Summer 2025 | Work it Out - Philippians 2:12 | June 29

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This summer we are sort of hitting reset, if you will, and I don't know if any

of you guys have been bowling in the last decade. I don't know that I've been.

I don't think our kids have ever been bowling either. So we might have to remedy that.

We might have to have a bit of a church bowling night or day.

Jake's a pro.

Awesome. All right. Well, we're going to plan a bowling night so that at least

our kids can have the benefit of understanding Jake's excitement.

But if you've been bowling in the last

ever there's always that that

reset button on the side of the middle thing just in case the pins get out of

whack or something happens you hit the reset button it swipes everything out

and then it sets your pins again so we've been pushing reset this summer although

I admit that that analogy breaks down a little bit because,

when you hit that button sometimes it just

puts all new pins down and you might have had three left

and so it might screw up everything so that might not be

the perfect analogy for what we're really talking about this one might maybe

this one's a little better we just have the new iteration of the Mario Kart

franchise now and so we've been playing that enjoying that Elliot is a pro he

won the Guinness World Record apparently like last week according to according to Alexa,

since he told the kids that he had won and they didn't believe him so they asked

Alexa and Alexa the first thing she said was he won the Guinness World Record

last week so I don't know what kind of voodoo happened there.

But so we've been playing that. And in every Mario Kart game,

if you drive off track or get stuck, there is this little turtle that floats

on a cloud, because that makes sense.

And it has a fishing rod and it fishes you up. His name is Lakitu.

And he sets you back on track, almost as if to say, here you go, keep going.

This is the right way. So that's maybe more accurate to what we're doing.

We're pressing reset so that Jesus can pick us up, reorient us, set us back on track.

And keep us going in the right direction. And so what we've been doing with

that is focusing on the word of God and the importance of it in our everyday life.

As Sandy was talking about, that we fight the truth, we fight the lies with the truth, right?

And we have to know the truth to be able to do that. We have to be saturated

with it. It has to be in us.

It has to surround us. It has to be actively in our thoughts.

And so that's what we've been resetting. We've been focusing.

We're allowing Jesus to rescinder us on his word and refocusing us because we

can't continue to finish the race or run the race and hope to finish if we let

everything else but God's word crowd out our thoughts.

If we let everything else in and therefore push God's word out,

we can't finish the race.

Tyler Statton in Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, which many of you have

read, he says that the unformed mind doesn't go to God when it's idle.

It goes to anxiety, fear, lust, anger.

You don't drift into discipleship, is his point.

Our mind, unformed, untrained, and this is an ongoing practice.

It's not something that we can point to in the past and say,

God formed my mind at that moment, and therefore now I think his thoughts.

This is an ongoing practice of forming and training our brains,

training our thoughts, renewing our mind, as it says in Romans 12,

to focus on the word of God.

So this is an ongoing practice and the unformed, the untrained mind doesn't go towards Jesus.

It goes towards fear and anxiety and these other crippling things that we fill

our thoughts on the day-to-day basis. We worry about the future.

We worry about our plans. We worry about our safety. We worry about what's going

to happen, what's going to come.

We focus on all of these things and what the result of that is,

is anxiety and it's fear. When we focus and we fixate on the future.

When someone asked me one time, Zach, how do you keep going with all of what

we're surrounded with, all of the war, all of the conflict,

all of the cultural divides that exist within our nation?

How do you keep going? How do

you not fall into fear with all of the stuff that's happening around us?

And of course, none of you would be surprised that my first response was the

smart aleck one of don't watch the news.

But there's a deeper truth, right, that is presented.

There's a deeper truth that when we meditate on the word of God,

when we fixate on the word of God, when we fill ourselves with scripture,

then we push out those other things.

The problem is when we watch the news, what we do is fixate on what could be or what may be.

And we crowd out the word of God in our hearts. When we fixate on the word of

God, we push out those other things.

Jesus illustrates this in the parable of the sower. It says that the seed that

fell among the thorns represents those who hear God's word, but all too quickly

the message is crowded out by the worries of this life and the lure of wealth

so that no fruit is produced.

And so what happens when we fixate on the future, when we fixate on our worries

and our fears of what may be and what could be, what we're doing is we're really

making ourselves into poor soil that is unfruitful and unreceptive.

When we let the worries and concerns of this life drown out the word of God.

But it's not just the future. What happens when we fixate on the past?

What happens when we meditate, if you will, on our past hurt,

our past mistakes, our past experiences, anything that has occupied our mind

for an extended period of time.

When we focus on that, it leads us to shame. It leads us to anger.

It leads us to bitterness.

And the Bible has a lot of strong words to say about bitterness.

Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 4 that it is a poison that we must get rid

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

of, right? That we must get rid of all bitterness.

It's an incompatible with a gospel community is what Paul tells us.

In Hebrews chapter 12, verse 15, it warns us that, see to it that no one falls

Hebrews 12:15

short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.

That bitterness grows deep into us as a root.

And it's very difficult to get rid of at that point. We must renew our minds with the word of God.

Because when we fixate on the past, when we fixate on the future,

when we fixate on the worries of this life, on our hurts or our mistakes,

when we crowd out the word of God, we sit with bitterness. We sit with shame.

We sit with fear. We sit with anxiety.

We set our home. We set our tent and we set our dwelling in those places.

But when we meditate on scripture, when we soak in the word of God,

what the Bible says is that we experience the fruit of that,

which is the fruit of joy, which is inexpressible.

The fruit of the glory of God, which fills us and pushes everything out.

The fruits of peace, the fruits of righteousness.

These are the fruits of our salvation when we meditate on the word of God.

And we've revisited this verse or this chapter a little bit.

In fact, I encourage you, as we have time today, don't just kind of rush out of here.

The weather is beautiful. It's a beautiful place. Maybe linger a little bit. Open up to John 15.

Just read John 15 as you walk the grounds, walk the property,

surrounded with his creation.

In John 15, 11, Jesus says, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may

be in you and that your joy may be full.

That the words that Jesus speaks to us, the things that he purposefully communicates

are meant to fill our hearts, not just with joy in general, but his joy that

is inexpressible and filled with glory.

When we think about joy in the Bible, because there's a lot of ways people maybe

have tried to define what joy is.

So, when we think about joy from a biblical perspective, that's what we're after,

the heart of God. So, what does he look at and how does he define joy?

What we see in the Bible is that joy is a picture of reunion.

The metaphor surrounding the idea of joy is reunion.

And maybe you have experienced a heartfelt reunion. Maybe you have been separated

from your family a bit, from your spouse, from your children,

from dear friends when Ginny and the kids went to Dollywood for a week.

It wasn't the joy-filled reunion. It was like, hey, dad, how you going?

And right to the rooms, right? And it's like, father, good to see you again.

Then straight to the room.

But maybe you've experienced something deeper than that.

Or maybe you've, you know, where joy explodes and where there is this building

anticipation for over months or weeks.

And maybe you've seen it, if you haven't experienced yourself,

in any of those videos where soldiers have returned home from deployment and

surprised their families, right?

Now, the family experiences joy in that moment to see their loved one,

but that person who has returned home, they've anticipated that reunion for a long time.

They've pictured it in their minds and they've seen the joy of what it's going

to be when they're back home with loved ones.

And this is the picture of what joy is in the Bible.

It's like the parable of the prodigal son, where the father is sitting on the

porch, waiting for his son to come home.

But for the father's perspective, he can already imagine the joy in his heart

when he runs and embraces his son.

There's already a joy in his mind and anticipation for when that's coming.

This is the joy of heaven that the father models for us, the joy that we can

look forward to this happy reunion when all of God's people get to be with Him

in His presence. We get to sing and dance with those who we love most.

There is this anticipation of what joy speaks of where anything can be weathered,

any situation, any season, any experience, because what's in our mind is the

hope and joy of what's coming.

That no matter what we experience now, there will be a heavenly reunion.

This is the joy of the Bible. It's real and it's lasting and it's true joy.

So what can we do as we sit here anticipating?

We can fill the idle moments, not with our worries and anxieties,

but we can fill our idle moments with the word of God in an active process.

And I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm going to risk it.

There are all these memes that exist nowadays because this is our modern reality,

of how people just can't go to the bathroom anymore without their phones, right?

It's like, without your phone.

Fill in the blank. And it's some expressible meme of how you are just lost in

the void without this device that we're all tied to over and over again.

And it's not just the bathroom.

We are tied to our technology. We are tied to these moments that what we choose

to fill with are distractions, are entertainment.

We want to be entertained. And so we fill our lives with these moments,

utilizing what's at hand in our phones.

But what we could do is we could fill those moments with God,

with His Word and the truth of His Word.

I encourage you to either turn on, enable, or maybe download an app that keeps

track of how many times you pick up your phone and how much you've looked at your screen.

And there's one that I use, I'm not going to endorse it necessarily,

but I can tell you about it later. That'll even compare.

If you continue to look at your phone three hours a day, this is how much you

will be looking at it over the course of your lifetime. So it's a pretty depressing statistic.

But if we choose to replace these idle moments,

if we take them captive and put them under the authority of Jesus,

this is one way that we can begin to meditate on the word of God and have the result be joy.

Like I said, this is an active process. In Philippians, Paul tells us in chapter

two, he says, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed,

so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence,

work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,

for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Paul doesn't say for us to go out, throw our hands in the air,

and wait for peace to come and wait for joy to come.

Now, God grants us with the things that are outside of our ability,

but the normative experience is that a lifetime of formation.

So what Paul says is to work out your salvation.

What we often want from God is the easy fix.

And what I think about is the movie, The Matrix, where we can just download peace into our brains.

We can just download joy into our brains. This is how I think about language learning, right?

It's not, I don't want to learn languages. I just want to know other languages.

We want the easy way out. We want the result without the effort.

And this is how we all are. This is how I am.

We want to just be changed and not go through the process of allowing God to change us.

And I didn't remind Elliot, but there's this thing that he has because it is

useful to him in his profession. It's called a TENS unit.

And it stands for transcutaneal electrical something or other.

Nerve stimulation. That's what it stands for. So this is an actual medical tool

that can be used for certain things like recovery,

like stimulating nerves and muscles and athletes when there's pain or discomfort.

There are uses for it. But what we get advertised as regular people is strap

this to your abs, do a thousand sit-ups a minute while you're sitting on a couch.

Do the exercise without doing the exercise.

Just let it happen to you. So I used to tell people that I must exercise in my sleep.

I mean, really, I was just young and have a great metabolism.

It's hard to communicate that. There's this really funny story where I think

it's like, who is it? It's some famous actor.

It's like Alec Baldwin, I think it is. Met this guy named Pete Davidson,

who's another famous guy. And he was like, how do you keep in shape?

And Pete Davidson didn't want to just tell him, I'm young and have a metabolism.

So he was like, do 100 sit-ups and 100 push-ups every day.

And so Alec Baldwin saw him months or years later and was super fit.

And he's like, I've been doing what you said. 100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups every day. And it works.

And Pete's like, great, thanks. He didn't have the heart to tell him he just had a metabolism.

So we don't want to put in the effort. We just want the results.

At these things. That's why our news feeds are filled with these miracle pills

that cut the fat without putting in the effort.

And this is what we're drawn to. We want the easy way out, but,

meditating on the word of God, but spiritual formation, as the Bible describes

it, is a process that involves effort, as Paul writes.

And the word he uses here for that word work is a Greek word,

which is kate ergatsomai.

And if you listen closely, you might even hear something that sounds similar

to the English word energize or energy.

We have to put energy into it.

So what Paul is communicating here is something powerful, that we are called

to continually work out our salvation to full expression,

that we are to fight for it to be realized in our lives.

That we are to put in the effort to allow what is ours to be realized in the way that we live.

And so here's the crucial thing for that understanding.

For us to be working out of salvation, there has to be something already inside of us.

Verse 13 says, So the reality, spiritual reality of what we're talking about is not,

earning something, it is that God has put within us the good deposit of his

salvation, the finished work of Christ in our hearts.

And so we are then called to work out of that positional standing of who we already are.

So God works within, and therefore we are to work out of that,

if that makes sense. Does that make sense?

If we back up a few verses in this chapter, Paul reminds us this.

He says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

What he's talking about here is specifically with regard to humility.

But what he's saying is, this mind is yours in Christ Jesus.

The mind of Christ is yours. Now work out from that.

Realize what is already yours, what God has already built up within you.

The fruits of the Spirit that we talk about, the fruits of salvation,

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.

These things are already yours.

They are the fruits that are grown as you are connected to the vine,

as you are connected to the spirit and what he's growing in you.

It's like adult teeth in the human body.

I could be wrong. From my understanding, you're pretty much already born with

all the teeth that you're going to have.

They just have to come into place.

It's a really disturbing picture when you see x-rays of children and you have

all of these adult teeth just migrating downwards, it's gross.

These things are already in you. We must work them into to be who we already

are, who God has already made us to be.

And because here's the truth, here's the key truth to all of this.

We're not working for our salvation. That's not what this verse is communicating.

We are working out of our salvation. We are working out of what God has already

put in us. We are working out of the finished work of Jesus on the cross.

That Jesus is working in you, you are called to work out of that.

Dallas Willard says it well. He says, grace is not opposed to effort.

It is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action.

And so grace is not contrary to effort.

In fact, grace instilled in your heart produces effort.

What it is opposed to, what it is contrary to, is the false belief that we can earn our salvation.

So it's not opposed to effort as opposed to earning.

One way, if we think about what effort can we practically put into working out

of our salvation, one way that we can work out our salvation is through what

the Bible calls abiding.

And I know that you've heard that before, and we've probably talked about that before.

John 15 that I mentioned earlier, John 15 is full of this idea of joy,

that my joy may be in you that your joy may be full.

That chapter is full of joy. And one word that you will see repeated more than

any other in that chapter is the word abide.

It starts off, right? I am the vine, you are the branches. If you abide in me

and my word abides in you, you will bear much fruit.

That chapter is full of joy and it's full of abiding because the pathway to

joy is abiding in the spirit of God.

We talked about if we were just paying attention to some of the songs that we sang this morning.

We had echoes of this idea of Psalm 1 being planted by streams of living water,

abiding in the presence of the Spirit and the Word of God.

We sang that song about sitting at the feet of Jesus, and I just imagine pictures

of all throughout the Gospels, but even specifically like with Mary and Martha

sitting at the feet of Jesus.

We think about the feeding of the 5,000. these people sat at the feet of Jesus

for so long that the disciples were worried that they were going to starve.

That they lingered, that they stayed. They remained in the presence of God.

Earlier in John's gospel, Jesus says, if you abide in my word,

you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

There's a calling to abide in the word of God.

In the Bible, this word, this idea of abiding comes with it,

this idea of an extended stay,

an extended time in the presence or in the house specifically of someone you're visiting.

What we like to do is we like to visit with Jesus from time to time.

We get to pop in during a quiet time, pop in on a Sunday morning.

We like to pop in and visit. The word abide has with it this idea of dwelling,

of living, of sitting or sitting with the word of God, and letting it sit in

you and let it become a part of you.

There's this old word that used to be used to describe this idea.

It's kind of fallen out of our lexicon, but it is the word terry, not as in Mr.

Henry here, but the old word terry. And you might be familiar with it from old

hymns, such as In the Garden, that you've perhaps sung in churches growing up,

the chorus goes, he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me that

I am his own and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other than can ever know.

It's this idea of sitting with and lingering in the presence of Jesus rather

than just visiting a couple times a week or throughout your day.

There's this idea of...

There's this idea of...

Matt Chandler last week preached a sermon called With Us in the Mess,

and that was about suffering.

But it's a reminder of what the picture of abiding looks like.

That God is with us in the mess, that God came to be Emmanuel God with us,

that he crossed that divide to be with us.

And so what we are called to do is to not just visit with Jesus from time to

time, there's a burden here, but

to make our home with him, because he has come to make his home with us.

That verse that I mentioned, actually, I didn't mention this,

but I've mentioned it before.

Jesus says to someone who asked him a question, and he says,

if you obey my word, if you keep my word, or if you love me,

you will keep my word, and my father will love you, and we will come to you

and make our home with you.

Like this is what God is doing actively in us.

So this is a picture of what we are to do with him, that God,

Emmanuel, God with us in the mess is living with us.

And so because God started it, we are called to keep it going.

And all that he has done in us and the salvation he has placed in our heart,

to work out from that, to realize who we already are and who he has made us to be.

We do that by abiding in his word, by soaking in it, by drinking it, by eating it.

God started it. So if we return to that verse in Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works

in you both to will and to work for his good pleasures.

God has started it. Jesus has worked it in.

Now go and work it out. And that is our call this morning.

What God has poured into you by his spirit, take that good deposit and live out of it.

Let it move through your choices. Let it move through your habits,

your prayers, your relationships, your joy.

Let it push out the lies. Let it push out your own thoughts,

your own feelings, and let it be centered on the reality of what is.

And so, what I hope that we walk away with today is the realization,

the eager realization that there is more of Jesus to explore,

that you can push into Jesus more, that you can press into him more than you are doing now.

That I hope that you would be able to say, not in shame, but in faith,

I can press into Jesus more. There is more there.

That we would let Let scripture be the melody of your heart as you return again and again.

Like a sacred background track to your day that just...

Permeates all that you do and

all that you think about. There's this verse in Psalm 119, which I love.

And it says, your decrees have been the theme of my songs wherever I have lived.

That the word of God would provide us the soundtrack of our lives.

That it would hold all that we speak and all that we do.

Imagine what your life would be like if the word of God wasn't just something

you visited, but it was something that you lived in.

Imagine what your life would feel like, what kind of peace, what kind of joy,

what kind of presence would follow you into every room you enter.

If we pressed into Jesus and we abided in the word of God more and more,

if we filled the idle moments with eternal lasting presence of Jesus,

if we took captive, that was my bottle,

if we took captive every thought and every moment, not for distraction,

not for entertainment, we turn to those things for the same reasons.

I don't know if you've analyzed your habits, but why do we turn to entertainment?

Why do we turn to distraction? It's to escape our thoughts.

So instead of escaping our thoughts, what if we pushed them out with the truth of what God's word is?

What if we dwelled with the God who's dwelling with us?

Instead of popping in for visits, what if we lingered and stayed?

The King James version of that verse talks about if you continue.

So it uses this word continue, which is potentially in our modern lexicon.

This is the second time I used the word lexicon today.

It's potentially a less impactful word, continue, if you continue in your faith.

But we might realize upon further inspection that that word continue is communicating

this idea of persisting, of enduring, of abiding.

So may we continue to abide in the word of God.

May we fill the idol with the eternal. May we fill our thoughts and our minds

with his instead of defaulting to distraction and entertainment.

Because what that does is give us truth to build from rather than just biding

our time until those thoughts return.

Let's pray. Why don't you stand with us? Stand with me as we pray.

Father, all of these things that we have heard today.

Let us be reminded that your word is truth.

That in your presence is inexpressible joy,

that the result of your word, the fruit of your word in our lives is experiencing

you, your love, your presence, your joy and your peace,

that you have placed salvation into our hearts,

that we can't look back at a moment in time and say, I am good.

Well, we can, but based on anything we've done, we can't look back and say,

I've done this, therefore I am saved.

But we can look back and say, you finished it and you placed salvation in our hearts.

Therefore, we are saved. Therefore, we are a new creation.

Therefore, all of our old habits, hurts and woes do not define us.

We are defined by the truth of your word, your spirit in us,

that we are children of the most high God.

And if we are children, then we are heirs, fellow heirs with Jesus.

As we live this life in eager expectation, of the joy that is to come.

This is what hope is as well.

Our hope does not lie in some intangible thing that might never happen.

It lies in a guarantee that you are faithful in what you have promised you will bring about.

So our joy and our hope lie in the faithfulness of your promise.

And we remind ourselves of that.

Moment by moment as we meditate on your word, as we fill our hearts and minds

and our thoughts with the truth of your word, as we replace our thoughts with

the thoughts that are above every other thought and the ways that are above every other ways.

So I just pray God that you would help us to look at our lives,

our day-to-day existence and show us where we can press into you more.

Show us how we can be present in between meetings. We can offer up prayers.

We can let you permeate in through all of our schedule,

that the God who dwells with us that we might dwell with.

So please, Lord, speak to us, reveal to us.

And may we be defined as people who are of your word and in your word and changed

by your word God as you speak it as you bring joy into our hearts.

Music.