Well, good morning. Privileged to be here in this capacity to bring God's word to you. Scripture text for this morning's sermon comes from Philippians chapter 1, verses 18 through 26, Philippians 1. I'm going to start the reading a bit earlier in verse 12 to get a little bit of the context. Verse 18. is a little bit of a hard transition, so we'll start back in verse 12. Hear then God's holy word, beginning Philippians chapter one 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 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 proclaimed Christ out of selfish ambition, 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. For 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 all 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. God's holy word. May he write it upon our hearts. Let's look to him in prayer. Father, we know that apart from the work of your spirit, we do not understand well, we do not understand savingly what your word says. And so we look to you, we ask you to fill us with your spirit, convict us of the meaning of this passage, of its bearing upon our lives. Bring us once again to our Savior in full reliance upon him, in humility submitting our lives to him and in this finding fullness of joy and purpose both for life and in death. Pray this in his name. Amen. Well, brothers and sisters, when Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians, he faced the most extreme kind of circumstances that a human being can face. Because he wrote the letter in prison, facing the imminent possibility of his own death. As you might expect, the prospect of death elicits from him some reflection. A very profound reflection, in fact, about what life really means for him as a Christian. And therefore, how to face death if it should come. In short, in this passage, Paul says that to live is Christ and to die is gain because of Christ. And that he's torn between these two options of remaining on earth, continuing to live on earth in order to help the Philippians, or departing to be with Christ himself, which he says very clearly is far better by comparison. And though death for a Christian holds the greater benefit, nevertheless, he says that he's resolved to go on living if he can, if God permits, for the sake of his ministry among Christ's people. Now, I'm sure you begin to sense just from this brief summary that Paul displays a remarkable calm in the face of death. He sees himself poised at this point in his life between two good things, life and death, either of which he will accept with joy if only he may honor Jesus Christ in either one. I would guess that for many of us, not all of us, I'm sure, but for many of us, these statements in Philippians 1 are quite familiar Pretty well-known passage, I think. And sometimes when things become familiar, we can easily lose sight of just how amazing, how profound, how impressive they are. And so this morning, I want us to step back for a moment and contrast what Paul says in this passage here with what someone else in his own time period said about the same topics. Many people in Paul's day wrote about the subject of how to face death bravely or nobly. And in fact, as you read the letter to the Philippians carefully, it seems that Paul has just some of those people precisely in mind as he writes. In other words, that the Philippians were supposed to, and I think would have, recognized a kind of background here a contrast to what Paul himself says. It was very common for philosophers in the ancient Roman Empire and pundits and those sorts to write about this topic, how to face death. Probably one of the most well-known of those writers was a Roman politician and orator named Seneca. He was partly contemporary with Paul, their lives overlapped. Seneca was a Stoic philosopher, and he articulated what was some of the most popular ways of viewing death itself, what happens in death, and therefore how we should live now. And Paul does the same thing in our passage. The wording that Paul uses here, the wording that he uses elsewhere in Philippians, suggests that he's purposefully contrasting himself to this kind of popular pagan, unbelieving viewpoint. What I want to do then this morning is to, I hope, help us appreciate Paul's words afresh here by placing what Paul says about life and death in contrast with what Seneca said. Again, I suggest that this is what was intended, and that's why I go this route. It's likely that the Philippians would have picked up on this, but specifically I want to do this by looking at three questions. Firstly, what really is the problem with death? What's the problem? Why does death bother us so much as a topic? Secondly, what is the solution to this problem? And thirdly, how should we live life in the present because of that? Well, firstly then, what really is the problem with death? In one of his most famous writings, the Roman philosopher Seneca, I mentioned earlier, wrote a letter of consolation to a woman named Marcia. It appears that when you read the letter, Marsha had lost her very young son to an untimely death. The boy was quite young, we don't know how old, but perhaps five or six. After a bit of time had passed, after that sad event, Seneca took it upon himself to write to Marsha to urge her to stop mourning. but to regain her composure. He wanted to help Marcia. He wanted to help her face the reality of death more resolutely. So he wrote to her at some length to tell her how to do that. Now, like many other people, both in the ancient Roman world and today, Seneca viewed death as morally neutral in itself, simply a natural phenomenon, a biological event where the body expires, just like it does for any animal. It's really neither here nor there. Death is just what happens. And so he wrote to Marsha, and he said, death is a release from all suffering, a boundary beyond which our ills cannot pass. It restores us to that peaceful state in which we lay before we were born. Death is neither a good nor an evil, neither here nor there, as it were. Now, we'll talk about a bit of that later, but this last part you see here, Seneca assures Marcia that death is not evil. It's just natural. It's normal. Just as in Seneca's view, blind fate once placed a human spirit into a mortal body for no particular reason, though the end of bodily life is also predetermined by fate, and it's just of no great consequence. By implication, then, for Marcia, the only problem that people face in death is if they fear it. Death is not a problem in itself, Seneca supposes. It's only a problem if you think it is, if you let it affect you, your mind. Well, right away, brothers and sisters, we already have to see a very strong contrast between Seneca and Paul here at this point. In Paul's teaching and in the Bible in general, death is by no means morally neutral. It is rather a morally reprehensible result of personal sin and hostility to the Creator God. Verse by Adam, and then by all the rest of us. Romans 5 verse 12, Paul says that just as sin entered the world through one man, that being Adam, and death entered through sin, so death came to all men. Why? Because all sinned. Far from being morally neutral then, Paul shows us that death is the tarnishing, the degrading, the defacing of man. And more particularly than that, the defacing of the one creature in the world whom God created to bear his image. Because of this, Paul goes on in that same chapter, Romans 5, and elsewhere to speak of death as a conquering enemy. Romans 5.21 says that sin reigns in death. It comes to its fullest expression of its power over mankind. Death is inevitable because sin is universal. And sin comes to its victory in death. Or in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 26, Paul says that death is the last enemy that still is to be defeated by Christ on his return. Death though clearly as the enemy. So the first thing we need to see then this morning is the true problem of death. Death is not a natural and inevitable state. Something to be therefore trivialized. It is rather an evil in this world. An enemy of God and an enemy of his people. An enemy that seeks to deny and to eradicate God's glory in his creature by bringing him back down to the dust. And this is important for us to understand in part to avoid a shallow and an insufficient view of death. What really is happening when a human being dies? You see, for Seneca, as an unbeliever, the only problem with death is how it affects people. He has a very man-centered and short-sighted view of the problem. Either, he supposes, the loss of a son is great human anguish, as Marsha feels it is, Or as Seneca wishes to convince her, human death is just a happy escape back to some form of undisturbed bliss. We got rid of the body, now the soul can go back to its happiness up in the clouds somewhere. But you see, for both Marsha and for Seneca, the entire issue turns not on God's image, nor on the vindication of God's glory, but only on the quality of human life and experience. And of course, brothers and sisters, if death is simply an obstacle to our happiness, then all that we really need in the face of death is some way to enjoy life anyway, to believe in some silver lining perhaps, or just to distract ourselves from our sorrow, or to distract ourselves from fear of death by various pleasures in life, or just by changing the subject. Let's not talk about it. Indeed, is this not really the way non-Christians in our own day typically deal with death too? Not a whole lot has really changed in 2,000 years on this topic. Unbelievers have no better or different answer now than they did then. And so what do we see as we go out in the workplace or speak to unbelieving relatives or whatever it might be? How do they deal with such topics? We see hollow, hallmark regrets and responses, a little limerick inside a card that doesn't really address the topic or change the fact that my loved one has passed away. We see avoidance, we see distraction, or we see vague, really, in the end, quite groundless statements that somehow, in some way, the deceased is in a better place, not knowing what that place is or if that person is really there. All simply to try to placate how we feel about death. Well, in a sense, that's really all that's needed if the whole problem of death is simply how it makes us feel. But brothers and sisters, Christians know the Bible teaches us very clearly that death is a problem, not simply or primarily because of what it does to people or how it makes us feel, but what it does in the face of God's glory. The crucial nature of the problem of death, as Paul sees it, is theocentric or God-centered, not simply man-centered. It is indeed the conquest of Satan and sin over God's image, man. So Paul understands, as we need to understand, that death is a problem so big it cannot simply be politely papered over or avoided. No, indeed, it needs to be reversed. That's the only solution. Well, secondly then, if we've looked a bit at the problem of death and the profound nature of the problem of death, what then is the solution? Here again, we need to see how believing Paul and unbelieving Seneca or any other unbeliever, these come into direct conflict. For Seneca, Because the problem of death is really only mental or emotional, the solution to the problem is simply rationalization, explaining it away. Does that sound familiar? We could call it cognitive behavioral therapy if we want. Coping mechanisms, right? And so Seneca offers Marcia various distractions or other coping strategies in this letter that he writes. For example, he suggests to Marcia that if she really thinks about it, she would know that she's better off now that her son has died, because now she's able to enjoy him more than when he was alive. Think about it, Marcia. Your son's memory is always at your disposal, every day, all the time. Whereas when he was alive, he was so energetic, running here and there, he was often not with you or paying attention to you. Really? What a profoundly empty way, a cruel way to deal with sorrow. By contrast, when we look at Paul in our passage, we don't see distraction. We don't see coping mechanisms. We don't see avoidance. We see steadfastness in the face of death. In fact, we see more than that. We see rejoicing in the face of death. And it's not due to mental games. And it's not due to some kind of empty coping mechanism, some trick. That due to something real, something concrete, something that has happened in the world, something historical. An actual solution to death's true evil. Though Paul clearly sees the deep problem of death, yet Paul also sees something else. Notice in our passage how Paul's gaze is fixed all throughout on the life-changing reality of his living Savior in heaven, Jesus Christ. He says, if I'm to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what I shall choose, I do not know. I'm torn between the two. Why? Because I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. You see the difference. Paul's focus here is entirely centered upon that new thing that has happened in the world, in history. The gospel announces that there is now, for the first time ever, a resurrected and exalted man in heaven who also acts as mediator before God for us all. You see, this announcement goes out that Jesus Christ is the one man in and for whom death has already entirely been defeated. Death no longer reigns over him because he's been vindicated and exalted, raised from the dead, ascended into heaven. Christ has not only, when Christ died, he was not only put in the grave and then resuscitated back to ordinary life here and now, like let's say Lazarus was, where the life that he was raised to was just like the life that he had once left in death, right? No different, just going on longer. No, Christ, when he was raised, was raised and glorified, transformed, changed, exalted, never to die again. When Lazarus was raised, someday he died a second time. Not Christ. In Christ's death, death itself, In Christ's death, the power of death was broken. And this was done not only for his sake himself, but for ours as well. For all who call upon the name of Christ are found in him. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, for as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive. This is not some remote fact of history that has nothing to do with us. No, Christ's resurrection was the guarantee of our resurrection. And so Christ's defeat of death is the defeat of death for us too. That even as we ourselves will die, that death does not have the sting the hopelessness, the meaninglessness that it otherwise would. Christian hope does not consist, brothers and sisters, in empty words of well-wishing or distraction. No, the Christian hope is a gospel. It's good news. It's about something that happened. An event that changed the world. That God has entered the human situation in Jesus Christ and he has reversed that situation for all who call upon Christ. So we can notice also that when Paul voices his hope, not simply a man-centered hope focused all upon himself. The tension here is not even drawn to the various lesser things, good things that he will enjoy himself in death. He doesn't focus his attention here in our passage on obtaining rest from his labor, or even obtaining freedom from suffering, and those are good things. And we are properly glad that that is what happens for us in death. And yet Paul's perspective here transcends that. In our passage, Paul goes above such things to something even far greater, that to depart this life holds something better for Christians because it means being with Christ our Savior in his presence. Again here, Paul's teaching contrasts so sharply with the man-centeredness of so many in his day and in our own day. So often, brothers and sisters, even Christians effectively seem to reduce the gospel to something that's really all about us. Human good. As if the whole focus of our religion is just to improve upon your lot in life in eternity. Or even worse, your lot in life simply now. But the gospel is not merely what we should call and what some have called eternal fire insurance. The gospel can't be reduced simply to escaping the discomfort of hell to attract an unbeliever to the gospel simply as it were because you're advertising a kind of personal gain. is really a dangerous oversimplification. How is somebody to become a Christian solely for their own good and out of their own self-interestedness, as it were, and then to live the Christian life, bearing their cross daily for the sake of Jesus? Yes, the gospel does include immense benefits for us. Thank God for that. But the scope and the purpose of the gospel are not oriented merely towards those sorts of things. Our minds should not be oriented merely towards those sorts of things either. Gospel has one chief end, which I hope you know, that we might glorify God and enjoy him forever. And so as we live in such a self-centered age as we do, we should say, as Paul does in Philippians 3, that we as Christians count everything in this life as a loss compared to something that is so far surpassingly greater, the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, our Lord, for whose sake give up all things. We need to lift our eyes this morning with Paul to see this Savior, whose fellowship is our great hope and privilege, both now by His Spirit unseen, and as we someday ourselves will die, unless He comes back first, be with Him in person in heaven. We need to ask the Lord, brothers and sisters, to help us to want to know Him more. To want to know Him more than we so often do. To want to see more clearly with the eyes of faith that one man in the universe whose friendship is perfect, whose faithfulness is matchless, whose sacrifice for us is beyond comprehension, and to want to be with that man. All other things being lost from view by comparison. You see how we confront here our own shallowness, don't you? We don't lift up our eyes to the hills to see where our help comes from. The Lord, the maker of the heavens and the earth. so often consumed merely by what we see and experience in the world around us every day. No wonder then that we often don't have the confidence that we should have and can have in the face of death. Because we're not clearly looking to that consolation the way we need to. That desire to be with Jesus Christ himself is not burning in our hearts the way we see on display here for Paul, the way he wants to be the case for us as well. Solution to death is so all comprehensively greater than we think. That is why Paul has steadfastness. And that is why Paul even rejoices. Well, thirdly, looked at the problem of death, something of it, there's lots more that could be said, of course. We've looked at that basic solution in Christ, his resurrection, and our being joined to him. And so our resurrection also being guaranteed, well as our being with him even prior to the resurrection, immediately upon death ourselves. Thirdly, then, at the question, what are we to make of life in the meantime? Paul's passage here is not focused principally on death in certain respects. It's really focused principally on what he wants to do now and what he wants the Philippians to do now in light of these things. And again here, Paul's message to the Philippians differs from Seneca's message to Marsha and any unbelieving message, not only concerning death, but just as much concerning life itself here and now. You see, in Seneca's view, bodily life in this world is an accident of fate, after which disembodied spirits, upon death, death releases the spirit from the body, Those disembodied spirits simply return, on Seneca's view, to that same state of undisturbed bliss that those spirits had before they were first born or first put into bodies. Now there's a variety of things that could be said here, and we don't need to know all the details, but here's the crucial part. For Seneca, There is no eschatology at all. What I mean by that is for Seneca, there is no destination, there's no ultimate climax towards which all of creation and his own life is moving. For Seneca, everything will be exactly the same after he dies as it was before he was born. What then, we may ask, is the point of life? What is the point of all of this history that we experience? What is the point of creation, the world around us? What is the point of anything really, if after all of our suffering and sacrifice and service in life, everything simply returns to a previous state? For Seneca, everything will be entirely the same after all of our suffering as before. Life, then, for Seneca, and for unbelievers in general, is simply an inconvenient detour. A maybe sometimes interesting, but often really just aggravating delay. And so Seneca, because of this, has the audacity to tell Marcia that her son's early death at a young age is really enviable. He says, if therefore the happiest lot is not to be born at all, that would be the first best option. The next best, I think, is to have a brief life and by death to be restored quickly to the original state. Well, distinct contrast to that, Paul has a very different perspective, does he not? And his perspective, I hope you see, is one that is oriented here, when it comes to life in this world, towards the good of others. And ultimately, through that, toward the honor of Christ. See again here, brothers and sisters, that Paul's personal condition does not dominate his viewpoint. Says, if I am to go on living in the body, what? What's the good of that? Well, the good of that is that it will mean useful labor for me. Says that to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. He says, convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all. Why? For your progress and joy in the faith. Remarkably then here, it is service towards others that pulls Paul towards life. But it's not as if Paul here faces a dilemma between human good on the one hand, and fellowship with Christ on the other. No, for Paul, both service to others in this life and his departure in death, both are for Jesus Christ. He says in verse 20, his great prayer and desire is that Christ might be honored in his body, whether by life or by death. See, the tension for Paul is not between people and God, but between serving God's people for Christ's sake on the one hand, and finally being with Christ himself on the other. A glorious perspective on life that far transcends the self-absorption of our natural human inclinations. When pressed by the approach of death, what flows out from the Apostle Paul's heart is not fear, on the one hand, or escapism on the other. What flows from his heart is rejoicing in his savior, in whose service he has true meaning, no matter what his immediate future holds. Live is Christ, to die is gain. So clearly here, as we read this, we see that just as Paul differed so decisively from the unbelieving wisdom of his own day, we too must differ just as much from the wisdom of our own. In ancient Rome, just as in ancient Rome, so today, philosophers, the poets, the pundits reflect on the specter of human death, and what do they find? Well, you're born from the pure accident of evolution, and your life will simply end the way every animal's ends, in the nothingness of death. So what? Well, except your animal mortality Free yourself somehow from thinking about it and caring. Live for the present. Live for the present for yourself. Well, in response to and over against that supposedly enlightened message, this brave so-called message of chance, We have to ask our unbelieving world, what good does their so-called freedom and enlightenment do? Breed from religion, right? Or what? Live apart from God and be self-determining, right? Toward what end? What value is there in this supposedly liberating secularism of our age? If, as one poet has said, life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, if that's true, then the Apostle Paul knows just as well as anybody what to do. He says, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. 1 Corinthians 15. or as one British rock band put it in their chorus, time goes on. There's nothing we can do but do what we love to. At work and at school and at the mall and maybe most especially at the mall, this is what we confront, isn't it? Aimless pleasure seeking. a more sophisticated form of animal life that's governed by every fleshly desire and fills our newspapers and our websites with increasingly bizarre and increasingly tragic stories week after week. For what purpose should one live a random, future-less life? With what sense of meaning should one face death in those circumstances? Who can say? Who knows? God can say, has said. Resoundingly, he has spoken in Jesus Christ. death of Christ as our representative and his resurrection as first fruits from the dead. These things give meaning to your present and to your future. These truths that we confess from scripture about our Savior are not some kind of lifeless points of orthodoxy or shallow or meaningless knowledge. No, they are a source of life. They are a source of purpose. All of your hopes are found in Christ and only in Christ, because he has both died for your sins and was raised from the grave for your justification, for your transformation, someday for your glorification. And in him and because of him, life does not have a random or a sorrowful ending. In Him, we've been purchased for God, and so all the details of your life are moving towards one God-glorifying end, being with Jesus. This, this is true consolation. In Christ, life is not a random coincidence. History and your own lives Even your very bodies are that through which God is bringing about and will bring about his own glory. So we don't grasp onto life with hopeless fear and we don't squander life as a meaningless passing of time for no reason. Yes, we may struggle and wrestle with God's providence to us and to our loved ones as we or they face death or have died. But even as we struggle, find ourselves in the hands of our Savior. That is what makes all the difference. Thrive for Christ's honor in all things. We rejoice in whatever his mysterious will may bring to each one of us if only as Paul says, we may honor him whether in life or in death. This raises us up from the dust. This raises us up from self-absorption. This raises us up from our lostness as we seek whatever answer it is that we could somehow drum up for life with no answers at all. Contrast to the wisdom of this world, brothers and sisters. Yes, the death of a human being is a real problem. A problem that far transcends how we just feel about it. Just as truly the gospel of Jesus Christ breaks through the darkness of death with the resurrection of Christ, by his spirit we're joined to him both now and in the future. And for this reason, we too, like Paul, can rejoice to honor him. We belong to Him, body and soul, and His glory and His service give us a true and a lasting purpose, whatever God calls us to, here and in the future. And so we lift up our hearts together to God, rejoicing and singing that we will one day be with Him. In the meantime, we live this life in hope, not in fear, in hope. not in self-centeredness, finding meaning and purpose as his creatures and as his redeemed creatures through our Savior. Amen. Let's pray.