Living a Life Worthy of the Gospel

Persecution of Christians around the world is going up. The persecuted have one thing we do not tend to have - clarity. They know the Gospel is meant to be lived. They know living the Gospel is not seeking worldly wealth, prestige, or power. They don’t seek governmental power because they know the government is against them. 

Here white evangelical Christians are the largest and most powerful voting block and this makes it hard for us to have clarity. This means we are of this world. 

We see the Church as one more purveyor of goods and services. God serves us - we don’t serve God. 

We need to accommodate - preaching the Gospel in a way people can understand. But we’ve gone too far in this direction and made an idol of God. We need to confront - but if we go too far, we become like Pharisees. In every age, the Church needs to find a balance between these two extremes. 

Exhortations don’t always call a person to do something they aren’t doing - exhortations are also meant as encouragement. See how Jonathan Edwards exhorted his children in letters to them. 

Philippians 1:27 is an exhortation to live a life worthy of the Gospel. The Gospel is not an accounting system - viewed only as Christ paying our debts. The Gospel is the story of how God came among us and what God did for us. Do not minimize it. The Gospel is too big for one interpretation. 

There are four interpretations of Atonement. The pastor sees it as God finding us because we couldn’t find God. The cross and resurrection is the victory of Jesus over death and sin. 

He brought up the restaurant that refused service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. He said Paul would not have called for that. He said it would be better to have served her abundantly and then explain why she did so. 

Emperor worship in Rome was worshipping the State - it was patriotism. It was a way to bring far flung Romans together. 

The Gospel should be provoking tension in your life. Is it?

The Gospel, A Greater Reason to Live

Friendship today is all too casual. In the ancient world, friendship was a covenant, friendship was a matter of survival and held commitments and responsibilities. 

Paul’s friendship with the Philippians was actually a three-way partnership because God is a partner. 

Philippi was a very patriotic city, full of Roman citizens. A lot of retired military, etc., lived there. 

N. T. Wright wrote a great biography of Paul. I’ve heard Wright on "Unbelievable." 

Initially, Paul thought he would preach until the Second Coming. Then he realized he would be executed; but, he had faith that whatever happened, it ultimately worked to the good for him. There is reason to hope ... whatever happens. 

The Gospel is the story of what God did through Jesus to reconcile us to Himself. 

The Gospel is a greater reason to live because it is:

1. The story of the cross and resurrection. 

2. The exaltation of Jesus. 

3. The creation of the church. 

4. The reconciliation of creation. 

Nurture Shock, an Introduction

This new series is going to go through Philippians verse by verse. Philippians is a relational letter, giving us a view of Paul in relationship with friends. 

This will be a work of translation - of language and culture. 

The title of the sermon is based on a parenting book of the same name. Parents are unintentionally disempowering their children. The gap between childhood and adulthood - relatively new in human culture - is getting longer. Now we have adolescence and delayed adulthood. People spending longer in college, getting married later, starting adulthood later. 

Child-centered, non critical parenting actually crippled young adults - they fear failure and independence. 

Christians claim to live by a higher moral standard - but this is not borne out by statistics. (I just brought that up in class.) Sometimes, when we give all the credit to God, we negate our responsibility for living life well. It breeds a sense of entitlement. 

We live in a generation of church shoppers - looking at what services the church offers us rather than a community we belong to and serve. 

Christian television here is now beyond patriotic and nationalistic. It’s apocalyptic and talks of persecution. The pastor works in Eastern Europe. He’s seen persecution and it’s not here. 

We have created a pet god and this deity does not challenge us. We look at what God can do for us - not what we can do for God. 

Three things to glean from Philippians:

1. Downward mobility - Christian life is a self-giving proposition - we are servants. 

2. Suffering - Christian life is in conflict with the culture at large and this can cause suffering. 

3. We have a destiny, a good future we are building today - this doesn’t lead to an effortless life - it leads to a life of friendship with God. 

Philippians 1:1 - The word usually translated as servant actually means slave. 

Philippians 1:3-11 - This is a prayer. Paul has a friendship covenant with the Philippians. In this letter, Paul speaks as an equal - he never calls himself an apostle. 

Paul is writing from jail. In Roman jail, your needs were met by your friends. The Roman government did not provide for prisoners. Jail was somewhere you waited before sentencing - it was not a punishment. 

Paul’s needs were taken care of by the Philippians and he prayed for them. 

Read Philippians this week and put it in your own words. 

Find one thing you value highly and give it to someone in secret.