Christian Identity

[0:00] Well, welcome everyone to Church of the Advent. Welcome to our worship gathering here. For those of you who are coming back, glad to see you. And anybody that I don't know yet, I'd love to meet you after the service.

[0:12] We're going to have a reception out in the courtyard since the weather is so nice. Immediately following this worship gathering, so please stick around. Would love to shake your hand if I haven't met you already.

[0:22] My name's Tommy. I'm one of the pastors here. And we're starting a series this week looking at one of Paul's letters that you find in the New Testament. It's the letter that we call Philippians.

[0:33] And we're going to be doing a study through this entire book. And we're going to be tracing one of the central themes in this book. The series is called The Joyful Life. The Joyful Life.

[0:47] One of the main themes in Paul's letter to the Philippians is the theme of joy. And it's a unique kind of joy because it's a joy that is able to exist regardless of circumstance.

[0:59] It's a joy that exists regardless of circumstance. You know, Paul wrote this letter roughly ten years after he helped to plant the church in Philippi. We looked at that last week. So this is roughly 60 to 62 A.D.

[1:11] And he's in prison. And yet he's writing this letter to the people that he hasn't seen in years from prison. And yet he makes some 15 references to joy and to rejoicing.

[1:23] Even many of these are his own joy and his own rejoicing. And you look at his circumstances and you look at the joy and it doesn't make sense. So that's what this series is going to explore.

[1:35] Where does that kind of joy come from? And, you know, some of us are here and we're Christians. And it's good to be reminded as we look at our own lives that, as the late John Stott once wrote in one of his commentaries, it seems clear that the main mark of justified believers is joy.

[1:55] In other words, he's saying if there's one thing that Christians should be known for, it's this inexplicable joy. And if you're here and you're not a follower of Christ or you're not sure what you believe, if it is possible to have a life that is full of joy regardless of your life circumstances, might it not be worth at least exploring whether or not there is some truth to this claim?

[2:22] So this is why we're exploring it. I think it's probably relevant to everybody. And as we get started, we're just going to look at the first eight verses. This is Philippians 1 verses 1 through 8.

[2:33] And the first thing that we see out of the gate is that this book that is about joy begins by talking about identity. In other words, Paul's saying if you want to understand where this joy comes from, you have to start with your own identity.

[2:50] In other words, what constitutes our identity as Christians for those of us who are? And there's a word that Paul uses that sums up what the Christian identity is all about, and that is the word saint.

[3:03] So tonight we're just going to look at that word. Because saint speaks to our identity. You know, before the word Christian was even coined, before it even existed, followers of Jesus referred to one another as saints.

[3:16] So this is what you see all throughout scripture. And the word saint speaks to two things. To who we are, and to who we are becoming.

[3:28] So that's how we're going to look at this this evening. Let's pray for the Lord to lead us. Our God, our Heavenly Father, we pray and we ask, and even as we ask, we know that you will speak to us.

[3:40] Lord, through your word, not through what I have to say, but through your word. We pray that somehow, as we look together at your written word, that we would encounter your living word, Jesus Christ, that we would come face to face with a reality of who he is, and that that would profoundly transform us.

[3:58] Lord, for your glory, and for our good, in your son's name. Amen. So as we're looking at this letter, as I said, Paul is writing this from prison.

[4:09] He begins, as we look at verse one, with a standard greeting. He's saying, Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ. So that's his way of saying, this letter is from Paul and Timothy, and he says that they are servants of Christ Jesus.

[4:24] We're going to come back to that in subsequent weeks. Here's the interesting part, though. He doesn't just say, to the people in Philippi, like you would normally do.

[4:34] He makes a point right away of saying, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

[4:50] So the first thing Paul does, after introducing himself, is to remind the Philippians of their primary identity. He reminds them of their primary identity. And he addresses every single person in the church as a saint.

[5:04] You know, if you're familiar with the Catholic Church, you know that they canonize certain people and set them apart and say, well, here's all of the Christians, but these people are saints.

[5:15] But that's not what Paul's doing here. Every single person in the church is a saint. If you're a Christian, you're a saint. And Paul is saying, this is your primary identity.

[5:27] This is how I think of you. Now, in our culture, we think a lot about identity. We talk a lot about identity. It's a very hot topic, debated topic. And most of that centers around our freedom and our desire to be able to choose our identity, to define ourselves for ourselves, to get rid of social, religious, traditional, institutional constraints, and to be able to have the freedom to define ourselves for ourselves, the freedom to choose who we are.

[5:59] We have kids. We watch a lot of kids' movies. A couple of days ago, we saw a newer kids' movie that's come out called The Good Dinosaur. I don't know if you've seen it. It's pretty good. 76% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[6:10] It's kind of like one of those borderline, is it worth our two hours? But the kids loved it. And as I was watching this movie, sort of my mind began to wander and I began to think about other movies in this kind of genre.

[6:22] And I began to realize, you know, a lot of these movies basically tell the same story. It's just with different packaging. You know, like here it's a dinosaur or a cave person and here it's like a fairy or like an Irish warrior.

[6:35] But it all tells the same story just with different sort of, you know, packaging. And so if you think about these movies, maybe you've seen them. Shrek, Frozen, Shrek 2, Shrek 3, Tangled, Brave, Mulan, Little Mermaid, Kung Fu Panda, Kung Fu Panda 2, How to Train Your Dragon, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Book of Life, Maya the Bee, I could go on and on.

[7:01] They all tell a very similar story. And what's that story? It is be true to yourself. Right? Get rid of what your parents expect of you. Get rid of what the culture expects of you.

[7:12] Get rid of all of the things that are, get rid of these expectations that are on you. Get rid of all of that. Figure out who you are and express that to the world. Be true to yourself. I mean, listen to our music.

[7:23] Eminem's beautiful. Casey Musgrave's Follow Your Arrow. Meghan Trainor's all about that bass. Lady Gaga sings it perfectly.

[7:34] She sings, Don't hide yourself in regret. Just love yourself and you're set. Right? That's a powerful claim. All you have to do is love yourself and you're set.

[7:45] We might think of this as a kind of secular gospel of our age. Maybe the gospel of our age. In other words, the good news for the world.

[7:59] This is the key to happiness and joy and fulfillment. Be true to yourself. Get rid of all constraints. Choose your own identity. Express that to the world. Love yourself and you're set.

[8:11] And you know, I have to admit, there's something very compelling about this as an idea. You know, there's this kind of a documentary, sort of a series of vignettes with different celebrities and such called Human.

[8:26] If you've not seen this, it's really, really worth your time. Well, and it's good, I was going to say, it's good for understanding culture. If you really want to understand culture, watch kids' movies. Honestly, it's one of the best ways to understand where our culture is and where we're going.

[8:42] Watch kids' movies. It'll tell you right away. But, you should also watch Human. It's really fantastic. And there's, Cameron Diaz gets on there and she starts talking about fame and how you shouldn't build your life on fame.

[8:55] That doesn't lead to happiness. And as a preacher, I'm thinking, preach it. This will preach, Cameron. And she says, this is, you're going to, life is going to be empty.

[9:05] And, you know, we agree with that, right? And if she was saying, don't build your life on wealth, don't build your life on success, don't build your life on notoriety, don't build your life on, you know, this, that, or the other, we would, even if we're doing it, we would agree, Cameron, you're right.

[9:21] Even though I'm doing that, I shouldn't be doing that because that's empty. But then she goes on and she says, the way to be happy is to be true to yourself. See, and then you hear that and you think, oh, that's a good message.

[9:34] You know, I want to do that, I want my kids to do that, we should, I want to be true to myself. It's compelling. But the only problem is, it doesn't actually work in real life.

[9:45] It's a really great idea, but it doesn't actually work. There's a, there's a couple of problems with it. The first problem with this gospel of being true to ourselves is, is actually illustrated in another kid's movie called The Incredibles.

[9:59] And the bad guy in The Incredibles is a guy named Syndrome. And Syndrome has, has his former mentor, he's kind of taking him as a prisoner.

[10:09] And he's yelling, he's kind of like sounding off at his former mentor who, he is now his arch enemy. And he's saying to Mr. Incredible, you always tell me to be true to myself.

[10:20] But you never tell me which part to be true to. true. It's so insightful, right? Because I have, I have, I have a lot of parts of self in me, right?

[10:33] I have one part that could, that is completely devoted to the, to living a long and healthy life. I want to see my kids grow up. I want to hopefully know my grandkids. I want to live as long as I can.

[10:44] I want to be healthy. I want to have energy. I want to, you know, I want to, I want that kind of life. And then there's another part of me that could literally live off cheeseburgers and whiskey.

[10:56] I could literally eat nothing but cheeseburgers and whiskey and I would be completely happy for like two weeks. And then I would have to go to the hospital. But, but I could literally live off that stuff, right?

[11:11] And then there's the part of me that's ashamed that I'm admitting this from up front. You know, now they're all going to know as if you didn't before but now they're definitely all going to know. And, and then there's the other part of me that will justify it and say, no, I have a stressful job and I deserve it and I'm going to five guys.

[11:29] Right? And so you've got all these parts competing, right? Which is the real self? Which is the thing that needs to be, to which do I be true and to, and what needs to be extinguished?

[11:39] You know, you've got the person who makes the, the, the committed lifelong vow to another person. I'm committing to you for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, sickness and health, till death us do part, I'm yours.

[11:57] Looking in the eyes, meaning it, friends, family, parents, all there, everybody looking, music, I'm looking at your eyes, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Right? Years down the road that same person really, really, really wants to sleep with their co-worker with whom they have found a special connection.

[12:14] Right? A connection that they really haven't experienced in their marriage. Two, two parts. Which is you and which needs to be extinguished?

[12:26] See, a lot of people in our culture would say, you know, that's the part that you should be true to. Get, get out of that marriage. That is inhibiting the true you. Be true to yourself. Which is the true self?

[12:38] Right? So, so we aren't actually, if you, if I just had one integrated whole self and here, it would be great for me to be true to that. Right? But what about all the little parts of self that I, that I really have?

[12:51] What do I do with that? But there's another reason that this doesn't work and I think an even deeper reason. And that's this. And I'm not going to tell you how you feel or what you think.

[13:02] You, you, maybe you're different. But I was thinking about this in my own life this week and I, I just have to be honest. Being true to myself and loving myself as, as Lady Gaga would, would tell me to do, it's not enough.

[13:18] It doesn't cut it with me. You know, loving myself, it's just not enough. I mean, if we're honest, I think deep down we actually crave a love that comes from outside of ourselves.

[13:32] A love, a love that comes from someone else who's not me, whose opinion matters. That's actually what I want. You know, I, I want somebody out there to say, I love you.

[13:44] Right? So another way of saying it is this. Below our desire to be able to choose who we are, I think there's a deeper desire to be chosen as we are.

[14:01] You know, we want the lover who says, out of all of the people in the world, I choose you. I want you. I want you to belong to me. I want to commit to you.

[14:12] I want, I want only you for the rest of my life. I just want you. That's what I want. That's a thousand times better than whatever love I can muster for myself.

[14:23] Yeah, okay, decent self-confidence, working on that, therapist is helping out with it and all that, but it's nothing compared to this person whose opinion matters saying, I choose you. That lifts me up to the heavens, right?

[14:34] I want the parent who says, I'm so delighted that you're my child. I want you to belong to me and I will love you for the rest of your life.

[14:46] That's what I want. And yet, you know, even the best lovers, even the best, most well-intentioned spouses, even the best parents love imperfectly.

[14:57] We don't always love people like that, right? I mean, even in the best marriages, sometimes your love is conditional. Even in the best parent-child relationship, sometimes that love is conditional.

[15:08] You do your best, but it falls short. And we're always, my desire for that kind of love always outstrips what the people in my life can provide. My wife can't love me that way.

[15:20] She's an amazing person. She just can't do it. I can't love her that way. I can't love my kids that way. My parents didn't love me that way. They got close sometimes. But it's not enough.

[15:31] And that's because we were made to find this love not in a human being, but in God. It's no coincidence that the two primary images that God uses to describe his relationship with us are what?

[15:45] Marriage and adoption. Right? What do those two relationships have in common? Marriage and adoption. They're both situations where somebody says to you, if you're the one being married or you're the one being adopted, there is somebody saying to you, I choose you.

[16:03] Not them, not them, you. I want you. So this brings us to the true meaning of the word saint. See, when we hear the word saint, we tend to think of the people who are super virtuous, super moral, super good.

[16:19] They're doing all kinds of amazing things. Like I said, the Catholic Church has canonized a number of such people, and we should pay attention to these people and learn about them, and there are great examples to follow, most of them. Amazing lives, very inspiring.

[16:32] But that's not what Paul's talking about. It's funny, the way we misunderstand the word saint, I think betrays us. It betrays our wiring. We are so wired, so wired to think that God's love depends on our merit.

[16:49] We're so wired to think that His love depends on our merit rather than being something that exists regardless of merit. When Paul uses the word saint, it's a word that means holy or set apart.

[17:04] And in the simplest terms, a saint is someone to whom God says, I choose you. Not someone who does something or says something or feels a certain thing or thinks a certain thing or acts in a certain way.

[17:20] No, no, no. We're not the subject of that. We're the object. A saint is someone to whom God says, I choose you. So everybody who comes to Jesus Christ, everybody who admits their sin, everybody who is reconciled through His death and resurrection, everybody who is baptized and becomes a part of the church, then those are people to whom God says, you.

[17:46] And how do you know if that's you? It's because you've come to faith. So if you're a saint, it's not because of anything you've done for God. You haven't earned it. It's because God has done something for you in Jesus Christ through His life and death and resurrection.

[18:00] And that's why Paul says we're saints in Christ, in all that He's done. So what does this mean? It means that you can, listen, you can be a, just the smarmiest, you know, investment banker you can imagine.

[18:19] You can just be the, you know, just that kind of, you know, I'm not going to get into detail, but you can kind of imagine, you know, you can be this kind of like, you know, big shot with your, you know, and you can, you can have a major wake-up call and you can sell all your stuff and sell all your cars and sell your, your, your Manhattan condo and sell all of that and you can move to the, to the poorest third world country you can, you can find and you can spend the rest of your life caring for lepers and building orphanages for kids and God's not going to love you one ounce more.

[18:59] That's not how it works. It's not how it works. Not for saints. And it could be that God actually wired you for banking and not orphanage building.

[19:13] You know, God wants just as many Christians in the banking world as he does building orphanages. We're supposed to be everywhere. You can also come out of, come out of this room and have a major public moral failing.

[19:28] You know, it all comes out. You've been dishonest. You've been lying to all kinds of people. It all comes out. God's not going to love you one ounce less. God hates the sin but he's not going to love you one ounce less.

[19:40] You can't affect it because he has chosen to put his love on you. You didn't even ask for it. It just happened. This is the thing I think that we can't get.

[19:52] But the entire Christian life is really about us becoming more and more grounded in this identity. That God loves us as we are in Christ regardless of anything we felt or said or done.

[20:06] And then here's the paradox is that the more we're grounded in this identity that God has chosen us in Christ set us apart to belong said I want you to belong to me and be mine the more I'm grounded in that identity the more it paradoxically creates a desire in me to become what God has made me to be.

[20:29] Isn't that weird? Because you say well if he accepts me as I am why should I want to change? Well the weird thing is the more you realize that his love is a gift the more that fills you with a desire to allow him to be the one to define you rather than you.

[20:46] And that may not make sense but this is why being a saint isn't just about who we are but it's about who we're becoming. This might help clarify it a little bit.

[20:58] You know Dan Bielman first sermon at Advent used an illustration from Ben-Hur and I'm just going to shamelessly borrow it because I think it's a great image. If you've never seen the movie Ben-Hur Judah Ben-Hur at this I won't tell you the whole story but at this point that I'm talking about he has become a slave and there's a Roman he's a Jew and there's a Roman named Quintus Arius who's a Roman consul and he's actually come to love Judah Ben-Hur like a son and so he petitions for Judah Ben-Hur to be freed set free and then he throws a party and he calls everyone's attention at this party and he announces that he's done all the legal formalities necessary to adopt Ben-Hur as his own son and he says young Arius he doesn't call him Judah Ben-Hur he names him gives him his own name young Arius is now the legal bearer of my name and the heir to my property and then he gives him this priceless ring off of his own finger and he says this ring of my ancestors would have gone to my son so now it's yours and then Ben-Hur's response is what I want to focus on because he responds by saying he takes the ring he puts it on his finger and he says

[22:21] I shall always try to wear this ring as a son of Arius should with gratitude affection and with honor so you have this amazing image of exactly what we're talking about right Arius of his own free will loves Ben-Hur adopts Ben-Hur gives him what his name he promises him an inheritance and he gives him a ring as a seal of his adoption and then Ben-Hur's response is to say I want to live like your son I want to be like your son and I want to do that because of why not fear not guilt not obligation but out of gratitude and out of affection and this is exactly what happens with us through the gospel right God comes and says I love you and I sent my son to die for you and he says I want you to belong to me in Christ and he says to those who come to him and accept this forgiveness he gives us what he gives us his name you're in Christ right he gives us an eternal inheritance he gives us a seal not a ring but the Holy Spirit this is a seal that guarantees and proves that you belong to me and what does this do it engenders in us a desire right it kindles in us in a desire we say

[23:44] I want to be in other words I want to let go of my sense of who I am and I prefer God's sense of who I am that's who I want to be I want to be the way you see me God that's how I want to live because of gratitude because of affection and Paul goes on to say you know as this happens God actually works in us to make that happen to make us more like his son he says in verses three through six I thank my God and all my remembrance of you always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now and I'm sure of this here it is that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ so all those partial selves all those partial parts of us that are kind of at war with each other and he's saying that God begins to bring all of that together this is why C.S. Lewis talks about the more we give ourselves away the more we actually become fully who we were meant to be we actually recover ourselves by giving ourselves to God because he's the one who can make us whole now there are a lot of themes in here that we're going to explore through the coming weeks this is setting up stuff that we're going to come back to again and again and again so tonight

[25:11] I just want to pause and I want to think about this idea of being a saint as Paul talks about it and I want to think about some implications as we think about what this says about who we are now and who we're becoming and I want to just look at three really quickly three implications of our sainthood first implication is this in our relationships with one another in this community and in our friends and family and all that one of the best ways that we can love one another is by reminding one another that we are in fact saints by reminding one another of that we all need to be reminded that we're utterly secure in the love of God right most of the time we either we either remind one another that we're sinners or we just take the easy road out and just don't bring it up at all right what I need is to be reminded that that that my identity doesn't hinge on my performance up here

[26:15] I need to know that my identity doesn't hinge in how good the church is doing I need to be reminded that my identity doesn't hinge in how good a dad I am or how good a husband I am or how good a friend I am that it doesn't matter if people like me or hate me it doesn't matter if people agree with me or disagree with me or criticize me I need to be reminded that my identity isn't based in any of that it is based squarely completely and utterly in the undeserved love of God I need you to remind me of that we need to be reminded of that one of the most amazing things that Paul does every time is every time he writes a letter to confront sin he starts with sainthood right so before he gets to the sin he says the first thing I want to do is to remind you you're a saint you have the love of God it's yours which opens the door to talk about sin right so this is the first thing we should do we should be reminded again and again and again that we are saints you know the reason that we sin at least if you're anything like me

[27:21] I don't most mornings I don't wake up and say I'm going to sin my brains out today I don't you know I don't do that if you maybe probably some one person in here does most of us don't I mean if you do we'll talk about it but I don't think you do most of us don't do that most of us don't sin because we wake up saying I want to sin we sin because we forget that we're saints we sin because we we start looking to other sources for love and affirmation and fulfillment and meaning rather than God and so we forget what we have and we begin to look elsewhere that's why we sin we need to be reminded that we're saints in Christ the second implication is this is that it's connected to the first that I think that we should always strive to remember that God is at work in the lives of people around us that when you look to your right and your left your friends your family your roommates that you need to remember that if they're in Christ that God is at work in them right so the way we tend to remember people is in snapshot form right you form some impressions of what a person is like and you may know them for 10 years but a lot of your image of that person is like a snapshot it's that picture that was taken 10 years ago you know you meet somebody in high school who's you know you knew this person in high school they're kind of unpopular and no confidence and always quiet and then you meet them at your 15 year reunion and all of a sudden they're confident and they're grown up and they're mature and they're successful and you're like whoa what a surprise well why is it a surprise it's been 15 years a lot can happen in 15 years right but it's you're looking at the snapshot and you're looking at the person and you're like well there's a different you're different of course you're different it's been 15 years why is that a surprise think about how this plays out spiritually right if God is at work in the people around us we need to expect that people aren't snapshots they're dynamic they change they grow right so I guess my question is this are you giving people in your life room to surprise you right

[29:42] I mean so you know your husband is always is always you know he's always impatient she's always critical you know he's always you know he's always she's always late you know he I don't know he always does and says embarrassing things in public you know I mean whatever your gripe is you know my friend she only ever talks about herself you know she's a horrible listener right it goes on and on and on we have all these absolute statements that's like looking at the snapshot if your friend or your husband or your wife if they had that moment where maybe most of the time they're impatient but they have this moment of profound patience would you notice or are you so fixated on the snapshot that you don't see that stuff is changing here right so if we're changing and we're growing and we're maturing and this says you absolutely are are we noticing this in the lives of the people around us and the third thing is related

[30:43] I think that we should always encourage the growth that we do see in people's lives we should always fan that flame one of the great things about this section of scripture is that Paul notices and points out evidence that the Philippians are growing you notice he first brings up their generosity and says every time I pray and every time I think about you guys it fills me with joy because of your generosity because of your partnership in the gospel and then it's no wonder he then goes on to say and I am confident that God is bringing to completion the work he began in you it's because he's saying this is evidence God is at work in your heart in the ten years since I met you you know last week Lydia the businesswoman a former slave girl a civil servant in the ten years since I met you you've become so much more generous look at the generosity here Christ is at work praise God this is the first thing he says I think that we should do all that we can to notice the evidence of God's work and affirm it and recognize it for what it is you know instead of constantly harping on your kids or constantly harping on your spouse or constantly harping or harboring grudges or resenting your roommates or your friends shift it around and to say rather than focusing on how they're always late notice that one time they're on time and say that's great you're on time

[32:05] I know this is hard for you but you're on time this time that means a lot to me praise God I'm serious but you have to do it in a non-passive aggressive way because that could be really passive aggressive so I'll leave it to your discretion but we should notice these things thank you last night last night I knew I know you were really angry but you didn't lose your temper and the way you responded was really gentle and loving thank you thank you Jesus is working in you right I just want you to know that Jesus is working in you if we believe that Christ is at work bringing his work to completion we should try to notice and encourage that work so for all who come to Jesus for all who ask forgiveness for all who are baptized in his name you become saints that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus and being a saint means one that what God has chosen you he set you apart he said

[33:06] I choose you I want you to belong to me he's given you his love not because of anything you said or did or felt but purely because that is the kind of God he is and second God is at work in you now God is bringing to completion the work he began in you when Christ set you apart making you more and more like him so what this means is that every saint every saint can say what the great John Newton who's the author of the hymn Amazing Grace once said he said this I'm not what I ought to be I'm not what I want to be I'm not what I hope to be in another world but still I'm not what I once used to be and by the grace of God I am what I am let's pray our father in heaven we thank you and praise you for your word and we as we hear this we pray that whatever is of you would remain in a little while we'll share in your supper in the Lord's supper and we pray that as we hear this proclamation of your love that as we receive the bread and wine a bit later that we would actually taste it and that in these two ways you would drive these truths home into our hearts that we are loved because you've chosen to love us and that we find our identity and meaning and acceptance and fulfillment there and we pray then that we would trust that you who set us apart are forming in us everything for which you've purposed us we thank you and praise you for this Lord in your son's holy name amen m I

[34:40] M valuable is what I can I can afford this might what I mean is if I put that my ESP is I doesn't that but I I I don't b I can what I can say there