Sacrificial Service

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Back on Easter Sunday, we had a fellowship lunch for those of us who didn’t have family things to go to here in the area. And when we were cleaning up, it’s always like a loaves and fishes type of situation. We somehow end up with more food than we started out with, and people are trying to get rid of it because they don’t want to take it all home.

If you were there for that, Marilyn, is she in here? Caught her. All right.

Oh, you are there. Okay. Here, I thought I caught you skipping out.

Marilyn made these things that were like the Reese’s peanut butter eggs, only they were homemade and they were bigger and they were better than the store-bought ones. And I deliberately steered clear of them on the dessert table. I was trying to behave myself.

But we were in the kitchen, cleanup was going on, and she said, These need to go home with somebody or they’re going in the trash. And I hate to see food go to waste, especially something like that. And so I said, I will make the sacrifice.

I will fall on my sword for everybody else. Nobody else was speaking up. I said, I will make the sacrifice.

Let me tell you, it was not a sacrifice. There was no sacrifice involved in that. I did not even share it with my wife and children.

I didn’t let them know I had it. They were headed off to go home anyway, and I was going to get some things done in the office before time for living Lord’s Supper. I hid those things in my office, and I ate every bit of what was in there, and it didn’t bother me a bit.

As a matter of fact, you may not have even known I had them until just now. There was no sacrifice involved. But I called it that, and I know it was a joke, but sometimes that’s the way we use the word sacrifice.

We kind of use it in this flippant way. and so the concept of sacrifice isn’t always well understood because sometimes we’ll treat things as a sacrifice when they’re really not or we don’t treat them as a sacrifice when they really are to give you an example this morning my wife I guess is punishment for hiding the Reese’s the homemade peanut butter eggs reminded me that it was my week to help with the two and three-year-olds in Sunday school because I had forgotten. And I thought, because one of them’s mine.

And that just dropped you people off. No, it’s really not an inconvenience being in there. I always end up having a good time when I’m in there.

It’s just that was not what I had planned. I had something else I needed to work on. Okay, I’m going to go in there.

And I thought to myself along those lines of it’s a sacrifice, but I’m doing it for X, Y, and Z. I’m doing it for this reason, that reason. And so I thought of it as a sacrifice when it really wasn’t that big a deal. You go in, you talk with the kids, they were having snacks and they wanted to sing the VBS songs.

Thank you very much for that, Christy, by the way. The VBS songs. By the way, mine, even when the other children and Vicki were sitting down reading stories, mine still wanted to be upstanding and singing and dancing along to the VBS songs and insisted that I dance with her.

So everybody else is having story time and we’re flying like eagles or something. Y’all should come help out in the nursery. It’s quite a show going on in there.

Anyway, but I thought of that as this huge sacrifice. And then I compare it to some other sacrifices I’ve made that were bigger that I didn’t even think of as sacrifices at the time. A few years ago, I graduated with my master’s, and my sister posted something on Facebook about the huge sacrifice that I had made.

Because when I was years ago, I suddenly found myself in the unexpected role of single father to a two-year-old and an 11-month-old and trying to work full-time and take care of them, and grad school just had to go. I just had to drop out. I didn’t come back to it for several years and finished, And my sister talked about what a sacrifice it had been to put that on the back burner and take care of the kids.

And I thought, I had never once thought of it as a sacrifice. I mean, that’s just what you do for your kids. I mean, those of you who are parents, you understand that the family comes first. I mean, God, family, everything else, right?

That’s how it’s supposed to be. So I’d never thought of it in terms of sacrifice, but it was. So it’s kind of weird to me that the things we think of as sacrifices, like, oh no, I have to go work nursery, and the things we don’t think of as sacrifices, like uprooting our whole lives for the sake of our children, is because we don’t.

. . I don’t know if we spend a lot of time thinking about what sacrifice really is.

We have some examples in the Bible of what sacrifice is, Jesus being the ultimate example of that. And Paul talks about him earlier in Philippians chapter 2, in a portion of the chapter that we read just recently, where he gives the example of Jesus coming to earth, dying on the cross, and doing all of that for us. And he gives it as the ultimate example of humility.

He’s telling the church at Philippi, be humble in this way, because he’s talking about humility, and goes into this example of Jesus and his sacrifice and tells him in verse 5, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. And if you recall back to what we’ve talked about with the biblical standard of humility, we need to remember that because sacrifice and humility are tied together. We need to understand that they go together.

They are both at play here in Philippians chapter 2. We’ve been studying our way through Philippians and we’re in chapter 2 where it talks about humility and sacrifice. Humility, if you’ll recall, I told you at least from Jesus’ example, is the willingness to accept less than you deserve so that others can have better than they deserve.

As we looked at the dictionary definitions, when Paul said, be like Jesus, okay, so what was Jesus doing? He was being humble. What does that mean?

The dictionary definitions all tell us things like, well, putting yourself, thinking of yourself as lowly. I’m not real comfortable being in a position where God thinks of himself as lowly. Sometimes the dictionary definition is, oh, elevating others above yourself.

it does not work to say that our God put others ahead of Himself or above Himself. That’s idolatry. So looking at what did He actually do, He was willing to accept less than He deserved so that we could have better.

And I think that’s a good biblical standard of humility. And sacrifice then is closely tied to that. It’s actually following through on not just being willing, but actually doing it.

Sacrifice is giving up what you have or deserve for another person. And so after Paul has spent most of Philippians chapter 2 instructing us about humility and sacrifice and what they are and what they mean, he takes some time to talk about some of the sacrifices that were taking place in his own ministry. To Paul, this wasn’t just abstract theology.

It wasn’t just good ideas, things that we should think about and aspire to. He said these are things that actually are going on and should be going on. And so we’re going to look at their examples this morning here in Philippians chapter 2.

Let me see if I can work the phrase Philippians chapter 2 into that thought any more times than I already have. But we’re going to be there in Philippians chapter 2 at the end of it this morning. If you would turn there with me in your Bibles.

If you’re using an electronic device, there’s a link in your bulletin that will get you there. Or if you don’t have a Bible with you, it’ll be on the screen as well. If you’ll stand with me when you find it as we read from God’s Word together.

We’re going to start in verse 19 and go through verse 30 this morning. And here’s what he says about the sacrifices that are taking place in his ministry at the time. He says, But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, that I also may be encouraged when I know your state.

For I have no one like-minded who will sincerely care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus, but you know His proven character that as a son with His Father, He served with me in the gospel. I want to stop there for just a second and explain a couple of things.

When he says, I have no one like-minded, that sounds like Paul says, there’s nobody else here who thinks like me. He’s not counting Timothy. He’s saying that besides Timothy, there’s nobody around at that time that he could count on who would go and minister to the people at Philippi the way that he wants them to.

Now we know of a lot of other associates of Paul in the ministry that would have done this. He’s not running them down. He’s not saying Luke is worthless.

He’s not saying Silas is worthless. They apparently weren’t there at that time. This is during Paul’s house arrest in Rome.

And he’s saying of all the people that are still here with me, there’s nobody I trust like Timothy to come and serve among you the way that I would. So that’s what he’s saying there. He says that others, that they would sincerely care for your state.

Nobody else would. In verse 21, he says, for all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus. Now, to be clear on this, he’s not saying everyone around me is a totally self-absorbed, selfish jerk.

He’s just saying they’re in a place where they’re focused on their stuff still. And their mind is not on sacrifice and ministry to you. So we read this and we might think everybody around Paul is just awful.

But in reality, they’re just doing the things that you and I do, where we get caught up in our daily stuff. And it’s not that we don’t care. It’s not that we don’t want to help people.

It’s just we get all caught up in what we’re doing, and we don’t think about it. Those are the kind of people he’s talking about that are around him. Verse 22, speaking of Timothy, he says, But you know his proven character, that as a son with his father, he served with me in the gospel.

Therefore, I hope to send him at once, as soon as I see how it goes with me. But I trust in the Lord that I myself shall also come shortly. Yet I considered it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, and fellow soldier, but your messenger and the one who ministered to my need.

Since he was longing for you all, and he was distressed because you had heard that he was sick. For indeed he was sick almost unto death, but God had mercy on him, and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore I sent him the more eagerly, that when you see him again, you may rejoice, and I may be less sorrowful.

Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness, and hold such men in esteem. Because for the work of Christ, he came close to death, not regarding his life, to supply what was lacking in your service toward me. And you may be seated.

What he’s talking about there, he says what is lacking in your service toward me. He’s not putting the Philippians down saying, you haven’t done enough for me. What had happened was the Philippians had taken up a collection to help support Paul during his house arrest because it wasn’t like today where you get locked up and the county foots the bill for your room and board.

You were under house arrest and you had to find a way to support yourself or you might starve. And so the Philippians had taken up a collection to help support Paul in this time of need. What was lacking was for somebody to bring it to him.

Didn’t matter how big the collection was if he never got it. And so what was lacking was somebody to bring it to him. And that’s where he says Epaphroditus met what was lacking in your care for me.

So Paul here in writing this, he’s wrapping up one section of his letter and he’s preparing to move on to another. Because this one sounds a lot more familiar. It sounds like he’s just tying up loose ends as opposed to the passages we’ve looked at already that really deal more with theological things.

They deal more with doctrinal things. Here he’s just talking about what’s going on. And he’s offering here, though, some personal words to the people at Philippi that reflect what he’s already been teaching about some of these things.

Humility, sacrifice, ultimately obedience to the Lord. And one of the things that is clear to us in this passage is that our Christian faith calls us to serve others sacrificially. And we, in fact, have at least four examples of sacrificial service in the text we just looked at.

Four people or groups of people that have behaved in a sacrificial way for the good of somebody else. The first one is the Philippians themselves, the believers at Philippi. They were willing to take up a collection and to support Paul.

They were willing to try to supply whatever needs he had that they could during his time of house arrest in Rome. and they were even willing to send one of their own, somebody that they really liked. I remember years ago sitting in a church service where they were talking about people volunteering to go on short-term mission trips.

And a friend of mine leaned over and said, can we volunteer people because I’ve got a list, right? It’s okay to laugh at that. Some of you laughed a little bit like, I’m not sure if that’s okay.

Yeah, it’s not nice, but anyway, I’m not saying that’s what we should do. but they’re not suggesting, oh, we sent somebody that we just wanted to get rid of. They parted with somebody they were closely connected to that they missed and he missed them.

The Philippians went to great lengths to support Paul and to send Epaphroditus on this trip to go and take the supplies and the funds and whatever else to Paul. They were sacrificing to send one of their own to meet Paul’s needs. And we see that everywhere it talks about Epaphroditus.

then we see that Epaphroditus was willing to sacrifice he was willing to leave his loved ones behind in Philippi and go and care for Paul even though doing so nearly cost him his life we don’t know if he was just in in bad health we don’t know what the situation was but he did get sick during the journey also travel during that time was not always easy he had to walk he had to ride animals he had to board a ship it was from Greece to Rome was not an easy trip necessarily so he did this and he was he did this even knowing how much he was going to miss being away from home. As a matter of fact when when the Philippians found out he was sick they got worried about him and then Epaphroditus worried about them worrying about him. It’s like I’ve got to get back there because I don’t want them to be worried about me.

So not only was he willing to make this this arduous journey but he was willing to do it again so soon just to get back to them so they didn’t worry about him. So we see the Philippians sacrificing to take care of Paul. We see Epaphroditus sacrificing to take care of Paul and sacrificing to take care of his people back in Philippi.

We see that Timothy was willing to leave his familiar surroundings in Rome and he was willing to go and minister to the Philippians when nobody else would. When nobody else there would. Timothy said, you know what, I’ll stop what I’m doing.

I’ll walk away from the people in places that I know to go and take care of them. And then Paul was willing to part with Timothy and with Epaphroditus for the good of the Philippians. He said, you know what?

It’s good for you to have Epaphroditus back and to have Timothy with you. Now think of being there in house arrest in Rome. And if we go back to the beginning of Philippians, Paul didn’t know from day to day whether he was going to see the end of that day.

He didn’t know whether this was going to be the day the Romans released him, whether it was going to be the day the Romans released him from this life, killed him. He didn’t know if he would end the day in prison. He just didn’t know.

Think about what a trying experience that would have to be day in and day out to live with that kind of uncertainty. And then to have for a moment some comfort of having people that you know and that you care about around and then suddenly you’re willing to say, I will take that little bit of comfort that I have in this moment of trial and I’m willing to give it to you because I’d rather you have it. That’s what Paul was doing.

We need to understand that because otherwise it’s easy to just breeze through this and think, okay, Paul sent these guys on a journey. What’s the big deal? Everybody involved here was sacrificing something for the good of somebody else.

Each of these men, each of these groups, if we include the Philippians, they were sacrificing for the good of others that they served. Now we know that this was written by Paul just to let the Philippians know what was going on. But because the Bible teaches and we believe that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and it’s profitable for doctrine, it’s profitable for our teaching, we know that this wasn’t just here as an accident.

It’s preserved in the text to show us something. This was given to us as examples to follow. So how can we follow their examples?

There’s a few things that they’ve done in here that we can do as well. We see where they noticed the needs around them and they met the ones that they could. And honestly, this may be the hardest part of this, is just noticing, noticing the needs around us.

I’m not asking for a show of hands, but I wonder if anybody else in this room is like me, where you care and you want to help, but you find yourself so easily getting caught up in your own to-do list, in your own calendar, that sometimes you walk away and at the end of the day or even days later, you think, oh, yeah, I should have done something there. I’m guessing I’m not alone there. But here, everything that they’re doing, Paul is across the sea from them.

I mean, not the ocean, but the Adriatic Sea. He’s a long way away from them. And he still hears about the needs that they have back there.

They’ve heard about the need that He has. They’re paying attention. And if we’re going to be sacrificial the way we ought to be, we ought to do what they did in verses 19 through 23 and just pay attention and notice the needs and meet the ones we can.

We can’t meet every single need. We have people that show up here at the church office and they need things that we can’t possibly provide. But there are needs we can meet that say if they went to another church down the road, they might not be able to meet, but we could and vice versa.

We’re not called to do things that God hasn’t equipped us to do. We’ve just got to pay attention to the needs, notice them, and meet the ones that we can. Part of the reason that they were able to do this is that they were invested with one another.

They invested time, and they were connected to one another. Look at verse 24. Paul said, I trust in the Lord that I myself shall also come shortly.

He wanted to go to the Philippians himself. He cared about them. He cared enough to say, I’m going to go and spend time with you.

I’m going to come be with you, and I’m going to come minister to you. Myself. It’s a wonderful thing to write a check to do ministry, but part of sacrificial ministry means we invest our time in other people.

They cared even when it cost them. And I look at the example of Epaphroditus in verses 25 through 27. He not only made the journey to Rome that almost killed him, but he was willing to turn right around and do it again.

And each time he did that, knowing what it might cost him, he did it because there was somebody on the other end that needed him. And I don’t think there’s any one of us in this room that would have faulted Epaphroditus if he’d said, you know, I really can’t do it because my health, because it’s too much of an imposition. I don’t think any of us would fault him for that.

But he didn’t even think along those lines, as far as it’s recorded here. He cared. There was a cost to be paid.

He paid it, and he went. That cost was his health. And along the same lines, they went even when it inconvenienced them.

You know, if we’re looking for excuses not to sacrifice, we will always find them. If we’re looking for excuses not to go, we’ll always find them. I know this from experience.

I don’t want to tell you about how many times I’ve talked myself out of what I knew the Holy Spirit was telling me to do. If we’re looking for reasons, we’ll always find them. But nobody, nobody in this letter did what they did because it was easy.

Nobody in this letter did what they did because it was convenient. Sometimes ministry is inconvenient. Sometimes the Christian life is inconvenient.

If our Christianity never inconveniences us, we may not have actual Christianity. We may have something that we’ve made up as a substitute. They went even when it was inconvenient, and they gave even when it was a challenge.

And these are the kinds of things that believers are called to do. These are the kinds of things that we are called to do. And please don’t take any of this as I’m standing up here saying you need to do what I’m doing.

I’m saying this is what God’s Word says, And even though it’s hard for me, it’s true. And this is what we should strive toward. All of this is hard.

And I fail at this. Not only do I fail at this more often than I want you to know, I probably fail at it more often than I even realize. But this is what we’ve been called to do.

And this is why the passages that we’ve looked at the last few weeks are so important. Because sacrificial service requires humility. If we’re going to sacrifice, if we’re going to actually follow through, we’re going to give up what we have or what we deserve for somebody else, it has to start with humility.

Earlier in Philippians 2, Jesus was shown as the ultimate example of humility. And we’re told to follow in his footsteps. That verse I quoted to you earlier from earlier in chapter 2, verse 5, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

Paul was telling the Philippians, approach life the same way that Jesus did. Think the same way Jesus did about these things. And Jesus’ humility, I’ve already hit on some of this, but Jesus’ humility, it went far beyond the simple dictionary definitions.

It had nothing to do with how important we think others are or how important we think we are. It has everything to do with Jesus being willing to accept less than he deserved so that you and I could have better than we deserve. And I shared with you, think about what Jesus deserves.

He deserves to sit in splendor in heaven and be glorified by the angels and man alike. He deserves all the honor and all the praise He could ever be given. And then some.

If you and I, if every creature that has ever lived, spent every last breath we had praising Jesus Christ, it still would not be a fraction of what He deserved. That’s what He deserved. And what did He settle for?

He came down here to be with us. Fallen, sinful, troublesome us. and not only that, he came here to be crucified.

He accepted far less than he deserved and it led him to the ultimate sacrifice. And sacrifice is not always a natural thing to do because we typically want what we think we deserve. Now, as a believer, you should have come to the understanding of what you actually deserve, what the Bible says, the wages of sin is death.

You should have come to the realization, I do not want what I deserve from God, right? I do not want what I deserve. Actually, in most situations, I don’t want what I deserve.

But our human nature tells us, oh no, I deserve that. I want that. We have to fight against that human nature and instead struggle to be obedient to our Lord.

It tends to go against our nature. It also tends to go against our culture because we’ve gotten this idea somewhere that sacrifice is weak. We’ve almost equated it with giving in.

Let me tell you, there is a big difference between being sacrificial and being a doormat. There’s a huge difference. And we can see it all around us.

Who is it that demands their own way all the time? Who is it that screams and cries and throws it? I’m not asking for a specific name, right?

But who screams and cries and throws a fit when they don’t get exactly what they want exactly when they want it? Babies. Babies demand that.

And yet we think it’s weak to do the opposite. We think it’s strong to demand our way. Our culture has taught us it’s strong to demand our way and it’s weak to give in.

Listen, babies demand their way. In contrast, let me rephrase that. What has God designed men to do?

Get up every day, work hard, do hard things, take care of your wife, take care of your children, make sacrifices for the people that matter most to you. That’s what God designed men to do. So somewhere in our culture, we’ve gotten the idea that the baby way of doing things is the strong way.

It takes strength to be able to sacrifice, not to demand our own way. So when we do this, when we live sacrificially, we’re fighting against our human nature. We’re also fighting against our self-centered culture.

Sacrificial service starts with recognizing the humility that our Lord showed. And Jesus was not weak. Jesus said, no man has the power to take my life from me.

I lay it down and I will take it up again. Nobody that’s ever lived has been stronger than Jesus. I know somebody’s probably thinking Samson.

I’m not just talking physical strength here. And yet, with all that strength, he was willing to accept less than he deserved. We recognize the humility that our Lord showed, and we have to understand that we as his servants are called to do the same thing.

He said a servant is not greater than his master. If we’re servants of Jesus, we don’t deserve better than he does. And we shouldn’t expect to follow a Lord who sacrifices and his servants not do the same thing.

but here’s the key because we are fighting against our nature because we are fighting against our culture to do this ultimately we depend on his help in order to do it and that’s why paul holds him up as the example and says let this mind be in you which was also in christ jesus it’s really the key to this whole chapter is verse five we need to strive to live the way verse five describes and be willing to sacrifice and here’s why it’s so important as we come to a close this morning it’s important because sacrificial service points others to the sacrifice of Christ. That’s why any of this matters. If your goal in sacrificing to take care of others, if your goal in that is so everybody will think you’re a nice person, you’ve kind of missed the point. We get a little closer to having it right when we say, well, we sacrifice to meet each other’s needs.

That’s correct as far as it goes, but there’s more to it. This ultimately is about bringing glory to Jesus Christ who deserves it. In just the text that we read this morning, Paul talks about how important these sacrifices are that everybody has made.

He calls these sacrifices that his partners had made in the ministry, he calls them the things of Christ in verse 21, these sacrifices. He calls them the work of Christ in verse 30. He calls them their service in the gospel in verse 22.

All throughout this, he ties this idea of sacrifice with things that they had done that were vital in the kingdom, things that actually matter. And folks, we need to understand that when we sacrifice, when God calls us to sacrifice for the good of somebody else, and when we step out and do it, there is an eternal significance to the sacrifices that we make. Because those sacrifices point people to the vital truth that we sacrifice because we serve a master who did the same thing.

And you might think, well, it is just a little thing. I sacrificed a few extra dollars to give to missions. I sacrificed a little bit of time to work vacation Bible school.

I sacrificed a little time to go and take a bottle of water to somebody who needed it. I helped in the clothes closet. I helped in the food pantry.

I did an outreach event. It was just a little thing, but it has an eternal significance. Because with every act of sacrifice that you and I do, even though it’s small, even though it pales in comparison to what Jesus Christ did, it points back.

It points back to the sacrifice that He made. Because when we make sacrifices that aren’t natural for us, the world looks at that and says, why? You Christians are weird.

Some of us more than others. But you Christians are weird. Why do you do these things?

Because we serve a Lord who did the same thing. And if my master was willing to go through that sacrifice, if he was willing to sacrifice himself on the cross, I’m not saying this to you, I’m saying this to me. How dare I not be willing to sacrifice a little bit in return when he calls me to for somebody else?

This whole chapter has been about doing things and acting in ways that point to who Jesus is. And when we sacrifice to take care of others, we’re in a small way reflecting what Jesus Christ did. It’s kind of like when Benjamin was little, probably about Charlie’s age.

He saw me shaving and he wanted to shave. I gave him a popsicle stick and some shaving cream. He just wanted to do what Daddy was doing.

All kids do that. Jojo runs around the house telling all the other kids what to do because she wants to do what Mama does. Call her Mama Junior.

They want to reflect something that they see that’s greater. Our little sacrifices are just a small way of reflecting the greatest sacrifice that’s ever been made. When we sacrifice, we point out the character of a God who sacrificed for His people, and we open doors to tell others about that sacrifice.