Keep On Keeping On - 5

As a teenager, I remember hearing in chapel services Bob Jones, Sr. say a number of things. He had these quaint sayings that were quite memorable, and so many of them, as I recall now, had to do with persevering in the Christian walk. He used to say, Keep on keeping on. Keep on keeping on.

Short to the point. Don't do exactly what he was talking about. Don't quit. Don't give up. Don't falter. Go as far as you can on the right road.

And that was another one of his sayings. Go as far as you can on the right road. Not the wrong one, but the right road.

As far as you can. And he used to say, Do right till the stars fall. Do right. Do right, young people. Till the stars fall.

Do right. All of these have to do with the theme of perseverance, continuing on in the Christian faith, and particularly to persevere in times of suffering and trial and opposition, because that's really where our perseverance is tested. It does require the grace of God to persevere in the normal affairs of life, but it is possible, as you know, to be a nominal Christian, a cultural Christian, a secondhand Christian, second generation Christian, that is, because your parents were Christians and you grew up in the church. And you can keep up that mode of operation pretty successfully until those difficulties and trials descend upon you, and then the real truth comes out, doesn't it?

It takes a true child of God who has been indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God and is living according to the word of God and is in communion with the Father and with the Son to persevere during times of opposition and trial. And that's what Paul is talking about in Philippians chapter 1. When he writes this epistle, where is he?

He's imprisoned in Rome. And who's he writing to? He's writing to the Philippians, who themselves have suffered a great deal of persecution and still are. To the church at Philippi, the very first church that was planted upon European soil, and a church that has a very special place in the heart of the apostle Paul, and he's writing to them. And the epistle is filled with references to joy and rejoicing, and that's often what many people pick up on, but there's an awful lot of it that has to do with enduring hardship and difficulty in trials. Paul is not saying everything is happy, happy, happy, happy, happy all the time.

Not that kind of Christianity. There is joy, there is rejoicing, even in the midst of trial, but you better understand the trials are here, and they're going to continue to come, and you need to learn to be able to stand in the midst of those trials. So Paul writes to strengthen them in their trials. He's writing to them to persevere no matter what takes place in their lives.

And what will it take to persevere, particularly in the face of opposition and difficulty? And I think there are four key words that we can draw from our text today in verses 27 through 30 that will help us understand the nature of perseverance and how we can, by God's grace, successfully persevere in trials. The first word is conduct, verse 27. Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs that you stand fast in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.

Conduct. Paul is dealing with how we are to live our daily lives and how we must stand firm in the times of opposition. How are we to live as Christians, and how are we to live as Christians if we're going to successfully persevere?

Because if we don't get our conduct right, we're not going to persevere when the trials come. Verse 27 begins with the word only. What does Paul mean by that? He means this is the one essential matter. He's circling this one particular matter, how we are to conduct our lives as Christians, as if that is the only matter.

And of course, that's a bit of overemphasis, I suppose, in the whole scheme of things, but right now, Paul is saying this is what's most important. As I write to you from Rome, as I think about what you're facing, as I think about what I'm facing, I've just told you I don't know whether I'm going to live or die. I don't know whether the trial that I'm going to go through when I stand before Caesar is going to result in my acquittal or my execution. Either way, it's fine for me to live as Christ, to die as gain, but in the meantime, what do I have to say to you?

This one thing in particular, only, this is the only request that I make. You must live a life that is worthy of the gospel of Christ, your conduct. And if that's going to be true in our lives, we're going to have to reject attitudes that diminish righteous conduct. We are born into a human family of sinfulness, aren't we?

We are all born sons and daughters of Adam, fallen sinners with hearts that delight in sin, that like darkness rather than light because our deeds are evil. And even when we come to Christ, there is still this battle with remaining sinfulness in our nature that's going to be taken from us someday when we see the Lord. Praise God for that. Don't we look forward to that day when the battle's over?

Every battle's over, and probably the greatest battle is the inward battle with our own flesh, and that's going to be over someday. No more sin, no more struggling with my sinful temptations, but in the meantime, we've got to struggle with those. And there are some Christians who diminish the need for that with a misunderstanding or a deliberate distortion of the concept of grace. They act as if because we are children of grace, it doesn't matter how we live. Grace just covers a multitude of sins. Paul dealt with people like that in his day. Some of you, he says, charge me with saying that the more we sin, the more it honors God because the more there is sin, there's more opportunity for grace to be bestowed.

He said, God forbid that anybody should think like that. But there are people who think that way, who misunderstand, distort the message of grace to make it to cover all kinds of misconduct as if it doesn't matter how Christians live. And the whole New Testament wars against that idea. But this one verse will stretch you straight on that. Paul says this is most important.

What? That your conduct enhance the gospel of Christ. We must live by recognizing the importance of Godly conduct.

Only this one thing lets your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ. We must live, Paul is telling us, as citizens of heaven, even though we are residents of Earth. The word conduct there could better be translated to live as citizens. Citizens.

That's a common word in our day and one that doesn't have a lot of zing to it because it is so common. In Paul's day in the Roman Empire, it was a great honor to be a Roman citizen. Not many of the people who populated the Roman Empire had the honor of being citizens.

Relatively just a handful. Remember Paul was a citizen, was born that way. It was a great honor and he used it to his advantage on several occasions.

Remember when he talked to the centurion in Jerusalem that rescued him from the mob in the temple. They were stretching him out on the rack, they were going to flog him. Paul said to the guy who was in charge of the flogging, is it lawful to flog a Roman citizen before he has been tried? You're a citizen? Didn't expect that.

Aren't many of those around? The centurion comes running down to check on this. If they flogged him as a citizen, they could be in great trouble. So the centurion says, are you a citizen? He said yes. The centurion said, well I am too, it cost me a lot of money to buy that favor. I don't know whether that meant he bribed his way in or how he got it, but it cost him money to become a Roman citizen. Paul said, but I was born a citizen.

Great honor. That really put him up in an upper echelon. And the point is that the city of Philippi was a Roman colony. That meant special status in the Roman Empire. And that meant that the citizens of Philippi were Roman citizens and cherished their citizenship. They were proud of it. They thought it was an honorable thing to be a Roman citizen. They recognized that as Roman citizens, they needed to live a certain way.

They needed to demonstrate what a great honor it was to be a Roman citizen. A concept that sadly has been lost by many of the citizens of the United States of America who no longer think it's an honor to be an American citizen. And I read a survey recently among those that were asked if Russia or somebody like that invaded our country, how many of you would stand and fight like they're doing in Ukraine?

And it's surprising what a huge percentage of people said, not me. I'd get out of here. I wouldn't stand and fight. This country isn't worth fighting for.

Wow. That wasn't the attitude of the Philippians. They considered being Roman citizens a high honor, but here's what Paul says. Listen, you've got a citizenship that's much more important than that. Roman citizens?

Yeah, that's important. Paul said, I'm one too, and I cherish that. But you've got a citizenship that's much more important than that. I want you to live as citizens of heaven. I want you to understand what an honor it is to be a citizen of heaven.

Think about, of all the people in the world, how few of them are actually citizens of heaven. But you are by the grace of God. Now act like it. Act like it. Live like it.

It's an honor. And it requires special, special conduct in order to demonstrate to others what it means to be a Christian, to be a citizen of heaven. And Paul says that's the way you need to live in a manner worthy of the gospel. By saying that, let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, Paul is making it clear that there's some conduct that enhances the gospel of Christ. There's some conduct that detracts from the gospel of Christ.

It is important how you live. You can't just live in any old way, and it makes no difference to the kingdom of Christ and to the advancement of the gospel and to the testimony of the gospel upon others. And how do we know how to live as citizens of heaven?

How to enhance the gospel of Christ? The Bible tells us that the New Testament is filled with instructions, and it's as simple as this. When the Bible says don't, then we don't. When the Bible says do, then we do. And then when the Bible says there are some things that are neither do or don't, these are matters of liberty, matters of indifference as far as right and wrong is concerned, then we understand that as well.

But we have to get these things right. We read the Bible, and when the Bible says thou shalt not, then I say I shall not. And when the Bible says thou shalt, I say I shalt.

I don't talk in that kind of language very often, but anyway, you understand what I'm saying. I shall. I shall do that because Christ commands me to. This is the way that I enhance the gospel of Christ. I live according to the words of Christ as he spoke them in the gospels and as he spoke them through his apostles who gave them to us. This is how we are to live. We must live in a way that enhances the gospel of Christ, and we must stand firm, the last part of verse 27 is telling us. So that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs that you stand fast in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel. How must we live? According to the scriptures. How must we stand firm?

And here's an interesting way of looking at it. How must we stand firm? We must stand firm independent of others. We must stand firm in fellowship with others. Is that a contradiction?

No. How are we going to stand firm? With an independent commitment that I'm going to stand firm if nobody else does. With or without Paul's presence.

With or without the encouragement of others. Whether I come and see you or am absent. It should make no difference in your commitment to stand firm in the truth, in the gospel, in a persevering faith.

It should make no difference whatsoever. If your standing firm for Christ depends upon a certain Christian leader, a certain pastor, a certain beloved Bible teacher, then your faith is pretty thin if it takes that to prop it up. If your standing firm depends upon all of your friends around you helping you and agreeing with you and you'll go along with them, but you can't stand alone, then your Christian commitment is pretty weak. You've got to have an independent determination that I'm going to stand for Christ if nobody else around me does. Independent from others. Determined to stand alone if necessary and yet it won't be necessary because there are others.

Always there are others. And so whether I come to see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs that you stand fast. And now he describes our standing fast together in fellowship with others in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel. We must have individual commitments together. If we don't have an inward determination before God, me, before Christ alone, I will stand if I'm the only one. But then we find the fellowship of the saints and we find, look, there are a lot of other people with the same commitment and now we do this together. One spirit. It's not clear whether that's the spirit of man or the Holy Spirit, but either way there's a unity here. One spirit, united in spirit. One mind, that's the Greek word psyche. Soul, sometimes it's translated. Mind, sometimes it's translated. It has to do with the word psychology, our mind.

We have the same commitment, the same thoughts about basic Christian truth, about the Bible being the word of God, about Christ being the eternal Son of God, about the death of Christ upon the cross and the place of sinners and so forth. And with this unity of mind and unity of heart and with this commitment that we all have independently, that we come together to exercise it in fellowship with one another, we can present a pretty formidable front against the opposition of Satan. Striving together, sometimes translated content, means a joint effort like that of an athletic team. Most of you played athletes sometime or another, athletics. There are certain sports that are solo sports. I used to like to play tennis, singles.

I was alone on my side of the net against one opponent on the other side of the net. But most of the sports that I played as a young person many, many, many, many years ago were team sports. I love to play soccer. I love to play basketball. I love to play volleyball. I love to play baseball and softball.

I love these team sports. And I learned very quickly, as all of you do, that if you're playing on a team, you don't play solo. You're not the hot shot. You're not the only one on the team. If you're on a basketball team, you don't hog the ball.

You don't take all the shots. You learn to cooperate together. You learn to play together.

You're much more effective that way. That's what Paul is saying here, that we have this individual commitment to standing for Christ, but we learn to play together. We learn to strive together. We learn to stand together.

It makes it much more effective. It's like an athletic team or like a military operation. And many commentators mentioned this. So it came to the minds of a lot of them that probably Paul had in mind the famous Greek phalanx. Have you ever heard of that term before?

P-H-A-L-A-N-X. There was a particular military strategy where the Greek soldiers, with much practice, learned to form kind of a wedge-like unit in which a number of men, could be a couple of dozen or more of them, would come together in team effort, all with their spears in one hand and their shields in the other hand. And their shields actually joined together, presenting almost an impenetrable wall. And with that, they would go right into the midst of another army that didn't know how to penetrate this wall. And that is the way, here's why many people thought of it, that is the way that Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, Philip of Macedon, where's Paul writing this letter?

To Philippi in the territory of Macedonia. It all ties together here. And Philip of Macedon wielded great defeat upon the Roman army back in about 200 B.C. by the use of this strategy, the phalanx, where everybody worked in precision and harmony and worked together and therefore accomplished so much more than they could individually. And Paul said, that's the way that Christians learn to stand against opposition. Individual determination, but cooperative fellowship and activity. That's the conduct we must employ if we're going to persevere. What's the second word? Courage, verse 28.

And some of these words overlap a bit. But Paul goes on to say in verse 28, and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation. And that from God. Courage. And he talks about the exercise of courage and also about the effects of courage. The exercise of courage. Do not in any way be terrified by your adversaries.

In other words, exercise courage. The word that is used there is used of horses that are frightened into a stampede. Again, something they would be familiar with. We are more familiar with cows stampeding because we've always seen that on television and westerns, but they didn't have cowboys in Paul's day, but they had a lot of armies around and a lot of horses and horses in corrals. And they knew what it was like for a horse to get spooked and start to stampede, and the whole herd goes running off in panic.

And that's often the way it is. Our enemies know how to make us panic, to frighten us, and pretty soon the whole herd is running away in fright. And Paul says you can't be like that, not terrified, not intimidated, fearless under attack, unmovable, exercising courage. But he goes on to tell us what the effects of that will be in the last part of verse 28, and he tells us about its effects upon the enemies of the gospel and upon Christians, believers in the gospel. What is its effect upon enemies of the gospel? Not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them, your adversaries, a proof of perdition, damnation, condemnation. And when I read that before I really got into it and studied it, the way I begin my sermon preparation is normally on Monday morning.

I start by just opening my Bible to the text and reading it carefully and writing down my own thoughts. That tells me what to look for as I start opening commentaries and reading other people's thoughts who are more studied than I. And I missed an important nuance in this particular part of the verse because I thought Paul was saying that the activity of your adversaries opposing you is a mark of their perdition. And there's that part of it, but that misses another part of it. But that is exactly right.

I don't dismiss that. What Paul is saying is that the activity of some people in opposing the gospel, opposing truth, opposing the church, opposing Christians, marks them out as sons of perdition. That's a sign. How do you tell who's going to heaven and who's going to hell?

We can't look into hearts and we can't always know infallibly, but here's a pretty good general way to identify them. The people who are supportive of Christ and supportive of the truth and supportive of the gospel and supportive of Christians, those who are involved in Christian activities and are involved in advancing the message of the Bible, those are the ones that in most cases are going to heaven and the ones who are opposing that are the ones who are going to hell. It's a sign. But here's what I missed. The text isn't saying just that the activity of opposition is what marks them out for perdition, but it's saying your courage against their opposition is what is related to their knowing about perdition.

It gets a little more complicated than it appears on the surface. And there are some commentators that translate this as an omen of destruction. Your courage under fire, your courage under opposition is an omen of destruction that is a message of their future destruction. In other words, it strikes fear in their hearts because this is a tool that God uses to convict them that if you don't change, if you don't change your ways, if you don't turn around and instead of opposing these people become one of them, you're going to hell. And what Paul is saying is Christians can be a powerful witness to the enemies of the gospel by showing this kind of courage in the face of opposition. See how important it is that your conduct enhance the gospel of Christ? You see how important it is for you to stand unmovable in the truth of the gospel and not run like a coward when the first little bit of opposition comes along?

They become convicted. And what they're convicted by as much as anything else is by watching Christians being willing to endure loss for the sake of Christ. They know that Christians are enduring loss.

They're inflicting it as much as they can. And here are Christians who keep standing and standing and standing and standing. I don't enjoy loss, but I'll take it for the cause of Christ. I don't enjoy losing my job, but I'll take it for the cause of Christ.

I don't enjoy the plundering of my goods, but I'll take it for the sake of Christ. There's something that's more important than worldly things. There's something that's more important than silver and gold and material things.

What is it? The riches that are in Christ, that's what's most important. I am willing to suffer all loss in this world for the sake of the gain that I will have in Jesus Christ. And when the enemies of the gospel see that, they are astounded. They are flabbergasted.

They have no explanation for that. They know that there's something real in you. You're not just professing to be a Christian.

You're not just going to church. You're not just mouthing the words. There's something genuine in you that cannot be explained any other way. And that strikes conviction into their own hearts, and it tells them that they better pay attention to what you're saying.

There's truth in it. And that's the effect of your courage upon the enemies of the gospel. And what is the effect of your courage upon believers, upon yourself and other believers?

Well, the opposite. Your courage in the face of opposition identifies you as a recipient of salvation. If you are being opposed for the sake of Christ, you must belong to Christ, right? That's the logic. And if you are able and willing to stand in the face of increasing suffering and trials and opposition, then there's only one explanation. The living, all-powerful God is at work in your life. That's the only way that that's possible. And if that's true, then you belong to Him. That's a mark of your salvation. There's the evidence of it. It brings assurance to your soul because God enables those who stand firm.

That's the only way they could do it. And so word number one, conduct. Word number two, courage.

Word number three, commitment. Verse 29. For to you has been granted on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for His sake. And Paul deals in this verse with, we might say, two commitments. Number one, a commitment to faith in Christ. And number two, a commitment to suffering for Christ. A commitment to faith in Christ. It is a commitment. It's more than that. But we have all heard at various times in evangelistic presentations, make a commitment to Christ. It's time for you to commit to Jesus Christ. That's not a bad term.

Not at all. Because there is a commitment. It's more than just mouthing words. It's more than just repeating this prayer.

It's more than just saying this after me. There's got to be a commitment of heart produced by the work of the Holy Spirit within the heart. But there's got to be a commitment. There's some substance to this.

There's something solid to it. There's a commitment to Christ, which is, we are told here very plainly. Where does that ability to believe in Christ come from, that commitment?

Where does it come from? It is a gift of God to you. For to you, it has been granted. It has been given on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but not less than believe in Him either.

We'll take just that part for the moment. Faith in Christ is a gift of God. That we're granted comes from, it's a different form of the Greek word keras, from which we get the word grace, which means a gift, a bestowment. Where does our faith come from? Does it come from something naturally within us as fallen sons and daughters of Adam?

The Bible says no. The Bible says it is the gift of God. And if there were no other verse in the Bible that taught it, this one makes it plain, though a lot of people skip over this one.

Most people are familiar with Ephesians chapter 2. For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. And a proper exegesis of that verse, I'm confident, makes it clear that faith is a gift of God. For by grace are you saved through faith, not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God. But there are those who object to that interpretation of the verse and they say, no, the gift of God doesn't apply just to faith, it applies to salvation, it applies to the whole package. It's all the gift of God. And so that kind of removes the, what should I say, the difficulty that some people have in accepting the sovereign grace of God. But like so many truths, that's not the only place in the Bible you find it.

And here you find it, and I don't know how you're going to explain it away here. Where does your ability to believe in Christ come from? It's the gift of God. Believing is the gift of God.

That's all that's mentioned in that verse. It can only be faith. Believing is the gift of God. It's amazing when you keep reading the Bible how things begin to flow together and how the Bible begins to interpret itself and the Bible in one place will make plain what may not be completely clear to you in another place. The Bible has a way of doing that, doesn't it? It's similar in some ways, I suppose, to the doctrine of election.

You find election referred to here and you find election referred to there. And on the surface it seems to be pretty clear that God chooses a people for Christ and gave them to Him before the foundation of the world. He chooses His people before the world was ever created. Those who come to faith in Christ come to faith in Christ because they are the elect of God. But again, they're people that'll get into every one of those verses and try to explain it away. Well, this is not just saying in Ephesians chapter 1, for example. This is not saying that God chose us to salvation.

It says that God chose us to good works, right? Or out and out and out it goes. I mean, you can find a way out. Until you come to that one in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 where it says, as plain as words on a page can say it, God has chosen you to salvation. Wiggle out of that one. And that explains all the others.

Same thing here. Where does faith come from? It's a gift of God.

It's as plain as can be in this text. This explains the others. You can't wiggle out of it here. But how does God bring this faith? He brings it in such a way that we exercise faith. We exercise our will. We make a commitment. That's the work of God in us, enabling us to do all that.

But we do that. In other words, God doesn't believe for us. He enables us to believe. He moves us to believe.

He empowers us to believe. But every one of us individually must believe. Have you believed? If you have, thank God for it.

If you haven't, call upon God to enable you to do it. But you must believe. You must exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ if you are going to be saved. So we make a commitment of faith. But Paul says that's not all that God gave us. He not only gifted us with faith, he gifted us with suffering. Whoops, that doesn't sound like a gift to me. Yes, it is. Right there in the same verse.

Look at it. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake. So God hands you the gift of faith and you say, Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. That has brought me to salvation in Christ. And then God hands you the gift of suffering.

And you say. Well, we need to learn to say by the grace of God, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. The same grace that brought us faith, brought us suffering. The same kind and loving heart of God that brought us faith, brought us suffering. He's got a good and gracious purpose for it, but it is the gift of God. One commentator said suffering is the friction that polishes our granite. I can understand that, can't you? You see, when suffering comes into the life of a believer, it's not an accident.

It's by design. There are no accidents with God. When suffering comes into the life of a believer, it's not necessarily punishment. And I'm not saying that God does not chasten His children because the Bible says He does.

But more often than not, it's got nothing to do with that. Think of the life of Job. What punishment was he receiving when he went through all that suffering?

None at all. But God had a wise and gracious purpose in it. It was a gracious gift of God. Both believing and suffering are by God's grace. And so we're talking about persevering, aren't we? And we have to think of our conduct. It needs to be godly conduct or we won't persevere. We think about courage. We must have courage in the face of opposition or we won't persevere. We must have commitment, commitment to faith in Christ and commitment to suffering.

Let's say, God, if You say this is good, I'm committed to it. Help me through it. It's the gift of God.

It's the gift of commitment. And then number four is conflict, verse 30. Conflict. Having the same conflict which you saw in me and now here in me. Our suffering, like our standing and striving, is both unique, it's both individual, and it's also shared. There's a sense in which your trial is, at least in some respects, different from anybody else's.

No two are exactly alike, like snowflakes. No two trials are exactly alike. And yet there's another sense in which the essence of our trials have been shared by everyone.

There is no trial or testing taken you but such as is common to man, common to man. God is faithful who will not allow you to suffer, above that you are able, but will with the suffering make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it. It's unique to you and it's real easy for us to get our little pity party and say nobody else understands, nobody else has had this, nobody else has suffered the way I suffer. Common to man. Nobody else has suffered the way I have.

I know yours is a little bit unique because no two are exactly alike. But common to man, the essence of your suffering has been shared by every believer and will continue to be shared by every believer. That's what Paul is saying in verse 30. The suffering that you're having in Philippi, you've already seen it in me. You saw it in me when I was at Philippi and you're seeing it in me now as I'm imprisoned in Rome. Now none of them had suffered exactly what Paul suffered in Philippi. They watched him as he was arrested, they watched him as he was beaten, they watched him as his feet were put in stocks. And then how God rescued him from that and how he was invited out of the city, deported from Philippi, they watched all that.

So in some respects the details of Paul's suffering were different from theirs but Paul says it's the same. The same kind of suffering you saw in me, that's what you're enduring now. You're enduring serious opposition from the people in Philippi just like I did. And you know where I am now, I'm in Rome in prison and that same kind of suffering you are having, none of you are in prison in Rome but you're having the same kind of unjust suffering. I'm not in prison because I'm a guilty criminal who's broken Roman law.

I'm in Roman imprisonment unjustly for the sake of Christ. And we're all going to face that as we've already seen. This is conflict and Paul had endured much conflict and it wasn't over. He said it'll continue to the end of my life. And you're enduring conflict and it's not over, it's going to continue to the end of your life. And so if you're going to persevere, you better understand conflict. And we don't pray, Lord, keep me from suffering, keep me from trials, keep me from opposition, keep me from conflict, what do we pray? Lord, give me strength and courage and faith to keep on keeping on in these things that your word tells me will come, they're supposed to come. Help me to honor you in the midst of all these things. How are you at enduring suffering? How are you at dealing with conflict?

You must learn to handle these things properly if you are going to keep on keeping on, if you're going to persevere. What will it take? Well, it will take right Christian living, right conduct. What will it take? It will take courage. You're not going to be stampeded by every little conflict. I read, this is not exactly the same, but I read online sometime this week, God pity us if we get into World War III when so many in our generation don't understand the pressure of somebody calling them by the wrong pronoun.

It's going to take a little more courage than that, isn't it? We don't even know what suffering is. We don't know what conflict is. This pampered generation, well, we better learn. As Christians, we better learn. It's going to take proper conduct. It's going to take courage. It's going to take commitment because conflict is a reality. It's not a possibility. It's a reality.

It's a gift from God. And therefore, ask God to enable you to stand. Some have fallen away, haven't they? All of us know, people who used to fellowship with us here, and now they're no longer in church anywhere. They're no longer walking with Christ.

What's happened? They've fallen away. You say, well, you know, what's their condition before God? Are they saved? Are they not saved? I don't know. You leave that between them and God.

But the evidence doesn't look real good at the moment, does it? We pray to God they'll return and demonstrate a real work of God's grace in their heart. But if they never demonstrate that, any ability to stand against pressure, against opposition, against difficulty, against disappointment, so poor, pretty me. I've been hurt in church, so I can't go to church anymore. What are you going to do when the real conflict comes?

Come on. We've seen many who have fallen away. We pray for them, and we pray that it will not be us.

That was them yesterday. Let's pray that it will not be me tomorrow. Ask God to enable you. When you see that happen, say, God, please don't let that happen to me by your grace. And if that is you, repent. Come back to Christ.

Seek God's pardon and His enabling power. Some of you fit that description. There's some of you here who were with us. Then you were gone, and you weren't just gone to another church. You were gone out of the Christian orbit, and then here you came back some years later, and here you are sitting with us today. God is a pardoning God. He's a merciful God. Who is a pardoning God like thee? We think of Peter, who denied the Lord and went out and wept bitterly, but Christ forgave him.

There is pardon. Come, every soul, by sin oppressed. There's mercy with the Lord, and He will surely give you rest by trusting in His word. But you've got to come back to your commitment to Christ and to Christian living and to opposition, facing the opposition of the world, and to striving together with others of like precious faith. That's the way you keep on keeping on, shall we pray. Father, oh Father, help us to learn from your word as we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.