I'm going to look at Philippians chapter 1 tonight. And as you saw in the bulletin this morning, the title of the message tonight is Living a Gospel-Driven Life. While you're turning to Philippians 1, I'd like to maybe give you a little background as to how this message came to be in my own life and in my own mind as I began contemplating the responsibilities that were upon all of us as a group at the church where I spent a number of years as the senior pastor. I had the privilege of leading a team of pastors as we shepherded together a group of believers in Milwaukee for seven years. And when I came to that church, I began to really become impacted as I would drive to and from where our church was located to where we lived. And then as we began to drive around the city, I began to just become very burdened for and have a sense of a great weight of responsibility for the impact and the stewardship that God had given us as a body for the city. It might help to know that for really The 10 years before I came to Milwaukee, I lived in the thriving metropolis of Dunbar, Wisconsin, 90 miles north of Green Bay. This little city had no stoplights and no stop signs on its major thoroughfares. And if you blinked, you were all the way through it. There are more cars in our parking lot than are in the entire city of Dunbar. So you can imagine what it was like to move to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and all of a sudden be in a city of a million and a half people being on highways and just driving in a sea of traffic and all of a sudden becoming impacted by the idea and by the reminder that unless these people embrace the truth of Jesus Christ that you and I sang about tonight, their eternal destiny was going to be very different. than the eternal destiny of each one of us sitting here in this room tonight. I would describe, and I think our people would all agree with this, I would describe our church at the end of seven years as being a very flawed, very sin conscious body of people struggling with living out the gospel in their life, but really a church that had somehow or another by the grace of God become invigorated by a desire for the gospel to go forth, that they would be as a congregation driven by the gospel of Jesus Christ. To the point that regularly in our ministry we saw, in spite of the fact that we didn't do a whole lot of overt things that you would find in many churches, we didn't do a whole lot of overt things. One of the things I told our people when I first came there was I really stink at invitations. I don't do them well. And so whenever the invitation time would come, basically in seven years of ministry in a church in Milwaukee, I gave invitations on a regular basis. And you know how many people walked an aisle when I gave an invitation in the seven years I was there? Zero. I just wasn't good at giving invitations. Now, other people would give invitations and people would come. But you know what happened all of a sudden as we ministered the word together and as we talked, all of a sudden people began to catch the spirit of the word of God. And God began to do work in their heart. And often we began to see incredible change in the hearts and lives of people. Now, please don't misunderstand what I just said. I am for invitations. I'm thankful that our church does them. I'm just observing that I am not a person who does them well. But in spite of that, God began to work and we began to see anywhere from 20 to 30 adult people come to Christ every year. and baptized and became part of our church. And over the course of seven years, there were several hundred people who came to know the Lord Jesus Christ and who came not just to know Him in name only, but whose lives were visibly impacted and transformed by the power of the Gospel that you've received and embraced yourself tonight if you're here as a believer. Now, it didn't always work that way at our church. It wasn't always like that. In fact, when I went to Brookside, I remember talking to my wife after about the first month or so that we were there. We had basically about 350 people that would come if you counted everybody and make sure you didn't miss anybody. And just in case you counted their shadow, if they moved, you got counted. And so we had about 350 people that were gathering together in that assembly. And I said to my wife as we were driving home one day after church, after about the first month or so, I feel like I have come to a fort. And everybody inside the fort is determined to keep anything that might make them uncomfortable outside of the fort. We joked about it over the years as we kind of had to work our way slowly through that. We joked about the fact that if you came to our church, you had to first of all, swim the moat and escape the alligator. And if you got across the moat, then you had to climb up the walls. And if you climbed up the walls, then you had to know the secret handshake and the secret password before we let you in and really embraced you. And You know, I've often wondered in my own heart. Why the Lord allowed us to continue in that venue for so long, our churches, when I went to our churches, 25 years old, and we were heavily invested in missions, but we were not doing a whole lot in our own backyard. And part of the reason was when you win somebody in your backyard, where do they go to church? If you win them in New York, it's a pretty long commute to Milwaukee. So if you win them in New York on a mission trip, they go to church in New York. But if you win them to Christ in Milwaukee, where are they going to come to church? Well, they're going to come to your church. And when they come to your church, guess what they look like when they walk in the door? They don't look like you. They don't talk like you. They bring huge amounts of baggage, particularly if they're saved out of a life. And we were seeing folks that were saved who had never been in church. I led a man to Christ in his 40s and he had never been inside a church outside of a funeral or a wedding. He had never been to church. And he started coming to our church and he was he told me he said it was like being an alien. I I didn't know anything that you guys were doing. And when you start seeing people like that coming to Christ, all of a sudden, as a church, you have to start thinking through what it is and what it means to become a gospel driven person in a gospel driven congregation. And I had to wrestle through that as a pastor, and the question I kept coming back to was, is this something that really God has put as a central pillar for his people. And I want to take you to Philippians 1 and I want to show you a passage that establishes this. And then secondly, I want to go to that passage and I want to show you what it takes for us to become this way. And I think that this is an important concept for us because of where God has placed us as a church. Let's read together verse 27. Philippians chapter one. Paul is writing, as you will remember, to a group of people who had themselves embraced the gospel. You remember when Paul came to Philippi and you remember the first time that he showed up there and all of the tremendous things that happened there to him. You remember the story of the Philippian jailer. You remember that maid that was demon possessed that was delivered by Paul. Remember the incredible work that took place there for the gospel sake at Philippi and how the gospel began to work in the hearts of many different individuals, although there are only three of them mentioned specifically in the Book of Acts. It's evident by the time that Paul writes a letter of Philippians that there is a growing, vibrant church there in that city. The gospel has taken root. And here's what Paul says to those people. Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come to see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side. And here's what all of this is oriented to. The standing firm in one spirit. The one-mindedness, the striving side by side, all of this is oriented down to something that Paul describes as the faith of the gospel. When God calls us together for corporate worship, you may disagree with this. This is my own personal opinion. I don't believe that the primary reason we come together on Sunday morning for corporate worship is is for lost people. I believe that's when the body of Christ comes together to affirm together what we believe about the Lord, to ascribe praise to him and to engage in worship that pleases him, that accurately reflects who he is and what he's like. And that word is measured against his words that he gives to us. But I do think that as we are strengthened by that worship and as we engage in that worship together, that what should be happening as a result of that worship in our own lives and in our own hearts as individual members of the congregation is that we ought to be, because of the faith that we have embraced and because of the power of that faith to shape us, we ought to become the kind of people that are described in verse 27. that we ought to be as a congregation and that we ought to be individually the kind of people that stand firm in one spirit, that have one mind together and that are striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. That involves standing for the purity of that faith and defending the doctrines that really comprise the gospel, that without which we have no gospel. But I think it also means that we ought to be engaged side by side, striving together for the advancement of the faith that is described as the gospel. And I think that's important for us because of where God has placed us. I read some statistics recently that might be interesting For you, as you hear them, let me just, you may not have, you may not have thought about this, but you realize that in the cities where God has placed Fourth Baptist Church, these cities represent 200 different language groups. There are 200 different languages that are spoken in our cities. It is the eighth fastest growing Hispanic city in the country. If you go down just a few miles from here, There's a Home Depot and if you go inside that Home Depot and you start looking at the signs, the signs are in English and right underneath all of that English wording is what? It's Spanish. And typically Home Depot does not put up Spanish wording on their signs unless there's a Spanish constituency that comes in to buy stuff. It's the eighth fastest growing Hispanic city in the U.S. It doubled in its Hispanic population from 1990 to 2000. You might not realize this, but it is the ninth fastest growing Asian population in the country. There are 13,000 international students that attend the different universities within a stone's throw of our church. One neighborhood alone in our cities, the Phillips neighborhood, has over 100 languages in that one neighborhood. It is the third, it's ranked third as a state in the nation for refugees. We have more refugees coming to Minnesota and really by definition to the Twin Cities than any other state with the exception of California and Florida. We have in our midst the largest Hmong population in the country. We have in our city the largest Ethiopian population outside of Ethiopia. We have the largest Liberian population outside of Liberia. It is estimated that 1% of the world's Liberians live right here in the Twin Cities. It has the largest Burmese population. It has the largest Sudanese population. And we heard when Phil Hunt was here, it has the largest Somali population. It has the second largest Tibetan population in the country. We have a tremendous opportunity as a church. To reach the nations right here in our backyard. And that brings a question that I desire to try to look at what Paul has to say to answer tonight, how in the world can we become a congregation of people? And more importantly, how can I become a person that is described in verse 27 as a person whose life stands firm in one spirit with the same mind fighting side by side for the advancement of the faith of the gospel. How do I become that kind of a person? And I think the Apostle Paul answers that in the first part of the chapter, and I think there are three very simple answers that he gives to that. If that's really what we believe God wants us to be as individual people, then I think the first thing that has to happen to us is what he talks about when he talks to these believers in verses 3 through 8. I think what has to happen in my life and in your life individually, and then as we do it individually, it develops corporately. I think we have to cultivate relationships that are centered on the gospel. That we have to think about our relationships in terms of the gospel. Notice what Paul says in verse three. I thank my God in all of my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you. Because I hold you in my heart for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. Now, think about the Apostle Paul and just reflect back over these verses and think about what you're hearing. The Apostle Paul is writing to people at Philippi and he is saying to them, every time I think about you, every time I pray for you and every remembrance that I make to you, to God. I make that remembrance in light of something that I remember about you and that I'm thankful for. I make those remembrances of you. I make those statements to God about you in every prayer of mine because of the fellowship and the word fellowship there really is the word for partnership because of the partnership that we have had together in the gospel, and that partnership has gone back to the very beginning of our relationship together. I mean, here are a group of people that the Apostle Paul has a very deep affection for, and that affection has gone back for an incredibly long time for the existence of their relationship. And from the first day until the very moment that he's writing this letter, the thing that he wants you to know about that relationship is this, that at the heart of that relationship has been a mutual partnership for the sake of the gospel. And I think the reason that that is so impacting to me is just to remember what these two people groups that are being talked about here, what Paul and his reader would have initially felt had the gospel not intervened in their life. Paul says, I want you to know something. When I think about our partnership in the gospel, when I think about the relationship that we have and the partnership that we have had for our entire life in the gospel, here's what I want you to know. Here's what I want you to see. I want you to understand that I feel a great joy about this. I have deep affection for you. Now think about the fact that a Jewish rabbi is writing to Gentile believers and typically Jewish rabbis didn't feel this way about Gentiles. In fact, if you go back to Acts and you start reading about the Apostle Paul's life and what he gave himself to before the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, he was pursuing people who were engaged in establishing gospel relationships with Gentiles. Now, all of a sudden, here's a man now who can write to people that he formerly hated and that he formerly persecuted and say to those people, I have great affection for you. When I think about you and I think about the partnership that we have together in the gospel, I want you to know that it is a great source of joy. And I would submit to you that the only thing that is powerful enough to eradicate The hostility that would exist between these two groups of people is the gospel that the Apostle Paul and the Philippians had embraced. Now, you think about the fact that we have a city that is as diverse as the city we live in. It is ethnically diverse. It is linguistically diverse. It is socially diverse. It is culturally diverse. And try as you might, there's only one thing that is powerful enough to bring all of that together and produce the kind of genuine affection and the kind of genuine joy between these people. And it's what you're reading about here in this book. It is the gospel. And the Apostle Paul said, if you want to be the kind of person that I talked about in verse 27, here's where it starts. All of your relationships have to be grounded in the gospel. And, you know, folks, really, that's true in any relationship that I have, the relationship that I enjoy with my wife ought to be grounded in the reality that we have both been forgiven by the gospel. The relationship that I have with my children, you realize that the Lord gave me two pagans in my home. When they were born, they were wonderfully, joyfully received. They were beautiful. They both look like their mother, but they were both pagans. And you know what? Thanks to the Lord and thanks to the faithful ministry of many people in their lives, those who taught them Sunday school, those who were there and wanted teachers, both of my children have come to the place where they have made a profession and have put their faith in Jesus Christ. And before our eyes as parents, they have displayed to us that the gospel indeed has taken root in their hearts. And so our relationships as a family are enhanced by the gospel. And that brings a penetrating question to me, and that is this, when I think about the relationships in my life, when I think about the places and the people that I am engaging with, in what way do those relationships advance the gospel? How do my relationships reflect the gospel, and how do they advance the gospel? The relationships that I enjoy with my brothers and sisters in Christ are possible because of what we have experienced together in the gospel. The relationships that I have with others who may not have embraced the gospel yet are really there as an opportunity to display and to propagate the faith that is in the gospel. How do my relationships affect the gospel? How are they grounded in the gospel? How do they reflect the gospel and how do they advance the gospel? And that's what the Apostle Paul is talking about here. I remember there was a gentleman in our church. He was a medical doctor in our church and he and I developed a friendship and we got the idea that we wanted to kind of do something together as couples. And so we decided to start an evangelistic Bible study in his home. And this Bible study would meet every other Friday night. And in order to come to the Bible study, we didn't want to just have a Bible study for church members. We had those opportunities and we had lots of opportunities where we could get together. But we wanted to have a Bible study where we could invite people who either weren't going to church or who didn't know the Lord. And so we started to do that and we ended up with number of folks that were coming to these Bible studies and we'd have a little little kind of a food time We each brought different kinds of foods to eat and they're probably I don't know 12 or 15 people that would come to this study on Friday nights and in one of the one of the folks that came to the Bible study was a nurse and she was a believer who had started to come to our church, but she had a husband who wasn't a believer whose name was Dave and Dave would come to these Bible studies and Dave wasn't just a A lost person, he was hostile to the gospel and we would sit there and we were trying to work our way through conversations around the gospel and Dave would interject from time to time with these unbelievable things. Like, for example, he would say, do you believe in capital punishment? Because if you believe in capital punishment, then you can't be a Christian. And he would just go off on capital punishment and pirate the whole Bible study for 40 minutes. Dr. Thompson, that was the gentleman's name, Dr. Thompson and I would talk and we decided, you know, what do we do with Dave? Because it was every time Dave came, he would do things like this. He would talk about the Nazis and he would talk about the Jewish Holocaust. He just had all kinds of things. And here we are trying to talk to people about the gospel. And here's this one guy who not only doesn't believe the gospel, but he's hostile to it. And I remember looking over to Dan and saying, Dan, do you think we should ask Dave not to come to the studies anymore? And Doc looked back and said, no, actually, Dave needs them. So we're going to have to find a way to divert him when he asks these big questions. So we kind of had a strategy. And this went on for the better part of a year and a half. And I'll never forget the day. We had a study, and this time it was in my home. Sure enough, Dave came to the study and he was hostile all through the study. And then we had our little food break and Dave said, I want to talk to you after the study. And I remember thinking this in my head, Lord, I don't. I don't have the energy or the time to get in another long discourse with Dave again. But what are you going to tell him? No. I mean, that's the whole reason you're inviting him into the study. So everybody left and Dave and I got into the little place, kind of like a little den that we had in our house. And Dave looked at me and he said, Pastor, I need to get saved. I mean, this is the guy who, forty-five years earlier, was just cranking on us in the Bible study. And I said, well, you know, that's good, Dave. He goes, I've known I need to be saved for years. He said, I'm a bitter, angry man who's been just completely disillusioned by life and I came to these studies and I had a chip on my shoulder. I'm like, really? And pastor, you guys just love me. And you know what? I want to get saved. And Dave bowed his head. I didn't even have to lead him. He bowed his head right there in my house. And he got saved. And the next Sunday, the next day was Sunday, so he comes into church and here he comes down the aisle with his Bible and a big old grin on his face. And I'll tell you something, in the years that have transpired, Dave has been a transformed man. His marriage has been transformed. He sits in church and it just radiates from him. And this wasn't just a month or two, I mean, this has been going on now for two or three years. And you know what happened? There was a medical doctor in our church who decided, you know what, I want my relationships to reflect the gospel, but I also want my relationships to be relationships that advance the gospel. So let me ask us a hard question tonight as a church. How do our relationships reflect the gospel? Oftentimes, the road the gospel travels to impact a person's heart is the road of a relationship. So how are you aggressively and actively engaged in using the relationships that you have to reflect the gospel and to advance it. Here's the second thing that the apostle talks about in this passage. It's not just that our relationships ought to be centered on the gospel, but there's another truth, and that is this, that the lives that we live ought to reflect the power of the gospel to transform us. Notice what the apostle Paul says in verse eight. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you with all of the affection of Christ. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. The apostle Paul says, you know, as As you live out the gospel in your life, the gospel ought to be transforming you in a progressive way. Your love for God ought to be abounding more and more. There ought to be a growing ability in you as you begin to understand the Gospel and you begin to see that the Gospel isn't just something you needed as an unbeliever. As you begin to recognize the necessity of the Gospel in your life as a believer, that begins to produce in you through the understanding that God gives you and the illumination that the Spirit provides for you from the Word. That begins to give to you the ability to discern more and more. And at the end of the day, as you think about your life and as you think about the gospel that your relationships are supposed to be reflecting and advancing, that brings this reality that if I really am going to be advancing the gospel, the gospel has to be advancing me. It has to be progressing me, it has to be growing me so that I become more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ so that I think like he thinks. So that I respond like he responds. So that when I find myself in circumstances, I react the way he reacts. You think about it for a moment and ask yourself the question, if you were a lost person, what you most need in life is deliverance. from the penalty and the power of sin. And in essence, that's what the word saved reflects. You know, we kind of have our own language sometimes, and we're so used to talking that language that we forget sometimes that outsiders who don't know those terms really sometimes are at a loss for those things. For example, if you were to go down to the Mall of America today after church in the morning and you were to have lunch at the food court and you were just to sit down at the food court and start observing people and all of a sudden here comes a person up to you and you ask them, are you saved? What do you think they would say back to you? Brother, have you been justified? Are you washed in the blood? At that point, there's going to be a rapid exodus. Because that person does not have all of the imagery that you have when you use those terminologies. When you and I use those terminologies and those phrases, they are precious to us. We sing about them. We rejoice in them. But if you don't know the gospel and somebody comes to you and says, are you saved? Here's what you're thinking. Am I saved from what? Are you delivered? Are you rescued? And all of a sudden, as you start engaging people in gospel conversations and they begin to realize what they're really up against. All of a sudden, they begin to understand, even though they may not agree with it, they begin to understand that if what you are saying is right and if what the Scriptures are teaching is right, they need to be delivered. They need to be made safe. They need to be rescued and what they need to be rescued from is the wrath of a holy God falling upon sin. When you think about the fact that we're all sinners. And the just compensation of that sin, the just result of all of that sin is death. It's not just the idea that we're all going to grow old one day and kind of exit life. It's the idea of condemnation. It's the idea that there is a just and righteous death sentence. That has been handed down to us. And the fact is, we need to be rescued from that. We need to be delivered from that. And all of a sudden, we begin to recognize as the gospel begins to open our eyes to that truth, that it's not just the penalty of sin that we need to be rescued from. It's the ongoing practice of that sin that goes on in our life. And in a very real sense, A question that I think is a very penetrating question for me is this, why would a lost person want a gospel that can't even deliver me from my sins? I mean, if a person really starts to rub up against me and starts to come in to the inner recesses of my life, if he starts to engage in the relationships that start to form and he starts to come in and he sees my marriage and he sees my life, why would he want a gospel that can't transform that? And that's why I think the Apostle Paul talks the way he does in verses 9 through 11. That if we really are going to be the kind of people that he talks about in verse 27, it's not enough that we start cultivating relationships around the gospel. It's that when people come into those relationships, they ought to be finding a person who is being progressively delivered and transformed and rescued by the gospel that he's propagating. And, you know, I need that every day. I need that in my own heart, my own life. And that brings us into the final thing, and that is this. When people come to the place that Paul is talking about in verse twenty seven. We are people who stand together side by side, striving for the faith of the gospel. These are people who, number one, cultivate relationships that are centered on the gospel that reflect it and that advance it. These are people who attempt to live lives that are being progressively transformed and delivered by the gospel. And these are people, number three, who take every opportunity and prioritize it as a way to advance the gospel. Look at how Paul talks about this in verse 12. I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. so that it has become known throughout the whole Imperial Guard and 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. Now, Paul begins in verse 12 by saying there is something that has happened to me. And I want you to know that the thing that has happened to me has actually served, it has benefited, it has advanced the gospel. And the thing that he's talking about is imprisonment. And he starts talking about imprisonment as a tremendous opportunity that the gospel has had to make advances in the highest places in the empire. In fact, right into Caesar's own household, the gospel has come. How would you like to be a Roman soldier chained to the Apostle Paul for two years? And here it is. Paul is actually saying that the imprisonment that most of us to be, you know, interestingly, when you read some of these letters, Paul never says, now pray for me that I'll be able to get out of jail quick. When you think about about me, you pray that God would quickly open the door for me to get out of prison, pray that it wouldn't be uncomfortable. I mean, his letters, even the ones from prison, are almost devoid of any reference to asking for prayer to be delivered. There are places where he does ask for us to pray for him, and particularly when he's thinking about what's going on when he comes into Jerusalem in Romans, he asks to be delivered from evil and wicked man. But it's interesting that he doesn't ask for the things we normally would think about in his letters. Instead, he says, let me tell you what God is doing. He's taking this imprisonment and it's the best thing that has ever happened. I mean, it is doing incredible things for the gospel. To the point that there are people who are hearing about it that would not have heard about it otherwise. And there are believers who are becoming emboldened by what they're observing God do in this. And it's an incredible thing. And I have to ask myself this question and I would pose it for you as we close tonight. Do you see the things that happen in your life? As a vehicle for the gospel. Do you evaluate all of the things that God brings into your life through the lens that Paul is talking about here? You know, the Lord gave us something like that five years ago when he introduced into our family a very painful thing. And most of you know the story of my wife's cancer. And I can remember as I was going over to the church to tell our church about this, my wife said to me, you know, when you get up and you talk to the church about this, I want you to ask them that God would use this in our family and that God would use this in our church as a vehicle for the gospel. Those weren't her exact words, but that's the gist of what she said to me. And you know, the Lord used that In that exact way, there was an 80. Actually, she was in her 90s. She'd come to Christ in her 80s. There was a woman in our church, a widow woman in our church who had two sons. One of those boys came to church. The other we had never seen. And he had an advanced. Case of cancer, and he happened to be in the same hospital at the very same time when death was in the hospital. And because I knew this woman in our church and she prayed for her son and asked prayer all the time and I had heard that he was in the hospital, I went up to see him. And make a very long story short, 14 days before he went home to be with the Lord. Randy came to accept Christ. And it was because of a relationship that was formed around The fellowship of suffering that comes. The commonality of suffering that comes among cancer patients. It wasn't just Randy that got saved. His wife, Penny, got saved. And after the funeral, Penny started attending church. And about a year later, she was baptized. And she still attends. We began to pray for my wife's surgeon. His name was Chip Smith. He was a very well-known surgeon in our town. And, you know, if you were an unsaved person, you would say, boy, did you get the luck of the draw. That was great that you got him. And he was an incredible, incredible surgeon, tender, affectionate, kind to us. I mean, he sat down with us and talked about all of the things that were going to happen and gave us his phone number, his cell, his home phone number. I mean, he was available to us. I mean, it was just an incredible, incredible thing. But he was an unsaved man. And so every time we started to talk to him about the gospel, he would just clam up. And so we began to pray, and our church began to pray for Chip Smith. And God began to afflict member after member after member with illnesses that required surgery. It was uncanny. And every one of them, this is no kidding, every one of them got Chip Smith as a surgeon. How do you explain that? There were five or six members in our church over the next nine months that came down with things that required surgery and they got Chip Smith. And so whenever somebody in our church had surgery, one of the pastors or two or three of the pastors would go up to the pre-op. And so here we're traipsing in and there's Tim Smith and pastors from Brookside and a member from Brookside there in the bed. And finally, he looked up and he said, what is going on here? How come all of you people are getting sick? I've seen more of the insides of your church without ever having been there. Well, the last person to get afflicted was our executive pastor, Ken Keltner. And sure enough, he got something. He had to go in and have a surgical procedure. And sure enough, wouldn't you know it, he got Chip Smith. And this time the whole pastoral team went up and we weren't going up to comfort Ken. We were going up there to give him a hard time just to kind of, because we were, you know, very good friends. And so, you know, so Chip Smith comes in there and we're goofing around with Ken and he's like, This is this is unbelievable. I said, now, now, now we're going to start going through pastors. And and Ken looked up at him, he said, you know, he said, Doc Smith, he said, the one thing I think I was trying to try and get hold of you. And I would like. to invite you to come to our Christmas musical. We always use Christmas and Easter as great opportunities to reach out to the community. And we always had an evangelistic thrust with that. And so we invited Chip Smith. And so Ken got out of surgery and Doc Smith said, you know, you need to take it easy, but I'll be there for your Christmas. So on Friday night when we did this Christmas musical, Ken stood out in the parking lot waiting for Dr. Smith and waiting for Dr. Smith and waiting. He never showed up. Well, sure enough, Ken didn't listen to what Doc Smith had told him to do, and he re-injured himself. So he had to go back in, and Dr. Smith just got all over him. What were you doing? I told you! I told you to take it easy! I told you to stay off your feet! What were you doing? And right out of the bat, Ken said, I was waiting in the parking lot for you to come. Wham! And Dr. Smith just melted. And he said to Ken, you know what? God has been pursuing me. for almost for a long time. I think you said almost 18 months. And I need to go to lunch with you. So he went to lunch with Ken that day and that day he became a Christian. He got in his car and he drove over to the church and he found me and he gave testimony to the fact that over all of these circumstances, he had been observing and he couldn't get away from the fact that the gospel was making these people different. And he embraced the gospel, and about seven or eight months later, he stood in our church and was baptized. And, you know, sometimes God will give you a circumstance like that. For Paul, it was imprisonment. For you, it might be a job loss. For you, it might be an illness. For you, it might be a struggle for you. It might be something you weren't planning on. And all of a sudden, God hands you something that can become an incredible way for the gospel to advance. And that's why Paul says in verse 27, I want you to live in a way I want your conduct, I want your life to be worthy of the gospel. May the Lord help us to be that kind of a person. That's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of person I'm sure you want to be. Let's ask the Lord to help us to be that kind of a person so that we can be that kind of a church. Father, as we look at this passage and as we think about the impact of it for our church and as we think about the impact of it on our own lives, may we be people who are transformed by the gospel. Lord, may our relationships reflect the gospel. May we think about ways in which you are putting us in contact with people who need the gospel. Lord, may our lives reflect the power of the gospel to make a difference. And then, Lord, as you hand us opportunity, sometimes through the pain or the unexpected circumstances of our life, may we evaluate them and prioritize them the way that Paul did. May we see them as opportunities that serve the gospel. And Lord, as we do this, we'll thank You and we'll praise You. In Jesus' name, Amen.