and let’s just ask God again to rivet in our spirit and understanding of today’s word. Father, teach us to lay our lives down beside one another and thereby to touch you through the example and power of your Spirit and the Lordship of Christ in our life. Amen. God bless you. You’re dismissed. There’s a time of fellowship out here on the patio if you’d like to take advantage of it.

God bless you.