Leverage Point #1 - A Love Relationship with Jesus Christ: Philippians 1:1, 4:4 - Philippians: Joy Leverage

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

If you're not a bond slave of Christ, you're a slave to something else.

You gotta serve somebody.

Bob Dylan got it right.

You gotta serve somebody, and it's either Jesus or whatever it is you serve.

And I say the key to freedom is who you serve and what you serve.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

If you have a Bible with you or your phone with you, turn to Philippians.

We're in Philippians.

We started last week with an introduction into the book of Philippians, and I share with you that the title I've chosen is The Leverage of Joy.

And I shared last week that we need leverage in our life.

We need the ability to deal with issues in our marriage and our singleness and in our families.

And I illustrated that with some bricks.

And these bricks represent burdens.

These bricks represent work and family and maybe depression, maybe uh suicidal thoughts, things that we go through, and some of us are deeply embedded in stuff that we don't know how in the world we're going to get set free.

And yet, all the studies that have been done in positive psychology and the studies that have been doing athletic science is finding happiness does not create joy.

But joy does create happiness.

And I shared last week that happiness is primarily built around outward circumstances.

So when outward circumstances are going our way, we're happy.

But joy is deeper than that.

Joy is from the inside out.

Joy is that part of our heart through an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, that we begin to take control of our outside life through an inward perspective of joy.

And so this leverage, and the way I described it last week, and you can go online and you can watch it either on video or audio, is that the closer we begin to renew our minds in joy, the more of a fulcrum we have by which we can lift some of these issues in our life.

You guys know that if we if we put the fulcrum right in the middle, it's just equal.

But the more you move the fulcrum toward the weight, the easier it is with the leverage that you had.

And the description I gave is that leverage, this leverage right here, this this uh this pole, this board, is the power of God.

It's the potential that you have in the power of the Holy Spirit working through you.

This leverage point is the joy of the Lord.

And so as we go through Philippians, church, we're looking at these leverage points.

What are the leverage points that give us joy and a mindset?

So in Philippians chapter 1, that's where we are, the letter begins with Paul and Timothy calling themselves bondservants, bondservants of Christ.

Philippians 1 · chapter mention

Very interesting.

So let's let's take a little background on who Paul and Timothy were.

Paul was one of the top leaders in Judaism in the first century.

He was being raised up.

Some believe he might have been a part of the Sanhedrin, the 70 elders in Jerusalem.

He had graduated from the Harvard of the Middle East, there in Jerusalem, studied under Gamalael, which even today is considered one of the great teachers of Israel.

But on a road to Damascus, while he was traveling one day, on his way, on his way to persecute Christians, he hated Christianity.

He passionately hated Christianity because he saw in Christianity the potential to ruin Judaism.

The reason he saw that is because he was a theologically gifted, doctrinaire young man who understood the difference between grace and law.

And he understood because he was so steeped in it, and he had probably memorized the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, he knew the law.

And he saw a new version at that time.

It was probably a new version of Judaism coming up, a sect, which he would consider a cult.

And he was passionate.

He was passionate to begin to take out these Christians.

And so he was he was going through houses and he was arresting, he might have even murdered some.

And so while on this trip, he had this vision.

And in this vision, Christ came to him and spoke to him.

And then later he was baptized.

And it's crazy, man.

It's like I like to say, whenever you're speaking before maybe a hostile group, and I've done that a few times.

We used to go out as a gymnastics team at the University of Georgia.

First of all, my my coach at Georgia really started to hate me because half the team became believers after I got saved.

And so he was like a total heathen.

You know, you think about like what you read today about kids getting in trouble on athletic teams and coaches trying to figure out what to do.

We had a coach who was leading the team into trouble.

And so he was a he was a nut.

And he didn't like me, and I didn't like him that much either.

And I knew more about gymnastics than he did.

So anyway, he was my coach and he got upset, and so we saw half the team get saved, and we would go out on the college campus and take a mini trampoline.

Do you know what a mini trampoline is?

Mini trampoline is about this big, and uh, and as a gymnast, you run, you run toward it and you hit it, and then you do flips and stuff.

And it's it's kind of just a fun thing.

I really didn't train you in anything, but it's really fun.

But it but it get, you know, we had a couple guys that were really good, way better than me.

And we used to do stuff like um we we'd gather a crowd of about two or three hundred on the campus.

And then what we would do is we would um we would take some good-looking gals and some handsome, big, strong guys, and we put the gals on the shoulders of these big strong guys, which we had to push off the volunteers.

And then they would hold hands and make a goalpost.

The girl would be on top of him and he'd make a goalpost, and then we would do like triple fronts and stuff like that through the goalposts, and we'd and we'd we'd do like play-by-play with Larry Munson, who was the play-by-play sportscaster for Georgia back then.

And crowds would love it.

And then we had all these campus crusade people that filtered out into the crowd, and then we'd end by saying, hey, we got this little yellow booklet, and uh, we want to get your opinion on it.

Just take 10 minutes of your time to get your opinion.

Everybody's like, oh man, it was something about gymnastics or what is it, you know?

And it was about four spiritual laws.

And then we'd lead hundreds of people to the Lord, as, you know, over over two or three years that we did this.

So Paul was like that.

So one day he just hates Christianity, then he gets radically saved, and the next thing is he's on a mini tramp, you know?

I mean, he's doing stuff.

And he's and he's going out on these missionary journeys out of Antioch.

So he starts moving all through Asia Minor in the Mediterranean area, and on a second missionary journey, he heard about a young guy named Timothy.

And Timothy had a Greek father and a Jewish mother.

He wasn't circumcised.

And he heard that he was a really gifted pastor, teacher, and evangelist.

So he circumcised him.

So, for all of you that have your boys circumcised and they're screaming their heads off, how would you like to be like a 25-year-old and get circumcised, okay?

So Timothy got circumcised, and the reason he circumcised him was because Paul's strategy was he went into a town or a village and he always went to the synagogue first.

And the reason he went to the synagogues was because the Jewish believers there were monotheistic.

They believed in one God, and he saw an open heart with them, and he would start there until he got booted.

And so he took Timothy because Timothy would not be allowed to go in because of a Gentile father, he needed to be circumcised.

So he takes Timothy with him, and they don't know where to go.

They don't know where to go.

They're not sure what direction to go there.

Like coming out of Antioch.

So they get a vision and a dream, and next thing they know, they see a vision of this guy calling them to go to Macedonia.

Come to us, come to us.

So they follow the vision, and the first city they come to is Philippi.

They come to Philippi and there's no synagogue.

So normally these towns had little synagogues, no synagogue in Philippi.

It was a very, very significant Roman city.

Most of the Roman soldiers who had served in Asia Minor retired there because it was such a beautiful place.

Not unlike Colorado Springs with so many retired military that we have here.

So very Roman, very polytheistic, idol worship was everywhere.

So they go to the river where women are there washing their clothes and stuff, and there's this gal named Lydia, who is a fabric merchant, and she gets saved, and then her household gets saved.

They take um, they take Paul and Timothy in, and then Paul's preaching the gospel, and as he's preaching the gospel, this demonized, we'll go over this a little bit more next week, but this demonized gal comes, he casts out the demon, really makes everybody mad, goes to prison, gets in prison, has an earthquake, and in the earthquake, um, all the doors open, and when the doors open, everybody's freaking out, especially the jailer, because if he loses everybody that's in the prison, he's over.

And so he comes in and he says, What do I do?

And then Paul says, You need to get saved, man.

And so he gives his heart to Christ, his whole family gets baptized.

That's how the Philippian church got started, and that's pretty good.

I mean, that's like signs and wonders, man.

That's like the coolest church.

And so Philippi loved Paul.

And so when they heard he was in prison and run, they sent a gift through Epiphroditus, and that's how Paul and Timothy began a relationship with Philippi, and arguably his favorite church.

So this book, 104 verses, uh 16 times, talks about joy, and here's what's cool about it: Paul's in prison.

That's why I'm convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is the most significant manual on joy ever written.

It is the joy manifesto.

And if you don't need any joy, and you don't need any more joy in your life, then quit coming to the road for the next two months, because that's all I'm gonna be talking about.

But if you'd like a little bit more joy, if you if you sense that your joy is leaking, then this is the book for you.

Because that's what Philippians is about.

It's about joy.

And it's written by someone who's in prison.

His happiness factor is not super high, but his joy is just overwhelming in his life.

And so Paul and Timothy, as they begin to write this letter, they identify themselves with a very, very interesting word, bond servant.

A bond servant.

It might also be translated bond slave, a bond slave of Jesus Christ.

At that time in the ancient world, everybody knew what a bond slave was or what a bondservant was because 30% of the Roman Empire were slaves.

And there were four ways that you became a slave.

One, you were born a slave.

Two, you owed a debt that you couldn't pay, and that made you a slave to pay back the debt.

Three, you were conquered and became a slave.

Or fourth, you decided to be a slave.

You chose to be a slave.

Can you imagine that?

Someone choosing to be a slave who could be free.

And the word they gave for that person was a bondservant.

And it was, and it was usually someone who had been a slave and then they had paid their dues.

Maybe it was a seven-year indentured slavery contract that they had developed or something like that, they could go free.

Or their master had said, you know, with your family and everything, and our love for each other, I want to set you free.

You can go free.

And then it would be that person who would say, I don't want to go free.

I don't want to go free.

I love you as my master.

I love your family, and we want to serve you all the rest of the days of our life.

So here's our leverage point number one, men and women, in verses one.

This is this is leverage point number one.

A love relationship with Jesus Christ gives us joy.

This is the foundation, church.

17 times in chapter one alone, Jesus Christ's name is mentioned by Paul.

40 times in the letter, but 17 times in the first chapter, he talks about Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus.

Men and women, this is where joy is found, and this is the leverage point number one is through a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

It's starting each day by saying, God, I want to love you with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Would you empower me?

I spoke at a youth event last night.

Right here, there were some youth here.

And I said, look, you guys, you're young, you're middle school, I think it was middle school up to college.

I said, look, these are the days.

These are the days to decide how you're going to build your life.

And men and women, some of you are older, some of you are just coming to know the Lord.

Some of us have been with the Lord and been in church for 40 years.

To begin to pray the revival prayer of breakthrough for 2018.

Oh God, would you empower me today to love you with all of my heart?

You think God's not going to answer that prayer?

It's like, oh no.

He's asking that prayer?

What do you think about that, Holy Spirit?

What do you think about that, Father?

Oh man.

He's a nutcase.

No, he said the first and the greatest commandment.

Everything, Old Testament, New Testament, Scriptures, prophecy, everything rises and falls on loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

It's a passionate, intimate, emotional love relationship with Jesus Christ.

Men and women, that's the leverage point.

That's first.

That's foundational.

And that's the key here.

He says, Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Jesus Christ.

Very cryptic passage.

Exodus 21.

You ought to jot this down.

Exodus 21, 5 and 6.

It's this cryptic verse in Exodus that's often overlooked.

Let me read it to you.

But if the slave plainly says to his master, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go free.

Then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with an owl, and he shall be his slave forever.

That's bondservant.

That's what a bondservant is.

So, Michael, you have an earring, a dangly earring.

You're a bondservant of Jesus Christ.

This has been going on for a long time.

So this is not some new thing where guys have earrings.

A bond slave had an earring.

He probably had an earring right.

In what we know archaeologically and historically, it was probably round.

And he wore that, and everybody knew that guy's a bond servant to his master.

He loves his master.

He doesn't have to follow his master.

He's chosen his master.

Men and women, that's where the joy is.

The joy is when we become a bond slave of Jesus Christ.

Are you a bond slave today?

If you want joy at the very core of how God made you, make a choice today to become a bond slave.

Here's what's great: a bond slave is the most free of all.

A bond slave is actually the most free of all because we are bond slaves to Jesus Christ.

When we become a bond slave of Jesus Christ, we get free from sin.

Isn't that exciting?

We're indebted to sin.

We're in bondage to sin.

We're born into sin.

If you're here's an interesting thought.

If you're not a bond slave of Christ, you're a slave to something else.

You gotta serve somebody.

Bob Dylan got it right.

You gotta serve somebody, and it's either Jesus or whatever it is you serve.

And I say the key to freedom is who you serve and what you serve.

And here at the road, we're building wholehearted disciples of Jesus, and we build wholehearted disciples of Jesus at the very foundational level of saying, I want Jesus to be my master.

And if you've never given your heart to Christ, today would be a good day.

To give yourself to Christ, to surrender everything to him, and let the joy begin in your life.

1 Corinthians 7 22, we read, For he who is called in the Lord as a bondservant is now a freed man of the Lord.

He likewise he who is free when he is called, he becomes a bondservant of Christ.

He's saying that if you came into this and you were a slave, and in our case, a slave to sin, you become free.

But if you come and you're free, you're free.

In other words, you're not a slave.

And you accept Christ, you become a bondservant.

So everybody, in a sense, is a slave.

It's just a who are you a slave to?

And so, some 35 years ago, I became a bond slave of Christ.

Never regretted that decision.

And so, for you, men and women, and all of us in this room, have you made that decision to become a bond slave of Christ?

That means that as best you can, because it'll be different every year because we we learn more, we grow more, we surrender our hearts to Christ.

We start with just surrendering our hearts to Christ.

So, Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus that are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons.

You're a saint, church, he calls you a saint.

You're a saint.

Can you believe that?

You're a saint?

You are, you're a saint.

Not because of what you've done, but because of what he's done.

Not because of your perfection, but because of your position.

You see, you'll never be perfect enough, you'll never be good enough.

But in the position that Christ has given, you are fully forgiven of all your sins, past, present, and future, and you're a saint.

Be a saint.

You're a saint because you is a saint.

You a saint because Jesus says you're a saint.

Not because your life is all that great.

Because I know the story.

Man, if you saw what I did this week, if you if you could have seen what I've been up to this week, no way you'd call me a saint.

Well, I'm not calling you a saint.

Jesus is calling you a saint.

So I blame it on him.

And he says, you're a saint in Christ Jesus.

Because of what he did, not what you did, but because of what he did, get ready for what you're gonna do.

Because it's gonna be exciting.

Because Christ working in you is the joy that birth is happiness in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit.

You're a saint.

Men and women, every one of you are a saint if you've accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, if you're trying to walk in Him.

And I say try because, man, it's two steps forward, one step back, right?

It is, it is.

And so what, and part of sanctification, part of growing in Christ, is not our perfection, but it's understanding our position, it's understanding who we are and saying that back to the devil.

Because sometimes you gotta say back to the devil, get out of here.

Would you get out of here with those thoughts?

Would you get out of here with that old scripting?

I am now born again.

I'm a child of God, I'm a saint in Christ because Jesus said it.

Whether I feel it or not.

It has nothing to do with your feelings.

Because, man, sometimes I feel it.

Woo! And it's exciting, and it's just, and Liz likes me on those days.

You know?

But man, there's some other days where I'm a drag.

I'm a bummer to be around.

So, so I mean that does that mean I'm not a saint on those days?

That's why I believe in eternal security.

That's why I believe that once saved, always saved.

When you give your heart to Christ, you're saved.

Because man, if you're not, then I don't know what point you're not.

Because I have a lot of points where it seems like I'm not.

Because I'm not in a good mood, that means I'm not saved.

Because I my while Liz and I had an argument, and I'm not saved?

No.

I'm saved because of what Jesus did, and I'm a saint because of what Jesus did at Calvary, and nothing changes that.

Now here's the problem.

The problem is that we haven't discovered the joy that comes through the intimacy of loving God with all of our heart.

So then we live in the marshes of that old life doing the same stuff we used to do, and we're just missing out.

It's like the guy who's a stowaway on the ship and he eats his little crackers and cheese in a barrel so nobody discovers him.

And one day one of the stewards comes along, he opens the barrel and says, What are you doing in here?

He goes, Oh, I kind of snuck my way on board.

And he goes, Oh, what's your name?

Um, Larry Dean.

Okay.

Oh, your name's right here.

You're a passenger.

Why are you in a barrel, man?

Look, we got great meals happening up there in our kitchen.

It's really awesome, man.

This is this is uh a great ship with great food and great opportunity.

You even got a place to sleep.

Why are you sleeping in a barrel?

Some of us are sleeping in a barrel, eating cheese and crackers when Jesus Christ offers us a new home and a new purpose and a new family and chili cook-offs.

You're a saint in Christ Jesus.

Don't forget that.

You need to say that to the devil sometimes.

I'm a saint in Christ Jesus.

Quit treating me like trash.

Get out of here in the name of Jesus.

Cast out that demon.

Because they come.

Well, I don't have any trouble with demons because I'm a believer.

Let me tell you something.

If you're not having some trouble with some demons, you're not doing a whole lot.

Because I can promise you right now that every time you begin to penetrate darkness for a breakthrough in your life, you're going to encounter demons.

So if you're not encountering demons, you're not doing enough.

You're not risking enough.

That's why we like to take risks scared.

I hope you get scared a lot this year.

Because that means you're penetrating new territory.

That means you're you're moving into some stuff you've never done before, and it's kind of scary.

That's good.

The problem with most of us is we get so satisfied with our Christianity that the most important thing happening in our life is who won the Super Bowl.

I couldn't care less about who wins.

I can't even remember who.

I mean, seriously.

I think I know, didn't the Broncos win it a couple years ago?

Right?

I don't know.

I I think New England came back last year from 28 to 3.

Give me two more years, I won't even remember that.

But you know what I remember?

I remember my freshman year at University of Georgia.

And I gave my heart to Christ in a little Lutheran chapel.

I changed everything.

I changed everything.

I became a saint.

I became a saint.

You can become a saint.

And as you walk in that sainthood, that's where the joy is.

Grace to you, verse 2, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

This word grace means unmerited favor.

It means that you can't earn it.

You don't deserve it.

You can't be holy enough.

You can't be good enough.

It's just God's grace toward you.

It's unmerited favor.

It's Him just blessing you with new life.

New life in Christ.

Joy in Christ.

That's what grace is.

And so there was a man named John Newton.

Many of you have heard of John Newton.

If you saw the 2006 movie Amazing Grace, you see a little bit about him and William Wilberforce.

John Newton was born into a Christian home in England in the 1700s.

He was orphaned at six, given to a relative who was a sea captain of slave ships.

So at 11 years old, he was on slave ships.

He learned how to run a slave ship.

It became his means of income with slave ships.

And one day, on a slave ship, as a young man, they hit a big storm.

And in that big storm, he realized he was about to die and he called out to God.

He remembered his Christianity from way back when he was a little kid, and he called out to God, and God stilled the storm, and he wrote Amazing Grace.

Well, for the next few years, he continued to be a sea captain and continued in the slave trade.

But then God began to convict him.

God began to work in his heart and he began to see the sinfulness and the cruelty and the injustice of slavery.

He wrote a little pamphlet, a little tract called Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade.

It became a huge hit and went all over England.

All of Parliament read Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade.

Here's one quote from that.

It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.

And working with William Wilberforce in 1807, the Slave Trade Act was put in as law, and the slave trade was ended in England in 1807.

In December of that year, John Newton went to be with the Lord.

John Newton's hymn, Amazing Grace, is estimated to be performed 10 million times annually and has appeared on over 11,000 albums.

Grace.

Amazing grace.

How sweet the sound that saved a wretch.

And John Newton understood that, like nobody else, like me.

I once was lost, but now I'm fine.

I once was blind, but now I see.

Isn't that exciting?

You have amazing grace.

And then he says, grace and peace.

He says, Grace and peace.

You know what peace is?

Peace is the result of grace.

Listen, you can't have peace, the peace of God, until you have peace with God.

Until you have peace with God, the peace of God is just a theory.

But when we start to have peace with God, and that means surrendering our heart to Jesus Christ, we start to have the peace of God.

And when we have the peace of God, the grace of God comes alive within us.

And then it becomes amazing grace.

I've heard amazing grace sung in a bar.

Everybody knows amazing grace.

But here's the deal: we don't understand how amazing it is until we realize what wretches we are without it.

We're all on that journey and that peace and grace to a relationship with Jesus Christ is the starting point.

The starting point of true joy.

But I would be remiss if I didn't give you the opportunity here this morning to receive Christ.

If you've never surrendered your life to Christ, and I'm not talking about religion and I'm not talking about churchianity, I grew up in the church.

Men and women, I was in the church nine months before I was born.

I was baptized in a dress.

But I was born into a godly family, a Christian family, and a pastor's family, but I didn't know Jesus.

I didn't have a personal relationship with Christ.

Some of you have come out of a Christian background, a churchy background, and you know you're long on religion and short on relationship.

So let's bow our heads right now.

And if you'd say, Steve, I don't know where I stand with Christ.

I'm not sure if I have peace with God.

But I want peace with God because I want to experience the peace of God and I want that unmerited favor that comes from amazing grace.

So if you'd like to receive Christ, and you'd like to, or, or just surrender your life completely to become a bond slave of Christ for the first time, just flip up your hand.

I want to pray for you.

Flip up your hand.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

So, Father, in the name of the blood of Jesus, we surrender our lives to you.

We make a choice to be a bond slave.

God, we want amazing grace, how sweet the sound, to echo through the chambers of our heart.

As we sing now, Lord, we pray, Holy Spirit, come.

Move with love and power.

In the name of Jesus.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.