Encouragement for Standing Fast

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Partway between Woodward and Enid, there’s a little outcropping in the plains called the Gloss Mountains. And there’s a trail there called the Cathedral Mountain Trail. And a while back, the boys and I were on that trail.

And I’m sorry, I realize there have been a lot of hiking-related stories lately, but y’all knew that I like to play outside when you called me here. So the blame here is 50-50, right? It’s one of my favorite hiking trails.

It’s not particularly difficult, but there’s an amazing view when you get to the top of it. It’s really a mesa, so it’s flat-ish on top. The whole thing is probably a mile and a half in and back.

Really, the only difficult thing, or I should say the most difficult thing about the trail, is that it’s so narrow and there’s so much brush grown up along the side of it that I’ve taught the kids to walk heavy. As I say, I make them stomp, and that gives any rattlesnakes that may be in the area ample warning that we’re coming to get out of the way. So that’s really the biggest concern about it.

Until you get to the point where you’re getting to the top, where it flattens out, there’s this spot where you have to take a big step. You have to climb a little bit. And so usually what I’ll do is get up to that top and then reach down, and you kind of have to brace yourself and reach down and then help the boys take that step because their legs, I mean my legs aren’t long, but they certainly are not long enough to do that on their own and so I will help them.

Now the problem with that is I have never been in that spot in all the years that I’ve been going there, I’ve never been in that spot where it did not feel like there were 50 to 60 mile an hour winds going across the top of that thing. You’re in northwest Oklahoma, It’s, you know, you’re a couple hundred feet up in the air. And it’s not like there’s a big mountain range around you like there are in the Wichita’s to block some of the wind.

So it’s just, you know, the wind comes sweeping down the plains and you’re up in the middle of it. It is really hard to get a firm footing and not throw Charlie back down the. .

. Poor Charlie. Or Benjamin, either one.

Benjamin’s a little more cooperative. But it’s really hard to brace yourself and get that firm stance you need without blowing one way or another. And yet that’s what you’ve got to do.

You’ve got to find that spot and stay planted there. And that’s the image that comes to mind for me when I come to the point in Philippians that we’re going to look at today. We’ve been going through the book of Philippians and seeing some of the advice there that Paul has for us, some of the encouragement, some of the challenges we try to live for Christ in a world that’s difficult sometimes to do that.

Paul talks about this idea of standing fast. As we get to the end of chapter 1, he talks about standing fast. Standing fast is not the way we would necessarily phrase it today. We would say standing firm, but it’s this idea of not being moved. I researched it a little bit this week.

What exactly does he mean by standing fast? He’s talking about taking up position in a spot and not moving from there. My understanding is it would be used of what a soldier was supposed to do when he occupied a particular piece of ground.

You’re expected not to retreat. The Roman armies, they didn’t want to fight over the same piece of real estate twice. You’re expected to advance at the very least. No, you’re expected to advance.

At the very least, you’re expected to hold your position and not fall back. So this idea of standing firm is this is the place where God has put me. This is where God has told me to stand.

And I don’t have permission just to step over here. I don’t have permission to give up that ground. I don’t have permission to wobble.

I’m supposed to stay here, to stand firm, and stay planted. This morning I want to talk about what that means and some of the encouragement that Paul gave the church at Philippi in order to do that. He didn’t just tell them to stand fast. He gave them some reasons why they could and some reasons why they should.

And that’s what we’re going to look at this morning. Philippians chapter 1, if you would turn there in your Bibles with me, it’ll be on your screen as well if you don’t have your Bible with you. And once you get there, if you’re able to stand without too much trouble, let’s stand together as we read from God’s Word this morning.

Short passage, Philippians 1, 27 through 30. It says, Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel, and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that from God. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me, and now here is in me.

And you may be seated. So Paul was preparing the Philippians, the people at Philippi, the Christians there. He was preparing them because they were coming into a period where they were going to endure trials too.

Now, it doesn’t mean that they had never endured any trials for their faith up to that point. But Paul is looking at what has gone on with him and recognizing that they are very likely going to face the same things. He says right there at the end, what we just read in verse 30, they were about to be having the same conflict which you saw in me and now here is in me.

Over the previous weeks, we’ve talked about some of the things that Paul had to endure. We talked about the imprisonment. We talked about the beatings that he endured.

We’ve talked about the opposition that he endured. And as a Christian, in that day and time, he suffered a lot of trouble. he suffered a lot of problems some of it was at the hands of the the Roman authorities who did not like the message of Jesus they did not like the message of the resurrection because it upset the social fabric you were supposed to worship Caesar and the Roman gods and anybody who didn’t do that they didn’t mind if you worship Jesus as long as you worship their stuff too you can worship whatever you wanted as long as you went along with them by the way the same thing is true in our world you can worship Jesus if you want and they’ll be fine with it as long as you worship everything else that the world worships too.

But it’s because Jesus and his claims are exclusive. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.

Because Jesus makes that claim of himself, we don’t have the luxury of being able to say, well, we’ll worship Jesus plus. We worship Jesus and Jesus alone. We serve Jesus and we serve Jesus alone.

And that’s what irritates the world because it looks intolerant and it’s convicting to the world. It upsets their social fabric. And so Paul had been beaten.

He had been imprisoned. He faced this torment at the hands of the Roman authorities. He faced opposition from false teachers.

He even faced opposition from some within the church. That sometimes he was just a little too gung-ho. Paul, why do you have to be in everybody’s face about the gospel?

Why can’t we just be a little quieter about this? Why can’t we just go along and get along? And he would face opposition from them as well.

And Paul was telling them in verse 30 that they needed to be prepared for the same conflict that he had been in. Because what he had endured was coming in some way, shape, or form to them. They were going to experience some trouble.

They were going to experience opposition. And just the fact of struggle and suffering, and by the way, the whole book of Philippians is not all about suffering and struggle. I know that’s where we’ve been the last few weeks.

That’s where he starts out. He eventually does move on from that. But hopefully just because we’re talking about suffering and struggle, he also offers encouragement.

So hopefully you’re taking that as encouragement and not just focusing on the suffering and struggle. But he’s preparing them because they’re going to experience these things. And as I was starting to say, it’s not just the persecution and the opposition.

it’s just a fact of life that as Christians we’re going to have trouble. Jesus promised that. We do people a disservice when we give them the idea that you come to Christ and everything’s peachy from there on out.

We just have perfect, wonderful lives. It is not that way. Sometimes they’re just awful.

I had a week where this week where I thought I cannot deal with one more thing going wrong with anyone. And I look at some of the stuff that I was involved with and stuff that happened with me and stuff that happened with other people. And none of it was particularly bad.

It was just that there was so much of it. Right? You ever felt that way?

Death by a thousand cuts? And sometimes you get to having a pity party where you think, if I’m serving the Lord, I shouldn’t have to be dealing with all this. And then I hear my own voice talking about that very thing from last Sunday.

I hate when I actually have to go out and live by the stuff that I’ve told you. Right? That’s really inconvenient.

But it’s true. we’re going to have trouble. We’re going to have trouble.

And so Paul was preparing the Philippians for the certainty of that trouble. And in the midst of that trouble that was coming, his challenge to them was to stand up and remain strong. He told them in verse 27, let your conduct, let your way of living be worthy of the gospel.

Let your way of life reflect the truth of God’s word in this gospel that you profess. In other words, live like you actually believe this stuff. let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of christ so that whether I come to you and see you or I’m absent because remember he didn’t know from day to day whether he was going to live or die he didn’t know this is what we talked about last week if you weren’t with us paul did not know from day to day is this going to be the day that the romans set me free is this going to be the day the romans execute me or is this just another day of me sitting in prison waiting for one of those two outcomes.

No idea. He said he wanted to go see the Philippians, but he didn’t know if he was going to make that journey or not, if he was going to be able to. And so he said, live this way so that whether I am able to come see you or whether I just hear about you through the grapevine, whether news gets back to me or not, I will hear of your affairs.

I’ll hear the way you live. I’ll hear the way you handle yourselves. And I’ll hear that you stand fast. He said, that’s what I want to hear.

I want to hear that you’re standing fast in the things you believe. And as I told you before, that phrase in verse 27, to stand fast, it means to be stationary, to not be moved. I feel like we watched some kind of game show, but I can’t remember what it was years ago, where people were in a competition.

I hadn’t thought about this until just now, so I wish I could remember all the details. But I feel like these people were attacking each other with these bats, with this nerf stuff at the end, so it’s not going to hurt them or anything. and they’re in kind of Nerf suits.

Does anybody else remember this? They’re standing on dots not too far apart, and the idea is to knock somebody else, knock the other person off of the dot first, and your goal is to stay there. Did I dream this?

Do you remember this? Okay. What was it?

American Gladiator. Maybe it happened there too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen American Gladiator, but maybe this happened.

At least I know I didn’t invent this. Thank you, Mark. All right.

the idea is you’re going to stand firm and not be moved no matter how much somebody pummels you with this big nerf bat all right that’s standing firm being planted in that position and not moving and the world will try to move us from our spot if our spot is jesus christ and his claims that he is lord that he is god the son in human flesh who came who was born to a virgin who lived a perfect sinless life, who was crucified for our sins and rose again three days later to prove everything that he’d ever claimed. If that is our spot, the world is going to try to push us off of that. If it’s the gospel, if it’s the offer of salvation because of what Jesus Christ did, the world is going to try to push us off of that.

If it’s the truth of Scripture, if it’s the sufficiency of Scripture. By the way, that’s the big argument today. The sufficient, even in conservative evangelical circles, people won’t say, oh, the Scriptures aren’t true, they just act like the Scriptures aren’t enough.

The world will try to push us off of that spot. And when it comes to the truth of Jesus Christ and what He taught, Paul said, stay there and don’t budge. Don’t move.

I want to hear that you’re right there. Now this can be a challenge, but in the text we see there are a few things that he talks about that bring us some clarity that can encourage us as we’re trying to stand firm, as we’re trying to stand fast. And the first thing is that trouble can clarify where our focus belongs. Anytime we’re in a crisis, our list of priorities tends to get very short, doesn’t it?

Or is that just me? Our focus tends to narrow only to the things that really matter. I know that there have been situations where I’ve had a full week.

I’ve had a full calendar, a full to-do list. I’m headed into the week. I know where I’m going to be at 7. 52 that morning.

I’ve got it all planned out. And then there’s some kind of family crisis. Somebody has a stroke and is in the hospital. Somebody passes away.

I mean, there’s a real family crisis. And suddenly that long to-do list and that extensive calendar, that gets way down to just a couple of things. And that’s the way it is for most of us.

Because we realize, and some of this stuff may be important and it may matter, but it can wait. we tend to focus in on just the things that are most important and most urgent. That’s what crisis will do for us.

And Paul said here in verse 27, he wanted to see that you stand fast in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel. And what he was doing here was calling for them to be united. He wanted the church to be unified.

Now, I did some research. What is he saying? One spirit, one mind.

and there’s all this information in the Scriptures about spirit, soul, mind, what all these various terms mean. And really, I kind of tied myself up in knots trying to work through this in this passage. I’m sure it matters that he picked these specific words, but just for our purposes this morning, I don’t want to get bogged down in the details.

I want to focus on the point here that he wanted them to be unified. One spirit and one mind. His point to them was, you need to be on the same page.

I want you to be unified. And when he wanted them to be unified, he wanted them to actually do something out of that. Not only to be unified and feel unified.

We talked about this, I feel like several weeks ago, with the idea of unity. That we think it’s just this warm, fuzzy, kumbaya thing. We sit around and sing songs.

And unity, he’s not just calling them to feel unified. He’s calling them to be unified because of where their focus is and to actually do something with it. Because He says, I want you to be striving together.

That’s where they work. And it’s all possible because they had a common focus. And their focus was the gospel.

Look at verse 27 again, all together now. Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear your affairs. Here we go.

That you stand fast in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel. He wanted them to be unified. He wanted them to work in a unified way.

And they were able to do this because they had a unified purpose, a common purpose. And it was the gospel. Folks, there is nothing that matters more than the gospel.

There’s nothing that matters as much as the gospel. That word gets thrown around a lot and rarely gets defined, so I just want to take a second and explain what the gospel is. The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and God’s offer of salvation to sinners as a result of it.

It’s the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. And then as Paul says in Ephesians 2, by grace we are saved. It’s God’s free gift, not something we earn or deserve.

By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So the gospel in a nutshell. Jesus Christ died to save us. Died to pay for our sins because there was no other way for us to be forgiven.

He rose again three days later to prove it. And now God offers us forgiveness. He offers us eternal life.

He offers us a relationship with Him. Not because we can ever do anything to deserve it, but because Jesus paid for it. And it’s ours if we will simply put our trust in Jesus Christ alone as our Savior.

That’s the gospel. There is nothing that we can do, there’s nothing that we can focus on that matters as much as that message, or certainly nothing matters more than that message. And the more a church, whether it’s Philippi, whether it’s Lawton, the more a church takes our focus off of that message and puts it somewhere else, the less unified we’re going to be and the less effective we’re going to be.

He called them to be focused on the gospel. And those moments of crisis brought them to the reminder that our time is short. We don’t know what’s going to happen.

We’re here because of the gospel. And that’s what we’re supposed to be focused on. And it’s no end of trouble when churches today focus on anything and everything but the gospel.

I’ve seen churches fight and split over choices of music. Come on now. I’ve seen church arguments over what time we’re going to start service.

What time we’re going to meet. I’ve seen church arguments. I’ve used this example before because it’s the most ridiculous one I have.

But I have seen, I have been present during church arguments where somebody took a swing at somebody else over who was supposed to get the mail. By the way, if you’re new here, none of that was here. None of those things that I just described took place here.

Were those people focused on the gospel? No. It would be easy to get focused on certain things.

It’d be more convenient for me if we started it this time versus this time. I have a particular taste in music. I don’t want to get the mail.

There are any number of things that I have preferences and opinions on, but we can’t afford for me for one second to put my focus on those things or your focus on those things. We can’t afford it. We’re called to be unified around the gospel.

And folks, the fact that trouble clarifies this is borne out in the testimonies of people that we see all over the world. While churches in America are having their little squabbles about. .

. And I’m not saying every church, but there’s enough of them. We’ve all heard stories.

Churches are having their squabbles over petty things. Look at believers in China who are being persecuted, and yet the church is exploding over there. Because they’re evangelizing people like crazy, sometimes at the cost of their own lives.

Look, in Eastern Europe today, there are believers meeting in subway tunnels. There are Russians and Ukrainians worshiping together in defiance of their own governments and serving together and evangelizing together in defiance of all political orthodoxy. Why?

Because the gospel matters more. And if we remain focused on the gospel, Times of trouble, times of suffering, times of struggle. If our focus is on the gospel, those times will pull us closer together as believers instead of pulling us apart.

See, if our focus is not on the gospel, those times of trouble will pull us apart. So our focus has got to be where it belongs on the gospel. Second of all, trouble can clarify where the battle is.

In verse 28, Paul called them to be not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation and that from God. There’s some interesting words that Paul uses in this text. The word terrified here is the word turo, which describes the way a horse is spooked or startled.

And my understanding is that I don’t have experience around horses, but my understanding of them is that they can be stubborn. I know they’re bigger than me. I don’t want to have to move one where it doesn’t want to go.

When a horse would get spooked or startled, it wouldn’t charge into battle. It wouldn’t charge into the crowd. As a matter of fact, from what I read this week, in some cases, these horses, even these war horses, if you managed to startle them, they would be worthless.

They’d flee the other direction. Now, I think they were trained, and so it took a lot to get them there. But that’s the picture.

He’s saying don’t act like that. You’re going to have adversaries. You’re going to have opposition.

Don’t let them terrify you. Don’t let them make you into the horse that’s so scared, so startled that it’s no good in battle. What he’s telling them is don’t turn and run from the battle when it comes for you.

People were going to oppose the church at Philippi and any believers, but what he’s telling them here is don’t be paralyzed by fear. Because if they were paralyzed by fear, they were going to fail to stand fast. They were going to be easy to knock down. I think it’s human nature that we sometimes get that way.

People don’t like what we have to say or what we’re preaching, and it’s easy to second-guess ourselves and say, well, maybe if I toned it down just a little bit. Now, I’m not talking about deliberately being a jerk. It’s easy to do that from the pulpit, and then complain, well, people just don’t like the Word.

Well, there’s some of that, but you can say hard truth nicely. I believe that. I know there are some.

. . Somewhere in America, somebody just heard heresy.

I think you can, God’s Word tells us to speak the truth in love. I think it can be done. So when I say this, people are going to oppose our message.

I’m not talking about, it doesn’t give us license to just go out and be hateful to people. But when we preach the Gospel, even when we preach it in love, people are not going to always like it. Because part of the Gospel is to confront us with the fact that we’re sinners.

And I don’t have to go up to somebody and say, you’re a sinner. But when we talk about how all sin condemns us, any kind of disobedience before God, we know, even if we don’t want to admit it, we know that we’re sinners. Now, how many of you, if I were to walk up to you and say, you’re a sinner, especially if you don’t know me, how many of you would enjoy that?

I remember walking around OU years ago, walking around campus, and they’d have these street preachers. It’s not so much that I disagreed with what they said as the way they went about it. But I remember they would stand out there.

I could tell you some stories about some of the stuff they did, but we don’t have time this morning. One thing they would do is stand out there. You’re a sinner!

And I remember one looking at me as I’m walking by and me thinking, how dare you? And then I thought, no, he’s right. But it was just, yes, I am.

Thank you for reminding me. But that approach is just off-putting. We as humans don’t like that reminder, even if we know it’s true.

And so the gospel, particularly to somebody who has not come to an understanding and an acceptance of Jesus Christ, the gospel itself is offensive. You’re telling me there’s something wrong with me and only Jesus Christ can fix it? Absolutely, that’s what I’m telling you.

By the way, same thing is true about me. But it’s a message that is going to engender opposition from others. And we have a tendency to say, well, maybe if I sugarcoat it, maybe if I kept quiet a little bit, maybe I shouldn’t say it quite so often or quite so vocally.

You know, we can second guess ourselves into not standing fast. But Paul’s attitude here is, who cares if people oppose you? He said, this opposition, it’s just a part of serving Jesus Christ. It’s going to happen, and it actually clarifies where everybody stands. it actually clarifies where everybody stands.

When you stand for the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and somebody opposes you in that, their opposition is visible evidence that you belong to Him, that you’re doing His work, and that they are not. And he even mentions that the opposition would come from within. .

. I mean, he doesn’t mention it here, but he talks all throughout his letters that sometimes the opposition would come from within the church as well. Right now there’s a crisis in broader evangelical circles over this very issue.

People wanting to return to the truth of the gospel and saying we don’t have to sugarcoat it with false ideas. We don’t have to interpret it through a Marxist lens for 21st century people. Calling people back to the gospel.

And there are people in evangelical leadership opposing this. And the natural inclination is to second guess and say, are we doing something wrong? No, it’s really just clarifying where everybody stands.

That’s what opposition is good for. It brings out into the open where everybody stands and what position they’re in. And so when these people were actively opposing the gospel, his point to them is it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to stop doing what you’re doing. It’s clarifying that you stand with the gospel and you’re doing something right if people are opposing you and that those who oppose you are standing against the gospel. Now that is really hard to live out.

I don’t know about you. I don’t want to offend people unnecessarily. It happens sometimes, but I don’t enjoy that.

I know some guys that they get in the pulpit that’s like a badge of honor. They keep notches in their Bible how many people they can offend. I don’t want to do that, and I know most of us don’t.

But sometimes it’s going to happen no matter how lovingly you preach the message, because the message itself is offensive to the world. And so Paul says, when people oppose you, just realize you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. So the trouble clarifies where the battle is.

It clarifies what side everybody’s on. And then finally, I think this is most important. We go to verse 29.

It says, For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake. Trouble clarifies who we serve. Trouble reminds us that I’m not here because of anything I’ve got going on.

I’m here in this life. I’m here in the position I’m in. I’m here doing what I’m doing because that’s where Jesus Christ wants me to be in order to serve Him.

It’s a reminder that I work for Him. And not just me. That’s all of us.

It’s a reminder that we work for Him. That we serve Him. When I read verse 29, I’ve probably read this a hundred times in my life.

I reread it this week during my studies. I did a double take because I noticed something I’ve never noticed before. Here in verse 29.

It has been granted. It has been granted. And if I can skip some words to clarify this without changing the meaning, just to focus in on one area, it has been granted to suffer for His sake.

And my thought when I read that, what, this is a gift you’re giving me? And yes, that’s exactly what he’s saying. It is God’s grace to us, not only that we have the opportunity to come to Jesus by faith and believe in Him, because God does not owe any of us salvation.

It is by His grace that any of us are saved. But it’s also a demonstration of His grace that we’re able to suffer for His sake. And I know that’s probably puzzling to some of you.

It was puzzling to me too. How in the world is it grace? How in the world is it grace?

How in the world is it a gift that I’ve been given the opportunity to suffer? Thanks for that. Did I get the receipt with that?

Can I return it? That’s not the gift I was looking for. you see here the gift is not the suffering it’s not the suffering that’s the gift it’s the connection with our Lord the emphasis here is not on the to suffer it’s for His sake even when we suffer we have been gifted this opportunity to do it for His sake we don’t deserve to have any kind of connection with Jesus Christ we are sinners we are separated from God by our sin we don’t deserve that connection with Him and yet He has given us the ability to walk every day and to serve Him so closely and so faithfully that we have the privilege of experiencing just a glimpse of what He experienced for us.

You and I will never suffer anything approaching what Jesus went through for us, but we get to experience just a glimpse when we suffer for His sake. It’s a reminder that we work for Him because it is so easy. You probably understand this.

It is so easy to go through daily life, just everything’s going on as normal, and we get focused on what I want to do, what I feel like I need to do, where my focus needs to be. I fill up my calendar and my to-do list. And then trouble comes, and I have that little pity party I’ve talked about before, where I think I shouldn’t be having to go through this, and then I’m confronted with scriptures like where Jesus said, the servant is not greater than his master. And what he was talking about is if I have to go through these things, why do you think you’re off the hook?

when I’m the master and you work for me. Thos