Living as Citizens of God's Kingdom

So, if you would turn to your Bibles to uh Philippians chapter 1, as Peter noted, we're going to we're going to finish chapter 1. But before we do that, if you don't mind if we could just pray again. I just feel much more comfortable coming before the Lord before I I speak. Father Lord, um just want to come before you and once again ask for your guidance as we look over your word. Lord, may it be truth that is proclaimed accurately and clearly. I give this time up to you in your heavenly name. Amen. 1 Corinthians 1:es 20:es 27-30 says only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ that whether I come and see you or else be absent I may hear of your affairs that ye stand fast in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel and in nothing terrified by your adversaries which is to them an evident token of predition but to you of salvation and that of God.

For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now here to be in me and here to be in me. Sorry. If you remember from uh Peter's message from last week, you know that Paul is writing from prison. This is not shocking because being a Christian at this time in history is difficult. can lead to suffering and definitely can lead to persecution. It's a world where the Christians are not liked by the Jews and the Roman ruling authorities are unsure about your devotion to the empire. You know, Rome allowed different religions to exist at this period of time within the empire.

They just wanted you to at some point show acceptance of the worship of the Roman Empire or sorry, the Roman uh uh emperor. You could worship the god your god just so long as at the times called upon by the Roman government that you would bow the knee within worship to the emperor. And of course Christians couldn't do this. Neither could Jews but they got an exception but not not the Christians. And this worship of the emperor was extremely important in the Roman Empire because this is what the Romans saw as a unifying factor within the empire. There's people from different languages, different cultures, different religions.

But if they would all unite under this one aspect, Rome figured they could keep it unified. And so the folks that would not do this, Rome considered to be rebels and they were punished for this. And this is a wild idea when you think about it because here we have Christians that are doing everything they can to fall in line and to be obedient to the authority that's been put put over them. But in this one area, they say no. And just that alone causes Rome to start to persecute. We have a letter um from AD12 from a Roman governor and by the name of Plenny to the Empire of Traan uh that speaks of this and you can look this up and read the letters between the two.

It's an interesting read, but I wanted to just read part of it so you get a feel for what it's like at this period of time. Plenty here is writing to Traan and he says, "So far it has been my so far this has been my procedure when people were charged before me with being Christians. I have asked the accused themselves if they were Christians. If they said yes, I asked them a second and third time, warning them of the penalty if they persisted. If they persisted, then I ordered them to be led off to execution. For I had no doubt that whatever kind of thing it was that they pleaded guilty to, their stubbornness and unyielding obstinency at any rate deserved to be punished.

There were other others afflicted with like madness who I marked down to be referred to Rome because they were Roman citizens. Just as in this one part of the letter, you see that that the attitude towards the Christians, they don't understand them. They're not interested in understanding them. They just see that they won't bow the knee. And for that, they see them stubborn rebels worthy of death. Ask them three times. Three times he says he's a believer and he won't bow down. Uh take him outside and slaughter him. And that's the world they lived in. Now, this this Roman governor governor um he all Roman governors weren't like this Roman governors.

There was different things throughout the empire, but you get the idea of what's going on at this time. This is the world that Paul and the church in Philippi lived in. And Paul suffers, but so were the Philippians. We pick it up in the end of our passage. Look down at verse 29 there. says, "For unto you is given in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer uh for his sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now here to be in me." They're suffering and we don't know the specifics. Paul doesn't give that to us, but but they're suffering in a manner similar to how he is and and he has been for his faith been put into prison and is now uh realizing that he may be put to death because of this.

And the Philippians are suffering in this same manner. They have this same challenge up against them. This is a serious challenge against their faith. But what we saw from last week is that this conflict and suffering had not broken Paul. In fact, in the face of this possible death sentence, Paul says in verse 21 of chapter 1, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. In the face of this persecution and possible death, Paul has this unbelievably positive outlook. And that is possible because Paul has set his mind on the kingdom of God. Paul knows that if he lives, he is useful for the kingdom of God.

And if he dies, he's free. He's freed from the struggles and issues of life and moved into the king's presence. The king that he wants to serve. the king that has given his life for him and the king that will love him and loves him at that moment because of this mentality this viewpoint on life. Paul cannot be intimidated by the authorities and any kind of conflict over the faith isn't an issue for him because all possibilities lead to blessings for him. All possibilities lead to blessings for the persons whose mind is fully set on the kingdom of God and the future that it brings. And the neat thing is that Paul wants other believers to be this have the same attitude and he wants it out of the church there in Philippi.

And so and he commands them in verse 27 then to move them into this direction. And he says only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ. Now normally in our King James versions when we see the word con conversation we understand that that means a manner of life. But in this special instance, that's not actually the case. Paul uses a different Greek word here. He uses it one other time or it's used one other other time in the book of Acts. Um it's Paul it's recording what Paul's speaking in the book of Acts where it's used. But what it actually means means is it means to live as a citizen.

It's not simply the manner of life. It means to live as a citizen. Why does Paul do that here? Why does he make it different here? Well, he does that because this is Philippi and Philippi is a Roman city and many of the people there would have Roman citizenship and they would understand the special value and special privileges that come with having citizenship. In fact, in Acts 16, this was shown of Paul's time in Philippi. Paul is a Roman citizen and and he comes into Philippi and he's he's witnessing there in Philippi and some conflicts develop and and he winds up getting arrested, not tried and put into prison, which you couldn't do that to a Roman citizen.

And when the authorities find this out, they're kind of stressed out. You pick up there in Acts chapter 16 and and they actually come and they take Paul out and they apologize for to Paul for doing this simply because Paul is a Roman citizen. And so it's got these these special advantages, these special privileges, and no person in the Roman Empire would ever want to dishonor their Roman citizenship. It was that special. They didn't wouldn't want to bring dishonor to that. It was special. And if that was true about being a Roman, how much more true would it be for a Philippian believer? Excuse me.

How much more is the value and privilege of being a citizen than in the kingdom of God? And so Paul commands them then in light of the conflicts that they're enduring to live as a citizen of the kingdom of God that is worthy of the gospel of Christ. Another way you could say this in in common language would be if you're going to be or if you call yourself a Christian then of all things live like it. And it's important for us tonight as we look at this command to recognize that Paul is not giving this command to a single person. He's he's giving it to a church. This is a command to the church. If they are going to say that they are a group of Christians, then the command is to live like it.

Show the evidence of it. Live life and deal with all of its difficulties in light of the kingdom of God and what that future brings. And so the command here is a command that we personally apply. But but as a pl a command that ohana as a church is to apply as a whole. Now how do we do that? How do we live church in this manner? Well, Paul gives us three ways in this passage. He tells us that we stand fast in one spirit. Secondly, that we with one mind strive together for the faith of the gospel. And third, that we're not terrified by our adversaries. So let's look at these three and see how the church is to live out this command as a whole.

And the first one is that we are to be united in one spirit, which really means that we are to be free from conflict between one another and then be united in the same spirit. The church at Philippi had a problem with this. We're going to find out about it when we get to chapter 4. But what has been going on is there's two ladies within the church who are not getting along. They've worked with Paul uh in in and getting the gospel out. And because they've worked directly with Paul, they're going to be influential women within the church. And and something yet has come between these two. And there's conflict between these two.

And Paul doesn't go into details to what this conflict is, but you can imagine what this would would do to the church. these two influential women in their conflict is going to cause the people in the church to want to choose one side or the other or to favor one side over the other. And what it's going to do is start to slowly divide the church. And the thing is is when the church is divided or when there are divisions within the church, the church stops working like it should. I want to illustrate this or or continue to teach on this by using 1 Corinthians 12. So if you want to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 12:12 because there in 1 Corinthians it's a similar idea and God there describes the church as a as a body and speaks of the unity of the body and of it working together.

That's that perfect idea of the necessity of unity within the body. In 1 Corinthians chapter 12, it says, "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all members of that and all members of that one body being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one spirit, we are all baptized into one body, whether be Jews or Gentiles, whether it be bond or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit. For the body is not one member, but many." You see in this passage we can pick up that the church is to be united because by one spirit we have all been baptized into one body. That body we we understand is Christ but it's exhibited within the church.

We are all saved or when we were when we were all saved we were saved and and and brought into the kingdom but that kingdom was being brought into union with other believers within the church. 1 John chapter 1 speaks of this so well too. You can go back and read that later. But but we are brought together to worship together our God. We do have a personal relationship, a one-on-one relationship with our creator. Um but we also have a corporate worship together. We have a corporate identity before the Lord. You see, when the Holy Spirit brought us to salvation, he brought us so that we are all together so that we are all equal as well.

This e this equality within the body is picked up here in first Corinthians where it says that we drink into one spirit, meaning that we have all the same source of life. We're not Jew and Gentile coming from two different groups, two different uh parents. We're we're coming from one. We're a body. We're a family. We have the same spirit, brothers and sisters, and nobody's greater than the other. We're together. We're equal. But then the Holy Spirit takes this body of the church and he then gifts the body. And 1 Corinthians 12 is in context of the gifting. Then he and he gifts the body in a different way or people in a different way within the body to bring about a unity within the church.

You know body with this there just an arm is no body right? You got to have all the parts and yet all the parts make that make that unity. And so the Holy Spirit has gifted us in different ways so that we can make up that complex organization of the church of the body. And these giftings that we have been given are not for our benefit but as 1 Corinthians 12 says 12:7 says they are for the common good. This gifting of the different aspects that we're given in the body is gifting not for ourselves but to serve one another within this body. But conflicts between us within the church then break down the church's ability to work that body.

It breaks down the ability to work out what the Holy Spirit has made us to do. If we have two people within the church that are having issues with each other, it's a broken part of the body because they're not able to carry out their giftings towards each other at the very least. In a sense, it's like having a having a broken arm in the body. It's still part of the body, but yet it's not doing what it's supposed to do. And in this command here from Paul, the church is to be able to stand, but cannot stand if there's broken parts in the body. If we have somebody that comes to fight against us and we only have one arm working because the other one's broken, we're really not going to be able to defend ourselves very well at all.

We cannot be the church that we're called to be if we are not united. We cannot stand fast as a church if we are not united. And so we must be one and one in spirit. We must resolve to fix the conflicts that with that exist within the church. We must resolve to encourage those who are not getting along to get along to find that common ground of love between one another and for the church and for our savior our Lord Jesus Christ. And so we stand fast in one spirit being united and exercising the gifting given by the spirit. And then secondly we we strive together for the faith faith of the gospel.

This is a neat word, another neat Greek word, this striving together. It it actually literally means to wrestle in company with. And it's an athletic term and it's a a term that you and me would would uh you use teamwork. We would say teamwork for this word is what we would the way we would say it because it's the idea of of coming together uh to work together for that that common goal. And the church is to do that. The church is to be that team that that works together. And that goal is the gospel of bringing the gospel out to the world to the unsaved. And it is the the church's effort for evangelism that are actually the strong aspect of evangelism that's often pictured in the scriptures.

We often think of our of our individual efforts and and those need to be there. But but the church in and of itself has a great effect on the community around us for the gospel when we live as we should. When we are that united in purpose body, in fact, it's in the evangelistic outreach where the gifting truly comes out. Do you want to be an evangelist and struggle with being an evangelist? I I struggled this with this for a long time. Okay? Because the reality is I'm not very good at it. I'd like to be. I carry tracks. I got one I got one in my my binder over there. I drop it all the time because it's hanging on the side and I want to give those out and I want to be a better evangelist.

But there's others that put in probably the same effort that I do and some maybe even less, some more, but some some say even less just for discussion here. And yet they're much more effective than I am. And I was like, why is that? And I started to realize that it's a gifting aspect. We are all called to evangelism, don't get me wrong on this. We are all called to share our faith every chance we get the opportunity. Don't don't get me wrong, but but just the reality is is that some of us have been gifted in this zone, but some of us have not. We've been given other kinds of gifts. And this is where the church as a whole comes into effect.

Because while we cannot all be evangelists, we all been given gifts. So that when we work together, we become an evangelistic team to the world around us. Let me give an example to try to work this through. We just um finished vacation Bible school, but to give an example here, just imagine that one of our gifted evangelists here within our church had gone out prior to the VBS program and had met somebody with a a small child and and gave them the gospel and they were kind of unsure about the gospel. And so they said, "Well, why don't you come check out the vacation Bible study or vacation Bible school at our church?

Your kid would probably really enjoy it." And so they're kind of a little interested in what the gospel message was. And so they come to the church and they bring their they bring their child to the VBS program and they come to the VBS program and and they learn about Steve Hutchinson, a man who has been gifted. I hear the laughter. Steve has been gifted with children. Steve has been gifted in this area of VBS. He's very effective. He loves it. It's important to him. He spends time trying to get it right. It's a gifting that Steve has and it came out over this past week. And if that that parent and child were to come and they were to see this, it would reinforce what the evangelist had shared with them and it would it would continue to move them along the spectrum uh towards the savior.

And then from VBS, maybe they come to the church, they're they're interested now maybe a little bit more and they come to the church on Sunday and they they come walking up and there's the welcome team. There's hospitality people that have been gifted with hospitality right there welcoming them in. And then they come up to the back over here in the foyer and they meet the ladies at the the desk. And once again, those that have been gifted with hospitality bring them in. And then and then they come in and say they go to a a Sunday school class. They go to the Sunday school class and now they hear somebody search to teach God's word in line with what they've heard from Steve and from what they've heard from the evangelist who invited them.

And then they go to second service and they hear the same thing from pastor. And then they leave. And as they're leaving, somebody who also has a gift of hospitality invites them over to their house for lunch. And they go over to lunch and they get to experience a Christian household, a Christian marriage, Christian parents, children that are being raised in a Christian home. And it's wildly different. And what that is is that's the church as a whole working out its gifting and and through that working out in in unity uh being that evangelistic testimony to the world around us. The church when it's active as a whole and working as the Holy Spirit has guided it is a testimony to the world and it brings the unsaved to their savior our lord Jesus Christ.

Now practically what this means to you and me then is that we need to serve within the church. Practically, this means we need to stop being so overly focused on ourselves and our schedules and look to see how we could serve in the way that we've been gifted. Now, I want to make a quick comment about the gifts. I'm going to say something that that probably not everybody's going to agree with, and that's okay. Um, we can not all agree on everything and still love one another, but I'm not a big fan of going and taking the exams to find out what your gifts are. Let me explain why. And hopefully this is an encouragement to those of you that are like me to come and to start serving.

Because as I look at God's word and I look at the giftings that are there and the descriptions of the giftings that are there, there are some that are defined very well, but there's some that are not. And there's some that as much matter no matter how much we dig within scripture to define them. And we come to a certain point where we got to start making some guesses as to what that actually means. And I think God has done this intentionally because I think his intent is not to get us to be focused on the gifts themselves, but but to know that there's a great variety within the gifting and that the gifting is for the common good of the of the body and then for us to start to serve.

And I think if we make our focus just on serving and not necessarily struggling with what our gift is, but to go serve, oh, what we'll find is that we will find what we are gifted at. And what we may find is that God moves us through the spectrum of different things and and and and changes in the areas that we're gifted. And so if we if we see a need, then we have a time and ability to be able to uh address that need, we need to do that. In fact, God may be showing us that need uh because he wants us to move us there and he plans on gifting us to be able to fill that need. And the wonderful thing is is if for some reason you go and try to try to serve in an area and you don't fit simply because you're trying to serve is going to uh cause you to be moved into another area where you do fit.

And so we need to be serving contained. And this idea of of looking to fill a need and then having God move you along is exactly what has happened with my wife and I because I'll tell you this guys. Um neither my wife or I are very comfortable standing in front of people talking at all. Right. And yet God put me here. And my wife has um taught ladies at Bible study fellowship and there's a decent sized group of ladies that come to that and she stands up in front of them and teaches. That's just not a place we're comfortable being. And yet God, what what he has done is he he's taken us from where we first started to serve, which was in the children department.

Uh we first started serving in the two and threes when when our kids were in um elementary school and we just continued to be faithful and serving and and we didn't have a direction we were aiming for. God just kept moving us and moving us and moving us until suddenly we're in positions that that if we were to take an exam on gifting and and and would say oh are you a teacher? Both of us would have said no way. And yet God put us in these positions. And so I just share that with you to encourage you to to serve, to use your gifting if you know what it is. And if you don't, just serve. And if you see a need and you can fit and you can fix that need, then then fix that need.

And so then as a church or for Ohana, for us here to live as citizens of the kingdom that's worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are to work together as a team for the gospel. And then we also to be united and to stand together. And then thirdly, we are not to be frightened by those that oppose us. Verse 28. And in nothing terrified by your adversaries. This perfectly describes Paul from what we learned from last week, doesn't it? Paul was not fearful with those who could take his life. And he could say, "In spite of everything that was going on, for to me uh to live as Christ and to die is gain."

You see, when we live for the gospel, when we serve Christ with the intent of using our gifts for the benefit of others, and when we seek to work uh together, to see people come to Christ and to grow in their faith, it's forcing us to have a kingdom mindset. And as we have that kingdom mindset, it causes us not to be so self centered and to be Christ centered. And it causes us not to be so concerned about worldly worldly affairs and to be more concerned about heavenly affairs. So that when we have the oppositions that come against us and we get challenged, we're not terrified because we're not thinking in this world.

We're thinking of the next. We're thinking of the building of the kingdom for the future. We're thinking of the blessings that come in the future. We're thinking of being with our savior in the future, being united with those other brothers and sisters that have gone before us. And in a sense, we start to see life through the same eyes that Paul had. And there is that boldness that comes from having the kingdom mindset. And what also happens then is that there's a confidence that comes in our salvation. Look back at verse 28 again. Let me read that verse again. It says nothing terrified by our advers by your adversaries uh which to them is an evident token of predition.

I'll come to that in a second. But to you of but to you of salvation and that of God. the the boldness of a testimony of our salvation. And and and I'm sorry, the boldness that we have is then a testimony. The boldness in the face of our adversaries is then a testimony to the reality of our salvation and that our salvation is of God. And with this kind of boldness and assurance, then we too can be like Paul and say, "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain." and no opponents of the gospel can terrify us. Think of that on a churchwide level. Think of a church full of Paul's who can't be intimidated.

Think of the effect that we would have. That's what Paul is calling on for us. He calls for in the church of Philippi. And by by being recorded here, it's for us as well, too. But we also need to recognize that what destroys that is disunityity and we need to be on the lookout for that. And the reality is that conflicts are going to happen. We are going to have times where we get broken. We are all sinners. It's going to happen. But the question is is will we in love seek to find reconciliation when that occurs? We cannot just let it exist. We cannot just say it's normal they don't get along. It's true.

We're not all going to be the best of friends and we don't have all the the the the same things we enjoy. We have even uh differences in doctrine sometimes, but we're all one in the spirit. We all been made to drink of the same spirit. We all have the same savior, our lord Jesus Christ. And so we need to make sure that we resolve those conflicts. And when we have or see others also dealing with conflicts, we need to help them find that common ground in love. We must remain united under our common savior, our lord Jesus Christ. If we will do that, we will be a very effective church. And then lastly, verse 28, it notes another aspect of this unified effort with the church that is an effect on the world around us.

And it says, "And nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of predition." An evident token of predition. And what that what that is really saying there in modern English is it says that we become proof to the enemies of the gospel that they will be destroyed because of our boldness within our faith. Now that doesn't sound like that maybe as an evangelistic res um um result but in reality it it is because the the gospel message is a message that God saves us from our sins. We want to be careful with how we word the gospel message sometimes. I know it. I know the result is that we go to heaven.

But if we just say that the gospel message is is accepting Christ and going to heaven, we we've missed the aspect of salvation. That that doesn't really picture salvation at all. The salvation is the fact that we've been rescued from the power of sin and now we're put under our Lord. So, we're rescued in that sense, but then we have forgiveness of sins. Sins which God is going to pour his wrath upon. And the guilty need to know that they're guilty to recognize or understand that there's wrath that is coming. Because when you understand there's wrath that is coming, you understand your need for a savior.

And the thing is is that when we live in this manner and it drives us to a point where we're not terrified in our by our adversaries that the message to the world is that they are different and they'll recognize that during this time period or a little I guess a little bit later in history around 355 AD there was a um professor I was we call him professor in today's terms he led a school in Antioch his name was Lebanius and Lebanius had a lot of interaction with Christians and at a certain point Lebanius in looking at what the Christian women were compared to the women that were around him makes this statement he says heavens what women these Christians have by the testimony of the church of the women within this church.

This very well-educated man in the Roman Empire that makes a difference in in in um in the in the in the time that he lived is affected by just looking to see what Christian women are like and they're different from the ones that he knows. And so much so that he's impressed and he recognizes that there's something wrong in the culture that he lives. And it's simply the testimony of the women within the church living out the lives, living out godly lives. And so we become that testimony. But just because we become that testimony during times of conflict doesn't mean that it takes away the sufferings.

We have the confidence of what's going to come with from the future. And that is reflected in our hope, but at the same time, it doesn't take away the suffering. And as I was thinking about this this week, to be honest, I couldn't help but think of our pastor, Pastor Enner, with this. Okay. Our pastor isn't going through attack for his faith, but he's had a lot of trials lately. He's had a number of people that he's known pass away. And here recently, the man that raised him, his grandfather, has passed away. And he's grieved. He's hurting. He's struggling. He he probably feels like the world is is closing in on him in a little bit.

And yet, as our pastor grieavves, his grief is different because he grieavves with hope. He grieavves in the hope that he's going to one day in the future see his grandfather again and and the sicknesses and the weaknesses will be gone and they'll have new bodies and the fellowship will be back there again. And then him and his grandfather together can worship God in love. Dang it. What a wonderful hope. What a wonderful future. The grieving, the suffering is still there, but yet it's different. And it's a testimony to the world that then looks and sees what's happening. And the reality is in all our struggles and difficulties, if we have that future look, that eternal or that kingdom perspective, then we too become that testimony to the world looking in at us that something's different, that we have something different, that they have something that's a miss, right?

How do we as a church live as citizens of the kingdom in a manner that is worthy of the gospel of Christ? Then we remain united with other believers within the spirit. We use the gifting that the spirit has given us for the good of the body and for seeing others come to salvation. And we keep that mindset so that when the troubles do come, we are not frightened because we know that as long as we are committed to the kingdom of God, there is blessings. And there is blessings in the suffering now, but there is blessings for all of eternity.