We Are Lights in the World

Philippians chapter 2, we're looking at verses 12 through 18.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

So where are we coming out of?

Paul has just kind of shown us this unveiled secret of Christ, that he humbled himself to become a servant and to be obedient even to the point of death, death on a cross.

And he showed us that that unveiled mystery of Christ's humility is the key for us as Christians living in community with one another to be able to humbly serve one another so that we might be unified and be able to be found steadfast in our faith under trials and persecution.

He kind of gave us this key to Christian perseverance, right?

And it's all rooted in the gospel of what Jesus has accomplished for us in his death, burial, and resurrection.

And so Paul contends to be unified, to be humble as Christ was humble.

But then he said this.

He said that the mind of Christ, which is yours in him, does this.

And he said, he humbles himself, he becomes like a servant, he's obedient, all these things.

And so we talked about how this mind, this transformed, renewed mind, is ours in Christ Jesus.

We have to lay hold of that, lay claim to that, and apply it to our life because it's a gift given to us by the finished work of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so we can be a community who's unified because we're not seeking our own selfish ambition or self-interest, right?

Because we are walking in humility, in service toward one another, seeking the betterment of others before ourselves, we can be unified.

Well, Paul is going to stay on this theme of unity, but he's going to come at it from a different angle.

Because what we have to understand in context, which it's kind of hard for us to understand in our American Christian culture, but around the world, this is true of them also.

To be a Christian costs you something significant.

There are brothers and sisters around the world who are being massacred, martyred, just because they confess to believe in Jesus.

They are not safe.

They have to go underground and have church in hidden places and secret spaces.

And we don't understand that.

We get the joyful privilege of coming here without any persecution.

And many of us don't even choose that, right?

I think you you persevered through the rain, the darkness, the temptation to stay under the covers.

You came this morning.

Comfort does not own you.

I appreciate that.

But for many believers, to be able to gather together like this, it literally could cost them their life.

If you read the news at all, there's major persecution going on in Africa where there are Nigerian Christians who are being slaughtered.

Thousands this year have been killed in Africa because they confessed the name of Jesus by radical Muslims.

Now I'm thankful we don't have to face that here and now, but we have to read in context of what's happening here within the text.

There's this persecution that's happening because these people are confessing Jesus.

And there's this emperor named Nero who is in uh in command of Rome at this point in time, and he was one of the most ruthless persecutors of the faith.

I mean, we can go into the stories of how he lit Christians on fire to just light up his garden as he threw parties, or as he sowed them into dead animals while they were still alive so that other beasts could eat them or sawn in half from the bottom to the top.

We can talk about all the vicious ways he persecuted the church.

What Paul is writing to is a church facing trials and persecutions.

Some severe as the ways that Nero would martyr them, some just their families disowned them and cast them out.

Some they were facing persecution and trying to be carried off into another belief or a false gospel, right?

And so Paul's writing to a church that needs to be unified because their steadfastness, their perseverance depends on it.

And so as we come into chapter 2, verses 12 through 18, we look at the very first two verses, 12 through 13, and we see this.

God works in us so that we can work out our salvation.

God works in us so that we can work out our salvation.

Flowing from the unveiled truth in the previous passage, Paul is going to call us to a continued obedience to the Word of God.

He says, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence.

He understands the necessity of these believers to be matured in the image of Christ of which they are being renewed in, right?

There's a maturity that needs to take place.

And Paul's letters are littered with this growing up in our faith to be more Christ-like.

See, the kind of final endeavor of the Christian faith is this pursuit of where we are becoming formed into the image of Jesus, which was given to us, the image of God given to us in the garden, but marred because of our sin, is being renewed in us by the Spirit, so much so that when we are in glory, 1 Peter says that we will be like him.

We will perfectly, holy, gloriously reflect the image of Jesus that was placed upon us in God's good creation.

Paul also stresses the urgency to do so in absence.

He says, not only ends in my presence, but much more in my absence.

Work out your salvation.

Whether he is able to labor alongside them to that end, or he does so from a distance, he stresses the importance of their maturity for their collective good.

All of this instruction still resides in light of unity to be found steadfast in their faith.

And then Paul goes into this next section.

He says, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

This is probably one of the most abused and misused passages of scripture out of all of them.

Because what we've done is this.

We've taken this language, right?

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

And we've applied a Western worldview around that text.

And we've infused it with all kinds of individualism and relativism.

So here's how we've typically understood this text.

Whatever is convicting for you, or whatever is resounding truth for you, you should embrace that and then work it out with fear and trembling.

However, that might not be for me.

We have this high sense of individualism and autonomy, and we have this high sense of relativism that we're even unaware of resides in us, but because we've been raised in a Western worldview and ideology, it is ingrained in the way that we think.

And then we read that worldview onto the scripture and it perverts it, it twists it to mean something that it actually never meant in the first place.

We hyperfocus on the language of your own and fuse it to our ideology of individualism.

It's a false and often dangerous lens of interpretation that has more to do with our Western worldview than a biblical one.

To interpret this correctly, we have to link it to what proceeds it in the text, for it is, right?

He says, Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God.

It is God.

What is it?

Paul is speaking to a community of people.

He's not speaking to an individual, he's speaking to a community that he is absent from, but his heart longs to be with.

And what is his instruction?

Even in my absence, much more so in my absence, continue obeying and work out your collectively, y'all salvation in fear and trembling.

This is not individualism, this is not relativism, this is a collective effort of the body of Christ, submitting to the word of God in righteous obedience.

Why?

Because it is God who works in us.

Because it is God who works in us so that we might work out the reality of our salvation.

Here's what maturing as a Christian means.

In Christ, because you have believed in him, in his death, burial, and resurrection for the forgiveness and atonement of your sin, there is a supernatural reality that has been applied to you: perfect righteousness, right standing with God, justified against the law, and you have eternal life given to you because of this.

But that reality is somewhat transcendent.

We live in this tendency or this tension of the already, not yet.

And so maturing in Christ is to see that reality become evident in your person.

The righteousness that Christ has given you, his perfect righteousness lived out within you, that gives evidence to the faith you confess to be true.

How do we know that you are a Christian?

Because the fruit of the Spirit is on you, is manifested out of you, in your actions, in your obedience.

That's how we have evidence that you truly are Christian, belonging to Christ.

What we cannot do is have a view where what Paul's doing is trying to get us to add something to our salvation.

So when he says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, he's not saying that we get to add anything to it as if the finished work of Jesus was insufficient in some way, and we have to add good works to it to make it proper or right or whole.

No, what he's saying is that there's a reality where Christ has justified you.

What does that mean?

He has legally declared you innocent before the Father.

Justified.

But there's another aspect of the Christian life: sanctification.

So we have justification.

You are legally declared innocent before God the Father, the eternal, holy judge of the cosmos.

But the sanctification of the Christian is the power of the Spirit working with you as you pursue obedience to see that image of Christ formed in you perfectly.

And Paul is talking about the sanctification of the Christian life.

The sanctification of the Christian life.

It's a maturing.

And Paul is stressing to a community of gospel-shaped people to work out that salvation of which God has worked in you already.

And this working out should be done in fear and trembling.

This doesn't mean to cower under the tyrant reign of a wrathful God.

You're outside of his wrath.

You're outside of his condemnation.

You are outside of his vengeance against unrighteousness because you are in Christ.

Now you are under his blessing.

You are under his favor.

You are under the inheritance that Christ has earned through his perfect obedience.

You are under him as father, not a tyrant.

And so what does this fear and trembling mean?

It means awe and reverence toward the one who has made you a citizen of his kingdom.

We should have a holy fear.

The fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom, Proverbs says.

To fear him, to have awe and reverence of him, of his power, but to realize that you in Christ are one of his children.

And Paul says this.

So what is he summarizing?

We are to obey, hear and listen to the commands of God and the truth of the gospel.

We're to work out, produce, or accomplish the maturity of faith in the conformity of Jesus, while fear and tremble, having reverence for the one who ultimately produced our justification, our right standing for us, so that we fully realize what?

Salvation.

So we're to obey, hear and listen.

We are to work out the active faith while fear and trembling in awe and reverence to the Lord, so that we might fully realize salvation.

And what is that?

It's a complete recovery from the disease of sin, a release from its captivity.

Isaiah prophesied about the Messiah who would come.

And he said that by his wounds we would be healed.

And there's a lot of uh garbage theology that have tried to apply that to all kinds of different physical ailments or even uh empty bank accounts.

And that's not what it's meant to.

Yes, we do believe that we will taste and see uh uh glimpses of God's healing power in us.

The healing, physical healing ministry of Jesus was evident in him and still resides within the church to some nature, and we believe in glory we will be fully free of sickness and disease that is physical in nature.

Yet Peter, in his letter, helps to clarify what the prophet Isaiah meant.

And he says that it is the disease of sin of which his heat his wounds have healed us.

Church, we're to work out collectively as a body of believers to see the fullness of that salvation realized in us.

For what purpose?

For God's good pleasure.

It's as simple as that.

Why should we do this?

It's for his glory, for his good pleasure, for the purpose that God has for us to will and to work for his good pleasure, Paul says.

Ephesians 2.10 shows us this.

For we are the workmanship, right?

He works in us, created in Christ Jesus for what?

Good works.

God works in us so that we might work.

Which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Well, God has ordained your footsteps for good works, and he has then saved you and picked you up and placed you in that path of righteousness, that you might walk out the good works he gave to you before the foundations of the earth.

That is how sovereign he is.

That is how powerful he is, omnipotent.

That he destined you for good works, then he saves you and places you to walk them out.

We are called to work out what God has worked in us.

We're not being called to life that best suits our own idealistic sense of the Christian life or to personalize our convictions and morals.

The call is to both each of us and all of us to be found mature in Christ through obedience to the Father as we tremble before his throne.

An individual and a collective realization of the fullness of salvation that God has already worked in us through Jesus.

Verses 14 through 15, we see this.

Internal divisions create external consequences.

Internal divisions create external consequences.

The work that we are being called to will need to be done without grumbling or creating disputes among us.

This is what Paul says: do all things without grumbling and do not create disputes.

There's still a primary call for unity here.

If we're missing that, that's what Paul is helping us emphasize.

Unity, because grumbling and petty arguments, that's what disputes means, creates division within the church.

Unity that not only helps us to be found steadfast in the face of our trials, but that shines a light onto the very ones who are putting us through it.

Grumbling denotes this dissatisfied complaining against other people.

To complain about your brother or sister is a message to the world around us that we are in disunity.

When they hear this language spoken, this grumbling and murmuring and complaining against one of our own brothers and sisters, it is a message to the world that we are in disunity.

If the world has one major accusation against the church, it's that we are so divided and in such disunity.

And we foster that.

This language speaks more to a person who would rather complain about a brother or sister than in love.

Help them to work out the maturity that they are called to.

To go to them in love.

Correction, encouragement, admonition, grace.

Rather than run to another with murmuring, griping, grumbling, complaining.

It's a simple question.

Do you love your brother?

Then go to them.

Don't go to someone else.

Don't let your mouth be filled with grumbling.

If you love your brother, go to them.

Why?

Because you are called to walk with them and they're maturing into the image of Jesus by grace.

Do you love them?

Go to them.

If you're going to someone else to complain about another person, all you're doing is showing that the love that you claim to have for the church is disingenuous in that moment.

Dietrich Bonhoeff, he was a martyr for the church during the World War II era.

He died in a concentration camp, and he wrote a book called Life Together.

And he had rules about Christian community as he was building underground seminaries and churches within concentration camps.

And one of his rules for Christian community was you were never allowed to talk about anyone else unless they were present before you.

And I don't mean it in like because I don't like you.

I think my love language is making fun of you.

And um, if I don't make fun of you, you should be concerned I don't really like you.

Uh we I say that quite often, but that's not good, that's not healthy in a lot of ways, and in so many ways.

The Bible tells me to put away coarse jesting.

The Bible tells me to lift up a brother with my language, to edify him and encourage him and strengthen him.

That's what it tells me to do.

And that's not happening when they're not in front of me.

And guess what?

When somebody is in front of you, it's a little less, it's a little more difficult to grumble about them.

We would do well to listen to Paul, to love our brother, to do all things without grumbling.

He also says, don't be in disputes.

These petty arguments.

It's another testimony to the world that we're in disunity.

Too often we want to argue about things that really aren't mission critical.

When we think about the things that we argue about within the church, so many of them are not mission critical.

Like, who cares?

I like theological sharpness.

Sacred mission is going to be built around theological sharpness.

We love that, right?

But it's too many times that in that pursuit of theological sharpness, we have built too many hills to die on.

And then we just fight and make uh contention within the body.

And these things aren't even mission critical a lot of the time.

Some of the goofy things that we want to fight about.

I'm not saying we shouldn't pursue truth.

But I'm saying we should be much more filled with grace and understand the things that are mission critical.

Are there things within the church to divide over?

You bet.

Are they as many as you want them to be?

No way.

Not even close.

Not even the things that I love and have passion about.

Man, I make petty arguments and I have created division within the church over things that in the end, man, they're not going to mean anything.

Too often we want to argue about things that are not mission critical.

Or we get people who want to argue about things when their more primary responsibilities are being abdicated.

This is one of my favorite things, right?

So this typically happens around young men.

Young men or or quasi-young-ish men, uh, they want to come and they want to argue about things that aren't mission critical, and their home is a wreck.

Right?

Their marriage is in tension.

Uh uh, their fathering their children is a mess.

You know their finances are out of whack or whatever.

They can't even submit to the primary responsibilities that they have as a man who claims the gospel of Jesus is Lord over his life, and you want to argue about goofy stuff, dude.

Go home and love your wife.

Go home and serve your kids.

Don't come at me with goofy arguments about covenantal paido-communion and all this other junk.

Be a man.

Pastor, protect, provide for your family.

When that's on the table, then we can have a good discussion about your theological distinctives.

Petty arguments and silly questionings lead to unnecessary divisions.

It's as simple as that.

We have these arguments and questionings because we want to divide on too many issues.

The church would be able to be more united if we as a body were committed to dividing on less.

And I have to wrestle with that.

You have to wrestle with that.

Because we love being particular.

The whole drive of this command is for us to have a pure witness to the world around us.

He says that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.

As the world looks on, they will be unable to make an accusation against you that sticks.

They would see the truth of your adoption as sons and daughters being lived out in biblical community, citizens of heaven, belonging to one another.

You see, it's the righteousness of Jesus in us being lived out through us that causes us to shine as lights into the darkness.

And guess what?

The shining of our light burns brightest against the darkest backdrop.

It is us being in culture, in the world, but not of it, shining as lights because of the righteousness of Jesus in us that creates the most brilliance of the Christianity that we confess.

Light shines brightest against the darkest backdrop.

First Peter kind of shows it like this in chapter 2, verse 12, he says, Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable.

Why?

So that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Live your life in such a way that any accusation they even tried to make would not stick.

And their only resolve is actually to glorify God on the day of Christ's return.

That's all they can do.

Because you shined like lights into the darkness.

We have to watch our conduct.

We have to walk in love for one another.

Why?

Because the world's watching.

Our internal divisions create external consequences.

The last section of the text, 16 through 18, we see this: everything is worth it if we persevere.

Everything is worth it if we persevere.

Paul says this, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

Paul sees the fullness of his work in the perseverance of each saint in the local church collectively.

There's only futility in his labor if the saints give up the gospel.

He says, No matter what happens to me, even if the end of his ministry is being put out to death, this being poured out as an offering literally is a libation.

In certain worship practices to false gods, they would pour out drink offerings as a libation, a worshipful offering unto God.

Paul says, if my life is a libation for your ministry, then glory to God.

Hold fast to the gospel.

Don't let me be found at the end of my life laboring in vain.

What would be that vanity?

What would constitute that claim if they let go of the gospel?

Paul's saying, persevere, persevere, no matter what the end of his own condition is, if they are found faithful, he will rejoice.

And then he commanded them to rejoice also.

There's four imperative verbs within this text.

It's work is one of them.

Work out your own salvation.

Do nothing and grumbling and disputes.

These are imperative commands.

So work, do, and then the other two imperative commands are glad and rejoice.

Paul is commanding them be glad and rejoice, no matter what comes my way, no matter what comes your way.

Work out your salvation.

Love the brother, be glad and rejoice.

And so our main idea of this text is this we while rejoicing, work out your salvation in gospel community.

While rejoicing, work out your salvation in gospel community.

There's a reality where we fail to read the Bible in light of community.

How many times when you read the Bible do you pretty much just only think about yourself?

Right?

You're just a selfish, selfish person.

No.

But we do.

We have this lens that we read the scriptures through that is individualistic, it's autonomous.

We don't often read the scriptures in light of community.

But I want to submit to you that all of the Bible is written to community.

All of it is about the ecclesia, the called-out ones of God, of whom his promises are for.

And then he instructs that community of people on how to live in obedience to his word.

That's pretty much how the Bible is set up.

It is set up to be communicated to a community of people.

Perhaps our individualism gives us a clue to why we read the text, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling and such autonomy and individualism and relativism.

Paul's not writing to instruct you, he's writing to instruct us.

A people that shape a gospel community.

It is in this necessary context that we're called to put away grumbling and disputes and to put on gladness and rejoicing, to put to death the things which create individualism.

Right?

If the thrust of this text is still unity, then we have to put to death the things that create distance, disunity, and individualism, and we have to foster within us the very things that create intimacy, community, one another-ness.

That's the call that's being made to us to bring to life the very things which cause you to press in to one another as a body of believers.

The Christian life is challenging.

I don't want to dismiss that.

It's full of hardships and difficulties, let alone as you add in the maturity and sanctification of others.

But this is the call.

This is the call to us as believers who have been saved by the power of the gospel.

You were not just reconciled to Jesus when you were saved, you were reconciled to his people and to his mission also.

You cannot separate those truths.

This is the heart of the text, albeit the heart of the letter.

We've called this sermon series a colony of heaven.

And we want to try to work to help define what is a colony of heaven.

I want to submit to you that it's this: a community united by the gospel of Jesus Christ, joyfully serving one another in humility.

That's a colony of heaven.

A community united by the gospel of Jesus Christ, joyfully serving one another in humility.

So we should cease all grumbling and petty arguments and labor alongside one another to see them mature and produce the evidence of their faith all while rejoicing.

Rejoicing as we are seeing one another hold fast to the gospel, the word of life, no matter what it may cost us personally.

My joy cannot be full unless you win.

We don't see our lives that way.

We see if we win, then we will have joy.

That is so anti-gospel, it is, it is sickening.

That mentality and mindset can remain within the church community.

I don't win.

I have no joy unless you persevere, unless you win, unless you mature in Christ.

And so what does that mean?

I have to labor alongside of you.

My joy depends on it.

Many of us, though, we allow disunifying behavior to draw us away from the very community that we've been called into.

And we're drawn away into a selfish existence that fails to communicate the truth and beauty of the gospel to a watching world.

This is the fruit of grumbling and petty arguments.

We allow them to create distance rather than intimacy, and they cause us to withdraw and be removed from those that we've been called to be near.

Some of us, we allow personal passion to create distance.

We allow personal passion to create distance.

Many of us are passionate people, which causes us to focus acutely on particulars, right?

Some of us we can get so uh uh uh tunnel visioned on particulars, and you see it in the passion in them.

They might have a passion about certain ministries, right?

Or they like the global mission or homeless outreach or you know, whatever whatever you want to call it.

They might have very particular passion about certain ministries, or maybe it's about theological positions.

They have really passionate particularities around theological things, like what what kind of worship should be done in the church, or or how should the preaching be, or, or whatever, right?

We kind of get this tunnel vision around particulars that we're passionate about.

We find ourselves picking petty arguments around tertiary matters that have little to no significant impact on the mission Jesus has called us to.

We have misdirected passion that fuels disputes more than it fuels gospel mission.

Certain ministries, like I said, it could be all kinds of different things.

And as a leader, uh as a pastor, you get hit with like, why don't you guys have this, or why don't you have that ministry, or why aren't you guys focused around this particular thing?

Hey, awesome.

I'm so glad you have a passion about that.

That doesn't mean that that has to be our passion.

And if you want to make that such a passion-filled particular, there's gonna be a temptation to create petty arguments and disputes that cause division.

Praise the Lord that He's given you a passion for that ministry, for that focus.

But don't allow that to cause disputes when others don't equally share it.

I want to celebrate someone within our church, uh, Nikki Smith.

She's doing a freestale here soon.

And she came to me and said, Hey, this is a passion of mine.

I said, Awesome, I don't share it.

She said, Great, that's okay, right?

I don't have to put on a freestale.

You know what Nikki did?

She stepped up.

She didn't allow that passion to create petty arguments of why don't you have this?

I'm so focused, I'm so zealous for this thing.

She said, I'll step up and take the responsibility to see it happen because she understands that she's called to minister.

She's called to be the church in her own ways.

We're called to equip, not do.

That's us as elders.

We are called to equip the saints for the working of ministry.

That means the saints then are called to do.

She's stepping up and putting on this freestyle, all but I ain't I ain't helping her.

I think if anything, I'm probably hindering more than helping.

But what a celebration it is to see a member who has a particular passion not allowed to create disputes within the church, but step up and see it be done through their own effort.

What about theological issues?

You want to dispute over very particular theological issues?

It's so funny to me.

Here's a great example.

I was at an Acts 29 uh coffee thing for pastors, and this dude came in and he wanted to tell us that we don't do biblical worship.

And I'm like, okay, well, what's biblical worship?

Right?

And his thing of biblical worship is he he sings um really bad songs and then he uh and he played and he only plays them on the piano.

That's it.

That's his view of biblical worship.

I said, so we don't do biblical worship, but you do, and the piano was invented when?

Like that it just logically doesn't line up, right?

But he wanted to make it a petty argument of division.

And so he was setting himself apart from all these other Acts 29 pastors because he wanted to be so hard-nosed and passionate around a particular that had no critical emphasis to the gospel mission.

And guess what?

He's not doing so great.

And that's okay, whatever.

If that's what he wants to do, if that's the hill he wants to die on, die on it, brother.

I don't think it's worth it.

I don't think it's worth creating disunity in the body over some tertiary, albeit wrong, theological distinction.

Too often personal passion leads to petty arguments.

We can't allow for that.

We can't allow it to create distance.

If the fruit of our passion is isolation and distancing ourselves from gospel community, then we need to seek the Spirit to give us humility, fundamentally.

The primary sign of unhealthy spirituality is distance being created from community.

Us as elders, that's the first flag that we see.

Anytime someone is distancing themselves from gospel community, it is the primary sign out of all health metrics that something's wrong.

Why?

It's what we're called into.

And there's only unhealthy matters, typically, that create that distance.

That create us to pull away, to draw away.

I'm not saying there's not times where we need a break.

I'm not saying there's not times where we need intentional rest.

I'm not saying that there's not a season of life where like just you've got to get some things in order so that you can kind of recalibrate and do things.

But I'm saying if that's the propensity, if that's the heart behind it, something is critically wrong.

Others of us we allow personal preference to create distance.

Personal preference to create distance.

Often this posture is more concerned about their traditions and certain practices than they are the maturing and steadfastness of believers around them.

And this typically works itself out in grumbling.

Grumbling over the point, that they don't do it a certain way that you prefer, that they grew accustomed to over the years, something they valued and treasured, all the way that we used to do music, or the way that we used to do Sunday school, or the way that the carpet used to look.

We can all be tempted to grow to love or value something, and when it's taken away or changed, we kind of can be left just grumbling about it.

This often leads people to draw away from community because they can't reconcile what it is with what it was.

And since the idea of them never having that again remains, what do they do?

They pull away as they let the current take the rest of the church on without them.

But if we're honest, the things we might find often about ourselves grumbling the most, they're not mission critical.

Again, they served a time and a purpose, yes.

But the absence of them doesn't mean we've aborted the cause.

In fact, many of the things we want to hold on to are the very reasons we aren't experiencing new spiritual growth in the first place.

So what do we do?

We just grumble.

And in that grumbling, we stir disunity and cause the church overall to suffer.

Whether through passion that leads to disputes or preference that leads to grumbling, the fruit of them both is disunity.

And disunity jeopardizes the health of gospel community.

And it cripples the testimony of the gospel to the watching world around us.

Church, be glad and rejoice as you humbly serve one another to see the image of Christ mature in them.

Let's put away grumbling and petty arguments and let's live on mission.

Let's share the gospel with our neighbors, our coworkers, our family members.

Let's be about people being saved.

The beauty of the gospel is this: that through closed lips, Jesus died for a gospel community.

Through closed lips, Jesus died for a gospel community.

He did the Father's will without grumbling or disputes.

He was found without a word, as he was relentlessly committed to obedience, silent before his accusers.

Isaiah 53, 7 says this, that he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.

Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

Who had every right to grumble and create disputes?

Would it not be the Son of God?

Who had been made like a servant, born in human flesh, to live a life around people who reviled him and hated him?

Well he's like, okay, God, you sent, you know, Father, you sent me down here to help these people.

They want to stone me.

They want to kill me.

They want to push me off a cliff.

They said I was a bastard child.

They did this, they did that.

Does he have not every right to grumble, to dispute, to dispute the father in the Garden of Gethsemane?

Lord, what is this for?

Father, what is this for?

Could he have not made a petty argument as he pursued obedience?

But what did he say?

Not my will, your will be done.

Even more so, he was hung on a tree, removed from the core of society.

And through that distant sacrifice, he'd make an intimate community of people for himself.

He would not die for an individual, but for a church.

A church who would be united and able to remain steadfast.

John 17, 11, Jesus says this, and I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you, Holy Father.

Keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

Unified.

How are we going to be united?

In the gospel.

What does the gospel unveil to us?

To humbly serve one another in joy.

He humbled himself to serve us.

He became the lowest that we might be exalted with him.

His life was given to serve the needs of a fallen and sin sick humanity.

Mark 10, 45 shows us, for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.

And to what?

To give his life as a ransom for many.

Without grumbling, without disputes, Jesus humbly served us that we might know his salvation.

And so the gospel vision for us as a church community is that we would reflect, to truly reflect, a colony of heaven.

What is a colony of heaven?

It's a community united by the gospel of Jesus Christ, joyfully serving one another in humility.

This is our aim.

The rest of the letter Philippians will help us to understand that and apply that to our life.

This is our endeavor to reflect this truth within us.

Sacred mission will be a church united.

Because we are humbly serving one another in community, because we are putting away grumbling and disputes, because we are pursuing mission together.

Amen.