One of the pronounced themes about the book of Philippians is this whole idea of joy and rejoicing.
But why? I think this is a book, if you will, about having the mind of Christ. Thinking about real life circumstances in light of the thinking of Christ. I need to live with a gospel transformed mind. My perspective on the circumstances of life must be shaped by the gospel.
We are living in a day where we are blitzed with information all the time. And our brain is designed that in one way, shape, or form, it does process that information. And when it does, it informs or it transforms our perspective. And I am here to challenge us today that there are things in life that we need to at least understand whether my perspective on those things is informed or transformed. And so I believe in this book as we study it together. What is God saying should be my perspective on that.
And if I make the change from one to the other, will it result in me living a life that is marked by a peaceful, settled joy in God. Welcome to The Daily Platform, a radio program featuring chapel messages from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today, Dr. Alan Benson is continuing the study series called The Mind of Christ from the book of Philippians. So as we return to Philippians chapter two, verses 12 through 18, I bring you there with a heart that is absolutely filled with the truth of these verses, because this is exactly where God wanted me to be this week.
And I am going to try and just preach to you out of the overflow of my heart. Philippians chapter two, one of the challenges with a book like Philippians that is not just familiar, but is filled with so many little familiar phrases or verses that we often grab out of the text and take and apply to life, which I think is wonderful. Is that if we're not careful, we can grab those little phrases and verses and take them with us and we allow them to become disconnected or disjointed. One of the things I want you to see as we look at this very familiar passage of scripture again this morning is the connection that is here because it's actually in the connection of this truth where we get its central purpose. And I believe that that central purpose is found in a phrase you just saw saying when you say perfect submission.
All's at rest. In the midst of a world that is filled with twisted turmoil, trouble, difficulty. And so you follow along as I read again, I'm going to begin in verse 12, wherefore, he says, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for.
It's connected. It is God which worketh in you both to will to do of his good pleasure do all things without murmurings and disputings. That it's connected in order that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I've not run in vain, neither labored in vain. Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all.
The same cause also do ye joy and rejoice with me. We started last time looking at this right perspective on salvation. And we talked about the display of that gospel life, of a gospel impacted life. So we talked about this idea that there is a submission that we're called to obey, and we saw that there's actually a connection between our obedience and Christ's obedience in the passage, the kenosis passage that comes before. And then I want you to see that there's this intricate connection between God working in us in verse 13 and our working out our salvation in verse 12. And so we talked about what this means, and obviously it's not a call for us to figure out our own salvation or to save ourselves, but we talked about this idea of displaying, to work from the inside out, to take what God has now done and bring it to fruition in the way that we live, in the way that we love, and in the way that we behave.
And so the idea here, I do think, is to actually work on to completion. In other words, to understand what it is that God was after when He saved you. What was it that God was doing? Redeeming you, His fallen creation so that He might change you from glory to glory, that you would be transformed into the image of His dear Son.
These are phrases we're familiar with. He wants to make you like Christ, and so in redemption He buys you back from the slave market of sin. He adopts you and makes you His child and brings you into His family. Through justification He clears the record of fault that is against you so that you're held guiltless in the court of the universe. And He puts His Holy Spirit within you, to now transform you into all of that in your living. And we are called then to partner, to work out to its right end.
Young people, I want you to see that this is the call of our Christian life. You are not perfect. And until Jesus comes again, you will not be perfect, but you live a life where God is at work in you, and you are at work with Him to be perfected.
He is changing you. And this passage actually is going to give us a unique glimpse into that. We're called, Matthew 24, 13 says this, but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receives the prize so run that you may obtain. And every man that strives for the mastery is tempered in all things.
Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. Paul says this then of himself, I therefore so run, not as uncertainly, so fight I not as one that beats the air. I'm not shadow boxing.
There's something real going on here. He says this, I keep my body under and bring it into subjection, lest by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway, a dacamas rejected. He says, I am working to live out and put on display the gospel truth that I know is in Christ. Because I want to demonstrate that I really am becoming who He is making me to be. This is the passion of heart of a genuine believer.
And so that challenge is there for us. Peter said it this way, 2 Peter 1, and besides this, giving all diligence. Add to your faith. And he walks us through a list of characteristics that ought to be marking a mature faith. And he says in verse 8, for if these things be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You see, there will be a process, a process of God's work for us in salvation, leading to God's work in us in sanctification, resulting in God's work through us in service. And he says that they are to do this not only in His presence but also in His absence. And it's an interesting statement there that I think is a call to genuineness of heart. That this is real for them. This isn't because they're a student at a Christian college. This isn't because they live in a home with Christian parents. This isn't because right now they're gathered with a group of peers and those peers seem to be a positive influence and they want to impress them the right way so the things that they're doing, I'm going to do those things or the conversations that they're having about spiritual things, I'm going to have those conversations because it's impressive to them.
It has nothing to do with that. It actually has to do because they're owning their own faith. And they're to do that out of a sense of fear and trembling or if you will, respect and awe.
Not a slavish terror one author said, but a wholesome, serious caution that leads them to thinking through the level of importance and choosing in light of that. My great passion for you as young adults is that you internalize your beliefs. Develop and personalize your values in light of those beliefs.
Settle your own convictions. This is, I believe, exactly what Dr. McGonigal was preaching last Wednesday when he said make your faith firm. This is how you practically adhere to the life shaping impact of truth that the Scriptures prescribe. Guard your heart. For out of it are the issues of life.
As a man, thinketh in his heart, so is he. This is a time to take your faith and own it, to personalize it, to internalize it, to say in light of what I believe, how should I then choose? And in light of how I choose, how should I then live? Working your salvation onto its end.
So I ask you this question. Do you believe that what you believe is really real? Do you really believe that what you believe, you claim to believe, is really real? Ground your faith. Ground your faith in truth. Not in tradition, not in history, not in relationships. Ground your faith in the faith.
Search the Scriptures to see whether these things are so. And so that moves us then from this display to God's side of the equation, and I've referred to it here as the dominion for Gospel-impacted living. There's a reign, there's a rule, there's an area of someone that owns this, and we tend not to see it when we read verse 13. But it's there, it says this, for it is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure. This isn't just a modicum of encouragement. This isn't just a, hey look, you can do this. It's God that's working in you.
It actually is giving an area of rule, of dominion. God is up to something. The first thing I want you to get here is that it's God that works in you. Think of all that Old Testament Israel had to go through in my Bible reading. I'm right now reading through all the demands and requirements for the building of the tabernacle. Today I was reading then all the passages about if this person sins or if that person sins or if these people sin, all the details of what they have to do. And it was because God would be in that temporary dwelling place and eventually then in a building, the temple. But all they had to do in order to come into his presence. And today, young person, understand Paul will say, are not ye, and he makes it plural, the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you.
For you are not your own, you are bought with a price. Young people, it is the same God that filled the tabernacle. The same God who filled the temple. That God who traveled as smoke and fire among the children of Israel. The one who slaughtered massive armies that would come against them. The one who opened seas. The one who caused food to fall from heaven. That God is this God who dwells in you. Who works in you to will and to do of his good pleasure.
Let's look at this for a moment. It starts with this little word, gar, for. It's used here to connect these phrases to give cause or clarification or inference. It's a marker of cause or reason.
So even though beginning of verse 13, we see this word, it's never the beginning of a sentence. It's not beginning a new thought, it's giving a reason. Why should I work out my salvation with a sense of dependent, reverent awe and respect? Why should this matter to me?
Why? Why should it be important to me that I even think about living this way? Because it's God who is working in you. And then notice what it is he is doing. To will and to do of his good pleasure. The idea here, this word where we would get our word energy maybe, to implement. God is doing something. God is causing something to function. God is bringing something into effect.
And that working then looks like two things. The word desire or to will, fellow, to feel or have a desire for or to want strongly. And then he reuses another form of this word, enter gain, to function, to do what something is used for or to perform as expected. And what he says is, God is at work in your life, transforming your heart in such a way that you've come to the place where you want what he wants and accomplish his purposes in your life. You realize that this verse is actually a key to you knowing and doing the will of God? I want to do the will of God, I'm not sure what that is.
You know what he is saying here? It's God that's working in your heart. And your focus ought to be to work out, to put on display, to get from the inside out, to bring to its completion God's salvation purposes in your life.
And when you do that, understand that God is working in you to shape your heart, your desires, your will, your direction so that you want what he wants for you. And in this way, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. I want you to look with me at a very, very familiar passage of Scripture. One that we quote all the time when we talk about God's will. Psalm 37 four. It says this, delight yourself also in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. Okay, God, I know what I want.
So what do I have to do? What's that delighting bit look like so that I can get what I want? You realize that is not what this verse says. The words that are used here are potent. This idea to delight is an imperative.
And it means to take a high degree of pleasure in or find mental satisfaction in or if you will, to make the object of both your affection and your attention. This means to put God in the right place. God first above all. God first and only.
To make the focus of my affection and my attention. This is God above pursuits. This is God above positions. This is God above people. God is not the vending machine that is the means of me getting people or position or things. This is to make God the object of my affection.
And then God will help take care of the things. It isn't just to tell yourself and others that you love God. It is actually to make decisions that reflect that you are making God the object of your affections. You know, this is as simple. This is as simple, young people.
Listen to me. This is as simple as why you make the right decision to get up and go to gathered worship on the Lord's day. There are too many people that walk around and say things like, oh, I love Jesus.
I just don't care much for His church. That's like walking up to your girlfriend or your boyfriend and saying, you know what? I love you. I just really don't care for how you look.
Have that conversation today and then make an appointment with me. I want to hear how it goes. It's ridiculous. It's ludicrous.
And that's how it should seem. This is about saying, you know what? This isn't about doing my duty to read the word of God. This is about saying I am going to make God the object of my affection. I'm going to delight in Him.
So I will dedicate my heart to His truth. My wife and I got engaged and I went to Canada. And back in that day, I had a calling card every now and again with a rotary phone. Do you know how frustrating it is to dial 26 numbers and realize at 27 you dialed the wrong one? You've got to hang up and start over? You have no idea what that means. You're like, phones had rotors on them?
What even is that? So we wrote letters, literally pen, paper, wrote, sent them back and forth. Can you imagine after 12 months of engagement? I show up and I say to Michelle, man, I love you. I love you with my whole heart. And she says, what? You didn't answer any of my questions. You didn't respond to any of the things that I told you were going on in my life. I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, I wrote you all those letters with all that stuff in there and I never heard anything back from you.
Oh baby, I'm sorry. You know, they smelled so good. I just kind of put them all in my nightstand and I've got them all.
They matter to me. God didn't give you a pretty book to keep polished friends. God gave you a word, a living word, a God breathed word filled with His truth that is about you living out your faith. Have you made Him the object of your affections to the point that you say, you know what?
What He has to say to me is a priority. He uses this word here, Natan, to give or to place or to pass on or deliver and even by application to teach, He will give you the desires of your heart. He will work in your heart to bring about the right kind of desires and increase your desire for Him. This word here, Mishalah, is the word to petition or prayer. It's the burden of my heart that is found in the locus of my thoughts and volition and emotions with a knowledge of right from wrong, my conscience.
It's all of my inner man. God says, if I will delight in Him, make Him the object of my affections, that He will so work in me that He'll shape me to look like the faith I claim. When we make God Himself the center of our desires and the object of our affection and attention, God Himself will work in our hearts to shape us so that we want what He wants for us. That's Psalm 37.4. That's Philippians 2. And thus, I want you to see then the demands for gospel impacted living because I want you to see that it's connected. This is one of those little verses we take. We give to our children, right?
Three, you need to go brush your teeth. Hey, do all things without murmurings and disputings. Well, it does apply there. But it actually is resonating from the heart. Words that he's using here are really, really potent.
The idea here of murmurings is almost this sense of an inward gurgling to mutter. It's a hard expression that is marked by complaining. And it's not complaining necessarily just about an individual thing that bothers me. Man, I hate the fact that we have tests on Mondays. They always mess with my weekend.
You shouldn't complain like that. But this is deeper than that. This is a heart that is expressing discontent with the fact that God wants to shape me. This is a heart that looks at the hard work of life, the all things that work together for good to them that love Him and to those who are called according to His purpose.
This is a heart that looks and says, you know what, God? You need to understand right now. I'm not really sure I want what you want. I have other plans, other goals, other desires, other dreams. I have popularity that I've got to figure out. I've got places that I want to go and people that I want to see me, respect that I want to have, pleasures that I want to pursue.
And God, I'm just not really sure that you're coming up to speed with my plan. And what's interesting is about this heart that murmurs or grumbles or complains is that it always leads to an outward expression. The word here disputings or arguings, it always affects the life I'm living.
It too will work itself out. So I ask you, how do your friends know you? Are you the complainer? That person is always a little on edge. Seemingly no matter what happens, you're the one that can drive the conversation that feels like you have an ax to grind. You're the one with the cutting comment, that slicing word, that's your role in the group.
You're always the one that seemingly has the quick wit, but you're the best at sarcasm. You can cut someone down with precision as though you were a physician, a surgeon. Ask what is being worked out in your life. Because he finishes this by telling us why it matters. He says this, so that you may be transformed, the word he uses is ginomai, to be made or created into a new state of being, into the children of God who are unimpeachable without moral handles while living in the middle of your current generation that is crooked, unscrupulous, and dishonest, and twisted, perverted, and deviant, actively turning from what it knows to be right and moral. And you in the midst of that can shine as a light in the world. You see young people, this is God's plan for gospel advance. It is His children that choose this kind of a pathway. You know all of us will face today, tomorrow, last week, next week, between now and graduation, all kinds of events that we're going to have to decide how we're going to respond to.
And we might not think that they're connected. We might be in our brains saying, you know what, no, no, no, no, I'm just, this is bad, so I'm just complaining. Ask yourself if that's your response to the working of God in your life. You say, well, it might not be the working of God in my life. Understand, when He says for it is God that works in you, He uses a present, and He says God is continuously persistently working in you.
God doesn't take any holidays, He doesn't have any episodic work in your life, He doesn't do something, go away, come back later and check to see how it's going. God is always working in your life to will and to do of His good pleasure. And when I find myself grumbling and complaining and cutting, actually my response is against the working of God in me to make me a light in the world that's unimpeachable in a generation that is all too ready to grab me by moral handles and pull me down into the darkness. Will you work out your faith? Whether someone's looking or not, because God has a purpose in you and you want Him to carry it to the end, it is then that you all know and do the will of God. Father, dismiss us with your blessing, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Alan Benson from the study series in the book of Philippians called The Mind of Christ. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel platform.
