I Rejoice in Sharing the Gospel

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon
Sunday, July 3, 2011

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

We are in a weekend of celebration. I think the Des Moines area has it right. I remember back in Arizona, this was just a couple of years ago, probably four years ago now, when we used to celebrate Independence Day, we used to celebrate it on July 4 and that was it. But here, I don’t know if you even looked at the Urbandale schedule of events, it started on Thursday night and it went into Friday and all day Saturday and all day Sunday, all day Monday. And there are even some events on Tuesday. It’s almost a week long celebration for the independence of our country.

There’s reason to celebrate. There’s reason for joy. We celebrate the freedom we enjoy and the freedom that’s unprecedented around the world. There are others who look upon our celebration and say, “Well, what exactly are you celebrating? Are you celebrating war, as you’ve defeated an enemy? Is that what you’re celebrating? Are you celebrating death?” They don’t understand the reason why we have joy on a day of independence. Isn’t it just like the world to try to steal our joy?

We’re going to have this great celebration. We have these great freedoms that we’re celebrating and somebody always wants to come in and crush our joy. Joy cannot be crushed. Joy is simply, if we look at the way that the world looks at joy, kind of a joyride. You’ve heard of a joyride, somebody who goes out and steals a car. There’s some exuberance, there’s some excitement there, for just a moment though because they know it’s not going to last forever.

The kind of joy we’re talking about here today that Paul highlights in the Philippians book, it’s a joy that doesn’t last a moment. It’s eternal joy, a joy that can’t be robbed by the world. There’s a famous parable and you all know it pretty well I’m sure, the parable of the prodigal son. That son, as he sets out into the new world, he wants to kind of grab some kind of nectar of joy, that center of joy. He wants to enjoy it all, but what does he need from his father because he can’t go out on his own? He needs cash. So he says to his father, “Give me the inheritance that is mine so I can go out and I can find joy.” You see, in his home, he only was there for obedience. He was there because his father said, “This is what you have to do. These are the jobs you have to do. This is part of being in the family.”

But he didn’t find a lot of joy there. He wanted to go out in search of joy and so when he grabbed that money, he packed up and he headed out and he started living wildly as it says, “a very fast life.” He threw parties and he had celebrations and I’m sure that he found some joy, but it was only for a moment.

Because then we find that after he spends his money, after there are no more friends that are around him, there are no more parties and no more women, what happens is it says “the famine hit the land” and he didn’t know what to do. So he went to a farmer and the farmer said, “Well, I’m going to put you out. You can feed the pigs.” And as he sat amongst the pigs and he was longing for the food they were eating, do you think there was joy there?

Joy that was offered to him, the joy that the world was tempting him to go into was a joy that was fleeting, a joy that was going to be gone in a moment. That’s not the joy we’re looking for. That’s not the joy that’s offered in Scripture. Joy is not in a moment but it’s eternal.

Have you allowed your joy to be robbed from you? Maybe you’ve been on a joyride? Maybe you’ve been out in search of that nectar of joy. Maybe you’re saying, “Well, what I’ve always had, it’s kind of normal and there’s no joy here but I think there’s going to be joy somewhere else.” Have you gone out in search of it only to find that it’s left you empty? Maybe even after generations and generations of searching for joy, did you come up empty?

Now more than ever in our world do we need a sense of joy back in our lives because too often we’ve been chasing after the future, these things that are out there that say they’re going to bring us joy, and they might for a moment, but not for eternity. We need to restore the joy back in the Christian heart and the perfect place, as we come to in this sermon series, is the book of Philippians.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians has often been called a book of joy. We see that theme as it flows through it, as it weaves it together, there is joy and rejoicing all throughout the book. If there are some people who come across Paul’s letter and they say, “Well, I don’t understand why he’s so joyful. There are not many things he really should be joyful about. And so when we understand, kind of, what it is that Paul’s looking at, why is it that he’s rejoicing? It’s about relationships.

Two primary relationships, and the first one we see right in the first verse. He says, “Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ.” His source of joy comes from that source, the source of him being himself, called himself a servant of Jesus Christ. That’s the heart of it. That’s the place where it begins. He mentions Timothy alongside, not as Timothy was a writer also along in this book of Philippians, but chances are Timothy was along with him when they started the church in Philippi, so mentioning the name of Timothy also along with himself, Paul, included them both as servants of Jesus Christ, identified to these Philippian Christians that they are primarily involved as servants of Jesus Christ, the primary relationship.

We see the second relationship that comes following, he says, “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi together with the overseers and the deacons; Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The second relationship that flows out of the first, the reason why he even cares about these Philippian Christians, he says, “But now to you who are together in that grace and peace of our God and Father.” All of a sudden, he’s starting to connect them together. He says, “We’re not apart even though now I’m in Rome and you’re in Philippi. We’re together with the same grace and the same peace that is in Jesus Christ offered by God the Father.” It is then that connection, those relationships that he’s trying to bring in for them to identify. That’s the source of joy that Paul speaks of.

But Paul continues. He doesn’t continue in his normal method as Paul’s letters normally go. Paul usually starts off by saying, “You know what, I’m an apostle. I’m a teacher. I’m kind of the founder of” whatever it might have been. The way he usually starts is not the way he starts here in the book of Philippians. It’s a different letter with a different focus. The way he starts off the next part and the thanksgiving and the prayer he offers to them is, “I thank my God in all remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, I always pray with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, and I’m sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers in God’s grace with me.”

The thrust of the letter is not one of condemning. He’s not trying to correct an issue in the church. It’s more of a fatherly encouragement. You can imagine a father writing to a child and him coming along side and saying, “I remember you with joy in my heart when I offer prayers of thanksgiving and praise. I know that God’s going to come alongside of you and He’s going to bring that work of completion in you. I have no doubt about it.” And he says, “You’re in my heart.” We’re all partakers of the same grace in that relationship with Jesus Christ.

Can you see that word of encouragement that’s coming out from Paul? He’s saying, “The reason for joy, the reason I rejoice is the relationship with Jesus Christ primarily and, secondary, that I remember you in my heart always, that I offer prayers with joy.” But then he comes to the point where we try to figure out what exactly he’s rejoicing over. Verse 7, “Both in my imprisonment and in my defense and confirmation of the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it’s my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge in all the sermons so that you may improve what is excellent and be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.”

He mentions in Verse 7 “in his imprisonment.” The book of Philippians was written while Paul was in his first imprisonment in Rome. Now his first imprisonment was not quite as bad as his second one, but the first imprisonment still wasn’t quite as pretty as what we would say our prison system is today. He wasn’t necessarily fed three meals a day. He was lucky if he had one. There wasn’t a nice clean toilet there for him to use. It wasn’t quite as pretty as the way we want to picture it, and so this man is sitting in prison and writing a letter of joy. That doesn’t make sense.

The way that I kind of connect that is this week, on Tuesday morning, I woke up and I could barely talk. I don’t know what it was. It just was an onset all of a sudden and it moved into my sinuses and I could barely breathe and I could barely talk. It was kind of a struggle for me to even kind of go through work. I was kind of in a cloud, in a haze. Can you imagine if I came out this morning saying, “You know what, I had some great news this week. I was sick. That’s reason to rejoice. I was in a cloud all day. I could barely work and yet I rejoiced.” Wouldn’t you kind of think, “Wow, he’s a little crazy. Why are you rejoicing because you’re sick? Shouldn’t you really be saying, ‘Oh, I just want to be taken care of.’”

It’s kind of the same thing with Paul. Why is he rejoicing in the setting he’s in? Why does he rejoice when he’s sitting in prison? It doesn’t make sense. But as he goes on, he kind of further explains what is going on while he is in prison. In Verse 12, he says, “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it’s become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to 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.” You see, he’s saying there are things that are going on because of his imprisonment that never would have happened. He says, “Look at the way the gospel is being proclaimed. Look at the way these people proclaim it without fear of judgment and without fear of death. Look at the way that God is at work.”

And this is the reason why he rejoices. When all of a sudden, he sees things that are happening that didn’t happen when he was out there, that’s a reason for joy, when Christ’s name is proclaimed.

But he goes on, “Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry but others from goodwill; the latter do it of love knowing that I was put here for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, 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.”

Alright, so not only does he have these people who are out there and they have no more fear and they speak boldly in their villages, in their country, in their jobs, in their marketplace, it doesn’t matter, they’re speaking boldly about the name of Christ, but now he has these other people and these are also Christians in the area that are going out and doing it out of rivalry and envy. There was somebody that wanted his job. They were tired of Paul getting all the fame and all of the spotlight. They said, “We want to be there. We want to be in that position. We want your job.”

What’s our normal reaction when somebody’s trying to get our job? We defend them off. We say, “No one can do it like me. You can’t even attempt to do what I do.” We defend it and even if they could do a job that’s just as good as what we can do, we would still say, “No, you can’t do it.” Why? Because we want to protect it. We want it to be our own. And yet, Paul is not thinking in the same way because he even says, “When these people even have wrong motives, even when they have envy and rivalry and in their hearts, they’re not preaching it for the right reasons,” he still says, “Christ is being proclaimed,” and in that, he rejoices.

The whole thrust of this first part of Philippians doesn’t make sense to a worldly perspective on joy. Paul’s proclaiming and rejoicing at things that we would say, “Well, I rejoice in Christ’s name being proclaimed,” but I don’t think I would if I was in prison. I don’t think I would if I was being attacked in some way by outside forces. I don’t know if I would be ready to proclaim the name of Christ in the midst of pain. And yet that’s exactly the reason why Paul rejoices because even in the midst of that, Christ’s name is proclaimed.

Here in our country, when we celebrate our independence, we celebrate so many freedoms that others don’t enjoy. One of those primarily is the freedom of religion. In this country, we have the freedom of religion. Some people even told me, “Well, that’s a little dangerous. I don’t know if we should really have that freedom available. Shouldn’t we just be a Christian nation and declare it to be our religion? Because of that, we can’t really like the freedom of religion.” And I would say let’s look at it from a perspective that’s different, not that it’s dangerous, not that it’s offering all these other paths that are false, let’s look at it in a perspective of joy coming from the heart of Paul from Philippians. In the freedom of religion, Christ’s name is proclaimed. In the freedom of religion, we can say we are free to speak the name of Christ in any place, at any time. In that, we can rejoice because that’s a freedom not all enjoy.

What a reason to have joy restored through our hearts once again when we read this letter from Paul and we see the joy that’s in his heart and the way he rejoices when Christ’s name is proclaimed. We can say, “Look at that joy.” Don’t we want that to be a part of who we are as the body of Christ? The same Holy Spirit that was in this New Testament church is the same Holy Spirit with us today, the same Holy Spirit that says, “His fruit is in you, of love and joy and peace and patience.” You see, it’s a joy that’s in the heart of every Christian but it’s a joy that often times we let ourselves be robbed of.

Maybe it’s because we’ve been on a joyride trying to find some other kind of joy, a joy that wasn’t going to last, a joy that was just for a moment. But the Holy Spirit says there’s a joy that’s eternal, a joy that can’t be robbed from you, a joy that says, “I rejoice when I see Christ proclaimed, when I see God at work.”

Beyond the celebration of the 4th of July, we can still have joy, joy that’s deep down in our hearts, a joy that can’t be crushed, that can’t be stolen or stripped from us, a joy that says, “I can see Christ at work and I rejoice when His name is proclaimed.”

The Psalmist himself said, “This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.” It’s something that we can wake up every morning knowing because it doesn’t matter what we face that day, whether it’s trial, whether it’s sickness or disease, it doesn’t matter what we face because it’s a day to rejoice knowing that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and that nothing can separate us from that.

Let’s restore that joy, restore the joy that is in every Christian heart, not joy for the moment but joy that’s eternal. Amen.