Philippians 2 12-18, Work out, don't grumble, hold on

And we are back in the book of Philippians and Philippians chapter 2 and we're in verses 12 to 18.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

So if you have a church Bible, it's 1179.

Page 1179.

Let me pray and ask for the Lord's help and then we'll read the passage and consider it together.

Let me pray.

Father, we thank you like Mike prayed as we opened our meeting together this evening.

We thank you that you, by your spirit, speak through your word to us.

Lord, we want to pray that you might make us attentive, that you might give us tender hearts, eager ears to listen.

Pray that the words of my mouth might be pleasing to you.

Pray, Lord, that you would help me to speak clearly and faithfully and for all of us to listen for the sake of your glory.

Amen.

Okay, verse 12 of Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

I just flicked into the ESV then in my brain.

Do everything without grumbling or arguing 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 as you hold firmly to the word of life.

Then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.

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.

So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.

Now my experience is that these Sunday evenings go quicker than I anticipate and we get through much less material than I hope we would.

And so I'm trying this evening to try and keep it simple for us.

And I want to pull out for you three instructions in the passage and three reasons that Paul gives those instructions.

And so we're just going to get straight into it.

There's no amusing story or anything to generate your interest.

We're just going to dive straight into the passage.

So the first instruction is this.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

It's there at the end of verse 12.

Now the context to this is obviously the stuff that we were looking at last week.

So the idea in verses 6 to 11 of chapter 2 that God the Son left the glories of heaven, humbled himself by becoming a man,

and by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross, and therefore has been given the name that is above every name,

a name that which we must bow.

So, verse 12,

or therefore, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

In other words, we live our Christian lives in the presence of one who is to be feared and trembled at.

You and I live our Christian lives in the presence of one who has a name that is above every name,

at whose name every knee will bow and every tongue acknowledge that he is Christ the Lord.

In other words, this is Paul's sort of highlighter pen.

Take this very seriously.

It matters.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Now, to their encouragement, this is what they have already been doing.

It's something they are to continue doing.

They have done it in Paul's presence, and even more so in his absence,

demonstrating the reality of their faith in Christ.

But here his point is that what you do in the Christian life matters.

How you live matters.

What you do with your time matters.

What you do with your gifts, your energy, your hopes, and your aspirations, all of that matters,

and should be worked out with fear and trembling in the presence of God.

Now, I discovered, I think this is because one of my children pointed it out to me,

but I can't remember which one,

but that you can go on YouTube,

and you can watch videos of people studying.

Do you know this?

So that if you're struggling to concentrate at your desk,

what you can do is you can go onto YouTube,

and you can have a video of someone for a couple of hours or an hour,

depending on how long you want to do study,

of them just working on their books and doing their study.

And the idea is that doing your homework in the presence of somebody else doing their homework

will inspire you not to be distracted or to get off and do something else.

I don't know whether you think that might work,

but if you think it might work for you,

you can Google on YouTube or whatever,

study with me or something, I think it is,

and you can see these videos.

But in a sense, the Christian life is not quite like that, is it?

But we are living our Christian lives in the presence of one

who we are to be fearful of and tremble at.

Not in a sense of be afraid at,

but one who is awesome in glory and power and exaltation.

We live our lives in the presence of the exalted King Jesus.

And he's not on a YouTube channel,

but he is in the heavenly places,

and he is eternally aware of what we're doing.

And that should make us take Christian living seriously,

with fear and trembling.

But there's actually more to it than that, isn't there?

If Paul left it there,

we might think that Christian living was done in our own strength,

as if the acknowledgement of the presence of Jesus

was enough to drive us in our own strength

to live the Christian life,

as if God had saved us through Christ.

And you guys, you better get on with it then.

You better get on with living the Christian life.

But it's not like that at all, is it?

Instead, look at verse 13.

We're to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

Why?

For it is God who is at work to will and to act

in order to fulfill his good purpose.

This is incredible.

It's Bible logic,

because it makes no sense in any other way.

It's a logical Bible logic, if you like.

We work hard, but actually it is God

who is not only changing what we desire,

but also giving us the power to do it.

He is at work, not only just on our wills and our desires,

but also in our actions.

For it is God is at work in you to will

and to act according to,

or in order to fulfill his good purposes.

So that working out our salvation

is something that we really, really want to do

because God really, really wants us to do it.

And it's something we work really, really hard to do

because God is working really, really hard for us to do it.

It's the same in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 10.

1 Corinthians 15:10

Did I actually put the verse on your handout

or did I type it out?

So yeah, here you go.

1 Corinthians 15, verse 10.

1 Corinthians 15:10

Paul says,

But by the grace of God, I am what I am.

And his grace to me was not without effect.

No, I worked harder than all of them.

He experiences the grace of God

and he works harder than all the other apostles.

Yet not I, he says,

but the grace of God that was with me.

In other words, he is working hard by the grace of God,

whether then it is I or they.

This is what we preach and this is what you believed.

I was thinking about this.

I think it's impossible to illustrate this.

I think you might think that we are like the engine of a car

and God gives us the fuel.

But actually, that's not right, is it?

Because he is both the fuel and the engine.

But if you say that God is both the fuel and the engine,

that might make me feel like you're just a passenger

in your Christian life

and you just sit back and let God do it all.

But of course, that's not right either, is it?

No, it's more like, I suppose, if you...

I don't know whether this works,

but it's like God has done a complete nut and bolt restoration

of the engine of our lives

and has swapped the gearbox around

so that it's going in the opposite direction

to what it was going in before.

So he is doing the work and he is giving us the fuel.

He has given us new passions and new energy

and so that we are going in the opposite direction

than we were going before,

full of the fuel of the spirit.

But we are driving hard in the Christian life,

working out our salvation.

So what I want you to think about

just with the person next to you

in just for a few minutes

and then you can feed back to me

is why is it important that we understand

God is at work within us?

How does this help us avoid these two errors?

One is legalism and the other is laziness.

Okay, how does this prevent us

from legalism or from laziness?

Why is it important that we understand

God is at work within us?

How does this help us avoid legalism and laziness?

Speak to the person next to you for a couple of moments.

If you're online, you can speak in your little group

or you can think on your own.

Okay, sorry if I'm interrupting your conversations,

but let's share some of our thoughts.

How does this prevent us from falling into legalism or laziness?

Anyone want to help us out?

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, if I understand salvation properly,

I'm going to want to work hard.

What else do you say then, Ray?

Sorry, finish that off for me.

It's just that if God is working in us,

if we understand it correctly,

because you can understand it in a 40 way,

if God is working within us and we understand that,

we won't want to be lazy.

We will be wanting to honour what God is doing.

Yes, yes.

We will want to honour what God is doing.

Yes.

There is a sense in which God has given us something great and brilliant

in the gospel, isn't it?

Regeneration gives us a whole new life and a whole new motive.

And so we're going to want to use that, right?

We're going to want to live that out.

Like, how crazy to be given a whole new set of desires

and a whole new set of energy and not want to do it.

That'd be nuts, wouldn't it?

It'd be like me handing you the keys of a sports car

and you going, oh yeah, very interesting,

and then just walking off and not driving it.

Like, the Lord has given us a desire to love him

that we never had before and the Spirit's power to do it.

Oh, wow, what an amazing way to live.

Let's get on and do that.

I don't want to be lazy about that.

Yeah, I want to get on and do that.

What about legalism?

Go on, Elise.

We're not earning our way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're not doing it because, you know,

our thoughts are going to actually do it.

Yeah.

We say, it's the idea of actually going to be a saving me

and becoming believers, the Spirit works in us

to give these desires to do those things

in accordance with God's will.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's not because we really want to

because we just have to do it.

Yeah.

It's like we have this desire that we really want to do it

to serve the Lord and to the glory of him.

Yeah.

So the desire to do it comes not from ourselves.

So it can't be legalism because we're not earning anything

with something that we've been given.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

This is the offense of legalism, right?

It tries to take what God has given us

and pay him off with it.

Right?

See, which is just such a stupid thing to do, isn't it?

If God has given us new desires and new energy to live for him,

the idea that then we could pay him with that

when we've received it is utter nonsense, isn't it?

So this defends us against legalism

because actually God gets the glory.

You see that, don't you, in the 1 Corinthians 15 passage

that I mentioned, that Paul is not afraid to say

that you work really hard

and lots of really brilliant things happen,

but he's saying, no, that was grace at work in me.

It wasn't actually for my glory or for me.

Okay, let's move on.

Verse 14, the second instruction,

do everything without grumbling or arguing.

Now, I think you could make a very good case

for this being the instruction

that is at the center of the whole passage.

I'm not sure, but I think it's probably

the only one in the imperative

that we were talking about last week.

All of those are more passive.

And it comes with a reason as well, doesn't it?

So that, verse 15, 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.

I think this is utterly astonishing, okay?

If I was to be mean and play a trick on you,

I'm not going to do this,

but if I was to be mean and play a trick on you,

and I say to you, I want you to speak

to the person next to you,

and I want you, no context,

just to define what it is to be pure

and blameless as a Christian,

what you might come up with.

I think you might come up with

all sorts of different things.

You might come up with something

relating to humility,

or to commitment to the life

and ministry of a local church,

or to reading your Bible,

or to having pure thoughts,

or to not watching too much television,

or whatever it is.

And then I would say, ha ha, I got you.

No, because being pure and blameless

is not about any of those things.

Paul's description of the blameless

and pure life has one instruction to it,

and it's this, stop grumbling

and stop arguing.

Now, of course, that's not because

Paul thinks that grumbling and arguing

are the only sins in the Christian life.

That would be completely illogical.

Rather, I think it is because

in the context of Philippians,

Paul is concerned that grumbling

and arguing are, get this,

tolerated sins within the Christian community.

That's, I think, the point.

This, if you like,

is the blind spot of the Corinthian church.

The Corinthian church,

which are so committed to gospel partnership,

that take Christian ministry

and mission so seriously,

that is massively committed

to the faithfulness of gospel ministry.

Right?

So they are hugely committed to faithfulness.

There's no doctrinal corrections here.

Yet, they have this blind spot

that they tolerate moaning, grumbling.

I think probably the two things,

the grumbling and arguing,

one, I think, is the internalization of moaning.

It's what we do under our breath or on our own.

And arguing is the externalization of it

when we moan to others

and we disagree and discuss with them about it.

I suggest to you this evening

that there's not a more challenging verse

in the Bible for us on a Sunday evening.

We're the church keynos here.

I don't know whether you know that,

but you are the church keynos.

Yeah, you're the Twicers, right?

Most of you.

And yet, here, I think,

is a blind spot for all of us.

Here is what we might not have noticed,

but which is a blemish on our walk with the Lord,

which is that we grumble,

we complain,

we moan,

we gripe,

we argue.

And that means, verse 15,

that if we're like that,

we fail to stand out

in a warped and crooked generation

that we live in.

And we don't shine like stars in the sky.

In other words,

I think the point is,

if you grumble and argue,

you are just like the world.

I mean, they grumble and argue

about different things, right?

They're not grumbling and arguing

about the things that we're arguing about

because they're not interested in those things.

They're grumbling about other things.

But actually, we just blend in.

It's interesting, isn't it?

It's like this in 1 Corinthians 10.

Turn, actually, to 1 Corinthians 10

because we're going to spend

a little bit of time just there

explaining this.

Page 1151.

1 Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

This is brilliant from Paul.

For I do not want you to be ignorant

of the fact, brothers and sisters,

that our ancestors were all under a cloud

and that they passed through the sea.

It's really fascinating here.

Paul, writing to the Corinthian church,

wants to invite them into the Old Testament

as if it were their ancestors.

Listen, I know not all of them

are from Jewish backgrounds,

but I want you to read the Old Testament

as being the story of your story,

of your ancestors.

They were all baptized into Moses

in the cloud and in the sea.

They all ate the same spiritual food

and drank the same spiritual drink,

for they drank from the spiritual rock

that accompanied them,

and that rock was Christ.

Wow.

Okay, your mind is now blown.

How can the rock in the desert be Christ?

How can walking through the Red Sea

be baptism?

Anyway, you can ask those questions

to Nick at the end.

Nevertheless, God was not pleased

with most of them

and their bodies were scattered

in the wilderness.

So you know that, don't you,

from your Old Testament story,

that actually, despite all these great experiences

of the saving power of God,

rescuing them from Egypt,

still, the wilderness is full of the bodies

of fallen Israelites.

Now, these things occurred as examples

to keep us from setting our hearts

on evil things as they did.

Okay, so, Paul's saying,

the Old Testament history

of the people of Israel

being brought through the wilderness

is there, not only to tell us what happened,

but also to teach us

not to fall into the same sins.

Okay, then, Paul, what are the sins?

What are the sins of the Israelites?

Okay, number one, verse seven,

don't be idolaters as some of them were.

Okay, so don't worship other gods

as some of them did.

As it's written,

the people sat down to eat and drink

and got up to indulge in revelry.

It's the first thing,

don't be an idolater.

Secondly, verse eight,

we should not commit a sexual immorality

as some of them did.

And in one day, 23,000 of them died.

Verse nine, the third one,

we shouldn't test Christ

as some of them did

and were killed by snakes.

Again, Christ is in the Old Testament.

Their failure to obey

is a testing of Christ.

And fourthly,

and I think we probably just skip over this,

but this is really important, isn't it?

We understand idolatry, sexual immorality.

We understand that we're not supposed

to test Christ.

Verse 10,

and do not grumble as some of them did

and were killed by the destroying angel.

I think Paul probably has in mind

that Numbers 14,

when the spies come back

from the promised land

to persuade the people that actually,

do you know what?

The promised land is amazing,

but it's way too hard for us to get there.

We're not gonna,

you know,

with the exception of Joshua and Caleb,

the rest of them are like,

there's no way,

there's no way we'll be able to get there.

There was no way we'll be able to conquer that.

And so the Israelites moan and complain,

have you brought us here

to kill us in the desert?

You know,

I wish that we'd just stayed in Egypt.

And they grumble and they moan.

It's that we'd be better off

if we weren't even Christians.

Life would be easier

if we weren't trying to do this thing called church.

And they grumble and they moan.

And that whole generation litter the wilderness

with their dead bodies

because they grumbled.

Because they grumbled.

Now,

I want you just in your pairs

or groups or whatever

to think about the answer to this question.

Then we'll talk about it together.

What do Christians tend to grumble about

and why?

And why do we tend not to take it seriously?

Okay,

have a think about that.

I don't think it's a difficult question.

What do Christians tend to grumble about

and why?

And why do we tend not to take it seriously?

And then we'll talk about it together.

Okay.

Do you want to share our answers?

Great.

Let me repeat that for the Zoomers.

Yeah,

we grumble when we feel entitled to something

and we don't get it.

Yeah.

Thank you, Charleston.

That's really helpful.

Yes.

So that's really helpful, Mike.

We want to distinguish between a sinful grumbling

and complaining in a sort of sinful sense

and that it is right to raise things

that are not right

and to seek resolution to them.

And you see that, don't you?

Particularly in the Psalms.

The Psalmist is raising complaints with the Lord

about things that...

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's a really helpful corrective.

Thank you, Mike.

We do need to distinguish between that.

We're not saying that Christians

are never allowed to say anything bad.

Yeah?

So I think we've tried just to find out on you.

So what would be a test?

What is the acid test of the difference

between righteous complaining

and unrighteous grumbling?

Yeah.

Mike?

Yeah.

I wonder if...

That's one of the sorts of questions

which is really difficult to give a definition to right now

but you kind of know.

in your own heart.

Does that make sense?

I wonder if maybe then the distinction, Liz,

is that sinful grumbling

is not seeking any resolution

other than airing it, right?

Whereas complaining is seeking some kind of resolution

with the Lord or with others, isn't it?

So actually if I'm...

Grumbling is that self-fulfilling thing

where actually all I really want to do

is moan or grumble about it.

I don't actually really want anything to change

because I'm not really desiring change.

I'm just grumbling.

Can you still decide?

Jen at the back?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It could be to do with your motives.

Yeah.

Jeff?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Grumbling is the opposite of thankfulness, isn't it?

In that sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do we ever have a right to be angry with God?

I don't think so.

I mean, I think we might be...

There might be times when it's right and okay to,

like we were saying before,

raise a complaint with God about the situations

and circumstances that we're facing

in a psalmist-like way.

I'm really struck...

When God comes and speaks to Jonah under the tree

and goes,

do you do well to be angry?

And the answer is,

no, you don't, Jonah.

No.

Yeah.

Why do we not tend to take grumbling seriously?

Why do you think this is a blind spot?

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah.

Because it's so normal.

Because everybody does it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And people grumble in all sorts of different forums

about all sorts of different things.

Yeah.

It's challenging, isn't it?

It's challenging.

Right.

Let's do the final instruction.

Verse 16.

Hold firmly to the word of life.

Hold on.

Hold firmly without letting go to the word of life.

There's a reason for it as well, isn't there?

Second half of verse 16.

And or so,

then I will be able to boast that my running wasn't vain

and my labors were not vain.

Now, it's worth noticing what Paul is doing here.

He's consistently doing this in the passage.

He's pushing us forward to action

and then pushing us back onto the word of God

all at the same time.

So hold firmly to the word of life.

He's pushing us back into the word of God.

This work, you know, do this.

Do this work.

Go.

Change.

Hold.

Trust.

Rely at the same time.

You know, in a sense, forward motion in the Christian life

is motion downwards into the word of God

and the truths about Christ.

You know, holding on is the same as moving on.

You know, Paul is running and laboring,

but he doesn't want his running and laboring to be in vanity.

He wants the Philippians to keep standing

and keep holding firm to exactly where they are

in the truth of God's word.

I guess it's true to say, isn't it,

that every generation of the church

has a slightly different temptation

to let go of the gospel in a slightly different way.

Each culture or each particular background or congregation

has a slightly different nuanced temptation

to abandon the truth.

I think it was J.C. Ryle who said

that the gospel itself is both very, very strong

and powerful to save,

but at the same time, it's very fragile

because it's easy to break it.

So you can break the gospel by adding to the gospel.

You can break the gospel by subtracting from the gospel,

or you can break the gospel by neglecting it

or by twisting it or tampering with it.

It might be that we add to it rules or peripheral beliefs.

It might be that we subtract from it

so that it's fundamentally changed

or that we just neglect to talk about it

so that it is not heard.

So I think it's worth us thinking,

and we'll do this perhaps just as a big group

just before we finish.

What are our temptations to let go of the gospel?

How does this work in our culture?

So when we're told to hold on,

where do we find the pressure to let go?

And what are people's thoughts on that?

Where are we tempted to let go

as we're told to hold firmly to the word of life?

Yes, so the temptation to let go of the gospel

because it seems like you get a better life

by letting go.

Yeah.

That's the lie of the devil

from the Garden of Eden, isn't it?

He's God really good.

Is he?

Are you sure he is?

Because he's withholding this from you.

Are you sure he's good?

Yeah.

And it comes in all sorts of different guises,

doesn't it?

To all sorts of different people.

Yeah.

That's really helpful, thanks Lee.

Anything else?

Yeah.

An intellectual idolatry.

That's really fascinating.

Would it be fair to summarize it

something like this,

that you fail to hold on to the word of life

by removing any sense of mystery

or the unknown in it?

Yeah, so if you can fail to hold on to the word of life

by making either God too simple,

so that you just think you can understand everything about him,

or Christian living easy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so if your version of the Christian life is easy

and your version of God is simple,

then you have not really understood.

Yeah.

I mean, I was reading a statement

about somebody that went into younger and stuff

and they said,

oh, this helps me to worship God better.

And I thought to myself,

oh, it's because the view of God that you have done,

there's no mystery.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, that's helpful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

To make up for something

that they left in their relationship with God.

Yeah.

That is really interesting.

Yes.

Do you compromise,

whether it's work or relationships

or whatever,

that it's,

and it's almost like the fear of men,

in a way,

because you know what the gospel is all about,

but the compromise may be,

well, actually,

I'm not going to actually say,

like, I'm going to water it down.

Yeah.

Or I'm not going to live the way

the Bible says to live.

Otherwise, I may not have friends

or I may not have a job or whatever.

Yeah.

And we find ourselves compromising

the truth of the gospel

in order to achieve our aim.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we can compromise the truth

in order to try and get ourselves on in life.

Yeah.

Oh, the Christian life's too hard,

too difficult.

We're not going to,

we're going to twist and compromise it that way.

Last bit, Charleston.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

I think you're right, Charleston.

I think the pressure to compromise

around relationships

in all sorts of different ways

is massive, isn't it?

Yeah.

Massive.

Yeah.

Great.

We've run out of time.

Paul just wraps up this section,

doesn't he,

with his joy and gladness

that's interestingly not dependent

on him playing a big part,

but rather in verse 17

that he is like the drink offering,

the small libation,

as it was called,

poured out on the big offering

of the Philippian church

in sacrificial service of the Lord.

Paul is just happy.

I get to play a part in this

and that's enough for me

in joyful participation

in what Christ is doing in them.

And he says,

verse 18,

that that should bring them joy too.

So you too should be glad

and rejoice with me.

In other words,

and we'll end with this thought,

Paul knows of no better way

to be happy,

to be a happy Christian

than to pour out yourself

in the service of others

to the glory of Christ.

If you're not happy

or joyful as a Christian,

then this is the way

to find joy,

to pour yourself out

in the service of others

to the glory of Christ.

Let me pray

and then we'll stand

and sing as we praise.

Heavenly Father,

these have been challenging words

for us this evening.

And so we pray, please,

that you might help us

to work out our salvation

with fear and trembling.

We pray that you might help us

to do everything

without grumbling or arguing.

And we pray that you might help us

to hold firmly

to the word of life.

And even as we say

and pray these things,

we know and we rejoice

in the fact that it is you

who is at work in us

to will and to act

according to your good purpose.

So we praise your name

in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.