How to Stand When They Want You to Fall

You ever feel like you're the missionary surrounded by cannibals? And the missionary noticed one cannibal is staring intently at him and got really nervous and said, why are you looking at me so intensely?

And the guy said, I'm the food inspector. You sort of feel like the world is watching you because they want to gobble you up. Well, Paul understood this dilemma. Paul understood that if you become a Christian and you follow Christ boldly, that the Christian life is not a playground, man, it's a battleground. The world is watching to see how Christians live.

You may be someone's only perception of who Jesus is and what He's all about. Today we continue our countdown of Skip's Top 40 Messages on the Connect with Skip Heitzig YouTube channel. In the number 34 spot is the message, How to Stand When They Want You to Fall. In it, Skip shares several ways you can stand strong in your faith and be a bold witness for Jesus.

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That's connectwithskip.com or 1-800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Philippians Chapter 1 as Skip Heisek starts today's study. Do you ever feel like you're being watched by unbelievers? Do you ever feel that unbelievers look at you and they analyze you and scrutinize you?

Well, if you ever get that feeling, you're right. That's what they're doing. And not only are they analyzing and scrutinizing you, they're criticizing you. And probably more so now than ever before in American history, the Christian church is being criticized by the unbelieving world. Every Christmas you hear the same stories about how kids can't sing Silent Night in a public setting.

Or throughout the year you hear about a Christian group who doesn't go along with the mainstream idea of sexuality, etc., and they're labeled as being intolerant and mean-spirited. I was listening to the news yesterday and in North Carolina, the Board of Commissioners every year get together, and for the last 50 years it has been their practice to get together and open up their public session with the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a prayer. It's been in their history a long time.

So they did it this time. They opened up their session with the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer. But this time the ACLU is watching them and filed a lawsuit against them because they prayed, and get this, they said the worst thing of all you could say, they said at the end of the prayer, in Jesus' name. So that became a violation. And a lawsuit was filed. And you know, I've been asked to pray publicly from time to time, and a couple times people have said, well, the only thing we're skittish about is if you use that term at the end, in Jesus' name. You probably shouldn't use that.

And I said, so do you want the prayer to work? I saw an article on CNN.com that admitted that Christians are becoming a hated minority. A hated minority. I've long had an article in my arsenal about the neighbors that Americans don't want living next door. The article is called Not in My Backyard.

And it's actually a little graph that shows this truth. It says this is the percentage of Americans who do not like the following minorities as neighbors. One percent say they don't want Catholics living next door. Two percent don't want Protestants living next door. Three percent don't want Jews living next door. Nine percent say they don't want Hispanics as neighbors. Then comes unmarried couples.

Then comes blacks. And finally, the bottom of the list, the highest percentage, 13 percent say they don't want religious fundamentalists as neighbors. They especially hate bold believers. The kind that make a stand for what they believe. Because bold believers, the kind that don't fold with the culture and just sort of go along with the flow, the bold believers, they're the ones that will be labeled narrow, myopic, bigoted, and biased. One website that I found, one honest atheist wrote, and I quote, I've considered myself an atheist for four or five years. And I feel a real hate of Christians, more so than any other religious cult. And it's growing inside of me. I cannot just read a story or watch a video of a Christian without this huge fireball of impatience and anger coming up through my body, close quote.

So who's intolerant? You ever feel like you're the missionary surrounded by cannibals? And the missionary noticed one cannibal staring intently at him and it got really nervous and said, why are you looking at me so intensely? And the guy said, I'm the food inspector.

You sort of feel like the world is watching you because they want to gobble you up. Well, Paul understood this dilemma. Paul understood that if you become a Christian and you follow Christ boldly, that the Christian life is not a playground, man, it's a battleground. He got that. He understood that.

In fact, here's part of his resume in 2 Corinthians 11. He says, I've been imprisoned frequently. I've been flogged severely. I've been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews 40 lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods and once I was stoned.

That's not Colorado stone, that's stoned with rocks. Now, as we have been reading in the book of Philippians, this chapter, this book of joy, we saw that Paul begins by writing to the Philippians as saints. Paul and Timothy to the saints who are at Philippi in Christ Jesus. Then he writes to them as servants, those who enjoyed the fellowship of the gospel with him. They were partners in the gospel.

But now there is a shift. Now he writes to them, not as saints, not as servants, but as soldiers as it were. And the focus of his letter beginning in chapter 1 verse 27 turns from his imprisonment to their predicament.

And you'll notice by just the wording in this little grouping of sentences, the word adversaries appears or enemies. The word suffer shows up and the word conflict is all in what we're about to read. So what I want to show you from this set of verses is how to stand for Christ when the world wants you to fall. Verse 27, Paul writes, only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come and see you or I'm 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. And not in any way be terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation and that from God.

For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. Having the same conflict which you saw in me and now here is in me. I want you to picture something in your mind. I want you to picture a man and around him is standing a hostile crowd. The crowd does not like the man. The crowd is yelling at him, shouting at him, threatening him. They're jeering and they're taunting and they wish him ill.

They want to see him gone or hurt. Now with that picture in mind, I want to show you four qualities on how to stand and not fall in the midst of a hostile world. I want you to picture it sort of like a stool with four legs.

Each leg will add a little more stability to the whole. First, consistency. Consistency is the first quality. Verse 27, Paul says, only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ. You see the word conduct? I'm going to give you a literal translation of it then I'm going to explain of it. The word means your political affiliation. Don't think of politics in the terms of modern America. The Greek word is polituo and polituo is the word by which we get our word political or politics or policy or police. They all come from this word because polituo was all about the polis in ancient times. A polis is a city or more accurately a city state, a free state. It's citizens that belong to a city state and they conduct themselves in a manner that represents the best of that state. So the word carries the idea of being a good citizen, honoring the political affiliation or the city state that you're a part of. And what are we a part of? Chapter three will say your citizenship is in heaven.

So the idea is let's conduct ourselves so that we are offering the very best of the kingdom of God. You know wherever we travel we represent our nation, whether we like it or not. You're an American. I don't know if you know what the reputation of Americans is around the world.

It's not favorable in most cases. The loud American, the ugly American, there's several things that we are noted for around the world and I remember on one trip I was on in India I was with a group of people from different places and there was one group of guys that were very very loud and they were at a meal and they were being laughing and loud and obnoxious and the Indians in that culture didn't know how to read these guys. They just sort of thought I guess this is how Americans act. You know and I'm over in the corner you know with my head and my hands going they don't represent the best my country has to offer, trust me.

But they were representing their kingdom. They were conducting themselves in a certain way or like the time I went to England and tried to sound like I was English. I tried really hard to come up with the best British accent. I practiced it. I thought I had it down so I went to breakfast and I ordered in an English accent and the maitre d looked at me and said and you're from California.

So I must have given myself away either in my fake British accent or the mannerisms that I displayed. So let your conduct, your display of your national identity and notice what it says let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ. The word worthy means to balance the scales or to weigh as much.

That is the weight on one side of the scales equals the weight on the other side of the scales. We use the word in that way. We will say that person is worthy of his pay. What we mean is the money we are giving that person corresponds or weighs as much as the output of the work that he or she produces.

If we say she is worthy of this honor we are saying the accolades we give her weigh as much or correspond to the productivity or the achievement that she has produced. So when Paul writes let your conduct be worthy of the gospel that's his way of saying that your practice must match your proclamation. If it's like a set of scales and on one side you say well this is what I believe that's your proclamation.

Your practice what you do needs to match up, needs to weigh as much. And by the way John the Baptist used this word like that. He said bear fruits worthy of repentance.

If you say you have a repentant life let's see it in what that life will produce. So what Paul is doing here is calling us to a consistent Christian life. If you're called Christian then live up to the name. A Christian must never live beneath his theology.

A Christian must never live beneath his belief. I know that you've heard all the research statistics for years. Barna research every year comes up with what Americans say they believe in. And every year we're always astonished because every year we find out that a large majority of Americans say that they're Christian. And a lot of them say they're born again Christians.

But as I look at the American landscape I just got to say it didn't quite weigh the same. What they say we are isn't really what we are. There's got to be some inconsistency in that. Back in 1986, get this, an IRS 25 year auditor, a veteran of auditing for the IRS, was arrested and convicted for tax evasion. You know that just gets to you right?

It's like yeah those are the guys that try to stiff me. You know they're always bummed out about this little discrepancy. They audit me. Well this auditor thought that he had found a loophole. That he had found a flaw in the system. He didn't. The system found a flaw in him.

And when they found it they fined him $115,000. He was inconsistent. What he said he believed in and what he actually practiced in his personal life were vastly different. And John Bunyan put it this way, a man can be a saint abroad and a devil at home. And if that is the case then that is unworthy conduct. It is inconsistent.

Now let me turn that around. One of the greatest weapons you can use against the devil is a consistent life. A consistent life.

A godly consistent life. Not that God expects perfection, he does not. The Bible says he knows our frame, that we are dust. But he does expect that as citizens of the kingdom of God, of the kingdom of heaven, that we show a consistency in that.

John says, 1 John chapter 1 verse 6, if we say we have fellowship with him and we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So simply put, our lives must give proof that they have been touched by the gospel, by the good news about Jesus Christ. That's worthy of the gospel. So here's a question, is your life filled with love? Cause the gospel is.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Is your life filled with forgiveness? Cause the gospel is. Is your life filled with hope? Cause the gospel is. Is your life filled with holiness?

Cause the gospel is. So consistency is the first tool, weapon, strength that will help you stand when the world wants you to fall. Here's a second, unity.

Unity. He says, continuing on in verse 27, 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, that's the unity, for the faith of the gospel. Now Paul doesn't know if he's going to live or die.

He said that. I don't know if I'm going to live or die, I don't know if I'm going to be set free or stay incarcerated. I may come and see you, I may not, but that doesn't matter.

Whether I'm around or not does not matter. What matters is that whether I'm with you or not, you stand firm. Now that's soldier talk. The word that Paul uses here in the imperative, stecate, stand firm, means stand your post, don't leave your guard. It speaks of a soldier who would stand his position even with the onslaught of tremendous opposition or temptation.

So go back to that little picture I put in your mind. Here's a man, there's a hostile crowd around him, he's standing, maybe he's sort of standing upright in a relaxed position but the crowd gets louder and closer and so he does this. He widens his stance to give him more stability. He's now going to stand firm, stand fast.

He's not going to move his position but he would be better served if he himself wasn't the only one standing fast but he had a whole bunch of friends next to him kind of doing this, right? When you have other people standing with you, your odds for victory increase. That's the thought of this verse. Stand fast in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.

I just got to say there are some great metaphors in this section. Paul the Apostle uses some great words. The words for striving together, a single Greek word, sun athleo. Sun, the prefix for together, athleo, we get the term athletic or athlete from it. So come together as athletes, you might say. Strive and stand together in this race as athletes. It is clear, it is evident that Paul saw the church as a team sport.

Not as some little private personal island experience that I have with God all by myself. No he said our team is in conflict. Our team is in a battle and it takes teamwork. We have to stand together. We need unity. Now I would like to explain when the New Testament talks about unity, what it doesn't mean and what it does mean. Unity in the Bible doesn't mean necessarily unanimity, where everybody thinks exactly the same. It doesn't necessarily mean uniformity where everybody acts exactly the same. If you think that you're going to get every Christian to agree on every point of doctrine and style of worship, good luck.

Not going to happen. You may not agree with my view on certain things. You may not agree with my view on eschatology, the rapture of the church. You may not agree with my view on spiritual gifts. You may not agree with my view on the election of the believer. And I always give anybody the privilege to be wrong. You can believe whatever you'd like. Everybody once said, if you find two people that agree on everything, one of them is not thinking.

So I think vigorous debate can be good, can be healthy, can be helpful, as long as we don't divide over it. Can you imagine if we could assemble the great Christian minds throughout the centuries and put them in one room together? For example, if we were to go back to the 4th century and get Augustine of Hippo, North Africa, who spiritualized so many texts of the scripture, put them in the room and sit next to him the 10th century Bernard of Clairvaux. And for fun, let's add the 16th century reformer John Calvin next to him. And then to really spice things up, we'll go to the 18th century, we'll get John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield.

Just those three in and of themselves would be fireworks. Then let's go to the 9th century and put in Charles Haddon Spurgeon and D. L. Moody. We'll go to the 20th century, we'll put C.S. Lewis in that room and Billy Graham. We'll go to the 21st century and put the likes of N.T.

Wright in there. I've got to tell you something. There is not going to be unanimity on every single point. It'll be a very, very lively discussion.

But at the end of the day, what you will have is unity. When it comes to the essential historic Christian gospel. That's Skip Heitzig's number 34 message on our Top 40 Messages countdown.

It's from the series Technicolor Joy. Find the full message and more of Skip's teachings organized into playlists that take you through the entire sermon series at youtube.com slash Calvary ABQ. Now, we want to let you know about an amazing opportunity you have to visit the sites where the prophets and kings in the Bible heard from God. Take a trip to experience Israel, not just the historic landscapes and delicious food, but the spiritual significance. In 2022, you have the opportunity to join Skip and his wife Lenya to worship and study God's word in the very places Jesus taught, preached and healed.

Find out more at inspirationcruises.com slash CABQ. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares another Top 40 message and encourages you to rest in the safety and security you have in Christ in the midst of the invisible spiritual warfare going on around you. Satan tried to pervert the paradise of heaven. He was kicked out of heaven. He and a third of the angels fell. He then was consigned to the earth and he tried to pervert the paradise of the earth. He effectively drug Adam and Eve and all of humanity into the cross hairs, into the cross fire of this great cosmic battle. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.