Philippians 1:2-6 - Joy in the Gospel Partnership
Tom Shrader continues his study through Philippians, examining Paul's thanksgiving and joy for the Philippian believers despite writing from prison. He emphasizes that true joy comes from understanding God's grace and our participation in the gospel together. The teaching culminates in the doctrinal truth of Philippians 1:6 - that God who began the good work of salvation will complete it, providing believers with unshakeable confidence regardless of circumstances.
“What makes us Christian is what we believe, not what we do or how we behave, but that belief now affects our behavior.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Philippians
Recorded: September 22, 2016
Duration: 38 min
Themes: joy, grace, partnership, thanksgiving, perseverance, confidence, gospel, circumstances, struggling with discouragement, facing difficult circumstances, new believer, feeling uncertain about salvation, going through trials, seeking purpose, pastor, mature believer
Scripture: Philippians 1:1-2, Philippians 1:3-6, 2 Corinthians 11:24, John 15:11, Galatians 5:22, Jeremiah 15:16, James 1:2, Psalm 51:10-12, John 10:27-28, Romans 8:38-39, Ephesians 2:1-3, Ephesians 2:8-9
Theological Themes: sanctification, perseverance of saints, salvation assurance, gospel partnership, divine sovereignty, spiritual growth, eternal security, biblical joy
Full Transcript
This is week two of a Bible study in the book of Philippians. I was with a guy yesterday and he was a great guy. I liked him a lot and he was in town talking to us about some stuff that we do and they do. He must have said 15 times, "I'm not saying that the way we do it is the only way, I'm not even saying it's the best way, I'm just saying it's our way." I appreciate that because I try to say that a lot myself. When I say I'm sure this is not the best way but it's my way of working our way through a book, we'll take and work our way through the book of Philippians. We started last week, we are no pace, we're no hurry and we'll work our way through the book of Philippians. So if you have a Bible, open to that. If not, take the phone and if you don't have a Bible app, load one on there and you can follow right along with us.
Paul's Circumstances and the Theme of Joy
Last week, let me remind you of a couple of the things we read to you by way of introduction. Chuck Swindoll said, "I know of no greater need today than the need for joy—unexplainable, contagious, outrageous joy." James Montgomery Boyce wrote, "Any Christian who is feeling down or discouraged about anything should study Paul's letter to the Philippians." This is true because of Paul's circumstance when He wrote it.
What were Paul's circumstances? He was in prison. He'd been in prison in Caesarea for two years, held without trial. Finally He ends up in Rome for another couple of years and Paul writes this book about joy. We see the theme all the way through the book and it would be easy to say or think that Paul's writing from this magnificent palace or writing from a life that's experienced little or no hardship. Exactly the opposite is true.
We looked at 2 Corinthians chapter 11, starting about verse 24: "Five times I've been beaten with rods, I was stoned, I was shipwrecked in danger." And He writes from prison not knowing at all what His ultimate fate could be. Certainly death is a distinct possibility. So when He writes about joy, He's writing about something that is in our lives regardless of circumstance.
Joy Beyond Circumstances
If I've got a stock and I bought it at 30 and it's at 40, I can be happy. If it's at 20, I am sad. What Paul's saying is circumstances are like this—that's life, that's every day, that's already today. I stopped and they raised the price at my little dive gas station on coffee. It was a dollar forty, now it's a dollar fifty-one. So now I have these four pennies and He doesn't have a penny and they raised it to this eleven cents. Apparently this eleven cents is His break point, that's His tipping point for whether this gas station stays alive apparently. Now my whole life is filled with these four pennies. I hadn't been out of the house five minutes and I'm going, "Look at this day I'm gonna have—four pennies already."
I told Sandy when I left today, "I'm teaching tonight, I'm downtown all day, not gonna be home till about nine, nine-thirty. It's gonna be one of those 14-hour days." That's what I said. And then I get all green lights across Elliott to the Fruit and I had a great day. It's going like this, just in ten minutes, based on circumstances. Here you go—circumstances inevitably go like this. What Paul's saying is in the midst of that, there is a calmness and a serene setting because we know something, and that's what we're going to look at today.
The Importance of Doctrine
Here was the last introduction quote that we used last week, again I think from James Boyce: "The book of Philippians is also noteworthy for its great doctrinal statement. It's not intended as a doctrinal treatise, as are Romans and Galatians, but it is filled nonetheless with doctrine. Paul thought doctrine. Consequently, great expressions of Christian truth fall like ripe fruit from His pen. At times it seems to just happen almost incidentally." Well, we know that's not true, we know it's not just coincidental.
For those of us who are Christians, and this is a hard truth, we're Christians not because of what we do, but because of what we believe. So you have all sorts of guys who are not Christians, don't care about Jesus, don't care about anything. They could be Buddhist or Hindus or Scientology or whatever their deal is, and they're down there and they're building homes for homeless people, feeding people. They're doing what we would call good Christian work. What makes us a Christian—and important again, even in that sentence I use Christian as an adjective, it's not an adjective, it's a noun—what makes us Christian is what we believe, not what we do or how we behave.
But that belief now affects our behavior, and we talk about that all the time. The last time we studied a book, probably the book of James, we call it Blue Gene Theology because it's rough, it's every day. James says don't just be a hearer of the word, but be a doer. So James is talking about action. He's talking about you can't just say you believe it, it has to change the way you live. That's true, but what makes me a Christian is what I believe—its doctrine.
How Doctrine Affects Everything
That's why doctrine is so important. I'm not intellectually inquisitive necessarily. I'm curious about a few things, and doctrine really matters to me because doctrine affects how I do what I do. It affects our whole worldview. It should affect how I interact with the guy who just changed His coffee price to $1.50—what a stupid price. It should affect the way I drive. It should affect if I'm single, how I date. If I'm married, how I interact with my spouse. It's how I interact with a barista. It begins to affect all of those things because we now have a view of the world that flows from this scripture.
That in its simplest form: page 1 and 2 of my Bible is creation, page 3 is the fall—that's sin. When you get that, you understand the world around you. And then the rest of that book, 1,200 pages, is about God restoring and redeeming. Now that has to affect the way I interact with the world, so doctrine is important. We're gonna see a great...
Paul's Identity as a Bond Servant
Just by way of reminder, in verses 1 and 2, Paul and Timothy describe themselves as bond servants. Paul calls himself a bond servant, which we don't typically look at in flattering terms. In that day and age there were different levels of slaves, but the lowest was this bond servant. That was somebody who was purchased by or owned by someone else completely, and that slave was totally dependent upon his master for everything. Paul seems to say this in a comfortable way—that's what I am. I'm a slave, not of Nero who has me in prison, but I'm a slave of Christ Jesus.
He's writing to all the believers in Philippi and in Christ. That phrase "in Christ" is one of Paul's favorite phrases, and it speaks of those of us who are in a relationship with Jesus. We'll talk more about that as the day unfolds.
Grace and Peace from God
In verse 2, Paul says, "Grace to you and peace." Grace is this idea of unmerited favor. The Gentiles would use the phrase grace as just meaning greeting. Paul's saying something much more than that. He's saying, "Listen, here's what I wish for you. I wish for you grace, unmerited favor, and peace." And look at the source of those—they're from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the lifelong battle that we fight as non-Christians, trying to find especially peace in this world from a person, place, or thing. So that's why you go from girl to girl to girl, guy to guy to guy, house to house to house, job to job to job, vacation to vacation to vacation, because you think ultimately, "I want to find this peace, whatever this is, I'm going to find it in that person, place, or thing."
Peace—here's an important definition for us—is not the absence of turmoil, it's the presence of God. Peace doesn't say that those circumstances are going to be gone out of your life. It just says that God's going to join you right in the middle of them.
God's Presence in Our Struggles
I was talking to somebody the other day and they were praying to God about some situation, and God hadn't done what they wanted done, therefore they classified their prayer as unanswered. God never comes along and says, "I'm going to take all the hardship out of life"—that would be to remove you from being human. He says in the middle of this, what's going to happen is you're still going to get the cancer, you're still going to have the relationship difficulties, you're still going to have financial struggles, you're still going to have economic hardships, but I'm going to join you right in the midst of it.
Yesterday would have been Larry Wright's 80th birthday. So I think of Larry, I think of that body all crumbled and weak, and I heard Larry say what I've heard dozens and dozens and dozens of people say in similar circumstances: "I would have never chosen this, I wouldn't want to go through it again, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. When I'm weak, He's strong." And all of a sudden, that idea of God's grace being sufficient becomes powerful.
Again, it's like patience. I don't know if I'm patient if every light is green. I only know if I have patience if the light's red. I don't know if I'm a loving person until you put me in circumstances that are extraordinarily difficult, face to face with unlovable people. So God uses that.
John Newton's Amazing Grace
Here's this grace. Last year, I think it was on vacation or somewhere, I had a Kindle and downloaded a book on John Newton. John Newton was a slave trader. He was born in this home, as I recall, a Christian home. He became infatuated with the sea, began to sail, began to make runs with slaves. And he was involved heavily in the slave trade. He would include female slaves for these trips. You can imagine how he would use them in a variety of ways, including sexual ways—the betrayal, the humiliation.
And then, God saved John Newton. And John Newton wrote these words, which have become, I think, the most recorded song in all of history. You know them, right? "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. I was blind and now I see." I don't know if you saw the movie "Amazing Grace" and then another one about Wilberforce, and you see John Newton and you see this poor, wretched guy. And you think, he penned those words? He got it. I was a wretch.
The Importance of Recognizing Our Condition
I'm in a church a while ago and they say, "We're going to sing number 152." Well, I don't know 152 from nothing. So I'm getting ready to grab the hymnal and they say, "Amazing Grace." I thought, well, I don't need the hymnal. So we're singing along and here's what they sing: "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a soul like mine." And I thought, wow, I screwed up. I thought it was wretch. So I got the hymnal and I looked at 152. Sure enough, they'd taken wretch and changed it into soul.
That's what happens when you start to mess around with real Christianity, biblical Christianity. If you don't get that you're a wretch, it doesn't matter. John Newton, Isaac Newton, Fig Newton—it doesn't matter. They're all lost, that's the point. That's the condition of all of us.
Just thinking of John Newton, having read that biography, it just enriched it all the more. "Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come"—shipwrecks, all the stuff in his line. "It was grace that brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home." Here's the verse that we sing: "And when we've been there 10,000 years bright, shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we just begun."
Personal Reflection on Transitions
So I'm going through this thing now. I think I shared with you, I'm not teaching on Sunday mornings anymore. And so that was a decision that was made almost a year ago, but really implemented at the first of this year. And then they had Tom Schrader Appreciation Day and I'm driving home and I'm going, this is it, that's it. That's done, there's no going back. Can't go back and say, "You know what? I've been thinking about this."
Personal Connection with God
And so now a portion of every day is invested in trying to figure out my future. And yet it's uncertain. I'm 63, so I don't know how long I live. I always keep trying to measure it off my dad because I think I'm healthier than he was, and he made it to 84. So I go, okay, if I have 20 more years and trying to figure out what can I do in 20 years? And yet I know I don't have the vitality now that I did at 44. There's a lot of thinking going on in this, and I'm thinking in terms of 20 years.
The way I do that is I retro. I go back and go, it feels like the church has always been part of my life, but it's only been 22 years, so that's how much time I have. And I'm giving it all this. And I read that line, I'm going, not 10 years or 15 years or 20 years, but when I've been with Christ for 10,000 years, it doesn't matter. Because I got another 10,000 or another 10,000. I have infinite 10,000 years to be with Him.
So grace, peace to you. I hope we get this. By nature, we're children of wrath, not children of God. So the line that you sang at Christmas, "God and sinner reconciled," that reconciliation has to take place because there's an alienation that precedes it. So I'm going to try to unpack all of that when we get to verse six.
Intimacy and Personal Ownership
Look at verse three, four, and five: "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now."
There's a couple of things that I look at. Number one, I see that personal possessive pronoun three times in verse three and four. My God, my remembrance, my prayer, very personal. Paul has this kind of idea or image of this stoic, hard-nosed, chauvinistic guy. And He's going, listen, first of all, let's talk about God. And he says, He's my God. There's a possessiveness there. There's an intimacy there.
Go back to my favorite Voltaire: "God made man in his own image, and man has been returning the favor ever since." We create a God, and we do that. We create a God. We don't go and find Him. We don't investigate. We don't see what the scripture has. So we constantly have, when I'm creating my own God, I constantly have phrases like, "If I was God, my God would never..." Well, we're not that interested in your God or my God. We're interested in the God of the Bible. And he says, "I thank my God," this intimate, personal God. I thank Him.
The Power of Remembrance
The Greek word there is eucharisto, from which we get the word Eucharist. And you think of the Lord's Supper. You think of that idea of even there, "Do this in remembrance of me." This idea of remembering is really important. That's the tradition.
Sandy and I were talking before. Sandy was recruited out here by ASU to do fundraising for the department, their engineering department. And so we were talking about fundraising at ASU and fundraising back at Washington University, St. Louis University. And she would talk about how significantly easier it was to fundraise back there, because you add a tradition. You would sit with a donor and say, "Hey, tell me about the class you took." "I took it from Professor Jones." "Oh, Professor Jones, he's still there teaching." You got an ASU of Jones. I don't have a Jones. I don't think there was a Jones. I was here a semester ago.
There's that idea of remembering. I was driving down the road yesterday, and I heard that ASU baseball has a big thing this, I think this weekend. And they're going to bring back 101 guys that have played at ASU and now play in the major leagues and Bobby Winkles and all this stuff. Well, those memories are important. Some of us are captivated by memories, feel hostage to it, but there's this good side. Remember, remember the tradition. Remember, and he said, here's what I remember. "I thank God and my remembrance of you."
True Partnership in the Gospel
And what are those things I remember? I remember verse five, your participation, your involvement. You were engaged with me, partners with me. And so I found myself praying for you all the time. That word participation, again, in the Greek is koinonia. Some of you would know that word koinonia means fellowship.
And we've screwed that word over. So now we have fellowship hall. So when you go in that room, you can fellowship, but let's not do it out here, right? It's kind of like worship center to me. It's like worship center. All the worship takes place in there, but you get out the door. Fellowship for us has become something fat to eat, caffeine, and this forced... Sandy has a great phrase she uses, forced fellowship. We're going to sit down and we're going to talk and pretend like we like each other, and then literally fight to get out of the parking lot.
I think of your fellowship, your participation, your participation in the gospel, the commonality we have of the Holy Spirit that indwells us. That's why, and many of you have had this experience, you're on a plane, you're in line, and you're there, let's say 20 minutes, and inexplicably, you've had a more intimate conversation with the guy next to you than you've had with any family member in your 68 years of life. How did that happen? Well, he said, "Hey, I noticed you're reading this book," and "Yeah, that book, and what's it about?" And you start to tell him, and then he says, "Whoa, whoa, are you a Christian? I'm a Christian, are you a..." Yeah. Well, you all of a sudden share something more intimate than a chain of DNA, you share the Holy Spirit, and there's a commonality, there's a fellowship. That's why they used to call each other brother, sister.
Joy in Remembrance and Prayer
So he remembers all of this stuff, and he remembers, in the context of that, the joy as well, and he talks about this joy. "I remember, and I'm offering prayers with joy." Let's talk about a couple of things about joy. Let me talk about them in a negative context first. If I don't see joy in your life, a lack of joy reveals itself in three ways. So if I see this, I'm going to see this lack of joy.
Joy Blockers and Their Impact
Negative thoughts and talk about others constantly rip at our joy. We're constantly looking, constantly criticizing. I'm sure I've shared with you before about this conference where we had five guys, so I said, "Tonight we're going to meet at dinner. Give me 25 observations of the day." So we had 125 observations, and all 125 of them were negative. I didn't say, "Give me 25 critiques." I just said, "Give me 25 observations." Room was too hot, room was too dark, speaker was dull. Nobody said, "You know what, great day, great weather, nice people, everybody was friendly, coffee was hot." So all of a sudden, when this joy's gone, my conversation becomes very negative.
Number two, there's a lack of concern for people's welfare. There's a harshness to the human condition. Sunday I was, and again, I'm not teaching on Sunday. And this guy came up and he said, "Listen, my wife and I are members of the church," which is embarrassing to me, which means I've been there a long time and they feel I don't know them. "My wife and I are members of the church and she has this condition." And he laid it out - it sounded serious to me. And he said, "They're going to do surgery tomorrow afternoon on her. Here's a card, here's a phone number. Can you have somebody from the church call her, visit her?" And I thought, you know what, I can do something better than that, I'll do this.
So I go to the hospital, there's no place to park. I parked a mile away, I walked to the room he gave me, he gave me the wrong room, I called the phone number that he gave me in the room, I got the wrong room. And I found myself, almost for a second, going, "What the heck was this?" But I remember his face, and I said, "How long have you guys been married?" And he said, "Well, my previous wife died, her previous husband died, so we've only been married 28 years." And I said, "This is really hard." You can just see the pain on his face. When you lack joy, you don't give a rip about something like that. You're not touched by a human condition.
Here's the third thing: there's a failure to intercede on people's behalf, specifically, to pray for them, if you don't have joy. Listen to this, a joyless believer is self-centered, selfish, proud, and vengeful. They don't care.
The Nature of Biblical Joy
Now, let me give you a couple of things as we talk about joy. Number one, it's a gift from God and it's granted to those who believe the gospel. John 15:11, "These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be made full."
Here's the third thing: it's produced by the Holy Spirit. So the fruit of the Spirit, right? Galatians 5:22, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control."
It's most experienced when I receive, obey, and live out God's Word. Jeremiah 15:16, "Your words were found and I ate them, and Your words became for me joy."
Here's the sixth thing: a believer's joy is deepened through trials. So James 1:2, "Count it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials." Now, that's counterintuitive. How can I count this joy trial? Well, because I know something. "Count it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials, because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance." It's those difficult things in life that confirm our joy.
Trials as Spiritual Aerobics
If this word picture helps, it's those trials that are spiritual aerobics for us. So Sandy swims every morning. Every morning at 4:55, that alarm goes off, and she gets up and goes swimming. I have a whole bunch of people say, "Well, you know, I swim. Does she swim in the back?" Well, no, it's this silly, stupid two or three mile swim every day, and they have coaches, and they're working on strokes, and all this different stuff. The only day she doesn't - she doesn't like sprints. So Tuesday's sprint day. She's a grinder long-term. The longer, the better, but she swims on Tuesday.
Thursday, that's today, is recovery day. She's not into recovery. So today, I leave at five, I get up at 5:15, but she doesn't get up till 5:30, because on Thursday, she runs rather than swim. But it's insane. It doesn't make any sense. Yesterday, she swam two or three miles in the morning, and then we went for a walk last night, and then she disappeared. I couldn't find her, and I found her in the back, and she took an hour and 15 minutes to do yoga. I mean, she's just constantly pushing.
I watch her when you run, and you say, "Why would you do that?" Because the more I run, the more aerobic activity, it allows me to go longer, to run harder, produces endurance. So what James tells us there: suffering is spiritual aerobics.
And here's the sixth thing: this joy is made complete when I contemplate the glory of God, the ultimate destiny of heaven. So those are some of the things about joy.
Identifying Joy Blockers
I came across, in Chuck Swindoll, he had these things that he called joy stealers. So I'm going to change the name to joy blockers, only so I can get a great illustration in here. I'm an infomercial guy, you all know that. There was a product however many years ago, called fat blockers. You remember it? And you took this pill, 45 minutes to an hour before you ate, and then eat anything you want, because it's going to block it. I gained like 50 pounds on the first, but I felt good about it, you know?
So here is Swindoll's three joy stealers, and I'm going to add a fourth to it. The first one is worry: an inordinate anxiety about something that may or may not occur, and generally doesn't. The second one is stress, more acute than worry. It's an intense strain over a situation - this is key now - that we cannot change or control.
Now that Oprah's gone, watch Ellen some. Why do I watch Ellen? For you, so I have the illustration. So Ellen has on a lady that just got - she's the oldest licensed driver in California. She's 105. I think I was behind her the other day, too. I don't know. And so Ellen says, "What's
The secret to long living? And this lady said, if I told you, it wouldn't be a secret. So she's a feisty, cocky little old lady. As they're talking more and more, and I'm relating this story from a friend, as they're talking more and more, the lady said, here's something that I decided a long time ago. She said, I just made this decision. If I can't change it, or control it, I don't think about it. It doesn't do me any good to be thinking about a bunch of stuff that I can't change or control.
That's why even goals, as we're setting goals, it's important to set goals that are not so easy that they're just rolling over, but they're achievable goals. To say, I'm going to set a goal, I'm a swimmer, I'm going to set a goal to win a gold medal. I guess that's okay, but you don't have much control over that. Here you are, you're Brad Snedeker, you've had two great weeks, but you ran into Tiger and Phil. But you want to play the best you can play. You want to know that if 20, 200 is a good number. If you don't win the tournament, man, I can't help that.
So it's really beneficial. If you look at the mental energy that's invested, wasted, on stuff that we can't change or we can't control, usually at the expense of the stuff we can.
Four Joy Robbers
So here's the third one, is fear. Dreadful uneasiness over the presence of danger or evil or pain. And generally, it perceives things to be much worse than they really are.
Now I'm going to add a fourth thing in here that I guarantee you will steal, rob, destroy your joy. And the fourth thing is sin. The psalmist writes in Psalm 51, it's David, he writes, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, renew a steadfast spirit in me." Psalm 51, verses 10 through 12. "Don't cast me away from thy presence, don't take thy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of my salvation."
So often we've discovered that when somebody is depressed—I'm not talking about a clinical, chemical issue—when somebody's just feeling a heaviness in their life, so often it's a result of, especially if they're a believer, it's a result of sin.
The Foundation of Joy
So along comes this joy, and He said, this is joy, and He's writing to these people and He's telling them to be joyful. He understands that here are these things like stress and worry and fear and sin that come along.
Verse 6, I'm not going to do justice to this verse 6, but He said, here's what I want you to know. In light of all that, in light of the difficulty of life, maybe you're here right now, and barely hanging on, got here, nobody knows it, because you've learned how to coif your hair and dress in a certain way, and hey, good, how you doing? I was with a guy, hadn't seen in a while, and he had put on some weight. And I saw him the other day, and I said, how you doing? And he said, any better there'd have to be two of me. I hate that answer. So he said, any better there'd have to be two of me, and I thought, well, there almost is. You must be happy. That's a little sarcasm, lack of joy.
Paul writes in the middle of this, here's what I want you to know. Verse 6, in my Bible I've written next to it the word fact. "I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." The Greek word that's translated began there is used twice in the New Testament, both times in reference to salvation.
The Security of God's Love
This is where doctrine becomes, to me, extraordinarily important. Three passages, let me give them to you. The one in front of you, Philippians 1, verse 6, John 10, verses 27 through 28, and Romans chapter 8, verses 38-39.
John 10, Jesus said this, "My sheep listen to my voice, I know them, they follow me, I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, no one can snatch them out of my hand." Romans 8:38, Paul writes, "I'm convinced that neither life nor death, nor angels nor demons, nor things present nor things in the future, nor powers nor height nor depth, or any other created thing is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus."
So let's get this point. Here's what He's saying. He said, here's what I know. Here's what I'm convinced of. That there's nothing, life, death, nor any other created thing, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
Here's the key point. It's not your love for Him, it's His love for you. If this whole thing is based on me hanging on to God, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to hang on, hang on, and after a while these hands are going to start to shake, and these arms are going to start to tremble, and I'm going to let go of this one and pretty soon let go of that one. It's not that. It's Him holding on to you. He began the good work.
The Importance of Grace
This is where doctrine is so important. Here's what He says. This whole process of salvation, this whole process of an intimate relationship with God, was begun by Him. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and the wage of sin is death. So what does sin earn? It earns death. Death means separation. I'm separated from God. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.
There is a word, Paul's already used it in this letter, that separates biblical Christianity from everything else, and it's grace. If ever there's been a time, a nation, a people, who are set up for religion, it's us. It's Americans.
But when I first got out here, there were gun racks with guns in them, and it was like everywhere I went there were pickup trucks. I'd never seen, from Iowa, I'd never seen a pickup truck other than at the town square and out on the farm. And they're driving through town and there's guns, and we're a tough breed.
So all of a sudden, here's the typically human approach to God. Okay, something's wrong. The world's screwed up. I'm screwed up. And I've got to make it right. That's why every year, in January, all of our classes get bigger. Because somebody sits around at Christmas and they're going to go, all right, I've got to figure this out. I've got to lose weight. I'm going to go to the gym. And part of losing
I don't want to go to church, but I'm going to go to that thing and I can get in and out in 45 minutes. So I'm going to give it a whirl. I now approach God and go, "God, here's the deal. I know I'm screwed up. I'm going to fix me." And He says, "I know you're screwed up, and that's the problem, and you can't fix it."
That's religion. Do this, don't do this, do more of this. And by the way, I sense I'm on a treadmill because how good is good enough? God comes along and says, "No, no, no, no, here's the deal. I'm going to save you."
God's Initiative, Not Ours
Ephesians 2, verse 1, you were dead. Chapter 2, verse 3, you were children of wrath. That's our natural condition. That's every kid that comes into the world. But God, by grace you've been saved through faith, not of yourself. It's a gift of God. It's not your effort. He did that.
So I come into the world, and I'm a child of wrath, and I can't fix it. So God comes along, and here's what He says. He said, "Before the foundations of the earth, I determined that you'd be My kid. And if I didn't determine that, you'd never respond, because you were dead, and I made you alive." That's what He's saying in verse 6 when He said He began the good work.
So God brought you into this right relationship with Him in spite of you, not because of you. He didn't look down at you and say, "Man, there's that Tom. If I can get a hold of Tom, I can sand off those rough edges. He's going to be a heck of a guy." No, He looked down, and what He saw was a pathetic human being filled with sin, willing to follow a God of his own creation, but not the one true God. And He saved me.
The Security of God's Continuing Work
And He continues in this. I didn't start this. I didn't choose Him. I didn't respond to Him. I didn't initiate this. He initiated it all. And because He initiated it, He began the good work, and He'll continue it.
See where doctrine becomes really important? If you're sitting out there going, "Boy, I initiated this. I analyzed it. I came to Christ," what's going to undo you faster than anything? You. Nothing can separate us from the love that Christ has for us, not our love for Him.
And that's written, not to tie you in your shorts theologically, that's written so you go, "Wow, wow. He is the vine. I am the branches. He is the one who did it all." I'm going to stop right there and maybe clarify that a bit more next week.
Father, thank You for that awesome and amazing truth. Remind us that You love us, that You initiated it. And God, thank You for the reality that You began this good work in us, and therefore You're the one who will continue it, continue it to achieve Your purpose in our life. Father, thanks for that. We pray to You this morning in Christ's name, amen.