Confident Generosity

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. I want to start today referring back again to that road trip story that I talked about last week. In the middle of that road trip, and just in case you didn't hear it, we were on a road trip with five very young children at the time, ages 6, 5, 3, and 2-year-old twins. And our transmission went out completely. We were stuck in first gear. It was the middle of the night. We didn't have a hotel book. We were trying to push those last two hours. There were tornadoes looming. I mean, it was not a good time. In fact, that's what we've been talking about with upheaval. We had these moments of upheaval where things just aren't going right. And when we are in the midst of that, maybe we're in a job transition, maybe something's going on with our children, maybe something's going on with our parents, when we are in the midst of that, that kind of upheaval,

you know, like a pandemic or something. Often the kind of advice that people give goes something like, hey, let's just try to make the most of it. Let's just try to find the silver lining. And they try to, they kind of try to stab at confidence. Right? Like let's look on the bright side. Okay? And that is very well-intentioned. However, it borders on fantasy. It's like playing pretend that we're gonna pretend like the good is really good, and we're gonna pretend like the bad isn't that bad or that it's not there. And people can sometimes believe that Christian confidence works this way, right? Hey, everything's gonna be fine, just believe, and magic Jesus is gonna pop in and make everything awesome and make everything positive, and that's not really what Christian confidence is. The Gospel inspires a different kind of confidence, a substantive confidence. And in Jesus calls us not to pretend like everything is awesome, but rather, Jesus calls

us to face the upheaval, and in the midst of that upheaval, to be generous. In fact, the Gospel intends to make every church, every group of Christians, every family of Christians a fountainhead of generosity that inspires others. That our sacrificial generosity would be so head-scratching that others would be drawn into it. Now all of that sounds well and good, but how? If it's not magic Jesus, then how do we get there? How do we inspire that kind of generosity? How do we grab hold of confidence without seeking into fantasy? Without trying to pretend like everything is okay? Well, we're going to begin our search today in Philippians chapter 1, we're going to start in verse 19 and we're going to go all the way through 27 today. And while you're turning there, we are working through the book of Philippians in our series, Are We There Yet? It is confident generosity on a painful journey.

And I'm working to show you how the Bible takes on confidence and generosity and pain by looking at the letter of the Philippians. And so we're going to begin Philippians 1, verse 19 and 20. And this is where Paul is discussing his imprisonment. So Paul is writing this from prison. So in his upheaval, he's dealing with prison. Verse 19, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit 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. Look at what he says about being in prison. He says, I'm sure that Jesus will turn this upheaval, this prison sentence, I'm sure that Jesus will turn this into salvation, into my deliverance. Now he doesn't mean that he's going to be rescued from jail.

What he's saying is that Jesus has the power to turn something even as disheartening, as despairing as a prison sentence into salvation. Jesus will turn our upheaval into salvation and we're gonna get to how in just a minute but I really want to point to this confidence first. Last week we looked at this confidence, Christian confidence, and we tied it into Jesus's record. In Philippians 1 6 it that Jesus is going to finish the work that he starts in us, that he will bring it to completion. And that happens every time. We can trust Jesus for that. And so it says here in the same tone, it says in Philippians 1, 19, 20, it is my eager expectation. I will not at all be ashamed. I am a full courage. This is not because Paul is cocky. Paul is confident in Jesus's record. And this confidence is also tied into the valuable cause, right? Back in verse 7 it talks about the defense and the confirmation of the gospel.

And it says here, in verse 20, it says that I am confident that Christ will be honored in my life or in my death. I am confident that Christ will be honored. The valuable cause will go on. And there is something different about you when you approach a situation with confidence. And we can see it. When we see a confident person, we know, right? They're carrying themselves a little differently. Their head is high. They're calmer. And when you do this in a Christian sense, when you know, when you have full courage that there is no stopping Jesus's plan, when you know that the cause is worth the cost, right? That's when you are entering into Christian confidence. And at the risk of belaboring this point, I want to put it a different way. Jesus, the way Jesus instills this confidence in us is by giving us a clearer picture. A clearer picture in assessing our upheaval. When we look around and see kind of the

damage that's going on. A lot of people are going to look for silver linings like we talked about before. But here's the problem with that. If all you're doing is hyping up the good and you're ignoring the bad, you're actually not seeing the whole picture. You're seeing less of the picture. You're obscuring the picture. You're not facing reality. And here is the clear picture, the clearer picture, our upheaval is actually one step on a journey toward Jesus's plan. Now what is Jesus's plan? Because that matters, right? If it's one step toward Jesus's plan, but it's not a great plan, or we're not excited about that plan, then that makes a big difference. But here's the good news, that Jesus's plan is for God's glory and for our good. It's for both, for God's glory and for our good. In Romans 8 28 it talks about this. It says, and we know that for those who love God all

things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Now look at that, it's all things are working together for your good and and it's still within the purposes of God. Now, I don't really pretend to understand all the intricacies of how our good works out with God's perfect purposes. I don't know all that, but I do know that when I read this, I know that my ultimate good, your ultimate good, what will give you and I the most joy And God's purposes, God's plan to reconcile all things to himself, both of those are combined into one plan, into one future. God, in other words, God has no scale where your benefit is on one side and his purposes are on the other. God's not weighing out his options. He's not deciding whether to give you joy or upheaval. God is in the business of bringing joy in people. God is in the business of not just making things better

at your home during the coronavirus shelter in place. God is in the business of helping you, growing you to discover the joy that's already there. Like we said last week, and I gave you an illustration with a mother and her children, and there's a speeding car coming toward her children, That mother is going to stop at nothing to save her children because the valuable cause of protecting her children, it propels her forward into pain, or at least the risk of pain.

If we're asking that mother, is there anything that would stop you? Any kind of pain, even death, and the mother would say, any good mother would say no. Nothing would stop you from that because the cause is worth it. Listen, if you are without hope, if you are without joy, it is not simply chemicals and personality. You need a clearer picture about true hope and true joy.

Like the mother who is saving her children, she has a clear picture of her children's reality and she is still running straight into it. Jesus is at work in your upheaval, not despite it. And this work is valuable both because it progresses his plan and it includes our good. This work that we are called toward is valuable because it progresses God's plan and it includes our good. Look at what we see here in verses 20 and 21. We're going to reread 20, but we're going to read it with 21. As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed, but that with full courage now, and now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. There's so much to say here. Verse 21 is what makes it onto the Christian t-shirts and the mugs, right? It's what makes the Instagram posts.

It's what people really wanna hear, right? And I could really go on and on about verse 21. I will only say here that this confidence that we're talking about pushes us past the fear of death. That we can obey Jesus whenever he calls us toward risk because even our death is gain. Now, I think that's a great thing to say, but we're a little disconnected from that idea. Many of us are not facing the pain of death every day. We're not in the middle of a prison sentence like Paul is here. He's really weighing out, am I going to die, am I not? So many of us, we're not facing the pain of death, we are facing smaller pains. We are facing lesser deaths. In other words, we don't fear the pain of death, We fear looking irresponsible. We don't fear the pain of death. We fear seeming overly dramatic. We fear losing friends. We fear being left alone. We fear being caught doing something that we shouldn't do.

And if you're like, well, you know, maybe, maybe I fear, well, here's how to determine what you fear. It's when you find what your defenses are. What do you mean? Well, you can call them insecurities. That's kind of what we all refer to them as. And you see them, you see your insecurities, you see your defenses when your reaction doesn't match the situation. When you are, maybe when you're overly defensive or when you're easily offended or when you snap at somebody unprovoked. It's times when you get prickly. Those are your insecurities. This is how you know what you are afraid of. And many of us are driven, not by fear of the pain of death, but we're driven by these other fears, these lesser deaths, these smaller fears of being found out, of being alone. And for some of us, we fear rejection. And when you do, when you fear rejection, you're going to work to please everyone.

And when you fear instability, for example, You're going to work to control everything, to eliminate change, because you want things to be stable. Only when you understand that Jesus' plan is both for His glory and our good will you be able to face these fears with confidence. You have a firm grip on the clearer picture that whatever happens, even if others reject you, even in the midst of instability, Even if your worst fears are coming true, whatever happens, you can say, along with the apostle Paul, for me to live as Christ and to die as gain, this is Christian confidence. And as we will see, it begins to come out in generosity. What do I mean by that? What do I mean by coming out in generosity? Well, to find that, we're gonna look at verse 27. I want to jump ahead to 27 because Paul is beginning to build a picture here in verse 27 and it helps us frame it up as we read it.

Philippians 1, 27, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. All this talk of confidence and all this talk pretty soon of generosity in the midst of upheaval, all this discussion about confidence and generosity, it's aimed firmly at this verse. At verse 27, let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel. This is a phrase, living a man are worthy, walking a man are worthy. This phrase echoes through the New Testament. Ephesians 4, 1, walking a man are worthy of your calling. Colossians 1, 10, walking a man are worthy of the Lord. First Thessalonians 2, 12, walking a man are worthy of God. What it's saying is that this confidence that we're talking about, it leads you somewhere.

It directs you toward a manner of living. It's not just a confidence that you have that you kind of keep inside and it never comes out. Like I said, when you see someone who's confident, you can tell this confidence works itself out in real time, in real relationships, in real conversation. And when we talk about living in a manner worthy of the gospel, what we're not doing is we're not trying to somehow say that we need to live up to the gospel now. It is another way of saying that when we are vulnerable with Jesus, when we do that time after time, it is going to have an effect on our lives that is going to resemble the gospel. We are going to be brought to completion. Our lives are going to be living in a manner worthy of the gospel because we are going to Jesus. And that confidence that we have is going to spell out into our lives, into something else.

It's going to result in what I'm going to call overflowing generosity. Our confidence results in overflowing generosity. And we find this illustrated in verses 22 through 26, where Paul, again, he's weighing out his life after prison or death in prison. He's thinking about this, right? So we're going to start in verse 22, Philippians 1, 22 through 26. We're going to go all the way through 26. Paul is saying, if I'm to live in the flesh, like stay alive, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which shall I 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. Okay, here we go. Now we're going to begin to see some generosity here. 24. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced to 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. What we see here is a generosity that is motivated by a combination of affection and a valuable cause. It's motivated by a combination of affection and cause. So we saw this last week in Philippians 1 7 through 11 where there was genuine affection that was pulling him toward this generosity. It was a genuine, he was praying verses 9 through 11. Paul Paul prays a robust prayer for the Philippian church to grow in a confident love and a love filled with knowledge and all discernment. He prays for their maturity. And it's this genuine affection that's drawing him toward that, toward their discipleship. And in verse 25 we see the same thing. He is praying for their progress and joy in the faith. motivated for them to succeed and grow. He's motivated because he loves them, because he's investing in them, because he cares for them. Look, part of why I came

to South Burleson Baptist Church was to see its success. And its success is not defined by the amount of people that we have in a room. Its success is defined by maturity level of the people that are in our body. I came here not just to, you know, to see a lot of people come to our church and glory to God that'd be great but true progress and joy in the faith. Part of my job description as the pastor of this church is to see each person become more joyful and confident and generous Christians. It's more than just simple, you know, I want to see good. No, what I want, what the Lord has birthed in me on to as a vision for this church is to see each and every person grow into maturity, to see each and every person follow Jesus in making disciples. It's not just for the spiritually elite, it's for everyone. I want to see your progress and joy and the faith and its affection

and what you see in Philippians 1. It is affection but it's more than that. It's more than just this genuine affection that pulls him toward their discipleship, toward their generosity. It is genuine affection connected to, hooked into a cause. It's this valuable cause that also pulls Paul toward this generosity to this church toward their discipleship. He calls it in verse 22, he calls it fruitful labor. He's working not just for their joy but also their progress, right? If you're motivated simply by affection and not cause, then you're going to make disciples that are without courage. If your motivation is just affection, then you're going to make disciples that may be nice, but they're going to lack discipline and depth, right? If all you are is affectionate and there's no cause attached to it, you're going to have disciples without courage. But if you flip it,

if you are making disciples and you are motivated by cause only and there's no affection, then what you're going to do is you're going to make disciples if they last, you're going to make disciples without compassion. There's going to be no heart. The generosity that Paul displays here carries both the affection and the cause. Paul has genuine affection for the Philippian church. He is truly going to receive overwhelming joy in their maturity. But he's not going to stick around just to hang out. He's not like, man, maybe I should stay here just to hang out with this church. Maybe we can talk and have fun. No, man, he's about progress. He's about the cause. Let's see you guys grow. Let's see you guys make a difference. Generosity, the Christian generosity that we're seeing right here is motivated by the affection and the cause. You need them both. Because this generosity, it's not just simple generosity,

it's overflowing generosity, remember? And now to see this, I want to look at verse 27 again. It says, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come and see you, Arm Absinthe, I may hear of you, now watch this, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. That last part, one spirit, one mind, striving side by side. The hope is not simply for each person in this church here in Philippi, for each person to be growing on their own, right? In other words, he wants to see their individual progress and joy, but he also wants to see their collective progress and joy. He wants to see them grow together. He wants to see them united. He wants to see them fight together, right? This is not just individuals growing in generosity, this is overflowing generosity. This is,

you know, Paul wants their progress and joy to spill into, to grow into generosity toward other people, toward each other, right? His vision for the church is not just that each person becomes more generous on their own, but that that generosity is multiply that they inspire each other and others toward more and more head-scratching generosity. I want to illustrate this with a child right raising a child most of us in well we've either raised a child or we've been raised as a child so either one when you when you raise a child you want to make sure that child is loved very well. But you also want to make sure that that child loves well. Right. So you have as a parent or as a guardian, you have a generous affection for that child and you want that child to grow up into maturity. However, you also want And this isn't uncalled for, this is totally normal.

You also want that child to reflect the generous affection that it was given. Right? So I have sons and daughters and as they grow up, I don't want to just love them well and watch them grow up into maturity and for them to mature into horrible people. Right? I want to love them well. I want to watch them grow up into maturity and I want to see them love other people well. In fact, just a confession, I want to see my children love people better than me. Better than the way I love people. Church, that is us right here. It's not just that Jesus wants to love us well. It's that Jesus wants to love us well, to see us grow into maturity, and to love others in the same way. Christian confidence always results in generosity. Confidence always results in generosity, and that generosity is always going to result in unity. Why? Because when you have people who have received Jesus' generosity, those people

generously work at other people's joy and progress in the faith. Unity is the result of that, or as the Bible refers to them, churches are the result of that overflowing generosity. If we can embrace Christian confidence, if we can embrace the valuable cause of Jesus working in people, of his plan for his glory and our good, then we will find our love for others growing and a generosity will grow along with it. This generosity that has begun in us and begun in the other people in our church will spread, our church family will grow, and in this way, in this way, the love and grace that is in the gospel is self-propagating, it's self-propelling, it goes on its own. Consider your own journey toward Jesus. Consider all the people that generously gave their time, their attention, and their prayers for you personally. You benefited from that generosity and it

changed your heart and your life and this this is the cause that we fight for side by side. Discipleship, growing people into maturity is the cause that we fight for. In the midst of upheaval, our reasons for generosity do not change. Even when we are hurting, our confidence doesn't have to be shaken. And in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a life crisis, in the middle of a really frustrating situation, when you have a lot at risk, you can be generous. And when they ask, how are you so generous? How are you so confident in the Lord? You can simply talk about Jesus's great generosity toward you. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much. Thank you for the way that you have listened to us, that you have cared for us in the midst of a pandemic, that you care for us from the day we were born to now, that you put people in our lives that have shown us generosity and love and care.

Jesus, if there is anyone watching that is wondering where you are in the midst of this, I pray that you would show yourself to them soon, that you would use people in their use Christians in their lives to generously extend themselves and to show love and grace. And that's in your name that we pray. Amen.