Difficult Times Refine Us for Exciting Proclamation

Scripture: Philippians 1:12-14

Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.

Insights:  Richard Melick wrote, “All events could be redeemed for the Lord’s sake.”  Paul, as we learned last week, has been put in prison for the proclamation of the gospel.  I will speak only on my behalf, but if this occurred to me, I would probably be belly aching and complaining about the injustice of it all.  Paul, on the other hand, rejoices and worships God because he accepts the Lord’s refining process.  Paul sees his situation as a way to be chained to four different groups of guards each day.  He is looking at the prospects of the expansion of the gospel.  We know that some of these guards and even members of the emperor’s very family came to know the Lord Jesus because of Paul’s circumstances.  God redeemed Paul’s situation for His glory.  Beloved, the Lord does this in our lives as well.  He allows us to go through hard times in order to make us more dependent upon Him.  As we grow more dependent on Him, the better we are able to proclaim the gospel.  The more we proclaim the gospel, the more exciting our Christian walk becomes.  Let me challenge you to not resist the Lord’s teaching moments through the tough times, but rather embrace them and look forward with eager anticipation as to what He is going to do in you through this process.  If you will let Him work, then you will be a different person in a year from now.  He will continue to redeem your life and your situations.

Questions:

1.  Are you currently facing a difficult season in your life?

2.  Do you understand the Lord may be using this time to refine your worship of Him?

Prayer: Father, I do not enjoy difficult seasons in my life, but I am grateful for what it does in me.  I am glad those events point me to You and You use them to make me a better worshipper of You.  Amen.

Exciting Worship Matures with Family

Scripture: Philippians 1:9-11

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Insights:  This weeks final thought deals with God’s work in maturing us in our faith through our family.  God puts our family in our lives to help encourage, strengthen, shape, disciple and mold us into the image of Jesus.  As the Lord is using our family to do this He is training us up to know and recognize Him better and better.  We develop knowledge from His Word and His Spirit grants us discernment.  We are able to prove the things are that excellent and good.  As a result, we are able to walk in a manner that is both sincere and blameless until Jesus takes us to our eternal home.  The body of Christ helps in this journey and is used by God to work on us.  This transforming work can be very exciting and can even be a very worshipful experience.  Now it is true that often times this transforming work is painful, but even in the midst of the pain, we can rejoice and declare this is an exciting time because the Lord is doing a work in me and using my family to help in the process.  When we are able to recognize this truth, it can help us worship this good and just King properly.  Beloved, don’t fight His transforming work.  Don’t resist the church body when they encourage you to walk more faithfully with Jesus.  Rather see these moments as God’s way of making you into a person who will experience much growth over the next year and worship the Lord for such a blessing.  To His great name be praise.

Questions:

1.  Is there a distinct difference in the person you are today as compared to the person you were one year ago?

2.  Have you embraced the transforming work of Jesus in your life and have you surrendered to His purging work of making you more like Him?

Prayer: Father, when You start to chisel away at my defects, flaws, desire for sin and every other blemish that my life produces, it is painful.  The rewards of such work, however, is worth all You take me through to be conformed into the image of Your Son, Jesus.  I thank You that even in Your work on my, You are gracious and always good.  Amen.

Exciting Worship Works with Family

Scripture: Philippians 1:6-8

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.  For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.  For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Insights:  Paul is in prison for the proclamation of the gospel and he knows that his fellow brothers and sisters in Philippi are also proclaiming and defending the gospel in his absence.  As a result, he is able to acknowledge with excitement the work they are doing.  Paul also understands that any work they are able to accomplish is because Christ Jesus is perfecting that good work in them.  Jesus initiated the work.  Jesus is currently doing the work and Jesus will one day complete that work.  The work Jesus is doing is perfecting us for the day of our glorious entrance into His eternal kingdom.  The predominant way Jesus does this work in us is by having us work while we are here.  Paul proclaimed and is now in prison and he is still proclaiming.  This family in Philippi is also proclaiming and are facing persecution.  Both Paul and these Philippian brothers and sisters are working out of the joy that is swelling up inside of themselves.  Beloved, we need to work with this same kind of intensity.  We need to let Christ do such a redemptive work in us that we understand and recognize that we never get to stop serving and working for our Lord Jesus.  There is no retirement from the command to go and proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of the world.  Will you, Beloved, join Christ in His mission to make His name known in all the world.  I pray you will and enjoy the exciting adventure on which He will set you.

Questions:

1.  In what ways are you working or serving with your family in Christ?

2.  Do you understand that it is not possible to be a follower of Jesus and to sit on the sidelines watching other people work?

Prayer: Father, grant me an insatiable passion for serving You and for Your glory.  You are the One to whom all glory belongs and my simple service is an exciting way to worship You.  Please receive it as my joy to serve You.  Amen.

Exciting Worship Prays for Family

Scripture: Philippians 1:3-5

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.

Insights:  Are all of your memories regarding your true family in Christ such that it brings you to a place of gratitude before the Lord.  I can, at this point in my life, not say that all my memories are filled with gratitude.  If we look back on Paul’s relationship with the people of Philippi, we have to wonder how Paul was able to pen those words as well.  This was the same little town that stripped him naked and beat him.  After they beat him they threw him in a jail ceil and did not clean him up or clothe until after an earthquake opened the prison doors.  Yet, it was through all of those things that the jailer and his household came to a saving knowledge of Jesus.  I think it is because of God’s exciting work within the life of Paul and these kinds of results that he is able to have a heart of gratitude when he thinks about his brothers and sisters in Philippi.  Notice that Paul not only had a grateful heart but one that was filled with exciting joy.  He truly, deep down, loved and cherished these people.  He wanted the very best for them and it was because he loved them so much that he prayed so earnestly for them.  Beloved, it is my hearts desire for the body of FBCBG to love each other so much that we are compelled by the Lord’s Spirit’s promptings to pray for our family on a regular basis throughout the day.  It is my belief that if you will do this, then you will be overwhelmed with an exciting joy for your church family when you come to church this week.  May God draw on your heart and produce these kinds of result.

Questions:

1.  Do you earnestly pray for your fellow family members in the body of Jesus?

2.  Is prayer one of those tools in your spiritual tool box that does not get pulled out very often or is it so used that every one can see the effects of its work?

Prayer: Father, forgive me for those times in which I have not interceded for my spiritual family.  Let me continue to be prompted by Your Spirit to cry out on their behalf and watch You work in their lives.  Amen.

Exciting Worship Recognizes Family

Scripture: Philippians 1:1-2

Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Insights:  Last week we finished the first part of our sermon series titled REAL Worship.  In that first part we spent several weeks learning about how worship was relevant for our daily lives.  In this second part of our sermon series we are going to examine how our worship is also exciting.  Throughout this second part I will use the word exciting and joy interchangeably at times.  The reason is because it is out of the joy we experience in Jesus that worship really does become exciting.  The best book in the Bible, in my opinion, that addresses this exciting joy we have in the Lord is Philippians.  As a result, we will spend the next several weeks in this fantastic book and learn how our worship ought to be exciting because of Jesus.  In many ways, the first sermon point in this second part of the sermon series is exactly the same point as the last in our first part of the sermon series out of First Peter (Did you follow all of that, because I think I got myself lost even while typing it).  Both of these have dealt with our family.  Last time we realized that family was relevant for our worship and in today’s verses, which is just a traditional salutation in the first century, we pick up on the fact that our families also bring us a great deal of joy.  When we joyfully worship with our family we are brought into the exciting part of communal fellowship that enhances our worship to the glorious One.  Beloved, it is my prayer that you wake up each Sunday with an exciting anticipation to the fact that you are getting to join together in worship with your fellow family members.  This thought ought to excite you from the top of your head all the way to the bottom of your feet.  These services are weekly family reunions and they ought to be joyfully exciting.  I prayer your weekly church service is filled with this kind of attitude.

Questions:

1.  Are you a member of the family of God?

2.  If you are not, what has hindered your birth into his wonderful family?

Prayer: Father, thank You for my salvation.  I am so grateful that You have birthed me into Your family.  I am forever alive with You because of Your immense love for me.  Thank You.  Amen.

Relevant Worship Must Pertain to All

Scripture: 1 Peter 5:12-14

Through Silvanus, our faithful brother (for so I regard him), I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it!  She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings, and so does my son, Mark.  Greet one another with a kiss of love.  Peace be to you all who are in Christ.

Insights:  Today is the last Thoughts by Scott that deals with the relevancy of worship in our lives.  The verses today are nothing more than a traditional closing to a letter in the first century.  Many names are mentioned and it is from those names I wish to present today’s thoughts.  I do not wish to focus on individual names from these verses, but rather to use them as a spring board to help us understand that relevant worship also incorporates the rest of the body of Christ.  Yes, there is an aspect of worship that is extremely personal and private, but there is another aspect that is very public and incorporating of the entire body of the church.  Just as salvation is offered to all people, so the natural bi-product of receiving Jesus’ gift is worship with everyone who is born again.  All of eternity, as we learned yesterday, is going to be centered on worship of Jesus.  A great deal of that time will be spent with the corporate body worshipping our Lord.  There is something powerful and impacting when we worship together.  Let me admonish you from the writer of Hebrews to not forsake the assembly of the brethren as some are in the habit of doing, but rather come with a longing heart to worship with your family (10:25).  May your worship and ours together truly be relevant for our daily lives in Jesus.

Questions:

1.  Have you come to recognize the importance of corporate worship?

2.  Has the Lord ever gripped you by His grace in the middle of a worship service?

Prayer: Father, I am not always ready to worship with my fellow brothers and sisters in Jesus.  Please forgive my sinful heart and grow me in Your grace to long for time with Your children.  Amen.

Relevant Worship Longs for Perfect Worship of Jesus

Scripture: 1 Peter 5:10-11

After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.  To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Insights:  I love the fact that the Lord Jesus is perfecting, confirming, strengthening and establishing me all for His glory.  I am incapable of saving myself.  I am incapable of fixing myself.  I am incapable of becoming strong and established by myself.  Yet, if I have received the eternal gift of life found in Jesus Christ, then He does all of that kind of work for me.  He is the One who breathes new life into my soul.  He is the One who makes me new and by His grace I am born again.  I long for that eternal worship with Jesus that is not hindered by this world and the sin that so easily entangles this place.  I am set free from my shackles of death and I get to worship unashamedly the Savior of the world.  Notice in today’s verses it does tell us that we will suffer for a little while, but after that suffering we will be called into His eternal glory.  Beloved take heart that your present afflictions will not last forever.  In fact, from the perspective of Jesus, your troubles, even if they last you your entire life here on earth, are but for a little while.  This truth brings me much joy and peace to know this life is the temporary, but the life with Jesus is the forever.  Glory to His name!

Questions:

1.  Are you born again and ready to spend eternity with Jesus?

2.  Does the worship of Jesus for all time fill your heart with Joy?

Prayer: Father, this world is so full of things that disturb my heart.  It makes my heart long for that day in eternity when I will see the Triune God unfettered by the sins of this world.  I long to worship You because I am Yours and You are mine.  Amen.