This morning we looked back at all we have learned from studying Paul’s letter to the Philippians, a series we started in April during lockdown. This short letter has so much to teach us, especially about rejoicing when circumstances seem far from ideal, but it’s not enough simply to hear sermons or read the Bible: we need to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, until truth becomes assimilated into our lives, capturing our attention, captivating our hearts and changing our behaviour.

Chapter 1

In this chapter, we learned that God is in control, no matter what the circumstances, and can use everything for good. We also learned about praying for others with depth – so that faith, hope and love are developed in each one of us. Key verses here remind us that God starts what He begins (Phil 1:6) and that we live ultimately in a win-win situation: ‘for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ (Phil 1:21)

Chapter 2

Here, we learn to follow the example of Jesus, who showed us that ‘down is the new up!’ – humility coming before exaltation.) If we want to follow Him, it will mean learning to value others above ourselves in humility and looking to the interests of others rather than to our own. (Phil 2:3-4) It’s a challenge for us at present when there’s so much emphasis on isolation and separation to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but the Christian life can’t successfully be lived in isolation. We are part of the body of Christ, and God wants us to live out our faith alongside other people. He wants us to learn to serve each other in love and to care for each other, but this happens only as we look to the example of Jesus and learn from Him.

Life ultimately is a partnership with God and ‘Team Church’, where there is a combination of our work and God’s (Phil 2:13-14) and every individual matters.

Chapter 3

Here, we learned about rejoicing always and how this comes about as we pursue Jesus, letting go of the past and straining towards the prize to which He has called us. (Phil 3:4-14) Knowing Jesus is at the heart of faith: ‘I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.’ (Phil 3:8) This means taking God as He is, knowing both the suffering and the glory.

Paul goes on to urge the Philippians to ‘join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.’ (Phil 3:17) This is a challenge for us all, but people need role models and God calls us to grow to become more like Him.

Chapter 4

This is a chapter like an expanding suitcases full of advice and promises that can change our attitudes completely. We are called to stand firm in Christ (Phil 4:1) and shown how to do this:

• Rejoice in the Lord always (Phil 4:4) – because He never changes and is working for good in our lives. Rejoicing is the source of our strength and builds us up spiritually more quickly than anything else.

• Know God’s nearness to us always (Phil 4:5) – God’s presence being the anchor for our souls and the source of our spiritual life.

• Know freedom from anxiety and fear as we bring everything to God in prayer and petition with thanksgiving (Phil 4:6-7)

• Know the peace of God which transcends all understanding (Phil 4:7) – guarding our hearts and our minds so that we will not fear as the world fears. Isaiah said, ‘do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.’ (Is 8:12) How much do we as believers need to take that verse and hold on to it by faith! We must not dread coronavirus; we must not live in fear, for Jesus said, ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27) God is the only One we have to fear, and if we fear Him, we need not fear anything else.

• Get control of your thought life, because if you do that, you will see life from God’s perspective and will never again be adversely influenced by what other people say and do. (Phil 4:8)

• Live in contentment, no matter what the external circumstances (Phil 4:12).

• Live in Christ’s strength and not your own: ‘I can do all this through Christ who gives me strength.’ (Phil 4:13)

• Live in the vast, unlimited provision of God: ‘my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.’ (Phil 4:19)

Do you sleep well? How easily do you wake up in a morning? Are you one of those people who are awake before the alarm goes off? Or are you one who has to have three alarms set before you even stir?

Waking up is a daily experience for us all. Some of us bounce out of bed like Tigger, instantly awake and alert.

Some of us seem more like zombies in a morning, rousing gradually, needing copious amounts of caffeine to even begin to function.

The Bible says that God wakens us ‘morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.’ (Is 50:4) We are urged repeatedly in Scripture to ‘wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.’ (Rom 13:11) Paul says, ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’ (Eph 5:14) The Holy Spirit spoke to one church, saying, ‘Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.’ (Rev 3:2)

Now is not the time to sleep. It’s not night-time. We are children of the day and we should be awake and sober. (1 Thess 5:6) We belong to the day and need to be fully dressed in the armour of God for the battle ahead. (Eph 6:10-18)

“Since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet.” (1 Thess 5:8)

We need to wake up, to rise from our slumber and engage in spiritual warfare, interceding for our world before the throne of God, pleading with God for mercy. The ancient message to Israel still applies: “Awake, awake, Zion, clothe yourself with strength! Put on your garments of splendour, Jerusalem, the holy city. The uncircumcised and defiled will not enter you again. Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive.” (Is 52:1-2)

Deliverance is defined as ‘the action of being rescued or set free’, and in spiritual terms, it often refers to God’s intervention in human situations which would otherwise result in distress or death. We think of how God delivered His people from Egypt, when His people were facing the prospect of being drowned in the Red Sea or killed by Pharaoh’s chariots, but God stepped in to part the Red Sea, giving them a way through and an escape from slavery. (Ex 14-15) We think of Ruth and Naomi, bereaved and bereft, finding salvation in the generosity and kindness of Boaz. (Ruth 1-4) We think of the Jewish people, under threat from the plots of Haman, rescued thanks to the intervention of Mordecai and Esther’s appeal to the king (Esther). Deliverance, whether personal or for a whole nation, is what happens when God steps into the situation and does the impossible. The psalmists frequently spoke of this kind of rescue:

• ‘I will exalt you, Lord,

  for you lifted me out of the depths

      and did not let my enemies gloat over me.

  Lord my God, I called to you for help,

      and you healed me.

  You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead;

      you spared me from going down to the pit.’ (Ps 30:1-3)

• ‘He reached down from on high and took hold of me;

  he drew me out of deep waters.

  He rescued me from my powerful enemy,

      from my foes, who were too strong for me.’ (Ps 18:16-17)

• ‘In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them.’ (Ps 22:4)

• ‘I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.’ (Ps 34:4)

• ‘For you have delivered me from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.’ (Ps 56:13)

In Ephesus, deliverance came in an unlikely form: the town clerk (who is not even given a name in the text!) spoke to the silversmiths and other rioters and effectively quashed the complaints against Paul and his companions. (Acts 19:35-41) It’s worth pondering from this that God can use anyone He likes to do His will (even those who may not know Him or acknowledge Him, as we see when Cyrus, a foreign king, allowed God’s people to return from exile, thus fulfilling God’s plans) and that deliverance may or may not look supernatural or spectacular. I’m sure this ‘ordinary’ conversation, which saw the malcontents drift away disconsolately without causing any more trouble, could have been easily dismissed as human intervention, but Paul saw it as God’s deliverance: ‘He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again.’ (2 Cor 1:10) We should not despise the ordinary, for God can use the everyday and the ordinary to work for our deliverance and protection.

Luke spends a good deal of time telling us about Paul’s ministry in Athens, Corinth and Ephesus (Acts 18-19), and throughout these chapters we find that Paul reasoned and persuaded people in his presentation of the gospel (Acts 18:4, 13; Acts 19:8, 9). From this, we can see that his preaching engaged the minds of his hearers and marshalled arguments to support and demonstrate his case. John Stott comments that ‘he was seeking to convince in order to convert.’ (John Stott, ‘Acts’, P 313)

Paul’s experience meant he knew he needed to rely on the wisdom of God rather than on the wisdom of the world (1 Cor 1 & 2), but we must never feel that apologetics (reasoned arguments) should be abandoned in our presentation of the gospel. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (John 14:17) and brings people to faith in Jesus ‘not in spite of the evidence but because of the evidence.’ (ibid., P 313) The Holy Spirit works to bring conviction and to teach us about sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8-11), but we must, like Paul, spend time engaging with people so that they can see that the gospel is trustworthy and reliable. Many were persuaded by Paul in Corinth and Ephesus; this led to their conversion, to a complete turnaround from a pagan way of life to a life of faith and trust in Jesus. Apologetics should not be used simply to score points or to win arguments; the ultimate purpose of reason and argument is to lead people to a place of decision; as Josh McDowell’s key book declares, the evidence ‘demands a verdict.’ (‘Evidence That Demands A Verdict.’) This book is highly useful in defending Christianity’s core truths and giving responses to the Bible’s most difficult passages and is another tool in equipping us, like Paul, to share the gospel with those who might not appear to have any interest in it whatsoever!

In Acts 19:21-43 we see Demetrius, probably the leader of the guild of silversmiths in Ephesus, mounting a campaign to discredit Paul which ends in a riot. The issue at stake was the economic future of men who made their living from making silver items connected with the goddess Artemis (either miniature versions of the temple or statuettes of the goddess), but as we have seen earlier (Acts 16:19-21), it’s very rare that people are so candid when making their arguments. Demetrius was subtle enough to develop other arguments as to why the silversmiths needed to take action: namely the dangers that their trade would lose its good name, their temple its prestige and their goddess her divine majesty. (Acts 19:27) John Stott, quoting Neil, says that in this way ‘vested interests were disguised as local patriotism – in this case also under the cloak of religious zeal.’ (John Stott, ‘Acts’, P 309)

Mixed motives and mixed messages are the part of life that is difficult to untangle. Life often has complex issues to work through – the current situation, where governments have to balance the economic needs of their countries with their health needs, is one example of this – and when we add the capacity of people to deceive themselves (for the heart is deceitful above all things, as Jer 17:9 reminds us) into the mix, we see how easily peace is disturbed and disquiet arises.

C. S. Lewis commented on two extremes we can fall into regarding evil in ‘The Screwtape Letters’, saying, ‘There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.’ One thing we must remember, however, is that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). Not everything which is proclaimed to us as good is actually good; the devil is a great proponent of the lie that the end justifies the means, and so we must be alive to the evil that is disguised as good and is persuasive in its apparent sincerity. This will often involve looking beneath the surface and looking for fruit, for as Jesus reminded us, ‘every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.’ (Matt 7:17-18) May God open our eyes, search our hearts and enable us to discern between the good and the best as we seek to follow Him.

The last time Stephen spoke on a Sunday evening, he talked about Abram and the promises God gave him, speaking about the need to give all of our lives (‘our pies’) to God. Abram embraced God and His promises initially, but in Gen 12:10-20, we see that he tried to gain favour from Pharaoh and effectively deal with famine and his life his own way, rather than by trusting God. He lied to Pharaoh about Sarah (saying she was his sister, not his wife), ‘so I will be treated well… and my life will be spared.’ (Gen 12:13) He tried to develop his own plan to bring prosperity and security for himself, despite God’s promises of blessing beyond his wildest dreams.

We can make the same mistakes as Abram, often trying to solve life’s difficulties ourselves instead of trusting God. Mistakes do not have to define us, however – we still remember Abraham ultimately as the father of faith, not as the man who lied! If we want to avoid spiralling into despair and condemnation when we sin and go astray, we need to see how Abram dealt with being thrown out of Egypt and realising that what he had done had not been God’s way. Effectively, he retraced his steps and called on the name of the Lord again. (Gen 13:3-4)

Repentance means retracing our steps, admitting we have been wrong and re-dedicating ourselves to God. We have to admit we have tried to live life ‘my way’, on our own, and if we are to go on with God, we must learn to be penitent. In ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’, we see our hero repeating the mantra ‘only the penitent man shall pass’ and realising he must humble himself and lie down to avoid certain death from above. We too must understand that penitence will mean we kneel only before the cross, that we prostrate ourselves before God.

So often, like Abram, we can be foolish and try to obtain God’s blessing our way. We sin and fall short of God’s plan for our lives, but there is a way back to God. If we retrace our steps and repent (see Rev 2:5), calling on the name of the Lord, we can know restoration and blessing. To claim God’s promises, however, we must be surrendered to God. We must do it His way.