It's All According To Plan - Philippians 1:12-17(Dec 17) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, we truly adore you.

And God, the more that we hear your voice, and the more that we hear you speaking of your son and all that he has done to secure eternal life for us, to secure everlasting joy for us.

God, the more that we hear of all that you reveal to us of your son, the more in awe of you we are.

And so, God, we thank you that in this moment, Lord, this moment that you've predestined before a time began, this moment that you have brought every person in this room that you love so dearly to this place to hear your voice.

God, I pray that we wouldn't miss all that you have to show us.

God, you have a word for us.

And so I pray by the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord, would you drive this word deep, so deep into our hearts, Lord, we need it.

Lord, we need to hear you.

We need to believe your word.

And so, God, we pray for your help this morning.

God, help us.

Help me to preach your word, God, such a task that's so beyond the ability of any human being.

And Lord, help us to receive your word, Lord, the thing that is most truly needed in our life to hear and believe all that you have to say to us as you've revealed to us in your word.

God, help us, we pray.

And God, we pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

You can grab a seat.

And as you take a seat, you can take your copy of God's word.

If you have it with you and open it up to Philippians chapter 1, verse 12 to 17.

Philippians 1:12–17

If you don't have a copy of God's word with you, or you don't own one, the ushers are going to be making their way down the aisle.

And if you stick your hand in the air, they'd love to get one into your hands, and you can consider this our gift to you.

We believe that God has spoken.

In the same way as if he were in this room speaking to you, he has spoken through his book.

And so every Sunday that we meet together, we are digging into God's word and seeing what he has to say to us.

I wonder if you've ever felt like there are certain parts of your life that just haven't gone your way.

It's like, you know, when you plug in a destination into a GPS and it's taking you there, but then all of a sudden, like the GPS just decides it's got a better way, and you you trust the GPS, you take that better way, you find yourself in the middle of the nowhere, nowhere.

The GPS has glitched out, you're on the wrong path.

Life feels like that sometimes, doesn't it?

I'm sure that all of us have looked at our life at times and looked at our circumstances, the circumstances we find ourselves in, and say, and said this.

Well, I've just been dealt a bad hand.

And certainly all of us have had plans for our life, grand, amazing plans that as we think about, we're like, yeah, this is the plan.

And yet we look back over the last maybe months or years, or maybe even our entire life, and can just say, it has not gone according to plan.

Life has a way of taking our plans and turning them upside down on their heads.

And if we're honest, then all of us really feel this, don't we?

To be human is in one sense to be like out of control.

Your life is kind of like this train that is moving, and sometimes you look at it and you're like, I don't know where this is going, and I don't even know if I want to be on this train.

Our life is filled with detours, it's filled with things that we consider to be hindrances.

And at times we find our circumstances to be such hindrances to what we truly want life to be that we just we even question the very path that we're on, wondering if we're going the right way.

Now, dealing with this can look a multitude of different ways, can't it?

Some of us, when life is like this, we get frustrated.

Whether it's frustrated at people or frustrated at ourselves or frustrated at God, we just recognize things aren't going our way, and so we shake our proverbial fists at the heavens and wish things could be different.

For others of us, there's just this kind of undercurrent of just, I don't really trust what God is doing here.

I don't really know, and maybe we'd never phrase it like this, but it's just kind of like this undercurrent, this underlying belief of like, I don't really know if God knows what he's doing in my life.

God wants to speak to us this morning right at that point.

At that point in our life when we look back and we say, Man, how did we get here?

Those circumstances in our life that we look at and we say, Why am I dealing with it?

Like, why can't things just be different?

God wants to speak to our hindrances, to the paths we look at that we consider to be detours.

He wants to speak to our unreal realized plans.

He wants to take us back to these things and apply the healing bomb of the gospel to them.

And so he's gonna do that this morning through his servant Paul.

And in Philippians chapter 1, verses 12 to 17, we we find Paul in a place where he really cannot be more hindered.

Philippians 1:12–17

This is a deaf, I mean, as we consider detours in life, this is a definite detour.

And so let's read it together.

Look at what Paul writes to the Philippian church in chapter 1, verse 12.

He says, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.

So it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.

And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will.

The latter do it out of love, knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel.

The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

What then?

Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

Here we find Paul, perhaps in one of the greatest detours of his life, he's imprisoned.

And at this point, Paul is really, since that time, one of the greatest missionaries the church has ever seen.

And one of the necessities of Paul's ministry missionary activity is that he's able to move.

Now, I don't need to get much into the details of imprisonment to tell you that that's the very opposite of having the ability to move anywhere.

Paul finds himself, the literal Greek word, we're gonna see this in a few moments, the little Greek word is he's in chains.

He's bound, he can't do anything.

And if you think of a man who's really gonna reach the world for the gospel of Christ, Paul is in a situation where he really can't.

It's not the way he envisioned it to go.

It's certainly not the way anyone would envision a successful missionary journey to go.

And yet, in his imprisonment, Paul gains this divine knowledge.

He gains this divine knowledge about the areas of life that we view as hindrances and the spiritual imprisonments that we find ourselves in and our life.

And he learned a few things about hindrances in life, and he wants to share them with us this morning.

And this is where God wants to speak to us in terms of our detours and hindrances and the ways in our life that in which things haven't gone as planned.

The first thing he wants us to understand is this my hindrances can lead to gospel advance.

My hindrances can lead to gospel advance.

Look at what Paul says.

He says, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me, and he's gonna get to what that exactly that is in the next verse, that's his imprisonment.

Literally, the Greek word for that is I'm in chains.

That what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.

Now, there's a play on words here.

This is kind of like an ironic statement.

In the one sense, Paul is imprisoned, he is in chains, he is confined within the walls of this house arrest, he cannot move, and you would expect that so as the minister of the gospel, it is Paul himself, is confined, so then the gospel will also be confined with Paul.

This is the church planter who would go from city to city, preaching the gospel, establishing a church, and then moving to the next city.

And now his movement is totally restricted to this prison, and yet what you find is that instead of the gospel being confined to Paul's movement, that through his imprisonment, the gospel is advancing.

Paul recognizes that what should have hindered the advancement of the gospel actually did the opposite.

It served the advancement of the gospel, Paul says.

And so the first thing I want us to understand here is that hindrances are instrumental to gospel advance.

Let me say that again because I think these are really strong words, that it's a really tough preach to a comfortable, consumeristic society.

But let me say this again: that your life's hindrances, the suffering that you experience, the difficulties that you face in life, the unrealized plans of your life, they are instrumental to gospel advance.

This is what God does.

God is in the business of taking circumstances that are less than ideal, that from all earthly perspectives, you could never understand how advancement could come from the circumstance.

He takes those circumstances and he uses them to advance his purposes.

In fact, we could go as far to say that God will have it no other way.

That your life hindrances are the very foundation that is necessary for the advancement of the gospel.

And so here's how I understand this.

I think about this moment all the time because I think it was pretty scarring for me when I was a you know young boy and a teenager.

But there's that moment all the time where you're lined up on the field, right?

The soccer field, and and a team captain is chosen.

Usually it's like you know, the best looking, best athlet, most athletic ability, team captain is chosen, and they're standing there and they start choosing their team, and one by one they choose the team.

And it's a really humiliating process for people like me who you know, you know, grew up with no athletic ability and then matured to also have no athletic ability.

And so I would always, you know, I my my biggest goal there is like I just, I just like second last would be like glorious for me.

If I get put chosen second last, I'm fist pumping, I'm you know, rubbing it in the face of the guy who got chosen last.

I'm really happy with that.

And what these team captains are doing is trying to assemble the best team.

Now, if God is the team captain and he is choosing people for his team to accomplish his purposes, you know what he's doing?

He is he's not choosing the strongest who are in the circumstances that are best suited to advance his cause.

What God does is he actually does the opposite.

He chooses the weakest people whose circumstances are the worst off to accomplish his mission.

I love this.

Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians.

This is so blatant, okay?

This is like offensively blatant if you're a Christian.

This is what he says in 1 Corinthians.

For consider your calling, brothers.

Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

Like, you know, modern-day translation of that is like it's statistics are very likely that if you were chosen for Christ, you're a fool.

He says, Not many were powerful.

You offended yet?

Not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

This is astounding.

God is choosing the weak.

He is choosing the foolish.

Why?

So that as his kingdom purposes advance in the world, no one can look at the team and say, Oh, well, they just got, you know, exceptional players.

Instead, they look at the team and they say, Well, God must be at work.

Like this is bringing all the glory to God because there's not very many impressive people on the team and they aren't really set up for success.

Then God gets the glory.

You know, at certain times, members of this team to carry on the illustration will start to get strong in and of themselves.

And in 2 Corinthians, you actually find Paul.

Paul has started to kind of get like independent.

Like he started to feel pretty good about himself.

You ever feel like that?

Like in times of life when you're not suffering, you start to think, like, oh man, you know, I can actually do pretty good at I'm doing pretty well at life.

You know, I kind of got these things under control.

And you know what God does?

So backwards.

God gives Paul a thorn in the flesh.

God places this thorn in the flesh.

It's like agonizing to Paul.

Paul is begging God, God, remove this thorn in the flesh.

Like it is impeding my ministry.

It is it is so painful.

Why won't you remove it?

You know what God says to Paul.

My power is made perfect in weakness.

You see, God's team is filled with the weakest people in the worst situation.

But the astounding thing is that as soon as God's team steps onto the field, he obliterates any opposition.

None of his enemies stand a chance.

He's using the weakest people in the worst situations to advance his mission so that all the glory can go to him.

And so here's what's beginning to happen.

If the Holy Spirit is pressing this truth into your life right now, you know what's beginning to happen?

You're beginning to reflect on your life and to look at all the things in your mind that have gone so wrong, and you're starting to see them with the eyes of faith.

You look at that sickness.

That sickness you say has set you back.

And you begin to see that that's an earthly perspective.

And that from God's heavenly perspective, this is crucial to what advances his kingdom purposes.

You look at that difficulty you've had in your marriage, just like that thing you you cannot get over with your spouse.

It has been a constant nagging problem.

You look at that difficulty you have in raising your children.

It's just like it's been constantly a problem.

It's always been there.

You've you've prayed, God, why can't you just take this away?

Why can't it be different?

And you begin to see that these things that you view as hindrances are actually instrumental to serving the advance of the gospel in your life and ultimately and more importantly in the world.

See, what Paul understands here is that that what hindered him, his imprisonment, actually served to advance the gospel so that God's glory was put on display to the watching world.

It actually began to inspire the faith of others.

And there's two groups of people here that Paul recognizes that through his imprisonment became inspired to understand who Christ was.

The first was the Imperial Guard.

You see that in verse 13.

It says, It's become known throughout the whole Imperial Guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.

Now the Imperial Guard was the highest military authority in Rome.

It was a group of 9,000 men who served Caesar, who was the highest political authority.

And you can imagine that if there are 9,000 military men serving one man, at times that these 9,000 men actually were the highest rulers.

There were times where they actually just overthrew the Caesar because they didn't like what he was doing.

And so this was an incredibly authoritative group of men who really, at the end of the day, had put Paul in prison under Caesar's authority.

And yet, as they look at Paul in prison, they do not say, oh, Paul's here because of Caesar.

They've come to recognize that there's even authority over Caesar that's keeping Paul in prison, and that authority is Christ.

And so Paul's in prison, and he's saying, Look, look, the reason why I'm here, you know why I'm stuck here?

It's not these walls.

You know, God has done way more amazing things.

He's broken people out of prison before.

It's not these walls.

I am I am here for Christ.

It is Christ and his authority that is keeping me here.

The Imperial Guard looked at Paul's situation and saw the authority of Christ in the suffering of Paul.

I want you to understand that from the foundation of the church, this has always been what has made Christianity so compelling.

What has made Christianity so compelling from the earliest days of the church is that its followers are willing to suffer for the cause.

In fact, one of the greatest evidences of the reliability of the stories and the gospels we read in the New Testament is the fact that the people who wrote it, most of them died for that belief.

And so there are some people who make this claim of, like, you know, well, everything we read in the Testament is just kind of made up by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Those are historical people, but they're just making up these stories.

And that's all good and fair until you consider that these people were willing to die for these stories.

And you begin to understand that at the very least they were truly convinced that Jesus Christ had died and was resurrected from the dead.

Because there's no made-up story that is worth sticking to the point of death.

This is what you see.

Suffering has always been an essential category for gospel advancement.

No, this isn't something that preaches well.

When you know, when you think about church growth, you know, maybe this is your first Sunday hearing, you're like, oh, is this the church that is for me?

And this is the message you're hearing right now: that if the gospel is going to advance through you, you need to suffer.

And it's not a great slogan for a church, redemption church, where we suffer for the gospel.

And yet that's the way that it works.

Look at what Jesus says to his disciples in Mark chapter 13, verse 9.

Mark 13:9

Jesus tells his disciples, be on your guard, for they will deliver you over to counsels, you'll be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings.

But listen to this, for my sake, to bear witness before them.

Jesus looks at his closest followers and he says, If the gospel is going to advance, listen, it is going to advance through your suffering.

Paul knew this explicitly.

In Acts 9, God is speaking to Aninaus, who was the one who proclaimed the gospel to Paul.

And look what God says to Aninaus.

This is the Lord said to him, Go.

Speaking to Paul, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and to the kings and to the children of Israel.

But then he says this, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

For the sake of my name.

And so you need to see this.

Your suffering is being used for the sake of Jesus' name.

It's being used for the advancement of the gospel.

Jesus' kingdom purposes are being advanced through the suffering of his children.

And so part of what we need to do is shake ourselves when we look at our life and we look at our trials and we say, Why is this happening?

Because this has always been the plan.

The plan has always been that God's kingdom purposes would advance through suffering.

This is why the first thing that Jesus said about following him, once people understood who he was, he said, This if you're going to follow me, you got to carry your cross.

This instrument of death, like the equivalent of picking up an electric chair.

You got to carry your cross.

It's going to be hard.

Well, this is this is light years, light years away from the North American gospel.

It is so often preached.

Come to Jesus, and everything in your life is going to be so much better.

It's going to be so much easier.

I remember the person who, or one of the people who met my mom when she first came to Christ who said he was a Christian, told her that her tires wouldn't wear out anymore.

And that's a promise that has not lasted to this day.

Multiple sets of tires.

We're still trying to hold on to that promise.

The kingdom advances through suffering.

It's absolutely necessary.

Notice that our suffering, it doesn't just inspire unbelievers, it also emboldens believers.

So what Paul then says is that most of the brothers, notice there's a different category here, having become confident.

In the Lord, by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

This Paul recognizes there's a group of people that are around him that are seeing his suffering, seeing the depths of suffering that he's endured, and it's such a clear picture of the gospel that they could not help but to start sharing the gospel, trusting that the same way that God had used Paul's hindrances to advance the gospel, they would use that God would use their hindrances to advance the gospel.

And so not only does the world need to witness your suffering, I want you to recognize that there are other believers in this church that need to witness your suffering.

They need a healthy model of what it looks like to walk through times of trial and be near to the Lord.

And so one way we can helpfully say this, say it is like this.

If you suffer alone, you're wasting your suffering.

If you suffer alone, you are wasting your suffering.

If you are not regularly kind of opening the blinds to allow other believers to see the struggle that you are enduring, the suffering you are faced with, then you are wasting your suffering.

Because part of the reason of your suffering is for the benefit of other people, so that they can see you suffer and see that when all is stripped away, the only thing you have left to cling to is Jesus Christ, and yet you are still filled with this satisfaction and this joy.

They see that the thing that they most need is not the things that they're chasing, it's not the money, it's not the accolades, it's not the comfort, it is Jesus.

Suffering encourages others, it gives us the ability to speak with unique insight into those who suffer in the same way as us.

This is part of what God is doing in suffering.

He's preparing us to be able to minister to other people.

And so we uh we ask this question in our hindrances and the things in life we look at and we we just cannot understand how this is the plan.

We ask this question, what's God trying to teach me?

We also ask this question, what's God trying to do through me?

Which leads to our next point.

I want you to understand this that gospel advance leads to gospel courage.

See, my hindrances can be used for gospel advance, and when the gospel advances through my hindrances, what we're understanding here is that it leads to this gospel courage, this gospel boldness.

And so we we see that Paul's suffering was being used to embolden believers.

We need to ask this question, why?

Why would Paul being in prison embolden believers?

Like if you think about it, if you really think about this, wouldn't it be the opposite?

Like if Paul's put in prison for preaching Christ, wouldn't people be like, well, maybe I should stop preaching Christ then?

Like this is kind of a dangerous activity.

And yet instead, what becomes clear about Paul's suffering is that it is happening under the sovereign hand of God.

That the suffering, the suffering that Paul is enduring is being used to advance the gospel.

And so the people around Paul, they they now have this courage.

This courage that comes from a confidence that God's plan is accomplished despite what they thought that accomplishment should look like.

See, before Paul is in prison, you get the sense that they kind of thought like the gospel should advance with kind of ease, like there should be no suffering.

Now Paul's in prison and the gospel is still advancing, and so all the more they recognize that gospel advancement does not always look the way that they thought it would look.

They understood that Paul's suffering was a necessity.

It wasn't cosmic chance.

Do you understand the world that we live in, the secular waters that we swim in, say that suffering is all according to chance.

This is what happens.

If you have a naturalistic evolutionary worldview in which uh everything comes by chance, everything is random, then suffering, it's just it's literally nothing more than a bad hand that has been dealt to you.

It's nothing more than fate.

And there is this oppression of suffering that is driven by the hand of fate, of this feeling like I don't deserve this, I deserve better than this.

And yet these believers who were emboldened for the gospel had come to understand what the imperial guard had come to understand, that it was Jesus Christ who had put them there.

That there's no authority higher than Jesus Christ, and the highest authority, Jesus Christ Himself, had decided to put Paul here, the king of the universe, had looked at Paul's situation and decided this is the best way to advance the gospel.

And so the believers all got in line and said, Well, I'm gonna trust God in this.

God's sovereign.

I want you to understand this is this is what we need to come to understand about our suffering.

It's all necessary.

It's all necessary, it's all placed into our life by the sovereign hand of God.

He's sovereign over every detail.

Everything you look back on in your life, you feel like has been a hindrance, you look at it, you say, Man, my life would have been much better if that wasn't there.

It has all been sovereignly and lovingly placed there by God.

We come to this verse so often as a church, it's one of my life verses, and I apologize as you continue to come to this church.

We're gonna come back to this again and again, and you're gonna say, Miles has nothing new to preach, and it's true.

This is so good.

1 Peter 1, 6 to 7, he says this in this you rejoice, though now for a little while, and do not miss these words.

If necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.

God, out of necessity, will place you in the furnace.

But it's only ever out of necessity.

And I love this quote.

I share it so often, and it was so helpful for me that when God puts you in the furnace, his eyes are on the clock, his hand is on the thermostat, he does not have it hotter than it needs to be, he does not have you in there a second longer than you need to be.

This is who God is.

He is unwilling to put you through unnecessary suffering.

And so understand this God has entered into covenant with you, and God has written a contract with you.

And and when you look at the contract of salvation that Jesus has signed with his blood, and he has given to you, and as a Christian, you've you know, you know, spiritually signed as well.

When you look at the contract, there's a big clause in there there, and it's a necessity clause.

And it's this clause that it's a promise to you that God will not cause you to endure anything that is not a necessity for you to endure.

There is no unnecessary suffering in the gospel.

That means that your circumstances, from an earthly perspective, as you view them from an earthly perspective, as the world looks at you and says, Oh man, you've got it pretty, pretty tough, it has no bearing on what they are accomplishing from a heavenly perspective.

In fact, what we're seeing here is that God ordinarily works through ways that from an earthly perspective look really horrible.

He works through those ways to advance his heavenly goals.

And so this is what God's calling us to do right now.

God is calling us to look at the areas of our life that the world may be telling us our most wasted, that the world is telling us are the hardest, and to view them with the utmost confidence that good is coming out of them.

That God is accomplishing a great thing through the deepest of our sufferings.

You know, we see we see examples of this all throughout scripture, but I just can't think of a better example than Christmas, than the story of Christmas.

Can you think of a better example of like a bad hand dealt to a person than the example of Jesus Christ when he came to this earth?

I mean, you could collect a whole team of Hollywood writers, and you could not set up circumstances that were worse than the circumstances that Jesus came to.

Like when Jesus came, I think, you know, you you and I could get in a room, and in like 30 seconds, we could solve a lot of the problems.

If we, you know, were the masters of the story, and we could play around with the plot and the narrative.

We could solve a lot of problems here.

Jesus is born into a handful of problems.

Think about the political oppression of the Roman rule.

Roman rule made life for Jewish people incredibly difficult.

And this impression was bearing heavily on the Jewish people so that there was constant division and tension.

Have you ever thought about that?

Like, Jesus doesn't come to a unified people.

Jesus doesn't really even come to any believing people.

He comes to a group of religious Jewish people who are uh divided by these groups that some of them call themselves Pharisees, some of them call themselves Sadducees, some of them call themselves scribes.

They're all arguing about these religious things, but nobody has it right.

They're all replacing true faith in the revealed word of God for religious rule, and they're trying to impose that religious rule on other people.

So Jesus doesn't come to like a crowd of people who are waiting for him and ready.

There's really only one.

It's John the Baptist, and he gets beheaded.

Not only do Jesus come to this sort of political oppression, he is also born into poverty.

He's born into a family.

They've got no, you know, like the emergency bags that we have when we have babies now.

You know, you got the whole bag with the diapers and the cute little, you know, matching Nike outfit for your little baby boy.

They had none of that.

They didn't even have a room.

They couldn't even get an inn there.

They was literally born in an animal's trough.

Born into poverty, born into a family with no resources who were not set up at all to have a baby.

That's not bad enough.

He's born in a town where there is a despicable act of brutality happening.

Every child under, male child under two is being murdered.

So at least could like maybe we could have him born in the next town over, and yet, no, it's in it's into this town that he's born.

It's the worst of all circumstances.

But this is the way God would have it.

What we might look at and see as less than ideal, God will take and use to accomplish his kingdom purposes.

And part of what we're celebrating at Christmas is like things were way worse for Jesus, and yet the greatest, most glorious thing came out of Jesus' story.

And so as we look at our own life and we consider, man, things might get pretty bad, we we have this faith that God takes our bad circumstances from an earthly perspective and uses them to accomplish great and glorious things.

This is what Paul means when he says that these believers placed their confidence in the Lord.

They believed that they believed that God was working through their circumstances.

Now, the reality is that often our circumstances, often our suffering, doesn't it kind of reveal that our confidence is in something else?

That's often the way that suffering's used in our life.

Often the way suffering is used in our life is that God kind of pulls the rug out from under our feet and reveals that we had all along been living with like this confidence, this our with our feet set on this foundation of something other than what was God.

And so let me illustrate how this might work for you.

If your confidence comes from people, you're naturally a people pleaser, you love to get the praise of other people, then when that praise is taken away, you know, something bad happens at work and your boss is no longer happy with you, the suffering you endure is because this thing that you had your confidence once in has been taken away from you.

And that's why it's so difficult.

And you look at yourself and you say, Why am I having so much trouble with this?

And it's because you realize that your confidence all along was in something that was not the Lord.

You might have confidence and comfort.

So that when life gets financially tight, you lose all hope because your confidence was never really in the Lord.

And suffering has this way of, I think it's one of the primary ways that God uses suffering in our life to reveal what foundation our feet are really set on and to show us that they aren't set on the Lord.

And so you need to understand this that God is He is so willing to use difficult circumstances in your life, to use things that you could never possibly imagine good could come from.

He is so willing out of a love for you to put you into that furnace, to put you into that fire, in order that it might be revealed what your confidence lies in, and that it might be changed, so that your confidence no longer lies in these things, but now is in the Lord.

And that so your questions change from what am I going to do to get out of this, to what is God going to do through this?

And your eyes are open.

Your eyes are open to the way that Christ might be proclaimed through this suffering.

That's the very thing that came out of Paul's suffering.

Those around him saw what God was doing and they were bold to speak the word without fear.

Which leads then to our third point.

My hindrances can lead to gospel advance.

Gospel advance leads to gospel confidence.

Gospel confidence leads to gospel glory.

Now listen, from all earthly perspectives, Paul is completely hindered here.

And yet God is using his circumstances to advance the gospel.

And people around him are looking at Paul, and now they're asking this question: what then can God do through me?

If God can do this through Jesus, born into the worst of all circumstances, if God can do this through Paul, who is currently in prison and yet the gospel is advancing through him, what can God do through you in the circumstances that you're in?

What can God do through me in the circumstances that I face?

As we see these things, we become all the more eager to preach and proclaim Christ in them.

We become all the more eager to be used as instruments to reveal the glory of Christ.

Suffering has a way of doing that, doesn't it?

Suffering has a way of taking the spotlight off of you and then putting it on God and revealing that it was, that God is the strength and the portion of your life.

Doesn't it do that?

Like when you're walking in a time in life when there's like little suffering in your life where things are going relatively well, you can kind of begin to feel like, yeah, I'm doing pretty good.

Isn't that true?

Like when we're not suffering, it can be hard to depend on the Lord because you just don't feel like you need him for anything.

But then suffering happens when all of a sudden you're you're kind of like at wit's end, you're like, I don't know what to do.

And you have to turn to the Lord.

And this is why some of the sweetest times in your life have been the times when you've been suffering.

Because it's been the time where you're like out of necessity.

I just need to be near to the Lord.

I need to spend time in prayer because all these things are outside of my control.

And the spotlight is taken off you because you can't do this in your own strength.

And the spotlight is then put on God because only God can do it.

God is leading us to see that He's using the things that would be hindrances to us to bring glory to his name.

His desire is that in our suffering we would proclaim Christ without fear.

That our lives would be a testimony to a lost world, that there's no other foundation to firmly set your feet on, apart from the foundation of Jesus Christ.

This is why Paul, or sorry, Peter wrote to the church, the suffering persecuted church.

He said in 1 Peter 3, verse 14 and 15, he said, even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you'll be blessed.

1 Peter 3:14

He says, Have no fear of them, those who persecute you, nor be troubled.

But listen to this, but in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

That is what the world is supposed to see.

When you suffer, they're supposed to see like this supernatural, otherworldly hope.

How are you doing so well?

How do you have joy in your trials?

The world can't fathom that.

Especially our secular age.

And for them to look at your life and to see that in the midst of life's deepest trials, when life's rug is pulled out from underneath your feet, you're still standing confident in the Lord.

For them to see that, it begs them to ask the question: where do you find this hope?

The world is looking for this hope.

And God is seeking for you to proclaim that there is only one hope, and it is Jesus Christ.

And so the question for you today is this: Have you given your life over to Jesus to be used as an instrument for his glory?

When you have, amazing things begin to happen in your life.

You are able to suffer, and good is then accomplished through it.

Your suffering is not wasted because you recognize that my I have a bigger purpose here.

I have a bigger purpose here.

I'm willing to go through the suffering.

You know, I've I'm a you you learn this about me very quickly as you come to know me, maybe not from a preacher perspective, but just from a personal perspective.

I'm a very competitive person.

I will make competition out of absolutely anything.

If I can, like, you know, categorize it statistically and say at the end of the day that I beat you in something, I will do that.

I don't know why.

God's just wired me this way to be like super competitive, very frustrating to my wife at times, and yet that's the way that I am.

I'm sorry, I cannot change it.

I don't know if you're like this, but you know, if I go on a run, I I can run, but man, if there is someone to run faster than, I can really run.

Like, if there's a purpose to my running, then that purpose is like I can, you know, beat this person at the end, you know, rub it in their face.

You're like, this guy's a pastor.

I don't know, I don't know how it happened.

But I love it.

I'm willing to suffer if I know that I'm gonna get something good out of it.

And this is what God is asking for us to consider.

Is your life, is the mission of your life to glorify Christ?

If it is, you can rejoice in suffering because with the eyes of faith you see that this being used for a better end.

It's being used to accomplish something good, the advancement of the gospel.

Paul's showing us here what happens when our life is an instrument to proclaim the glory of Christ.

First thing he shows is that we have a boldness to share.

See, if your overwhelming desire is to be used as an instrument to glorify Christ, to make Christ known, then when you suffer, like you won't want that suffering to be wasted.

Your desire will be that your suffering is a testimony to the fact that when all is stripped away, Jesus is still a sufficient foundation.

He is still the refuge of your life, the rock on which you can stand.

You desire your life to proclaim that.

You desire your life, your testimony, and your words to be used as an evangelism to the watching world.

And you recognize that the evangelism that happens through you, whether you speak the gospel, whether you preach the gospel, whether you share your testimony, whether you invite someone to church, the evangelistic efforts that are that God is uh putting through your suffering, they're always a win-win situation.

That's what these believers had come to understand.

That because if the worst thing that could happen would be that they would be put into prison, but even if they were put into prison, the gospel would still advance.

So, like, it doesn't matter, it's a win-win situation.

In the best case scenario, someone comes to the Lord, in the worst case scenario, I'm put in prison, and yet Paul has shown me that even if you get put in prison, God's gonna use that as well.

See, the reason why you and I struggle with evangelism so much is because we consider it like a win-loss situation, don't we?

So we're in our evangelism, what we kind of always do, many of us, is we're always kind of doing like this mathematics, this statistical analysis.

What is the percent chance that this person is going to receive well the things that I say?

And if we start to feel like the door is like really wide open, then we start to have this confidence.

Okay, well, then I'm gonna share the gospel.

Okay, well, I'm gonna invite this person to the Christmas Eve service because I feel like it could be well received.

But then if if the opposite, if we feel like this person might ignore us, if we feel like this might be an awkward conversation, if we feel like this person might just take this invite and throw it in the garbage, well, then we we kind of back away.

Well, I don't want to do that.

And the question for us this morning is this who are you to say that that reaction you thought was a loss is actually loss?

Who are you to say that that God might not use that that first rejection of the gospel down the road to sort of put a pebble in that person's shoe?

You don't know what a win looks like.

And what God is trying to convince us here is that sharing the gospel, it is always a win win situation.

You never lose.

Take the Christmas invites as an example.

This is something that we are giving to you that we're proud.

Providing for my family as a resource for you, as a tool for evangelism.

Asking you in faith to hand this to people that you know, to invite them as an act of evangelism to come and hear the gospel at a time when many are open to do that.

And so the question you gotta ask here is like, what's the loss?

That person you have in your mind right now, or you like you've you've been thinking about handing the invite to them, what is the loss?

Is the loss like, oh man, it could be an awkward conversation?

Is the loss like, oh man, they could throw that thing in the garbage?

It's very cheap.

I'll tell you right now, we don't care.

They can throw it in the garbage, they can burn it, they can do whatever they want with it.

What's the loss?

And who are you to say that that reaction that you've considered a loss won't be used down the road?

You know, maybe it's that invite that they reject to come and hear the hope that is in Jesus Christ at the Christmas Eve service, that six months from now, when they find themselves in the deepest suffering, they remembered that you said, Hey, you know, I'd love for you to hear the hope of Jesus Christ and to come to our Christmas Eve service.

And they remembered that they rejected that, but they remembered that you said that there was hope and they want that hope.

Who are you to say how God might use your evangelism?

And when we are filled with faith, we understand God will use even the things we consider to be loss or hindrances to the gospel to advance the gospel.

Another thing that happens when our confidence is in God's plan, we want to be an instrument for his glory, is that we that there's this willingness to suffer.

And so it's really interesting.

We could spend so much time here, but we kind of got to fly through it here.

In verses 15 to 17, something really interesting is happening to Paul.

He says, Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry.

This is a really interesting situation where these people aren't preaching the false gospel, they are preaching the true gospel of Jesus Christ, but their motivation is wrong.

Some people have used this to say, you know, as long as people, you know, are proclaiming to be Christian, then we should accept them.

But I want you to understand here, what's happening is really interesting.

These people are preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, they are preaching the truth.

The problem then is that is their motivation.

They're doing it from envy and rival.

There are some, Paul says in verse 17, that are doing it from goodwill.

Verse 16, he says the latter do it out of love for Paul, knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel.

The former proclaim Christ, again, the true gospel of Christ, out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

See, there are some who have decided, I would love this.

This has never happened to me.

I can't imagine a circumstance in what it would happen.

But but people decide to attack me, so they're gonna go preach the gospel to lost sinners who need the hope of salvation.

Wouldn't that be an amazing thing to happen in your life?

It's a pretty interesting scenario, and yet this is what is happening to Paul.

And one of the ways that Paul could react is to take the hurt of that, like, hey, why are you doing that?

That really hurts.

And yet instead, Paul's mind is on glorifying Christ.

And so you know what happens?

Paul's willing to take the punches.

He says, I don't care if these people are trying to afflict me in my imprisonment, I will take the affliction so that the name of Christ can be proclaimed.

It's a willingness to suffer that we can experience if our desire is to lift high the name of Christ in the deepest suffering of our life.

There's a third experience.

When we make it our aim to be instruments for the proclamation of Christ, there's a joy we receive.

So look at what Paul says in verse 18.

He says, What then?

Only that in every way, whether in pretense or truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

And can you just take a moment?

Like, we we gotta take like our you know Christianese Sunday school glasses off for a moment and consider the absurdity of that statement.

Paul is in prison, and so many people are against him.

In the next verses, next time we're in Philippians, we're gonna see he doesn't even know if he's gonna make it out alive.

He literally thinks he could die, and yet he's rejoicing.

How?

Because Paul's desire is to lift high the name of Christ.

Church, do you understand this?

That your greatest joy is not in elevating yourself.

That is that's the perspective of the world, and that's why the world struggles so much with suffering, because everything about life is elevating yourself, getting higher and higher and higher, getting more and more things, getting more and more money, getting more and more fame, more and more and more and more.

I just want more for myself.

And if that's your perspective, suffering will always be horrible.

Because all suffering does is take you down a few notches.

You'll never find joy.

But when your desire is not to elevate yourself, but to elevate the name of Christ, you know what happens?

You can experience what Paul experienced.

You can have joy in your suffering because you understand that suffering is the path to glory.

Jesus modeled that.

That's what we celebrate at Christmas, isn't it?

Before resurrected glory, there is a humble cradle.

Before his glorious crown, there is a humiliating cross.

And here's the inevitable reality of your life.

It's not going to go your way.

Your plans, is this an encouraging message as you leave this room?

Your plans are going to continue to fail.

There will be things that are completely out of your control.

But here's this unstoppable truth that we've received this morning.

What is out of your control is in God's control, and he will accomplish his purpose through you, through the things that you could never imagine he could ever accomplish great things from, he will accomplish great things from.

And so the question for you is this how are you gonna respond?

And to help us respond in as biblically fitting a way as we possibly can, we're gonna turn to song and take this moment to proclaim this.

In the midst of my deepest valleys, I'm gonna lift high the name of the Lord.

Let's stand now.

I'm gonna pray, and the worship team is gonna come up and lead us in a time of response.

Father, we Lord, we bow before you and God, we confess that life is incredibly difficult at times.

Lord, that many in this room, in ways that I could never even begin to fathom, have suffered deeply and walked through the darkest valleys of life.

And many now bear the great weight of the darkness of this world on their shoulders.

Lord, there are many questions we have about our life.

There are many paths that we've been forced to take that we, Lord, we just doubt that there any good could come from them.

And there are many battles we're experiencing now.

Lord, battles with sin, battles in marriage, battles in parenting, battles at work, battles in family, Lord, everywhere.

Personal struggles, physical health issues, mental health issues, Lord, battles are everywhere.

And we can look around and ask, Lord, why?

Why would it ever be like this?

Why do I ever have to face these things?

Why do I have to live the life that I have lived?

And yet, Lord, you have offered us a new perspective, and it is the true perspective.

And you've called us to put away the false earthly perspective that the world preaches to us constantly about our suffering, that no good can come from it, and to view things as you view them, to know, Lord, that suffering is instrumental.

Lord, you use it to advance your gospel.

And Lord, you are seeking to use a people.

Lord, a people to proclaim the greatness of your name.

And so, Lord, you find in this room a group of people, and I pray right now that our hearts' response would be, Lord, that we want to proclaim your name in life's deepest valleys.

We want to lift you high, Lord.

And so help us to do this.

Lord, help us to respond in the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord, to say this.

We want this to be us.

And so, God, we pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.