Pest Control - Part B

Look at how Paul answers this. He says, What then? You know what that means? That little question, what then?

You know how we would translate that? So what? So what?

What does it matter? What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense, they're pretending to be pure in their motives, but they're not. In pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. And in this, I rejoice. Yes, and will rejoice.

Man, you cannot stop this dude. Even though the apostle Paul faced opposition when sharing the gospel, he rejoiced that the gospel was being preached. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares how you can have that same attitude of Paul and live a gospel centered life.

And at the end of today's program, Skip and his wife Lenya give you vital insight to help you keep your focus on sharing the good news of Jesus. Bottom line is be a God pleaser, not a man pleaser. If you please God, then anybody else who loves God who wants to please God will be pleased with you. And the rest, let them go. And frankly, we're expected to have enemies.

I mean, part of being a Christian is that the world won't love you. Thanks, Skip and Lenya. Be sure to stay tuned after today's message to hear the full conversation. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will help you live victoriously through the power of the Holy Spirit. Counselor, Comforter, Advocate, Helper. These are some of the names for the Holy Spirit found in the Bible. The Holy Spirit isn't a warm, fuzzy feeling or a vague cosmic force. He's a person who loves you, cares for you and wants to empower you to be everything God calls you to be. Here's Skip Heidzig.

I think there's a lot of Christians who have heard the term Holy Spirit, obviously, but they have a very vague idea of who the Spirit of God is and what he's supposed to do in their lives. We want to help you better understand the Holy Spirit by sending you Expound Holy Spirit, a DVD study from Pastor Skip, and for a limited time, we'll also send you a booklet by Lenya Heidzig called Empower, Discover Your Spiritual Gifts. Both resources are our way to say thanks for your gift of $25 or more to help keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, connecting you to God's life changing truth. Call now to request your copies of these resources.

800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in Philippians chapter one as Skip Heidzig starts today's study. Keep this in mind. Next time you hear gossip. And there are there are unfortunately too many people even in the church who love to spread gossip. When you hear gossip, somebody's ego is being exalted. It's usually shared because I know this and you don't and I'm concerned. And ego is being exalted as that information is being divulged.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. And selfish ambition was part and parcel of what was wrong with these people. They were selfish. So they're jealous. They're contentious. They're selfish. Paul mentions them.

Not by name. He doesn't want to make too much out of it. He didn't want to be self-serving, but he mentions what they did. But there's a fourth thing. They were malicious. Notice in verse 16, the former preached Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely.

Now watch this. Supposing or hoping to add affliction to my chains. Now Paul is revealing their motivation. They're doing all this. They are this way.

They're pushing me down to pull themselves up and here's why. They want to add affliction to my bonds. What does that mean? The word affliction is a common New Testament word, phillipsis. Phillipsis is a word that means pressure or trial, but it literally means an irritation. It means friction.

It is the irritation caused by the rubbing of an object over another object. Now notice it says, Paul says they want to add affliction or irritation to my chains. For two years Paul was in chains. I know you've heard that. I know we've read that. We've discussed that.

But I just want you to think of what that means. That means for two years, Paul couldn't take a potty break alone. He had no freedom. He had no isolation. He had no privacy. He couldn't eat a meal alone.

He couldn't have a conversation in that rented house in Rome for two years. He was chained to a guard. That means there was a shackle around his wrist with a chain attached to the shackle of another soldier who only occupied that place for a few hours at a time. But Paul, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, two years, he had a chain.

That means that that shackle would irritate his skin and his bones and scabs would develop and it would bleed and it would thicken, etc. You get the picture. So he says the reason these people are this way toward me is they want to add to the irritation that I already have in my chains. That is their motivation. They don't want to evangelize the lost. They don't want to feed the flock. They're not really concerned for the church even though they're saying, well I'm saying this about Paul because I'm really concerned for the church. Paul said that's not the truth. The truth is they have one motivation.

They want to add irritation to my already irritable situation of being in chains. Now please understand again, these are preachers. Paul says they preach Christ. They are Christians. They are Christian preachers. They are not anti-Christ. But they are anti-Paul. And they are anti-Paul with a vengeance. And I can't think of a worse reason to preach a message than that. I can't think of a worse motivation to write a book or have a blog site than that.

Let's just make life hard for Paul the Apostle. Sort of like scorpions. You know that if you leave scorpions together alone, they'll kill themselves and eat themselves? A guy did an experiment with a hundred scorpions in a huge glass jar. In a few days only 14 survived. They had killed the others and were eating them. There was even a pregnant scorpion in that jar that killed and started eating her young as soon as they were born.

One of those babies escaped on the mother's back and eventually killed her. Any leader who has led anything, even Christian leaders in Christian churches, know that every church, every group has the Tate family among them. Every church has the Tates. There's old man Dick Tate who wants to run everything. While Uncle Ro Tate tries to change everything. Their sister Agitate stirs up plenty of trouble with help from her husband Iritate. And whenever new projects are suggested, Hesitate and his wife Vegitate want to wait till next year. Then there's Aunt Imitate who wants our church to be like all the others.

Devastate provides the voice of doom while Potentate wants to be a big shot. And of course there's the black sheep of the family, Amputate, who has completely cut himself off from every church. Anybody who's a leader knows those people exist. So what do you do? I suggest you do what Paul does.

You don't spend all your time worried about them. You pivot. Yes, you identify the troublemakers, but then you ratify the truth makers. And notice what Paul says in verse 15. Some indeed preach Christ from envy and strife and some.

I want to go, ah, it feels better already. He's pivoting here. And some also from good will. Verse 17 further describes them. But the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. This is the silver lining in the dark cloud of contention and Paul has found it.

Yes, in any group there's going to be irritate and agitate and vegetate, but there's also going to be advocate and celebrate. And you want to find those people. And here's what Paul does. He says, yeah, there are some like this, but then there are some like that. You see, rather than just focusing on the smudge that is on the white linen garment, Paul says, yeah, but there's a lot of white linen garment around that smudge. It's not all a smudge.

There is a smudge, I grant you that. I can identify the troublemakers, but there's a lot of others who are not like that. That's part of the strategy. Starve the problem and feed the solution. Find those who love you, who love the work of God in you and run with them. Ratify them, encourage them, empower them, build with them. And just keep running ahead of the irritates and the agitates and the amputates.

Their voice will diminish as you go further ahead. Now, I'm going to share something with you that will probably be shocking to you. Did you know that Paul, the apostle, probably lost his life as a result of troublemaking Christians in Rome?

I want that to settle on your hearts. Paul probably lost his life because of the trouble caused by troublemaking Christians in Rome. You say, now wait a minute, I always heard that it was Caesar Nero that killed Paul the apostle, beheaded him. Well, that's true.

Here's the problem. We have very little information about the death of Paul from early church records. They're very silent on it.

We just have a snippet here or there. But it would seem like the envy, the jealousy of many Christians in Rome denounced Paul before Caesar Nero, which added the weight to the death sentence. You say, well, how do you know that?

Well, there are several sources I've discovered, but I'm going to share two with you. One comes from 2 Timothy chapter 1, a guy by the name of Onesiphorus, how's that for a name? Don't name your son Onesiphorus, though he was a good guy.

It'll be hard in school. Onesiphorus came to visit Paul while he was in Rome in prison. The problem is, once he gets to Rome, it seems like nobody will tell him where Paul the apostle is. They don't want to tell him.

Maybe they don't know or maybe they don't want to tell him. But listen to what it says, 2 Timothy chapter 1, Paul writes, may the Lord show special kindness to Onesiphorus and all his family because he often visited and encouraged me. He was never ashamed of me because I was in prison. When he came to Rome, he searched everywhere until he found me. So he came to Rome, nobody told him where Paul was, even though he kept open house for two years, people came and visited him and he influenced church leaders, we're told. But he had to search for him until he could find him. And Paul made a special note, he wasn't ashamed of me being in prison, which indicates some were.

They saw this as a defeat, an embarrassment. But then a second source comes from a letter that was found from 90 AD written by a man named Clement of Rome to the church of Corinth. And in the book, in the letter from Clement, Clement addresses jealousy and envy among God's people that have led to the destruction, death or trouble caused by other of God's people. And he gives seven examples of that through history and one of the examples is Paul. Clement writes this and I quote, by reason of jealousy and strife, Paul by his example pointed out the prize of patient endurance. And when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, he departed from this world and went to heaven.

The point Clement makes is that envy among Christians somehow helped bring the execution brought on by Caesar Nero. If you still have further doubts, you have only to read 2 Timothy chapter 4, it's the end of Paul's life, it's right before he died, Paul says this, listen to Paul. At my first defense, no one stood with me, but all forsook me.

That breaks my heart to just read that. This is Paul, the stinking apostle. At my first defense, nobody stood with me, everybody forsook me, but then he quickly adds, but the Lord stood with me.

He was utterly alone in terms of human fellowship at that point. So Paul identifies the troublemakers, tells us that they are jealous, contentious, selfish, malicious, but then he pivots and ratifies the truth makers. But here's the third part of this strategy and the best of all, magnify the true message.

Look at verse 18, look at how Paul answers this. He says, what then? You know what that means? That little question, what then?

You know how we would translate that? So what? So what? What does it matter? What then?

Only that in every way, whether in pretense, they're pretending to be pure in their motives, but they're not. In pretense or in truth, Christ is preached and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice. Man, you cannot stop this dude. He is in jail. He has been in jail. He will be in jail for a total of two years. He will be released, brought back into prison. He will be executed.

He is in jail. He is persecuted by unbelievers. He is picked on by believers and he goes, so what?

And then he says, I rejoice. You know, I don't know how many of us would have the courage to say, you know, there's a lot of people that are against me and then say, so what? Most of us would write shame on them. Don't they know that I am the great Paul, the apostle who had a vision of the living Christ who will write 13 New Testament books?

Don't they know who I am? He goes, so what? I rejoice and will rejoice, almost like this defiant, I'm not going to let anybody steal my joy. An amazing reaction, an amazing reaction. Now I don't want you to think in looking at this, because a lot of people do think this, that Paul came to a point where he was just this stone statue of a man impervious to the criticisms of others.

He just rolled off his back. I don't believe that. He was a person with emotions and heart and feelings, and he was wounded very deeply by these people. But what he is saying is, I'm not going to let mean people rob me of joy. In fact, I have found cause and reason to rejoice, and that is this, the message of the gospel. Even when preached with bad motives, they're preaching the right message. Right message, wrong motives.

I'm not going to worry about the motives, that's between them and God. I'm going to worry about the message, and that is the gospel. Now here's the great truth.

The great truth in all of this can be boiled down to the irreducible minimum, which is this. The power is in the message, not in the messenger. The power is in the message, not in the messenger. If somebody tampers with the message, go at them. If people tamper with the messenger, ignore them.

Now let's just talk about that for a moment. If people mess and tamper with the message, go at them. Paul did. Paul wrote to the Galatians, and he says, I'm noticing that people among you are preaching a different gospel, a different gospel than one that is the true gospel.

And he goes, I want you to know, if we or an angel from heaven preach to you any other gospel than the one you have received, let him be cursed below the lowest hell. Close that for confrontation. So you mess with the message, I'm going to come at you.

You mess with the messenger, I'm going to ignore you. What then? So what?

What does it matter? I rejoice that the message is being preached. So Paul has his comrades. Those are partners in the gospel. He rejoices because of them.

Paul has his critics, detractors of Paul. He rejoices in spite of them. Why? Because they're brothers, that's why.

Simple as that. They're brothers. Yes, they're ornery, yes, they're stupid, yes, they're irritating, but they're brothers.

They're brothers in Christ. So Paul is saying, I'm not called to defend myself, I'm called to defend the gospel. I'm not called to protect myself, I'm called to proclaim the gospel. Now I want to close on a couple of thoughts. We often make too much over what divides us and not enough over what unites us.

I know, I know we have to use discernment, I know we have to be careful about what the truth is, the true gospel, like Galatians chapter one. But sometimes I fear that we are known more for what we're against than what we're for. And some people actually like being that way.

They like being known for what they're against, and they are known for what they're against. But sometimes I think we make too much of it. Here's the truth. God reserves the right to use people who disagree with you.

News flash. God reserves the right to use people who disagree with you. There's people who disagree with you on the rapture, there's people who disagree with me on the rapture, or spiritual gifts, or a number of things that aren't the real crux, crucial matters of the gospel. Death, burial, resurrection, vicarious atonement, all that central stuff.

So what? I began with talking about denominations and changing light bulbs, let me tell you a true story about denominations. In the late 1700s, John Wesley, you know John Wesley, one of the great leaders in England at the time. Wesley was concerned because there were so many denominations springing up. And this always bothers people who study church history because church history is a history of people not getting along and dividing. So somebody in the group doesn't like the group and leaves the group and starts their own group. And as their group grows, somebody in that group doesn't like that group and they start another group. And that group grows and somebody in that group may get together with the first group and start another group.

Those are denominations. Well this bothered him. So one night John Wesley goes to bed, has a dream, and in his dream he is ushered to the gates of hell. And in his dream he asks the question, are there any Presbyterians here? And the answer comes back, yes, there are. He's shocked. He goes, are there any Baptists here? He goes, yes, there are. Are there any Methodists? Are there any Episcopalians? Yes, yes, yes. Well he's troubled by this and immediately in his dream he's now ushered to the gates of heaven.

And he asks the same set of questions. Are there any Presbyterians here? No was the answer. Are there any Baptists? No. Are there any Methodists? No. Are there any Episcopalians? No.

And he said, no. Who then is inside? And this answer came back, there are only Christians here. There are only Christians here. You don't get to heaven by being a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Methodist, an Episcopalian, a Calvaryite, but by trust in Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, period. And you are a Christian if you believe that and that message has changed your life. That's Skip Heitzig with a message from the series Technicolor Joy.

Now let's go in the studio with Skip and Lenya as they give you vital insight to help you keep your focus on sharing the good news of Jesus. There will always be people who are against us. Oh, man. Sad, but true.

Yep. We're all going to have enemies and we have to learn to turn the other cheek. Or frenemies. That's true. Unfortunately, some of them are even fellow believers, but we shouldn't let them rob our joy or distract us from being God's messengers in the world.

Skip, what are some steps that we can take to deal with these people? Well, I want to give you some encouragement. I have a friend who encouraged me with a book and he said that there is in any group of people, any church group, he calls it the 10-10-80 principle.

And here's what he means. Ten percent of the people like you automatically. They just love you. They like the way you look, the way you smile, everything you say. Ten percent will like you. Ten percent don't like you. They just don't like you.

They meet you. And they never will. And they never will. Eighty percent are suspending judgment.

That is their wedding to see if you're honest, if you're faithful, if you're winsome, whatever. So that's a good rule. And what he encourages people to do is to be willing to lose the customer. When you have those 10 percent who don't like you, don't cater to them. Don't try to win them over. Let it go.

Lose the customer. You know the old saying, I think it was Lincoln who said, you can please some of the people some of the time and all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can never please all the people all the time. So, bottom line is be a God pleaser, not a man pleaser. If you please God, then anybody else who loves God who wants to please God will be pleased with you.

And the rest, let them go. And frankly, we're expected to have enemies. I mean, part of being a Christian is that the world won't love you. And so, sometimes that's not a bad thing. Sometimes that's actually evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in your life. And so, anyway, be encouraged.

The Lord knows what you need, and he is your friend. And he will bring you, you know, two or more who can be gathered together in his name. Good word.

So, yeah. Thanks, Skip and Lenya. We hope you enjoyed getting to know Skip and Lenya through this conversation. You can be a part of impacting lives through the Gospel by helping keep these Bible messages going strong on the air. Just visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate, or call 800-922-1888.

Again that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in tomorrow, as Skip Heiseck shares how you can live with joy and confidence, knowing God has your future in his hands. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast your hands. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast your burdens on his word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Heiseck is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.