The Centrality of Christ

If you want to have true joy, your entire life must be centered on the person of Jesus Christ.

Well, good morning, Church. If you are new with us this week after visiting for the first time last week on Easter, we are glad you are here. Thanks for joining us again. We’ve been experiencing an influx of new people here at Calvary or so I’m told. Everyone looks new to me, actually. We’re not sure exactly why this influx is happening. Could be a few reasons. Could be the long, dark night of COVID is finally coming to an end. It could be that new people are coming to town. Maybe you’re just coming to size up the new guy. I don’t know. I’m not sure why. Whatever it is, we’re glad you’re here. We’re looking forward to getting to know you better. And helping you to get involved and plugged into our church, which is growing and doing good work in this community, so we’re glad you’re part of it.

One of the things that I’ve been asked since I got here at Calvary just a few months ago is how I plan to set up the preaching. What’s the preaching going to look like? Specifically how are we going to approach the Bible from week to week? And the question to me is usually presented as a fork in the road. So it sounds a little like this, are we going to have topical series or are we going to have expository sermons? Is it going to be topical or are we going to do expository? And what they mean is, are we going to have three or four little mini series on money and family and parenting and relationships? Or are we going to have 100 sermons out of the book of Romans? And by the way, usually when people ask me this question, the person who asked me the question is hoping to hear 100 sermons out of Romans, almost exclusively that’s what they’re hoping I will say. The concern usually is that there’s a trend in the church toward short, relatable, relevant, felt need topical sermons that don’t handle the Bible very well. And that’s just true. That’s just true of the church today. They pull verses out of context. They pack them with stories, and they send people on their way with very little Bible content, generally speaking. That is a huge problem today, in my opinion, in the church.

Good preaching should equip you to understand your Bible better. When you’ve heard a good sermon, you ought to be able to look at that passage of Scripture and go, I can handle this and apply this better in my life. That’s a good sermon. The correction for that is expository sermons; exposit means to explain. And an expository sermon unpacks what is in the Bible passage, makes it plain to the listeners, and then applies that that content appropriately. And since you are here to hear what God has to say and not just my opinions and funny stories, all sermons should be expository. In fact, I might even go so far as to say if it’s not, it’s not actually a sermon, because otherwise, honestly, it’s just a TED talk, and nobody needs that. Right? You can look those up on YouTube if you want those.

But here’s the thing. You can preach a topical series in an expository way. You can exposit it scripture. And we will certainly do that on occasion during the year. You can be assured that when we do this, we will go to passages and work very hard to say what it is that the Scriptures have to say on that particular topic. But I want to tell you also that the steady diet of preaching here at Calvary will be to work through large passages of Scripture or even full books of Scripture over many weeks and months. And by doing that, by working our way through that, you get to see all that the author has to say. You get to see all the different themes that are developed, all of the arguments that get made over the course of many chapters. We get to plumb the depths of Scripture and address all the topics in the Scriptures as they come up. See how that works. And that’s why we’re going to embark on a long road through what you might consider to be a short book.

We’re going to go on a long road through the book, or I guess more specifically, the letter of Philippians. There’s a question that I sometimes think about that kind of haunts me, sort of a haunting question. What would happen to my joy in Christ if all the things that brought me joy were taken away? What would happen to that joy that I feel inside walking with Jesus, if all the things in the world that bring me joy were taken away? It’s the question of Christians suffering. What would happen if following Jesus meant the loss of my family as it has for countless numbers of missionaries who live in hard places all over the world, throughout generations? What would happen to my faith if faithfulness led me to the loss of freedom as it has for many faithful Christians throughout centuries? What would happen to my joy, even if my faith remained, even if I didn’t lose my faith, what would happen to my joy if sorrow swept over my life tomorrow? Would I be able to say with Job the Lord gives, the Lord takes away? Blessed be the name of the Lord. Would I still say that? And would I receive that hardship as coming from God’s hand, not just some random junk that got spit out into my life and I just got caught up and churned up in the world, but that it was actually given to me by God and recognizing that He is using it to bring about my ultimate good and the good of his kingdom here in the world, and in my heart? You ever think about that? Do you ever wonder what would happen if your joy was taken away or the things that bring you joy in the world were taken away? Now nobody wants God to test them on this. Nobody ever prays that – God test me and help me see if my joy if you took away my things. Right? Nobody prays that. But we’re told in James, that the testing of our faith will produce steadfastness and that when that steadfastness has full effect, we will be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. And I don’t know that I know any of us here who would say that we want an incomplete faith.

We’re going to explore Philippians. It’s a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a church that he planted. He planted this church on his second missionary journey. Now, Paul took three missionary journeys throughout his lifetime before he took his final fourth journey to Rome. And he took these journeys through the countries that we would know today as Turkey and Greece. Ingrid from South Africa, that would be straight north, about half the planet. She needs that. Philippi is located in Greece, kind of northeastern Greece.

And he spent his time, his life planting these churches all over these places. And he writes this letter to the Philippians church while he’s sitting in prison, probably awaiting trial near the end of his life. His ministry choices, his service to God has led him to this moment where he’s going to be executed for what he believes, and for what he has done. And so he writes what we call a missionary support letter to this Philippian church community that has been supporting him all along the way, financially and in prayer throughout his ministry. So what is he going to say in this moment, near the end of his life? What is he going to say? What would you say if your ministry, if everything that God called you to do in this world were to result in sitting in prison waiting to die after serving the Lord faithfully? Philippians is sometimes called the letter of Joy because Paul keeps referring to his joy throughout the letter. You know, as I was thinking about it, as I was reading this letter. I don’t think at this point in my life I would write if I were in that same position, that I would write anything that you might call the letter of joy. But I do want to become the kind of Christian who would. Wouldn’t you? Isn’t that what we’re going for? This letter is going to show us how to do that. The teaching of this letter, if we will receive it, will give us the guidance to develop a faith that will never lose joy, no matter what happens to us.

Some of you came in this week and your joy meters are on empty. You’re like a balloon someone just let the air out of. You’re feeling this joylessness of life. This letter, if you’ll receive the teachings of this letter, will fill you with the joy that you’re longing for. And it will do it with a quality of joy that will not ebb and flow with your circumstances. It’ll incorporate your circumstances and the trials in your life in such a way that you’ll find yourself resting in joy. Even when sorrow overwhelms you, you’ll be resting in joy. And if that sounds like a radically different kind of joy than you’re used to, that’s probably because it is. Paul is going to show us that the key to impermeable joy is to center your life on the grace and the goodness of Jesus Christ. If you want to have true joy, your entire life must be centered on the person of Jesus Christ. Now, if you’ve spent any time in the church at all, you’ve probably heard this phrase ‘Christ-centered’ before. We use it a lot. It seems it got really popular in the last 20 years to call everything Christ-centered. And in fact, it’s used so much that it’s almost become cliché and we don’t know what it means anymore.

Paul is going to help us with this. He’s going to flesh out an entire way of seeing life that is centered on the person and work of Jesus. And as our hearts and minds conform to Christ, to His character and to His mission, we begin to see the world the way that Jesus saw it. And the more that we see the way Jesus sees, the more joy that comes from serving Him. And then there’s nothing that can take that joy away. We serve a permanent God. am unchanging God, a living God. And if your joy is set in Him, nothing can take that joy away.

This Christ-centered life begins in the introduction of the letter. When Paul opens this letter, he uses the name Christ Jesus twice and the Lord Jesus Christ once. And when you put all three of those together, you get a great preview of where we’re going to go in this letter. And so let me begin by reading the introduction, and then I’m going to show you the way Paul sets us up for learning the fullness of a Christ-centered life. Here’s the introduction: “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the Saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and Peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now if you thought Christ was Jesus’ last name, this this is probably messing with your head just a little bit. I mean, how many different ways can you say this guy’s name? It seems like they’re constantly flipping it around, doesn’t it? The word Christ is a title. It’s not a name. Though even by the first century, it was starting to become part of his name. So it was so closely identified with Jesus that it was making its way into the place where people always said, Jesus Christ. It’s kind of like the way people refer to the president as Mr. President. That doesn’t sound weird, right? That doesn’t sound weird to you because that’s how people refer to the president. Mr. President. President is a title, but now it’s being used as a name. Christ is the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah, which means anointed one. The Old Testament tells of one who is anointed by God, who will come in and save God’s people from their sins. That’s the Messiah. So Jesus, being this Messiah, is rightly titled Christ. You might remember that when Jesus asked His disciples, who do you say that I am?, Peter speaks up and he says, You are the Christ. He’s saying, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Christ was the title for the Messiah that the Jewish nation was expecting. And so when Jesus of Nazareth shows up and then He shows the world that He is this Messiah, by dying and rising from the dead, the church started to call him Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. Or if you want to go big time, the Lord Jesus Christ. These are all titles.

When my mom uses all three of my names, I know I’m in a lot of trouble. But when we use all three of Jesus’ names, He gets more glory. The first thing we learn about a Christ-centered life is the way Paul describes himself and his ministry companion, Timothy. He says they are servants of Christ Jesus. This is one of the three ways that Paul identifies himself in the letters that he writes. So everything from Romans all the way to Philemon in your Bible, are letters that Paul writes, either to churches or to individuals. And he refers to himself in three different ways. In most of his letters, he calls himself an apostle by the will of God, which focuses on his unique calling and placement among the other 12 apostles. Apostle means a messenger or a person who is sent. And so he’s saying, I’m a messenger from God, but not because of my will. I’m a messenger because God himself, because Christ himself, has sent me. Jesus chose me for this. In one place in the letter to Philemon, he calls himself a prisoner of Christ Jesus, which is unique for reasons in that letter.

But in three places, Paul refers to himself as a servant of Christ Jesus. He does it here and in Romans. And in the letter to Titus, where he calls himself both, both an apostle and a servant. Now, that word ‘servant’ here is actually a pretty interesting one. I worked as a server in a restaurant for many years back in high school and in college, and that’s what they would call us. They would call us servers. I was not a very good server. I was great at talking to people. I was terrible at remembering what they needed. And if you know anything about that, like, I would just like, oh, like water; you wanted water. And then they would just die of thirst right there on my table. So I wasn’t very good at it. You’ve known people with a kind servant heart in your life, people that are here in this church, you know, people you just look at them, they’re like, there’s such servants. They’re so kind, they’re so generous, they’re so helpful. They’re always working, they’re always pitching in. They’re always doing things to help. We think of servants as helping where they can in voluntary capacities, because either it’s just the way that they’re built, or because it’s their employment. That’s not exactly what Paul is saying here. Paul is not saying that he is just inclined to help Jesus when he can because he has the time or because it’s his profession. That’s not what he’s saying.

The word he uses here is the word for slave. It’s a bonded servant relationship where the master commands and the slave obeys. Now, our English translations don’t put the word slave here for obvious reasons. Probably some of you are a little more on edge of your seat right now, because I actually said the word. Right. We have a whole history of terrible injustice brought by the evils of chattel slavery. So if you were to translate it that way, we’d have a whole bunch of unintended connotations. You would see that word and you would think wrongly, you would actually not understand what he was saying, even if you translated it exactly the way the word is used in that time, because you would have different ways of thinking about it. But here’s the thing. Servant doesn’t quite get to it either. And so what do you say? Well, you say servant because it’s the easier word, and then you have to explain it. The kind of servanthood Paul is talking about here is the kind where Jesus becomes master, and we are entirely at His service. See, when you put your trust in Jesus, that’s not just a statement of future salvation. That’s a statement of current identity. First Corinthians 6 says ‘You are not your own. You were bought with a price.’

When Jesus paid the price on the cross, He didn’t just buy your salvation. He bought you. He bought you. He didn’t buy your Sunday morning. He didn’t buy the religious part of your life. He didn’t even buy just something for you. He bought you. In your entirety. He picked you up out of your sins, He washed you with the waters of baptism that symbolized the sanctifying power, He gave you new heart. He put a new spirit within you, and He made you part of his kingdom. And in that new spiritual kingdom, you don’t call the shots for your life anymore. You and I are now in service to our King. So what that means is, you and I must be very diligent in learning the commands of our Master and take an uncompromised stand that whatever He commands is what we are going to do. If you want a Christ-centered life, it starts with knowing and obeying Christ. Whatever He says, wherever He leads.

Jack Miller, a former professor at Westminster, was the director of World Harvest Mission, was writing to a new missionary who had just gone to Uganda, and he was writing to encourage him. And I love his advice because it included things like, don’t take yourself too seriously and have some fun. Sometimes he even said to him, You know, just read a Robert Ludlum book and go on vacation. It’s totally fine. It’s totally fine to do that. But then he said, Remember, the only real leader you have is Jesus Christ. Remember, the only real leader you have is Jesus Christ. That is not to discount the leadership of others that the Lord places over us in life. After all, Jack Miller was this guy as director at the time that he wrote this student. But ultimately we are bonded to serve only one Master for life, and we are not at liberty to deny Him anything. We are servants of Jesus. That’s how Paul describes himself and how he describes Timothy. Now let’s look at how he describes the Philippian church. To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons, if you think of Paul’s description of himself as vocational, if he’s talking about his vocation, he’s calling when he describes himself as a servant. His description of the Philippian church we might call positional. It’s where they’re located. In other words, he’s not talking about what they do, but now where they reside, since they are saints who are in Philippi. Now, if you have a Roman Catholic background, that word saint, there could be a little bit problematic for you. In the Roman Catholic Church, sainthood is a five step process that requires investigation into a person’s life that can’t even start until five years after that person has died, unless special permission is granted. And then it’s all about how holy that person was during their life, and whether praying to that person after they have died causes a verifiable miracle or two here in the world. That’s how you determine sainthood. And here Paul is throwing the word saint around like it’s just any old Christian. What gives? Well, who’s right on this? Well, you won’t be surprised to hear that we should probably go with Paul on this one, of what a saint is. Sainthood does require a miracle. That part is true. Sainthood requires a miracle. But it’s not one that you perform. It’s one that is performed for you and in you. A saint is a person who has been sanctified, which means he’s been washed or cleaned. The miracle required to become a saint is performed by Jesus, who, by His death and resurrection, washes our sins away. That’s why in the baptism you saw earlier in the service, we dip the person under the water and we bring them back up. We symbolize the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. And then our baptism symbolizes the fact that when Jesus performed this miracle, we were spiritually with him. Our sins died with Him on the cross. Our spirits came alive with Him in the grave. That’s every church member. Every single person who’s part of a church, that’s not a certain subset of people within the church. Everyone who is positionally in Jesus is a saint.

You can see that even more clearly when you look at the rest of the letter, because he writes to the saints who are in Philippi, but he writes it to the whole church. He’s talking to everybody. His audience includes the group Paul refers to as his brothers. It includes two ladies who are fighting, Euodia and Syntych who are fighting, and he calls them out by name in chapter 4 of this letter. That had the embarrassing moment, I suppose, for them. I don’t know. It includes overseers and deacons, as Paul mentions here. These are two offices of the church. Overseer is one way of describing an elder. So the words pastor, elder and overseer are used interchangeably throughout the New Testament. So here he’s referring to the leaders, the overseers, those who are overseeing and eldering and shepherding this congregation of people. And deacon means servant. It’s a it’s a different word from the one Paul used to describe himself. This refers to all people who lead in the church, but who are not elders. So all the elders, the leaders, the servants and everyone who follows Christ are saints because they have been bonded together in Christ. So a Christ-centered life includes a change of position. I am no longer a worldly man connected to whomever and whatever I like. I am a man sanctified by the cleansing power of Christ and bonded to my brothers and sisters who are also saints in Christ.

Okay. So if our vocation, if our calling has changed to become a servant of Jesus, a bonded servant of Jesus, and if our location has changed to become a member of Christ’s body, then what should we expect here? Well, what we should expect is grace and peace. This is the standard greeting grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Paul’s way of opening letters. He opens a lot of his letters this way, but we should not overlook it. It’s not like the greetings that we give to each other. This is not him sending hugs or good vibes to the Philippines. Send hugs. That felt good, right? That’s a weird, weird greeting. You ever had somebody send you positive thoughts, that positive thoughts are coming your way? Did you feel them? Did you feel Him coming in? You know why not? Because that’s nonsense. That is utter and total nonsense. Paul’s not sending grace and peace to these folks either. You know why? Because that also would be nonsense. He’s not sending it to them. What he’s doing is drawing their attention to the grace and the peace that now have come, because they are servants of Christ who have been sanctified by Christ. That’s what he’s saying. The grace and peace doesn’t come from Paul. It’s not sent in the letter. It’s not in his words. It comes, as he says here, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. See, Paul went big on the last name there. He’s going to mention Jesus one more time, going all three. It comes from the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah who is our Lord and our Master, who was sent by the Father on a mission of salvation to buy His people back out of their sins, has brought you a gracious gift. And if you will receive this grace, you will have this peace. The grace that he’s talking about here is absolutely certainly the undeserved gift of salvation to sinners. Salvation from our sins is not a work project for us. It’s not a plan of action for us to carry out. The work has been done, but it was done by these two: God our Father, who sent the Lord Jesus Christ to perform the work on our behalf. His cross work is all the work necessary. And since that work has entirely been finished on the cross, there’s nothing left for a person to do than to trust in that work. We repent of our sin. We trust that Jesus’ work is now our work. We are in Christ entirely as a free gift of grace, and that grace results in peace. So what sort of a peace does Paul have in mind here? Is he talking about the peace that we now have between us and God? Or is he talking about the piece that we now have in our hearts and mind because we are no longer in fear of anything in this world? Well, based on the rest of the letter, I would say that Paul has both of those things in mind. In fact, I would go so far as to say I don’t think he can separate those things. That the peace that that comes between us and God is the peace that gives us life and hope in this world.

Sitting in a prison awaiting his trial, possible execution, he wrote a letter to a church he loves, to assure them that because he serves his master, Christ, having been sanctified and brought into union with Christ, because he knows the grace of Christ has ended the war between Himself and God, he has nothing to fear in this world. There’s nothing to fear. Friends, that is a Christ-centered life. And that is the life I want for you. I want you to know this peace because you have this grace. We’re going to be challenged to become the sort of Christians that have unceasing joy, because everything about us, our identity, our calling, our service, our hope, literally everything about us is oriented to the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope you’re excited to explore this letter further. Let’s pray