Finding Relentless Joy in Every Circumstance: The Gospel Is Winning

Good morning, everyone.

Uh as a father, it's always hard to hear my little one crying as she's exiting the sanctuary.

Today, as uh many have mentioned, Sarah has mentioned, is Palm Sunday.

And just to reiterate some things that were already said, if you know anything about Palm Sunday, you know that it is the day where everything looked like everything was gonna finally go right.

Right, Sarah started to mention that a crowd gathered on a road outside Jerusalem.

I mean, these people they had been waiting their whole lives for a king.

And when he finally came, the one the whole story had been building toward, the one the ancient promises had been pointing toward for centuries.

I mean, Sarah also alluded to the fact it's almost as if the crowd kind of lost their minds.

I mean, they started taking their cloaks and throwing it on the roads, they started waving palm branches, shouting, Hosanna, save us, save us.

I mean, they're thinking, finally, he's here, this is it.

And yeah, he came on a donkey.

I mean, that must have been shocking for them.

Right?

No, he didn't come on a war horse.

He didn't come as the as the head of an army.

He came on a donkey.

Now, the crowd's joy that day was tied to the parade.

It was tied to the momentum, to the expectation that this was finally the moment.

It was finally the moment everything was supposed to change the way they wanted, the way they expected things to change.

Their joy needed the circumstances to cooperate.

It needed the story to go a certain way.

But within days, that parade, it was over.

And what followed looked like one of the most catastrophic losses in history.

A trial, a cross, a tomb.

What the crowd couldn't see yet was that the story wasn't over.

What looked like the end was actually the beginning.

If you're new with us this morning, or you've missed a couple weeks, we are in a series called Relentless Joy through the letter of Philippians.

The writer of this letter, his name is Paul.

He wrote this letter from a Roman prison.

He was chained to a soldier.

He did not know if tomorrow was going to be his last day.

And what he writes, it's going to kind of sound sort of impossible, just like a king coming down the road on a donkey.

Right?

Because Paul says his chains have not stopped the gospel, but instead they've advanced it.

So this morning, we're going to read from Philippians chapter 1.

Philippians 1 · chapter mention

Starting in verse 12.

If you have Bibles, there are Bibles in the pews, you can use those.

If you got Bible apps, you can use that, or you can follow along on the screen.

Philippians chapter 1.

Philippians 1 · chapter mention

Picking up in verse 12.

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.

As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.

And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill.

The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.

The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I'm in chains.

But what does it matter?

The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.

And because of this, I rejoice.

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice.

This is God's word.

Again, Paul is writing this letter.

He's in a Roman prison, chained to a soldier around the clock.

He doesn't know if he's gonna live or die tomorrow.

He has no freedom, he has no platform, he has no control.

I mean, by every measurement the world uses to determine whether a person is winning or losing, Paul is losing.

And yet he is the most joyful man in the building.

Not a performing joy.

He's not managing his emotions, he's not putting on a brave face, you know, in a bad situation.

And he opens up this letter with gratitude.

He prays with joy.

And then in verse 12, he says something that should honestly stop us in our tracks.

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

Actually.

He says, actually.

Now notice what Paul does not say.

He does not say God is going to use this someday.

No, he doesn't say that.

He says it actually already is advancing the gospel.

Not later, now, not in spite of what happened, but through what happened.

Not in spite of the chains, but through them.

See, the word Paul uses in the original Greek is a word called procope.

It's a military term.

It means troops cutting a path forward through enemy territory.

Those are the chains.

Look, friends, the gospel is simple.

Jesus died for our sins, Jesus rose from the dead.

The kingdom of God is here.

That is the message that's advancing.

And Paul is saying that God used his imprisonment as a battering ram to advance that announcement.

The chains were not a barrier, they were the instrument.

They were the instrument.

And then he points to the evidence.

In fact, Paul gives two pieces of evidence.

First, he talks about how the gospel has spread outward into the palace guard.

And then second, he talks about how it spread inward into the church.

His chains have made other believers more bold, more bold in their sharing, more bold in their proclamation.

Let's look at verse 13 again.

He says, as a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.

I want you to understand what this whole palace guard thing is all about.

These men, these soldiers, they served Emperor Nero.

Nero was one of the most brutal rulers in human history.

This is a man who burned Christians alive and then blamed them for the fires that destroyed Rome.

These are the soldiers that these were these were the most elite soldiers in the empire.

They were essentially the personal bodyguard of the most powerful and most corrupt ruler in the world.

And Paul, he was chained to them.

Every four hours, a new soldier, chained to Paul.

Nowhere to go, no way out.

And what does Paul do?

He preaches Jesus to them.

They heard about Jesus.

Some through direct conversation, some just by watching Paul.

I mean, let me, I got, I gotta say this.

This guy, Paul, I mean, you cannot chain a man to someone like Paul and walk away unchanged.

That's Paul.

I don't know how many of us can say that.

I mean, this guy is facing possible execution.

He doesn't know if he's gonna live or die, and he opens his mouth shift after shift, day after day, and he tells these soldiers about a king who died for his enemies and rose from the dead.

The chains were meant to contain Paul.

Instead, they contained his audience.

God did not give a platform, sure, but God chained the audience to him, and the gospel spread.

The gospel spread through one of the most powerful households in Rome, through the soldiers of the man who was burning Christians alive, the gospel was advancing.

Why?

Because Paul refused to let his chains determine whether he opened his mouth.

He preached Jesus.

Now look, that's not Paul making the best of a bad situation.

That's the pattern of how God works.

I mean, you see it in Genesis 50, when Joseph looks at his brothers who sold him into slavery and says to them, You intended to harm me.

But God intended it for good.

Those brothers threw Joseph into a pit and sold him to slave traders.

And God used every single step of that betrayal to position Joseph as the second most powerful person in Egypt and to save an entire nation from starvation.

The pit was the path.

The chains were the strategy.

This is who God is.

See, the thing that looks most like defeat of God's purposes is often the very instrument of their advance.

So let me ask you something directly.

You got Paul here who's chained to soldiers.

Soldiers who serve the man burning Christians alive.

He doesn't know if tomorrow's gonna be his last day, and he is telling them about Jesus.

You have a phone, you have a car, you have people in your life who love you and who would actually listen to you.

And you've been sitting on the gospel because you feel too uncomfortable to have that conversation.

Paul didn't have that luxury, and honestly, even if he did, I don't think he would have taken it.

In this passage, Paul is showing us that the gospel is advancing even here, even now.

Friends, I want you to understand something.

The gospel is winning, it has always been winning.

And I want to let that land on you for a second.

Not as a nice thought, but as a fact.

The gospel has been advancing for 2,000 years through chains, through crosses, through prison cells, through emperors who burn believers alive.

And it has never once been stopped.

Not once.

Every attempt to chain it has scattered it further.

Every tomb has turned into an empty room.

From a Roman prison cell to Caesar's household, from Nero's Rome to the church in communist China, two thousand years, not once has it stopped.

The gospel is winning, and it has always been winning.

But now let me show you the contrast.

Because I know what it looks like when the gospel is not the main thing.

I mean, I lived it for years.

Before I came to faith, my happiness was pegged to a goalpost.

It started in high school.

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut.

I was the awkward Indian boy in Connecticut.

And I wanted to be somebody.

So I figured out what the goalpost was.

And I ran after it as hard as I could.

Popularity.

Girls, I wanted girls to look at me.

Awkward Indian boy, who doesn't want that, right?

I played varsity soccer, played basketball, I started lifting weights, gotta make my body look better.

I went to all the right parties and I hit the goalpost.

I became popular.

Five minutes of something, and then I was empty.

Then college, different goalpost.

I joined a fraternity, same result.

I reached the goal, emptiness.

Then I focused on money.

My wife and I, we started business, same result.

Right?

We we even hit a goal.

We we started hitting milestone.

We we had a goal to hit 250,000 in revenue in our first year of business.

We hit it, and I was genuinely excited.

I was so excited, we hit the goal.

Depression.

So what I do?

I move the goalpost.

500k, hit it, woo-hoo! Depressed.

1 million, excited, hit it, depressed.

Fancy cars, fancy homes, fancy boats, everything I told myself I was working toward, we hit it time and time again.

Then depressed.

And I remember sitting in the middle of all of that, thinking, why?

Why am I empty?

I mean, I got what I wanted.

I hit the numbers.

What the heck is wrong with me?

Here's what I know now.

I wasn't just chasing success.

I wasn't just chasing popularity.

I was worshiping it.

I made myself the god of my own story.

And gods that are made out of goalposts always demand another goalpost.

And I look at Paul in a prison cell.

No goalposts in sight, no metrics, no momentum, no crowd.

He is chained to a soldier who would rather be anywhere else.

And he is the most joyful man in the room.

Paul has something that I spent years chasing after and never found at the end of my goalpost.

And look, I want to show you what that is, but but Paul's got more to say.

Paul's about to show us something that's that's harder than chains.

Because the next threat doesn't come from the outside, it actually comes from the inside, from inside the church, from inside a body of believers.

And I think you're going to start to recognize it as we go through it.

Verses 15 through 17.

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill.

The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.

The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition.

They're wanting to be seen.

They're wanting to be first, to be known.

They're doing this not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I'm in chains.

I want you to understand something really carefully with this.

These are not false teachers.

Paul is not correcting their theology, right?

They are preaching Christ correctly.

The content of their message is right, but their motive is poisoned.

I mean, this is the shocking part of the passage.

You expect Paul to be to be crushed by prison, but what actually threatens to break him is something harder.

He's got, there are people preaching Christ with the wrong motives.

That should crush him even more.

These preachers were jealous of Paul's Paul's influence.

They wanted what he had.

He had a platform, a following, authority.

And with Paul locked up and unable to compete, they saw their moment.

No more Paul dominating the conversation.

Now, now they could build their own ministry, their own name.

They could develop their own following.

They were going to become the Paul while Paul was in chains.

And that should have crushed him.

But how does Paul respond?

He rejoices anyway.

Now that's not him being naive.

That's not denial.

That's what it looks like when the gospel is the main thing.

See, when the gospel is the main thing, even your enemies cannot steal your joy.

Because your joy is not anchored in being treated fairly, it is anchored in Christ being proclaimed.

And Christ is being proclaimed.

So Paul rejoices.

Now here's what makes this so uncomfortable.

This isn't just a first century problem.

This isn't just a problem for back then.

This is a human problem.

I mean, you may have never stood behind a pulpit in your life, but you do know what it feels like to use something important: your work, your reputation, your relationship, even your generosity to build something for yourself.

That's what these rival preachers are doing.

And if we're honest, this lives in all of us.

We all have this need to be seen.

We have this need to matter.

We have this need for our version of the story to win.

And when it doesn't, when someone else gets the credit, when the circumstances just don't cooperate, when the thing that we believed God was doing, it just falls apart, well, then our joy collapses.

And that's an indicator that the gospel was never really the main thing.

It was just one important thing among many.

And when Jesus is one important thing among among a whole list of other important things, he's just not that important anymore.

Right?

When everything is important, nothing is important.

And when this happens, we've made Jesus useful instead of making him worthy.

And there is a difference because he's not just useful, he is worthy.

He's not just the one who fixes your life, he is the one your life was made for.

And until he is that to you, he will stay one thing among many.

So ask yourself have you made Jesus your main thing?

Not one important thing, but the main thing.

See, because most of us, we know the right answer.

We would say yes in a heartbeat.

But then look at your life this past week.

Think about your life this past week.

Look at what got your best attention, your best energy, or your deepest anxiety.

Whatever that was, that was your main thing.

So why do we do this?

Why do we keep Jesus on the list instead of instead of making him The center.

I think for most of us, it comes down to this.

We're not, we're just not sure.

We're just not sure that we can trust him with everything.

I mean, we trust him in theory, but in practice, we have a backup scenario for we have a backup plan for every scenario.

We have a a just-in-case plan, right?

And the things that matter most to us, your health diagnosis, your marriage, your finances, whatever has been keeping you up at night until three in the morning, those things that matter most to you, instead of handing it over to him, we hold on to these things onto our, you know, to ourselves.

We try to control it ourselves because if we hand those things to him, and if he doesn't come through the way the way we need him to, well, we don't know what we're gonna do.

We have this picture of God that makes it hard to give him that kind of authority over our lives.

So, yeah, he becomes just one important thing among a bunch of other important things.

You see, some of you may even have a picture of God, some maybe something like this.

God is watching your circumstances, he's watching your life, he's watching how everything's going.

And when they go well, you believe he's pleased, he's involved.

Right?

But when things fall apart, you start to think that maybe God's either lost control or he's lost interest.

And so your whole relationship with God kind of feels like a yo-yo.

You're always checking in.

You know, am I okay?

Is he still there?

Did I do enough to keep this whole relationship thing going?

I mean, look, if that's you, that is that picture of God is not the God of Philippians 1.

The God in this passage is not watching your circumstances, hoping they cooperate.

He's moving through them.

He's not surprised by your chains.

He's not surprised by what struggles you might be going through.

In fact, he may be using them.

I mean, think about this.

What if what if the thing that you've been reading as God's absence or God's lack of interest is actually God's activity?

What if the circumstance you've been begging him to remove is the very thing he is working through right now?

What if the gospel advancing through your life doesn't look like everything going right and going picture perfect all the time, but looks more like what Paul is describing from a prison cell.

See, here's the problem underneath it all.

We spend our whole lives chasing after and trying to control our way to joy.

We think that if we can get all the circumstances right, if we can keep everything cooperating, manage all the variables, get it all in the right place, you know, nice and tidy, and we do it carefully enough, then joy will finally arrive.

And guess what?

We think it'll just stay put.

We got the joy, we controlled all the pieces, it's there, it's gonna stay there.

But friends, joy is not something you achieve.

It is something the gospel produces when it finally becomes the main thing in your life.

You see, most of us, we treat joy like the stock market.

When it goes up, we feel good, but when it comes down, we fall apart.

And you know, the last few weeks ought to remind, I mean, gosh, with everything going on, in fact, this entire first quarter of this year ought to remind us you can't control the market.

You can watch it, you can lose sleep over it, but you cannot control it.

And a joy that needs the market to cooperate will never be stable.

See, Paul's not checking the ticker, he's in chains.

His rivals are preaching against him.

He doesn't know if he's gonna live or die, and he has found something that doesn't trade, something that doesn't fluctuate with the news cycle or circumstances or what other people are doing around him.

The gospel.

And it is the gospel that is advancing, that is the only number that matters.

And look, Paul, let me say this: Paul didn't pretend his circumstances weren't real, he named the chains, he named the rivals, but underneath everything, he could see something was more real.

The gospel was moving, the gospel was more real to him, and nothing, not an emperor, not the market, not the diagnosis, not the rivals, not the thing you've been begging God to remove or to fix has ever been able to stop the gospel from advancing, which means the joy Paul has in a prison cell is available to every single one of us right now.

Not when your circumstances cooperate, not when all the pieces are just right, but right now.

Because the gospel is winning, and it has always been winning.

Paul found it in chains.

And now he's gonna show us what exactly what it looks like.

He names it in one sentence.

One of the most, I would say, one of the most defiant, most joyful, most surprising sentences in the entire New Testament.

And when you hear it, everything, everything we've been moving towards this morning ought to land.

Right?

So here we go.

Paul, Paul, he's named the chains, he's named the rivals, he's looked at all of it clearly, he's not minimizing any of it, he's not flinching by it.

And then he writes this.

Now understand, this is the controlling sentence of the whole passage.

If you understand this, you understand everything Paul is saying.

He says this, but what does it matter?

But what does it matter?

The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is priest, and because of this, I rejoice.

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice.

Why can Paul say that?

Because Christ is not just a part of his life, Christ is his life.

Christ is not just a means to joy, Christ is the joy.

This is not a man talking himself into a better mood.

This is a man who has found something so much bigger than his circumstances.

Yes, the chains are real, yes, the rivals are real, but the gospel is more real, and Paul knows it, and in that Paul rejoices.

So here's Paul's logic.

Here's the logic he's going for in this in this passage.

My suffering has advanced the gospel.

Even rivalry cannot stop it.

And if Christ is preached, I rejoice.

That's the logic.

Many of you may be familiar.

There was a Jewish psychiatrist named Victor Frankl who survived the Nazi concentration camps.

Frankel lost his wife, he lost his parents, he lost his brother.

He had everything taken from him.

And from inside that suffering, he made an observation that became one of the most quoted lines in modern psychology.

He said that everything can be taken from a man, but one thing: the freedom to choose his own response to his circumstances.

Frankl, he survived.

He survived by finding meaning that his circumstances could not destroy.

But Paul, Paul's not doing what Frankel did.

Paul didn't manufacture this joy from inside himself.

Paul isn't creating meaning.

He received it from a risen king, from a God who is actually, really, historically at work in our world.

See, Frankel found a way to survive his chains.

Paul had something that made his chains irrelevant to his joy.

And here's why.

And here's the events.

2,000 years ago, on a day that started kind of like today, Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Yes, the crowd wanted a war horse.

They wanted a military king who would overthrow Rome by force, but instead they got a donkey.

And within days, what looked like the most catastrophic defeat in history.

In fact, one of his closest friends betrayed him and sold him out for 30 pieces of silver.

He was dragged before a kangaroo court in the middle of the night.

He was beaten.

He was mocked.

He was spit on.

He had a crown of thorns pressed into his skull.

And then he was nailed to a cross in public.

In front of everyone who had ever believed in him.

And when it was over, they sealed him in a tomb.

They posted guards outside.

That was Friday.

The gospel looked finished.

But here's what the cross actually was.

The cross was the ultimate ironic reversal.

What looked like defeat became victory.

At the cross, Jesus didn't just win a victory, he won you.

He took your sin, he took your shame, your record, and he gave you his righteousness, his standing, his life.

That is why the gospel is good news.

And three days later, Jesus walked out of the tomb.

Death could not hold the one who said, It is finished.

The tomb was the chains.

Easter was the breakthrough.

And if you want to know more about what that means, come back next Sunday.

It's Easter.

But hear this today.

If death could not hold him, nothing can hold the gospel back.

If the grave could not stop the king, no chain, no rival, no emperor, no market crash, no diagnosis, no broken thing in your life can stop what he has set into motion.

The gospel is winning, and it has always been winning.

And when that captures you, when that truly captures you, nothing can touch your joy.

See, for some of you, the most important thing you can do today is not a prayer at the altar, it's deciding to make the gospel the main thing.

Not one important thing, the main thing.

So make that decision today.

I told you about years I spent chasing various goalposts that kept that kept moving.

Popularity, money, success, all of it.

And every time I hit the next number, I walked away empty.

It was the gospel that ended that chase.

Not because the goalpost just magically disappeared, but because every goalpost promised me something only Jesus could give.

Approval.

Identity.

And look, Jesus doesn't move the goalpost.

He gives you himself.

Something that doesn't move.

Something that can't be taken.

Something that has been winning for two thousand years.

That's what Paul found in a prison cell.

That's what's available to you right now.

Not the end of your next goalpost.

Not when the market recovers.

But right now.

Friends, the gospel is winning.

It has always been winning.

And when that captures you, I can't say it enough.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing can take your joy.

So now go tell somebody about it.

Because there is someone in your life who needs to hear this this week.

The Christians in Philippi heard Paul was in chains and they went out and preached more boldly than before.

Their logic was because if if Paul is in chains and is still winning, they had no reason to be silent.

Neither do you.

So go tell somebody about it.

Go tell somebody about Jesus.

Don't sit on the gospel.

God and share it.

Two things before we go.

If you have never placed your trust in Jesus Christ, today is the day to start.

Right now, in your seat.

You can say it out loud, you can say it quietly in your heart.

But I'm telling you, do not wait.

Tell Jesus, I need you.

I believed you died for me and rose from the dead, and I cannot fix myself.

I'm yours.

I'm yours.

Let him know that.

That is the beginning of a life anchored to the one that nothing has ever been able to stop.

And if you're already in Christ, here's your one thing this week.

Stop treating the gospel as one important thing among many.

Make it the main thing.

And understand something.

That is not a feeling you wait for, it is a decision you make.

And when there's a voice that comes telling you that God is losing, that the chains are the end of the story, stay say this back to him.

The gospel is winning, it has always been winning, and nothing can touch my joy.

That is the word of God spoken back at a lie.

That is what it looks like to make the gospel the main thing.

Do it every day this week if you have to.

But preach the truth to yourself.

The truth of the gospel.

You came in this morning on Palm Sunday.

You are leaving in Holy Week.

And the gospel is still winning.

So believe it, rest in it, live like it.

Go out and proclaim the truth of the gospel.

Someone out there needs to hear it.

Go out boldly this morning.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you this morning to have security and trust in the fact that the gospel is winning, the gospel is advancing.

Whatever chains we have in our life, whatever struggles, whatever challenges, whatever circumstances we are going through, whatever difficulties we are going through, thank you, God, for giving us new perspective.

That even in chains, we rejoice in you, we rejoice in the fact that Jesus Christ is preached.

So God, empower us, embolden us to go out and do the same.

Jesus, we love you, we worship you.

It's in your name we pray always.

Amen.

And everyone of God's people said, Amen.

Amen.