Hello folks, my name is George Sinclair. I'm the pastor here at Church of the Messiah and it's my great privilege and honor to open the word with you.
We'll be looking at Philippians chapter 2 beginning at verse 14 if you want to turn to that.
And just as you, well here, just as you're turning to it, let's just say a prayer.
Father, we confess before you that we think we know ourselves really well and we think we know how the world works really well and so we often stand in judgment on your word.
And Father, we think these things, but Father, when we actually really do think about it, we realize that we don't know ourselves very well and we don't know the world very well and we are in no position to judge your word.
We ask, Father, that the Holy Spirit would come with might and power and deep conviction upon each of us so that as we think about Jesus and as we listen to your word, you would help us to understand better who we are and who we can be in and through the work and presence of Jesus in our lives.
So pour out the Holy Spirit, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen.
You sort of get a bit of the idea from the introduction is that if you're honest and what Christians, if we're honest, we often find the Bible underwhelming.
We read it and say, is that all there is?
Is that the big reveal?
Is that the big message?
And we're often disappointed.
In fact, there's whole books written on the problem of disappointment with God.
Well, I want to suggest the text that we're going to look at today is a prime example of how we can be disappointed with God.
But what it reveals is actually a lack of insight about ourselves.
And sort of a, I don't mean to offend you, when I say, like I'm including myself in this, you know, in the words of that old, beautiful old song,
it's me, it's me, it's me, it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.
So this isn't me pointing my finger at other people.
You know, even if I point my finger, I'm conscious that there's three fingers pointing back at me, only one pointing away.
But often, the fact of the matter is, is that we just assume we know about ourselves and we think we know what's important.
And God's word seems underwhelming.
But by the grace and mercy of God, slowly and intermittently, I really do realize that the Bible is far wiser than I am.
And I really need to camp with it and listen to it.
So with that as a workup, we're going to look at Philippians chapter 2, verse 14 and following.
In particular, I'm going to read just the first three verses.
And why this is a little bit underwhelming, you need to, if you read the book from beginning to end,
you'll have a bit of a sense as to why this is an underwhelming text.
It is describing the problem of envy and rivalry.
It's describing the problems of pride.
There's this wonderful text that encourages us to try to deal with these things in a way which is more humble.
There's this, well, I'm going to return to it in a moment.
There's this very, very powerful, beautiful, poetic message of how God, the Son of God,
seeing human need, didn't grasp or hold on to the advantages he had in heaven as God, the Son of God,
in perfect fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit and the adoration of angels.
But setting all of that aside, but remaining God, he takes into himself our human nature.
And he does this to serve.
And his posture as a servant includes like a working class, lower working class life.
And his posture of emptying and service goes all the way to him dying a very, very shameful death upon the cross.
And then the Father's great exalting of him so that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is the highest name.
And then it goes right from that into this sort of a bit of a shocking text where it says to us
that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
As if there's something that we have to do 100% of all of that work to be made right with God.
And then there's this like almost like a whiplash where all of a sudden then God says,
but just remember that all of the work and all of the willing comes from me.
And now we have a word.
And in our text, it goes, it doesn't have it, but it should say now.
And so now you're sort of ready for something big.
This powerful picture of Jesus, this profound encouragement to go 100%,
this great mystery of 100% from God.
And now we're ready to hear, do all things without grumbling.
You know what?
It leads to that.
Do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and innocent children of God
without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation
among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.
So then the day of Christ, I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
Like it's a little bit underwhelming.
After this powerful, powerful text, that what we have to do is do all things without grumbling or disputing.
Now, if we camp with this, and I've had to camp with it all week, I'm going to confess to you, I was a bit underwhelmed.
In fact, I realized one of the great benefits that I have in teaching the word is it makes me more honest with myself.
Not as often as it should be.
You can pray that I will be more honest with myself.
But because I know I have to actually teach it, I actually have to look at it and I think, well, you know, like we'd expect something more.
Wouldn't we?
We'd expect take these 10 or 15 or 20 steps.
Or, you know, like in terms of modern spirituality, it would be like you learn these yoga moves.
You learn these meditation techniques.
You master this body of knowledge.
You do this.
You do that.
We expect something big.
And all it says is do all things without grumbling or disputing.
But here's the first point.
And it's a very important point that we don't realize without just thinking about the powerful thing of all things.
The first point is the narrow way, in quotes, the narrow way of Jesus brings you in to the worldwide expanse of freedom.
And by the way, these points that I have will eventually be in the side thing here.
But one of the things is they'll all be online later on.
Or you can email me if you're just curious and you want to have them.
And we are working.
Hopefully next week or later we'll be able to have these points on screen.
We're also working today.
We thought we'd be able to hook up this video right directly onto the internet.
We had technical problems that didn't allow us to have that.
So we're still going through Wi-Fi.
Just pray as we sort a couple of these things out to get rid of some of the jerkiness and some of the sound issues.
Just pray for us.
But back to the point.
If you think about it for a second, what we usually think of is that there's religious things and non-religious things.
There's spiritual things and non-spiritual things.
And one of the reasons that people don't like spirituality and they don't like religion is it takes up so much time.
Like you've got to go to Bible studies.
You've got to go to church.
You've got to give up your money.
Like, you know, and then you have to, you know, do all sorts of certain things.
Like a good example, getting outside of the Christian world, like for very devout Muslims, like there'd be things like because you want to be like Muhammad, you don't shave your mustache and you let your beard grow long.
Like another thing would be for a very devout Muslim that you have pants, which are a bit short because that's how Muhammad did it.
And it just seems like there's all of these rules.
But here all of a sudden there's this narrow way because Christians believe in this text is going to, and I'm going to talk about it more in a moment,
that the only way that we can be made right with God is by what God has done to make us right with himself that we receive by faith.
And it's very, very narrow.
It's only the person of Jesus.
But when you enter into this narrow way, Jesus be my Savior and my Lord, and now you come to expect religion, it says do all things.
Now, obviously it's going to say, you know, if you get to know the Bible, it doesn't include go ahead and murder and don't rape and all that.
But there's this whole world of freedom.
Do all things.
Like you don't have to have a certain type of job.
You don't have to have a certain type of exercise.
You don't even have to have exercise.
You don't have to eat certain types of food.
You don't have to eat in a certain pattern.
You don't have to do prayers at certain times.
It's do all things.
You're going rock climbing.
You're going to go and hang out with a cafe once the lockdown and the shutdown's all thing.
You're going to spend time with your friend.
You're going to spend time with your family.
You're going to dance a dance, sing a song, paint a painting, balance a budget, build a business, work in the government.
Do all things.
The whole world is open.
You don't have to just learn a certain language.
You don't have to live in a certain place.
You don't have to dress a certain way.
Do all things.
All things.
Like the Bible calls us to live in our father's world with freedom.
And the freedom aspect is going to get into by this particular odd thing about grumbling.
Do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.
And it actually opens us up into an expanse of freedom.
And that's why the grumbling text, which seems so trivial, like in an odd way, if you think about it, we grumble that the Bible would pick on grumbling.
Like we grumble about it.
If you think about it for a second, like why on earth is he?
Like, come on, God.
Like, you know, take a chill pill.
Like, what's so big?
Like in a sense, we grumble about the fact that he warns us about grumbling, which if you think about it for a second, should give us a little tiny bit of an indication that there's something more going on with it.
But here's the first thing.
I'm going to explain why grumbling.
Well, here's the thing.
Let me explain why he picked something which seems so small and so, like, trivial.
Six years ago, we bought the house that we currently live in.
It was a house built in 1960, and it was an original owner, actually, that we bought it from.
And it's sort of a corner lot that, like this side of the corner, so it has like a pie-shaped backyard.
And one of the things that we noticed, and you couldn't help but not notice it when we looked at the house, is that off to the side, there was about 30 or 40 feet really old cedar hedge.
Really high, really old, and it broke up the yard.
The only thing we could gather was that we guessed, and then we sort of figured, we ended up hearing later on that that was probably the case,
that he had some things that he stored there, and he built the cedar, had planted the cedar hedge so that he could plant, put his RV or his trailers or his other stuff into this corner,
and it would be out of view from the rest of the yard.
But we didn't want to have anything like that.
We wanted to have the full use of our yard.
So we had to get rid of the cedar hedge.
Now, if you're at all like me, or if I'm like most of you, I have more time than money.
And so we didn't hire anybody.
First of all, we cut down the hedge.
But then, you just can't cut down the hedge, because then you have all these big pieces of wood sticking up about this high.
And if you don't do something else, it's going to just keep growing and growing and growing.
So I had to spend days and days and days of back-breaking work with a pickaxe and some other things and shovels to one by one go throughout that entire length,
dig down around the roots, and dig out the roots and pull the thing up.
I ruined three shovels doing it.
The three best shovels I could find, three of them, got broken in the process of trying to remove.
And I eventually did remove this cedar hedge.
And I got most of the roots, but not all of the roots.
But here's the thing.
I cut the grass, and you get these little sprouts occasionally of a cedar hedge, which comes up.
But you just mow those over with the lawnmower.
They just go like nothing, you know?
But when those little roots, if you don't deal with those little tiny bits of a thing,
they grow up into these huge cedar hedges, these huge cedar trees with these big root systems,
which are really, really hard to get rid of.
And you see, so what this Bible text is saying about here is very, very wise.
Here's the second point.
Since you live beyond death, even the smallest sin in your life can grow to consume you.
But you still say, George, it's just like grumbling.
Well, here's the thing.
Now, it's going to be really hard.
Like, what is grumbling?
And to try to get into what grumbling is, it's going to probably be very hard to think about yourself at first.
So think of a situation where either a friend of yours grumbles, where you've been the boss, or you've been the manager, you've been the supervisor, you've been the dad, or the mom, or the parent, or whatever.
Because that would be the dad or the mom.
And your kids are grumbling, you know, your adult kids are grumbling, or other people are grumbling.
And what you notice is this.
First of all, grumbling and disputing.
The word for disputing in the original language has two senses, depending on the context.
One is a positive sense, and the other one is a bad sense.
The positive sense is that there's just sometimes you need to get into a discussion with somebody.
You need to set forth your case because something's been done wrong.
But in a negative sense, it's really describing something like being quarrelsome.
And another way to look at it is grumbling is the outer, and this quarrelsome aspect is the inside aspect.
What it's really talking about is that there's this aspect of us which is self-righteous, self-centered, proud thinking.
Like, think about other people's grumbling for a moment, okay?
And, you know, they grumble and they send you an email or they give you a phone call or they take you aside.
They don't assume goodwill on me.
They don't think that they know everything that needs to be known.
They don't actually ever think that there's more to the situation than they realize.
They think that they're smarter than me, wiser than me, more practical than me.
They think they could do the job way better than me.
They never, people who grumble, they never seek to understand what's going on as a first step.
Why? Because they think they know what's going on.
They don't, they've set aside, the more you grumble, the less you seek to understand.
And on top of that, people who grumble, they think that they're right.
And they almost always give themselves a pass on the times that they've been wrong.
But they don't give me or you a pass on the times that they've, that they've been, that we've been wrong.
They remember it.
They water it.
They feed it.
They give it the right type of environment so that it can grow.
Now isn't that true of other people?
And isn't it all true, always true, also true,
that it's easy for me to think of how this is for other people,
but it's actually hard for me to think about it for myself?
So, you know, you just think about it.
That is what I'm like.
And that's a hard thing for me to confess.
This has been a very challenging week for me spiritually, let me tell you.
It's hard for me to acknowledge that there's this part of me that thinks I'm always right.
For those of you who are watching this who disagree with me,
like inside, part of me goes, sucks to be you.
I'm the one who's right.
I'm the one who's wrong.
I'm the one who's wise.
And for some of you, if the Holy Spirit's moving in your lives,
you're going, actually, George sucks to be you,
because I'm the one who's always right.
And in fact, this tiny, tiny thing like grumbling opens up
a deep condition of the soul
that we tend to be self-righteous.
We tend to be self-centered.
And we tend to be proud.
And that's how we see the world.
And it comes out in grumbling.
If you watch any of the different pandemic movies,
or any of the different types of plague movies,
how do they all begin?
Or how do they all early on?
I mean, usually there's something, I don't know,
they're all having a party, they're all having a good time,
they're all doing this, they're all doing that.
But it almost always starts, not with all of a sudden,
somebody with full-blown Ebola,
or some other horrific plague,
walking down the street, spewing blood.
No, how does it always begin?
A little cough.
Or maybe they just, they go like this
because they sweat a little bit,
and it always begins, very tiny.
Isn't that how it always begins?
The worst plagues?
How we first become aware of it?
Well, one moment here.
All of a sudden, we see that the Bible is just saying,
you want to have a bit of an insight
into the state of, George,
your self-righteousness,
your self-centeredness,
your proud thinking,
your habit to not seek to understand,
your habit to think that you're the wise one,
you're the smart one,
you're the insightful one,
everybody else is whatever.
George, just look at your grumbling.
Why?
It's the cough.
It's the little bit of a sweat from a fever.
You see,
since you,
here's the third point,
since you cannot leave yourself,
you cannot deliver yourself.
You need a Savior who knows you and loves you.
Since you cannot leave yourself,
you cannot deliver yourself,
you need a Savior who knows you and loves you.
In fact,
you know,
you think about it,
part of the text,
which probably bothered some of you
when you're reading it,
and might have made some of you
very,
very troubled,
listen to it again,
verses 14 to 16.
Do all things without grumbling or disputing.
Now,
remember here that another way to put it
is the disputing is the inner aspect.
It should probably be translated
as a quarrelsome spirit.
The type of nitpicking,
observational,
put-down,
cynical spirit
that lurks in far too many of us.
Okay?
That you may be blameless and innocent,
children of God without blemish,
in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation,
among whom you shine as lights in the world,
holding fast to the word of life.
That crooked and twisted,
here's the thing to understand about this phrase.
This is describing what human beings are like.
And it isn't Paul saying,
by the way,
I'm not crooked and twisted,
and it really sucks that the rest of the world
is crooked and twisted,
unlike straight,
blameless,
pure,
innocent me.
Not at all.
This is a very,
very powerful image
of what happens to us with pride.
Because the fact of the matter is,
is that you watch any movie
that does this very well,
read any book,
think about somebody that you know
that seems to be very,
very proud,
very,
very self-righteous,
very,
very me-centered,
very,
very picky out of that.
Do they seem like the strongest,
straightest,
wholest,
most whole,
free person?
No.
What do you think?
You think it's bending them out of shape.
You think it's making them smaller.
You think it's making it hard for them
to do anything well.
It's making it hard for them to be free,
hard for them to love.
You think it's making them crooked
and twisted.
And the message of the gospel,
the good news of the gospel,
is really this.
I am a crooked and twisted man
who is only telling you
about the one
who is beginning to make me straight
and will make you straight
and whole and free.
The Christian gospel is one beggar
telling another beggar
where to find free food,
where to find deliverance
and warmth and security.
One beggar telling another beggar
friend,
I'm a beggar
telling you about Jesus.
You see,
and if the fact of the matter is
is that there's a part of us
which is crooked and twisted,
that means
if I can't leave myself,
I bring my crookedness
and twistedness to religion.
I bring my crookedness
and twistedness
to spirituality.
I bring my crookedness
and twistedness
to therapy.
I bring all of that
always with me
to whatever technique
I want to be mindful
but I can't be mindful really
because at the end of the day
there's still the me
who is crooked and twisted.
I need someone,
you need someone
from outside
who can deliver you.
And that's what is so wonderful
about the gospel.
Here's the fourth point.
The gospel tells
how the triune God
has acted
to unbend
all human pride
and atone for it,
especially yours.
Another way to put it
would be this.
The gospel tells
how the triune God
has acted
to
untwist
and uncrookedness,
that's not a word,
all human pride
and atone
for it,
especially
yours.
That's what the gospel
tells us.
See, that's this wonderful thing.
But the thing which is so remarkable
about this story
that Paul tells,
if you go back
and you read
verses
6 to 11,
is that God,
the Son of God,
in perfect harmony
and fellowship
with the Father
and in the Holy Spirit,
this eternity,
ceaseless,
giving and receiving,
knowing,
revealing
and knowing,
this loving
and receiving
of love,
this eternity,
this three persons
but just this one God,
this threeness
but this unity
of love
and goodness,
of truth,
of mercy.
and it is this
triune God
that's created you and me
and this triune God
who sees how we,
seeking to be like God,
in fact,
rather than becoming
like God,
all that we did
was made ourselves
crooked and twisted.
A crookedness
and making ourselves
a crookedness
and a twistedness
that unless God intervenes,
unless God restrains,
would just go on
for eternity.
You see,
you go back
to that earlier analogy
if in fact
the matter is
you live
beyond death,
even the smallest
sin in your life
can grow to consume you.
It's just like
if you let that
tiny little cedar hedge
little thing grow
and it grows
and grows
and if you have
a person
who has a trouble
with grumbling,
if it starts
to become clear to you
that you grumble
sometimes,
if that grumbling
isn't put to death
and you outlive death,
that grumble
can grow
and grow
until you become
grumble.
A grumble
who grumbles
and cannot
stop grumbling.
And so we have
this powerful image
of the same God
who's created all things,
of God,
the Son of God,
doing the exact
opposite of grumbling,
the exact opposite
of being self-centered,
the exact opposite
of being me first
and proud
and looking down
his nose at others,
of setting aside
his glory,
setting aside
his prerogatives,
setting all of
these things aside
and descending
and emptying
and emptying himself
even to the most
shameful death
upon the cross
and tasting all
there is to taste
of death
with nothing left.
And he does this
for you
and he does this
for me.
He doesn't do it
for himself.
And then this
profound reversal
and it's as if
God,
the Son of God,
is taking our pride
and our crookedness
and our twistedness
and not just me
but me and you
and every person
who's in this room
and every person
on the planet
and every person
who's ever lived
and so there's
this profound
movement by God,
the Son of God
and this profound
lifting of freedom
and joy
of God,
the Son of God
and then when you
or I put our faith
and trust in Jesus,
it's ours.
we are in Him
and so it becomes
our experience
that we begin
to experience now
a bit
but one day
in its fullness.
And the other
wonderful thing
about the Gospel
is that in a sense
that first part,
if you go and you
read verse 5
and then verses 6
to 11
how we're in Christ,
then we see
after that in verse 13
that it's God in us.
You see,
it's the whole thing
about love, right?
That's why I've talked
about this time
and time and time again
in love.
In a sense,
I enter into the other
at least in a type
of a spiritual sense,
a mystical sense
and the other
enters into me.
There's that mutual entry
and so in this thing
that Jesus does
to save us
because we can't
leave ourselves
to save ourselves
that whatever it is
that He has accomplished
on the cross
to both pay the penalty
of our crookedness
and twistedness
and in a sense
to clothe us
with His mighty act,
a righteousness
which is not our own
and we get in Him
and that is in us
and that is why
when you put your faith
and trust in Jesus,
you begin to experience
this now
but its final result
is never in doubt.
Listen again
to the text.
Therefore,
do all things
without grumbling
or disputing
that you may be
blameless and innocent
children of God.
It can also be translated
that you may become
blameless and innocent
children of God
without blemish.
Blameless means
in the eyes of the world.
Innocent means
in terms of your life
and blemish means
in terms of how God
sees you.
In a sense,
it's the public,
the inner,
and the spiritual.
Children of God
because you made
His child
by adoption and grace
in the midst
of a crooked
and twisted generation.
I am a crooked
and twisted man
who has been redeemed
by Jesus
and trying to hold fast
to the word of life
in the power
of the Holy Spirit
that some of my crookedness
and some of my twistedness
will come to an end
that I might be free,
free to know,
free to love,
free to ask the questions,
free to see beauty
and excellence in others,
free to pursue
that which is good
and just
in lives of others
in the creation
in the world,
among whom you shine
as lights in the world,
holding fast
to the word of life,
holding fast
to the word of life.
You see,
the word of life
is the message
of the gospel
in the context
of all of the Bible
and it's all of the Bible
in the context
of the gospel
and the word of life
is not something
that gives you life
but as you listen to it,
it leads you
in the way of life
just as this text
reveals
the significance
of grumbling
and the inner life
that goes along with it,
right?
Like in a pandemic
or plague movie,
the cough,
the sign
of a vastly
more dangerous
situation
than you realize
with that cough.
The rest of the text
in a sense
unpacks it,
listen to it.
Actually,
before you listen to it,
I'm going to give you
the final point,
the takeaway point,
which is this,
the final point.
It's also a prayer
and once again,
if you can't capture it
and the little thing
on the side,
send me an email
or go on the webpage,
it'll be up there.
loving Father,
help me to put
all my grumbling
and self-righteous
thinking to death
and by the power
of the Holy Spirit,
help me to hold fast
to the word of life
so I will live free
to love
like my Lord
and Savior,
Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Listen to the rest
of the text
as it unpacks
what it's like
to hold fast
to the word of life.
Listen to it.
Even if I,
verse 17,
am to be poured out
as a drink offering
upon the sacrificial offering
of your faith,
I am glad and rejoiced
with you all.
Likewise,
you also should be glad
and rejoiced with me.
His love and service
for them
and their love
and service for him
is a sacrifice.
It's the opposite
of being self-centered.
It's a death
or a service
for others.
And then he grounds it
in the lives
of two people
whom they know.
Verse 19,
I hope in the Lord Jesus
to send Timothy
to you soon
that I too
may be cheered
by news of you
for I have no one
like him
who will be genuinely
concerned
for your welfare.
For they all seek
their own interests,
not those of Jesus Christ.
The opposite of grumbling.
But you know
Timothy's proven worth
how as a son
with a father
he has served me
in the gospel.
I hope therefore
to send him
just as soon
as I see
how it will go
with me.
And I trust in the Lord
that shortly
I myself
will come also.
I have thought
it necessary
to send to you
Epaphroditus
my brother
and fellow worker
and fellow soldier
and your messenger
and minister
to my need.
Once again
the opposite
of grumbling
of self-righteousness
of pride
a giving of yourself
for the other
keeping your eyes
on Jesus
a type of freedom
which expands
beyond the world
from Greece to Rome
from Jerusalem
to Greece
to Greece to Rome.
It's a world
of freedom
for he has been
longing for you all
the opposite
of grumbling.
He has been longing
for you all
and has been distressed
because you heard
that he was ill.
Indeed he was ill
near to death
but God had mercy
on him
and not only on him
but on me also
lest I should have
sorrow upon sorrow.
I am the more eager
to send him therefore
that you may rejoice
rejoicing the opposite
of grumbling
at seeing him again
and that I may be
less anxious.
So receive him
in the Lord
with all joy
and honor such men.
The sacrifice
for he nearly died
for the work of Christ
risking his life
to complete
what was lacking
in your service
to me.
Friends
what is this text
calling me to?
What is this text
calling you to?
It's a prayer like this.
Lord Jesus
help me
to put all my grumbling
and self-righteous
thinking to death
and by the power
of the Holy Spirit
help me to hold fast
to the word of life
so I will live
free
to love
like my Lord
and Savior
Jesus Christ.
That is my final prayer.
Amen.
God bless.