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From Philippians 2:12-18: Paul calls the Philippian church stars in the night. But what comes first, what allows them to shine is the difficult work of joining God in the work He is doing in them. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. That was Paul’s command to us. Let’s find out what that means.
A couple of years ago, my 2000 Saab turbo-charged 9-3 SE decided that it had had enough. A number of things broke on it and it was going to cost substantially more to fix it than it was worth. So all of a sudden, I was in the market for a car.
To make a long story short, I was able to make an offer on a 2008 Ford Fusion 5-speed, not turbo-charged, very slow, but much nicer car than my Saab. It was a great deal. I got to buy it from someone I trusted and pay them cash for it.
It was a cool day. We drove from Cincinnati to Columbus, OH to pick it up so I had a good amount of time to drive it.
By the time we got back on the road to head back to Cincinnati, it was dark out and it was raining if I’m remembering correctly.
And for all of us who have had to get used to driving a new car, it can take a little while to get acclimated to them, can’t it.
You know, I bought it. It was mine. We signed the title over to me. It was now my car. But in the darkness and during a rainy evening, I had to work out what it was like to drive it.
I had to figure out where the windshield wiper controls were. Since it’s a stick shift, I had to figure out the clutch and get acclimated to where it started to grab. I had to get used to the way the car performs and accelerates and brakes.
Every car is different and when you’re new to a car, even when you own it, it can take some work to work out how to drive it well.
Christianity is kind of like that…
And you know what? Christianity is kind of like that—only on a far more intense and pervasive level.
What do I mean by that? Well, when we become followers of Jesus, there are all kinds of new things for us to learn, not just intellectually, but also in practice.
What we’re talking about today…
And what we’re talking about today, if we don’t do this, we will stunt our growth. If we don’t do this, we won’t progress in our walk with God.
We’ll think to ourselves, is this all there is to the Christian life?
We won’t experience the kind of life change and transformation that God so deeply desires to bring out in us.
Neglecting this leads to the emotionally immature biblical scholar
In fact, if we neglect what Paul is going to explain to us today, we’ll be like the emotionally immature biblical scholar in the church who is unaware of their own issues, but completely aware of how to parse the Greek in the passage we’ll be looking at today.
The knowledgeable but horrendous driver
We’ll be the driver who knows every detail about the traffic laws, every detail about the inner-workings of a combustion engine, every detail of a transmission, every detail of a car frame and suspension, every detail of what their new car can do, and yet when they get behind the wheel, they wreck at the first turn.
Christians who are stuck
If you’ve ever felt stuck in your walk with God, this is the way to get unstuck.
This is the way to get on the path that God wants us on.
This is the way for us to live out our God-given purpose.
So let’s jump in.
Philippians: Finding Joy in a Discouraging World
In the first Century, one of the leaders of the early church, the apostle Paul, wrote a letter to a church, a group of Christ followers in Philippi.
This was a church he helped start and is very familiar with. He’s writing to them in order to encourage them to keep walking with Jesus, to live with joy, to adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus and so much more.
He wants them to be unified and to live out the purpose that God has for them in this world that so desperately needs the message and the hope that they have in Christ.
So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn to Philippians 2.
Philippians 2:12-18
12 Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose. 14 Do everything without grumbling and arguing,15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world, 16 by holding firm to the word of life. Then I can boast in the day of Christ that I didn’t run or labor for nothing. 17 But even if I am poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. 18 In the same way you should also be glad and rejoice with me.
There’s a lot here so let’s break it down.
Philippians 2:12-13
12 Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose.
So let’s think about where Paul has taken the Philippian Christians thus far.
This church, of which began with a woman named, Lydia, a slave girl who was, at one time, possessed by demons, and a Roman prison guard, was working out what it meant to say no to themselves, to say no to the way they used to do things, the way they used to think, the way they used to make decisions—that’s what it means to deny yourself—were now working out what it means to drive this new car, if you will.
They experienced salvation, the promise, the gift, it was theirs. But now, the work that God was doing in them, this saving and sanctifying work—which sanctify-ing is just a fancy way of referring to the process of transformation that happens in us as we follow Christ—was to be worked out.
They had to work it out
For Jews, they had to work out what it meant to love Gentiles when they would normally try to avoid them.
For Gentiles, they had to work out what it meant to say no to all the pagan gods of their culture and say yes only to Jesus.
For men, they had to work out what it meant that in Christ there is neither male nor female.
For rich folks and poor folks, they had to work out what it meant to love each other.
And this is just scratching the surface…
It seems that Paul’s writing to them has been an outworking of his own working out of his own salvation. He has had life happen and has had to continually go back to the gospel and to Christ Himself to interpret and navigate what is going on beyond just the view of what he can see.
Interpreting the happenings of our lives in light of the gospel
I believe what we’re seeing here is that working out your salvation with fear and trembling is the work of interpreting the happenings of our lives in light of the gospel.
It’s the daily choosings of lifting Christ up above ourselves, of counting others as more important than ourselves, of living in the body of Christ, standing firm with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and contending together for the gospel.
The truths and callings of Christ are clear from Scripture. But we must apply them and live by them. Because here’s the thing: our salvation in Christ pervades and invades every crevice of our lives.
It involves constantly re-working and tweaking our lives to be in harmony with what we see God calling us to.
Picture: attend to it (Gardener)
Like a gardener working in his garden, we must attend to this. We must work the ground. We must identify the weeds and kill them at the root. We must attend to the soil of our hearts so that when God grows the seed of the gospel inside it, it will take root and thrive.
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
What does that look like—work out your salvation with fear and trembling?
As we grow more deeply entrenched in God’s word and as we spend time attending to the working out of our salvation, we begin to recognize the areas of our lives that need to be dug up and replaced.
I believe there are some major areas of our lives that are transformed through the process of God working in us and us working out our salvation. I’ve identified seven, but there are surely others.
- Beliefs // As we work out our salvation, we begin to realize that much of what we believed about life was wrong and those things need to be worked out in light of what God’s word says.
- Emotions // This probably pervades the rest of these that I’ll mention, but in Christ, our emotional maturity ought to grow. I read somewhere where someone said that you’ll only be young for a time, but you can be immature for a lifetime. Pastor and author, Pete Scazzero has said that you can’t be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. They both go hand-in-hand.
- Habits // As we work out our salvation, our habits change because we begin to prioritize the things of God more heavily in our lives.
- Moral Standards // As we work out our salvation, we will see that our standard for what is morally acceptable will rise. We’ll expect more from ourselves and for ourselves. When we struggle with sin, we’ll begin to fight it instead of giving in to it.
- Finances // As we work out our salvation, we begin to see that our finances are given to us by God to manage and that He is the sole owner of them. We’ll begin to work out what it looks like to be generous in His word here on earth and how to be a blessing with this tool called money.
- Relationships // As we work out our salvation, we work to engage in relationships differently. We work to more quickly put on compassion and walk in other people’s shoes. We work to listen more. We work to talk less.
- Reactions // As we work out our salvation, we will begin to work toward reacting differently to things. For example, when I started playing hockey again after I surrendered to Christ, I had to work out what that looked like because I wanted my playing to honor my King. And this was a tall order because in hockey, it’s not always the nicest and most kind of sports. It often includes moments of pure anger and passion that is usually accompanied with colorful and eloquent language. And so as a hockey player, I had to work out what it meant to play hockey in such a way where my reactions to people was different.
We work, God works
And we work out this salvation that we have received from God while He Himself works in us to bring about His good purpose in us.
The Holy Spirit is at work in each and every one of us.
We work from His work.
In other words, our work is dependent on His work. Our work moves the needle only because He is working.
He is working in, we are working out.
We work out what He is working in.
The work that must be done in us is initiated by God, it is sustained by God, and it is completed by God. And at the same time, we are not called to be passive, we are called to actively work out what God is working in.
Are you working out your salvation or is this a part-time, Sunday morning, whenever it’s convenient kind of thing?
Philippians 2:14-18
14 Do everything without grumbling and arguing,15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world, 16 by holding firm to the word of life. Then I can boast in the day of Christ that I didn’t run or labor for nothing. 17 But even if I am poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. 18 In the same way you should also be glad and rejoice with me.
Stars in the night
I love the imagery that Paul uses here in verse 15 where he says that in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation in which they live, they themselves shine like stars in the world.
Stars in the night.
Do you ever on a clear, warm, summer night, look up and just stare at the stars in the sky?
I love doing this.
At Wayne High School, where I graduated from, they have a planetarium. And wow! It’s just so cool.
What do stars in the night do?
They provide light, of course. But they do more than that, I believe.
I think they create in us a sense of awe and wonder. They remind us of how expansive the Universe is. They remind us of how mighty our God is.
Stars in the night.
Church, that’s what we are. We shine like stars in a dark world. We’re glimmers of light, we’re carriers of hope. We help people discover a sense of awe toward God. We are visual representatives of the work of God.
When people see us, they should be reminded of the God who is at work in us.
Stars in the night.
Why?
Because not only has Jesus saved us, He has invaded us.
The salvation He has given us is not only in us but it is manifesting out of us. In other words, we are changed people living among a world that so desperately needs the change we have.
How Do We Obey, Work Out Our Salvation and Shine Like Stars?
By holding firm to the word of life.
What is the word of life? It’s the good news of Jesus Christ. It’s the Bible.
We work out our salvation with fear and trembling, we shine like stars, by holding firm to the word of life.
So let me ask you…
Are you holding to the word of life? Are you reading the biblical text?
We live in a time when access to Scripture and Bible reading plans are available for free and in abundance. And yet, while most homes in America have a Bible in them, those Bibles are rarely read.
My friends, God has spoken. He speaks. He has given us His very words in this book we call the Bible.
It’s what we need more of.
So let me challenge you: Google Bible reading plans and begin to spend time in God’s word on a daily basis WITH A PLAN.
But don’t stop there. Also read the text of your life.
Part of working out our salvation with fear and trembling is conforming our actions, our thoughts, and our will to Christ.
When you get defensive, ask yourself why you reacted that way.
When the actions of others anger you and you begin to look down on others, ask yourself why that is.
When you give yourself excuses for disrespecting others, ask yourself why you thought that was okay.
In other words, working out our salvation with fear and trembling involves a constant editing of the text we’re writing with our lives in light of what God wants for us.
When we start going down a path that doesn’t honor Christ, we must, by the power of the Holy Spirit, preach the gospel to ourselves and re-write what we’re doing and how we’re living.
If We Shined Like Stars
Can you imagine if we truly shined like stars in this generation?
Can you imagine if when people interacted with us they were in awe, not of us, but of our God?
Can you imagine if people saw us and noticed Jesus at work in us?
We would hear more stories of people seeing us and being pointed to Jesus. We would hear more testimonies like mine… That they saw Christians living out their faith and God began to work on them and before they knew it, they were surrendering their lives to Christ, being called into ministry, and stepping into a vocation that they would have never, for a million years have thought they would be in.
Only God.
God working in you. You working out your salvation. And people taking notice.
So what does the path forward look like for us?
Start a Bible Reading Plan (Daily) & Start Reading Your Life Daily
Right now, if you have a smart phone, go ahead and pull it out, open your browser and search daily Bible reading plans. And keep that tab opened. When you get home, pick one, print it out or start it in the YouVersion Bible app.
AND, pay attention to the areas of your life that need to be worked out. There are likely a few for each of us..
- Beliefs
- Emotions
- Habits
- Moral Standards
- Finances
- Relationships
- Reactions
