Philippians 2:12-18 sermon Take Responsibility

We are doing a series in Philippians, this first church planted in what today is now modern Greece. 

• A story you can read about in Acts chapter 16 in which Lydia the businesswoman becomes the first follower of Jesus in this city.
• And that is followed by Paul and Silas causing an uproar in the city when a girl who can tell fortunes gets delivered.
• They end up in prison… and as they are want to do… they continue to worship and pray… an earthquake happens… and through a series of events the jailor ends up following Jesus too!
• So about 10 years on, the church is still going strong and Paul, now again in prison writes to them.
• And the theme of the letter is really one of thankfulness and joy! They are still partners in the gospel after all this time. 
• But he wants them to get on their own two feet!

So the last few weeks we have been looking at the example of Christ who humbled himself in order to be exalted…

• And this remarkable challenge to have the same mindset as Christ in our relationships with others.
• Humble ourselves, look to the interests of others. Die to selfish ambition and vain conceit.
• Its pretty powerful stuff!
• We are to be mini Christs in this world as we become servants of all, in order that Christ may be made visible to the world.
• Right?
• Often the only way anyone will see Jesus is through our enactment of his humility…
• So what a blessing to be studying this remarkable letter together.

Philippians 2:12-18

12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky 16 as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. 17 But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. 18 So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.

Well what a remarkable passage in which we are told to continue to work out our salvation and to shine amongst a crooked generation, holding firmly to the word of life.

• In other words, you’ve now got a job to do. Now that you follow Christ…
• You have responsibilities…
• For your own faith and for the world around us!
• While there is so much freedom to be found in Christ…
• Our freedom in Christ is to be used to take responsibilities for our lives and the lives around us!
• This is what Paul did, and this is what he expects now of us!

I wonder when I use the word responsibility, what comes to mind? Positive things? Negative things?

• I remember I had a friend when I lived in London who was in a rock band and used to love to travel…
• And I saw him many years later back here in Sydney, now married with children and owning a business, had a mortgage….
• And he said to me “my life is defined by responsibilities”
• While I think he is very grateful for the gift of these things in his life, I am not sure he was saying this with a total sense of positivity!

Of course one of the things that is a challenge both in the church and in the world around us, is an unwillingness by many to take responsibility

• To own your life despite the circumstances and consequences of our actions…
• We blame our upbringing, or the government, or the economy or corporations or whatever, for what is wrong in our lives rather than taking responsibility
• We are good at wanting to abscond from duty
• And of course this goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis…
• Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the snake and the snake didn’t have a leg to stand on…
• Is this on?
• Right? 
• But whatever the mitigating circumstances we are all accountable for our actions and lives!

But here is what I find really interesting…

• Is that for all of our innate natural desire away from taking responsibility, what we counter intuitively find is that the path to meaningful, purposeful, flourishing lives…
• Is actually found through stepping up to the plate and taking ownership of our own lives and our role in the world around us. 
• Unfettered freedom and living for yourself and your whims can actually end up being the lonely path, or the damaging path…
• As Paul says elsewhere “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial!”

One of the leading voices around all of this has been the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.

• He is a really interesting guy, and I don’t agree with everything he says, but on this basic idea, I think he is spot on…
• The context within which he writes is that he basically understand life as a lot of suffering. 
• He says “there is a baseline of suffering in life that can be exaggerated by human failure as a consequence of malevolence and betrayal and deceit that amplifies suffering…
• He goes on “that is often what makes people feel hopeless and depressed, anxious and overwhelmed.
• So according to the good Dr.. what is the solution? He writes;
• “And what you put up against that suffering is meaning. Meaning is actually the instinct that helps guide yourself through that catastrophe. And most of that meaning is to be found in the adoption of responsibility.”
• Good – without responsibility I think we actually end up being nihilistic… no meaning…

So what does Paul suggest?

Firstly, take responsibility for our own lives

Verse 12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

So our first responsibility in our own lives is to work out our salvation.

• And our salvation of course is the incredible new freedom we find in Christ.
• To be saved by Jesus Christ is to be set free. Free from our guilt, our addictions, and our fear of death.
• Jesus sets us free from the penalty of sin in order that we can know God, to love God and others like we were meant to be. 
• So this new found freedom and responsibility then go hand in hand. Work it out with fear and trembling…
• Be responsible for your freedom…
• This isn’t a small thing in life…
• This is the reconciling of our lives with God’s that then re-identifies us as the children of God. 

Now to work out our salvation doesn’t mean to work for or towards our salvation.

• Salvation, and freedom in Christ is a gift… but it is a gift that we then take responsibility for in exploring, and enjoying and stepping into, for the rest of our lives.
• Right if you get married… that is an event… you are then married.
• But you take a life time of exploring that relationship…
• Right, salvation is a gift, but we need to work it out day by day…
• What does it mean to be saved? What does this now require of me? 
• What path am I now on that I didn’t used to be?

The context of course is Paul is in jail. He longs to visit them, but you know… he is in jail…

• He can’t do it for them…
• He can’t constantly guide them and teach them and reassure them.
• They have to take responsibility for their own salvation. 
• They have to cultivate their own relationship with God and the things that will feed them and keep them on the right path. 

I still to this day remember a friend of mine who was in the same youth group as me.

• And she got into university in Canberra and so moved down there…
• And I remember her saying to me “Tim, don’t let me lose my faith.”
• Well sadly over the following years, the party culture and university life meant she did lose her faith.
• And the reality was, that she needed to take responsibility for her salvation, she needed to work out, day to day what it meant for her to be a Christian!
• You cant borrow someone else’s faith? Right?
• You need to be responsible for joining a church, for knowing Christ personally, for your spiritual formation…

So I just want to challenge us all…

• Yes lean on other Christians and be guided and helped and even held up at times by your brothers and sisters in Christ.
• But take responsibility for your Christian faith!
• Know the gospel. Know your new identity in Christ.
• Take steps by being committed, to grow in your faith through investing in your church community.
• Have daily disciplines that will nurture you like a small devotion…
• Get in a Life Group.
• And then do things that show your responsible! Give towards your church community and the poor. Do things like Christ that cost you!
• Hospitality, generosity, concern for others…
• This is all working out your salvation with fear and trembling!

This is a glorious faith that we belong to!

• But don’t be lazy, or entitled or a grumbler… step up into your new identity in Christ!
• What an adventure to be on your own two feet, knowing and loving the Lord Jesus
• And growing deeper and deeper as a disciple of Christ.
• Amen?

One quick heads up… later in the year we are going to launch a course called Practicing the Way

• This is about all of us taking responsibility for our salvation!
• A lot of courses these days (which I think are great) are about teaching us a bunch of information about God.
• If you’re a bit like me… it can go in one ear and out the other.
• What Practicing the Way is about is developing the practices in your life that will sustain and form your relationship with God.
• Some of you will have read John Mark Comer’s books… so its his materials…
• But it looks at things like bible reading, prayer, sabbath, fasting, community life and so on…
• Right. Pretty cool…
• Work out your salvation… take responsibility to flourish in Christ by developing practices to help you follow the way!

OK then, our next responsibility is then to the world. 

Verse 15-16 “become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.

What a verse! We have a responsibility to shine in a crooked generation!

• Would you say we live in a crooked and depraved generation?
• One whose values and practices are far from good?
• Of course it is easy to say that the younger generation are always worse than whatever generation you come from. 
• Kids these days… and all that!

Who do you think said this?

• “The children now love luxury, they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in the place of exercise. Children are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, gobble up food and tyrannize their teachers.”
• Any guesses?
• Well that was Socrates 399 years before the birth of Christ! 
• So not much has changed. 

Well in the midst of a world around us that is warped and distorted in its activities and values due to its rebellion from God

• Christians are called to live lives that are noticeably different from those around them.
• We are called to do everything without complaining or arguing…
• That being a particularly high call when this comes after Paul telling us to look to the interests of others ahead of ourselves and have the same mindset as Christ in being humble and serving!
• Our attitude is not “poor me” or “it’s not fair” or self pity…
• Instead of grumbling like the Israelites in the desert after being saved…
• Our lips are to speak and sing praise, thanksgiving, encouragement and life!
• That’s a blameless life… a life in which people can’t find fault. 

And isn’t that a cool image – shining like stars in the universe!

• That is all of our responsibility. Having lifestyles and words and purposes that make a difference.
• And what do people do to the stars? Well they gaze at them and are guided by them!
• Our lives in this very lost generation, are to be admired.
• Not in a show off way, or a look at me way… or because we are perfect. Far from it…
• But because of our humility and service towards all.
• How we treat our family, our neighbours, our work colleagues and the members of our church!
• Right? What kind of a star do you want to be?

The author Philip Yancey wrote this;

In my career as a journalist, I have interviewed diverse people. Looking back, I can roughly divide them into two types: stars and servants. The stars include NFL football greats, movie actors, music performers, famous authors, TV personalities, and the like. These are the people who dominate our magazines and our television programs. We fawn over them, poring over the minutiae of their lives: the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the aerobic routines they follow, the people they love…

Yet I must tell you that, in my limited experience, these ‘idols’ are as miserable a group of people as I have ever met. Most have troubled or broken marriages Nearly all are hopelessly dependent on psychotherapy. In a heavy irony, these larger than life heroes seem tormented by incurable self-doubt.

I have also spent time with servants. People like Dr. Paul Brand, who worked for twenty years among the poorest of the poor, leprosy patients in rural India. Or relief workers in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, or other such repositories of world-class human suffering. 

As I now reflect on the two groups side by side, stars and servants, the servants clearly emerge as the favoured ones, the graced ones. They work for low pay, long hours, and no applause, ‘wasting’ their talents and skills among the poor and uneducated. But somewhere in the process of losing their lives they have found them.

So this generations stars aren’t really stars at all… instead it is those who have taken on the responsibility of becoming servants who really shine!

• That is what it means to shine like a star in the universe.
• Great phrase: “somewhere in the process of losing their lives they have found them.”
• Those who bear the burdens of responsibility in the service of others will be those who find meaning, purpose and life!

So I wonder, how are we shining like stars in the universe in a crooked and depraved generation?

• What wonderful opportunities we have to make the most of the gifts and relationships and world that we live in…
• Nothing worse than getting saved then sitting around waiting for heaven…
• We are called to see earth be like it is in heaven!
• Can I suggest you have a cause?
  • Your family (main place of influence)
  • Your church
  • Those less fortunate than you… (rather than looking up constantly at what you don’t have)

I note with the Paris Olympics we are coming up to a big anniversary… Eric Liddell of Chariots of fire… 

• 100 years since his gold in the 400m track at the Paris 
• Story of the win and not racing Sunday – not favourite… went out hard… 
• Famous scene in Chariots of Fire… preaching after a track meet and he quotes Isaiah 40 “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
• His other famous quote ““I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast!
  And when I run I feel his pleasure.”
• Retired and went to help his Doctor brother in China missionary work… 

Life in the internment camp… eased the suffering of others and was a servant of all…

• One American in the camp said of Liddell: “Often in an evening I would see him bent over a chessboard or a model boat, or directing some sort of square dance – absorbed, weary and interested, pouring all of himself into this effort to capture the imagination of these penned-up youths. He was overflowing with good humour and love for life, and with enthusiasm and charm. It is rare indeed that a person has the good fortune to meet a saint, but he came as close to it as anyone I have ever known.”
• He died in Feb 1945 months before the camps were liberated… exhausted by serving others and terribly ill, he died surrendered to his God. 

Derek has a great outreach planned for us all in the coming weeks 

• I will let him share on that soon… but will basically involve inviting friends to come and watch Chariots of Fire
• And then giving them a great little book on the gospel by the evangelist JJohn. 
• I reckon that is something we could all do!
• Young Adults will probably hold one big central showing of the film up here too!

I note Paul talks about not running in vain in verse 16… 

You may not win an Olympic gold or die on the mission field…

Amen.

But having worked out your salvation with fear and trembling you will shine

“may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky 16 as you hold firmly to the word of life.”