Partners in the Gospel

Good morning, Church of the Grove.

Terrible.

Good morning, Church of the Grove.

I'll be honest the first number is better.

Um, you know, Russ said, I think he'll explain that in just a minute.

I don't know what he's talking about.

Um, and they said if you do comedy and people don't know you're doing company, it's just mean speech.

And so I'm really hurting my feelings.

Um that's it.

Um I love sports.

Um, anybody love sports?

Come on, I think we could probably agree though that not all sports are created equal.

Amen?

Um, because I'm gonna feel the same way about water polo as I do about baseball.

Um I'm gonna feel the same way about my indoor cycling as I do about my college football.

Um and I realize a lot of you probably think, man, you know, he must he must love sports so much because uh he was an elite athlete.

Um I'm what not a joke.

Um that was that was that was not that was just mean laughter, um, not mean speech.

Um and and I get listen, I get why you know why that's the first thought that you have is well he you know he really must have raked in college.

Um but there was a time in my life, just a few short years ago, that I I was very close uh to becoming an Olympic athlete.

Um, I don't know this part about my past.

Um maybe you remember the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyongyang, South Korea.

Uh maybe you don't.

Maybe you weren't alive.

I don't know.

Um but there was a group of four men, they were known as Team Schuster.

Team Schuster won the very first curling medal in U.S.

Olympic history.

It was a big deal.

Curling took the United States by storm.

There are curling centers now all over the country where there didn't used to be curling centers.

If you know anything about that group, they're just a bunch of normals, just a bunch of dad bods winning gold medals, you know?

And and you know, I for a moment I was like, I could do that.

Um, and so I sent in my application.

Um, and I thought it might be helpful if I included a picture of my form, maybe compared to one of theirs.

I'll be honest.

I mean, copy and paste, you know what I'm saying?

Um you'll notice, you'll notice the painter's tape on my right elbow, if you can see that.

I thought that was in good taste.

The work glove.

Uh, the some people call it a mop, I call it a sweeper, that's what it was called.

Um again, not a curling stone, but really close.

Um and so uh, you know, for a moment I I thought that I could go from being a participant just watching from home to uh uh uh to somebody on the ice, right?

No, no longer just a spectator, no longer just a hopeful.

Um they didn't call me back, and I don't know why.

Maybe it's because I'm big Russ.

Listen, you may not be an Olympic athlete like me, but you know what I'm talking about, right?

Like, just just a quick show of hands.

Who how many of you have ever been to a live sporting event of any kind?

Just real quick.

That's almost everybody.

Some people that live under rocks.

Um, like I'm not I'm talking about it doesn't matter if it's a kids' t-ball game or or a soccer match.

Um, you know, like Amoeba League.

Y'all heard of Amoeba Leagues where everybody just follows the ball around, you know, and nobody ever scores a goal, but they have a great time, and grandparents cheer.

Um but no matter what kind of sporting event you go to, there's one thing that's true about every single one of them.

There's two kinds of people at every sporting event.

There's people that are watching the game, and there's people that are playing the game.

No matter what you go to, no matter what sport, no matter what level, there are people watching the game, and there are people playing the game.

Now we could split hairs about, oh, there's other people out there, there's coaches, there's camera operators, there's vendors.

The reality is there's only two kinds of people.

You're either watching or you're playing.

The same is true for you and for me in relationship to the local church.

And we're gonna we're gonna kind of dig into that idea today of what it means to go from being someone who watches the game to someone who's playing the game.

Here's the big idea for the day.

I want you to commit this to memory.

If you're note takers, it's a good thing to write down.

Attendance puts you in the room.

But partnership puts you on the mission.

Attendance puts you in the room, but partnership puts you on the mission.

Now, we're starting a new series today called Philippians.

It's a really creative title.

It's Philippians.

Um, and we're just gonna walk over the next several weeks through the book of Philippians, highlight what God has to teach us, and then talk about how do we need to apply it to our lives.

And that's what we're gonna do today.

But before we jump into the actual text, I want to give you just a quick backstory on the book of Philippians.

It was written by the Apostle Paul, somewhere between AD 60 and 62.

And by the title, you can tell he wrote it to the church and the city of Philippi.

Philippi was a prominent city in Macedonia.

It was located on the northeast corner of Greece, near the border between Europe and Asia.

And if you read through the book of Acts, you'll probably see this city and stories that came from it over and over again.

Maybe you remember the very first Christian in Europe, a lady by the name of Lydia.

Lydia was a seller of purple, Acts tells us.

She was a very prominent woman and was a catalyst for the spread of the gospel in Europe.

You may have heard the story of a demon-possessed girl who Paul and Silas exorcised demons from.

They prayed, and those demons left.

And they were subsequently thrown into prison, right?

And God sent this earthquake, and their chains were broken, and they were freed.

And you probably remember that the Philippian jailer.

He was worried that he was going to be killed because these prisoners escaped.

They came back and they shared the gospel with him, and he believed, and everyone in his household was saved.

Philippi was an important city in the spread of the gospel in Europe and beyond.

The most unique things about the book of Philippians isn't really its background or the stories in it, but the tone of the book.

The tone of the book is exceedingly joyful and encouraging.

We might even call it defiant joy.

Despite circumstances, Paul was joyful.

And Paul was not a writer who was typically encouraging to churches.

If you read through his other letters, you will see that they were very, very focused on correction, right?

Fixing wrong thought, fixing wrong action.

But in this book, Paul is writing a very different story to the church at Philippi.

I think they were incredibly special to him because they were faithful and they were growing.

And Paul is filled with joy because they have become the kind of gospel partners that every missionary dreams of.

And I can confidently say to you that I hope that as we explore the book of Philippians and we learn about the Philippians church over the next several weeks, that we here at Church of the Grove would become more and more like this church.

It would do us well.

So if you've got your Bible with you, I want you to turn to the book of Philippians.

It's in the New Testament.

You got the Gospels, you got Acts and Romans and 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and then you got General Electric Power Company.

I don't know if you ever did Bible drill, but that's how I learned it.

Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians.

So that's where we are in Philippians chapter 1.

Philippians 1 · chapter mention

And I just want to read the entire passage before we jump into it and kind of go uh section by section.

So this is starting in verse 1, chapter 1.

It says Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons.

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

I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

I am sure of this that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Indeed, it is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I have you in my heart, and you are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

For God is my witness how deeply I miss all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And I pray this that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

Do you pray with me?

God, we thank you for your word.

We ask that you plan it deep in our hearts this morning.

God, that because of what we learn today, we'll be different when we leave this place.

We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

As we read through that passage, there's a word that kind of sticks out to me.

Maybe it sticks out to you.

It's an interesting word choice, I think.

Um, having read through the Bible a lot in my lifetime, it sticks out.

And so when things stick out to me in scripture, I kind of want to dig in and figure out why that word.

But it's the word partner or partnership.

And so the Greek word that is translated here in Philippians 1 as partner is actually the Greek word koinemia.

Now, you probably are familiar with that word.

And we typically uh interpret that word to mean fellowship, right?

And when we think about fellowship, we think about a casual gathering, maybe not you know, not too serious, right?

There's maybe there's some food involved.

Let's be real.

We live in Georgia.

There's always food involved, right?

But but the idea that we have when we think of fellowship would be completely foreign to first century Christians.

Fellowship was never casual.

Simply attending church once a week or once a month or once every three months or twice a year.

There were no creasters in the first century.

Y'all know what a creaser is?

That's somebody that attends church on Christmas and Easter.

That's not you guys.

You're good.

Don't be so nervous.

Um but but instead they would they they knew that that coin and eal was a joint venture.

In fact, it had business implications.

This this idea of partnership in a business where two people or three people or four people gathered together and they all shared a stake in the company or in the business venture.

When one lost, everybody lost.

But for the modern American church, fellowship has come to mean potlucks.

But Paul intended for it to mean you have skin in the game.

That's why he addresses his letter very specifically.

Um just look at the greeting.

These first two verses, some people kind of run past them, but they're really important verses.

Verse one says, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, some translations say slaves or bond servants.

So that's the that's who's writing, and this is who they're writing to.

To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons.

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

This letter is for Christ followers.

It is for believers, not spectators, not people in the stands, people on the field, partners, servants, saints, overseers, deacons.

These aren't attenders, right?

These are people that are involved in the work.

They're not fringe folks.

They're not folks that when you mention their name in a staff meeting, nobody knows who they are.

Like these are these are people that are that are in.

You probably know people like this.

Maybe you are these people.

People who are bought into what it means to be a part of a covenant community of believers inside the local church.

And I've known some people like that.

I know people like that here.

I've known people like that in every church that I've served in the last 23 years.

But there's one couple that sticks out in my mind.

You don't know them.

And that's okay because it doesn't really matter for this story.

All you need to know is that together they were faithful partners of Third Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for more than 40 years.

They're my in-laws, Ashley's parents, Stan and Emily Baskin.

Stan, Ashley's dad died back in 2018.

But prior to that time, he had served as a bivocational staff member.

He was a deacon.

He played his tuba in the orchestra every single week because they had an orchestra and he had a tuba.

He was in the other leadership roles and probably a lot of other stuff that I don't remember.

And his wife, Emily, is still there.

It's weird for me to call her that.

We just call her Emmy at our house.

And for 50 years, for 50 years, I just want you to know, she's probably watching this.

That's longer than I've been alive.

For 50 years, she has taught second grade Sunday school at Third Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

She's been a part of countless vacation Bible schools, right?

She still leads Bible drill every Sunday afternoon, teaching kids how to study and know Scripture.

The Baskins were and are faithful partners of the gospel in their local church.

Now, I'm not sure how much you know about churches or church people, but over 40 to 50 years, we can find some ways to do things that will make you want to pull your hair out.

Amen?

Yeah.

You know because you either have pulled your hair out or you have been the cause of someone pulling their hair out, right?

You maybe you've been on both sides of that equation.

Leaders fail, committees make terrible decisions, music styles change, directions shift.

Surrounding communities look differently than they did.

People just act like people.

And in that span of time, I'm certain that Stan and Emily probably could have found plenty of reasons to walk away, to find another place.

And I'm not even talking about petty stuff.

I'm talking about legitimate reasons.

But they stayed year after year, serving, giving, encouraging, partnering.

I don't know how long you've been here at Church at the Grove.

I know it's not 50 years because we haven't been around that long.

But maybe you're like my family and you've only been here a few months.

Or maybe you've been here for a few years, or maybe you've been here since the very beginning.

And maybe you've even had thoughts about walking away.

And maybe there were good reasons.

And maybe they were reasons you'd be embarrassed to say out loud.

But there's something that Paul reveals about what makes great gospel partners.

And this is it.

Partners are in it for the long haul.

Partners are in it for the long haul.

Look at verse 3.

He says, I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

At this point, the church at Philippi was only about 10 years old, but it was a hard 10 years.

It was a hard 10 years.

Their founding missionary was in prison.

There was constant persecution.

At times I imagine it probably felt like the wheels of this entire movement were about to fall off.

And yet they remained faithful.

Faithful in their examples of what maturing Christ followers look like, faithful in their financial support of Paul and the missionary work that he was doing.

Remember, partnership puts you on the mission.

And when we're locked in on the mission, we don't get derailed by distractions.

We don't let the petty stuff win.

We don't get offended and go elsewhere or nowhere at all, and we don't get our way.

We don't get, we don't bail out when decisions are made that maybe we don't like or that we disagree with.

Partners understand the value of faithfulness over time.

And they keep showing up and they keep praying and they keep serving and they keep giving and they keep encouraging.

They keep doing what it takes to carry the gospel forward.

Verse 6.

You're probably familiar with this verse.

Maybe we'll look at it in a slightly different way than you might be accustomed.

He says, I'm sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Now, there are a couple different ways to interpret this passage.

But I think if we use the the high Greek that translates into the word we know as y'all, it's really helpful.

So let's read it again.

I think we actually have that translation.

There it is.

I'm sure of this, that he who started a good work in Y'all will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Paul is talking in this verse specifically about the spread of the gospel message through the efforts of the church at Philippi.

He's saying, God established his church to declare the good news, and he's going to see it through.

He's saying the same thing to us today in 2026 at Church of the Grove.

He has established his church and he is going to declare the good news through it.

He says a similar thing to Peter in Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

He says, I'm going to build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.

It doesn't matter what political party is in power.

It doesn't matter what law is passed or repealed.

It doesn't matter what artificial intelligence looks like.

It doesn't matter who has a nuclear weapon and who doesn't.

It doesn't matter how dark things seem to be.

God is going to finish the work he began.

And he's going to do it through his church.

I tell people all the time, the church is God's plan A, and there is no plan B.

And let me just tell you on a personal note, God's going to do it with or without you.

But it's better for you if you get on board.

That's why it's so important that partners live with the end in mind.

Partners live with the end in mind.

Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated 20 years church at the Grove.

Now you've heard Little Russ, I guess.

If I'm big Russ, Little Russ.

You've heard Little Russ say time and time again, and you're going to continue to hear him say it over and over again, because it is true that when your memories exceed your dreams, what?

The end is near.

When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.

God is calling us to look forward and live with the end in mind.

One day, every one of us who is a believer in Christ Jesus will stand before Him and we will give an account of what we did with the gospel.

I'm not talking about the great white throne judgment.

I'm talking about when we stand before God and He says, What did you do with my gospel?

Truth.

What did you do with the gospel?

How did you partner with me?

That is the day that partners look forward to.

That's how we should live.

We should live with that day in mind.

Because that is the day that matters.

Not the ridicule we may face now or the inconvenience that may seem to crop up from time to time when we're partnering in advancing the gospel.

But partners live for that moment.

And we stand and say, Here's what I did.

Here's how I partnered with you in the spread of the gospel.

The past couple of weeks, our staff and elders have spent time talking about the future of Church at the Grove.

What is God calling us to?

How are we going to reach people?

What do things look like 10 years from now?

And you're going to hear more about that in the months to come.

But here's the thing you need to know in this moment that we are about to run really hard after some God-sized stuff.

Stuff that only God can do in us, that only the power of the Holy Spirit can make real.

But there is absolutely no way that we can do it without you.

There's no way we can do it without you.

The vision that God has placed on our hearts and clarified through our leadership is impossible without partners.

It's impossible without partners.

We have a great staff, we cannot do it by ourselves.

We need you.

And listen, I'll whisper this part.

Even people who save the best parking spots for somebody else.

Said the quiet part out loud.

Sorry.

Listen, some of you need to check your heart on that.

We need people who take ownership in advancing the gospel.

That's what partners do.

Partners share ownership.

Look at verse 7.

Paul says, indeed, it's right for me to think this way about all of you because I have you in my heart, and you are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

For God is my witness how deeply I miss all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Paul says, it's right for me to be excited, to be over the moon about the believers at Philippi, because they are partners in the good stuff and the hard stuff.

They're not fair weather Christians.

They are in it with me all the way.

He says it kind of again down in verse 29.

It says, For you have been given the privilege, uh, given not only the privilege of trusting in Christ, but also the privilege of suffering for him.

I don't know about you, but I've never considered suffering a privilege until I read scripture.

Like that's a foreign concept, right?

It's easy to celebrate when the gospel gains ground.

It's easy to celebrate baptism this morning.

We got to celebrate baptism this morning, and that is an awesome thing.

It's easy to celebrate that we baptized more than 50 people so far this year.

It's easy to celebrate 20 years of ministry.

But Paul doesn't differentiate in verse 29 between trusting in Christ and suffering.

He puts them in the same bucket.

He says, we should be joyful in both.

They are both privileges for those who follow Jesus.

Can we just be honest about something?

We don't really want to suffer.

Like we don't.

I'm not going to make you raise your hand.

But we don't really want to suffer.

I don't want to suffer.

I don't get excited about suffering.

I don't wake up every morning and say, Lord, just make a way so that I can suffer for you today.

I don't say that.

I'm just being honest with y'all.

I know you don't either.

It's okay.

We are all we are the same person.

I do not get up and say, Lord, help me to suffer well for you today.

But that's what Paul says, doesn't he?

He says, it's a privilege to suffer for the sake of Christ.

Suffering has become, in fact, so countercultural that I would say it is unrecognizable in the Western Church.

But it was very real for the first century church.

Maybe you know the name Hudson Taylor.

Hudson Taylor was a 19th-century British missionary to inland China.

China's a place where Christians have been persecuted for more than a thousand years.

And here's what Hudson Taylor said about suffering for the sake of Jesus.

Carrying the cross does mean following in Jesus' footsteps.

And in his footsteps are rejection, brokenheartedness, persecution, and death.

Listen to this.

There are not two Christs.

An easy-going one for easy-going Christians and a suffering one for exceptional believers.

There is only one Christ.

Hudson Taylor was right.

And those words set heavy on me this week.

There is only one Christ.

But when we think like spectators, when we think like attenders, like people in the stands, we necessarily create a version of Christ and of Christianity that is nowhere in Scripture.

It's just not there.

We start to look for an easy way, a way that doesn't require suffering, or at least not a lot of suffering.

That doesn't really require much of a change from how we do life anyway.

But that's not what partners do.

Partners want to be like Jesus.

Being like Jesus means viewing the suffering and sacrifices as a privilege.

Here's the final thing that partners do.

Partners never stop growing.

They never stop growing.

Look at verse 9.

He says, and I pray this that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

When Paul prays for the people he loves, he doesn't pray for their circumstances.

Get this.

He doesn't pray that they would avoid hardship.

He prays that they would bear fruit.

You probably know this that throughout Christian history, every time the church is persecuted, what happens?

It grows.

It flourishes.

The gospel spreads.

People come to Christ.

Paul did not pray for the church at Philippi that things would be easy.

He prayed that they would grow.

He prayed that they would bear fruit.

I love the way the New Living Translation paraphrases this verse.

It says, May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation.

The righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ.

Partners never stop growing.

It's ideas baked into our DNA here at Church at the Grove.

We say it a little differently.

We say, growing people change.

Growing people change.

In other words, if we are doing it right, if we are doing it right, we should look more and more like Jesus every day.

If we are doing it right, we should be changing ever so gradually into the image of Christ.

Here's what we got to remember.

Growth doesn't happen in the stands.

Growth doesn't happen when you're just watching the game.

Growth happens on the field.

Growth happens when you're shoulder to shoulder doing the work.

Real growth doesn't happen in the mindset of an attender.

Attenders don't have a growth mindset.

They're not doing the work, they're not flexing their spiritual muscles.

Growth happens on the field.

Bud Wilkinson is the Hall of Fame coach for the Oklahoma Sooners back in the 50s, won three national titles.

He said this.

A football game is where thousands of spectators, desperately needing exercise, sit in the stands watching 22 men on the field desperately needing rest.

Y'all attenders are a dime a dozen.

We can go and we can get attenders, right?

We can play the attractional church game and we could gather a mass of people by doing cool stuff.

We could probably drive cars on stage and give away stuff and do all these cool things that would get a bunch of attenders in this building.

But that's not what we're after.

Partners are few and far between.

Whether they realize it or not, attenders desperately need to be on that field.

They desperately need spiritual exercise.

And the partners that are already doing the work desperately need them to complete the mission.

So as we prepare our hearts to respond this morning, whatever it is God wants you to do, I'm not sure what that is for you, but I want you to, if you just for a moment, bow your heads.

And I just want to ask you to wrestle with a question.

It's a really simple question.

Are you an attender or a partner?

Are you a spectator or a participant?

Are you watching the game or playing it?

I don't really care nearly as much about your answer as I do that you are honest.

Because you can lie to me and you can lie to your community group and you can lie to your serve team.

You can actually lie to yourself.

He knows your thoughts, he knows your intentions, knows your motivations.

So I just want you to be really honest.

Are you an attender or a partner?

Are you watching or are you playing?

And based on your answer to that question, I want you to consider what your next step might be.

Maybe you need to join a community group.

Maybe you've been here attending and being a loose part of this body of believers, but you've never really subjected yourself to any real accountability.

Never had anybody given permission to call you out when you miss church.

To see your Facebook post and say, hey, that's not what we do.

Some of what partners do.

We don't stir things up like that.

So maybe you need to be a part of a community group.

Maybe, maybe you need to serve.

Maybe you need to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who didn't consider equality with God, something to be grasped, but instead humbled himself and became a servant.

Maybe you need to serve.

Maybe you need to take the step of being a covenant family member.

Maybe you need to submit your life to the authority of the local church.

Maybe you've been a Christ follower for some time now, and you've never taken the step of going public with your faith.

And maybe when you were watching Molina get baptized this morning, something was stirring in you.

But you did what you normally do and you shoved it down.

Maybe your next step is to reach out and talk to somebody about following the example of Christ in believers' baptism.

Or maybe we need to zoom out further.

Maybe you would say you're sitting here this morning and you've never entered into a relationship with Jesus.

You've never said, I give up control of my life to the one who gave me life.

Maybe today is the day for you.

After we close, there will be some folks here that would love to talk to you about that decision if that's what needs to happen in your heart today.

Maybe there's some other next step that I've left out that maybe hits you where you are, whatever it is, I would encourage you with this.

What are you going to do about it?

Are you going to just agree that it does need to happen?

Are you going to walk down on the field?

Can you imagine, church, what we would look like if we chose to be partners instead of just attenders?

If believers chose to be players on the field instead of spectators in the stands?

If we move past belief into belonging, into accountability, into covenant community.

People who welcome accountability.

What if we committed to become more like Jesus and build his kingdom here on earth?

Think about the needs that would be met in our community because of your financial faithfulness.

Think about how youth sports would look different.

Because moms and dads, ball coaches, took the gospel to the field.

Think about how office dynamics and job sites and dinner tables would be different because we are a people on mission.

I don't think, I could be wrong, but I don't think a single one of us truly grasps what's possible if we sell out to the mission.

I don't think a single one of us truly understands what God is willing to do for the body of Christ followers sold out to the gospel.

And the reason I know that we don't know is because he tells us we don't know.

He says that I will do immeasurably more than all you could ask or hope or think because I'm at work in you.

It's me at work in you.

Church, this is a special place.

And you do not want to miss what's ahead.