02-02-14 All Your Needs Pt. 1

I spent no small amount of time

brooding over how best to approach

the passage we have for today.

It is one of those awkward passages,

a passage most of us have heard quoted numerous times,

a passage we know we should believe,

and yet a passage we don’t.

We have a special place in our minds for such passages.

We’ll call it “A special place in my mind for verses I accept without believing.”

It’s not that we don’t want to believe it.

It’s not even that we don’t try to believe it.

It’s just that we believe we face far too much hard cold evidence to the contrary.

To accept the verse

would seem to be

to deny the reality of the world as we know it.

We have come up against other such verses at times.

One of the big ones

is the way in which God

repeatedly calls us His “Holy Ones”.

We translate it as “saints” in the New Testament,

but the literal translation is “Holy Ones”.

And to complicate it even more,

the word “Holy” used to describe us

is the same word “Holy” used to describe God Himself.

More than 60 times He calls us His “Holy Ones”.

For many of us

to accept those verses as being literally true

would seem impossible.

We think we should be holy.

We think we will be holy in heaven.

But we believe we know ourselves too well to call ourselves Holy here and now.

And so we choose to accept the verses

without really believing them.

And because we don’t believe them,

the power of those verses

to transform our lives

never becomes a living reality within us.

I’m getting off track already,

and I haven’t even started yet,

but do you want to hear an interesting statement

Paul made to the Thessalonian Christians,

a statement that has a remarkable revelation imbedded in it?

It’s found in I Thess. 2:13. Paul says,

And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God's message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.

Paul tells the Thessalonians

that the message he has offered them

truly is the word of God - words spoken by God Himself to them personally.

But then he goes on to tell them

that, even though it is absolute truth,

it only has the power to transform their lives

as they choose to accept it

and believe it for the absolute truth it is.

It is certainly that way with God’s affirmations

that we are His Holy Ones.

If we are trying to become holy,

believing we really should be holy,

but certain we are not yet holy,

the best we will ever accomplish

when it comes to changed lives

is a pasted-on external facade,

a religious imitation of true righteousness.

Only when we begin to accept the living truth

that through Christ we have been

absolutely and totally and eternally

cleansed,

and purified,

and transformed

at the deepest level of our being,

and that we are now

and will forevermore remain

HOLY and RIGHTEOUS,

in other words,

only when we recognize the truth

of the absolute righteousness of our spirits

because of the redeeming work of Christ within us,

will we begin to experience

the reality of that truth

bringing about practical transformations in our behavior and actions.

We will not begin to live out Holiness

until we first come to grips

with the reality of our true new identity in Christ.

Because we do not yet understand

and believe the truth

of what our God tells us about ourselves

we do not yet experience

the transforming power of that truth

in our practical daily lives.

And I think we are going to run up against a very similar problem

with the passage we will look at

in this final passage of Philippians.

If you’re a regular around here

you know we are studying the book of Philippians.

We are near the end of our study of this book,

having made it to the end of chapter 4

in just a little over a year.

We are studying the final major section of this remarkable book,

a passage that begins in Phil. 4:10

and runs through verse 20.

We studied the first half of that passage

during the past two weeks,

and this morning we’ll move on to the rest of it,

and especially to verse 19.

I want to read the entire passage for us

before we get back into our study of it

just so that we can see it as a unit.

Paul writes:

Phil. 4:10 But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned before, but you lacked opportunity.

Phil. 4:11 Not that I speak from want; for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.

Phil. 4:12 I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

Phil. 4:13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Phil. 4:14 Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my affliction.

Phil. 4:15 And you yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel, after I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving but you alone;

Phil. 4:16 for even in Thessalonica you sent a gift more than once for my needs.

Phil. 4:17 Not that I seek the gift itself, but I seek for the profit which increases to your account.

Phil. 4:18 But I have received everything in full, and have an abundance; I am amply supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God.

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Phil. 4:20 Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

If you have been with us the past two weeks

you have wrestled with us

through Paul’s revelation

of the secret he has learned

about knowing contentment

in whatever circumstance he finds himself.

Without succumbing to the urge to reteach the passage again,

I’ll just say that his contentment came

from going through those circumstances in the presence and love

of his Lord Jesus Christ.

Then, after affirming that he can do all things in His Lord Jesus Christ

whose presence with Him gives Him strength,

Paul then goes on to say,

Phil. 4:14 Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my affliction.

In effect Paul says,

“My wonderful friends,

I know that if I did not have you in my life,

my Lord would find other ways

of supplying my needs,

but I want you to know, too,

that I am so grateful that He has chosen to do this through you.”

Paul wants them to know

that it felt really good

knowing they cared,

knowing they were with him

during a very difficult time in his life.

And without getting way off track here,

I just want to say that is a very healthy place to be

in our relationships with one another.

Our security,

our rock-solid place of refuge

is in knowing that whatever we encounter in life

we will encounter in the presence of our Lord,

and it is His presence

and His commitment to us

that is our great security.

And yet, every one of us will have those people in our lives

through whom God has chosen

to meet so many of our needs.

I’ll just state what I want to say here

in a single sentence

and hope I’m not misunderstood.

The truly healthy love relationship for the Christian

is the one in which we can say,

“I know if my Lord had not placed you into my life

He would still bring me through,

but I’m so very thankful,

so incredibly grateful that He has chosen

to place you next to me, with me in life.”

And that’s what I see Paul saying

when he puts those two statements back to back:

Phil. 4:13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Phil. 4:14 Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my affliction.

I see Him saying,

“If I didn’t have you with me in this

because I have my Lord

I would still make it through,

but I want you to know

I’m so deeply grateful

that you are the ones God has chosen

to meet these needs in me.”

That’s a healthy relationship.

Paul then goes on to remind his friends in Philippi

of the history they share together,

of the other times when they served this same role in his life,

times when they were used by God

to meet his physical and emotional needs.

And here again, even in these final verses of this little letter,

we have Paul offering us

yet another powerful survival tool

for the hard times in our lives.

When we hurt

one of the most valuable things we can do is to say to those

who are going through our pain with us, “REMEMBER WHEN...”

“Remember that other time

when we saw God’s love

and God’s faithfulness

and God’s kindness through one another?”

And to be honest,

I should not have worded it that way,

or you may miss the power

of what’s going on with this principle.

It would be far better for me to say,

“Remember that time...that conversation...that crucial point in life we shared together?

Remember when we were so keenly aware

of how good our God is to us?”

“Remember that time when we saw God’s faithfulness...or healing...or His kindness to us in such wonderful ways...”

Remember when...

What do you use for book-marks in your Bible?

I use “Remember When’s”.

I use photographs

of favorite times in my life.

And with me all my photographs are of people,

in whom I have seen the love of my God,

people He has used

to help get me through,

to remind me it always matters so much more than I think it does,

to remind me that choosing to love

changes us and the ones we love forever.

The photographs would mean nothing to anyone else,

but I know what they mean,

and they help me to never forget.

When we hurt,

ESPECIALLY when we hurt,

when we find ourselves feeling imprisoned,

it helps to remember when.

Phil. 4:16 for even in Thessalonica you sent a gift more than once for my needs.

And then there is one more statement

I want us to look at

before we get to that difficult statement I promised you when we began.

And with all of this background

and other issues along the way

you no doubt realize that

today we will get right up to that difficult statement,

but we won’t actually study it

until the next time we jump back into Philippians.

But I don’t want us to miss

one other treasure along the way.

It’s found in Paul’s statement

in Philippians 4:17:

Not that I seek the gift itself, but I seek for the profit which increases to your account.

Now I know that a statement like that

sounds like a televangelist’s fund-raising dream,

but I hope we can get past that.

And the first observation I would make here

is that Paul makes this comment to the Philippians after they gave to his needs,

not before.

Unlike much of the greed-motivated,

flesh-based

fund-raising techniques

employed by some of those in the church world,

Paul was not looking for leverage

with which to squeeze bigger gifts

out of his Philippian friends.

In fact, his next statement makes that absolutely clear.

The next thing he says is,

Phil. 4:18 But I have received everything in full, and have an abundance; I am amply supplied, ...

In other words,

“Don’t send any more! I have all I need. In fact I have an abundance!”

When was the last time

you ever heard a Christian fund-raiser say that?

Could you imagine turning on the TV

and hearing one of those glittering,

polished,

powdered fellows saying,

“Please! Stop sending those checks. We have all that we need, and more.

Indeed, by the grace of our great God, we have an abundance.”

That is exactly what Paul says in verse 18,

and this is also another one of those verses you will never hear on TV or the radio.

But I want to back up

to what Paul said in verse 17.

He said he was grateful for the gift itself,

but he was also grateful

for “...the profit which increases to your account.

Now I don’t want to build an empire on this verse,

but at the same time

it is impossible to read that statement

without recognizing that Paul is telling us

that our acts of kindness to one another,

here, now, in this world,

have consequences for us

far beyond the acts themselves.

Paul actually uses accountant language in this verse.

He talks about each of us having an “account”,

and about “profit” “increasing” to that account.

This concept shouldn’t surprise us.

In fact one of the central themes of the entire Bible

is the understanding that the choices we make in this life

have significance

and consequences throughout eternity.

In fact, Paul goes so far as to say in 1 Cor. 15:19 “If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.”

He’s saying that,

the Christian life only makes sense,

and can only be seen

as truly logical

and sensible

and reasonable

when we force ourselves

to break free from an 80 year perspective on life.

If there is no unbroken link

between this life and the next,

or if our choices in this life

have no significance in the next

only a fool would be a Christian.

In fact,

in that same 15^th chapter of I Corinthians

Paul comes right out and says

what every growing Christian has felt at times in his or her life:

1 Cor. 15:32 If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

If there is no eternal accountability,

and if there are no eternal benefits

to the right choices I make now,

then why fight these battles?

Why would we go through the agony

of choosing what is right

when it is sometimes so hard to do so,

or when it makes our life here and now

more difficult,

or more painful,

or more lonely.

But Paul makes it clear in this passage

that one of the many things God does best

is to balance the moral scales of the universe.

No right choice,

no choice of kindness,

no choice of love,

no act of compassion

ever goes unnoticed

or unrewarded by our God for His children.

In fact, Paul gives a vivid mental image

of the way in which God balances those scales for us in 2 Cor. 4:17. He says,

For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison...

He says that

if we were to take all of the pain,

and all of the inconvenience,

and all of the frustration,

and all of the hurt,

and all of the negative consequences

that enter into our lives here and now

because of the right choices we make in this life,

and we put them on one side of a scale,

and then on the other side

God placed His response to those choices of ours,

it would be like a feather on one side

and a massive, solid block of wealth on the other...

momentary, light affliction... an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.

That knowledge in itself

is not the only reason we need

for making many of the hardest choices we have to make in life,

but it helps,

and it sure is great to know, isn’t it?

And that’s why Paul says it:

Phil. 4:17 Not that I seek the gift itself, but I seek for the profit which increases to your account ... a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God.

And with all of that as foundation,

with or next Philippians study we’ll look at Paul’s final great statement made to his Philippian friends:

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.