[0:00] Thank you. I knew it dropped, but I didn't know where it went. It's good today to be in the house of the Lord.
[0:20] I like to go to church. Church is one of my favorite places to be. And I like preaching. Amen. Man, preaching is one of my favorite things to do. Preaching is one of my favorite things to listen to.
[0:34] A lot of times, I don't know how many tapes and CDs and things that I have, but believe it or not, I'll skip past good singing just to get to hear the preaching.
[0:45] Amen. I like the preaching. Lord willing, we're going to preach to you today from the book of Philippians chapter 1. Have your Bibles you'd like to read with us.
[0:59] In the book of Philippians chapter 1. Start at verse 10. That you may approve those things that are excellent.
[1:14] That you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ. Being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ under the glory and praise of God.
[1:27] But I would you should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out, brethren, under the furtherance of the gospel.
[1:38] That my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and all other places. Many of the brethren in the Lord waxing confident by my bonds are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
[2:00] Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife. Some also of good will. The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely.
[2:13] Supposing to add affliction to my bonds. The other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. What then notwithstanding every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached and I therein do rejoice.
[2:34] Yea, and will rejoice. The apostle Paul here is confronted with the people who are preaching Christ for the wrong reasons.
[2:47] We've got churches today that preach for the wrong reasons. But he said, Amen. If they preach in Christ, that makes me happy.
[2:58] The other day, we were having a fellowship. And one of the questions that we were supposed to ask each other was, What is your favorite Bible character?
[3:11] To me, that is a no-brainer. You can have your Daniels, your Moseses, and your Davids. You give me Jesus. He's my favorite.
[3:24] Amen. Daniel did not save me. Paul did not save me. It was Jesus Christ's death on the cross of Calvary that saved me. I think it ought to be against the law to have a favorite Bible character that wasn't Jesus.
[3:42] Amen. I appreciate what he's did for me. He loved me and gave himself for me. And here we got preachers that are, like I say, preaching of contention.
[3:59] I get around some. I'm not all that well-rounded. But I've seen some preachers that couldn't preach their way out of a paper bag.
[4:13] I thought, Man, won't you get out of the pulpit? You ain't doing nothing but messing people up. You don't know what you're talking about. And you're preaching to people that don't know what they're talking about.
[4:25] What you got is blind leading the blind. And then we have to come along, and I don't want to sound arrogant, but we have to come along and try to rescue that mess.
[4:36] When somebody got through all of their little doctrines that whatever they wanted to preach. And then we got to come along and try to straighten them out of what some goofy TV preacher has said.
[4:48] Amen. They probably ought to fire every television preacher but one. That's my idea. Paul said if Christ is preached, that makes me happy.
[5:01] Even if they can't do a very good job of it, it makes me happy if they're preaching Jesus. If they're preaching Jesus just to make me mad, you ain't going to make me mad.
[5:12] Amen. If they're preaching Jesus just to add afflictions to my bonds, you're not going to add no afflictions to me by preaching Christ. Let's pray and we'll go further.
[5:23] Heavenly Father today, thank you for Christ, the dearest friend I ever had, the lily of the valley, the roses of Sharon, the fast among 10,000.
[5:38] Lord, there's none that can compare to the Son of God. Father, I pray that our preaching today, I pray that it would exalt our Savior and our Father that people could see without Christ, nobody will go to heaven.
[6:00] Neither is there salvation in any other. None other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Lord God, highly exalted him and given him a name that's above every name.
[6:14] That's the name of Jesus. Every knee should bow and every tongue should confess. Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
[6:25] Help us to remember that as we walk down life's pathway. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, last time we were in the book of Ephesians and we studied God's purpose of taking from the Jew and the Gentile and making one body.
[6:48] You remember? I told you how you ought to treat your fellow Christians. The conduct of some of the Philippians would deny the unity of the body.
[7:01] Romans, through Ephesians, Paul the Apostle, the Philippians is not written from that apostolic point, but it's written from a member of the body.
[7:20] It's written from a member of the church. Not that he wasn't an apostle, he was. But he isn't writing with that authority. Revelation from heaven is not the object.
[7:34] It's not the instruction. But it's the reproof of earth. Paul was in a Roman jail. And being in a place of much affliction, from there he appreciated the Philippian people for the gifts that he had received from them.
[7:57] They had communicated with him. The followers of Christ had been consistent in their support for him. I found that true. When folks are right with God, you don't have a problem with them helping you if you're right with God.
[8:15] But then the deniers of the body had been seizing the opportunity to verbally beat up Paul. And they were preaching a Christ of contention.
[8:28] They were trying to drive a division in the body. And Paul declares to the faithful. Look at 110.
[8:39] That you may approve the things that are excellent. That you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ.
[8:50] I think I've taught you before what that word sincere means. They were pottery makers in that day. And whenever they would get a piece of pottery that worked on the wheel.
[9:06] And they were shaping that pottery into the vessel that it was supposed to be. Sometimes that pot would crack. That's how they got Baptists.
[9:20] Crack pots. Sometimes that pot would crack. Well, if you were a legitimate potter, you'd break that vessel and start over.
[9:36] But if you were a crook, which a lot of crooked potters around, they would take clay and they would smear over that crack.
[9:48] They'd put it on the wheel. And they'd rotate it and sand it, if you will, work with it. Till you couldn't tell that it was cracked.
[10:02] But there was a method of telling. You could take that piece of pottery. And you could hold it up to the light. And if there were any cracks, they'd show up.
[10:18] That's what sincere is. That you wouldn't be a cracked pot. That whenever you were held up to the light, you'd find that the light is what you wanted.
[10:31] You did not want to live in darkness. Those that have evil deeds want to live in darkness. But those that are of the light love to do the things of God.
[10:46] I'm a musician, if you say it fast. Musical instruments. Let's just talk, for instance, about a fiddle.
[11:02] I know something about fiddle. I know that you cannot judge a fiddle by how it looks like on the outside. The craftsmanship of a violin, amen, is on the inside.
[11:21] If you want to see what the fiddle's going to look like before you ever even pick it up to play it, you can pick it up and examine how it's made on the inside.
[11:34] Amen. It will tell you what kind of a fiddle it is. If you pick up a fiddle that feels like a block of wood, like you're holding a church pew, probably the inside of it hasn't been detailed the way it should be.
[11:54] I'm preaching today about Christians. And I'm preaching that Christians are from the inside out. That we need to be sincere.
[12:05] We need to be good in our workmanship. But the workmanship starts on the inside, not on the outside. You do not gain unity at the expense of truth.
[12:19] It's not scriptural to partake of the things that the world would tell us would help us in getting along with people.
[12:31] Psychology. Psychology. Psychologists come up with different people types. There are no different people types. There's two types.
[12:44] They saved and lost. And you just might as well forget the rest of them. He'll be one way today and another way next week. Hollywood.
[12:54] Hollywood. They've got their ideas about spirituality. Don't even watch them. Amen. The History Channel. And whenever they put something on there, the Discovery Channel about the lost books of the Bible, don't even turn it on, pal.
[13:15] They're blind and they're leading blind and they don't know where they're going and they can't take you nowhere. Amen. Revisions of the Bible have never helped anybody.
[13:27] Amen. Never helped anybody. Amen. If we gain converts without them being converted, then we're in a deadly position.
[13:38] Amen. I don't know. I'd like to have a church full. Yeah. But I'm certainly not going to compromise together. Amen. Verse 9.
[13:51] Paul prayed for love to abound, but love that is knowledgeable and correct. Persecution had landed the Apostle Paul in a Roman jail.
[14:02] So what's he do? He wins the jailer. We'd be writing the Christian Law Association and everything else.
[14:14] Did you ever notice? Paul never says, did I remember not one time, did he ever say I'm a prisoner of wrong? He said I'm a prisoner of the Lord.
[14:26] The Lord put me in this jail. He put me in this jail for a purpose and that purpose was to win that jailer to Jesus. Amen. Do you look at life that way?
[14:37] I believe we need to. Amen. The whole court of Rome had an opportunity to hear the gospel because they arrested the wrong preacher. Yes. Amen. If they'd arrested certain people, they'd have been over there, like I say, filing lawsuits and everything else.
[14:53] But when they arrested Paul, he said, look here, man. I get a free trip to Rome. I get a preach to the whole Roman council.
[15:07] Things that happen to real Christians happen for the furtherance of the gospel. That's why they happen to us. They must be considered as that.
[15:20] Or we'll get frustrated and think that Satan is stronger than God. But he isn't. Amen. Amen. And we're on a winning team.
[15:32] Not only didn't stop Paul, but others got bold because Paul was bold. Right. And in the Philippian jail, Paul and Silas sang.
[15:46] Amen. Is that right? I don't know what they sang, but they sang at midnight. Somebody preached Christ for spite. Paul was thrilled that he was preached.
[16:00] I mean, he talked about them third string preachers, tried to take advantage of his imprisonment, called him a heretic, an imposter. But Paul said, I'm glad that the old, old story is being told.
[16:13] Amen. No matter to me who tells it. That's right. I'm glad that the story is getting out. Amen. Amen. He had no goal but Christ.
[16:25] What's your goal? Amen. He had no goal but Christ. For Paul to live was Christ. Amen. For him to die was gain. His body was a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.
[16:38] And he'd rather have went on to heaven. He said so. But evidently, the Lord didn't want him to go quite yet. The Lord wanted him to hang around here and work a while. So he said, all right, we're here, we'll just work.
[16:50] That's more needful for you. Paul felt privileged, not only to believe in Christ, but to suffer with him. You know, if you suffered with him, there'll be a day when that'll be appreciated.
[17:04] Amen. Well, I'll just use Clinton. He's right here real close. Not only did he fight for his country, but he suffered for his country.
[17:17] He got a purple heart on his license plate to prove that he shed blood for his country. When we get to the glory lane. Amen.
[17:27] Wouldn't we like to have some kind of a purple heart? Amen. Or some kind of a bronze star or something to say, hey, I not only was saved, I not only was in the army, but I suffered with him.
[17:40] Amen. Amen. So beat up on me, Paul said. That'll just be more, more glory to me when Jesus comes. Now the way to stop conflict in the body is found in Philippians chapter 2.
[17:55] And Paul was an example. And Timothy and Epaphroditus on endeavoring to keep the unity of the body. But the greatest, the greatest example that we'll ever find is Jesus Christ.
[18:11] Amen. Jesus was and is God. Amen. Jesus of Nazareth is just as much God as Jehovah God of the Old Testament.
[18:21] Amen. The same God that created the world in Genesis 1 died on the cross in Matthew 27. Amen. Before the foundation of the world, the Son of God dwelt in equality with the Father.
[18:36] He had every right to participate pertaining to deity. He did not require a perpetuation of that state. Amen. But He emptied Himself of all that glory and became a servant or a slave.
[18:50] Amen. Adam dishonored himself by trying to grab the glory of God. But Jesus Christ, the second Adam, glorified God by the submission that a slave would give.
[19:01] He made in the likeness of man and being in the likeness of men, He was subject to His parents. He was employed as a carpenter. He was sold as a slave.
[19:11] And He died as a criminal but trusted God would deliver Him. Jesus thought not of His own will but the will of the Father.
[19:23] Not His own glory but the glory of Him that sent Him, the glory of others. He saved Himself. He couldn't save others. But He did not save Himself. He saved me.
[19:35] That's why He's my favorite Bible character. There are seven steps in His dissension and His condescension. Step number one is found in verse 6 of Philippians chapter 2.
[19:53] He agreed to an inequality. He didn't have to do that. He didn't have to become a man. But He agreed to an equality that the Father could still be up here and He would come down here.
[20:09] Step number two, He emptied Himself of all notoriety, of everything, amen, that was credited to Him as God.
[20:19] He emptied Himself of it. In verse 7, step number three, He became a servant. Jesus became a servant. We always are wanting served.
[20:32] We don't want to go to the table and serve somebody else. We always want Him to be the one that's served. Let me tell you that Jesus came here not to be ministered to, but to minister.
[20:46] Step number four in verse 7, He exchanged the likeness of God for the likeness of man. Step number five in verse 8, in that situation, He humbled Himself.
[20:57] Step number six in verse 8, He humbled Himself even to death. Step number seven, He died a death of ignominy.
[21:09] I heard old preacher Riawan use that word and I thought, man, where did he get a word like that? And I was reading, that word's a Bible word. I don't know whether you know it or not, but if you read your Bible, you'll come across that word ignominy.
[21:25] And that means I've no reputation. That means the lowest of the low, the disastrous of the disastrous. Jesus took that.
[21:37] But then there's a sevenfold exhortation. In verse 9, God's the one that did the exultant. In verse 9 again, step 2, He gave Him the name.
[21:50] Jesus didn't take the name. God gave Him the name. Step number three in verse 10, not only gave Him a name, but He gave Him a dominion. A dominion over heaven.
[22:04] A dominion over earth. A dominion over hell. And in verse 11, He gave Him a confession. Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him and given Him a name that's above every name.
[22:18] That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue should confess. Murmurings and disputings break the unity of the bond. Abram told Lot, you take what you want, leave me the rest.
[22:32] Let's not quarrel. Take what you want, I'll take what's left. Which one of those names is exalted in the New Testament? You see, at that time, Lot thought it would be good to take that well-watered plain of Sodom.
[22:50] And He knew what I knew. He said, I don't want nothing to do with it. Keep away from it. That'll cost me my wife. That'll cost me my daughters. That'll cost me my home. That'll make me drunk in a cave.
[23:02] I don't want nothing to do with it. Amen. When Moses tried to step the, or stop the bickering between the brothers, it cost him his job.
[23:14] Christians are to be a light, and Christians are to be salt. You can't shine to nobody if you're fussing and fighting.
[23:28] Say, why are you preaching that? That's what I've got right here. Christianity should cause a change in me completely.
[23:39] Amen. Your importance should drop, and the importance of the body should be exalted. The most important thing you should have around here is the health of Esther Baptist Church.
[23:55] You should try to make that church a healthy church where babies can be born. A sanitary place. Man is centered with self-righteousness and self-importance and needs to surrender it to who is worthy of being important.
[24:16] Press toward the mark. Our conversation, the Bible said, is in heaven. Our home is there. Our citizenship is there.
[24:29] Our treasures are there. My mommy's there. The old preachers that taught me the gospel, they're there. Many of the church members from 30 years of preaching right here are already there.
[24:46] Why shouldn't we be talking about that place? Why shouldn't our conversation be there? The free cities of the Roman world were much prized.
[25:00] But Paul said, hey, I'm free born. I think he's more to that than just being a Roman. I think when he said, I'm free born, he meant not only was he a free born Roman, but he was free born through the Lord Jesus Christ.
[25:17] If the sun shall make you free, you're free indeed. The cities of the Bible world were not like the cities of today. They had walls around them and they had gates that they would shut at night to keep people that were not part of the city from coming in and robbing.
[25:40] I like this. They had a row. They had a book. And if you wanted entrance to the city, you would call out and they would check the book.
[25:56] And if your name was found written in the book, you was allowed to enter the city. Man, I read that some other place. I read, well, there's a day coming when the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is going to open up a book of life.
[26:14] And whosoever was found written in that book gained access to the city. The body too has a book.
[26:25] Look at chapter 4, verse 3. And I entreat thee also, true yoke fellow, help those women which labored with me in the gospel with lament also and with other my fellow laborers whose names are in the book of life.
[26:51] Amen. Isn't it amazing how things just shows up in the Bible over and over? You'd have never thought that that book of life mentioned in Revelation 21, 22, you'd never thought that that was going to show up in the book of Philippians.
[27:05] But it does. And he said, hey, you two girls, your name's written in the book of life. Then, yeah, at least you can do is help one another.
[27:18] Would you agree with that? I agree with that. I think we ought to be glad that Jesus is preached. I mean, he may not be preached the way we want him preached.
[27:30] But hey, if he's preached, there's power in the blood. There's wonder, work, and power in the blood of the Lamb. Let's bow for prayer. Heads are bowed, eyes are closed.
[27:45] Power in the blood. I'm glad Jesus is preached. Tonight, I want him to have preeminence in my life.
[27:57] The things I do, I want them to be for the furtherance of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Folks, you're coming to pray. If you'd like to come, you're welcome.
[28:10] Step out of your seat and walk down this aisle and kneel here at this altar and say to God in heaven, Lord, help my number one goal to be Jesus.
[28:24] The promotion of the gospel of Christ help that to be what I need most of all. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
[28:38] All these other things will be added to you. I'm going to pray. Would you like to pray with me? If you would just slip out of your seat today, come and kneel here at this altar and let's pray together.
[28:54] Our heavenly Father, Lord, I thank you for the privilege to pray. Lord, I thank you for your love and grace and God, how you've been good to us.
[29:05] I pray, our Father, that the words of this book could not be bound, yea, cannot be bound. Lord, that they'd be loose and that they would loose those that are bound in sin.
[29:20] Help us, our Father, today that we might have the privilege of standing for Christ in this world of darkness.
[29:32] I pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, let's stand and sing together. Number 289. Hear the blessings I am open there.
[29:59] Break me every burden. Break me every day. Come to me.
[30:10] I am a living place. In my youth, I follow you.
[30:21] Give me every day. I am weak and holy.
[30:32] I am blessed my heart. God, I hope you see me.
[30:43] And my heart is mine. C.T., I have time for a song. Will you come and sing something for me?
[30:57] Just a verse or two. You folks can sit down. Good beef laughing.
[31:13] Good beef laughing.
[31:27] Good beef laughing. Good beef laughing. Good beef. Good beef. Good beef. Good beef. Good afternoon, everyone.
[31:38] And loudly I cried, Ship ahoy, ship ahoy.
[32:17] And loudly I cried, Ship ahoy. T'was the old ship of Zion, Thus sailing along.
[32:34] All aboard her seemed joyous, I heard their sweet song. And the captain's keen ear, Ever ready to hear, Caught my will of distress, As I cried out in fear, Ship ahoy, ship ahoy.
[33:08] As I cried out in fear, Ship ahoy. The good captain commanded a boat to be Lord, And with tender compassion, He took me on board, And I'm happy today.
[33:38] All my sins washed away, In the blood of my Savior, And now I can save.
[33:54] Bless the Lord, bless the Lord, From my soul I can save.
[34:04] Bless the Lord, O soul, Sinking down, Nason's merciless wave, The strong arm of our captain Is mighty to save.
[34:26] Then trust Him today, No longer delay. Board the old ship of Zion, And shout on your way.
[34:44] Jesus saves. Jesus saves. Jesus saves. Shout and sing on your way.
[34:57] Jesus saves. Amen. Amen. Amen.