Philippians: Humility with Fearlessness | Guest Speaker: David Russ

My name is uh David Russ, and I'm one of the elders here at uh Christ the Redeemer.

Uh for bonus confusion, my last name is Russ, and our pastor's first name is Russ, but so I'm not the if you came here expecting to see Russ Masterson, I'm not the Russ you you came here for.

Um I'm not a pastor, I'm an engineer.

Uh so if you ask me what I do for a living, I'll give you an answer that's incomprehensible and boring.

Uh and I'm definitely not a professional Christian.

Uh I found as I was preparing this message, this message is for me as much as it is for anyone here.

So so being an engineer and thus a geek, uh, one of my favorite books and movies is Lord of the Rings.

And hopefully, I hope most of y'all have seen this because this illustration is gonna go completely over your heads if you haven't seen it.

Um, in the in the in the book Lord of the Rings, there's this massively evil creature called Sauron, and he's made this ring of power, and this ring of power is gonna conquer the world.

And so they have to destroy the ring of power.

And of course, as you might guess in the story, come to find out the ring is pretty much indestructible, so they've got a dilemma.

So the only way to destroy the ring is to carry it into the land of Mordor and drop it into the flames of Mount Doom.

Okay, I didn't make these names up.

Jared Tolkien made these names up.

Okay.

And and so I everything, so there's these little these little guys call hobbits, and one of the hobbits named Frodo, it's his job to carry the ring into Mordor and drop it into uh Mount Doom.

They've decided that rather than send the whole army to do this, they're just going to send these two little hobbits, and everything else that happens in the book, there's wars, there's uh defeats, there's victories, there's love, there's romance, everything else that happens is really a diversion to distract Sauron from the fact that these two little hobbits are sneaking in to destroy the ring.

So one of the hobbits, the guy who gets to carry the ring is named Frodo, and he's got a companion named Sam, Sam Gamgee, or Sam Wise Gamge.

And and um, so Frodo, you know, pretty much gets top billing, right?

It's his job to carry the ring, and he's the ring bearer, and everybody's focused on him, everybody's rooting for him.

And there's this guy standing next to him who just kind of disappears in the shadows named Sam.

And what's cool is that Sam is perfectly happy.

He's quite happy not to be carrying the ring, okay?

And he's quite happy not being the center of attention.

He doesn't want to be the center of attention, okay?

And yet he's completely fearless.

A giant spider shows up, Sam attacks it, orcs show up, Sam attacks it.

He's completely fearless, okay?

And what I think is cool about it is we think of humility and fearlessness as being total opposites, right?

We think of humility like Mother Teresa humility, right?

We think of fearlessness like uh Jason Bourne is being fearless, right?

We think of them as opposites.

But Sam is both humble and fearless at the same time, okay?

And our our passage today, uh, but and by the way, uh Tolkien himself, Gerard Tolkien himself said that he thought that Sam was actually the chief hero of the book.

Okay.

So we're gonna we're gonna look at that today in the passage that we have that uh Sam uh read for us.

Um and um this passage that we're gonna look at talks about reconciliation through humility, and then it talks about fearlessness through prayer.

So we're gonna talk about those things, and then we're gonna circle back because there's a danger if you if you look at it just uh what it says in isolation, there's a danger that it's just more law, more checklist.

We'll circle back and look at those themes in the in the light of the gospel.

So we're gonna start by looking at uh reconciliation through humility.

Um Paul begins in our passage today by asking Euodia and Syndecchi to agree in the Lord.

Now, these are two very close companions to Paul.

Um the church in Philippi was started among a group of uh women that met down by the riverside.

Okay, so it's it's a safe bet that these women were part of that group that met down by the riverside.

So these are these are founding members of the church, and they're also leaders in the church.

Paul says they're fellow laborers in the gospel.

And by the way, for a first century man to talk about women as being fellow laborers with him is an astounding show of love and respect.

We don't know why they're fighting.

In fact, uh they will forever be known as the two ladies in Philippi who were fighting.

When we meet them in heaven, it'll be interesting talking to them because that's all we know about them, is that they're fighting.

They have something, they have a conflict of some kind.

But Paul says some things about them that are going to help their situation.

Okay.

When Paul says, I entreat you to agree in the Lord, he actually says, I entreat you to be of the same mind.

Okay, that's what he means by agree.

Earlier in this book, in Philippians chapter 2, Paul says that believers should be of the same mind.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

And in 2.5, he said, believers should have the same mind, which is the mind of Christ.

And when he talks about the mind of Christ in Philippians 2, there's that passage where Christ emptied himself.

What the mind of Christ means is to empty yourself of claims of privilege, empty yourself in humility and service to others.

And that's how you then become exalted in the gospel.

And so what Paul says here, uh, he says that they should be of the same mind.

And then in verse 5, he says, uh, let your reasonableness be evident to all.

Okay.

You know, one of the things you do when you're an amateur like me and you're preparing for a sermon is you look all the words up in the Greek, okay?

So I got my logos app out on my phone and I looked up all the words in the Greek, okay?

And this one's really cool.

Most of the time you look up the word and it just means the same thing, you know?

This one's really cool.

The word reasonableness here says uh it means in the Greek not being unduly rigorous, being satisfied with less than one's due, forbearance, okay?

It means I deserve this, but I'm gonna choose to settle for less.

I deserve to win the argument, but I'm gonna choose to lose the argument.

I deserve to have the last word, but this time I'm gonna let somebody else have the last word.

That's what forbearance means, or reasonableness.

If there's anything that characterizes Jesus' life on earth, it's that: giving up all his privilege, giving up everything that he deserved so that he could come to earth as a servant and be a servant to others.

Now, I need to I need to hear this, okay?

You uh Davis talked about uh his grandson learning how to share, okay?

We we cling to stuff.

We cling to stuff just to cling to it, right?

We we have so many new parents here in our church, and the the first words that kids learn are dada and mama, and the next word they learn is my, okay?

And uh that that's all of it, that's why I need to hear this, that giving up, giving this up is an option, okay?

And it's such a huge part of reconciliation and living with others.

But Paul doesn't just stop there, he brings in another powerful resource, which are mutual friends.

Okay, he encourages his loyal companion.

Some translations have that as a name, Syzyus.

Uh, and he also talks about Clement.

He asks mutual friends to come in and help them.

Okay, we live in a community.

We live in a community of people who are who can share our burdens and share our perspective.

We live in a community of people who can come and help us when we have conflicts.

I forget that.

I'm a not only am I a guy, okay, I'm an engineer, so I absolutely want to fix it myself and tell others how they can fix their problems, right?

But but this is about living and loving in the community and and and counting on resources of people around us.

Um in fact, the whole thrust of the letter to Paul, living in unity and harmony is like his highest priority for the church.

The word unity occurs all over the place in this letter.

And it's almost like in Paul's mind, if we have unity as a church, we can face just about anything.

But if we don't have unity, if we have conflict, we're lost before we start.

And so uh bringing others in can help with uh conflict.

Now I'm the last person who should tell a positive story about themselves in a in a sermon, but I had something happen in my life that really taught me this lesson very, very hard.

Okay.

Um years ago, when I lived in Florida, I worked for a company and they had uh reserve parking spaces if you were at a certain management level.

A lot of companies don't do that anymore, but but that was a big thing back in the day was to have a reserve parking space.

So I had this reserve parking space that was, say, 20 spaces from the front door, and my boss, he he not only did he have a Corvette, he had the best spot.

He had he was like right next to the front door, okay?

So my boss retired, and the person in charge of parking spaces gave me my boss's parking space.

So I'm I'm like, ooh, I'm I'm cool with that.

I'm parking in the spot next to the closest to the door, that's awesome.

About two weeks go by, and this guy shows up.

And this guy, you gotta know, he's he's that guy, okay?

He's the guy that instantly, when you walk into a room, my blood pressure went up.

He just every time I interacted with this guy, he made me furious.

You know who I'm talking about.

You you have that guy in your life.

This guy, he he shows up and he says, You need to give me your parking space.

Your boss promised that when he ever left, he would give me his parking space, and now he's left, you need to give me his parking space.

Now I can tell you what I thought about doing, okay?

I can tell you.

I thought about telling him to go pound sand.

I thought about telling him, I'll help you park on the moon.

How about that?

You know?

That's what I thought about saying.

I really did.

And for reasons that I don't know to this day, it just occurred to me if I argue with him about our parking place, I am becoming him.

I'm going to turn into that guy if I if I fight this.

And I don't even know why.

I can't, I to this day I can't tell you why, because it's not my nature at all.

I just said, fine, you can have the parking space.

I got his parking space, was maybe ten from the front door, and he got the big parking space.

But what really brought the lesson home was this.

Word got around our whole company what this guy had done.

And everybody's like, oh, you wouldn't believe what this guy's pulled now.

And so they hid a camera in our head lawyer's office, and he called the guy in and demanded his parking space.

And they recorded this and played it at the next all hands meeting.

Okay.

That really happened.

But what that showed me is you're you're gonna be known.

Your reputation's gonna be defined by how you act in those situations.

Okay.

That's uh that's a lot to live up to, and I get that, but I I really I learned that lesson loud and clear.

So, the first part's about reconciliation to humility.

Now we're gonna talk about fearlessness through prayer, okay?

In uh, and I forgot to uh put this here so I can go back to the original passage.

Um, Paul says, um, the Lord is at hand, uh, be anxious, do not be anxious about anything.

If you just stop there, the Lord is at hand, do not be anxious about anything.

That's a tall order for me.

Do not be anxious about anything.

That's it.

That's a tall order.

The phrase, uh, do not be anxious about anything.

Again, I had to look this up, you know.

The phrase uh in the Greek forbids the continuance of an action already habitually going on.

Okay?

And what I mean by that is Paul, the the Philippians weren't just anxious about one thing.

Okay, the Philippians were anxious as a habit over a long period of time, okay?

Um, and uh I that's me, right?

I'm anxious as a habit over a long period of time, right?

To steal a phrase from a Christmas story, I work in worry pretty much like Picasso worked in oils, okay?

Um and Paul gets right to it.

The cure for habitual anxiety is habitual prayer, okay?

It really is not rocket science.

And I would know if it was.

Um He uses three different words here.

He says, uh, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

By prayer is just a religious term meaning worship or devotion.

So prayer, the word prayer here means uh thanking God for who he is or reflecting on who God is and how great he is.

Um the last part with thanksgiving, uh, that means thanksgiving.

That means gratitude.

And gratitude, just by itself, just gratitude alone, is a powerful cure for both anxiety and pessimism.

If I get to the place where I can thank God for my circumstances, then I've already gotten to the place where I'm seeing God's hand and orchestrating my circumstances.

And by supplication is just talking about personal needs.

Asking God to, asking the God of the universe to come down into our lives and intervene in something that's going on in our lives.

That's what that's what supplication means.

This principle is so simple and so direct.

And and uh some people think that uh supplication, that maybe adoration is a higher form of prayer, and supplication is a lower form of prayer, and maybe you should spend all your time in adoration.

Um but it's interesting.

Um Jesus, when he when Jesus was facing the greatest crisis of his life and he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he offered up a prayer.

And the prayer that he offered was a prayer of supplication.

Okay?

So there's nothing wrong with supplication, there's nothing wrong with thinking that you need to have more adoration in your life than supplication.

The other thing is we think maybe we should only bring big requests to God.

You know, God's got a whole universe to run.

So maybe we should only, like, if somebody's help, you know, somebody's life, somebody's marriage, but but like finding a parking place, maybe that's kind of like below his radar or something.

Well, I was reading uh C.

S.

Lewis's book about prayer, Letters to Malcolm, chiefly concerning prayer, and C.

S.

Lewis said this: Perhaps, as those who do not turn to God in petty trials will have no habit or such resource to help them when great trials come.

So those who have not learned to ask him for childish things will have less readiness to ask him for great ones.

Paul says, in everything, present your requests to God.

It's pretty straightforward.

And it's healthy for us to put whatever is in our hearts before God.

That's healthy for us, whether we think it's big or small.

Because when we're putting everything before God in supplication, it's actually a statement of radical dependence.

It's saying that I'm depending on God to find the parking place, no less than depending on God to help me uh in my marriage.

So Paul's saying we should reflect on who God is, we should thank him for what he's done, and in that context, we should bring requests before him.

The principles are actually pretty straightforward to understand.

Uh, what happens when you do that?

Uh does God sort of magically answer the prayer and everything's good?

No, no, actually, that's not that's not what God is promising here.

Um the Philippians had anxiety as a habit.

It's something they were doing over a period of time, okay?

And what God promises here is something that's gonna be with us.

Uh what's promised here is uh you will have the peace of God that will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Guard your heart like a troop of soldiers guarding a place of importance.

So that peace is is gonna last and have duration.

Okay?

Um God doesn't promise an answer to prayer, but he does uh promise peace.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus prayed, Father, take the cup from me, God didn't answer his prayer.

But God did give him the peace and the courage to face the trial that he was about to face.

So now I need to come up for air for a second, okay?

You really don't need me to stand up here and tell you that you should worry less and pray more, okay?

I don't need me to stand up here and say I should be humble more and I should pray more and all this kind of stuff, right?

If you're like me, I've got this voice that tells me every single time when I'm being a jerk and when I'm being gutless.

Okay, I don't need somebody to stand up and say you're being a jerk and you're being gutless.

I get it.

Okay?

The danger here, there's a huge danger here.

If you just take the words we've talked about and just look at this passage by itself, what you have is more obligation, more law, more checklist stuff, more things you have to do, more things on your to-do list.

Okay?

The gospel is not a to-do list.

The gospel is an already done list, okay?

Um, Paul says in this in this context, again, in this same, in this very letter, Paul says back in Philippians 3, for Christ's sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.

That is not depending on a checklist for self-salvation, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, depending by faith on Christ's finished work for salvation.

The Christian life is not about becoming righteous.

The Christian life is about being declared righteous.

It's not about doing something to earn salvation.

It's about already being saved and living your life out of gratitude for what's already happened.

Anything that sounds like a command in Paul's letters is in the context of grace.

It's not something you have to do to be saved, it's gratitude for having been saved.

And even more than that, God actually gives us the resources.

God gives us the power to do whatever sounds like a command.

And one of the founding principles of our church, we state that grace does not motivate spiritual growth.

Grace animates spiritual growth.

And an English revivalist put it this way, and this is such a great, great little poem.

It's in the bulletin.

He said, um, run, John, and work, the law commands, yet finds me neither feet nor hands.

But sweeter news the gospel brings, it bids me fly and lends me wings.

Okay?

So the gospel gives us the power to carry out what's in Scripture.

When we focused on Jesus' finished work on the cross, when we focus on that, we see that we are sinners and that we can't possibly change ourselves.

And by the way, that guy at work, he's pretty much in the same boat, right?

He's also a sinner and he can't change himself.

The gospel forces us to see our helplessness and it forces us to take our eyes off ourselves and put them on someone else.

I can let go of what I think I deserve because God's already given me everything I could possibly need.

When we focus on Jesus' finished work on the cross, we know that we've authoritatively been declared righteous in his sight and declared his children.

And that declaration supersedes any other declaration we could possibly have in our life.

When the world declares, you're ugly, the gospel says, that God says in the gospel, I'm declaring you righteous and I love you.

When the boss says, you're useless, God says, I'm declaring you righteous and I love you as my adopted child.

When we see it like that, when we have that status, that declaration that the world cannot reverse, we're playing with the house's money.

We're totally playing with the house's money.

We can't lose.

We're way ahead of the game, okay?

Fear no longer constrains us.

Fear no longer forces us to act in self-protection because we have nothing to lose.

Okay?

I'm trying really hard here not to lay on a guilt trip.

It's almost impossible to preach through this passage and not lay on a guilt trip.

And I'm trying really hard not to do that.

Because all this stuff is so much easier said than done.

You know, putting others ahead of ourselves, constantly praying, living a life of fearlessness, it's just not easy to do.

Our lives are so curved inward.

Our whole life is not going to be enough to get that uncurled and get outward.

So, so, you know, I let's let's try it like this.

Don't try thinking, I have to be humble.

Try thinking, in Christ, I can allow the other person to win this time.

Don't try thinking, I have to stop worrying.

Try thinking, in Christ, I can present what's on my heart to a loving father who wants to hear me.

Okay?

In the gospel, it's not I've got to pray, it's I get to pray.

Okay?

That's the power the gospel provides.

Um and now I've gotten my pages all shuffled up here, and I've got to find the right page because this one I do need to read.

Um, there's a great scene in uh book two of Lord of the Rings.

Um, and it's where uh Frodo and Sam uh are talking about it so the book is a story, right?

And in the middle of the story, these two characters are talking about what would happen if their story ever becomes a story.

It's pretty it's pretty interesting.

It's an interesting scene.

They're talking about what would happen if what we're doing ever gets written into a book.

And so Sam, the I who I think is the big hero, says, I wonder if we'll ever be put into songs or tales.

I wonder if people will ever say, Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring.

And they'll say, Yes, that's one of my favorite stories.

Frodo was really courageous, wasn't he, Dad?

Yes, my boy, the most famous of habits.

That's it, the most famousest of hobbits.

And that's saying a lot.

So Frodo says, You've left out one of the chief characters, Sam Wise the Brave.

I want to hear more about Sam.

Frodo wouldn't have gotten very far without Sam.

Frodo's reaction, I mean, Sam's, Sam's reaction is funny.

Now, Mr.

Frodo, you shouldn't make fun.

I was being serious.

And Frodo says, so was I.

What's so great about this part of the story is this.

Sam is so focused on helping Frodo.

Sam is so focused on their mission, so focused on what they've got to do and how he can take care of his friend that he's not thinking of himself at all.

In fact, he thinks that uh Frodo's joking and being rude when Frodo says that he wouldn't have gotten far without Sam.

But we know it's true.

Frodo really would not have gotten far without Sam.

And that's when I wish I was more like Sam.

So focused on helping others, so focused on the mission, so focused on what God's called me to do, that I've forgotten all about my self-protection, my agenda.

In that state, when I'm when I'm focused outwardly like that, I can face anything.

I can face Mount Doom, I can face whatever trials are in my life.

Now, does that start to sound like someone else?

I hope that starts to sound like someone else.

Someone who gave up everything to become nothing.

Someone who was so focused on redeeming his people that he was willing to accept death, even death on the cross.

Because humility combined with fearlessness is the very essence of Christ-likeness.

And through the power of the gospel, we can have that power in our own lives.

So let's pray.

Father God, we thank you that you had a plan from eternity past to send your Son.

And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you gave up everything to become nothing, to become a servant.

We thank you that when you lived here on earth, you constantly put others ahead of yourself.

At the same time, you depended on your Heavenly Father day by day, hour by hour, and you were fearless.

You spoke truth to power without worrying about the consequences, knowing that it was to achieve your mission, which you accomplished.

We thank you that you've risen from the dead to prove that you have the power, that you have power over death, and you have power in our lives to help us with whatever we're facing.

We pray that the truth of the gospel, that we would, we pray that we could meditate on that, marinate in that, and as we focus on your finished work on the cross, we would see uh humility and fearlessness taking root in our own lives.

In your most holy and precious name we pray.

Amen.