Well, let's come this morning to Paul's letter to the Philippians. Remember Paul's writing from prison to a church that had been established through his preaching, a church with whom he enjoyed a very special relationship of partnership. This was a church which had been partners with him in the gospel from the very beginning. And one of the concrete forms it took was that this congregation, though in Macedonia, which had the poorest churches, that Paul had founded nevertheless were frequent and very generous givers in the support of Paul's ministry. He is writing to them because they are struggling with some difficulties, and from his place in prison his focus is not on himself and his situation and anxieties, but rather He has an anxiety for the church, and so he writes to them with their benefit in mind. And so this morning we begin at verse 12 of chapter 1. Again, I'm reading now from the English Standard Version. 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 to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some, indeed, preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage, now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus. because of my coming to you again. Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and 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 for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had, and now hear that I still have." These are God's words. Let us pray. My father, you have appointed your son to be the great prophet in whom all truth resides and from whom all truth is delivered. You have appointed him to be the good shepherd who, when he speaks, his sheep hear him and listen to him and follow him. And so we pray this morning that the Lord Jesus may exercise his prophetic office speaking to us, and that we may see him as our shepherd and hear his authentic word and so be drawn to him. For we pray these things in his name. Amen. Those of us who have been in love when we were pretty young know what it's like to think at that time the only thing that really matters is for us to be together. We don't care about anything else. We want to be together. And that's the main thing. That's the only thing. Of course, if you, as I did, marry early, you fairly quickly find out that there's some other things that you need pretty much. You need money. And you need a place to live. And you need some food to eat. and you need some clothes to wear. There are other essential things, but you know what it's like to feel that there's only one thing that matters. There's a sense in which Paul is telling us that about our life in the church and what we've read today. He's telling us that there is ultimately in whatever way we may look at the church, only one thing that matters, and that one thing that matters that then makes all the difference is Christ and His gospel. And so we look first at what matters in ministry. Paul is evaluating his own circumstance. He is in Rome, in prison, in a trial process awaiting the outcome. and he has now been a prisoner for four years. He was taken into protective custody because of a near-riot in Jerusalem. He was moved down to Caesarea, where he was held and where he had several hearings. He eventually exercised his right as a Roman citizen and appealed to have his case heard in Rome. He had made his way to Rome, almost losing his life in a shipwreck, and now he was there. Here was an active man, used to traveling, used to being with people, used to working, and he's now confined and waiting a trial process. He has been, in a sense, out of commission for four years. And yet the way Paul looks at his circumstances is in terms of the effect of his circumstances on the cause of the gospel. And he says, I want you to know that all this has led to the advancement of the gospel. when an army is going to advance, if it is a large force. The engineers have to go ahead, because it's the job of the engineers to build the roads and the bridges over which the army is going to travel in order to make its advance. And as Paul thinks about his imprisonment and all that has happened before it in the previous four years. He looks upon these circumstances as the engineers who have gone before to open up the way in Rome for him to advance the gospel in ways and among people with whom he would probably not otherwise have had contact. He has been in contact in Caesarea with Felix and with Festus and with Agrippa, and he has appeared before various officials of the Roman government in the trial process. And under house arrest, he is guarded by members of the Imperial Guard, Caesar's own. And as he has been in all of these circumstances, it has become clear to people that Paul is not a common criminal, that he is not an insurrectionist, that this man is in this circumstance because of Christ and because of the gospel. And as he has been there, they not only have observed who he is and the kind of life he has lived, but they have heard from his own lips this wonderful message of salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's contributed to the advancement of the gospel, and that's what matters. The circumstances have also contributed to the advancement of the gospel through the Roman Christians themselves. For some reason, they had pulled back. They were no longer so bold and courageous and open about their faith. It may have been that they were beginning to be afraid, because at this time Nero was the emperor, and opposition to the faith was growing. And so perhaps they had decided it was a matter of wisdom not to be so open and aggressive about the faith. But now they have seen Paul, and they have seen God's grace at work in him. supporting him and giving him courage and enabling him to speak the gospel to these important and powerful people. And so now they have taken encouragement and are proclaiming the gospel, and so again, Paul says, my circumstances have contributed to the gospel's advance, and that's what matters. Paul not only looked at his own circumstances and his ministry and the ministry of the Roman church in terms of the gospel, he even looked at the ministries of others in that way. There were those who now were preaching the gospel. perhaps who had not been or who had not been so openly and so boldly, but they did not all have the same motives. Some loved Paul and had an affection for Paul, and they saw themselves not as Paul's rivals, but as Paul's partners. They were doing in the city the work that Paul was doing under house arrest. But there were others who were envious of Paul, and they considered him to be a rival, and they thought that his imprisonment was an opportunity for them to advance themselves at his expense. And so some have goodwill, and some are advancing the gospel sincerely, and others have ill will. And at least as far as their relationship to Paul, their preaching of the gospel is not sincere. But Paul is more concerned with the matter than with the motive. What counts to Paul is that the gospel itself is being preached. And so long as it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul is content to have people preach who are envious toward him, who consider him their rival. and who are seeking to take advantage of his imprisonment to advance themselves, their reputations, and their careers. But again, Paul says it doesn't matter so long as the gospel is advanced. What a difference it would make in the things that we are willing to do in the life of the church if the only thing that mattered to us was Christ and the gospel. and what a difference it can make in our relationship with each other when all of us look at life from the perspective of the advancement of the gospel and when that is what we all sincerely desire above other things. But then Paul goes to an even more basic issue, something that is more fundamental and in a way more revealing than what matters in ministry. He begins to talk about what matters in life and in death. This is something that gets to the heart of every person because we all have to think about life and we all have to think about death. We all are going to die and we all are going to live till then. It can be very revealing of yourself or of another person simply to complete the sentence, for to me to live is. what you fill in that blank says a lot about who you are. It says a lot about a person with whom you're talking and how a person views death. For me to die means, says a lot about you and a lot about the people with whom you talk. And so Paul is thinking about his present situation in Rome. undergoing trial, likely to be exonerated and set free, but possibly to be condemned and executed. And his great concern right now in living is that he will be courageous and not be ashamed, and that Christ may be glorified in his body, that Christ may be honored in his body now as always. That's because for Paul to live is Christ. The significance of life for Paul is knowing Christ, loving Christ, living in unity with Christ, serving Christ. Having your relationship with Christ permeate every aspect of your life. Living means Christ for Paul. And therefore, as he goes through this trial process, his great concern is that he will stand firmly for Christ and that he will not bring any embarrassment to the cause of Christ. He wants Christ to be honored in his present bodily existence. in every way possible, whatever may come. His overriding concern is that Christ may be honored in His body. Some of you all may remember when I was living here in 1991, I had a colon resection because of diverticulitis. The first time they got me up, the nurses came and helped, and that was not any fun, but we got up. And then the second time I was going to get up and walk, the nurses did not come, and it was just Susan and me. And I'm telling you, it was painful. And I do not know what I said, but I remember this. Susan said to me, Bill, these people in here know you're a minister. She was concerned that I not embarrass myself or my calling by whatever it was I was saying and doing. My view was I couldn't help it, and it was fully justified. But she was concerned that I had not dishonored my calling in what I did. Well, the attitude that we should have as Christians is that we want Christ to be honored no matter what in our bodies. And if Paul is exonerated and set free, then because to live is Christ for him, he expects that he will go on and he will have fruitful labor for as long as the Lord gives him. He perhaps will be able to visit Philippi again and build up that church, to visit other churches he has established, and perhaps, as we think, to go to territories he had never been in before there to preach the gospel and establish churches. For Paul, it was all about Christ and the gospel in living. But what about dying? You know, we don't want to die because the only existence we know is our bodily existence. And that's the way God created us. He didn't create us as souls or spirits. He created us as bodies and souls united in one person. We are embodied souls or we are in soul bodies. There is a connection, a blending, an intertwining of soul and body that is so strong and so deep that nothing except death itself can tear them apart. And we know that our destiny is to exist bodily. The Christian hope is not immortality of the soul. The Christian hope is the resurrection of the body, the union of sinless souls in immortal bodies. That's our hope. Our existence was intended to be bodily, and our future existence will be bodily, but our existence in between is not bodily. And so you wonder, how could it be gain to be less than whole, to be less than fully human? And Paul can say it is gain because for him it is Christ. And the only thing he has to know about the state between death and resurrection is that he will be with Christ. I've been to Ukraine a couple of times and the first time I went by myself and I remember I arrived and of course it was cold and overcast and snowy and I went into this hotel and I was given a room had one light bulb hanging down from the ceiling and there was a bed there and I was sitting there and I just there's nobody else that I was going to be with for the week there in the hotel at the time I had this most incredible sense of loneliness and I had this kind of a terrible homesickness that used to come over me when I was a kid and away from home. It's the way it was when I was there. And suppose that I were in a place like that and now they were to say to me, you're not going to go home. you're going to be sent down to a remote place in Africa because there's something that you need to do there. And I would be thinking, well, my whole focus has been that I was going to be back with Susan because that's when I'm complete. That's when everything's okay in my life. And I am here and I'm away from her and I'm going to another place. And then the message comes. But when you get there, your wife will be there. You see, that makes all the difference in the world. The time I went to Ukraine with my wife, my whole spirit and attitude was different. And if I were to be told, you're going to another place, but she will be there, I would say, well, okay. It's going to be all right. And that's the way the Christian needs to begin to try to look at death. It is gained because it is absence from the body, presence with the Lord. It is to be with Christ in His nearer presence, to know a union with Him and a fellowship with Him and a joy with Him. that is not possible in this existence. It's not everything that we're going to get, but it's more than we have now. And so Paul's perspective on both life and death is that it is all about Christ and the gospel that exists in Christ and through Christ. Again, think what that would mean for our lives together. if we had the whole, if we had all the same way of looking at life and of facing death. If we all looked at life from the perspective, what life is about is Christ, knowing Him, loving Him, enjoying Him, serving Him. That's what it's about. And if we all could say of death, I don't want to die and I will prolong my bodily existence as long as I can, but when the time comes that I must pass over from this life to the life to come, I know by faith that it will be gained, because even though I can't even imagine what a bodiless existence is, nevertheless, I know I will be with Christ And to be with Christ means I will be safe and happy because I will be with Him in a fellowship I have not yet known. And then thirdly, Paul talks about the only thing that matters in hardship. Of course, he has had hardship his entire ministry. You remember when the Lord sent Ananias to see Paul. One of the things the Lord said to Ananias about Paul is that, I have many things for him to suffer. And Paul's ministry, his life was taken up with suffering, and now he is in prison, and for an active man like Paul who burns to travel and preach and be with people, it is suffering. It is hardship of an extreme nature to be confined and limited as he is. But the Philippians are undergoing hardship, and Paul is more concerned about them than he is about himself. Their hardship goes something like this, I think. It's hard to know for sure what was going on there. We can know the basics, but we're not sure of the sources of it all. For one thing, there was a doctrinal issue, which seems to have been created by people that were called Judaizers, who had come in after Paul and said, in order to be fully reconciled to God, in order to be included fully amongst God's people, you must submit yourself to the Mosaic law. to all of it, including to circumcision, and it is by your acceptance of the law that you will be fully God's people and fully reconciled to Him." And there was a doctrinal issue that led, I think, to an ethical issue. Some think there were two groups here, but I think the ethical problem came from the doctrinal problem, and there were people there who were living according to what pleased them, living according to their desires, living the way everybody lives by nature, and that was getting some root in the Philippian Church. In addition to these internal problems, I believe there was some external opposition. Paul, remember, had been beaten and imprisoned and opposed when he had preached the gospel in Philippi, and so I expect there was both official and unofficial opposition, and perhaps by now some forms of persecution coming on the Church. And so they had external pressures and they had internal pressures, and whatever may have been the mix of those things, what we know for certain is that the result was that the unity of the Church was not what it once had been. And so Paul says to them, I am concerned above all else as you face this hardship that you will live a life that is worthy of the gospel of Christ. That the gospel you have believed will be so worked out in your life that your life will be a credit to the grace and the truth and the power and the beauty of this gospel, and that means particularly that you will stand firm for this gospel. You must believe it and preserve it and teach it and practice it. and propagate it. The gospel must be your concern, and you must stand for it. Stand for it, though you are persecuted from without. Stand for it, though you are opposed in your belief of the apostolic gospel within. Stand firm no matter what. The gospel is everything. Stand for it. You have to stand for it together. Stand firm together. That's what Paul says matters in hardship as you live out a life worthy of the gospel. You have to be together. And the problem in the Philippian church now was that they were together, but not together. You know, sometimes when some kind of real hardship comes into a marriage, there's a first response in which a couple gear up and engage the challenge. You deal with the job loss or you deal with the illness of the child or whatever it is that has come into your family life, you gear up and you grit your teeth and you stand. But the pressure of the experience works. And over time, what it can do is to weaken the unity. Sometimes it exposes. cracks of the unity that were there but not obvious until the pressure got on the relationship. And so sometimes couples are there and together but not together. They're living separate lives, though they're facing this problem. And sometimes when the problem resolves, that's the end of the marriage because they've been standing firm and they've been together but not together. Paul wants them to be together, truly together, together because they recognize that the one thing that matters in their ministry is Christ and His gospel, because they understand that the one thing that matters in their living is Christ and the gospel. because they understand that the whole meaning of their death will be Christ because of the gospel, and that they understand that the Christian response to hardship in the corporate body is to face it by standing up and standing strong and being firm, but doing it in interdependence, doing it with love for one another, doing it together because we really are in this together. You're not in your own little canoe making your way to the heavenly shore. You're on an ark, an ark of salvation. It's the church. And you might at times want to get out of it and get into your canoe. Or you might want to get a little bigger skiff and get into it with people like you. But God has put you on this larger boat. And that boat is meant to carry you to heaven. And so you are together. And since you are together, You need to learn how to be together, just as we do in marriage. You're in this and you can't get out of it. My wife says the reason she married me was because she was so young that she didn't know any better. But she's a woman who believes in marriage. And so she has learned to live with me. We're together and together rather than together and not together because we're here and we're supposed to live together through this life. And so for us as the church. God has put us on this boat. He's put us in this family. He's put us in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, for which he shed his own precious blood. We're here together. And the thing that matters, and the thing that brings us together, and the thing that overcomes all the differences that exist amongst us, is that the only thing that matters in the church is Christ and the gospel. Let's pray. Father, we confess that many other things come into our lives. Some of them are good and have their rightful place in our lives, but sometimes they take over and become the whole meaning of our existence. We forget about Christ. We forget about how much we need the Gospel. We sometimes don't even want to think about death or about heaven because it seems so unreal to us. We can't imagine what it's like. to live apart from the body for a time. And Lord, sometimes when we get into hard places, we're so focused on our own problems that we look at ourselves and our own narrow interests, and we're not concerned about anything or anybody but ourselves. So, in all of this, we are forgetting Christ and the gospel, but we thank you that the gospel is for people such as we, for those who aren't what they should be, for those who have failed, for those who struggle, for those who are in a battle that sometimes is won and sometimes is lost, but still struggling. And so, Father, focus us more and more on Christ and on the gospel. Make him a joy and a delight to us and not a threat. Make the gospel the source of our confidence. and the source of our sense of acceptance now and forever. And make us, O Lord, able to stand firm for that blessed gospel of Christ and to stand together in doing it. For we pray these things in His name. Amen.