Fear, and Trembling, Oh My! with Pastor Ben Carruthers

Hey, there we go.

Thank you, Kelsey.

Please be seated.

Well, good morning again.

Again, my name is Ben Carellers, an associate pastor.

Great to be with you this morning.

Great to have, man.

We've had a lot of baptisms this summer, and it's such a cool uh thing to see the front pews filled with family and friends and supportive of these young ones.

That's great.

And it just brings life into the church, man, when these young ones are coming and being a part of what's going on.

And so the rest of us essential, man.

This is this is not normal in the world that's happening.

This is incredible to have these young people moving forward.

So thanks for being here, family and friends.

Appreciate it.

We are in the middle of our sermon series called You Pick, which is exactly that.

You guys have uh emailed or texted or called with questions about the Bible, about faith, and we do our best to answer them.

This is week three, and I really enjoy this sermon series.

One, because the questions that we get in are often questions that I have that other people have.

If you have the question, you're not the only one.

Sometimes we're just kind of scared to ask the question.

So thanks for sending in your questions.

And we have really kind of handled some tough stuff.

We started off with a tough parable.

Last week we talked about a tough passage.

And this passage from Philippians is another tough one to wrap our head around.

So the sermon series called Fear and Trembling, Oh My.

Because the passage says something, there's a word in there that we know it, and you know, we we are, I think, we think we understand it, and that's the word salvation.

Whenever we read about salvation, I think our ears perk up a little bit.

We come more attuned to what the person's saying about it.

Because it seems to me that around this idea of salvation, there is this concept of fear and trembling.

And so that's what we're talking about this morning, this passage that says something about salvation, but yet it says stuff like fear and trembling and working out, uh, working out our salvation.

What does this all mean?

It seems kind of scary.

It seems like we have to be doing a lot of stuff, and it can cause some of our own fear around something, an issue that we should have zero fear about.

Fear is powerful.

Fear can get us to think things that aren't true.

It can get us to stop doing things that are right.

Years ago, we were at Kohl's, my family and I, Justin Rogers, there, I think right around this time, doing some school shopping.

So we're walking around Kohl's, and I'm extremely bored.

And we're walking, and all of a sudden, my wife stops as she looks at me.

And it wasn't because I was so stunning.

She stopped and she went pale.

I said, What's going on?

And I kind of felt like this itch right here.

And I kind of went like this, and she looked at me and she said, There is a huge bug on your chest.

I'm like, Okay.

So I looked down and I'm not kidding.

Boom.

The saw bigger than my hand, a bug was crawling up me.

And here's the thing.

I we and ask anyone in my family, I swear I'm not over-exaggerating.

This thing was massive.

I scoured the internet trying to figure out what kind of bug this was.

And thankfully, I found a picture.

It looked like this.

This is what was on me.

It was this, it was huge.

I couldn't believe it.

And my wife is there and my kids are there, and they're staring at me.

And I said, Get it off.

And they looked at me and said, No.

I'm like, it's huge.

They said, Yeah.

And it started to crawl up.

It started to go for the jugular.

It was gonna take my life.

It was up here, and they were doing nothing about it.

Nothing.

I'm like, please save me.

And they said, We love you, but it's your time to go.

Like, that's it.

It was going for it.

They didn't do anything.

So I swapped it away like a hundred times because it was a mutant devil bug.

And finally, I threw it on the ground and I stepped on it.

And I kid you not, I wear a size 13 shoe.

It was bigger than my shoe.

And Coles had to like lock down aisle 14 and put in crime tape because it was a crime scene from what had just happened there.

Awful.

True story.

Fear stopped my wife and kids from saving my life that day.

Fear has that power.

Fear has the power to stop us in our tracks.

Fear has the power to get us to believe things that are untrue.

And when it comes to this idea of our salvation, how we are saved, there's a statistic in Christianity today, it just came out a few years ago, that over 52% of people who claim to be Christian believe that they are saved by their good works.

52%.

Which means over half of us in this room today, this morning, believe just that.

That your salvation is wrapped up in the things that you do, in doing enough good things, in knowing enough Bible verses, in helping enough people, in wearing the right clothes, buying the right house, and doing all the right things, that is where your salvation lies.

Over half of us in this room believe that.

And then you tap on a verse like this that at first glance seems to support that claim.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

It makes it sound like our salvation is something to be scared of, and we need to work it out.

We need to do something about it.

At first glance, this passage could even instill more fear in us about salvation.

And that's what's great about this series, because man, when you dive into it, this passage does the exact opposite.

It frees us from that lie and allows us to be a light in the darkness.

So this morning, as we dive into Philippians chapter 2, that's what we're gonna look at.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

This freeing grace, this freeing life that we are called to have, that over half of us in this room are not experiencing.

So will you pray with me before we dive in?

Heavenly Father, look, I would give you thanks and praise for this morning.

I thank you for the sermon series where we get to dive into passages like this that may cause fear and anxiety over something that it shouldn't.

So, Lord, lead and guide us, speak truth to us through your scripture this morning.

Lord, I thank you for the baptisms this morning as well as we talk about being a light.

How fitting that we have baptisms this morning as we talk about what it means to live out our salvation.

So, Lord, be in this place.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

So this comes from the book of Philippians.

So Philippians was written by the Apostle Paul to a church in a town called Philippi.

Now, again, these churches were not like this.

They didn't have a big building where they gathered and sang and did all this stuff.

It was more house churches.

They'd gather in houses.

So real small young believers, and which is really interesting, right?

So he's writing this letter to young believers in their faith, where this idea of how we're saved is probably really confusing because they're coming from a world where it was all about doing things.

The gospel says it's not about doing things, it's about God's grace.

And so now Paul is writing this passage to these young believers saying, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

It doesn't seem to match up with the gospel.

And we know what Paul believed.

You can search the letters in the New Testament and you can find scripture and scripture upon scripture of what he believed when it came to salvation.

Here's just a few.

From Ephesians, again, Paul's writing this book to the church in Ephesus, much like Philippi.

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not from yourself or from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

And again, he write in Romans, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to anyone and everyone who believes.

And this verse from Acts, I want to tell you the story after we read this.

The jailer called for lights, rushed in, and fell trembling before Paul and Silas.

He then brought them out and asked, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?

That's the question.

What must I do to earn salvation?

They replied, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

That's an incredible passage, but the story that it takes place in is really cool.

So Paul and Silas are walking around Rome and they're preaching and teaching the gospel.

And there is this young slave girl there.

This comes from Acts 16.

There's this young slave girl there who has the ability to tell the future, who has the ability to let people know what's going to happen in their lives.

Crazy story.

Great you pick question for next year when Ryan's back.

All right.

So keep that one in your hopper.

So this young girl is following them around because she's just yelling this stuff at them, really kind of mocking them about praising Jesus and teaching this new gospel.

She does this for days.

Finally, Paul's had enough.

Paul turns around and basically frees this girl from whatever she's dealing with.

The demon leaves her, or whatever is going on in her life, she's freed.

Great news.

Not really, because this young slave girl was bringing its owners incredible wealth.

Because people would go and see them, pay lots of money, and this young girl would tell them the future.

So these owners didn't like that one bit.

So they talk to the officials and say, listen, Paul and Silas, man, they're going around, they're claiming all this, claiming all that.

People are hooting and hollering, they're nuisance.

We need to arrest them.

They say, You're right, that's exactly what we need to do.

So they take Paul and Silas and they take them to the deepest, darkest pit they can find in this prison with the thickest doors, the biggest locks.

They get them inside, not only that, but they chain their hands and their feet.

The idea is they're not going anywhere.

They're trapped.

That night there's an earthquake and the whole earth shakes.

And through some incredible way, the doors are blown open, the chains are released from their hands and feet, and Paul and Silas are free.

Well, the guard sees and hears this noise.

He runs over and he sees what has happened, and his life is forever changed.

He sees what's going on with his own eyes, and his life is forever changed.

And he asks the question, What must I do to be saved?

And in this crucial pivotal moment of this guard's life, the answer wasn't go and do 12, you know, clean 12 yards, go and learn this in the Torah, do 20 push-ups.

It was believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

The verse goes on to say, you will be saved and your family will be saved.

The verse goes on to say that Paul went to this guy's house, baptized him and his entire family.

Paul and Silas were prisoners in the jail cell.

But I asked you who was set free in this story?

I want you to remember this story until we get to the end.

So you can read Paul's letters throughout the New Testament, and you can clearly see what he believes in.

He believes in grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone.

This is how salvation works.

Not by our doing, not by things that we can do, enough of the good things, giving this much money, doing this much help.

It's grace that comes from only God, the forgiveness of sin that he gives us, even though we don't deserve it.

It comes from our faith, having faith in the promises of God through Christ alone, the only one who lived and died and was resurrected for our sins.

This is Paul's belief.

Grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone.

Then how in the world can he say, work out your salvation with fear and trembling?

Because they don't match up.

One seems that we're free people living in the grace of God.

One seems that he might be saying that we have to do things to earn things to earn our salvation.

So what is this passage really saying?

Let's start with the fear and trembling part.

Fear and trembling.

It's always good, we talked about this last two weeks to go to the Greek.

This was written in Greek, and sometimes the translations get a little weird.

And so I like to do this mostly because when something doesn't make sense to me, if I go to the Greek and read what it means, it usually makes me feel happy inside because I'm like, oh, this is what it means.

This is not that case.

Because you go to it, the Greek word is phobos, which is obviously where we get phobias from.

And I was thinking it would mean something different, like, oh no, life is good.

Do not fear.

No, it means fear and panic.

So Paul is saying, hey, fear and panic, man, when you talk about salvation.

Fear and panic when you talk about God.

Well, luckily, if you look at phobos throughout the New Testament, when this word is used in this context, it always means respectful and awe and reverence.

So Paul is not saying you have to be scared of what God is going to do to you if you don't measure up.

He's not saying live a life of fear until you can make sure you climb the ladder.

What he's saying is God is so incredible in the way that he loves you, in the way that he gives you grace, this free gift, and the way that he forgives you of your sin, even though we are still sinners, even though we are knuckleheads, we receive these gifts because God is so incredible, we stand in awe of him, in reverence of him.

I think this is what it might look like.

Uh when I was five years old, we had just moved to Ramsey and it was Christmas time.

And on Christmas Eve in our house, we open up presents from our parents and each other.

And so we're open up gifts and the doorbell rings.

And my mom goes, Ben, go downstairs and answer the door.

And I say, No, it's Christmas time.

We are unwrapping presents.

I've waited long enough.

No more distractions, mom.

She said, No, go down and open the door.

So I go downstairs, I open the door, and this is what I see.

That's me in that lovely red sweater and great bowl cut.

So I stood there for 10 minutes and I didn't say a word.

That's Santa at my door at age five.

And Santa had a gift for each one of me and my sisters, and I stood there and Santa would talk to me.

Ben, Merry Christmas.

How was your Christmas?

Not a peep.

Didn't even move.

My mom and dad are up there taking pictures.

They got the big old camera, you know, back in the day going.

And they're like, hey, Ben, what do you think?

Not a peep, not a word.

I don't even move.

Because I'm so in awe that Santa knows where I live, Santa knows my name, and Santa's at my door on Christmas Eve.

All the kids heard about it after winter break.

Let me tell you, I was the coolest kid ever.

But I stood there in awe and reverence.

I think that's kind of a picture of what it means to fear and tremble before God.

Because we see examples of this all around.

We see in his creation.

Sometimes it looks like this.

Yeah, we see that, and we're in awe of what God can do.

Sometimes it looks like this.

Others it looks like this.

And still this.

Those are all real pictures.

They're not AI created.

This is God's creation.

Sometimes we just need to walk outside and stand in awe of what God has done.

And in reverence of what He is doing.

There's examples all over.

And it's not just in creation, it's in our lives as well.

I listen to two podcasts.

One is a Disney podcast, no surprise.

The second one is Dateline.

And I love be some Dateline.

I listen to Dateline all the time.

And one thing that usually shocks me when I listen to Dateline is that some horrible crime happened and they catch the guy or lady who did it.

There's a lot of ladies out there doing some bad things.

Let me tell you, according to Dateline.

And at the end, they got the guy, he goes to trial, he's he or she's going to prison for life.

And the family will get up and say, We have forgiven you for what you've done.

We've forgiven you.

And what this person has done to many is unforgivable.

You see, an example of the awe of God is in when we offer forgiveness to other people, when the world would say why.

Another thing is unconditional love.

School starts for my kids on Tuesday, and I love uh the first day of school.

My wife and I love them for two different reasons.

My wife works at home, so she loves it that they're out of the house.

I love it because when Wego pick up my kids, and this is not just my kids, it's all over, and you'll know if you're a parent.

You walk up to the sidewalk, they release the kids, and these kids run into the arms of their parents and jump into the arms of their parents.

Because that unconditional love between father and son, father and daughter, mother and daughter, mother and son, whatever it may be.

We see these examples of unconditional love, of forgiveness lived through us.

And those are examples of God at work in our lives, reasons where we can fear and tremble what God is doing.

It's our way to respond to what God has done for us.

We respond this way because what Christ has done for us, and Romans 5.8 says it perfect.

It says this, but God proves his love for us in this that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We fear and we tremble because we're not worthy of that kind of love.

Because he came and died and forgives us of a sin that I will probably repeat and repeat and repeat throughout my life.

But yet God still offers me this free gift of grace.

He doesn't ask me to do this and do this and do this and then earn it.

He just says, I'm giving it to you.

That is reason for us to fear and tremble what God is doing in our lives and has done for us.

We stand in awe and reverence because even though we are sinful, even though we can't do enough to earn it, even though we miss the mark daily, Christ died for us.

This is salvation.

And we fear and tremble at it.

Well, then what about that workout part?

Because that workout part still sounds like we have to do something.

We go back to the Greek.

This Greek word is a bit harder to pronounce than Phobos, but it's katergizomeia.

Everyone say katagozomia.

Yeah, I'm just kidding, you don't have to say it.

I love it though, because when I did come to this one, this started to make a little sense.

It means to actively carry out or to complete.

So what work out means, it doesn't mean do this, do this, do this.

It simply means this: to live it out.

To live out your salvation, to live this life as though you are a saved person, not by the things that you do, but by what has been done because of who you are, to live out your salvation.

And I love that part to complete, which means we live it out daily.

We have the opportunity to live as a saved person by the grace of Jesus every single day.

Paul is writing to this young church in Philippi who is struggling between the world saying, do this to be saved, versus what they know to be true from the gospels, from Jesus' mouth himself.

And they're struggling.

What do we do?

And then Paul comes and says this he says, work out your salvation.

Not work it out, not do things, but live it out.

Live as though you're saved, live as though you've received these free gifts of grace.

Live it out.

And when you do, fear and tremble at it because it's incredible what God has done.

Paul even tells us what it looks like to live it out.

He says, 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.

What does it look like to live on our salvation?

How do you speak to one another?

What do you post about online?

How do you handle the hardships in your life?

How do you make decisions?

How do you reflect Jesus?

And again, it kills full circle.

He's not asking us to be perfect.

He knows we're gonna make mistakes time and time and time again.

He knows that we're not gonna use every day to reflect him the best we could.

He knows that, and yet he still loves us.

He still saves us.

It's not about a performance, but a partnership.

It's not about performance, it's about a partnership.

And Paul says this in verse 13.

He says this for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purposes.

If you were to ask me what does it look like to live out your salvation, I think the one sentence I would say to you is to let it go.

Let it go.

Let go of the worries about not adding up.

Let go of the thing that you think you have to hold on to so tight or it's gonna go out of control.

Because to live out your salvation means that you're free.

You see, I think that story from Acts 16, where Paul and Silas were freed from prison, I think the real person set free that day was that guard.

Because that guard got to let it go.

He got to let go of the worries of salvation.

He got to let go and live in the promises that God has for him as a chosen son and daughter.

He got to live out those promises.

And even though Paul and Silas were in chains, that prison guard was the one who was a captive.

And now he's free to live out his salvation.

So, Central Lutheran Church, what does it look like to you to live out your salvation?

Paul says this as we close with what he said in scripture.

He said that as you live out your salvation, as you work out your salvation with fear and trembling, you will shine like the stars.

Because here's the thing when you live out your salvation, you live a life different than the world.

Paul also wrote in that passage that the world is a dark place and it needs the light.

The light is Christ.

But remember, this is not about performance, this is a partnership.

Because God lives in you.

The light lives in you.

It's that Holy Spirit that lives inside us that gives us the opportunity to live out our salvation.

It reminds us that our salvation is not in the things that we do, but in who we are.

It reminds us that salvation is grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone.

And when we live out our salvation, our light shines into a dark world.

Imagine if that 52% went down to 25% of people who thought that they needed to do things to earn their salvation.

Imagine the light that would shine in the darkness.

So, Central, I want to invite you during our reflection song, if you want to, to come up to one of these boxes and there's these little candles there.

And I invite you to light your light, to remind you to live out your salvation.

But also in doing so, for that 52% that's in this room, as you light that candle and place it in the sin, be reminded that you are free.

Free of the bondage of this world that says you have to measure up and do this and do that.

That's not the gospel, that's not what Christ said, that's not what he came and lived and died and was resurrected for.

Be reminded of the freedom that we have in Christ.

And as we start to light these candles, look and see what happens to the darkness.

Amen.