Deliverance Either Way

As a Christian, I know the entire purpose of my life is to bring glory to Christ, and death only means I go to be with Christ.

So when you’re in college and you write a research paper, the main thing they tell you to do is to make sure that you have a thesis statement. Remember those? Remember the thesis? Remember why that was so important? This thesis statement, as they call it, is the sentence of the paper that says very succinctly what it is that you want to say in the paper. And the reason they harp on this so much is that so you don’t write ten pages of rambling nonsense and turn that in. Right? I was a teacher’s assistant in seminary. I read those papers. That is not a fun afternoon. Awful. A solid thesis gives you a clear fixed point from which to understand everything else that you read in the paper.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippines, I believe that his thesis statement comes in our passages that we’re going to look at this morning. To live as Christ to die is gain. That’s the reason that I named this sermon series To Live as Christ. That’s the reason you see it on the on the walls here, written; to live as Christ to die is gain. The reason Paul wrote this letter was to encourage this young church in Philippi with the assurance that no matter what happens to him, whether he lives or whether he dies, God is glorified and his life purpose is fulfilled. No matter what. Church, I’d say that this might be one of the best summaries of Christian life that there is. I mean, there’s quite a few in Scripture, of course, there’s ways of talking and slicing up and defining and showing what a Christian life is. But this might be one of the clearest. I’ve had a few of you come up to me and say that you cannot wait until we get to chapter two of Philippians because you love chapter two so much. And I’ll grant you that passage on the humility of Christ in chapter two – that’s going to be a fantastic couple of weeks that we’re going to be looking over that particular area of the letter. But I’ve been waiting for this passage. This is the one I’m most excited about. This is what inspires me. One of the early church leaders was a man named Clement. He was a bishop in Rome around the end of the first century. And he wrote a letter to the church in Corinth (yes, they were still writing letters to different churches, even after scripture was done and the canon was filled), He wrote a letter to the church in Corinth to encourage them. And in that letter he gives some ancient examples, like from Abraham’s day, of some encouragement. And then he says, let’s use some “noble examples from our own generation”. And then he uses Peter and Paul.

Can you imagine writing a letter where you want to illustrate something and your current generational examples, and the contemporaries from your day is Peter and Paul. Wouldn’t it have been awesome? That’s what you got to do. He was part of their generation. And so he writes this to him, and he says this about Paul: “Paul obtains the reward of patient endurance after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee and stoned. After preaching both in the East and the West, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world and come to the extreme limit of the West, and then suffered martyrdom under the prefects. “Thus was he removed from the world and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience.” A striking example of patience. Another translator who translated this letter used the phrase ‘the greatest pattern of endurance’.

This morning, we are going to get a peek inside the theological reasoning of the greatest pattern of endurance. We’re going to get to watch Paul lay down the pattern of thinking that allows him to endure. And what Paul says today is like another level down from the three mental shifts we looked at last week. So we looked at three mental shifts. This is kind of what’s underneath that. How do I get to that? So last week we talked about having a missions mindset for our own personal circumstances. We talked about seeing our unique position as an opportunity to spread the gospel, and then recognizing what we’re going through may actually be to encourage others. How is all of that possible? How do we make all three of those mental shifts? Well, here’s the key. As a Christian, I know that the entire purpose of my life is to bring glory to Christ. And death only means that I go to be with Him. The entire purpose of my life as a Christian is to glorify Christ in everything I do. And when that’s done and I die, death only means I go to Jesus. There’s nothing else. There is no other reason for living and there is no other purpose in dying. That’s the great pattern of endurance that’s set by Paul.

So let’s look at this. Open your Bibles, if you would, to Philippians 1:18. It will also be on the screen, but you can open there if you’d like to. The passage starts about halfway through verse 18, and you’re going to see that there in your Bible. Paul starts off by saying what he knows is going to happen to him, and then he explains why it’s going to happen to him and why he knows it. And then he ends with a guess as to which way he thinks things will actually go in his life. So we’re going to look at it in those three parts and you’ll see this this portion of the letter is sort of like Paul’s internal dialogue while he sits there in prison, like he’s been thinking this to himself. He’s been talking to himself for a little while, you know, as you do in prison. And so he’s been thinking this through and he’s been wrestling with it and he’s like, you know what? I’m going to tell them what I’ve been wrestling with. Let me tell this church what I’ve had going on in my heart. So here’s what Paul says is going to happen. “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.” Paul knows all of this, all of this, everything that’s happening to him is going to end in deliverance. Deliverance is rescue. He’s saying that he knows that the end of his imprisonment, he is going to be set free. And two things are coming together, they’re merging together for his deliverance, to make his deliverance happen. He says the prayers of the Philippians are coming together with the help of the spirit of Jesus Christ. Now, that raises an interesting question. How do our prayers work in conjunction with the Holy Spirit? How does that work? Do the prayers come first and then the spirit empowers what we say? Or does the Spirit work first to then move us to pray? And then which one then actually delivers Paul? Which one actually brings deliverance? Is it the prayers or the spirit? Well, notice that Paul seems to assume that the prayers of the church and the movement of the spirit are in alignment. That these things are synced up. The prayer doesn’t have to convince the spirit, and the spirit isn’t dependent on the prayer. And throughout Scripture, we’re taught to bring our requests to God, while at the same time praying for God’s will to be accomplished. Remember how Jesus told us to pray? Your kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. So basically our prayer to God is to make it here like it is there. Certainly that’s the way Paul taught this church that he planted how to pray. He knows that they’re going to go to the Lord on his behalf and they’re going to ask for rescue. But he also knows simultaneously that the spirit of Jesus Christ is powerfully at work in his imprisonment, that he is uniquely placed for kingdom advancement and the end of this assignment, he will be rescued by God because he knows that God will never abandon him. And by the way, this is a very good lesson for all of us, not only in how to pray, but how to think about those who are praying for us.

See, when we pray for each other, we should go boldly before the Lord and ask Him to work in power, to deliver and to heal, just like we always do when we reach out, to pray for one another, to bring about good for people in the church and in our community. We should and can pray very boldly, fully expecting God will work powerfully. But at the same time that we do that, we should also be conforming our wills to God’s will. So Paul knows the church is praying in coordination with the help of the spirit, and that that will all bring about his deliverance. But how did he know that? How did he know that was going to be the end of those two things merging together?

Well, the secret is in what he means by deliverance. We might say nothing less than the full release and the full restoration of Paul’s life to him is deliverance. That’s the only thing we’ll count. We might even pray to that end. See, for a lot of us who struggle with God putting us in uncomfortable circumstances, this is the only kind of deliverance we can picture. This is the only kind of thing that we are asking God for. God isn’t good until He gets us out of this thing and gives us back what we lost. When he restores us fully to where we were when we were happy and comfortable, when he does that, then we’re delivered. That’s where a lot of us are. But Paul, pictures something more complex than that. It starts with not wanting to be ashamed in ministry. That’s where he starts it. He doesn’t mean, by the way, being ashamed of being in prison. He means being ashamed of doing something to dishonor God while he’s in prison. In the early centuries of the church, when Rome was persecuting Christians, it was common for people to recant their faith in Jesus, to deny Jesus publicly in order to save their lives. We don’t experience that, so we don’t know what that’s like. But it was actually quite a big discussion within the early church because they didn’t know what to do with folks who would do that to save their lives. When they recanted, do we let them back into the church? How do we talk to them? How do we share Christian life with them? Can we anymore? The church was a little divided on that issue. This is part of Paul’s example of endurance to us. We should be careful when we are going through difficult times and difficult circumstances not to do anything that would bring shame to Jesus. Paul saying, I don’t want to shame the Lord while I’m in prison. I don’t want to deny him. I don’t want to turn people away from the gospel that I represent while I’m here.

Same for us. That should be something that we’re thinking about when we’re going through struggle. How am I showing people Jesus in this? I don’t want to put him to shame. I’ve known folks who have no trouble at all honoring the Lord with their words and their behavior when things are going well. But it’s all out the window when things are going poorly. Suddenly it’s I don’t know if God’s good anymore. I don’t know if I’m a Christian. I’m not sure what to think about God. Paul says deliverance starts with glorifying Christ in the midst of the trial. And then he says, instead of the shame of denying Christ, he’s asking for the courage that he always had before his imprisonment. So I want to have the courage. I want to have the same sort of life I had before the imprisonment. I want to model that here while I’m imprisoned and serving Jesus. So when people look at him now, when they see that he’s in prison now, when they look at him and they knew him before prison, when they do that, they say, you know what, that’s the same, Paul. That’s the same guy. He has as much passion for Jesus now as he had when things were going well for him. This courage now has to extend, though, for Paul, all the way to his life. See, he recognizes that he is facing possible execution and he wants to remain firmly committed to Jesus. He needs to share the gospel and defend his life, knowing full well that it might end in death. So the courage he needs right now is to be able to say, my body will honor Jesus. My presence, my physical form will honor Jesus, whether they release it or whether they kill it. I’m going to honor Jesus. If I go free, praise God. If they execute me, praise God.

Now I can make sense of that kind of courage, of needing that kind of courage. And I’m sure you can, too. I mean, you look at that, you think, yeah, that’s that’s what I would need in that moment. Here’s how I would approach that if it were me and how I have seen this handled by godly people in dire circumstances. You know what I would say? I would say, God, give me the courage to honor you through this. Give me eyes to see what you’re accomplishing. Give me faith. Just persevere. Give me the words to share your goodness and your gospel. So basically I’d be saying let me suffer well while I’m in this situation. Church, that is that is godly courage. And I want that for us. I want that for you and me. But there’s something more being said here too. There’s something more than that. See, Paul calls both outcomes deliverance. He calls them both deliverance. Both of those outcomes are rescue. Why can Paul call his full release from prison and his execution deliverance? Here’s why. For me to live is Christ. And to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet, which I shall choose I cannot tell. I’m hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ. For that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

We try so hard to preserve life, including myself here. We try so hard to preserve life that this almost does not make sense to us. It almost doesn’t make sense. This line of reasoning that underlies Paul’s courageous commitment to Christ is so foreign to our entire American value system that I had difficulty this week putting it into words that would even make sense to us. That would make sense to even me. See, we are so focused on celebrating and enjoying life as a culture, we’re all about life, that for me to stand here this morning and say that we make a too big a deal out of life. That we hold it too tightly. That we sometimes make it an idol. Well, that just seems like the kind of thing that everybody’s going to tune out pretty quickly. If I say that to you. If I say that to me. Right? So let’s do this.

I really want you to dial in here for just a moment. For a few minutes this morning, I’m going to walk through this thought by thought. And while I do this, I want you to try to suspend in yourself that insatiable desire to live the longest, happiest life that you possibly can. I want you to try to suspend that thought for the next few minutes. I want you to challenge yourself to think about your impending death. That’s what I want you to think about. Just for a few minutes. I want you to think about your impending death. I realize that I should have been preaching this when it wasn’t so nice out here in Minnesota. I get that, right? This is much better in February. But I want you to just think about that for a minute. The great Puritan pastor, Jonathan Edwards, had a resolution where he was resolved to think about his death every day. I am not asking for that. I’m asking for the next few minutes. Here’s what makes both life and death rescue from prison. Two things. To live is Christ. To live, to take off those chains and walk out of there a free man means Christ to Paul. Deliverance there seems pretty obvious, but Paul is saying that the main point would be that he’s breathing. The main point would be that God has more for him to do on this earth to serve Christ.

He’s not just thinking deliverance means I get to live. He’s thinking deliverance means I get to serve. I get to serve. To live means to glorify Christ with the continued use of this body in ministry. The same body that was beaten for the gospel, that was exhausted from travel, that was anxious for all these churches that he planted, that felt sorrow over his fellow Jewish brothers and sisters who would not come to Jesus. That body, Paul says, would continue in ministry. Paul is not envisioning a change in direction ‘if God will just get him out of this’. You ever prayed that prayer before? He’s not saying, If I could just get out of this, I would be delivered. He’s going to go right back to serving Jesus Christ in the same way that got him thrown into prison the first time. Living on in the flesh to Paul means fruitful ministry. To live as Christ. Do you want to know how to assess whether God has important things left for you to do here on Earth? You are still here. That’s it. That’s the whole assessment. You don’t have to do any more tests. That’s it. You are still here. For a Christian to be alive is to live for Christ. There’s no second reason. There’s no other purpose given to you by yourself or by the universe. That’s the reason you’re here. God makes us for His glory. And as long as we can breathe, our assignment is to live and bring glory to our Creator.

You are here because faithful labor remains for you. Fruitful labor remains for you. God will let you know when that fruitful labor is over. He will take you out. Okay? That’s how you’ll know. Every life lasts just as long as God intends for it. And I know that’s a difficult thought given some of the tragedy in our country recently. Every life lasts as long as God intended. God’s sovereignty extends and includes every tragedy. As long as we still walk around and have air in our lungs, that’s a sure sign that God has some role within his kingdom, within his divine plan for us to accomplish. To live is to live for Christ. Christians know this and it’s one half, it’s one half of what gives us endurance. Here’s the other half. To die is gain. Now, here’s where it starts to go off the rails. Here’s where it starts to not make sense to our American ears. Most of us who follow Jesus have no trouble with that first half. We understand that to follow Jesus means to serve Jesus. We get that. We enjoy that part to the most degree, right? We like that. We, at least in theory, understand that our lives are meant for Christ. But even we have trouble seeing death as gain in any sense. Now, sure, we might speak about it, we might speak in those terms if we are at a funeral and the dying is already done, and now what we’re doing is we’re comforting one another, and that’s when we start to talk like this. But we don’t think and talk and make decisions like this while we’re still alive. We don’t think like this now. We don’t have a fully biblical understanding of death. We don’t see the value of it. We know that biblically, death is the result of sin, and then it’s an enemy. And that means that we were not made to die. Which is why we are sad when people we love pass away. That’s all true, by the way. That’s all a part of it. That’s biblical. That’s the part of death that we all feel. It’s all what we know innately. It’s hardwired in us to hate death. That’s why it’s so wonderful that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a death-defying feat and that He defeats death. And we celebrate that aspect of it by putting our faith in Jesus. But there’s another way of seeing death. There’s another way of seeing death, and we need to include it in our theology. Death is also gain. My desire is to depart and be with Christ. For that is far better. Far better than what? Far better than the fruitful labor in a living body on earth, Church, that’s what he’s comparing it to. Far better than your summer vacation. You got some plans? I know I do.

I’m excited about my summer vacation plans. I got Northern Michigan, Mackinac Island, Great Lakes, summer living on the schedule. Right? That’s gonna be great. I got fishing in an actual lake coming up. That’s going to be cool. I get the majesty and the glory of God’s creation to commune with God in coming up. What do you got coming up? Whatever it is, death leads to something far better. Far better than everything you hope to accomplish. Some of you younger adults and college students, you’re home for the summer. You’ve got big plans for your future. You got big plans for your future and that’s wonderful. Go do it all for the glory of Christ. But remember, someday you’re going to be done. God is going to take you out, your body will be in the ground and you will be with Jesus. And that will be far better than anything you can do or feel or accomplish right now. Death is an enemy because it’s the result of sin, but it is also the doorway to the presence of Jesus Christ. And being with him will be far better, will be far better than anything that you’re doing right now. And when you bring this fully biblical view of death into the way that you think about life in this world, it has a huge influence. You start to loosen that grip on the importance of having the longest, happiest, most fulfilling, most fun life that you can possibly have, that everybody in this world tells you is the most important thing that you can do. Start to let go of that a little bit. And you can see why. If your joy is solely found in Jesus, then serving him in this world would actually be less desirable than being in his presence, being with him in person. That’s why Paul can’t choose here. He says he’s hard pressed between these two outcomes. By the way, when he says he can’t choose, it doesn’t mean that he gets to have the choice of what happens. It just means that he’s wrestling with his own understanding of what he would want, what he prefers to have happen. He’s delivered either way. He’s delivered either way. But he’s thinking that the best outcome for him at this point would actually be execution because it would mean he would get to hang out directly with Jesus instead of having to merely be in the world serving Jesus. Now, here’s the thing. I have known Christians who feel this way. They tend to be older. They tend to be people in chronic pain. They tend to be people in some very difficult situation. See, they see dying as gain because they love Jesus and they feel like they’ve got nothing left to accomplish. They are, as they say, ready to go at any time. And for these dear brothers and sisters who I believe have figured out this truth that I’m talking about right now.

The challenge, really, is to live as Christ. You live right now because there is fruitful kingdom ministry for you to do. Sitting around waiting to die isn’t what Paul is advocating here either. What we need is to see Christ in both directions. We need to see Christ in both directions. Life means serving Christ. Death means being with Christ. Do you remember in Colossians when Jesus described you, you were made through Him and for Him, remember that? You’re made through Him and you’re made for Him. This is what that looks like in practice. The more fully you embrace to live as Christ, to die as gain, two things will begin to happen. You’ll endure everything with joy. No difficulty will overcome you. I mean, how could it? Even if this trial takes you out, there’s Jesus. Well done good and faithful servant. That’s a wonderful truth to be able to hang on to. Even if I don’t get through this thing. Jesus is there. That’s fantastic. The other thing, though, that will happen as you will begin to make fearless choices when serving and being with Jesus is the most precious thing to you. Safety and security become far less important. I’m not saying that you should do unsafe or foolish things. I’m saying that the idea of serving in sacrificial ways to spread the Gospel, to advance the Kingdom of God will become much more appealing.

So which one will it be for Paul? Let’s see. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus because of my coming to you again. Paul doesn’t actually know what’s going to happen to him, but when he weighs it out in his mind, he believes that the need that the Philippines have for his continued leadership means that he will remain alive, serving Jesus. He’ll be released from prison. So I know you’re thinking. Is that what happened? That’s what I was thinking. Is that what happened? I haven’t talked a whole lot. And in fact, I haven’t talked really at all about the location and date that this letter was written. Paul is in a Roman prison with Roman guards, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s in Rome, because at that time Rome was everywhere. So he could be in a Roman prison in lots of different places. There are three main theories. I think only two of them actually make sense. He most likely wrote it in either Rome in the early sixties or eroded in Ephesus in the mid fifties. We’re talking first century at this point. And there’s actually a strong case for both Rome and Ephesus. Though I’m not I’m not going to lay out the case for that here this morning.

The early church father Origen wrote, “Only God knows where Philippians was really written.” So if you think me and my commentaries figured it out this week in my office, you’re going to be disappointed. What’s interesting to me about this, though, is that if it was Ephesus, Paul was right. He was released. But if it was Rome, he was wrong. Because he was executed in Rome. But regardless of whether Paul got the future right or wrong here, look at what he intends to do with his remaining time. He’s going to use this time to help this church progress in their faith. He’s going to help them have joy in their faith. They’re going to have glory in Christ. He’s not going to go sit the bench and watch the clock run down, even if every one of us would give him permission to do so after being released from prison. I imagine we would if he showed up here. Can you imagine if one of our missionaries was overseas and they were in prison for a few years and then they came home? We probably wouldn’t put them in charge of VBS right away, don’t you think? Right? Probably not. Then we’d give them a little break here. But Paul doesn’t have a category for that. Paul doesn’t have a category for a bench or a sidelined Christian. There are only two places a Christian can be: serving Jesus or with Jesus. It’s the only two. Christians, there are only two places you can be. To live is Christ. You are breathing because Jesus has a plan for you right now on this earth that includes your time and talent. That is the reason that you are here. There are people who need your love and care. There are there are people who need your bold witness. There’s a whole community of people who need to see you abandon the fleeting values of this world and model a life that is given over to Christ in every way. They need to see doctors who will practice medicine to the glory of God, and they need to see people who will suffer illnesses for the same glory. They need to see younger people give their futures to Jesus, and they need to see older people give their retirement years to Jesus. You are here because there is fruitful ministry for you. That’s one place that you can be, my Christian friends.

Here is the other. To die is gain. You can live boldly and courageously. Come with me. No matter what happens, you can live boldly and courageously. Because at the end of this short life, there is an eternity with the one who made us. If you pour out this life for Christ, it is no waste. Because the moment you are completely empty, you’ll be with Jesus. The life you live for Him will now be lived with him for eternity. Would you pray with me?