It's in His name we pray, amen. Philippians 1, we'll finish this chapter today. I'm gonna ask you an honest question, and you give an honest answer just to yourself, or you can tell the person beside you if you'd like to, but the question is, why are you here today? What are you doing here? What are you looking for here in this place, in this meeting we have together? And be honest with yourself, are you here just to check the Sunday morning box? We've probably all been maybe guilty of that in the past, some point in our lives, like, well it's church time, let me just go check that box, got that thing done. Are you here just to make somebody around you happy? Right? That happens, right? Spouses drag the other spouse to church or family member, you know, hey, they need to be there. Maybe you want to be at church just to keep up appearances. You know, I'm a good person. I do the right thing. And so I'm just going to be at church. Why are you here today is the question. For Andrew, it's because I pulled him out of bed this morning, right? That's why he's here. He had some encouragement. Come on, get up. You can do it. Why are you here? Well, here's why you should be here and why I should be here. You ready? A simple sentence. We should be here to know God and to make him known. To know him more ourselves and to make and help encourage other people to know him better. We said last week and then we said again on Wednesday night that we need to be witnesses. We need to encourage fellow believers and we need to prioritize Christ in our lives. So we discussed on Wednesday and so I told you that 19 through 30 will really give us help on how to do that. How can we be better witnesses? How can we encourage other believers And how can we put Christ first in our lives? Well, we're going to see it in today's text. Paul is in prison, riding back to the church at Philippi. And though his future is uncertain, his words are full of hope. Keep thinking about that. He could be writing from a place of despair and frustration and uncertainty and yet he sounds very certain when you read his words. So we're going to go through the text as Mark read it for us already earlier. We'll kind of walk back through it looking at some things and I have four main points for you to jot down today. The first one is notice Paul's supreme confidence in Christ. Paul has a supreme confidence, not in himself, but in Jesus. And so I kind of broke up verse 19 and kind of rewrote it in my own words. Paul had supreme confidence that he would be delivered through the prayers of the church and the provision of Christ. So look back with me at verse 19. He says, for I know that this shall turn from my salvation or my deliverance. He's not talking here about his eternal salvation, he's talking about his deliverance from one situation or another. And he says, for I know. He is convinced that he is going to be delivered in one way or another. He has confidence in Christ. I thought about this line of confidence. Have you ever had someone in your life who let you down over and over again? And eventually what happens, you lose confidence in them. You might ask them to help you do this or do that, and if they never come through, you just stop asking them, right? Why would I ask you? Because you're not gonna come through. I have no confidence in you. I have no faith in you. At the same time, we have people that we do trust in, the people that do help us, that we know we can count on if we need something, we can call them, and they come through for us. But even the best friend, even the best family member, even the best person can fail us from time to time. But God has never failed us, has he? Has God ever failed us? So then why would our confidence in him waver or be shaky? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses and David, of Mary and Simon Peter, who provided for those people, that very same God provided then, and as the song says, he provides now. So why wouldn't we trust him? This is a main thought I had this week is, why does my faith sometimes feel so shaky? Like I'm on shifting sand. A lot of Christians who have Christ in us, the spirit in us, and trusting in God, and going to church, and reading the word, and singing the songs, why does our faith seem shaky a lot of times? And it made me wonder if our faith is always shaky, if it's never growing, then do we even have true faith in Christ? Because I think if we're walking with him in his word and in prayer and in the fellowship of the church, my confidence in Christ should be growing, not wavering. I think that's true. I mean, I see it in the Bible. I see it in Paul's life. So why is he confident? Verse 19, I know that I'll be delivered through your prayer. Do you think Paul was a person who minimized prayer or maximized it? He maximized it, didn't he? He tells us to pray. Paul wrote things like pray without ceasing. Always be in prayer. And he says here, I'll be delivered through your prayer. Now, he's calling the Philippians and he's thanking them for praying and he's calling them to continue to pray. Keep praying as I'll pray for you, you pray for me, and I know that I'll be delivered through your prayer, but he also knew something else. Verse 19, I'll be delivered through prayer and the supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ. Paul's confidence, his supreme confidence is rooted in prayers, but more than prayers, his confidence is rooted in what God's gonna provide through Christ. Notice verse chapter four, flip to chapter four, verse 19. We'll get to this at the very end of this letter. He says, but my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. So back in chapter one, verse 19, he says, I'm provided for through what? The supply of Christ. Chapter four, verse 19, the very same word, your needs will be met. You'll be supplied through Christ. I love seeing kind of how he uses the same words and he drives home this point. God's gonna provide for me and church, trust me, he's going to provide for you. Is Paul's confidence rooted in his current circumstance? It's not, is it? Is Paul's confidence rooted in his situation? It's not. Are y'all like me when the time changes during the wintertime and it gets dark in the afternoons? Like I hate that time change. Do y'all like it or hate it? I don't like it. I like more sunshine. On a sunnier day, I'm in a better mood. It's just how it is. Some people may not be, that's fine, but like that's me. I think a lot of us are very easily I guess influenced by that a sunny day or a gloomy day, like a gloomy Sunday afternoon, it's raining, what do you want to do? Go and take a nap, right? Which some of us do that on a sunshiny day, too. But but like, yeah, we can be wavered by that. What about, you know, you wake up and you just got a little tweak in your back or I actually do back or some little tweak in your body, you're like, Oh, it's gonna be a bad day. I just I feel bad today. What if you know, something's going on in your family and you hear about this, you hear about a thing at work, whatever it could be, Does our faith depend on favorable conditions, or are we understanding our faith is rooted in Christ no matter what the conditions? I think we understand that, and I hope we do. It shouldn't matter, because we know one thing's for sure, life's not always gonna be sunny, is it? Not always gonna be great, things gonna happen. And so this whole text, this whole text of 19 to 30 is a reminder that we trust in the character of who God is, not in what's going on in this crazy life we live. The reformer John Calvin said, the fateful therefore must not judge God's will by the appearance of things, but must be persuaded that nothing happens to them but what is conducive to their salvation. That God will allow and bring about things in our life that is there to help us somehow be delivered. That's what Paul says and it's repeated here by this reformer. We need confidence in God no matter what the outcome. So, I want to ask y'all this, church, because I know that you'll have the correct answer. In verse 19, what is it that will deliver Paul? Is it the prayers of the people, or is it the supply of Christ? And the answer is both, right? Both. Paul knows that God is sovereign over all things. I mean, this is the same Paul who wrote, I know that God works all things together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. He knows God is sovereign, but Paul also knows that God ordains the means by which he brings about his plan. And oftentimes, the means that God uses is prayer. And I wanna remind us today, as Christians, we should be men and women of prayer. We should be people of prayer. Charles Spurgeon said the Christian's confidence is not in himself nor in his circumstances but in the unchanging faithfulness of God who works all things for his glory and for our good. So in verse 20 we see a supreme confidence and now he says I have this earnest expectation and hope. Again he's not writing as someone who's in prison by the way. But he says that nothing shall I be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. My second point for you is Paul's, notice his spiritual perspective. His perspective is a spiritual one. It's not an earthly one. It's not a natural man's perspective. It is a spiritual perspective. And it is that no matter what happens, I have hope and expectation that I will not be ashamed, but boldly will do what God calls me to do so that I will honor Christ in my life and or in my death. And that leads us to my favorite verse in this book and probably one of my favorite verses in all the scripture. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If you mark notes or mark in your Bible, I would highlight that verse. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. To live is, I'm here to live and do all the things I do, family, work, church, life, hobbies, all that should be to honor Christ, right? And then one day when my time comes, I may not be ready to die, right? But when I do, it will be gain, because I will go and be with the Lord. Again, this is not an earthly perspective, not a human, not a worldly perspective, but this is a beautiful, written, spiritual perspective that we should also embrace. John Owen is one of my favorite Puritan writers. He said, to live as Christ is true when Christ is all our life. When we have no other aim but to know Him, to love Him, and to make Him known. So we can't really quote Philippians 121 and say, for me to live as Christ, if we don't consider Christ our all in all. Our goal, our hope in this life. If we can't say that, then Philippians 121 is not gonna mean as much to us. Jonathan Edwards, I think the greatest American theologian of all time, said, the happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted. So to live as Christ is to find our happiness, our joy in God. Look at verse 22. 22 through 26, he moves on and he gives a very interesting statement. If I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor, yet what I shall choose I do not know. And then he says in verse 23, I'm torn. I'm torn between a couple different things here. I could depart and leave this earth, and because he don't know, Paul doesn't know any day he could be killed, right? He's in prison, and you never know, he goes before, he goes on trial, and who knows what's gonna happen, but he doesn't know, and so I'm torn. To go to be with Christ, verse 23, would be far better. Verse 24, nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. And so he says, I have this confidence, verse 25, that God's leaving me here for a reason, for a purpose. I know it's better to go to be with God, but he's leaving me here for a purpose that, verse 25, that your faith will be helped, the joy of your faith will be helped by me, that you can rejoice more and more in Christ Jesus, verse 26, for me, by my coming to you again. Now, some people could read this, maybe like people that don't go to church and don't read the Bible might read this and say, does this guy have a death wish, right? Does he have a death wish? I mean, because it's far better to die. But we know what he means, right? We understand what that means, that heaven and being with God truly is better than this. All the pains we have, the suffering we have, the sin we have here, we will not have that when we go to be with the Lord. And so we understand his priority here and his spiritual perspective. But we also understand his earthly perspective. We understand that to stay here is, for him, God's plan. And for us, we're still here, right? So as long as we're still here, then God still has a plan and a purpose for us as he did for Paul. I wonder, though, if you look at back at verse 21, how firmly do we truly believe that line? For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If we truly believe that line, We would continually grow in our faith. We would hold our earthly possessions with less of a grip if we truly believe Philippians 121. We would not worry so much about our earthly status if we truly believed in Philippians 121. If we truly believed in that verse, we would invest in the spiritual more than we do the worldly. So I pray that God would help us embrace Philippians 1.21. Our third thing, before I hit the third thing, we'll go ahead and do the third thing. The third thing, Paul's serious challenge to Philippi, his serious challenge to them. This is a challenge to us as well. Verse 27, only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ. The word conversation doesn't just mean the things you say, it means everything you do and who you are. It means your entire conduct should be in a way that is worthy of the gospel. How many of us can say, every day I live a life that I feel like is worthy of the gospel? I would not raise my hand. I hope it is, but we know we don't always do that. Our conduct, our conversation, our lives don't always line up to what the gospel tells us we should be and who we are, but as Christians, that is our goal, isn't it? Paul wrote in another place, he said, get your life back in line with the gospel. I love that idea. The way I've illustrated it in the past is have you ever seen a marching band? We've all been to high school football game or college game, you see a marching band and you ever look out there and see like one person out of place? You gotta scoot over buddy, you're not in the right spot. Or maybe you're taking a picture with a team or a group and you can't get everybody lined up. Get in line, right? If you get in line, it looks better. Paul says we need to get our lives in line with the gospel. Are the things we're living for, the things we're saying, the things we're doing, does that line up with what God's called us to be through? his good news. And he says, do this, verse 27, because whether I come and see you again or I remain absent, I want to hear what's going on. I want to hear of your affairs, of your work, that you will stand fast in one spirit, striving together for the faith of the gospel. And then he says, don't be terrified, verse 28, don't be afraid by your enemies. Our conduct matters. We understand this, right? Our lives matter. Not just the Christianity we proclaim, but what people see us living like every single day. Someone said that to me recently. I hadn't really heard it said this way in a while, but they were like, man, there's too many Christians that don't live like Christians, basically is what they said. Which I try to take up for Christians. And I said, hey, we're doing the best we can. The Lord's got to help us. We're not perfect. But for some people who are either lost or, let's say, young in the faith, they see believers living in a way that's not like believers, and that can really cause them to stumble, right? I mean, I know the people in this room, and so I can see you maybe stumble, and I can say, well, I know their heart. I know that the Lord's gonna help them, and they're gonna keep going, but imagine a young believer or an unbeliever sees us, and they stumble, and I know none of us want that. I love how he calls the church here in their conduct and their conversation to work together as a church in one spirit, one mind, striving together for the gospel. It's a very serious challenge to the church, not just individuals, but as a group. I wrote in my notes here, this is a true story. Give an illustration of one of those people in the church from my past who did bad stuff. I never got around to actually coming up with which one I wanted to share. I think I've heard most of them. How many times have we seen Christians not act Christian-like? May God help us to be as real and as honest and as Christian as we possibly can be. Martin Luther, the reformer, said, the gospel does not merely teach us what to believe, but it teaches us how to live. It transforms our hearts so that our conduct reflects the glory of Christ. I don't ever want us to be I don't want us to settle for just having right beliefs. Now, do I believe we have right beliefs? I do, and I love how we talk about them all the time. But true doctrine that doesn't make us better Christians, what's the point of it, right? True doctrine starts on the inside, but then it transforms us from the inside out. so that when people see us anywhere, and hear us and talk to us, they will hear about Christ. A friend of mine this week said, he said, man, I knew this guy, he's talking about a guy from his past, and he said, he just had it all over him. He had the Lord all over him. Every time he talked to him, he talked about the Lord, and he just kept going on and on and on, and I was like, I just felt bad, I dropped my head. Like, does he say that about me when he's talking to somebody else? I was like, You know, do people say that about me? Like, hey, he talks about the Lord to you. So, look at this final quote by Herman Bavick. The church is not only a community of faith, but a community of action, united in its confession and striving together for the advancement of the gospel. Paul gives a serious challenge to them, and this is a serious challenge for me and for you, to have a conduct worthy of the gospel, striving together as the church, Not just in word, but in action, that the gospel may go forward through our church. Finally, number four. What you got on that one, Kendall? Make sure, yeah. Paul's stance on suffering. Suffering is a privilege and an opportunity to share in Christ's mission. Does that feel weird to say, suffering is a privilege? Verse 29, for unto you it is given on the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake. Look at it again. To you, church, it is given. It is a, it's given to you. It is a gift. God's given it to you. through Christ, not only to believe and have faith in him, but even and also to suffer for his sake." I mean, that's a surprising statement if you haven't read it before or if you don't know the Christian doctrine. Maybe even if you do, because there are some people out there who call themselves Christians who say, you know, if you're a Christian, God won't let you suffer. You can be healthy, wealthy, and wise, right? That's not what Paul says, is it? He says you can have faith, but in Christ you also will have times of suffering. Paul suffered more than any of us. And he wrote these very words. Suffering is not a sign in your life that God is ignoring you. Suffering is not always a sign that maybe God's disciplining you, although God does discipline his children, maybe that's a part of it, but oftentimes, suffering in the life of a Christian is an opportunity for our faith to grow stronger. How many of us have been through very difficult times in life, and when you came out the other side, you look back and go, oh wow, God grew my faith through that thing. I bet every one of us can say that. It's like the story of the missionary who went to the Papua New Guinea, I think it was, and he's witnessing these people, and all of a sudden they start trying to kill him, and he has to run through the woods at night, and he climbs up in the tree and just stays there by the tree, and they're running around with like muskets or some kind of weapons, and he stays up in the tree all night long, and he later wrote, I've never been more close to God than up in that tree that night. Suffering and struggle is not something that we should look at as always bad. It's a privilege that God's given us. We don't like it, of course, but not only is it a privilege, it is an opportunity to bear witness to his grace, to say to someone else, yeah, I went through this struggle, but God's grace was sufficient for me. During World War II, there was two sisters, Betsy and Corrie Ten Boom. Y'all heard of them before? Corrie Ten Boom's pretty famous for her writing. These two sisters were Dutch, and they were Christian, and they were arrested because they were hiding Jews from the Nazis. So they were put in a notorious concentration camp, and they faced so much suffering. were starved, they were treated cruelly, they were constantly under the threat of death. But even though these two sisters were in this very terrible situation, their faith in God still shone brightly, shined brightly. Betsy, who was very weak and frail physically because of her situation, continued to trust that God was sovereign. And Cory would tell later that Betsy how much she would pray for their whole situation. And in Betsy's prayers, Cory later wrote, Betsy would thank God for his presence even in a dark place. One night as they read scripture in the camp, somebody had smuggled scripture into the camp, Betsy said, Cory, there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still. And my biggest problem today is some plumbing issue, right? There's no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still. You see, Betsy's confidence was not just that God might release them from the concentration camp, but that Christ would sustain them through the experience. The story's told that Betsy's hope was infectious, Her and Corey led secret Bible studies, united prisoners in worship. Even though they were mocked and threatened by the guards, they still did it anyway. Betsy saw their suffering as a privilege and an opportunity. And Betsy eventually died in that concentration camp. But her sister, Corey Tenboom, later shared her story, and I think she died in the 80s, but she's a lot of good Christian writing from Corey Tenboom. She said this, to live as Christ and to die as gain became real to us in that prison, in that prison camp. So all of us can quote the scripture, right? But is it real to us? Sometimes it takes suffering to make things real. Paul, similar to Betsy, live to honor Christ. Paul was confident that God would deliver him, verse 19, whether that meant through getting him out of prison or whether that meant delivering him from this earthly body and to his heavenly home, he was confident. And guess what? In Acts chapter 20, there are at least two things that point to Paul once again going through Philippi. And I just think how amazing, and we don't have anything about it, we don't know anything about it, but in Acts 20 there's at least one or two things that kind of point to the fact that he probably got to go back there. And you can imagine what he would go and tell them after what he had already written them here. And so Paul's confidence in God, I hope, reminds us that we need confidence in God. And may we see our suffering as a privilege, and may we see our suffering as an opportunity. J.C. Ryle, I hadn't quoted him in a while, he said, true faith in Christ will always lead to a willingness to suffer for his sake. For it counts all things as loss, that's Philippians 3, compared to the suppressing worth of knowing him. All this chapter, and I guess this whole letter, is really point after point of radical Christian thinking. Radical in the sense of the world will look at these things and go, that's insane, that's crazy. Why would you do that? Why would you say that? But for us who are Christians and who love the word, we know this is just our perspective. So let me conclude with just some reminders. Put those up there for me, Kendall. For us in this room who are Christians, we find our identity and our purpose in Christ, not in circumstances. We must and we should find our identity and our purpose in Christ, not in circumstances, which means no matter how healthy I am or how sick I am, my purpose is in Christ. No matter how rich I am or how poor I am, my identity is Christ. No matter how Famous or popular I am or unpopular I am, no matter how much I suffer or how little I suffer, my identity is in Christ, not in my circumstances. Secondly, we should live with courage, trusting that Christ will be glorified in our life and in our death. If, not to go dark with this, but if we were having your funeral in here today, What would people get up and say about you? It's a good thing to think about. What would be the testimony of the people who knew you if your life was over? Would Christ be magnified and glorified, not only in your life, but even in your death? I hope we can live in such a way that that's the case. Number three, we strive to live worthy of the gospel. Now we're never gonna achieve that, are we? But we strive for it. We ask God to help us. Finally, we see faith in suffering as a gift. And I'm definitely not saying we want suffering, by the way, but I'm saying when it does happen, it's an opportunity to know Christ more deeply and to be a witness of his grace. Whatever we face, if Philippians 121 and this spiritual perspective that Paul has, this supreme confidence Paul has, if it's a part of our life, then no matter what we go through, we're going to bring honor and glory to God. And I think that's our goal for most of us, probably for all of us. All right. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Let's pray.