Philippians 2:14-18
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to the New Testament book of Philippians. Today, our
passage from Philippians is chapter two, verses 14 through 18. In
this passage, we end a little section that we’ve been in for
a little while. We started it in May, took a
little break through June and some of the bumps of the summer,
and we picked it up just last week. But in this passage, the
apostle Paul writing from his imprisonment under house arrest
in Rome as he awaits a hearing from Caesar for the accusations
that his fellow countrymen, the Jews, have against him for his
supposedly bringing a Gentile into the courts of the temple.
He is still ministering to the churches that he labored in the
gospel in as he has made his several missionary journeys around
the Mediterranean Sea. And so the church at Philippi,
has sent word to him through Epaphroditus that there are troubles
there, and so he’s encouraging them to stand in their faith,
to be obedient unto God, and to be a witness in the world.
And so today’s passage continues in that vein, where he encourages
them to struggle living the Christian life, but that it may bear fruit. So let us hear from God’s word.
This is chapter two of Philippians, beginning at 14. Do all things
without grumbling and questioning. that you may be blameless and
innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked
and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the
world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of
Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out
as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your
faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you also
should be glad and rejoice with me. Pray with me if you would.
Our gracious God, we bless you that you are a God who speaks.
And we pray now that by the reading and preaching of your word that
you would come into our midst that you would speak as you did
from the mountain to the Israelites with thunder clarity, and that
we would know without a shadow of a doubt that it is you, the
living God, the speaking God, who has spoken to us this day.
Help us by your word and spirit to understand all that we have
in Christ, all that we are in Christ, and all that we are to
do as we live for Christ. Give us your help and grace,
we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. on the back kitchen door
of one of my best friends’ home as we were growing up. I remember
seeing this often as I was in their home. It was on the door
of their kitchen. It said one word, quit your belly
aching. I think it was Q-U-I-T-Y-E-R-B-E-L-L-Y-A-C-H-I-N
and then maybe an apostrophe. Quit your belly aching. And I
remember looking at that little cross stitching and thinking
it’s got to be, it’s got to be because the children are getting
on the nerves of the parents that that sign is up. We say
to our children, quit your belly aching, quit your whining, quit
your fussing, quit your complaining. And the simple reason is very
often for our own personal comfort. Quit getting on my nerves. Well, when the apostle Paul says
to the Philippians, when he says it to the church, When Moses
says it to the Israelites in the wilderness who grumbled,
when they say to us, quit your bellyaching, it’s not because
we’re getting on the leadership’s nerves, although I’m sure that
can be the case. It is because it is a bad witness
for the children of Almighty God to be bellyachers, to be
grumblers, to be disputers, and to be complainers. And what I
want us to understand today from this passage is that until the
Lord Jesus comes, until he returns, until he comes to take us home
to be with him, and we are left on earth in this life to live
our Christian faith, until he comes, we should let our faith
lead us to live lives of obedience to God. Our passage tells us
without blemish, blameless, without spot or wrinkle. We are to live
these lives shining brightly as a witness before the watching
world. And it shows who we are in Christ
and who Jesus is as a savior. There are a couple of things
this passage teaches us in order to help us as Christians to live
a faithful life, a faithful witness. The first thing we understand
from this passage we find in verse 14, and it’s the subject
of obedience. Now, remember, if you go back
to chapter 12, what we studied last week, the apostle Paul says
to the Philippians, as you have always obeyed, so continue to
be obedient. Well, he picks up that same theme
in verse 14. He says, do all things without
complaining or grumbling and questioning. In another version,
do all things without complaining or disputing. Do all things without
grumbling or questioning that you may be blameless and innocent. In the present time, the apostle
is speaking to the church. He spoke to the Philippians.
He’s speaking to us today by God and His Holy Spirit. We’re
to do all things. What does that mean? Everything
we do is we live life. We’re to do it in a happy way.
Now, some of us as parents have read through the years some of
these little parenting books that have popped up and you hear these
little sayings and we teach them to our kids. We do it right away.
We do it all the way. And we do it, can you fill in
the blank, in a happy way. Now, big people, adults, don’t
you think we could use a dose of that as well to do things
right away, all the way, and in a happy way? That’s what God
is teaching us by his word and his spirit. We do all things
without complaining and disputing. We have this little book in our
house that some of you probably have read over the years. It’s
called my ABC’s Bible verses. I think it was put together maybe
by Susan Hunt, and it has a verse for every letter of the alphabet.
And when you get to D, the letter D. It uses this very passage,
do all things without complaining and disputing. Now we might take
this verse and use it as we apply it towards our children and say,
eat your meatloaf without complaining and disputing. Eat your carrots,
drink your milk, pick up your room, make your bed, take out
the trash, pick up your bath towel. And on and on we may go
and we may say and apply this passage in ways like that that
say, Do your daily duties without grumbling and complaining and
disputing and without murmuring. And there’s a wonderful, I think,
application in that. It is very true. But we must
remember here that the Apostle Paul is speaking to the church
at Philippi. And by God’s grace, he’s speaking
to the church today. And he wants us to be obedient
children. Now, what is the opposite of
obedience? It’s rebellion. And we see rebellion throughout
the scriptures, but we see it beginning in the garden of Eden.
When God, in the midst of paradise, told Adam and Eve, you have all
that you need, and you may eat freely from the garden, but do
not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For
in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. And we know
that Satan came and tempted Adam and Eve and created dissatisfaction
in their hearts. They rebelled against God, they
ate the fruit, and that’s history for the rest of us. We’re born
in sin. We’re born in sin because of
our first parents. We grumble, we complain, we murmur. And so
this passage is speaking a little bit more than just eat your meatloaf
without complaining and disputing. Now, children, if your mom serves
you meatloaf, you need to eat it and happily and thankfully
and all the rest. That’s a wonderful application of this. Please do
that. But in the life of the Christian
community, God is saying to us, obedience is critical. We don’t
want to be found in the camp of those who do two things. Verse
14 tells us, do all things without grumbling or questioning. What is grumbling? Do you remember
in your English class learning words that were onomatopoeic?
Those are words that their sound sort of gives away their meaning.
And if we were all to sit here today, I won’t make you do it,
but if we were all to say, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble
together, it would sound onomatopoeic, wouldn’t it? We’d know for sure
what was taking place. Or if we were to say the word
murmur and say murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, we would get
the point very quickly that there was dissatisfaction in the room. And so God says to us as Christians,
as children of the heavenly father, do not grumble, do not murmur,
do not let your dissatisfaction be known as you live life before
the watching world and in the church community. Do all things
without grumbling, it says in verse 14, or questioning. Some use the word disputing.
It’s a little bit more of a, internal attitude he’s speaking
of. Stop being critical. Stop being
skeptical. Stop being a disputer of everything,
a questioner. Now, God is referring to here,
the Apostle Paul is, through his pen by God in the Holy Spirit,
he’s referring to the grumbling of the Israelites. We read a
little bit of it in chapter 32 of Deuteronomy. But do you remember
that the Israelites, just two weeks after being delivered from
Egypt, now how long had they been whining and fussing and
saying, get us out of Egypt, get us out of Egypt for quite
a while. And so what happened? God heard their voice. And what
did God do? He raised up a deliverer and
that deliverer was Moses. And after Moses pressed and said,
I can’t do it myself, God said, I’ll send Aaron with you. But
God heard their voices and rescued them. He brought them out of
Egypt across the Red Sea on dry land. When the Egyptians pursued
them, the Red Sea closed back on them. And Pharaoh and his
army, in another song of Moses, the horse and the rider were
thrown into the sea. And God brought them out of Egypt
across the sea on dry land. And he brought them into the
desert of Sinai. When they were hungry, he fed
them bread from heaven. When they were thirsty, he gave
them water from the rock. When they needed oil for their
lamps, it came out of the rock. When they needed something, God
provided. Their shoes did not wear out. The moth did not eat
their clothing, and they were provided for. But do you know
just two weeks after all those mighty acts of God, what did
the people do? We wish we were in Egypt. We
miss the leeks. We miss the onions. We miss the
fish. And you know that Pharaoh guy,
he wasn’t so bad after all. I mean the lashes upon our back,
the labor, 15, 18 hours a day, making bricks without straw.
That wasn’t so bad because the food was pretty good. What in
the world were the Israelites thinking? And God let that generation,
he let them die in the wilderness. And it was their children who
went into the promised land later under Joshua. And that is what
the Apostle Paul is speaking of here, is in the camp of the
saints, in the community of the church. And yes, it can happen
in your homes, it can happen in your workplace, in your schools
and other settings. But he’s speaking specifically here of
the church. We can grumble, we can murmur, we can question,
we can dispute, we can be critical, we can be skeptical. And like
the Israelites, who are so blessed by almighty God, and haven’t
thought we’ve been more blessed? We live this side of the cross
of Jesus, where we see the full and final sacrifice for our sins. And yet we as the church, just
like Israel, can complain and we can dispute. We can have what
is called corporate or church-wide ill will. We can be divisive. One minister I know well has
said this, he said, in the church, there is what we might call the
undertow. Now you know how it is, you go
to the beach and you’re out swimming, you enjoy the ocean, the sky
is blue, the water is cool and refreshing, and you haven’t been
to the seaside, so you jump in the water, and lo and behold,
what happens? The undertow pulls you out, runs
your swimming time. It pulls you out and it pulls
you down. And friends, there can be people
in the church who are like that undertow. and because of their
skepticism, because of their murmuring, their grumbling, and
their complaining. And the little conversations happen all around
the little corners of the church. And pretty soon, the undertow
has pulled people away from the center of grace. And we need
to be very careful because we can become like the Egyptian
or the Israelites, very blessed by God. But you know what they
said? You know what was the height
of their complaint? Can God No, they said, can Yahweh
spread a table in the wilderness? And you see the apostle Paul
is speaking to the Philippians because he knows the danger of
discontentment and skepticism and questioning and grumbling
in the church. And he wants from far away in
his prison cell to make sure that they do not become like
the Israelites who though blessed by God complained against Moses
and those who led them. Some years ago in my first church,
I had a young man come up to me and he said, pastor, I have
the gift of criticism. And I said, yes, you do. And
he said, it’s a spiritual gift. He said, because the church needs
to know what’s wrong with it in order to know how to fix itself. And I said, no, the Word of God
is what does that. The Word of God shows us, as
Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter 3, 15 through 17, the Word of
God sets up what is following all scripture. It’s breathed
out by God. It’s useful for teaching and
for correcting and rebuking and training in righteousness so
that the man and the woman of God are fully furnished to do
the work of the church. And he went on to say how he
was gifted in criticism and had a critical spirit in order to
serve the church. And I said, you know, brother,
your critical spirit is not a spiritual gift. It’s a gift from Satan.
And he’s using it to divide and to destroy our church. And that’s
a reality, friends. That’s a spiritual reality that
we must understand. But God calls us to obedience,
to do all things without complaining or grumbling or disputing or
causing dissension within the ranks. And this can be applied
into the home with children for sure. It can be applied into
your workplace. Well, so-and-so gets paid more
than I do. Or why do we get good coffee
on Fridays and bad coffee the other four days of the week?
And on and on it can go. It can arise in our politics. We can
watch so many of these cable news shows where we become the
grumpy curmudgeons we are watching on TV. And we end up doing all
things in the church and in other spheres with complaining and
disputing. Well, there’s a second thing
this passage teaches us. In addition to obedience, it
teaches us character. We find it in verse 15 where
it says, that you may be blameless and innocent. Children of God
without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation
among whom you shine as lights in the world. Remember that Paul
has been telling the Philippians, he’s been telling us that God
is at work in us. He who began a good work in you
will be faithful to complete it. He will take you safely into
heaven where he will make you presentable before the Lord,
our God. God is at work in us. And notice
the word he uses in verse 15. He says, do all things without
grumbling and questioning that you may be or literally become
blameless and innocent. One of the great blessings we
have as Christians is that God takes us where we are, but he
doesn’t leave us there. makes us, in Christ Jesus, who
we ought to be. Remember that in Adam we are
fallen. In Adam we are bent and bruised and broken by the fall.
In Adam we are condemned. Death is our lot. An eternity
without God is our future. But in Christ Jesus, we are being
conformed into the image of the Son. We are being made into the
likeness of the second Adam, the Adam that did not fail. but
the Adam who lived righteously before Almighty God. And so God
is working in us the character of Christ. We become pure. We become blameless. God is at
work in us. We are blameless, without blame.
We are innocent. No charge can be counted against
us. We are children of God without
blemish. Now, isn’t that an amazing thought?
Blameless. innocent, children of the living
God who are without spot or blemish. Friends, there is no other way
to have that standing apart from faith in Jesus, apart from the
washing with the waters of baptism, the regeneration of the Holy
Spirit, the sanctification that comes from Christ’s work and
through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. We are faultless. We are unadulterated. We are
unmixed. Now think of a couple items in
our world. Think about pure metal, pure
gold, pure silver, the dross removed, the impurities removed. That’s what we are. Or pure wine. It comes from the fruit of the
vine. It’s not mixed with water or other types of ingredients. It is pure. It is unadulterated.
Or we think this time of year in the summer about a bride who
wears her gowns of white, saying, I am a pure and radiant woman
awaiting for the union with my husband. And it shows the picture
of Christ and his church. Or think also of the robes that
we will wear in heaven, the white robes, without spot and wrinkle,
without blemish, because Christ has cleansed us and made us fit
for heaven. You see, God wants our attention
with our obedience, do all things without complaining and disputing,
without grumbling and fussing and causing division. But he
wants character worked in us. And we remember that it’s difficult. It’s difficult to live the Christian
life faithfully before the watching world. The world and all its
pressure comes in on us. Think of two great examples,
one a little more modern. You think of Eric Little, the
Scottish missionary. Olympic runner. And when the
Olympics were held on Sundays, he would not run a race because
he honored the Lord. He remembered the Lord’s Day.
He remembered the Sabbath and kept it holy and said, I’ll run
any other day of the week. But on the Lord’s Day, that’s
for rest. And that is for worship. And God honored him. And a generation
watched him with questions, with the scratching of heads. And
they wondered at this man. We don’t see too many Eric Littles
in our day. Oh, we play NFL on Sunday. We
play basketball on Sunday. We play NASCAR on Sunday. We
do everything on the Lord’s day. And now there’s a generation,
maybe two of children who are on the ball fields instead of
in the house of the Lord. And we wonder, don’t we? We scratch
our heads and say, what has happened to a generation? Friends, that
is what has happened to the generation. God is at work, working his character
in us that we might be blameless, innocent children of God without
blemish. the work of Christ in us. How
about Daniel? Daniel was one of the Jews exiled
from Jerusalem into Babylon. And you remember he was brought
into the king’s court. He was gonna be one of the king’s new
guys, part of the brain trust, whatever. We’re gonna feed him,
we’re gonna fatten him. And what did Daniel say? I can’t
eat that diet. It’s against my religion. Yahweh would not be
happy with me. And so what did he do? He respectfully
said, I can’t do what you ask, but if you’ll do this and let
me keep my rules and my rituals and my dietary laws, if you do
this, you’ll see that it blesses me, it blesses my companions.
And it was so Daniel was able to be faithful. Again, later
in Daniel’s life, it was said, don’t pray to anybody except
the emperor. We’re going to put up a statue.
When you hear the sounds of prayer time, you pray. What did Daniel
do? He went into his house. And in spite of what one of the
most dangerous and powerful kings of the earth said, he prayed
to Yahweh. He kept the faith. And so friends,
God is working that character in us that we might obey him.
And there’s a reason for this character. There’s a reason for
this obedience. We find it in the third point
we want to understand today, and that is our witness. Look
at verses 15 and 16. Do all things without grumbling
or questioning. that you may be blameless and
innocent, children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked
and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the
world, holding fast, or in some translations, holding forth the
word of life, that in the day of Christ, I may be proud. You see, our obedience and our
character have a purpose. Oh, yes, we want to have obedient
lives. It’s helpful. Obedient people live longer and
happier. They’re safer. They don’t do foolish things.
People of character are the same. But you see here, it’s a witness
for Christ. Now, you’re probably figuring
out after a couple of years with me, there’s a method to my madness.
And one of the things that you will always hear me say on Sundays
in the pastoral prayer is this. Let’s pause and join our hearts
and minds together, asking for God’s help and blessing as we
live life in this fallen world. Where does that come from? Well,
it comes from right here in Philippians chapter two. We live in the midst
of a crooked and twisted generation, a generation that does not love
God. We are called by God to live in the world until he takes
us home. And it’s a dangerous place. It’s
a divisive place. It’s a crooked place. It literally
is the word scolios. We get our word scoliosis from
it. the curved spine. It’s a crooked, twisted world,
and it is twisted morally, ethically. The world is a nasty, foul, dangerous
place, and we are called to be the children of God, blameless,
innocent, obedient, and to live before that generation, shining
brightly as lights into this world. We could sit down and have a
little chit chat about what do we want to do to make our church
grow? We could start a preschool. We could have vacation Bible
school every Sunday. We could go canvas the neighborhoods
and mail out all these postcards. We could advertise on TV. We
could get some billboards on the highway. We could make sure
our website is up to date and all those are wonderful, good
things. Not a one of them a bad idea, but you know what the greatest
witness, that this church can have is obedient children living
lives of character as God is at work in them before the watching
world. One of the other things that you’ll hear me say in a
pastoral prayer from week to week is, oh Lord, help us as
we go into all the places we go week after week, the doctor’s
offices, the schools, the neighborhoods, the workplace, the grocery store,
the post office, wherever it is, that you send us. Help us
to live lives of obedience and character so that someone may
say, who are you and where did you come from? You are strange. You are an alien. And you see,
we can, we can program church growth and sometimes that’s helpful,
but the best witness for the gospel of Jesus and the power
it has to save is each and every one of us living faithfully,
living obediently, and living lives full of character. You see, most of the church this
day and age, very sadly, has soaked up the world. It’s mopped
it up. It’s put its head on the pillow
of the sleep of entertainment, and through osmosis, it has soaked
up the ways of the world. And very sadly, we do not live
like children of Almighty God. We live like the world. We love
its entertainment. We are indoctrinated by its patterns. We believe what it teaches. And
when we sometimes hear the word of God, we say, what a strange
thing. And it ought to be the opposite.
We ought to be children of God, blameless, innocent, holy, washed
in the word, regenerated by the spirit, trained in godliness. And we ought to be so different
from the world that when people see us or they come into our
fellowship, they say, wow, that was other worldly. It was heavenly. And that’s the
experience that as a church of Jesus Christ, we should give. Not grumbling, not disputing,
not divisive, not unhappy with one another, but a fragrance
of Christ, an outpost of heaven, a place of joy. Oh, dear brothers
and sisters, until Jesus comes, let us by faith live lives of
obedience to God, blameless, innocent, holy, without blemish. Jesus is coming. And as the Apostle
Paul says in verses 17 and 18, we do not want the ministry of
those who’ve labored in the gospel, whether it be Paul or the previous
pastors of this church, the present pastor or future pastors, we
do not want their labor in the gospel ministry to be in vain.
No, we want to say we have grown in grace. We have grown in holiness,
in the sufferings and the difficulty of ministry and following Jesus
has been worth it because there is a crowd of people who says
yes to Jesus, yes to obedience, and submits to his work of character
in each of us. We want to say the gospel has
taken. The gospel has embedded itself
in our hearts and minds. And we want to say with Jesus,
let our lights so shine before men that they may see our good
works and praise our Father who is in heaven. And we ask for
his help and grace in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen. Let us stand and respond to God’s
holy word as we sing Savior, like a shepherd, lead us. It’s
number 462.