12-30-12 IN NO WAY ALARMED

We are involved in a study

of Paul’s letter to the Philippians,

and we have reached a section in that letter

in which Paul is encouraging his friends

to “conduct yourselves in a manner

worthy of the gospel of Christ”.

That phrase is found in Phil. 1:27,

and then in the next 22 verses

Paul talks with them

about what that means -

he explains how to approach life

in a manner worthy of

the gospel of Christ.

This morning I want to pick up where we left off before Christmas

and have us begin our new year with our discovery

of what this worthy walk looks like.

And Paul begins his description in verses 1:28-30.

In those verses Paul says,

28] in no way alarmed by your opponents-- which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and that too, from God. [29] For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, [30] experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear to be in me.

In these 3 verses I see Paul offering us

2 major truths

that are crucial to any Christian

who is seeking practical daily victory

in his or her walk with the King.

The first principle is found in verse 28

where Paul says,

28] in no way alarmed by your opponents-- which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and that too, from God.

Before we look at the principle

I want to just point out the obvious-

that Paul simply assumes the existence of opponents in the life of the Christian.

He doesn’t offer any explanation

for their presence,

he shows no surprise at their existence,

he simply acknowledges them

as a “GIVEN” in Christian living.

I know that fits perfectly

with what every person in this room

is experiencing in their life,

but remarkably it does not fit

with some of the messages

we often find being marketed under the Christian banner.

There is a brand of religion being pushed

that seems to suggest that

God’s goal for His people

is to get us all pain-free,

trouble-free,

debt-free,

and then keep us that way,

and anything short of that

is less than what we should expect

or what we have a right to.

The assumption, of course,

is that God is the great fixer of hard times

and once we have Him on our side

and play by His rules

its just a matter of time

before all the bad stuff goes away.

We’ve already seen Paul talking about that kind of stupidity in this letter.

A couple of weeks ago

we were looking at the way in which

Paul defines God’s deliverance

as deliverance through,

not deliverance from.

And he comes right back to the same theme here

in even stronger language.

I mean, look at his own situation

as he writes...

He’s in prison,

waiting for his own possible execution.

He’s just seen a very good friend

who came to visit him

nearly die of some disease,

and the people he’s writing to

are under heavy persecution

as a direct result of their commitment to Christ.

Now, either Paul has not yet achieved

the necessary level of faith

or obedience

that frees God to bring on the good stuff,

or else the “good stuff” theology

is a half a bubble off

from true Christianity.

Paul obviously considers that

prison,

disease,

persecution,

and an endless stream of opponents to our faith

is simply business as usual

for the kids of the kingdom.

The opponents we face

take on as many different faces

as there are Christians

and backgrounds

and cultures

and personal circumstances.

For Paul it was some of his fellow Jews,

and the Roman Government,

and his prison cell,

and isolation,

and inactivity.

For the Philippians

it was persecution,

and anxiety over Paul

and Epaphroditus,

and doubts,

and confusion.

For us

our opponents may take the form

of intense moral battles,

or troubled relationships,

or physical or emotional addictions,

or boredom,

or fear about the future,

or regrets about the past,

or homesickness,

or anything else

that causes us to doubt

our Lord’s love for us

and commitment to us.

Paul makes no effort whatsoever

to explain why the opponents are there.

He certainly doesn’t suggest

that they would go away

if the Philippians would change their behavior.

Rather, he outlines a battle plan

for dealing with them

one opponent

and one day at a time.

And I’ll have to admit

that what he says here

may sound confusing when we first hear it.

He says that we are to be

28] in no way alarmed by our opponents-- which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for us, and that too, from God.

This is another one of those places

where we risk missing what’s being said

because our own preconceived ideas blind us to it.

I’ll give you what I see going on here

in a single sentence

and then I’ll try to explain it.

Here it is:

Paul is telling us that the greatest opponent we face in any situation

is not the opponent itself,

but rather our attitude towards that opponent.

Now look what he does in this verse -

he talks to us about our opponent being defeated,

and us being delivered or saved from that opponent by God Himself.

That part we understand.

But he also tells us

that this destruction

and this salvation

begins with an attitude on our part

that affirms our confidence in God’s willingness

to walk through this situation with us

and His ability to handle it for us.

Do you know what Christian warfare really is?

It’s the process of facing

an endless stream of circumstances

and events

and situations

and feelings

and memories

that attack the integrity and the character of God,

and through that onslaught

affirming

and reaffirming

and reaffirming again

the truth about our Creator.

Every night the evening news

parades an endless stream of events

across our TV screen

that seem to affirm that our world

is in total melt-down -

wars that never end,

floods and earthquakes,

levels of crime and violence like we have never seen before in our nation,

corruption at every level

and in every branch of our government.

And the same message

seems to attack us

through so much of what we face

in our daily lives.

People don’t treat us the way we think they should,

circumstances don’t go

the way we want them to go.

And through it all Satan says

with such apparent logic,

“If God really loved you

these things wouldn’t happen to you,

if He really cared about you

He would take better care of you.”

And into that trap

Paul says, “Child of God,

step one in every battle we face

is reaffirming the truth

about our Lord.”

We have been called

to live the first few days

of our eternity with our Creator

in a world that is drenched in the consequences and results

of man’s and Satan’s rebellion against God.

That rebellion has resulted in evil

infiltrating every aspect of our existence on this earth.

We live in enemy territory,

surrounded by a system

designed to support and energize

man’s continued rejection of his Creator.

It’s not the world we would have chosen,

nor is it the one in which we will spend

most of eternity,

but it is the only one currently available.

When we come to Christ

His Spirit begins a learning process

in each of our lives,

a process designed to begin teaching us

the truth about our Lord

and His ability to defeat the power of evil in our life.

He begins with the evil

that we understand the best -

the evil of our own sin

and rebellion against our Creator.

You see, the first and greatest opponent

any of us will ever face

is ourselves,

our own stubborn rebellious flesh

that we have carefully trained

in a frantic attempt to meet our needs

outside of God’s protective moral framework,

and all the baggage that comes with it.

And that is where we begin discovering

God’s willingness

and ability to defeat the opponents in our life.

He doesn’t start by blasting the evil in Washington D.C.

or by attacking the entertainment industry,

or by stopping the wars in the Middle East.

He starts with the war raging inside us.

And through His love,

and His forgiveness,

and His carefully designed program of healing,

He calls us to discover His power

over the evil we know best -

the evil inside us.

But here’s the thing -

the first step towards victory

in any battle we face in life

is the battle to see our God

as bigger than our enemy.

That is at the heart of what Paul is talking about

when he calls us to in no way be alarmed by our opponents.

The only way that’s possible

is when we have seen our opponent honestly

and then seen our God correctly

and have put the two side-by-side

and seen that there is no contest.

Paul could sit in prison

and look toward his own possible execution

and feel no alarm

because he understood that nothing touched his life

that had not first passed through the hands of his Lord.

Now I’ll be honest with you here -

for me this is not a point at which I live,

it is a daily process I must work my way through

again and again and again.

I watch my daughter as she seeks to be a mother to 2 precious children,

and know all too well

the multitude of problems she faces every day

and attacks she encounters

and my first response is to feel my stomach

tighten into a knot

and find myself brooding inside.

I see the lives of some of the young people

whose lives I have access to,

and I see the world they face,

and the daily attacks against faith and trust in their God

that flood in on them from nearly every voice in our culture,

and my first response is to feel my stomach

tighten into a knot

as I hurt for them and fear for them in what’s ahead.

I look at my own future

at a time of life where things are changing all too quickly,

and wonder how in the world

to put together an approach to life

that will work for my beloved Sandee and myself in the years ahead,

and my first response is to feel my stomach

tighten into a knot

and find my mind brooding endlessly.

I face relationships that trouble me

that I have no idea how to fix,

and my first response is to find my stomach tighten into a knot

and find my mind brooding over what to do.

And with each of those battles

the first step to finding peace and victory

is in taking the problem

or the opponent

and setting it next to what I know about my God,

and then asking myself,

“Is this something I can trust Him with?

Does He care enough about me

to get involved in this issue with me?

Does He have sufficient power and grace

to protect or heal or deliver or provide?

And once I can see Him caring enough

and strong enough to handle the issue,

my alarm level begins to drop...a little...

And He is such a good communicator

when it comes to helping me remember

that He really does care.

And I need to prepare you for something I’ve seen in my own life

so that you don’t miss what’s happening.

So often it is not the big things in our life

that have the power to communicate God’s love to us,

and confirm His presence with us,

it’s the small things.

I could share examples from my own life

but they would mean nothing to you

because you could not understand why the incidents affected me so deeply -

finding a cell phone I’d dropped on the golf course,

or a drill bit I’d dropped on the lawn,

or finding a container of chocolate chip mint ice cream,

or receiving a phone call or a text message or an e-mail that freed me from some lie I was believing.

You see, in our minds

we so often assume that it is the issue or the event or the size of the problem

that must trigger God’s involvement in our lives.

And we think that certainly it must be an issue or event or problem

that was sufficiently significant in size or importance to catch His attention

or to justify His involvement.

But when we suddenly see Him

both aware of and involved in some tiny aspect of our life

it forces us to realize

that it’s not the issue that motivates His involvement,

it’s us!

You see, the truly great mystery in life

is why He would care about us at all -

why He would involve Himself in the life of one tiny speck on this planet

whose life will come and go utterly unnoticed by most of the rest of the world.

And yet that is just exactly what He does -

involving Himself in every tiny aspect

of the existence of His precious people.

And when we get even a tiny glimpse

of His involvement in the small stuff,

it gives us greater assurance

of His ability to carry us through the big stuff

on step at a time.

It’s His way of saying, “If I care about the tiny things,

don’t you think I can handle

those other issues you’re brooding about? The ones that really matter?”

I think that’s the same thing the Lord was saying in Matt 10:29-31 when He said,

29] “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. [30] But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. [31] Therefore do not fear; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

It is that knowledge of our Lord

that forms the basis for dealing with

the alarm we initially feel

whenever a new

or and old opponent shows his head.

Satan says look around you,

look behind you,

look ahead of you,

and see what good reason there is to fear.

Our Lord says, “Look at Me,

and see what good reason there is to trust.”

As we begin this new year,

a year filled with a whole lot of uncertainty,

I can think of no better calling to begin with than this, the calling that we choose to be...

in no way alarmed by our opponents-- which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for us, and that too, from God.