04-21-13 Finding Freedom From Grumbling

Last week we were looking at Paul’s comments Philippians 2:14-16

and I’d like us to go back into that passage again this morning.

The passage we were studying reads as follows:

Phil. 2:14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing;

Phil. 2:15 that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world,

Phil. 2:16 holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may have cause to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.

We spent last week talking about

the remarkable nature of those three verses.

We saw the way in which Paul offers his readers two external gauges

that allow us to accurately read

our progress in the two most crucial areas of practical Christian living.

He calls us to “Do all things without grumbling or disputing...”

And we talked about the way in which

grumbling is the external indicator

of where we really are

in our faith,

our practical trust in God.

Each time we grumble

we are simply revealing those areas in our life

where we still believe

that God either doesn’t care

or where we believe He is powerless or unwilling

to handle our life issues correctly.

When I get up in the morning

and look outside and see that it has snowed during the night

and say to myself, “RATS! Stupid snow! Now I have to clear the driveway

before I can get the car out!”...

what I am really saying is,

“You blew it again, Lord!

You have failed to meet my needs today.

Why don’t you take better care of me?”

Now, of course, we would never

dare put that into words like that,

so instead we just grumble.

And we saw last week

that Paul ties this grumbling thing

directly to our effectiveness in our communicating Christ

to the society in which we live.

He tells us that the more we move towards

a grumble-free life

the more we will become lights

in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

What he’s doing, of course,

is calling us to a life that is more consistent

with who we really are.

As Christians

we have become the children of God Himself.

God tells us that He has become

our Eternal Father

and we, through Christ,

have become not just His created beings

but also His adopted sons and daughters.

We are a part of a select group of humanity who correctly claim to live

daily in a Father-child relationship

with the Creator-God of the universe.

Now, given that truth,

we can see why our grumbling level

has such a dramatic effect

on our effectiveness in drawing the world to our Heavenly Father.

Each time we grumble

we are expressing our personal evaluation

of how God is doing

with His parenting role in our life.

Now the truth is that

none of us have ever lived in a

Father-child relationship with God Himself

prior to our submission to Christ,

and this whole thing is very much of a

learning process to all of us.

Before we came to Christ

we were orphans,

street-kids in the world

with no one and nothing to rely on

but ourselves and our own wits.

Learning how to live in the presence

of a Heavenly Father

who loves us deeply

and accepts us totally

requires a tremendous amount of

relearning and rethinking.

And it is exactly that rethinking process

that Paul is calling us to

through his comments about this whole grumbling thing.

We didn’t talk much last week

about how to go about fighting grumbling in our lives,

so I’d like to offer a few suggestions

before we move on.

And maybe I can do this best

by simply sharing with you

what I’m trying to do in my own life.

Step #1 involves being willing to listen to myself.

I need to HEAR what I’m really saying

when I grumble.

And here, of course, we are totally dependant upon the working of God’s Spirit within us

to give us ears to hear ourselves.

But I need to interject one qualifying statement in this process.

If we are ever to find the healing and freedom our King has for us here

it is essential that we be able to hear ourselves

without condemning ourselves for what we hear.

By that I mean that we need to realize

that our initial response to virtually everything in life

is a flesh response,

a response that is prompted by all of those thinking processes

that were built into us before we came to our Lord.

And as such

they are always responses that reject and deny the truth about out God.

They are responses

that reject the love of our God for us,

and His commitment to bring us through

whatever it is we face in this life on a daily basis.

In other words,

we shouldn’t ever be surprised

to discover that our first response to anything we encounter in life

is one of grumbling,

or fear, or loneliness, or anger, or stress.

Those are always our default settings in life.

They don’t surprise our Lord,

and they don’t trouble Him

because He understands perfectly why they are there.

He understand the flesh...our flesh perfectly

and expects nothing else from it.

And when we see those flesh responses in ourselves

the healthiest thing we can do

is to face them honestly

while at the same time telling ourselves the truth about the source of those responses.

“There goes my flesh again! It just never changes, does it, Lord.”

Then, at those points where

He allows me to hear what I’m saying,

I try to counter the grumbling urge

by telling myself the truth.

“Thank you, Lord, for being my Father.

Thank you for loving me.

Thank you for holding me

in the palm of your hand once again this day.

And thank you for understanding me perfectly

and for supplying exactly what I need this day.

You know, Lord, that I didn’t FEEL like I needed to shovel snow this morning,

but I thank You for the strength to do it.”

You see, what we are really involved in

is a process in which we learn increasingly

how to think from a Father-child perspective

in our relationship with our Lord,

telling ourselves over and over again

that we are no longer orphans,

we are sons and daughters of the King,

the King who delights in us,

who loves us,

and goes with us right where we are, just as we are each step of the way.

But what if it’s not just circumstances

or the weather that we grumble about,

what if its real evil that has touched our life?

Are we suppose to just pretend it isn’t evil?

No, we don’t just pretend.

But the fundamental principle doesn’t change.

We are called to listen carefully

to what our Father says about evil

and then speak the truth about what He says.

“Lord, this hurts!

If there is any way you can remove this from my life,

I ask you to remove it.

And I thank you for being with me

through this whole horrible thing.

I thank You that nothing has the power

to separate me from Your love

or Your care.

And I thank you, too,

that somehow You will work this together for good in my life.

You are my Father,

I am your child,

and I can and I will trust you through this.”

Now, I don’t do it that well in real life.

At least I don’t do it nearly that quickly.

And frequently it isn’t just one battle,

it is a an ongoing warfare through life.

But I believe it is those kinds of growth issues Paul is talking about

when he talks about this whole grumbling issue in our lives.

And I’ll say here, too,

that even though grumbling will never get us from where we are

to where we want to be,

still there are times when we need to give ourselves

the freedom to grieve -

to grieve the loss of what could have been

if evil would not have touched our lives.

That may mean, for example, grieving the loss

of the childhood we could have known

had our parents been better able to protect us,

or nurture us,

or communicate love to us.

Bitterness and blame only compound the effects of evil in our lives,

but that doesn’t mean we don’t honestly grieve the loss

of what would have been in a perfect world.

And as long as I’ve gotten into this

I’ll add one more comment from my own life experience,

and something that I know is absolutely consistent

with the way in which our Abba Father relates to His children.

I have seen the most remarkable pattern

in the work my Lord has done within my own life throughout the years.

With so many major areas in my own life

where I have recognized some loss that has entered my life

and have felt the pain it has brought,

I have also seen that, in His time,

my Lord has found ways of taking the pain

and recreating it into joy.

He hasn’t just removed the pain,

He has literally taken it in His hands

and reshaped it in ways I could never have believed possible,

and then recreated it into something profoundly good in my own life.

There is a prophetic description of our King in the 61^st chapter of Isaiah

that captures this work of God in our lives perfectly.

Isa 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners;

Isa 61:2 To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn,

Isa 61:3 To grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

The work of God that we have being described in that passage

is God’s alternative to grumbling.

Our flesh grumbles and through it proclaims our God’s failure

and His unwillingness or inability to meet our deepest needs.

The Spirit of God, on the other hand,

calls us to bring Him the ashes of our burned-out lives

so that He can exchange them for the oil of gladness within our spirit

and the mantle of praise within our hearts.

It’s important, too, to remember

that this, like every other aspect of our walk with God,

is not something we are trying to do FOR God,

it is a growth process that we share with Him,

and one that He is carefully involved in coordinating.

Paul’s comments here are given

not to dump one more thing on our list of,

“Things I really need to do

in order to become a better Christian”.

Rather, he is wanting to open our eyes

to the kinds of growth issues

we can expect our Lord to be dealing with in our lives.

And it really is HIM who is designing

this whole process for us.

There is actually a powerful contrast

Paul sets up in verses 14-18,

a contrast that allows us to see

both sides of this grumbling thing.

In verse 14, of course, he talks to us about grumbling,

but then in verses 17-18

Paul allows us to see himself doing it right.

Listen to what he says:

Phil. 2:17 But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all.

Phil. 2:18 And you too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me.

Now, admittedly we are seeing Paul

toward the end of his life -

and as such we are seeing

an example of true Christian maturity.

But remember, too, that Scripture also allows us to see where Paul began his pilgrimage -

as a bitter, hateful, impatient, vicious, impulsive young man -

filled with self-righteousness,

driven by his own ego.

The example we see being displayed by Paul in this letter

is designed to give us tremendous hope.

You see, the same God who reshaped Paul

is also the God who has called US to Himself.

Just as He rebuilt Paul

so He can rebuild us.

I have found tremendous comfort in recent years

in realizing that the men and women

we find in Scripture were just that:

MEN and WOMEN

no different from you and me.

Which means, of course,

that what God was able to do in THEM

He is also able to do in US.

If anyone ever had a “right” to grumble

from a human point of view

it was Paul.

Locked in prison because of groundless charges

by a corrupt and unjust government,

he had an endless source of items

about which he could grumble:

the food

the water

the lack of privacy

the lack of freedom

the Jews who accused him,

the Romans who held him,

and on and on and on.

And yet, in these two verses, 17 and 18,

Paul reveals the central theme of this letter,

a theme that he began to develop

back in verse 18 of the first chapter.

Rather than grumbling about what’s going on in his life,

he chooses to rejoice.

He describes himself in very Jewish terms

as a “drink offering” being poured out

on the sacrifice and service of their faith.

The drink offering was part of the Old Testament sacrificial system.

It was always wine,

poured out on the alter,

and used as a means of expressing to God

gratitude for His kindness

and His bountiful provision.

I can’t help but think

it must have crossed the mind

of those who poured that wine out on the alter,

“What a waste! All that wonderful wine just poured out on the floor.”

I think maybe that’s why Paul selected the drink offering

to illustrate his life here.

It’s as if he’s saying,

“What? You think my life is being wasted as I sit here in prison?

If God has chosen me as His drink offering,

to be poured out before you,

that’s GREAT!

I can, and I will trust His care

and His leadership in my life.”

And the main thing I want us to see here

is that in these verses Paul reveals to us

in very practical terms

exactly HOW to approach our ongoing battle with grumbling.

And, in fact, he reveals to us

how to grow in faith.

You see, Paul knows that telling us to STOP a certain type of behavior

in itself solves nothing

and changes nothing.

True change in our life never results

from simply trying to eliminate wrong behavior from our life.

True change takes place only when we

replace the wrong behavior

with the right behavior.

It’s a little like a father teaching his son to shoot a rifle.

He sets up a target,

but then he doesn’t list all of the places

where he wants his son NOT to aim,

he simply shows him where he DOES want him to aim.

Well, this is what Paul is doing for us.

He is saying, “I don’t want you to grumble,

but instead I want you to follow my lead

in expressing gratitude to God

for who He is

and what He’s doing in your life,

and for the way He has chosen to do it.”

In other words, say, “Thank you!”, because when we do we tell the truth

about what our Heavenly Father is really like.

And having said all of that,

I have to admit that I have very real concerns

about what I’ve just done during the past few minutes.

I have concerns, not because I have any doubts about it’s validity,

but rather because I have doubts about whether I’ve really helped us

get past our religious barriers

that so easily blind us to the truth.

This is world in which we currently live

is so deeply saturated in evil

and in the pain and suffering that evil has inflicted on our lives.

Every week of my life

I see the consequences of that evil

in some of those who invite me into their lives.

And I know how apparently absurd it can sound

for me to stand up here at suggest that we should not grumble

but rather that we should say “thank you” to our God.

It could so easily sound as if I’m suggesting

that we spray a little whipped cream on top of a deep, painful, open wound

so that it doesn’t look so bad.

So let me see if I can frame my comments

in a way that really clarifies what’s going on.

Every child of God on this planet right now

lives each day in a fierce battle

to reclaim and then proclaim the truth about our God,

the truth that He is absolutely and eternally GOOD

to all of those who come to Him.

He knows how to deliver,

He knows how to free,

He knows how to recreate our lives.

And our doorway into that redemptive process in so many area of our lives

begins when we can pick up that armload of agony within some area of our life,

bring it to our God,

and then choose to say, “Thank You! Thank You for giving me the strength and the courage to face this, thank you for Your ability to take even this and bring good out of it in my life. Right here, Lord, more than ever before, I need to know You’re there, I need to know You care, and I need to see Your redemption within me. Thank You for who You are and for what You’ll do.”