Sermon: Philippians 2:12-18 - As you have always obeyed... continue!

Good morning, church! Or good afternoon, or good evening, depending on when you’re watching this. A special shout-out to all those who are watching live on Facebook. What up. For those who don’t know me so well, My name’s Ben, one of the members of New Song Family Church, and I’ve been asked to preach today – or pre-record for today – the next sermon in our series on Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Before I start with that, I will ask my wife Penny to do the Bible reading for today.

Good morning, church. Today we will be reading from Philippians chapter 2, from verse 12 to verse 18. I am reading from the New International Version:

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.”

Thanks, Penny. When I was growing up, we had a white bull terrier cross called Phantom. Phantom was a good dog. She had a very even temperament, and she was very easy to train. You could train this dog to do anything! She would sit, stay, fetch, lie down, she would only eat when told, she would walk at heel – you could even tell her “Go to sleep”, and she would lie down on her blanket, put her head on her paws and close her eyes. She never went on the chairs or beds in the house, she never begged for food, she rarely barked without permission, she even went to the toilet in only one spot in the yard, so you didn’t have to dodge little doggie land mines all over the place. One time while we were packing some stuff into a trailer, we told Phantom to “stay” so that she wouldn’t get in the way of us moving things. We then got in the car and drove off to our destination… and when we returned home a few hours later, we found Phantom still sitting in the same spot we told her to stay in! Phantom was a good dog. She did what she was told, even when we weren’t there watching.

In today’s passage, these are Paul’s words to the Philippian church: “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue”. The Philippian church was a good dog. Whether or not Paul was with them, they were obedient – not to Paul, he was just their teacher – but to their real master, the Lord their God.

I think this passage of Philippians is actually a wonderful and important passage for New Song Family Church to hear during this time of lockdown. Brian and Dana, our spiritual teachers, are absent against their will, just like Paul was from the Philippian church. And I think they’d agree with me that New Song, like the church at Philippi, is a good dog – we are being obedient even more in their absence than we are in their presence. Sybille and Riko and JP and others have been doing a really great job of keeping church going in the midst of Covid lockdown and in the absence of Brian and Dana.

I want you to imagine for a moment how great a relief it is to the Bullingtons to know that even though they are locked out of returning to Namibia for the moment, our church has not fallen into a heap, and that even though our church is facing one of the most uniquely difficult times in history for churches – not being able to physically meet together, not even for Easter! – we as a church are still going strong for the Lord. Let me tell you, it is not always like that! There are churches that really do just fall apart when the minister goes away – services stop, people don’t get cared for, and the message of Christ no longer gets preached. It is a reason why missionary church planters are always so keen to identify and train up local leaders in new churches: because eventually all missionaries must leave, and they want to know that without them the church will not die. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” the prophet Zechariah tells us, and that is a truth that has happened many times to many churches.

We all know it’s always easier to do something the right way when your teacher is with you. As a teacher, you know you’ve done your job well when your students can do what they’ve been taught even without you around. Nothing makes a teacher more proud than to see their students succeeding in their chosen field, using the skills they were taught – not just to impress the teacher, or to get good marks, but using the skills for themselves, to accomplish things in the real world. Paul was that proud teacher. His students, the Philippian Christians, were continuing to be obedient to God, not just when he was with them, but now even more when he was absent. They were growing and maturing into godly men and women who were doing the right thing because they knew it was right, and because they wanted to serve God. Paul calls this process of maturing, this changing into someone who does God’s will because they want to please God rather than just follow a list of rules, he calls that “working out your salvation with fear and trembling”.

Now this saying sometimes confuses people in one of two ways. Firstly, people will say, “Hey, is Paul saying here that you are working for your own salvation, like we’re saving ourselves? Isn’t salvation from God by grace through faith?” This first confusion is very easily dealt with, and it’s dealt with by Paul himself. It’s almost like he saw it coming. In the very next verse, verse 13, he says, “[F]or it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” So you know what? Yes, during your Christian life you will change to become more mature, you will have a deeper trust in God, you will become more righteous, your will and your act – that is, your thoughts and your deeds – will more and more fulfil God’s good purpose. Can you even argue about that? That’s the Christian life!

But it’s just like the crippled man who was brought to Jesus. You remember, his friends had to lower him in through the hole in the roof. Jesus says to him, “I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home.” Dude’s a cripple. Seems harsh to tell him to get up and walk when he can’t do it by himself! But God is at work in him. Christ has the power to make him walk; but the guy still had to get up and do it. If we ever say, “Hey, look at what a good job I’m doing in my Christian life” then we already fail, because it is God working in us that is doing that, not our own self. But if we ever say “God’s got this; I don’t have to do anything” then we fail, because we’re not being obedient. The crippled man didn’t have to heal himself to obey Christ’s command to get up; he just had to trust God, and get up. We don’t have to save ourselves to be God’s people; we just have to trust God, and grow into the people he wants us to be.

The second thing people ask about “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” is, “Is Paul saying here that we should be afraid of God; that if we don’t be obedient to him he will punish us and take away our salvation? Doesn’t that also go against salvation by grace? Doesn’t that stop God being a loving God?” Now, sometimes we are told that when the Bible says “fear God” it doesn’t mean “fear” like being terrified of God; instead it means being in reverent awe of God. And this is fair enough: the term “fear God” is used almost 100 times in the Bible, and it basically means respect the power and majesty of God. This is a legitimate use of the word “fear”: when I looked up “fear” in the dictionary, the fourth definition is “reverential awe, especially towards God”. But when you say “fear and trembling” as Paul says here, it’s not quite the same. We’ve all been properly scared, and we know what happens when you are scared: you tremble. You shake. You don’t tremble when you’re in reverent awe. Now if you’re using the New Living Translation, it translates this as “with deep reverence and fear” – which really means you should revere God and be scared – they’re translating the Greek “fear and trembling” so that “fear” means “reverence” and “trembling” means, well, “scared”. The fact is that the idea of being properly scared is still there.

The real question we need to ask is this: What is Paul saying we should be scared of? And here’s the answer: Paul is not saying we need to be scared of God. What he’s saying is that as we work out our salvation, as we mature in our Christian life, we should be scared of disappointing God. Imagine if you invite someone really important over for tea – maybe President Geingob, or Queen Elizabeth, or your fiancée’s parents. Before they get there, you clean up your place, you make sure you have clean cups, that you actually have tea, that you have your best clothes washed and ready to wear. Before they arrive, you might well be trembling. Are you trembling because you’re afraid of them, of what they might do to you? If it’s your fiancée’s parents, maybe. But President Geingob and Queen Elizabeth are not about to punish someone for forgetting to put sugar in their tea. Really, you’re afraid because you don’t want to disappoint them, because they are so important to you. Let me tell you, if you don’t care about the Queen, or the President, or your fiancée’s parents, then you would not be afraid of what they think! You would just let them come into your dirty house, you’d be like, “Sorry Hage, we’re out of tea,” or, “The toilet’s in the back, Lizzy, go for it.”

When Paul is telling us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, he’s not saying, “Because if you don’t then God will smite you.” Seriously, just before this he was talking about how Jesus made himself nothing and died on a cross for us! No, he’s saying, “Take your salvation seriously; take it so seriously that you are actually afraid of being a disappointment, because you should care what God thinks of your life.” So let me ask you now: do you care what God thinks of your life? Does the thought that some parts of your life aren’t up to scratch make you tremble in fear - not in fear of punishment, but fear of God’s disappointment? How seriously do you take maturing in your Christian life? I’m going to leave that with you to chew on.

But also remember that Paul isn’t just saying this to the Philippian Christians individually. He’s writing this letter to them as a church. So you may even need to ask yourself this: as a member of God’s church – both his people worldwide, but also this specific church, New Song Family Church – am I contributing to the maturing and growth of this church? Am I taking my role in church life seriously? When our church leaders recommended that we all read the Bible together throughout this year, yes of course it was because they knew it would be of individual benefit to each of us, but they also wanted all of us as a church to be on the same page in terms of our spiritual growth. There is a kind of spiritual growth that we all take part in together as we read the Bible together that doesn’t happen even if we were all reading it separately. It’s the same as our February prayer and fasting month. We all pray all the time, I hope. But February is when we pray together as a church. The maturing that comes out of these things is a maturing of our community, not just ourselves. Let me tell you, I reflected on this as I was writing this sermon, and I realised that I had been lax in my giving because we haven’t had physical church, so there’s no box to put money into. Am I really taking my part in this church seriously? So that was something I had to rectify. Giving money to church is a great example of community maturing, because that money I give does not primarily help me. It invests in the community as a whole. Maybe it’s something different for you, that you need to think about in terms of your maturing as a member of our church.

But the key here is to take your part in God’s church seriously. God is empowering you to will and act in order to fulfil his good purpose. As long as we’re honestly working on maturing, both as individual Christians and as a church community, we will not disappoint him. And this is something that New Song Family Church actually does well. Our church’s budget, our Bible reading plan, our February prayer and fasting, our community activities like Sunday school, Bible study groups, YWAP, D-Groups, coffee service – these things are all part of that, and they are well supported by this church community. We are a good dog. Let’s keep it up, so that as a church we can continue to mature and grow with fear and trembling.

All right, we’ve made it through two verses so far. Thankfully, the rest of this passage is pretty clear. As we are on this journey of maturity in thoughts and deeds, Paul says we should not grumble about it, and we should not argue about it. Now I want to be clear about this: Paul here is not saying that Christians never complain that the world is not how it should be. The Bible is full of people who righteously complain that God’s perfect design for the world has been marred by sin, and that his perfect plan sometimes seems slow in coming; people who cry out asking why they are in such pain and anguish and facing such oppression and injustice when they know they serve a loving and just God, whose plan is to bring all these bad things to an end. There is nothing wrong with wanting God’s kingdom to come! And Paul is not saying that good Christians never argue: we argue all the time! Anyone who knows me knows I argue against false teachers, who seek to pervert God’s words; I argue against unbelievers who say that there is no God, or that God is someone other than who he is; I argue against laws that are unjust, or situations or practices that oppress the weak and vulnerable. I am an arguing machine for the Lord.

But that’s not what Paul is talking about. No, Paul is painting a very clear picture to his readers by the language he uses. He says Don’t grumble and argue, so that you can be “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” And all of us who have been doing the Bible reading plan should at this point be going, “Oooooh, right! Don’t be like Israel in the desert!” Paul literally quotes Deuteronomy 32, which is reminding Israel about when they were in the desert, and the Israelites were grumbling about God, and arguing with God’s plan for them! They were not saying, “We hate injustice”, they were saying, “Why did God bring us out into the desert to die? We would have been better in Egypt as slaves than what God has planned for us! He provides us miraculous food and water – but we’re bored with it! God has got it wrong!” They did not trust God at all! They questioned every step they took in the desert. They put Moses through hell. God got so fed up with them that he threatened to wipe them off the planet and start again with Moses.

This is the people that God saved from slavery but did not take into his promised land – a bunch of whingers and moaners who would rather live as oppressed slaves than trust God’s plan. That generation died in the desert. Paul says that if we trust God, and we don’t complain about his plan for our salvation even when it gets hard, if we don’t argue with him about his plan for the world to hear the good news about his son, then in comparison to Israel, we will be pure and blameless! We will shine like stars to the rest of the world!

And as Christians, both individually and communally as a church, that is our job, my friends! When Paul says that God is at work in us to will and to act according to his good purpose, this is the good purpose! When we look around and see that God has placed us within a warped and crooked generation, this is why he has done that: so we can shine like stars as we hold firmly to that gospel of good news about Jesus Christ breaking down the walls between people and God. As a church, we should be a shining example of that, we should be a place where people say, “Wow, those Christians really care about knowing God, and they really care about me knowing God better too.”

Have any of you ever seen a star? Of course all of you have seen stars. Namibia has the third lowest light pollution in the world, y’all have seen stars. The closest star to earth we call the sun, and you have all seen its light and felt its warmth on your skin. And yet the sun is 150 million kilometres away. The next closest star to Earth is the binary star Alpha Centauri A and B. That star is 4.3 light years away – that’s 300,000 times further away than the sun – but you can still see these stars brightly with the naked eye! The stars in the Southern Cross are 228 light years away – about 16 million times further away than the Sun – and yet people can still recognise these stars specifically and use them to navigate!

Why am I telling you this? Because at the moment, while we’re all in lockdown, it can feel like it’s impossible for us as a church to be visible as the pure and blameless children of God in this warped and crooked generation. It can feel like if we can’t see people face to face, we can’t be the good example God calls us to be, and we can’t share the gospel the way God intends us to do it. To that, my friends, I say this: the stars are not close by, but you can still see them. They still shine , and they are still glorious and beautiful.

During lockdown, we are not 228 light years away from others, although sometimes it might feel like that. We aren’t even 150 million kilometres away. People can still see us and hear us; they can still feel our warmth. We might not be able to do things the way we would hope to do them, but we can still do things. Do you think that our church services on a Sunday morning in the hall at St George’s school are any more visible to the world than our virtual services are now? As a matter of fact, our internet services are more visible! It’s easier for people to see them, and to be involved in them. It’s easier to invite someone to church now than it will be when the lockdown is over. Pastoral care might be harder without face to face meetings, but it’s actually more important now than ever, because people are really struggling now. So we’ve got to use our phones, make calls, send texts, deliver food to people, and stay connected; and we have to make sure the people who do this job for us full-time are funded to keep doing it. As a church of God’s people seeking to shine his light like stars in this warped and crooked generation, we need to be showing people that we care, checking up on them, doing what we can do, not just bemoaning what we can’t do. This is God’s good purpose that he calls us to fulfil.

And then, Paul says in Philippians, only then - only when the Philippians are shining like stars among a warped and crooked generation, only when they are holding out the word of life and fulfilling God’s good purpose in their thoughts and their deeds – then Paul will know that his work with the Philippian church was not in vain. Then he will be able to boast before the Lord. Oh, but he’s not boasting as if he is someone special to have raised up this church, to have trained this good dog. In fact, he says that a good church that faithfully follows God’s mission is the real sacrifice – it’s the meat - and that his work is just the drink offering that is poured out on top. To God, a faithful, missional church is the meat at the braai; the work of a church leader helping them get there is just the cool drink.

That is the aim of all good church leaders. They don’t just want to see a church where people know their bibles and live good lives and don’t get into trouble. They want to see a church where people take the light of the gospel and shine it all around! They want to see people’s lives so transformed by the gospel that it impacts the world! Good church leaders want to see a church that is doing the same mission that they themselves are called to: seeing the gospel spread, seeing the kingdom grow. And they don’t want it because it makes them look good. Paul actually says that if the Philippian church can become the meat at God’s braai, then he will rejoice with them in that; and if all he ends up as is the cool drink at the braai, then they should rejoice with him in that.

Do you think while Brian and Dana have been in the United States they’ve been boasting to their friends and supporters about how good their leadership is? Do you think Brian stands up in churches there and says, “You should hear the sermons I give; you should see me in church leadership meetings. New Song couldn’t survive without me”? Of course not! That would be like inviting someone to your braai and boasting to them about how good your cool drink is, while the meat is rotten. He’s over there saying, “You should see New Song Family Church. You should see how on fire for God they are. You should see how mature in the faith they are. You should meet the Namibians who are in charge while I’m gone. I swear, even if Dana and I never get to go back to Namibia, that church is going to thrive and God’s mission is going to be worked out there.” That, my friends, is a braai worth boasting about.

And I think if I were to ask Brian and Dana, they would say that. They might not appreciate my American accent, but from what I know about New Song, I think there is a lot to boast about, because God works in us to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose. New Song Family Church is a good braai before the Lord, and the Bullingtons are happy to be the cool drink. But I think they would also say to us, as Paul said to the Philippian church, “[A]s you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue”. I really hope that the lockdown ends soon. I really hope that Brian and Dana can come back home to Namibia soon. But I am so glad to be a part of a church that does not fall apart when the leaders are away, even when it is facing trials and difficult circumstances. So let’s keep it up, church. Let’s continue to shine like stars.