Good morning, everyone. Before I begin this morning, I do want to say this will be my last Sunday here. Congratulations and praise the Lord that you have a pastor coming. But I do want to say thank you. Being able to come down here this winter and this spring has been an incredible blessing to me. You’ve definitely ministered to me. You’ve been very kind, very friendly. You haven’t lived up to your reputation as Cape Codders at all. And I’ve been telling everyone that, so sorry if I’m ruining it for you. But thank you very much. It’s been an absolute privilege to be down here with you and to worship the Lord with you.
If you’ll turn in your Bibles with me this morning to Philippians chapter 1, starting in verse 27. And I’m going to read this morning chapter 1, 27 down through 2, 11, but the primary emphasis this morning will be 1, 27 through 2, 5. And if you’ll stand with me in honor of the reading of the word of the living God.
And the Apostle Paul writes, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I may come and see you or am absent, I may hear that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.
This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. Engaged in the same conflict that you saw that I had, and now hear that I still have. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The word of the Lord.
You may be seated. Let’s pray. Lord, we gather now as your people, called by your name. Lord, citizens of the gospel. Lord, in the next few moments, take our minds, take our hearts from wherever they are, and Lord, focus them on you. Lord, give us ears to hear. Give us eyes to see. Open up the eyes of our heart that, Lord, we may know you. We may know the power of your resurrection. Lord, that we may know the height and depth and breadth of your love for us. Lord, work in us now to be honest with ourselves. Lord, help us to see our sin, see our sinful motives. And Lord, more than anything, help us to see Jesus. Lord, we ask all these things, knowing that you work mightily in us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
A number of years ago, it’s probably close to 20 now, I made my first trip to Europe. I went to Poland to my brother-in-law’s church in Siedlce, Poland to preach a few times and to visit them. My brother and sister-in-law are missionaries in Poland and have been there for a long time.
And so I took a flight through London. I don’t think it’s possible to go to Europe without going to London, it seems. And so I was in Heathrow. And if you’ve ever been to Heathrow, it’s a gigantic airport. And the whole world goes through Heathrow Airport. And so it’s just probably about as diverse a place as you’ll ever see in any given moment. Flights from all over the world take off and land there. And the way it’s designed, there’s some areas where you congregate centrally.
And so I was sitting there in the airport, and they had something that was like a Starbucks. It wasn’t Starbucks yet. Starbucks wasn’t quite ubiquitous enough at this point to get into Heathrow. But it was like a, I guess the English version of Starbucks.
And as I was sitting there and I was watching people at the counter, a man came up to the counter and he, just by everything he did, the way he carried himself, the way that, I couldn’t quite hear him speak at first, but the way he pointed at things, the way he just like looked, I was like, I bet that guy’s an American.
I’m almost certain that’s an American. Well, sure enough, I finally could hear his voice and he even told the barista, I’m from America or I’m an American. And it just confirmed what I had already figured out. And then when I got to Poland, I said to my brother-in-law, I said, you know, it’s really easy to spot Americans when you’re in Europe. And he’s like, oh yeah, it’s obvious just from everything about them.
And I say that this morning because when we come to verse 27, Paul says this, he says, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. And the idea of that phrase is one of almost saying like, let your citizenship or let the way you behave be consistent with the country you live in.
But in this case, it’s not a country, it’s the gospel of Christ. And he’s addressing this, now all things start with us as humans, but we are called together as one body. And Paul’s going to address these things to the church as a whole, to the Philippian church as a whole. But they’re really gonna be things that each of us individually must do and must have.
And so this morning, what I want us to look at is, in order for us to walk worthy of the gospel, in order for us to have the characteristics of a Christian, of people that are citizens of the gospel of Christ, there has to be certain things that should be true about us. and true about us as a church. And so this morning I want to look at these things and the first one I want to look at is in order for us to be worthy or walk worthy of the gospel is we need to stand firm in our purpose. And that is the gospel, and by standing firm, we stand united. Look in your text with me, Paul goes on to say this, and this is going to run throughout this whole passage, but he says, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. so that whether I come and see you or am absent, and so in other words, Paul’s authority, Paul’s presence shouldn’t matter. They should live this way before Christ, whether Paul is there or not.
This will be a theme you’ll see a number of times in Philippians. He says, I may hear of you, that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. That picture there, the side-by-side is military-type language, like an army marching as one whole towards its enemy. When you look at the text there, and he says that whether I come and see you or I’m absent, I may hear of you that you’re standing firm.
The one spirit or one mind, he may be saying one spirit in this essence of the Holy Spirit, which then unites us in spirit, or it could just mean As I think we’re familiar with like when you have one spirit, one attitude, everybody on the same page, everybody thinking the same way. Not in some, the actual with the one mind there is really rooted in the word soul. To have one mind, one soul empowered by the spirit, empowered by what God is doing in us. striving side by side for the sake of the gospel.
A number of years ago, I got into cycling, like road bike cycling. And so I got interested in the Tour de France. And every summer, to me, like a passage of the summer is the Tour de France. It’s three weeks. Starts around the 4th of July, ends at the end of July. When the Tour de France is over, it often feels like summer is pretty much almost over. And summer in New England is only three weeks anyway. So it doesn’t, I guess, unless you deal with traffic, May to September.
But if you ever have watched the Tour de France, one of the more fascinating thing to watch is what’s called a team time trial. And in a team time trial, the entire team of cyclists, usually eight cyclists, they go together to win points for the whole team. And it actually has implications for their riders as well. But in the team time trial, they line up one right behind another. And they can reach speeds of over 70 miles an hour.
And they cycle through the line. The first person in line goes as hard as he can. And then he drops to the back. And he stays on right with the back. Because the fifth rider is usually how they time the time trial. So they have to stay together. And they have to keep shuffling. The guy in front runs out of gas. The line moves up one. They drop and they just keep cycling through. It’s actually a beautiful thing to watch as it goes through the mountains of France. But it’s a picture of striving side by side for the same goal, the gospel. You see, we are Christians.
We’re united in Christ. We’re united by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. We are here for the glory of God to fulfill his purpose. This is his church. We are all striving for the same exact thing. And to be citizens of the gospel, we should be united, striving for that singular purpose. The way the gospel is used in this passage and used throughout Philippians and really usually used within Pauline literature is really the rudimentary beginnings of the idea of creed. It’s the whole doctrine of the faith, the faith of the gospel.
We are here this morning to fight for that, side by side with one mind, one soul. all together. Now, we want to stand firm in our purpose, but secondly, we want to stand firm in suffering. As Paul goes on here in this text, he says, that I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. And then he says this, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God. For it has been granted to you for the sake of Christ that you should not, for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. engaged in the same conflict that you saw that I had and now hear that I still have.
The experiences that we find ourselves in as a church should be suffering. Let me say that again. Suffering should be an experience for the church. Suffering, in particular, in this, for the gospel. Paul says, in this language here, he says, not only has it been given to you to believe in Christ, this is gift language, he says it’s been granted to you to suffer for Jesus, church. It’s part of what we get. is to suffer. And we don’t look at it that way at all, do we? Can a church that doesn’t suffer demonstrate a suffering savior?
If you know anything about the history of the church in the United States, that the rise of rationalism, things like Darwinism, in the late 19th century, early 20th century, really changed American church culture in many ways. Prior to that, it was wise to be a member of church if you wanted to vote in your town or just was expected, even if the church was maybe a church like a Unitarian Church or something, it was just far more ingrained in American culture. But as the rise of empiricism and the rise of rationalism and the rise of critical theory and things like that, there came a point where the American church, and really probably the European church as well, stopped just being a cultural institution and began to shrink. And since that time, the church’s mission has subtly switched from suffering for Christ to trying to be attractional, trying to be something that people will want to come to.
And now, the things that have been tried, the attempts made, the philosophies, theories, ideas, ironically, they haven’t worked, really. Whenever you read church statistics, you gotta always take them with a grain of salt, but for the most part, it’s been, a continual downgrade right up to 2026. I mean, I’ve seen video of churches jumping dirt bikes on stage in an attempt to attract people.
And if we’re honest about this, it seeps into a lot of things that we do and a lot of things that we say, right? We start to pull our punches because we’re fearful of the reaction. We’re fearful that we won’t be liked. We’re fearful we won’t be attractional.
In this passage, when Paul writes this, he says this, not frightened in anything by your opponents. And then he says, this is a clear sign to them of their destruction. Now that there is supplied by the translators. And it’s probably more, this is a clear sign of them of destruction, but a view of your salvation and that from God. And that verse there has a couple of implications for us. First of all, the idea, our suffering in Christ should be a testimony to us that we are in Christ. He suffered, we’re gonna suffer. It’s our privilege to suffer like him.
And I don’t think what he’s saying there is that it’s a clear sign to them that they’ll be destroyed. I think the idea, if you drop out that there, and again, this is a little bit debated, is just like the culture of the Philippians that the Philippians lived in, they look at the church and they say, look at that lunatic cult that isn’t worshiping the emperor, that refuses to do what it should be doing. They’re gonna be destroyed. They hate the church. They think it’s crazy. They think the church is on the road to destruction. And Paul says to them, stay united. Don’t be terrified. Don’t be scared. But you strive with one purpose for the Lord Jesus Christ. And unfortunately, we sit here and say, how can we get them to like us?
When we look throughout our New Testament, we see this idea, like, if you can, you can flip there if you’d like, go to Acts 5, 40, 42, 40, and the apostles have been arrested, brought before Sanhedrin, the Sanhedrin, And then they’re being released, and it says in Acts 5, 40 to 42, it says, and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them. And that beating is probably 39 to 40 lashes there.
So it’s just a horrific punishment for the apostles. And charge them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. And then this is the apostles reaction. And then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day in the temple from house to house they did not cease preaching and teaching that the Christ is Jesus.
You’ve probably had this experience if you’ve taught Children’s Sunday School, if you’ve ever worked in youth ministry, and you definitely have it if you’ve ever preached. There are people that will give you a scorecard. And that’s fine, you can score me all you want, because I’m going to face a much bigger scorecard someday. But a lot of times a scorecard is about, I’ve almost never had someone come up and correct something I said theologically. In fact, I don’t ever remember that. Or even like, every now and then someone might say, oh, I viewed that passage this way or something. What normally it is, is a scorecard of whether the people liked it or not. And it’s like, and I’m not trying to be mean, but it’s like, it doesn’t really matter if they liked it or not. In fact, if it’s right, some of them might have hated it, right? We live in a culture that loves exit surveys, right? Why don’t people want to come here? Why don’t people stay here?
Now, there can be some insight in those things. But my own experience as an elder and formerly a pastor is that a lot of times the reason people leave are consumer reasons. It’d be almost refreshing if somebody came in and said, we’re a reformed church and said, I’m a hardcore Arminian, I can’t stay here. I’d almost be like, well, praise the Lord. Go find a church that you can be comfortable in doctrinally. Or it’s usually like, well, the nursery did this, or the youth program did that, or the service time doesn’t meet my needs.
We’re so far, I think, sometimes from suffering, we place such a high value for the church on numeric, numerical numbers. Yet the reality is that’s never given us in scripture that that’s something we control. So we stand firm in our purpose. We stand firm in our suffering and nothing terrified by our enemies. We understand that fidelity to the gospel will result in enemies.
Have you thought about that, that you might have enemies this morning? Often in our culture, we only see things in political terms. But that there are people that might hate your church, no matter what you do. They just might not like you. There might be people you work with just hate you because you’re religious. That’s okay. You’ve been counted worthy to suffer. Rejoice. So we stand firm in our purpose. We stand firm in our suffering. And now here comes the hard part. We stay united in our relationships.
If you look down in verse two, Starting in verse one, Paul writes this. He says, so if there is any encouragement, there’ll be four if statements essentially here, though they’re not translated exactly that way. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.” These four things here, it’s somewhat debated exactly what Paul’s saying, whether he’s saying, because I have ministered to you in this way, which might be somewhat consistent with his personal pleas that he makes throughout the letter, or I think more, these are in, in relation to our union with Christ.
If we have encouragement or consolation of being in Christ, that Jesus loves us, cares for us, hears our prayers, strengthens us, promises us heaven, as Paul says earlier in the epistle, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. If there’s comfort from his love, no matter how much you suffer, Jesus loves you. And he has, you are part of his church, ministers love to you, meets needs for you.
That’s all by the power of Christ. Participation in the spirit, and this I would argue is referring to the Holy Spirit. the work of the Spirit among us. And then affection and sympathy, I would argue that this is affection and sympathy we find in Christ. And again, these things are always manifested through us to one another, his people.
How do I know the love of Christ? Because other Christians come beside me. How does the Lord Jesus show me compassion? It’s so often through other Christians meeting needs, praying for me, caring for me, lifting me up when I’m down, and I try to do the same to others.
Paul says, so if these things are real, and you can maybe even translate that, since these things are real, and since you have some experience of them, as he testifies earlier in chapter one, where he wants these things to abound more and more and more.
Since these things are real, he says, Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” And somewhat similar to what he’s already said above, united in our spirit. Now, this isn’t calling for like cult-like thinking. But it’s more a unity of mind and thinking, an accord that comes from having the same goal, right?
And I think that’s something that when we lose the centrality of the gospel, when we lose the reality of the lordship of Jesus Christ, as this passage will end, and every tongue confess, so that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. When we lose the truth of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, of justification by faith alone, of God’s sanctifying work in our lives, or to put it simply like Paul put it, and I already mentioned, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain, we lose, we’ll start to disintegrate, right? in our relationships will start to fall apart. Christ is the unifying goal. The gospel is the mission. And those things we should think the same on. We should be united in spirit, in attitude, and approach.
Now, Paul goes, What I just said may to you seem impossible, right? I mean, there’s churches that have split probably over the color of the carpet, right? Sin comes in, people don’t like all sorts of things. So how do we do this? Well, Paul, After he says, you know, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count yourselves more significant. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. He says, have this mind among yourselves.
In other words, this is the thinking that should control the church, which is yours in Christ Jesus. And really, this is one of the most famous passages in all the Bible, and it’s, Thousands and thousands and thousands of pages have been written about it, but it’s actually an illustration or an example that Paul’s using here. He says here, have this mind in you, the mind of Christ. Well, what is the mind of Christ?
Who though he was in the form of God, God the Son, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, and being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, the humiliation of Christ. The idea behind who, though he was in the form of God, he’s God, the Son, He did not account equality with God a thing to be grasped. And the idea of that is he laid aside the privilege and glory that are his right. And when he was on earth, he did not demand that, did he?
He did not walk around earth going, hey, I’m Jesus. You know who I am? I’m Jesus Christ. You better bow. He didn’t demand his rights. Is there anything grosser than when you see some celebrity that tried to get out of something by saying, do you know who I am? And if we’re honest, our heart works the same way, doesn’t it? Paul says, let this mind be in you. The Son of God came to Earth.
He was born. lowly, and I just became a servant, a slave. And he humbled himself, humbled himself under the law. He gave himself up to false accusers. He was betrayed. He was abandoned. Everyone said, hey, how dare you do that? I’m Jesus. No, he went to the cross. Paul writes, even the death of a cross, even death on a cross. How do we do this? We approach it like Christ. We surrender our rights. The way Paul writes this in the passage, He has some negatives and then he has some positives in verse 3. He says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.
The first of that is quite simply party spirit, rivalry. A rivalry is when you’re pitted against somebody all the time and it breeds hatred or enmity like the Montreal Canadiens, if you’re a Bruins fan like me. Or if you’re a Red Sox fan, the Yankees, right? You don’t give them quarter. Sorry if you’re from New York here this morning, but you feel the same way.
In our culture, it’s politics. It’s us versus them. They’re out to get us. They think we’re out to get them. No place for that in the church. We all have the same mission. We all have the same purpose. It’s not how Jesus approached it. It wasn’t us versus them in that sense. We see no party spirit. And then he says, nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. And conceit is just empty glory, pointless glory, glory that has no eternal value. People spend their whole lives chasing empty glory.
You know, we can easily get into the weeds on things and be so excited about our little petty victories, even within the church. How many have heard the term a Pyrrhic victory? It comes from the Greek general Pyrrhus. who after winning victories over the Romans, the cost to him was so high that he essentially said something like, one more victory and we’re done for.
So now we have a term of period. It’s yes, you won, but you won nothing. Yes, you won, but it would have been better if you lost. That’s what happens in our interpersonal relationships, doesn’t it? We get a party spirit, we get rivals, Then we want to win, vain glory. None of those things help the gospel. None of those things help us strive side by side. They strive at each other. Paul then gives some positive things and he says, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Look, each of you, not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
How many of you, I bet, if I were going around the room, a lot of you guys had challenging weeks, right? We all live in stress. Part of it’s our culture, part of it’s how we approach it, and things happen. My family, the last couple of weeks, there’s just been things popping up that add stress. How much time did we spend this past week thinking about the things of others? Looking on the things of others. The way Paul writes this is pretty difficult for us to take. It’s a shot to the heart, right?
He says, let each of you, or he says in verse three, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. In other words, more worthy. Esteem them higher than yourself, other people. Nobody had to teach us to esteem ourselves highly. And nobody had to teach us how to look down on other people, right? We all come naturally by that.
And Paul says, no, no, no, no. Here’s what the mind of Christ does. It esteems others as greater than themselves. It doesn’t just look. on its own things, but it looks on the things of others. And the idea of that look is not a glance, it’s gonna contemplate the things of others.
You guys prayed for a number of people, Barry prayed for a number of people. You ever spend some time thinking about what they’re going through? Take five minutes this afternoon, pick one. You’ve been there probably in your life. Look on the things of, it’s very easy.
And part of it is we live in a culture where it’s 24-7 tragedy awful thing, right? Like your phone, your newsfeed, whatever it is you feed yourself with, you’ll just see tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, weird thing after weird. I somehow saw a clip on my weather app the other day of a volcano that erupted and hikers were, hikers died. It’s far, far away place this happens, but, and you can almost become like numb to that, right?
I didn’t, it doesn’t, but you’re just, that’s what happens to us. We don’t even think about it. Three people lost their lives. We do that amongst ourselves. We hear about things that happen and it’s, it just doesn’t register. We just move on. Paul says, no, don’t, don’t look on your own things. Look on the things of others.
This passage concludes with what I already referenced earlier. Where it says, therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. to the glory of God the Father. This is the terminus, right? This is where we’re going. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess. Paul said, for me to live, to die is gain. You will die. And every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.
What kind of light does that shed on the day-to-day of our church life? On the value we’ve placed on things in the light of Jesus Christ. On the foxhole we’ve dug. On our pet issues. And I’m not talking about major doctrinal points and things like that. I’m talking about the petty things that often rip us apart.
Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess. I’ve often heard people that are near death who spent their lives working. I’ve heard this, and maybe it’s just a bit of a trope, but that when someone’s on their deathbed who spent their life pursuing a career, pursuing vainglory, they never say, now that they’re facing death, oh, I wish I’d worked more. Oh, I wish I’d spent more time commuting, more time trying to get that title, more time trying to earn that raise, because the reality and finality of death brings a clarity to it. The reality that Jesus Christ is Lord, that every knee will bow, every tongue confess, should bring a clarity to our mission, to our purpose, to our relationships. Let’s pray. Father, these are not easy things.
We’re sinful. Lord, we usually think we’re right. And Lord, sometimes we lose sight of what we’re doing here, or we lose sight of you, of your example. of your humility. Lord, we lose sight of the glory that awaits us in you. Father, this morning, help us to repent. Help us to see how we need to change our attitude by your power and your grace.
Lord, may there be love, forgiveness. And Lord, may there be a renewed desire to proclaim you, to go forth, Lord, whatever you have for your church. Or may we faithfully, just united, pursue that, Lord, one day, let us live now to live as Christ. And, Lord, may we be motivated that one day we will be with you. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let us respond with hymn 518. 518.