This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Philippians” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, May 26, 1991.
About this sermon
Paul rejoices in Christ even while fellow Jews bring real charges against him. The church’s most dangerous attacks come from inside, subtler and harder to name than those from outside. Rejoicing in tribulation bears witness to God’s sovereignty.
Sermon transcript
the Philippians, the first chapter, we are beginning with verse 12. Hear the word of God. By which ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel, so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places.
And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife, and some also of goodwill. One preached Christ of contention, not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my bonds, but the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. What then?
Notwithstanding every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and my hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, But that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death.
For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor. I shall choose, I know not, for I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.”
Having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of the faith, that your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.” I suppose that one of the most famous verses from the Philippians is the verse that we find in the fourth chapter, the fourth verse. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.
That instruction from the apostle is not something that hangs out there in the air. It’s not something detached. It’s not advice that he is giving to these Philippian Christians that does not register well upon him. for the instruction that the apostle gives at that point to these Philippians is something that has been well worked out in his own life. So here is one, if you’re looking for such a one, here is one who practices what he preaches.
If he’s going to tell others to rejoice, and yes, again, I’ll tell you, rejoice, he’s one who has already drunk deeply of that well of rejoicing and seen the joy multiply in himself. When he gives instructions, then he speaks out of his soul and out of the reality of what he is.
Did you hear the twofold rejoicing of the Apostle as we read our text this morning? That twofold rejoicing that answers to the instruction that he gives later to the Philippians, rejoice, and again I say rejoice, will you find it there in the 18th verse of the 1st chapter? What then? Only that in every way, whether it pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. And in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice, there it is, the twofold rejoicing of the Apostle that then is enjoined upon these Christians in Philippi.
Why, the utter consistency of it should enable us just as that, especially when we take stock of ourselves. And we realize that we might speak well, but we don’t act so well. We might mean well, but we don’t do so well. We might say things that don’t find any reflex in our lives whatsoever. Our doctrine is over here, and our lives are over here. And sadly and tragically, too often. The case is, and remains so, that our doctrine is at one level, our life at another.
Is it any wonder, then, that the apostle, and he does not do this in a spirit of vanity, He is not a man pumped up with himself, but is it any wonder that the Apostle, so energetically and strenuously giving himself to that consistent faith of doctrine and life, can say what he says?
For instance, in verse 17 of the third chapter, he says there, Brethren, join in following my example.” Who’s this guy? I think it is. Join in following my example. He’s actually holding himself out there. “…and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.” Referring to himself, and also Timothy, who’s joining him in this letter. But then you turn over to the fourth chapter again, and you note the fourth, or rather the ninth verse. After that glorious rhapsody in the eighth verse, finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, etc., etc., Then the ninth verse says, these things, or the things you have learned and perceived and heard and seen and meet, practice these things, and the God of peace shall be with you. That’s bold talk.
Now, please understand, as I’ve always said, The apostle here is not on some sort of ego trip. At the same time, he’s not intending to lay upon these Christians a burden, further burden, which merely accentuates their weakness and reveals just how pitiful they are.
Incapable of even lifting their hand to do belief, spiritual good. Why? That’s all. He’s quite a guy, but I guess I’ll never quite measure up. He seems to have it all together. What a wonderful Christian he is, but… I mean, I don’t dare go into wives to that level. I’m never going to give a Christian the fault. Don’t you see, Paul’s serious here.
He sets himself in front of these Philippian Christians as the example. He’s fully expecting them to follow him. He’s fully expecting them to be able to match doctrine and life as he does. He’s fully expecting them to be consistent. And He’s doing this not in a spirit whereby He might lay further weight upon them, weight they cannot bear. He is doing it in order to encourage them with regard to the strength that is now theirs through Christ and the resources that have become theirs because they are united to Him.
And it’s true, I have no power in myself. Paul will be the first to say that. He’s about to confess, even to these Philippians, it is God’s work that I’m supposed to do, and the will of His revelation. The strength isn’t coming from me, it is coming from Him. If there is example to be found in me, it is because there is example to be found in Christ. And not only example in Christ, but power, power to follow after him. Power, in fact, to be conformed more and more to what Jesus Christ himself is.
Rejoice. He says it lovingly. There’s a moment of encouragement in what he says. He’s not being judgmental here. He’s preaching for the encouragement of these things. Rejoice. Can you understand it? Rejoice. Now, marvelously, the Lord has given us in the Apostle Paul one who is face-to-face with all the physical and spiritual extremities that life can heap upon one. You get the point of it. Here’s the guy who’s going through it in the extreme. But this is the guy who rejoices and will rejoice, according to his own testimony in Chapter 118. The man who is in the most extreme circumstances, he is the one who is rejoicing.
Then we come to our own situation. Then the Apostle Paul isn’t here saying, well, you know, my circumstances are worse than your circumstances, and if I can do it, you can do it. That isn’t his tone at all. His tone, rather, is, if the Lord can be so gracious in me, in bringing me through my predicament and my situation, he’s definitely, for sure, is gracious to you. May my rejoicing then, in my strength, be an encouragement to you in your distress.
And what about the astrology that the Apostle faces? He has been doing good. Collecting an offering for a poor in Jerusalem during his third missionary journey, carrying the offering with him back to Jerusalem in order to give the gifts of the Church to the saints there that were suffering.
And while he’s there, you know how it went, he was arrested. What were the charges? He was charged with being a blasphemer. Can you imagine? The knife in the heart. Here’s Paul, transparently zealous for God, and he is charged with being a blasphemer. Not only that, you hear of his pedigree, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, born of the tribe of Benjamin, truly a Jew if there ever was one. But yet, what do the Jews in Jerusalem charge him with? They charge him with anti-Semitism.
He opposes us and our nation, they say. He is charged with beating Antinomy? What does that mean? That means that he is contrary to, even filled with a hatred for Moses and the law. Rejecting an opponent to the law in that he sees Moses as the enemy. That’s what the Jews charge. And he is an enemy of the institutions of Israel, particularly the Temple.
They say he defiled it by bringing a Gentile into the courts of it. Those are the charges which must go right to the heart of the man. But the ordeal is not over. Word gets out, the Jews are plotting to kill him. So the Roman police whisk him away out of Jerusalem, down to the seacoast town of Caesarea.
It’s not a Roman terrifying case, he’s there for two years, for better than two years, in prison. Delegations are coming down from Jerusalem, lawyers come down, they make their accusations, they present their charges before the governors, successively, Felix and Festus. Paul making his defense, and then making his defense before King Herod of Britain. And he, being a Roman citizen, then taking full advantage of his Roman citizenship, appeals to the emperor. So off he goes, and ends the trip. Quite an ordeal on his way to Rome. You can read about this in chapters 21 through 28 of Acts. It’s primitive.
And in the midst of it, a soul that is being trained to rejoice and to always say, yes, and I will rejoice. So we find him in Rome. And the description of his imprisonment there in Philippians chapter 1, verses 12 through 14, And how, in his view of that imprisonment, he is seeing the positive outpouring of the purposes of God, even through those things which man has intended for him. So great is this God’s service, so certain in Jesus Christ and the victory that is to be found in Him.
Why, they put me in chains, but the gospel itself isn’t chained. It has access even to my jailers, the Praetorian Guard, who are making progress throughout Caesar’s household. And not only that, why, the ministers, the pastors of the churches, the congregations here in Rome are made all the more bold for playing the word without fear. My imprisonment was meant to intimidate. All that is done is emboldened at that by the working of the Spirit of God.
There are those extremities, then, that are coming to the Apostle because of the opposition of the world. Those who do not know the truth are opposers, who are enemies of the truth, of the gospel. But it seems as if there are even more severe problems. There is even more severe distress. for the Apostle while in prison.
The wonderful thing about Paul is not merely the fact that his doctrine matches the advice of Latter-day Saints, but that in this man we have a true realist, a man who’s not deluded with regard to the reality of things, the way things really are in this world, in this seemingly cursed world. That’s a rather loose spin that the modern church puts on things. Wouldn’t they tell us that there’s no distinction between the church and the world, that they are being really foolish, tragically blind, if not corrupt? We’ve talked about the 19th with regard to the gravity and its power. The world opposes the truth. You want to hit the world? Where are you going to find it? Remaking it in your own head? Reconstructing things as you might wish them to be?
All of that myriad of testimonies of your inability to face God, to reality, to please Him, are, in this world, truth does oppose error, falsehood. Light does oppose darkness. God does oppose Satan and his hosts. That’s the world you find yourself in.
It’s not just the threat from the outside, as serious as that is. There’s a more subtle threat, and that comes from inside. Is it any wonder that Satan attacks initially from the inside, taking a creature in the garden, making that creature enspoiled so that he can make his assault upon humanity? How naive the Church is when it believes that there is no threat that arises from within the walls of the Church. There are actually wolves dressed up in sheep’s clothing.
It’s true. And Paul is speaking about these in Philippians. And there’s the one group, spoken of in the third chapter, who are out-and-out heretics. Paul calls them dogs. He says, they mind earthly things. They parade under the name and the title of Christian, but they are anything but, for they have developed their own doctrine. And that doctrine in that area is the truth. There’s a second group that really focuses on verses 15 through 18 of the first chapter. These people aren’t heretics, they’re Orthodox. Paul is able to say that they preach Christ in the 18th verse, but what their problem is. The problem is that they do not have Christ at the center of their lives. They don’t have Christ at the center of their ministries.
Paul says that they’re motivated by envy, by jealousy. He says, in verse 17, that they’re motivated by selfish ambition. Their own agenda has displaced the agenda of the God. Paul has appeared in Rome. And it is generated in them envy and jealousy and strife. What is true of them at the most fundamental level now comes to expression. These are men who are self-centered.
Now, it’s not as if we have to go around the world looking for people who take advantage of apostles who are in prison, as if we could conjure up such a situation in our present day. The point isn’t to say that there are apostles being taken advantage of while they are in chains in prison by other religious opportunists. The point is that there are some who preach the gospel on the basis of selfish ambition. That’s the point.
And in listening to them, you may not be able to discern it, because they sound so orthodox. In fact, they might be recognized as believers of evangelical work. But interestingly, buildings are named before them, and organizations And when you give your money, you give your money to their name and to their operation.
People of God, we are facing a tragedy. And one of the reasons why we are facing that tragedy is because we today cannot line up what we read here in these verses with the atrocities that are taking place in the name of Christ. You may even give your life to such operations as that.
But for all that is said, he is not poised to murder us. It is selfish ambition. And what is our reaction? We may be distressed, and rightly so. We may take exception, and rightly so. But even though we are distressed and we take exception, and even at times outraged, may we also respond, disciplined as we are, by the spirit of Jesus Christ at work in the Apostle, to rejoice in the fact that Christ is risen.
The message goes on. People mend, even through unfit servants. He will triumph even through unworthy preachers. The extremities, then, of the Apostles’ situation. In the midst of it, assaulted from without, assaulted from within, yet He is rejoicing and He will rejoice because He is so absolutely confident of the triumph of Christ. What impact has this among Philippians in the first century? That they might be resilient in coming to supper, to learn in the midst of their pain through the joys, their affliction coming to them through the cross of Christ?
Oh, yes. but that they might also be on the lookout for any selfish ambition and vanity, an egocentrism that is rising in them so as to obscure Christ and to exalt themselves. The centerpiece will be, will it not, have this mind in you, which is also in Christ Jesus. For although he existed in the form of God, he did not regard the equality with God of things to be grasped, but emptied himself and took the form of a bondservant, being made in the likeness of man. Denying, says the apostle, out of selfishness and empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself. in the Astronomy Institute than of our situation. Will we not be disciplined after the pattern of the Apostle to rejoice, and again to rejoice, So I’m really confident in the triumph of Christ, and not that, not generally, but specifically in regard to myself in our own lives.
Here’s our moment. And you bless us, Father, richly with knowledge of your will. May our hearts learn the lessons of faith, provided we are more and more able to rejoice in the circumstances that come to us. Rejoice, because Christ is exalted. Rejoice, because Christ is the victor. and your kingdom will in fact have its way in all the affairs of this world. O God, may we not be so vain as to put our own selfish ambitions between us and you, so as to eclipse your goal So as to eclipse that which is rightly yours, may we not seek the praise of others, but may we seek to be servants for the sake of our Savior, and therein find our joy and laughter. We ask this in our Savior’s name.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.