At Work to Spread the Gospel

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All right, this morning we’re going to be in Philippians chapter 1. Philippians chapter 1 there in the New Testament. You flip most of the way back through your Bible and you’ll find the small book of Philippians, four chapters here, where it’s essentially a thank you letter.

Now there’s more to it than that, but it’s essentially a thank you letter in tone and everything else from the Apostle Paul to the church at Philippi. See, the church at Philippi was a group of people that loved the Apostle Paul and he loved them as well. And they been also great supporters of his ministry, not only to support his, you know, his living expenses and his traveling expenses, but it seems as though the church at Philippi was also giving to him for the care of some of the other churches as well.

So this was a group of people that were very supportive of Paul’s ministry. They knew him, he knew them, and there was a love relationship between them. And as Paul was writing to the church at Philippi, he talks a little bit about the circumstances that he’s found himself in in life.

And Paul, overall, had a fairly difficult life in ministry. Now, that’s not to say that there weren’t joys, there weren’t successes, there weren’t triumphs. There were certainly all of those.

But the Apostle Paul went through some really difficult times to get there. I mean, the man was beaten. He was beaten nearly to death.

He was run out of more than one town. People were always trying to kill him. I mean, it’s certainly not a life any of us would sign up for and say, hey, that sounds like a great time.

And yet the Apostle Paul went through all of this, and he went through all of it gladly. But when he writes the letter to the Philippians, he’s come near the end of his ministry. Now, this is not right before he dies.

This is not, you know, the letter of 2 Timothy where he’s talking about how he’s ready to be offered. He knows his death is near. It’s a few years off from that.

But by this time, Paul has been in ministry for over 30 years since his conversion. Over 30 years of ministry up to this point. And when he writes, he has about five, four or five years, maybe three years, somewhere in there left before he was executed by the Romans.

And so this gives him a pretty good perspective as he looks back over decades of ministry. And as he writes, he’s pondering over the successes and the failures, the triumphs and the tragedies of his life. And when I say ministry, I don’t want you immediately to check out and say, well, this is about people in ministry.

The Apostle Paul was in ministry because he was a Christian. It wasn’t because he was some special class of Christian. I mean, certainly there are different roles in ministry, and my role is different from yours, and your role in ministry is a little bit different from the person sitting in the row next to you, but we all have a role in ministry as Christians.

So this morning, if you are a Christian, if you are a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, you have a ministry. So please don’t check out when I say Paul’s going over his ministry and think, well, that has nothing to do with me, because we could easily use the term ministry as a synonym for Christian life. He is looking over the last few decades of his time serving Jesus Christ and walking with Jesus Christ, and he’s going over the good things that have happened and the bad things that have happened.

And so as he’s musing over these, as he’s pondering everything that’s happened, he writes to the church at Philippi, and he says, starting in Philippians chapter 1 verse 12, but I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel. I’m going to read this whole passage to you this morning that we’re going to look at, and then I’m going to come back and kind of take it piece by piece for you. But just to give you some context, we’re going to look at the whole thing together.

The things which have happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel. Verse 13, so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard and to all the that my chains are in Christ. And most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ, even from envy and strife, some also from goodwill.

The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my chains, but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. What then? only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.

For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness as always. So now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

So Paul’s looking over his years of ministry, or our synonym, his Christian life, his walk with and his service for Jesus over the last three decades, and he’s going over all the things that have happened to him and describing to the church at Philippi what it’s all been for. And if you’ve been with us the last couple weeks, you know this series that I’ve started here in the month of February, has been looking at the sovereignty of God and God’s plans and really God’s sovereignty from the standpoint of him being at work in our midst even when we don’t realize it. God is always at work in our midst. There’s nothing that happens to us that God says, oops, I didn’t see that coming.

And there’s no point where we can look at the circumstances in our life and say, God’s not even involved here anymore. We may not see his involvement. We may not notice it, we may not be perceptive enough to realize it, but the scriptures paint a picture of God as being a God who is always involved.

He’s intimately involved with his people, and he intervenes in our lives and on our behalf, and he’s always at work in our midst, even, you know, whether we see it or not. Sometimes we’re just not looking in the right place. And even at that, sometimes as believers, we look at the circumstances in our lives, and we know intellectually, we know from our knowledge of scripture that God is at work.

We know he’s got a plan and he’s carrying out his plan, but sometimes we look at the circumstances in our lives and we say, if God’s got a plan in this, I sure wish I knew what it was. What on earth is God doing? You know, what could God possibly be up to that I have to go through this?

And we wonder sometimes, even if we know God’s at work, well, why, what is he trying to accomplish through this? And so this series really has been about all of these things, you know, demonstrating that God’s always at work in our midst and looking at a few of the reasons that scripture reveals as to why, some of the goals he’s working towards. And this passage here in Philippians chapter 1 gives us some insight into a very important thing that God is always working toward, a goal that God is intervening in our lives for, which is the furtherance of the gospel.

If you’re a believer, if you’re a believer this morning, if you’re somebody who’s trusted in Christ as your Savior, you’ve received that message of that free offer of salvation that Jesus paid so much for on the cross. If you’ve received that salvation, then you should desire for other people to receive that free offer of salvation. It should be something that we long for, That other people should come to know the same hope that we have found in Jesus Christ. Should come to know the same forgiveness that we’ve found in Jesus Christ. Should come to know the same mercy that we’ve received from God through Jesus Christ. And I think within each of us, there’s a desire that other people would know that.

We pray for it all the time, don’t we? When we come together, we pray that God will help us reach the lost. Sometimes we’re back there on Wednesday nights and we pray for people by name that God will help us reach this family member. that God will help us reach this neighbor, that God will speak to somebody.

Maybe we’ve been sharing the gospel with them for 20 years, and they’re going to knock us out if we bring it up again. And we’re praying God will send somebody else to bring it up, that they’re not going to knock out. We want people to hear the gospel.

We want people to find the hope that we’ve found. Well, the good news is that God is working in our circumstances to bring people to a knowledge of the gospel. Now, the downside for us is that sometimes it costs us circumstances that aren’t exactly pleasant.

But if we keep in mind, you know, on the one hand, I want a peaceful life. I want a calm life. I want a happy, comfortable life.

I think we all feel that way to some extent. And on the other hand, I want people to come to know Jesus Christ. I have to decide which one I want more because I can’t always have both at every moment, all right? Sometimes God is at work in our circumstances, even the painful circumstances, to bring people to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. And we see that in verse 12 here where we picked it up.

He said, these things, the things that have happened to me, he’s thinking again over all the circumstances of his life with Jesus Christ, the good and the bad. And he says, they have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel. Now, I think that wording here gives us a pretty clear idea of what he’s talking about.

But I think the way it is explained, I think the way it’s translated in the King James, where it says they’ve fallen out for the furtherance of the gospel. I think that gives us an idea as well, and I think it’s a memorable picture. Because when I’ve preached on this verse before, I’ve always thought of the game Yahtzee.

Any of you ever played Yahtzee? If you’ve not played Yahtzee, you probably at least know what I’m talking about. Take the little cup and you throw, what is it, five dice?

It’s been years since I’ve played it. Throw five dice in the little cup and you shake them, and then the whole game is determined by how the dice fall out of the cup. You know what?

50 years ago, none of us would have admitted to playing with dice in a Baptist church, would we have? That’s my how times change. Now everybody says, oh, I played Yahtzee.

I’m not going to ask you how many of you know about slots and roulette and things like that. You put the five dice in a cup and you shake it up, and however they fall out, you make whatever combination, you’re shooting for certain combinations and you get points based on it. But it all depends on how the dice fall out, how they shake out.

And we tend to think that the way the dice shake out are just random. I started thinking about this this week. I can’t at the moment think of anything in our world that is actually random.

Things have the appearance of being random, but ultimately there’s some kind of cause, some kind of chain of causes. There’s some kind of, in many cases, choice on the part of a person that leads to circumstances. The more I think about it, it just isn’t all that random.

Because if we could take video inside that cup of dice from every angle, take video from every angle inside that cup of dice and slow it down, what we would see is not a random jumbling, but we would see the laws of physics at work as these dice bounce off of each other. And there’s actually math that could predict the angle at which they’ll bounce off and bounce off of each other. I mean, it’s really not random at all.

There are, there, that would be a lot of math to come up, you know, to try to figure out how the dice are going to fall out, but it could be done. If we had perfect knowledge of everything going on in that cup, there’s an explanation for how the dice fall out the way they do. It comes down to how they bounce off of each other, how long they’re shaking, what angle it’s poured out.

It all comes down to math and physics. It’s not really random. It just appears to be random.

And that’s why this verse reminds me of that game, Yahtzee, in a couple of ways, because Paul is looking at his life and all the things that have happened to him, and sometimes from our perspective, the things that go on in our lives, they seem random. You know, I woke up this morning, I didn’t realize that no matter, even though I got up an hour and a half before I needed to be here, actually two hours before I needed to be here, that I still was going to be running out the door with 10 minutes to get here and still had to grab breakfast. That seemed to be random. I had no idea when I woke up this morning it was going to be that way, and yet I can trace it back.

It was a string of choices and a string of activities and causes that made me run late this morning. You know, we look at the circumstances of our lives and they seem random. Seems like just the dice falling out of the cup.

Oh, this happened to me. Oh, I met this person. Oh, this misfortune befell me.

But when you get right down to it, there’s a cause behind all of it. It’s not really random. And as the events of Paul’s life were put into this cup and shaken together and dumped out, Paul says they’ve fallen out for the furtherance of the gospel.

See, Paul, on any given day, it looked like the events that happened were just random. But looking back over, he sees that God was actually arranging the dice. God was actually arranging the events for the furtherance of the gospel.

So you look at it and say, why was I arrested? Why was I beaten? Why did I get into that debate in the synagogue?

Why did those people corner me in the marketplace? All of it came together for the furtherance of the gospel. God, why would you not let me go to this town?

Why did you send me here instead? We see that in Paul’s life. He wanted to continue preaching in Asia Minor, and the Holy Spirit just kept closing door after door after door.

It’s awfully strange, and yet God had prepared somebody over there in Philippi, as a matter of fact, where this church came to be located. who needed to hear the gospel. And that church would support his work in the other places.

And see, all of it fell together for the furtherance of the gospel. In his own life, Paul could see God at work using his life and using the circumstances of his life to make the gospel known. As he looked back over it, he could see God at work using his circumstances, orchestrating his circumstances to make the gospel known.

And we see a couple ways that happened. First of all, the lost were exposed to the gospel because of the things that happened to the apostle Paul. In verse 13, we see so that it has become evident because of the circumstances he’d been in, all the things that have happened to him, we get to verse 13, so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard and to all the rest that my chains are in Christ. Now, this is an incredible perspective on Paul’s part.

He has been arrested. He’s been put in chains over things that he should not have been arrested for. He should not have been in prison for preaching Christ, and yet he’s there, and yet he’s glad to be there because his jailers have come to know about Jesus Christ as a result of being there.

Now think about that. You and I are mad when we get a speeding ticket that we deserved, right? Yet Paul is in prison for something he didn’t deserve to be in prison for, and he’s rejoicing because he says, I can see the hand of the Lord at work, that he’s orchestrated all of this.

It’s not random. He’s orchestrated all of this so that my circumstances could bring the loss to be exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. How else were you going to get in? How else were you going to get in to rough and tumble Roman soldiers and centurions to try to share the gospel with them other than you’re a captive audience and they have to guard you and so are they.

Paul was their captive, but they’d become Paul’s. They had to be there and listen to what he had to say. And not only that, by his life, by his attitude, they saw Jesus Christ in him.

By his words, they heard the gospel. It’s not just enough that we live a life that people see there’s something different. Our lifestyle has to back up our evangelism, but it can’t be a substitute for opening our mouth and saying something about the gospel.

But Paul did all this and he said, I can see that I’m in prison because there were people at the prison who needed to know about Jesus Christ. So he could see God at work orchestrating the circumstances to make the gospel known because the lost were being exposed to the gospel in ways that they might not otherwise have been. We see the second effect this had on the proclamation of the gospel in verse 14 when he says, And most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. So not only were the lost being exposed to the gospel, but the church was being emboldened in the gospel because of Paul’s circumstances.

They lived in a world where being a Christian could cost you your life. At the minimum, it could cost you your freedom. At the maximum, it could cost you your life.

And in those sort of circumstances, when we start to think about what it’s going to cost us to stand for what we believe, we become a little more calculating about whether we’re going to do it or not. And there’s a role for that. you know we have missionaries in closed countries and I don’t fault them one bit for being strategic I don’t want our missionaries going over to closed countries and just standing out on the street corner with a bullhorn where they get to share the gospel for exactly 30 seconds before they’re thrown into a dark hole for the rest of their lives.

Now be strategic and look for opportunities where you can share the gospel without getting thrown in prison and you’ll have more opportunities to show the gospel. But that’s not where we are. A lot of times we’re strategic in the sense of, oh, you know, I’m just not really feeling it today.

Well, you know, it’s not really that important. You know, we can just get together and talk about the gospel amongst ourselves. We really don’t have to tell other people.

They were afraid. Let’s be honest, they were afraid. And we get a little afraid too.

We have a whole lot less to be afraid of than they did. But they would get a little afraid. And yet they had this incredible example.

And Paul wasn’t an incredible example because of who he was. Paul was an incredible example because of how God worked in his life. And just his willingness to be used of God is what made the difference.

But the churches around would look at Paul and they’d have this incredible example of a man of God. And here we’re afraid, we’re afraid to be open about the gospel. We’re afraid to be open about preaching Jesus Christ because we might get arrested.

We might get beaten. And here’s Paul who says, I’m so excited. I’ve been arrested.

I’ve been beaten. And it’s only given me a greater platform to tell other people about Jesus. And he says at the end of this passage that we’ve looked at today, for me to live is Christ and for me to die is gain.

He said in other places in the scriptures, hey, if they let me go, I get to tell people about Jesus outside the prison. If they keep me in prison, hey, I’ve got a captive audience. I can tell people about Jesus in prison.

If they kill me, whoopee, I get to go be with Jesus. And so Paul, from that standpoint, was saying, it’s all about the furtherance of the gospel. What can they do to me?

And that kind of, folks, courage is contagious. When that first one person has the willingness to stand against the insanity around us and say, this is what God says, that kind of courage is contagious and other people are more likely to stand. My father-in-law has said to me many times, it’s harder to go from zero to one than it is from one to 100.

And they had one who was saying, you know what, I don’t care. Do whatever you want to me because it all comes out for the furtherance of the gospel. And the courage was contagious and the churches became emboldened in preaching the gospel.

Most of the brethren in the Lord having become confident by my chains, not in spite of his imprisonment, but because of his imprisonment, and the way he was preaching the gospel in prison, they became bolder. They are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Sometimes our circumstances, God can use those.

God will use those to further the gospel by exposing people the gospel through our circumstances who wouldn’t hear it otherwise, and by using those circumstances to embolden us and to embolden others around us to share the gospel. because sometimes your circumstances get to where they’ve beaten you down so much. I have nothing left to lose, and I don’t care what people think about me.

I’m going to tell them about Jesus. With everything that’s happened to me, what do I really have to be afraid of now? And we can get to that point.

I think God will take us to that point if that’s what it takes for the gospel to be shared. God was at work exposing the lost of the gospel and emboldening the church. Now let’s look at verses 15, 16, and 17.

He said, some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill. The gospel was being preached, and Paul said there are some people who are preaching it for the wrong reasons. Now, Paul here in this passage, he’s not talking about false teachers.

He’s not talking about people who are preaching a false gospel. He’s talking about actual ministers of the gospel who were preaching the message of Jesus Christ. They were just doing it for the wrong reasons. said some are preaching out of envy and strife, some out of goodwill though.

And he says, the former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my chains, but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. So he points out that there were some people preaching the gospel who weren’t doing it out of pure motives. Now, on the one hand, we’re all fallen sinful creatures.

I’m not sure any of us ever do anything out of 100% pure motives, okay, because we’re sinners. I’m not sure we can achieve that level of purity. But there are some people, you know, and, you know, from that standpoint, I can say I don’t preach because of the paycheck.

I don’t. I’ve done it for free, but at the same time, I’m glad I don’t have to. You know, there’s that little bit of human motive that says, hey, I get to eat today.

But that’s different from what they were doing. See, yes, I don’t have completely 100% pure motives the way Jesus would. And yet my great motivation in preaching to you all, bringing messages to you all, is because this is true, this is what God’s Word says, and because I want to help you, I want for all of us to learn God’s Word and become the Christians that he wants us to be.

And he’s called me to do that, and I do this out of obedience and out of love for you. And that’s the overriding. That’s the main motivation.

He’s saying for some of these people, the impure motives are their main motives. And there were people looking and saying, you know, when the big guy goes down, four little ones move up. If they could take down Paul, maybe I could be the next Paul.

Let me tell you, this still goes on among preachers today. That’s why preachers are sometimes the most critical people of other preachers. Hmm.

If I could just undermine John MacArthur. If I could just convince people he’s a heretic. If I could dig up some dirt on Russell Moore.

You start naming names of the. . .

Again, I’m not talking the false teachers. I’m talking biblical teachers. If I could just undermine them a little bit, I might build up my ministry.

and Paul said there’s some of that going on. They were thinking, all right, all right, if I could just undermine Paul, maybe I could move up and be the next Paul. Wouldn’t that be awesome if I could be the next Paul?

And so Paul was being attacked by people who were supposed to be on the same side. They were supposed to be on the same team. See, we expect attacks.

We expect attacks from false teachers, from people who teach heresy and lead people astray into hell. We expect that. We expect attacks on the gospel and on the messenger from the world outside.

But it’s a sad reality that we have attacks on one another from within. And this is where Paul is looking over his ministry. Paul’s looking over his ministry and saying, there have been some things to rejoice in, and there have been some things to mourn over.

And Paul’s looking at the division between those who have attacked him unjustly. By the way, I also don’t think preachers are untouchable. I’m the first to tell you if I say something that’s not biblical, you call me out on it.

Now, hopefully you’ll call me out on it gently off to the side afterwards because I try very hard to be biblical, and if I make a mistake, it’s probably out of ignorance rather than false teaching. But if that doesn’t work, if I still go on preaching something that’s unbiblical, call me out on it, okay? I’m the first to say that preachers are not untouchable.

That verse, touch not the Lord’s anointed, has nothing to do with pastors, all right? Talk about King David and his relationship to Saul has nothing to do with pastors. But he’s looking at it saying these people attacked him unjustly for no reason.

It’s not like Paul was teaching heresy and needed to be called out. They were attacking him out of envy and strife, as it says in verse 15. And he looks over his relationships with them and his interactions with them, and he looks at those who he sees are preaching Christ out of sincerity and out of goodwill and out of love for Christ and the people.

So he looks back over the good times and the bad times, and he says, I can see God at work in each of them. He saw God work for the purpose of the furtherance of the gospel in both his good circumstances and his bad circumstances. And Paul rejoiced, actually.

He said, even these guys who were preaching the truth out of bad motives, he said, I’m just thankful the truth is being preached, which I’ve got to say is awfully generous because I’m sure his critics weren’t saying the same thing about him. Paul’s saying God’s concern here. God’s intervention here is to bring people to a knowledge of the gospel.

He said, and if it takes some not-so-nice guys for that to happen, hey, I’m glad God’s using them too, which is a really charitable way for Paul to look at his critics. Hey, it’s not about me, and it’s not about my ego, and it’s not about Paul’s ministry and Paul’s following. It’s about the gospel.

The gospel is going forth, and he rejoiced. We see that Paul rejoiced that God could use his life and his circumstances to glorify Jesus and spread the gospel. Because at the beginning of verse 15, after he’s gone through all these, he said there are some who are teaching out of wrong motives.

So what, he asks at the beginning of verse 18. What then is, so what? So what, where do we go from here?

He says, only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. Whether they’re doing it out of pure motives or not, I don’t care. He said Christ is being preached.

And again, it needs to be clear, we’re talking about the true gospel here. He’s not thankful for everybody who says they’re a preacher of the gospel, because then as now, there are people who claim to be preachers of the gospel who are preaching anything but. They’re teaching that you can get to heaven by works.

They’re teaching that God is bound to bless you monetarily just for your righteousness and that you can tell who has God’s favor by what’s in their bank account. There’s all sorts of wrong teachings out there. That’s not what he’s talking about.

But people were preaching the true gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Some were doing it out of good motives. Some were doing it out of poor motives.

And Paul said, hey, the gospel is being preached and that makes it all worth it. All the attacks Paul had suffered from people who were supposed to be on the same team, he says, hey, praise God. He can use that for spreading the gospel.

All the persecution Paul had suffered from the government and from the mobs, Paul said, hey, praise the Lord, he can use that to further the gospel. He says in verse 19, for I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. That phrase, turn out, draws my attention back to verse 12, talking about how things fell out, turned out for the furtherance of the gospel. He said, I know this too.

where I am, this circumstance I’m in today, I know is going to turn out the same way for the furtherance of the gospel. He says for his deliverance. Now, I think Paul knew that not every time he was in prison, he was going to be delivered.

Now, there came a time at the end of his ministry where God didn’t deliver him from the hands of the Romans again. God just delivered him into heaven. But Paul wasn’t concerned about what the deliverance looked like.

He just knew it was coming. And Paul rejoiced in the fact that his circumstances could be used to further the gospel. According to my earnest expectation, Paul knew this earnest expectation.

He not only believed it was coming, he expected it. He expected it. You know, I think we’ve used this, we’ve talked about this story before, the prayer meeting in the drought-stricken area where they got together to pray for rain, but only one person brought an umbrella to the prayer meeting.

And we say that faith is bringing the umbrella. Well, there’s also, you know, there’s also the belief that God can do things. That’s going to the prayer meeting.

The earnest expectation that Paul is talking about is bringing the umbrella. Paul expected that God was going to intervene in his life and in his circumstances, not just for what made Paul comfortable in the moment, but for the furtherance of the gospel. According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed.

He said, If this is what, if God brings good things or disaster into my life, and it’s for the furtherance of the gospel, then I’ve got nothing to be ashame