Good morning, friends. Let's continue to worship the Lord now for the public reading of this Word. And let me invite you to turn to Philippians chapter 1. I'm going to preach on just the last couple of verses of Philippians chapter 1 this morning. But our reading is Philippians 1 verse 27. to chapter 2, verse 11. Philippians 1, verse 27 to chapter 2, verse 11. Let us hear the word of the Lord. 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. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy. by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each one of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him. and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, for this the gift of your word. And we ask now, having read it, that over the next few minutes, by your Holy Spirit, you would illuminate your word, and that you would help us to understand it, and that you would help us to apply it for your glory and our joy. And we pray that in the name of our majestic Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, I've stood in this pulpit once before when it was maybe the second or third week you were in this building, and I preached on Daniel chapter 3, a one-off sermon in the Old Testament. And so coming here, I thought, what am I going to preach on? And it wasn't going to be Daniel chapter 4. Instead, I thought I could preach a companion sermon to a sermon I preached last year at the Parisia Conference. So last year I preached a sermon called Strangers in a Foreign Land and I know many of you were there in Glasgow last summer. And I preached a sermon on Philippians chapter 3, verses 20 and 21, where the apostle says, but our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things. to himself. And embedded in that passage, we have this idea that as Christians, as those who are born again, who have trusted in the Lord Jesus, we are citizens of heaven. We belong to that commonwealth. And I don't expect any of you to remember this if you were there in Glasgow last year, but I made mention in that sermon that similar to that language of being part of God's commonwealth, there is a verse in Philippians chapter 1 that makes a similar remark that uses similar language that's a little bit obscured in our English Bible translations. And that's where Paul says in Philippians 1.27 where he speaks of our manner of life. And I didn't have time to explore that during that sermon, but I think it's important to work through that. And so today what I want to do is to explore Philippians chapter 1 verses 27 to 30 with a view to consider our marching orders as soldiers from the kingdom of heaven. I want to consider our marching orders as soldiers from the kingdom of heaven. And there are three such marching orders that I want to discuss today. But I want to first consider this idea of what it means for us to be heavenly soldiers, to be soldiers in Christ's army, to be citizens of which speaks to our Christian identity. That's not something we pursue. That is something, if you are a Christian, that is something that you are. It speaks to your identity. And that is something very different from being a soldier in any military that you might know. And so I want to briefly dwell on the fact that, one, you are a citizen of heaven, and two, you are a soldier in Christ's army. So friends, Consider your citizenship. In Philippians 1.27, Paul speaks of manner of life. Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. And as I said, our English translations obscure that. The verb Paul uses is very much related to what he says in chapter 3 and verse 20 where he speaks of citizenship. And so one way to translate manner of life is to speak of living as a citizen. One of the commentators on Philippians translates this verse, speaking of, live out your heavenly citizenship in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Live out your heavenly citizenship in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. And if you translate it like that, it immediately reminds you of that verse in chapter 3 and verse 20. And so we have this underlying idea that we have a heavenly citizenship, that we belong to the kingdom of God. And that is a message that is very contrary to the message people in Philippi would be used to. Philippi was a very patriotic city. It was destroyed. It was eventually rebuilt as a Roman colony. And I remember reading this one comment someone made about Philippi being more Roman than Rome itself. Philippi is more Roman than Rome itself. People there were proud of their Roman identity. They glory in their Roman identity. And along comes the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it turns that on its head. It says, no, no, this is not the most important thing in your life. What is now most important in your life is the fact that you belong to Jesus Christ, that you belong to heaven, that that is where your citizenship is. you are citizens of heaven first. There's an American football coach in America named Tony Dungy who happens to be also an outspoken and professing Christian, and he got into a a Twitter back and forth with someone some years ago where someone had stated that you are black first and Christian second. Tony Dungy is an African-American, the first African-American who won the Super Bowl, very successful coach. And so someone said online to him, You are black first and Christian second." And here's how he responded. He said, I'm sorry to disagree with you, but Christian is always going to trump, in all caps, everything else in my life. I'm proud of my African heritage. I'm proud to be an American, but my first allegiance is to Jesus Christ. Your heavenly citizenship comes first before national or cultural or social identities you may have, before any favorite sports teams you may have, before your family, before your career, before anything else in all creation. And so for me, I am a citizen of heaven first. I'm not German first. I'm not a husband first. I'm not a father first. I'm not a pastor first. I am a citizen of heaven. And so, that is the first picture that emerges here in our passage of what a Christian is. And then secondly, consider the metaphor of Christians being soldiers. Consider the words that Paul is using in this passage. He speaks of us standing firm, of us striving. He speaks of opponents. He speaks of destruction and he speaks of salvation or deliverance. He speaks of suffering. He speaks of conflict. Now where do we normally find those words being used? We find them in descriptions of war, of armed conflict. But Paul is not talking about war as we know it. He is referring to a spiritual war that we are engaged in. And if you just turn one page in your Bible, you come to Ephesians chapter 6. And there's a very important passage about the fact that we are engaged in a spiritual war in Ephesians chapter 6. where Paul says in verse 12, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And then he says that because of that, verse 13, therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. and having done all, to stand firm. And so we are citizens of heaven, we are soldiers in Christ's army. We could summarize that by referring to ourselves as heavenly soldiers, and in this passage then, we are given some marching orders for us to conduct ourselves in a way that aligns with our Christian identity. And so in this passage, I want to unpack three of them. And the first one is that we are called here to live upright lives. As a heavenly soldier, you are called to live upright lives. Now, I believe some of you have been in the military before, and I was when I was young, and there were certain things expected of you in terms of your conduct. So if you were out in public and you were wearing your uniform, it was expected that that is neat and tidy and ironed and clean, that you're not dirty, that you're clean-shaven, because how people perceived you is how they would perceive the military in general. Discipline mattered. How you looked mattered. And then you were expected to be polite. That you would conduct yourself a certain way if you are a soldier because your conduct doesn't just reflect on you, but it reflects on the whole organization. It reflects on everybody else who is wearing that uniform. In a sense, it reflects on the aims that military has. And the same reasoning applies here. How we live our lives as Christians will reflect not just on us, But it's going to reflect on our fellow Christians. It's going to reflect on the Church. Ultimately, it's going to reflect on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me give you a couple of examples how this might play out. Say you've grown up in a secular context and you've now become a Christian. And your friends, they hear you say, I've become a Christian. They understand that you're now going to church. But what if your life looks the same? Does that not communicate that the gospel does not have power to change your life? More broadly speaking, what if someone observes a Christian life and sees that you are living just like the world. Does that not communicate that what the world offers is more precious to you than Christ? That you're happy to pursue sexual immorality or pornography in ways just like the world do because that is more shiny in your eyes than what the gospel offers. Think about church attendance. What if you don't go to church as Christians? Why should we expect unbelievers to come? And in those examples, you see that our conduct as Christians communicates something about Christianity. And so it speaks more broadly to our faith and to how we ought to live the Christian life. And so Paul then says in verse 27, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or I'm 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. It speaks to this right conduct that we are called to. Now let me be clear, and I believe you all know this, but this right conduct is not what qualifies us It is not because you engage in this right conduct that you are a heavenly soldier. It is because you are a heavenly soldier, because you have trusted in Jesus Christ, because God is doing a work in your life, that you are called to live a certain way. And so we reject, in the clearest terms, salvation by our own works. But once we are saved, we are to strive to live upright lives. We are called to be worthy of the gospel, to reflect the reality that God has done a work in our lives, and that we are then called to live a life of thankfulness, a life that reflects what God has done within us. Now, what does that look like? Well, Paul is going to address that. He's going to address it not just in the verses before us this morning, but as we go into chapter 2 and chapter 3, he unpacks what it looks like for us to conduct ourselves in a Christian way. We'll consider a couple of them today. We'll talk about unity. We talk about courage. There are others. Chapter 2 speaks of humility as a reflection of what it means to be a Christian. But what matters then is that you would consider. what God has done for you, that the gospel would be before you, that you would realize the great work that he's done for you. Speaking of an eternal decree of his love for you, speaking of the fact that Christ was willing to live and to die and to rise in your place, so that your sins might be forgiven, so that God may look at you as if you had never sinned, so that God may look at you as if your life had been perfectly righteous. Consider the work of the Holy Spirit who gives us new birth, who gives us new life, and who now entwels us to day by day make us more like Jesus Christ. Consider what God has done for you so that reflecting on that, you might see how you are called to live even now. Consider that you are not your own. That contrary to this modern myth that our life is about ourselves, that we are self-reliant creatures who can do whatever we want. That's modernism. That's not Christianity. Consider that you are not your own. That you belong to God with the entirety of your being. And consider what your life can do for the message. You go out, you do evangelism in this part of Aberdeen, you go into the city center, and you preach the gospel. But if your life doesn't align with what you're preaching, people will reject you. People will say, why should I care about what these Christians are saying if their lives aren't any different? Instead, we are called to, as Paul says elsewhere, adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. by how we live, by how we conduct ourselves in this world. And so that's the first marching order that we have, that we are called to live upright lives. were called to serve in unison. Let me read verse 27 once again. Paul says, 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. There is a command here to Christian unity. And if we consider once again, this metaphor of being part of an army, it matters that we are serving in unison. It matters that we have a manner of unity. If you're out on patrol and everybody does whatever they want to do, You will not be successful. You're not doing what you are called to do. Instead, you should pursue unity. And so Paul is saying you should be standing firm. You should be holding ground as a unit. If you look at how the old Greeks engaged in warfare, and they would have a phalanx and people were standing side by side. This only works if there is no gap between the soldiers. It only works if they're truly side by side and if they're truly striving together. As soon as someone says, I'm done with it, I'm going to walk off, the whole thing implodes. And so we need to have that unity. And it is Jesus who makes that possible. And so we read in chapter 4 in verse 1, where Paul says, Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. Our standing is not a self-reliant standing. It is not even a standing reliant upon the other Christians. It is ultimately a standing reliant upon Jesus Christ and it is reliant, as we learn in our passage, upon the Spirit. Now in verse 27, I love my ESV, in verse 27 it says that you are standing firm in one Spirit and in my translation that's a lowercase s. I wonder, do any of you have a translation where it's a capital s? No? There are some translations who use a capital S, and in my opinion, that is correct. This is not referring to one spirit as if we're unified in what we're going about. Paul communicates that by speaking of the one mind that we're called to have. But the reference to the one spirit, similar to the reference at the beginning of chapter 2, is a reference to the Holy Spirit, who is the source of our unity. Our unity is not something that we first pursue. It is something that we first have. It is something that exists. As Christians, we have fellowship with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. We see that explicitly in Scripture. And so, whereas a lot of Christians think of fellowship simply as how we relate to one another, fellowship is always first how we relate to God. There's a fellowship with the Father, 1 John chapter 1. Well, we also see a fellowship with the Son. We see that also in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. In 2 Corinthians chapter 13, we have a reference to the fellowship the Holy Spirit. And this is where it starts. But then growing out of that, I have a fellowship with every other Christian, with every Christian here, every Christian elsewhere in the world, and also every Christian who may have lived 200 years ago or who might live until the Lord comes. And so the fellowship we have is an objective reality and the unity that we have is a reflection of that reality. And so We have unity and we're called then to express that unity. And that's why we have those metaphors that help us to think about and to understand what that looks like, to stand side by side. You might think of a different metaphor, a sports team where all the players on one team are only successful if they work together. If you have people who are on an ego trip, who are just out for their own success and their own glory, those teams don't do so well. That is, by the way, why sometimes in athletics, you'll have relay teams that don't have the best sprinters, but that still outdo faster nations because they have a greater sense of unity and working together, they have practiced more. And so it matters that we have unity. The Christian life is not an individual competition, it is a team sport. So serve in unison. Now the problem is that we often see a lack of unity within the church. We see that in Philippians. And so in chapter 4 and verses 2 and 3, Paul addresses one such lack of unity. He says, I entreat Iodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the Book of Life. Unity was lacking in Philippi, and Philippi is one of the best churches in the New Testament. And unity is often lacking in our churches today. There are issues that come up, they are peripheral. There are issues that come up that are personal, and they stand in the way of our unity. There are churches who disagree on whether we should baptize forwards or backwards. There are churches who disagree who chooses the hymns. There are churches who disagree on when coffee and tea should be served, whether it's before the service or after. And what we are called to here as heavenly soldiers is ultimately not to fight against one another. That is not our aim. That is not our goal. And so the church is essentially one. We have metaphors in Scripture that speak to that. We have the metaphor of the church being like a family. We have a metaphor of the church being like a building. And if I tore down one of these walls, the whole building might collapse. That is how important it is that we pursue unity, that we would solve conflicts quickly, that we would remember that we have a common Savior, that we have a common Spirit who indwells us all, that we have a common goal, and that is that we would strive for the faith of the gospel. And what it does then is it helps us to switch our focus on the gospel, that we would turn away from the bickering and the problems that we have that stand in the way of our unity and that we would focus on what is most important. So pursue unity. Lastly, my third marching order for this morning is that you would fight with courage. If you're struggling with illustrations and you come to a passage like that, it makes it fairly easy because some of these illustrations are self-evident. And so is the one of soldiers fighting with courage. Most of the nations in this world often recognize bravery in battle and give out special awards because it is seen as something that is so significant for the success of any military campaign. It matters that soldiers are brave in battle where they face death and suffering and dying. And yet courage is largely missing in our churches today. There are many Christians, many churches who do not stand up for what the Bible teaches. There are many Christians and many churches who are not willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel. There are many Christians and many churches who have a lack of integrity. And so Paul is speaking here of opponents, which shows us that the spiritual war he talks about in Ephesians chapter 6 spills over into the real world. And we don't know for certain who these opponents were, but what we do know is that they were preaching a gospel that was tainted. We see some of that in chapter 3. They were bringing in works into the gospel. They were introducing certain matters of obedience so that someone can be saved. A case could even be made that Paul is referring to citizens of Philippi, who would gladly declare across the city that Caesar is Lord, whereas the Christian would say, no, Christ is Lord. And so Paul is referring to here the same struggle he had, and you'll remember that Paul is writing this letter from a Roman jail. And he says, you Philippians are experiencing some of the same struggle as I am experiencing today. Now our opponents today might be very different. We might not have very patriotic people around us today. We might not have Judaizing influences on the church today, but we do have people who want Christians dead. We see some of that in countries where our brothers and sisters are being persecuted. Where meeting in a building like this on a Sunday morning is out of the question. They're enemies of the gospel. We have enemies of the gospel who are mocking the church for being irrelevant, for being out of step with the times, for evil, for upholding biblical teaching on what it means to be human, what it means to be a person, what marriage is. Ultimately, it is anyone who strives to stop others from hearing the gospel. And yet, we are called to fight with courage. And Paul says that this is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, because your courage vindicates you. We might say, this gospel is worth dying for, but if we do, it proves our point. And so courage is absolutely central for every Christian. And the history of the church is littered with examples of courage, of men and women who refused to recant Christ and were put into the arena. Well, one church father says that more converts were won by observing how Christians conducted themselves in the arena than by anything else. We see it throughout the history of the church as people are willing, men and women, willing to stand up for biblical truth and pay for it with their freedom, pay for it with their comfort, pay for it even with their lives. They were, to use Paul's phrase, not frightened in anything by their opponents. And central to that idea is that suffering for Christ is an honor. Did you notice that Paul uses the word granted to describe that? That it is granted for us to suffer? Now for us to believe that is the basis of our faith, but then we're also called to suffer. And we see some people glorying in that reality. And so in Acts chapter 5 and verse 41, it says, then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer this honor for the name. What a strange sentence. What a strange sentence. They have experienced much suffering at this point by those who were authorities in Jerusalem. But Luke says, They left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. Likewise, consider the example of Whitefield, one of the great evangelists in the history of the church, who at one point in his diary says, I was honored today with having a few stones, dirt, rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cat thrown at me. That is very different from the gospel of the prosperity preachers, where someone might stand up and say, as you use your faith, God is going to wipe out your credit card debt. That if you become a Christian, your life is one of ease and luxury and self-fulfillment. And Paul says, you will suffer. And the apostles rejoice in their suffering. And so did Whitefield. But someone stands up and says, no, it's about a pleasant life. It's about your health. God will bless you with good relationships. God will give you a husband or God will give you children. But let me be clear. If you want an easy life, don't become a Christian. Consider the words Jesus speaks in the Gospels of the cost of discipleship. And realize that many great Christians suffered, that Paul even himself suffered often. He speaks of that at the end of 2 Corinthians. He's comparing himself to some who are called super apostles. And he says, this is 2 Corinthians 11.23, if you want to read along. He says, Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one. I am talking like a madman with far greater labors, far more imprisonments. with countless beatings and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea. on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, dangers in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to fall and I am not indignant?" That was Paul's life. Even if you look back to Acts chapter 9 where you have the account of Paul's conversion, it is immediately put before him that his life was going to be one of suffering. And the ultimate example of suffering is Jesus Christ. And Peter, very beautiful, highlights that in 1 Peter 2 and verse 21, where he says, For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you. leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of suffering and as we are called to imitate him in our lives, we are called as Christians to be willing and to be ready to suffer and for us to fight with courage. We've seen today that as Christians we are heavenly soldiers, that our citizenship is in heaven, that we are called to engage in a spiritual war that the Church is engaged in, and we have then considered a couple of marching orders. We considered that we're called to conduct ourselves living upright lives. We're called to unity as Christians, and we've seen that we ought to fight with courage, even being willing to suffer for the sake of Christ. But with all of that, I don't want the focus to be on you. I don't want you to leave this place thinking about the things you need to do. I ultimately want you to think about what Christ has done. I want you to consider that Christ is our great general. Think about how he is a model for our conduct. I was joining the nobles this morning for their family devotions. They were going through the catechism and there's a catechism question about if Christ has sinned. Has Christ sinned? And the answer is no, he has not. Jesus Christ is the only one in the history of the human race who has never sinned. He who is truly God and truly man in one person is the perfect model for our conduct. And that is why Paul can say in sort of a summary fashion of his ethics, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. He is the perfect model. for our conduct. He is the leader of a unified army. He is the one who ultimately died so that we all would be one. And he is the boldest man who ever lived. Where you and I waver, where you and I quiver, where you and I have moments of fear and doubt, he's the boldest man who ever lived, who knowing what his suffering would entail, went willingly to the cross, where he would die in our place so that we might live. And for us now who have eternal life in him, we are called then to live out the reality that we are heavenly soldiers. Let's pray. Lord Jesus Christ, we praise your holy name today. We thank you that you are the one who lived a perfect life, perfectly righteous, that your father might say, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, and you in whom there was no falsehood, no deceit, no wickedness, No sin. You've been like us in every way. You've been tempted like us in every way, yet without sin. And we thank you that you lived that perfect life and that you went on willing to die our shameful death so that our sins could be forgiven and that your righteousness might be credited to us. So that the Father can look at us who are in Christ and say, here is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased, not because of our conduct, but because of yours. But Lord Jesus, we pray today that by your Holy Spirit, you would help us to live out what we are called to, to be here in this passage. We pray and ask that you would help us by your Spirit to live upright lives, to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior, that you would help us to pursue unity but not at the expense of truth. That you would help us to courageously stand up for what is true, for what is good, and for what is beautiful. And so we pray you would help us. We pray you would bless us. We thank you for all that is ours because of you. We thank you that you love us. And so we pray that you would bless us. Amen. Seeing how we're closing him now, soldiers of Christ the Risen, please stand.