Lights in the World

It is God’s desire for us that we be so counter-cultural as a body of believers that we stand out in the world, like light shining in darkness.

Oh, good. You’re all here. That didn’t scare you off last week talking about not grumbling or complaining. That’s good. Glad to hear it. I’m right there with you, by the way. I’m right there with you. I was voted biggest whiner in high school. That’s true. You know, those superlatives that they vote for? For all the different people in the graduating class of that year, I was voted biggest whiner. I got four of those actually. I got four of those different awards. I don’t remember all of them. I know I tied for Most Likely to succeed, which felt really good. But then they balance that out with Biggest Whiner to keep me humble, I guess. I remember it was a very catch 22 moment because when I found out that I had received this award, I felt really bad about it. But then what do you do at that point? Right. So apparently back in high school, my argumentative spirit and style came off as whining enough times to make me the biggest whiner. I did like to debate, but not so much anymore. Really? Now? Now we live in a world of complaints. I was just ahead of my time. I was gearing up. We can’t turn on the TV today without seeing people shouting each other. I want you to try something this week. I want you to try something. I want you to turn on some cable news. It’s got to be evening cable news, not the daytime stuff where they’re telling you facts and things like that. No, no, no. I want you to wait till the end of the day. And I want you to see the kind of cable news where there’s like a split screen and one person is shouting, the other person is just shaking their head like, wait till my turn to talk. That’s what I want. I want you to watch as much of that as you can stand. And then I want you to quickly flip over to National Geographic. So, I want to just be rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. The majestic bald eagle. You will feel your heart rate. Suddenly you’ll be like, Oh. That is nice. I feel so good. It’s like jumping out of the pool and into the hot tub, you know? This feels good.

Historically, cultures tend to fall on a spectrum somewhere between the needs of the community and the needs of the individual. So if you think of a spectrum at both ends, needs of the community, one end needs are the of the individual at the other. We as a culture are very much toward the individual side of that spectrum. And it has its perks by the way, being down on that end, because it gives us a lot of freedom and actually gives us a lot of self-motivation being down on that end. But it also tends to make us into victims and grumblers when we do not get what we want. If you are a parent with a lot of kids, or if you have a job where you are in charge of a lot of people, you tend to be a manager of complaints, don’t you? Sort of the job description. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to work in the customer service department of a department store. Oh, my goodness. God bless you, people. That must be a very, very – I can’t imagine what your day is like. It’s a blessing that we have free speech in our culture. That’s a good thing. And there are times when we need to speak up, when we need to speak our minds, when we need to advocate either for ourselves or for other people. But an abundance of complaining and grumbling not only undermines our Christian witness, it also is an indication that we don’t have our focus in the right place. It’s God’s desire for us that we, as his followers, as Christians, be so countercultural as a body of believers that we stand out in the world like lights shining in darkness. Part of our working out of our salvation into every area of our lives has to do with how we stand out in the world. And two weeks ago, Paul told us to do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit.

So at that time, he told us to look internally. Look at your heart, what motivates you, what’s going on inside of you? Today he’s going to have us look at our behavior and assess what it communicates to the world around us. So we’re going to look at ourselves externally today. If you have your Bible, you can go ahead and open to Philippians 2:14. We’re going to look at verses 14 to 18 today, and I’m going to go ahead and read the whole thing at once, because the first three verses of this passage are one giant run on sentence. So you need to hear it kind of all at once. We’re going to read the whole section first, and then I’m going to unpack each of the details so that we can see why it’s so vital for us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, to eliminate grumbling and complaining. This is Philippians 2:14-18: “Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.”

Now let’s break this down into roughly, roughly three parts. First of all, there’s a command from Paul. Do all things without grumbling or disputing. Disputing is arguing with each other. Grumbling is arguing with yourself. That’s kind of how you could look at it. Basically, disputing is creating divisions with other people and grumbling is complaining about it afterwards when you don’t get your way. You say, Kyle, I do not complain. I vent. Well, please keep going then, right? Now we give ourselves a lot of free passes for our own behavior, don’t we? We do, we call it different things, so it doesn’t sound quite like what the Bible is talking about. We know that it is. Two weeks ago, Paul told us to do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit. Now he’s saying, Look at yourself, look at what’s happening. Look at what you’re actually doing in your life. What is  actually coming out of you. And be honest about that. This is one of those commands where faithfulness can be very difficult because it’s hard to know when you’ve crossed the line. We need to say truthful things. We do. We need to say them. And sometimes those truthful things can be frustrating. How do we know when we stopped being helpfully truthful and when we’ve started to dispute and grumble in a sinful way? If two people are not seeing eye to eye on something, then they’re having a disagreement and they need to talk it out. But here’s the thing. That discussion on that disagreement is not automatically sinful, simply because there’s a disagreement. That’s not what he means. To make peace with each other, Jesus tells us how to do this. He says, you’ve got to get the log out of your own eye first, but then you’ll be able to see clearly to get the speck out of your brother’s eye. I think about the implications of that. The implication is when you discuss with one another, I expect that you will helpfully help your brother or sister see more clearly. You’re going to use this disagreement as an opportunity to get to a place where you both see more clearly. That’s a disagreement. You’re working toward agreement; you’re working toward peace. You’re working toward having one mind and one heart. The dispute here, the one that Paul is talking about in this passage is an ongoing conflict where the two sides are not seeking peace. And we know that because it’s partnered with grumbling. And we know the kind of dispute here because it’s partnered up with grumbling, which is an ongoing complaining. It’s a sour spirit that invades your home or invades your friend group, or sometimes it can invade your entire church. We also know that this is that kind of disputing because it affects the witness of the church to the rest of the non-Christian community, which will see here in a moment.

So we’re not talking about a difference of opinion and then seeking peace on that. This is fighting in the church. This is ongoing conflict. And this will kill a church. Ongoing conflict in church will kill a church. Churches that allow fighting to continue eventually fall apart. Same with grumbling. Same with grumbling. If you think of fighting as the open battlefield conflict, so fighting is the sort of the hot war, it’s the words that we say to one another, then grumbling is what happens in between those skirmishes. Grumbling and complaining are like cancer in a church community, it usually goes along with gossip. So if I’m not fighting openly with someone, I’m trashing them, not in their presence, with other people. Right? And so that sort of dynamic happens over time. And that attitude, if allowed to continue unchecked and unaddressed, spreads to other people and it becomes like church disease. I remember years ago in a church where I served, there was a particular small group that had become incredibly unhealthy. Just this one small group, just very unhealthy. He had a few people in it who liked every time the group got together to spend just a little bit of that time talking about things that were happening in the church that they didn’t like, sort of the way they started the thing off before getting into their study. And eventually the whole group became unstable as the complaining came to dominate more and more of the small group time. And eventually every meeting just became a church meeting about what should and shouldn’t be done. And eventually that group had to dissolve because it wasn’t making disciples of Jesus anymore. What it was creating was people with critical spirits. That was the kind of disciple now, the critical student. The reason Paul has to issue this command here to the church is that it is very easy for us to lose our focus on being a disciple or make a Christ-centered church if we give in to the temptation to allow ongoing fighting and complaining. And there are huge consequences, huge consequences if we allow that to happen.

The second part of this passage tells us why this is so important that we not grumble and dispute. This church community that each of us are part of has a role in the greater Rochester community. You see in verse 15 where it says, “Among whom you shine as lights in the world”? We collectively as a church must do everything without disputing or grumbling, because all of us individually, as people, shine as lights in the world. The implication here is that your light to the world is impacted by the behavior of your church. The effectiveness of your light in this community is impacted by this community. A reputation of peace and gentleness in your church helps your personal mission in the world. And on the other hand, a scandalized church plagued with reputation for fighting and complaining hurts your personal witness. You as missionaries for Christ in this community will be helped or hurt by the reputation that Calvary has in Rochester. Now let’s back up to verse 15 and see how we got here. To do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish. How many of you would say that you right now have grown in Christ to the point that you would say that your life is without blemish? Show of hands. Anybody? Anybody? Okay. I know. You’re kidding with me. No? Me neither. Right. Without blemish. What is Paul saying here? What is he insinuating? Is he setting the church up for failure? Is he expecting too much of us, to be able to live without blemish? Well. Paul is laying out the goal here for all what he calls children of God, which is his phrase for people who trust Jesus, who follow Jesus, who are now being sanctified or cleansed in their lives by Jesus. And so he uses family language to describe this relationship. You’re no longer strangers to God. If you know Jesus, you are now a child in God’s family. And in our new household there are household rules. Just like in your household.

In God’s household, there’s way things work. There’s a way to act and think. For example, in this house, we care about the needs of other people just as much as we care about our own needs. Why? Why do we do that? Well, because Big Brother Jesus, who perfectly modeled humble sacrifice, is the model for our way of treating each other. That’s why. In this household, we do not fight and complain. We talk, we find peace. We collaborate with each other. Why do we do that? Well, because our big brother, Jesus, who perfectly modeled gentleness and respect and submission to the father, not only taught us love, he actually made peace by sacrificing himself. He stepped in and took it on himself to make peace with us. That’s why. So the goal is not to just do better. The goal is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and to become more and more like Jesus every day. And that means our goal is not slightly less complaining. We’re not trying to just be a little bit better than those around us. Our goal is the perfection of Christ. That’s where our eyes are set. And that’s Paul’s goal for us here. As children of God, our goal is to create a household where peace is established in every interaction. We should be consistently challenging each other. There should be a consistent challenge between us and between all of you, with each other, in your communities, in your ministries, in your small groups to be to be more like Jesus. We should be challenging others to seek peace, to root out bitterness, to reconcile when we hear of fighting going on or bitterness or anger or grumbling or even the tension of those things. When you hear grumbling, you should say to that person, have you gone to that other person and talk to them about it? Have you done that? You should feel open to be able to say that to one another. Boy, I hear you really upset. Have you gone to that person and spoken with them about this issue? When you’re on a ministry team in this church and you don’t see eye to eye with somebody, you should be working toward consensus. And finding that sort of consensus, finding that teamwork actually requires a lot of humility and a lot of compromise. Now you hear that word compromise. You say, Kyle. Kyle, we can’t, we can’t compromise on biblical issues and on the Word of God. We cannot compromise on the word of God. Agreed. But two things. One, this is the word of God we’re looking at right now. Right? This is it. Here it is. This is part of the Word of God. If we’re not going to compromise the word of God, well, this would have to be included in that, right? So a very thorough review of our attitude is in order because of our lack of compromise with God’s word.

But secondly, let’s not confuse our preferences with God’s commands. And this is really hard, isn’t it? Let’s not confuse what we want with what God actually commands. Just because we want something and feel strongly about it doesn’t make that thing God’s best for the church. You heard James 4 read earlier in the service. You desire and do not have, so you murder, you covet and cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. Passions that cause fights in the church aren’t always rooted in righteousness, no matter how much we believe them to be. No matter how much. What every church community needs, including our church here at Calvary, is a distaste for any type of fighting and grumbling that would take away from the blamelessness, purity and flawlessness of Jesus. We should have such a distaste for that in our mouths that we would reject any way, any direction that would go into the quarreling, fighting and grumbling. We need to have such a desire to live out the good news of Christ that disputing and grumbling would be unnatural to the culture of our church. That it would seem weird. It should be weird when you hear of an ongoing problem between brothers and sisters here at Calvary. That should be very strange to you. Really? At Calvary? That should be unsettling to hear complaining. And on the other hand, it should be totally natural for you to see brothers and sisters in Christ consistently deferring to the needs of others and working toward consensus, even when they don’t agree on something. Even when there’s disagreement, you should see a working toward peace and consensus, and that should be very natural. I’ll give you two examples from our church. The leadership board that gives direction to Calvary does not always see eye to eye on every issue. Are you surprised? Did you know that? Especially that Satterblom? Very hard to work with that guy. Very tough. Seriously.

We bring different perspectives to the table and we should. That’s a good thing. It would be a problem if everybody in leadership always saw eye to eye on every single thing and all we saw from the same exact angle and we never, ever sharpened one another. That would be a problem. But as we work, as we do the leadership work, our aim is one mindedness, and the decisions that we make are better for having wrestled through them. Our goal, however imperfectly we do it, is to be unified and to model that unity. The second example I’ll give you is of our staff. And the goal there is the same thing. We spend a little bit of time each week in our meeting just talking through and wrestling with what it looks like to have a healthy leadership culture in our church, to build trust and love so that we can lead these different ministries, but in collaboration with one another and in a God honoring way. We work really hard toward that because we’re not just an organization, we’re not just pumping out products here. We are a church family. We’re a family of God. We’re a household that’s supposed to look more and more like Jesus all the time. And the reason Paul says this is so important is that the church community is supposed to stand out in a crooked and twisted generation. So it’s supposed to look right-way. It’s supposed to look untwisted. It’s supposed to look natural in a twisted world. Think about what our culture values right now. It actually values grumbling and disputing. These aren’t problems. These are virtues in our culture. Bringing your anger down on other people, calling out enemies, waging wars against perceived injustice with your YouTube channel, and finding fault everywhere and telling the world how upset you are. What does that do? It makes you brave, right? That makes you that makes you stand out. That makes you a hero of our culture. Carefully considering the thoughts of others and adjusting your own with new knowledge? No, no, no. I won’t do that. Turning the other cheek when you’ve been slighted. Oh. Only if you’re a weakling. Well, if you can’t stand up for what you believe in, I find it very ironic that one of the newer things to do in our culture is to publicly shame people for having bad demanding attitudes toward other people. That is very ironic in our culture. And if you do this and you are a lady, they call you a Karen. And by the way, if your name is actually Karen and you are a very sweet person, may I apologize to you on behalf of humanity? Humanity has not treated you well. I don’t know how that happened for you. It has to have been a rough couple of years here for you now. I find it tremendously ironic that people are being shamed for their poor attitudes by people with poor attitudes evidenced by the fact that they spend their day at their keyboard, shaming other people for their poor attitudes, don’t you? It’s a very weird world that we live in now. Our world is a confusing mess of political disputes, misplaced anger, cancel culture, faux righteousness directed at anyone who doesn’t agree with us.

And in the midst of all that, God sets down his church. He sets down his church. Like a lamp. Like a beacon of peace in the middle of a dark storm of anger and complaint. The peacefulness and the camaraderie of the church is part of the attractive love of Jesus that is meant to draw people who don’t know Jesus yet to himself. Notice the word there – lights is a plural word. There’s more than one of them. The command not to grumble and fight is a command to the church community as a whole. But that church piece affects each individual person who is a light in the world. It’s not talking about the lights necessarily of the church, although that certainly is an implication here. But it’s specifically talking about each individual light, each individual person, your personal witness. For Christ in the places God has you in in this community is affected one way or another by the culture of your church. If you’re part of a church that is known for its peacefulness, known for the love and health of the community, then your personal witness in the community is going to have credibility because you’re going to be able to say, come and see the difference Jesus makes. Come and see what it’s like to be in a place that’s untwisted, that’s right side up. If you’ve ever been part of a church full of controversy or that’s unhealthy in its relationships, you know how hard that can be on your personal witnessing to the community. That’s why scandal in the church is so damaging. The church is the body of Christ, and so scandal in the church is read by the community as scandal in Christ. Or representative; you represent Jesus and you’re like that? Well, what difference does Jesus make then? You’re just like the world. A fighting and grumbling church undermines the mission of Jesus, and a church that loves peace and truth and that values each other more than our own preferences empowers each of us for the mission of Jesus.

Well, the third part of this passage tells us the way we maintain this kind of church. Holding fast to the word of life. We don’t avoid the trap of argument and grumbling by telling ourselves not to argue and grumble. We do it by holding closely to Christ and His Word. We hold closely to God’s direction for us. See, holding fast is holding with a strong grip. We don’t use that word holding fast anymore, but it means to be so united to something that you just can’t break with it. We grip Jesus, his examples, his commands, his life-giving gospel, and we make them the center of our community. And yes, we reject worldly ways of interacting with each other. We reject the bitterness. We refuse to grumble along with those who grumble. But we do this by having such a strong grip on the peace and love of Christ that we will not let go of it. Let me ask you something. Which one is easier? Which one is easier? Going home and complaining about someone who bothers you, or going to that person and resolving the issue? Which one is easier to do. 100 times out of 100, complaining is easier. Right? 100 times out of 100. But it will undermine your heart. It’ll undermine you. It’ll undermine your understanding of the gospel, undermine your church family, and ultimately your ability to show the gospel in this community. Holding fast to Christ takes more energy. It’s harder. It’s harder to hang on to the gospel and work it out into every aspect of your life, including those relationships where you have a problem because you are going to be swimming upstream of the world that’s flowing in the opposite direction. And you’re going to be flowing against even the current of your own sinful inclinations and the self-righteousness that’s in your heart that says, I’m right in this situation. You will be flowing, you’ll be swimming against all of that flow. But it’s worth it. It’s worth it. It’s redemptive for your relationships. Which strengthens your own faith in Christ, which builds up your church community, makes us more effective as a witness to our community, and ultimately it prepares us for the day that we stand before Christ. Paul says when he gets to the day of Christ, he wants to be able to look at the Philippine church as an example of how his effort for Jesus was not for nothing. That it wasn’t wasted. He says even if he’s poured out like a drink offering, meaning he’s given over to death in prison to die for what he did to plant this Philippine church and the other churches that he’s in trouble for planting, it will be worth it. He’ll be like a sacrifice to the Lord, like a drink offering poured out before the Lord. And He’s going to rejoice about that. He is happy about that. And he says, Church, rejoice with me in this because they’ll be standing there before the Lord someday and they’re going to be thankful. They’ll be able to say, look at this church that was faithful even in an unfaithful world. Lord, look at this body of believers who swam against the current. Who swam against the stream of the world. And live for you in it. They were lights. So how do we do it? How do we do that? Maybe you’re not the biggest whiner of an entire high school graduating class. I don’t know, maybe you are. Come talk to me if you are. I’d feel better. But maybe you are not that but are prone to get worked up when things don’t go your way. Maybe you’re inclined to get upset. Maybe you’re inclined to grumble. What if you find yourself falling into the pattern of letting anger turn into complaining and complaining into bitterness? What if you’re known more for your heat than for your light?

I want you to remember something, and I want you to do something. I want you to remember something, and I want you to do something. You need to remember that the Gospel that saves you is also the Gospel that makes you new. The Gospel that saves you, the good news of Christ that saved you and brought you out of the pit of your sin and into this family of God so that you are children of God, that gospel not only saves you, but it cleanses you. It makes you new. In Christ, the father turned his wrath away from us. The very heart of the Gospel is God sacrificing himself to settle His anger and to bring peace to those who are opposed to him. If you trust in Christ, the power of His Holy Spirit is at work in you. It’s at work in you. You need to remember who you are in Christ. And then you need to let the Lord overcome your sinful tendency toward fighting and toward complaining. And then once you remember this, this thing, you need to go and make peace. You need to do the hard work. You need to go to your brother or sister in Christ and say, there’s just too much at stake for us to keep fighting. There’s too much at stake. It’s not just you and me. It’s you and me and our families and our church and the mission of Christ. All of that is at stake in this relationship. We need to make peace here. You might need to go to some people that you’ve been grumbling to and apologize for stirring up those emotions and dragging them to your side into the grumbling with you. I know that’s not the way the world works. I know that would be incredibly hard. It is not the way the world works. But who wants to watch the world work? I want to watch Christ at work. Let us pray.