What Are You Living For? | Grow E2

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Thanks so much, Amy. How good. These are good passages, hey. Philippians is a great book. This is our second week in our series to kick off the year called Grow. And yeah, we're thinking about ah not just what it looks like for us as a church to grow in number, but for what it looks like for us as individuals and collectively to grow towards the vision that...

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Paul and Christ himself put before us in terms of what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus. So if you haven't listened to last week, you can go back and listen to that talk, but we talked about this journey of discipleship that we're on, this idea of spiritual formation being this slow process over time where God transforms us into the very likeness of Christ. That the goal of our whole spirituality is to deepen our union with Jesus.

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And we look to that great opening line where Paul talks about what God has started in us, He will bring to completion. That there's this future time, this time on the other side of Christ's return where we will experience full togetherness with Jesus. We will know Him fully as we are fully known. But actually here and now, we're on this like never ending journey.

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where even the kind of ups and downs and the backward steps of life can all be caught up in this journey towards Christ-likeness that we're on. And today we have this passage that for me centers around this really well-known, beautiful statement from Paul, which kind of sums up his life. He says, for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Now, I don't know if that's

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a brand new verse to you. If you're kind of new to scripture or the New Testament, you may not have heard that before. If you've been in church for a long time, you've probably heard that heaps. When I first started coming to church as a teenager, they let me join the band as a trumpet player. I think it was just a way of letting me in. I don't think anyone really wanted a trumpet in the band, but we used to play this song. So before I knew that that was a Bible verse, it was a song to me. Does anyone remember the song?

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Sing it Trevor. It's a really good song. The verses and the lyrics are taken straight out of this passage. But it comes from this kind of mission statement, this motto of Paul that we may be familiar with. But when I first kind of encountered passages like this, I was like, wow, Paul is really full on. That's a full on thing to say. For me to live is Christ. What that even mean?

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And to die is game. That's crazy. The only other people who talk like that are surfers. So we used to get these DVDs in the surf magazines. And I remember one where a guy called Strider Waselusky, who now is on the world tour, of uh is a commentator, is a cool guy. uh But it was all about this wipeout that he had at Chopu, that famous break in Tahiti. And he got rolled across the reef and he got cut from head to toe. People thought he was going to die.

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And the interview was so extreme and so ridiculous thinking back on it. But basically what he said was like surfing is life for me. And if I die surfing, I'll die doing what I love. And that is actually like a pretty normal thing I feel like for surfers to say. They're very extreme in their views. But what about for you? If you were to complete that sentence, for me to live is blank. How would you fill it in?

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What would go in that blank space for me to live is.

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And I don't mean what you'd put like if you were asked this in a Bible study or a church context or a survey. I mean like, if I was to look at your diary this week, what would it reveal for me to live is? If I was to delve into your inner thought life, what would it reveal for me to live is?

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It's a really interesting question to ask in our kind of Western context. And I say these things fully owning, but this is very real for me. But I reckon we'd fill in that blank with things like safety and security, comfort, control. For me to live is to be liked and affirmed. For me to live is success, whatever that looks like for you. For me to live is surfing.

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for me to live is to keep all of my options open all the time. I mean, these things aren't evil in and of themselves. They're all good things, but they're actually very fragile foundations for our lives.

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If what is in that blank for you can be taken away at any moment.

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then you're building your life on shaky foundations. If over the long kind of view, those things can be torn apart, shaken, taken away from you, then when things go wrong for you or when you lose those things, it's not just like a temporary hardship, it's like the very foundation of your existence and your identity being stripped away.

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feels like life is collapsing for you.

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Matthew, in the book of Matthew, Jesus says, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. It's another way of prodding and poking that question. What is it for you to live? What is your life built on? Last year we looked at the book of James and in chapter four, if you remember, he said, what you do not even know what will happen to you tomorrow. What is your life? You're a mist.

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that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Pretty full on, but he's saying life itself is fragile.

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But this one sentence in the book of Philippians, this kind of mission statement or motto of Paul reminds us that there is something solid and firm that we can build our lives around. And we're going to look at why Paul can say that today with such confidence. Because remember, where's Paul writing from this book? He's writing from prison, probably house arrest in Rome, under guard 24-7, no guarantees about what happens next.

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If you listen to the way he speaks, he doesn't know whether this is ending in release or ending in death. He doesn't know what's ahead for him. I've never experienced anything like that, where everything is stripped away, where my control, my freedom is all taken away, where I have no idea about what is coming ahead of me. I can't think of any season of life like that for me. What would that do to us? How much would that shake us? And yet here is Paul with such confidence in the foundation of his life.

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that he can say, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

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Paul here is putting words around what defines him when everything's out of his control, when he can no longer control the outcomes, which is so much of what we're trying to do day to day and in any given moment. We're trying to control the outcomes of things around us. But this defines Paul even when he has no control.

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When we get a window into Paul's suffering and the context in which he writes this letter, we can see that one of the things that his life being found in Christ gives him is the ability to interpret even his suffering through the lens of the gospel. So he can look at the most difficult of life circumstances and he can see how even that is being used by God for his kingdom purposes.

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This is the same Paul who writes, you know, God works all things together for those, for the good of those who love him. Even this is not a setback. In fact, it could be used for the advancement of God's purposes here on earth. A life built on Christ enables us to interpret even our hardest moments through the lens of God's much bigger story. Paul re-

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frames what he's going through, it's not just a meaningless setback. Oh man, I wish I could be out there back on the mission field doing my thing. How annoying is this? He says, even this God will use. He's reading his story, his life within the biggest story that God is writing.

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And he puts this down on paper in verse 13, he writes, as a result of his imprisonment, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I'm in chains for Christ. So even in prison he's like, how good's this? I've got a chance to preach to these palace guards and they know why I'm here. What an annoying prisoner he probably would have been.

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In fact, when he was in Philippi itself, he was in jail. This is a different jailing. Remember the whole story about him praising God until the prison walls broke down? That was in Philippi. We see it in the Book of Acts. So he just like is annoying. He goes to jail and just wants to preach even to his jailers and bring them to the Lord. It's just more evidence that the gospel can move through the most unlikely channels. We should never count ourselves out. Whether we've got a big audience or a tiny captive audience.

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God's put us in that place for a reason, for a season, to be the hands and feet of Jesus in whatever that context is. So even his limitations, even his imprisonment becomes an opportunity for witness. It's a really beautiful story in and of itself. And he says again in verse 14, and because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.

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So actually people look at the way that he holds himself even in these most difficult moments and as fellow followers of Jesus, they are inspired too to dare all the more to spread the gospel, to be the presence of Christ where they are. You see, when our life is deeply formed by the life of Jesus, it becomes not only a witness to those who don't know Jesus, it becomes an encouragement for those

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who walk alongside us as followers of Jesus. It's kind of contagious and he constantly talks about it like he's got some disease that everyone around him can't help but catch. Such is the depth of his formation in Christ and his union with him. And his courage spreads when people see him endure with Christ at the center of his life.

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There's this funny little verse there, verse 18. We won't skip over it. It probably means something quite specific to the Philippians. says, he starts talking about the motives with which people are preaching the gospel, some from selfish motives, others out of love for others. But he says, what does it matter? The important thing is that Christ is preached in every way, whether it's from false motives or true, Christ is preach. And because of this, I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue.

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to rejoice because for Paul, he's like, what does it matter? It's not about my platform or necessarily my ministry. If it was, he'd probably be threatened and wanting to put everyone in their right place. He's not like that. He just goes, whatever, I'm just going to do what God has called me to do. And if they're preaching Christ from false motives, the word goes out and trusting that the Holy Spirit can use even those falsely motivated preachers to reach people with the news of Jesus.

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a funny little aside. um Then we look at this kind of hinge point as we get to verse 19 and 20. We're going through kind of verse by verse today because it's all pretty rich, but verse 19 reads this, for I know that through your prayers and God's provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. Can we see that confidence that he has?

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He says, eagerly expect and hope that I will be in no way ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted or honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

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was really taken by this, that little line that Christ will be exalted or other versions might say honored in my body. About what that meant for him in that moment. Because what he was going through was very much an embodied reality, like he was in chains. Like he could feel those chains, possibly as he wrote this letter. In his body, he was experiencing the claustrophobia of being in the same contained space. uh

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In his body, he was probably being deprived of food and the essentials of life. In his moment, in that moment, sorry, he is glorifying Christ through his body in a very real and tangible way. What does that look like for us? Well, it means that our discipleship is not just about what we think and what we believe and about having the right beliefs.

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It's about what is being shaped and formed in our hearts, our loves, our desires, our motivations. And of course, then what we do with our bodies, our hands and our feet, where Christ would take us, how we would serve him in the flesh. And does that sound like something that should be familiar to us all? So if you're new to our church, our church name is a bit strange, H3O, but it stands for heads on, hearts on, hands on. And this idea that following Jesus actually

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kind of catalyzes all three dimensions of what it means to live. It's not just about what we think, it's about what we love, our desires, our hearts being transformed so that we may actually go and live out the gospel in real practical, tangible ways. Beautiful reminder of this this week, I was sitting in the offices at the end of the hall on Thursday running a mediation with one of our clients for um Horizons. She's had the most.

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difficult season of family breakdown and domestic violence. And in that moment, we were doing a mediation, means on the other side of a team's call, there was her abuser and someone who had caused such damage and harm in her life over a long period of time. And she's connected with Mon, who has helped her to kind of access our clinic with Jan, who is in the waiting room and has loved her and served her cups of tea. And in this moment, we had some downtime because the other party was sitting.

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was blanked out on the screen and thinking about what was being proposed. And in that moment, she looked at the little sign that says H3O. She's like, so that's your church, yeah? It's our church. What does H3O mean? I was like, oh yeah, it's a bit of a funny name, but this is kind of what it means, heads on, hearts on, hands on. It's this idea that like, when we follow Jesus, we do it with the whole of our lives. And she's like, you know, I used to go to church. She's like, but I never really heard it put like that.

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When I was young, it was just all about believing the right things. And I used to think I was gonna be in trouble if I didn't know or believe the right things. And we just realized that so much of discipleship for many of us has been caught up in what goes on in our head, right belief. It's only part of it. But Paul says, actually, it's our full embodied experience that needs to honor and, I guess, embody the life of Christ in the world.

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It's not enough to just know the right things, but we're called to live it out in all circumstances. particularly when we're, somebody used, this is really funny, but somebody used the idea of a tube of toothpaste and squeezing it. Like when your life is squeezed, what comes out? Like Paul's life's being squeezed here. And what comes out is this deep knowing confidence that his life is resting on the foundation of Christ.

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And it's amazing, it's beautiful, it sustains him through the most difficult season, but when your life is squeezed, what comes out?

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Do you have that assuredness of faith, that confidence in Christ that cannot be taken away by anything in this world?

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Then of course we get to this beautiful crux kind of sentence, for me to live is for Paul, for me to live is Christ.

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For me to live is Christ. Coming back to our question, for me to live is blank.

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How did you fill in that gap?

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And if it's not obvious yet, maybe ask some of these questions. What do you most feel losing?

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What keeps you up at night worrying? What do you protect at all costs? What's that thing that you feel like, if I just had that or that event came to pass, then I would be settled, then I would be happy. What is that for you?

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What is it that when it's threatened in your life makes you just spiral out of control?

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feel like there's a point of fragility in Western culture that we're so used to being able to control things with our intellect, with our degrees, with our jobs, with our finances. We do have a high degree of control and a lot of outcomes are within our ability to kind of have influence over. And it can lull us into thinking that we are in control, that we have ultimate control. But control is always an illusion.

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And some of you, know your life stories, you've lived through moments where that control has been totally shattered. And actually sometimes that's what we need to realize, that we need something more solid to build our lives upon.

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If whatever you filled the blank in with, whether it's comfort or control, like suffering won't just feel like a temporary setback, it'll feel like the end, like everything's falling apart.

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I don't know about you, but I long to have the kind of confidence that Paul has, that even when all was stripped away, he could see God at work in the midst of it.

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and he knew that the very basis foundation of his identity remained intact.

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This is a recurring theme of the New Testament. We see this in the teachings of Paul again and again, we see it in the teachings of Jesus in ways that really, I think, hit home for us with our desire for uh security, often through our finances, property, you name it. I think of Luke 12, where Jesus tells that uh parable of a farmer or business owner who stores up

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grain and he fills up his barns and he builds a new barn to fill it up some more and he's just storing and storing for that rainy day.

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God says to him, you fool, this very night your life can be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? Proverbs way back in the Old Testament, Proverbs of Solomon 23, five says, cast but a glance at riches and they are gone. For they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. If we put our

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confidence in material things, we're putting our confidence in something that is inherently fragile.

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something that can sprout wings and fly off.

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But to put our confidence in Christ is something that cannot be shaken. So to live is Christ. What does Paul mean? This week I listened to a really beautiful sermon on this passage by a pastor called Matt Rowe and he had it, said it, I was trying to think of ways to paraphrase it but I'm just gonna quote him because that was good. He talked about loving Jesus supremely, serving him completely, and looking to him eternally.

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To live is Christ means to love Jesus supremely. As we read before, that word from Jesus, whatever our treasure is, there our heart will be also. um Augustine had that beautiful line, if you remember it, that you have made us for yourself, oh Lord. And our heart is restless until it finds rest in you. I reckon Paul's stability and his confidence

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comes from having Christ as his supreme treasure.

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because his stability and his sense, that sense of security doesn't come from his circumstances, doesn't come from his finances, doesn't come from material things, doesn't even come from his relationships, his friendships, his family, because it doesn't come from those things as good as they are, even in prison, he can confidently say, me to live is Christ. It also means to serve.

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Jesus completely. What do we mean by that? Well, kind of Paul explains it when he goes on in verse 22. He says, look, if I'm to go on living in the body, in other words, if I get out of here, this will mean fruitful labor for me.

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Yet what shall I choose? I do not know.

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So he's like, as long as I live, I have purpose. I have a purpose that no one can take away from me. Even in jail, I can labor fruitfully for the Lord as I witness to my guards. I was listening to a podcast, The Diary of the CEO. Has anyone heard that? What's the guy's name? It's very popular at the moment. So a few nodding heads. And he was interviewing Tony Robbins, who's that kind of very old guy now, but guru.

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mentor like life coach guy from America. If you don't know who I'm talking about, if you saw a photo of him, you'd know him.

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And he was talking about what he sees as the biggest existential threat in the West. And he's talked about the rise of AI as many people do. He's like, let me tell you why. Last 100, 200 years, we've been trained that our purpose and our sense of identity is completely intertwined with our work. And if we have another moment of mass unemployment, that will be such a deep existential crisis in the West.

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such a deep amount of suffering, not just because of the financial implications, but the identity implications. Preach it, Tony Robbins. That is so true. How many of us, when we're asked like, who are you, like talk about our work as being fundamental to our identity, not our family, not our community, not our church, our work.

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But here we see that if our goal in life is to serve Christ completely, then no matter what, we have a labor that is not in vain. We have a purpose for our lives that nothing can strip away.

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And the third thing that Matt Rose summarized when he talked about what it means for Paul to say to live is Christ is that we would look to him eternally. And he put it like this, he said that Paul's horizon is bigger than his immediate chapter. We really struggle to zoom out of our circumstances and see our life on the longer horizon of what God is doing in the world. And it's only when we get that long view of the redemptive

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redemptive work of Christ across the ages, the new creation that he is bringing into being through us, through his church in the world, that our circumstances actually become smaller and God's story becomes bigger. He can hold the outcomes pretty loosely because he knows it's actually not about me in the end. I'm just one part of a bigger story, the story of God's kingdom breaking into this world through Christ.

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He's like, I just get the lucky chance to be part of that for my season.

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And so imprisonment isn't a meaningless setback, it's just another chapter in the bigger unfolding story of God for him. So I love that simple little summary to love Jesus supremely, serve him completely and look to him eternally. I started with that Strada Wasilewski quote where he's like, man, if I die, I die doing what I love.

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Paul has that kind of moment. He's like, for me to live is Christ and hey, like to die is gain. And that's probably the bit that most of us go, wow, I can maybe get with you on the to live is Christ bit, but to die is gain. What does that mean? For some of us, it might sound like he's romanticizing death. It might even sound a little bit naive in some ways. For others, it may sound like he's kind of dismissive of the grief that

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death brings for us, the real, very real pain when we lose someone we love. He's not saying that life doesn't matter and that death isn't filled with grief. Go on and read what he says elsewhere.

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But what he is saying, and he kind of expresses this in verse 21, 23, sorry, he says, I'm torn between the two and here's why. He says, desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. See, the gain here is actually deeper union with Christ. Because he says, like actually the whole trajectory of my life has been growth, growing in my depth of...

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relational knowledge, like we talked about last time, intimacy with my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I want to know Him. I want to become more like Him. And actually, I know that the fullest experience of that that I will ever have is on the other side of death, when I see Him face to face, when the veil is removed. And so He longs for that day and as should we.

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That is why he can say to die is gain because he will enjoy deeper communion with Christ which has been the goal of his life all along.

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Elsewhere in Colossians, he says, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. These things are hard to understand, but our life is so caught up in Christ in this mysterious way that when He returns, the fullness of our life in Him will be revealed. And that is life that death itself cannot take away. That is the resurrection hope.

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that we have, that Jesus gives us this life, this life to the full, that not even death can extinguish, that will last eternally in deep union with our Lord Jesus Christ. That is where the security and peace that all of us are looking for actually comes from. We want security, we want a deep sense of comfort, we want peace, we just look for it in the wrong places.

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in things that can be taken away. Again, to quote Paul elsewhere in Romans, he says, convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. That's beautiful, Nothing can take that from us.

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Jesus says to his disciples before his death, when they're really experiencing grief as he tries to explain to them what's about to happen, he says, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I don't give you peace as the world gives it. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. Oh, that's the peace and security that we long for, not the peace that the world tries to give us. The peace that comes from owning your little slice of the Northern beaches, the peace that comes from a full bank account.

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the piece that comes from paying off your mortgage and receiving a passive income. Great.

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That's the piece that we're longing for. And that's a piece that cannot be taken away. One of the beauties of intergenerational community is knowing people in your life that have lived for decades, who are nearing the end, who have seen, done, lived through it all, and yet exude that kind of peace. That deep knowing that in the end, all will be okay.

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So Paul says, yeah, to be honest, I'm hard pressed between the two. Like, I've loved this life and the opportunity it's given me to live for Christ, but if I was to go, that would be a gain for me. He's not being naive. It's not making light of suffering and death. It's a genuine dilemma for those whose life is so hidden with Christ that actually not even death can rob them of that.

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So I'm gonna land with where we started and where we've been the whole time. What's that blank for you? What keeps coming up in your mind as we've been talking today?

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What would it look like to move Christ closer to the center?

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I just want to lead us in prayer and then I'm going to give us a moment to reflect and Amy's going to come back up.

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prayer is really simple.

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If you want to close your eyes and think about this with me, then I will for my life as well.

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Jesus, here's what I'm putting in the blank.

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Would you reorder my loves?

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Here is what I'm putting in the blank. Jesus, would you reorder my loves?

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Would you help me to love you supremely, serve you completely, and look to you eternally? Would you lengthen and broaden out the horizon of my life so that I can see that this chapter is not the whole story, that even if I feel like I'm in a place of setback and loss, that you are working all things together for my good, that you will finish what you started.

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that you will grow the life of Christ himself in me.

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So Holy Spirit, invite you into our lives to shape, mold and transform us more and more into your image. In Jesus' name, amen.