Thirty Miles!
That’s the distance the human eye can see a flickering candle on a dark night.
Sitting on a hillside with crowds gathered around him, Jesus delivered His longest and best-known teaching, “The Sermon on the Mount.” At the core of that message we find these words: “You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others… and give glory to your Father!”
The darker the night, the greater need for light. The Holy Spirit, though Paul in Philippians, reminds us of our Kingdom privilege of piercing this present darkness. Sunday we will open our hearts to God’s Word and rekindle the flame.
Someone in that darkness is lost and longing for a glimpse of God’s light. Let’s be the city on the hill that cannot be hidden.
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Buddy Hoffman
Series: Philippians: The “What Ifs” of Faith
October 27, 2013
Do All Things without Grumbling
Philippians 2:12-16
If you’re here this morning and don’t have a Bible with you, slip up your hand. I want to put a Bible in your hand. When you get that Bible, open it up to the book of Philippians. We’ve been doing a study through there, and we’ve called the study The “What Ifs” of Faith. There are the “what ifs” of fear. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you really didn’t know what was going to happen, our natural tendency is to move into worst-case scenarios. “What’s going to happen here?” Often what we imagine is going to happen never comes to be.
But what we’ve been looking at are The “What Ifs” of Faith. What if we looked at the world through those eyes of faith? One of the things we have to recognize is that fear and faith are really actually the same thing. They’re just focused different directions. Fear is looking into the future and seeing, and God has given us this ability, this powerful imagination, what could happen. Faith is looking into the future and believing the promises of God of what he says will happen.
This is one of Paul’s prison letters. He’s in prison, and there are questions of the church in Philippi. “Why has this happened to you? Why are you in prison? Why has your ministry been confined the way it has?” We have been looking at those “what ifs.” If you want to just go through there, the first one we looked at is in verses 1-3, which is, “What if the church really reached the city?”
What if the church really went out after people? What if the church went after the schools, went after the colleges? What if we didn’t just put up a sign on the side of the road and say, “Everybody who’s looking for God, come here”? What if we went out aggressively? This church in Philippi is the first church that was really established in Europe.
Then we looked at, “What if we really interceded for one another?” when he starts praying for them. What should we pray for another? Then in verse 12 of chapter 1, we looked at, “What if problems were God’s way of blazing a pioneer pathway for the gospel?” What if these problems we run into were God’s way of showing the world what the difference knowing him makes in our lives?
In the first part of chapter 2, we looked at, “What if we really loved one another and looked after one another?” Beginning in chapter 2, verse 5, “What if we had the mind of Christ?” That’s what it says in verse 5. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus…” (Philippians 2:5) I know that sounds like an almost impossible idea, that we could have the mind of Christ.
But it goes through here and takes us back to how in that garden of Eden Adam and Eve reached out and grasped what they were told to leave alone. Then it makes the comparison that Jesus is the new Adam, that instead of grasping, he just turned loose of that. He emptied himself. It talks about creation and the incarnation and the resurrection and the eventual glorification when we shall be around the throne and people from every nation, tribe, and language.
Now what we come to in verse 12 is, “What if we lived the light?” Verse 12: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence…” (Philippians 2:12) I think it’s an interesting thing when you look through here. Paul is not afraid to tell the people he loves that he loves them.
I think one of the things that’s important for us is when we really love people that we express it. Sometimes we just take it for granted that people know we love them, that they know we appreciate them. It’s a really old and stupid joke about the guy who had been married 25 years and his wife said, “Do you still love me, honey?” and he said, “I told you 25 years ago I did. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.” Paul is saying, “I love you, and you always obeyed not just when I’m with you but now much more in my absence.”
“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling…” (Philippians 2:12) Now I know you are aware that salvation is not of works. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) Amen? Aren’t you glad that’s true, because if salvation was of works, we would be in serious trouble? When you start thinking just even about heaven, getting a house on earth paid for is hard. If you had to pay for your place in heaven, you’d go, “I don’t even have a down payment.”
Here Paul says, “Listen, work out your own salvation and be serious about it.” But notice what it says there, “…for it is God who works in you…” (Philippians 2:13) It is God who is working in you, but you have this responsibility to work out what God is working in. Growing spiritually is not something that happens with passivity. You have to exercise some spiritual discipline.
You can’t just say, “I really would like to grow spiritually and know the Word,” and just start kind of rubbing it on you and it’ll somehow rub off on you. You can’t sit in church and think about the football game and think somehow or another you’re going to grow spiritually. There are spiritual disciplines of prayer, of fellowship, of worship. There are things we must do, and as we do those things God uses those things in a miraculous way to change us.
He says, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Do all things without murmurings and disputings…” (Philippians 2:12-14) Now I’m reading out of the New King James. If you got one of the Bibles off the trays, they’re English Standard Version. There are so many versions, which isn’t really a bad thing, but I kind of like this translation because it uses this word, “Do all things without murmuring and grumbling.”
That word murmuring in the English is what they call an onomatopoeia. Remember that? What’s an onomatopoeia? It’s a word that sounds like it is. Somebody give me an onomatopoeia. Okay, there’s a Tech fan over here I can tell. Buzz. What would be the word after buzz for ka-boom? That would be the football team.
What’s another one? Cuckoo. Yeah, I think cuckoo qualifies. In the English, when they formed that word murmur, it’s the word babies use before they can even speak. It’s the word when they’re unhappy about something. They just, “Murmur. Murmur. Murmur. Murmur.”
What Paul is doing here is he’s taking this church he loves and he is taking them back into the history of Israel and reminding them what not to do. “Don’t murmur.” Because what you find in the children of Israel is… If you do a word study on murmuring and grumbling, the children of Israel spent so much of their time murmuring.
Even before they got across the Red Sea, and the armies are coming down on them, God says, “I’m going to deliver you. I’m going to deliver you from Egypt. Today you’re going to see my power.” They get down there and they see the armies coming in and they say to Moses, “You just brought us down here to kill us.” They start murmuring. Then God says to Moses, “Stretch out your staff,” and the waters opened up, and they got across the Red Sea.
The very first place they come to, the water is a little bitter. Do you know what it says? Israel murmured. They murmured and they murmured. Really, it wasn’t even a long journey from Egypt to Israel. It was a trade route. People went through it all the time. You could do just in a matter of really a couple of weeks, but they spent 40 years circling around just repeating the same situations over and over. We’ll look at that when we get down into that passage.
Part of that time, most of that time, they just spent murmuring about what was going on. Murmuring about the food. Murmuring about the leadership. Murmuring really just about everything. He says, “Do all things. Just exclude murmuring and disputing.” This disputing is this constantly questioning God. Constantly just, “God, why are you doing this? God, why is this going on? God, why is this going on?”
We know that’s not an attractive quality. Say amen. Like really quick, like you just know that. We know! Let’s use a different word you might even relate to. A whiner. Have you ever been with a whiner? Like on a vacation and it turned into like prison. They just whine about the traffic and then they whine about the food. They whine about the place you’re staying. They whine and they whine, and you just think, “It’s such a good thing that the Ten Commandments prohibit murder.”
He says, “Don’t be that whiner. Don’t be that murmurer. Don’t be that grumbler.” I can’t really emphasize this more than it deserves, because there are so many things that we understand they’re sin and they’re wrong, but for some reason we have a really difficult time believing that whining and murmuring and grumbling are sins! It’s a sin. It’s wrong!
People who would never, ever, ever go into the grocery store and steal something or go into a department store and take something, and certainly wouldn’t think about committing some type of adultery or cheating on their spouse will live their lives in a cesspool of murmuring and complaining and griping and never, ever imagine that God actually hates murmuring. God hates it! Can you say amen to that, or is that a little too close to home?
I know for me, I can get into a murmuring kind of attitude. Some people actually believe that one of the spiritual gifts… They think they have the gift of discernment. “I have the gift of discernment.” What they mean by that is, “I can find something wrong with everything.” Do you know what? We are in a broken kingdom. We are not where God is taking us to be. It is true that in everything there’s something not right with. But we are to be different people.
One of the ways we demonstrate that difference is we don’t murmur. We don’t murmur. We don’t tolerate it in ourselves and we admonish one another, “Let’s not be murmurers.” Paul is in prison for goodness’ sake. He’s not in a pleasant situation, and he is not murmuring. He says, “This situation has given me the opportunity to share the euaggelion, the gospel, the good news, the news about who Jesus is and why Jesus came to all of the palace guard. This has broken open doors that would never have broken open any other way.”
So he says, “Do all things without [murmuring] and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault…” Notice what he says here. “…in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation…” This is the comparison, and it’s really the big idea of the passage, and this is the big idea of what he is encouraging them to do. “…among whom you shine as lights in the world…” (Philippians 2:14-15)
That’s our job we are to people who don’t know Jesus. They’re to look at our lives and they’re supposed to go, “Wow, they’re different than we are. Their light shines.” I read that on the side of a mountain on a dark night, a flickering candle can be discerned and can be seen from 30 miles with just your eye. Can you imagine that? Thirty miles! Just a candle. Now if you’re on flat terrain, the bend, the curvature of the earth is only about three miles, and you can only see about three miles. But if it’s lifted up high, for a 30-mile distance someone can see a candle.
Now here’s what Jesus said. Israel was to be a light to the nations. That was their job. That was their vocation. That was their call. That was their responsibility. “You’re going to be a light to the nations. You are going to be different than the other nations. You’re going to be different. How are you going to be different? Well, I’m going to put you in this land bridge that all the nations of the world have to come and go through. When they come by your place, this is going to be a place that is different.”
One of the great stories of the Bible is the book of Ruth. Remember that one? This is where Ruth comes back into the nation of Israel. Boaz has a farm. On that field (I’ve walked down to Boaz’s field in Bethlehem), he would tell his workmen, “When you harvest the crops, leave the corners. Don’t harvest the corners because there are going to be people who are going to come through here, and we don’t want to make them steal from us; we want to provide food for them.
It’s going to be so different than every other place they go, that they’re going to go, ‘Who are these people? Why do you live this way?’ and you’re going to be able to say, ‘Because there’s this God named Jehovah, and he loves us, and we are to treat one another differently, and he tells us to love one another and to love even our enemies,’ and they’re going to go, ‘What kind of crazy people are you? What are you really all about?'” We’re to be different. He says you’re to shine as lights in this darkness.
Then he says, “…holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.” (Philippians 2:16-18) So I’m going to take you through these points.
1. What? It’s verse 15. It’s the big idea. It says, “Be the light in the darkness.” I like the way The Message translates this. It says, “Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night…” One of the famous missionaries says, “Some people want to live within the sound of the chapel bell. I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”
So what’s the big idea? Be that light. There’s a tendency for us to retreat from the darkness and even fear the darkness. But darkness does not penetrate light; light penetrates darkness. We don’t have anything to be afraid of. They need to be afraid of us! They need to be going, “Those folks with light are coming. They’re coming after our kids.”
By the way, I will just warn you. If you’re here and you don’t believe in God and you just kind of want your kids to get a religious education so they have some kind of knowledge of religion and you don’t want your kids to be deeply devoted disciples, followers of Jesus, if I were you, I would make this my last Sunday, because we’re coming after your kids. We want them to grow up to be fervent lovers, followers of Jesus.
2. When? When is he referring to? He’s referring back to the book of Numbers. You might want to look over there. This is the story of really when they come up to this place to go into the Promised Land. In Numbers 13:23-33, it says… Really, when you go home, just read both of those chapters, Numbers 13 and 14.
They do the typical church thing. They come up to the edge of the Promised Land, a place called Kadesh-Barnea. God has already said to them and made it clear that he is going to give them the land. But instead of just going in and taking the land, they say, “Let’s put together a committee.” So they put together a committee of 12 people to decide if they should do what God wants them to do. Isn’t that a strange thing? If God has given a command, you don’t need a committee. All you need are warriors.
They go in. Maybe if you grew up in Sunday school you sang that song that the spies go in. Ten were bad; two were good. Joshua and Caleb came back with this minority report. Ten of them go in and they look around at the people of the land, and they’re really big guys. This is the word they use. “We were like grasshoppers.” Now they weren’t that big. But they were bigger than they were. They said, “The cities are well fortified. The people are absolutely fierce.”
Now then, let me just say this. The 10 people who gave the majority report were factually correct on everything. They didn’t come back and lie. They came back and told the truth. There were problems. You have to fight the Canaanites. Okay, that’s a problem. You have to fight the Amalekites. They live up in the mountains. Okay, that’s a problem. You start naming off them all. The Jebusites. They own Jerusalem. Taking Jerusalem is a really tough problem. That’s why David ended up putting his fortress there.
They named off all the problems. They said, “Now then, there’s a lot of fruit there. It’s a fertile land. It’s an amazing piece of land. But we are not able to take it. We aren’t able to take it.” Joshua and Caleb just stood up and said, “Let’s just go get it.” Do you know what happened? If you read through there, here’s what you’ll see.
When the people hear the majority report, they murmur. “God, why? O God, why do we have to fight the giants? Why do we have to fight the Canaanites? You know how fierce they are. Why do we? Lord, you promised us this land and now it’s full of all these warriors.” Murmur. As they murmured (and listen, this is what murmuring does), it causes people’s hearts to melt.
It melts the faith and the courage out of the people. If you’re jotting notes under when (this is what Paul is referring them back to, the book of Numbers and Joshua), here’s the mistake they made, because here’s what they decided to do. “We’re not going to go in and we’re not going to take it. We’re going to turn back.”
3. Where? There are pivotal moments in your life. There are days of decision that that decision and that day and that pivot turn your life, maybe for the rest of your life, where God gives you this chance to step into something he has prepared for you that may even be a difficult thing but he has prepared. You know he has already spoken to you. He has given you the promise that he’s going to give you victory through it.
What they did is they said, “No, we’re not going in.” Here’s what God said to them, and it’s pretty rough. He says, “You could’ve gone in and taken the land, but now you’re not going to. You’re going to live the next 40 years in the wilderness.” This is called the wilderness wanderings. For the next 40 years, these people wandered around and around and around and around, repeating the same pathways, coming upon the same graveyards, coming upon the same camping grounds they had repeated over and over and over again.
He says, “Every one of you above this age, you’re going to die in the wilderness. Your carcasses are going to rot in the wilderness. It’s the next generation that’s going to go in and take the land. Your children are going to have to wait until you actually die off before they’re going to take the land.” What were their mistakes?
First, they listened to the wrong people. Let me just give you this piece of advice. Never listen to a murmurer. Never take spiritual advice from a murmurer.
Secondly, they put more faith in problems than the promises of God. Yes, there were problems. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the problems are, but if God has made promises, then we need to lean into those promises. I hear people all the time saying, “Things are worse than they’ve ever been. It’s the end of the world.” Maybe it is; I don’t know. It almost was for me, but I’m going to tell you, that’s just not that bad.
People talk about, “Oh, it has never been like this before.” Listen; you weren’t alive during the Roman Empire. You talk about the Bill of Rights. Good grief! The church grew during times of persecution more than it did during any other time. Do you know why? Because it kind of sorts things out. If you’re not serious about your faith and you might get thrown to the lions for showing up with the believers then it might be a good day to just watch it on TV or hide or not go at all.
Thirdly, they thought the victory was up to them. You hear this in here. “We aren’t able. We aren’t able. We aren’t able.” Do you know what? That’s one thing they were completely right about. God was able. God was going to enable them to do that. If we aren’t attempting to do things that are beyond our ability, where does faith come in? We need to be asking God for massive, big things.
Again, I keep hearing about, “Oh, the next generation. This is the last generation that’s really going to really follow Jesus.” I don’t believe in that. I do not believe that. I believe we’re going to see a spiritual renewal in our nation like has never been before. Yes, and I think we need to pray and believe that and ask God for it and go after it and say, “We are not going to stand by idly and let the world take our children.”
Fourthly, they counted the wrong cost. This is really, really important. They looked at what it was going to cost to go to war and take the land. Do you know what they said? “If we go up there and we take on this fight, some of us, maybe even a lot of us, are going to die.” What they didn’t realize was that the cost of disobedience is always more than the cost of obedience. Because in not doing it, they all died!
It’s not easy and not always convenient to raise good kids. Can anybody say amen to that? It’s not. There are a lot of late-night talks. Yeah, you and your wife strategize. There’s a lot of calling in reinforcements. The greatest joy I have is watching my kids raise kids. Yeah, and it’s so fun to hear them say, “This is not really as easy as I thought it was.” It’s not.
Let me tell you something else. It’s not easy to have a good marriage. Amen? If you just kind of just get married and say, “Okay, we like each other and things are going to be fine,” I’m going to tell you something. It’s not that way. Now I know you want to look up here at me and say, “Oh, Buddy and Jody have this perfect marriage.” Ha! She’s married to me! You have to work at it. You have to pray. You have to seek God’s face.
I don’t do marriage counseling at all. I don’t do any kind of counseling at all. As a matter of fact, the board has told me not to do any counseling. Any of you I’ve given advice to, you’re probably going, “That’s why he doesn’t counsel.” Marriage is like one of the most sanctifying things imaginable. Do you know why? Because it makes you realize how selfish you are.
Your life is about you and you do what you want to do when you want to do it the way you want it done. Then you get married, and then you kind of have to work things together, and you realize how selfish you are. You go, “My goodness, I’m a selfish person.” Some of you are looking at me like, “Is that true?” Okay, your mate is suffering. Things that are worth having and worth doing are costly. They are.
Churches. Do you think this church just kind of happens on its own? No! Do you think the worship service, they just get up here in 15 minutes and they go, “Well, let’s do these three songs and that’ll work out”? Or messages? Or Denise and Randy and all those LUG people? You adults who come up here and disciple these kids, and some of you keep doing it after your kids are grown. I look at you and think, “Man, you’re a good person.”
It is expensive. It does cost you something, but disobedience is a lot more expensive. Do you know what the book of Proverbs says? It says, “The way of the transgressor is hard.” Do you think going to a marriage counselor is expensive? Try alimony. I guarantee you the life Satan wants to sell you is a miserable life.
I don’t mean this in any casual way, but look at the number of famous beautiful people who have blown their brains out. The world looks at them and says, “They have everything. They have money. They have looks. They have fame. They have attention. They have everything.” They’re empty and miserable! They counted the wrong cost.
4. Why? It’s really simple. People need light. People need Jesus. Why do these things? Why live this way? Why take this path? People need Jesus.
5. How? It’s really simple, and I touched on it. Work out your salvation, for it’s God who works in you. I reiterate this. We’re to go into the darkness. We’re to penetrate to the darkness. We’re to go into those places. You say, “Well, I kind of want to live in a Christian neighborhood, and I want to have all Christian friends, and I want to be around Christians all the time.” Well, who in the world are you going to share the gospel with?
I’ve had people say to me, “I want to come to work for the church.” I’ll say, “Why is that?” They say, “Well, I can just be around Christian people all the time. It’d be such a wonderful thing.” Let me tell you circumstances. We have a wonderful staff, but we aren’t like a perfect bunch of people. You say, “Well, I just want to not be in the world.” Guess what, friends? You are! This is the world, and God has put you here to be a light, and we’re to hold fast that Word of light. There’s a real simple reason. People need it.
I remember years ago (I’m talking a lot of years ago) over in the other building. The church was maybe a couple of years old. I preached this sermon one Sunday morning. I was going through the Gospels, and it was the fact that Jesus was a friend of sinners. Have you ever thought about that? Jesus was a friend of sinners. Do you get this? Sinners liked Jesus. Sinners liked him. Harlots liked Jesus. Publicans liked Jesus. Republicans liked Jesus. Democrats liked Jesus.
Do you know who didn’t like Jesus? Religious people! They didn’t like Jesus, but sinners really liked Jesus. One of the big complaints the Pharisees had was, “Man, the sinners ask him to eat at their house, and he goes.” When Jesus is headed back up to Jerusalem and he goes through Jericho, remember Zacchaeus is up in the tree? Jesus is walking by. I love that story.
I think I’ve told you this, but every time I read that story, if I were casting that movie, the guy playing Zacchaeus would be Danny DeVito. He’s up in the tree. Nobody likes him because he’s a crook and he’s mean and he’s devious. He has stolen everybody’s money. Jesus walks by, sees Danny up in the tree, and he says, “Danny, what are you having for lunch? I’m coming to eat at your house.”
“What? You’re coming to eat at my house?”
“Yep, I want to come eat with you.”
“Nobody comes to eat in my house. They hate me.”
“I like you.”
That’s Jesus, man. That’s Jesus. Levi is sitting there at the tax booth, taking everybody’s money. Who likes the IRS? If you work for the IRS, you don’t even tell people who you work for. You make up words. You’re like, “I work for the revenue creative company. We build roads.” He walks by and he says, “Levi, I want you to follow me. Be my disciple. I want you to be one of my disciples.” He ends up writing the first book of the New Testament! What kind of God is this?
Do you want me to tell you what kind of God it is? It’s the kind of God who likes people like you. Now I know you’re going, “No, I’m a good guy.” No, you’re not. “No, no, no. I’m one of those good people.” No, you’re not. You think you are. You’re not. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. You say, “You don’t understand. I’m a really good person.” You may be good in your actions, but you’re not good in your insides. You’re not. You may have learned to do good stuff, but compared to the righteousness of God, it’s filthy rags.
I was really ranting on this one Sunday morning. I know you can’t imagine that. We got in the car to go home and Jody says to me, “Man, I think you were really off base this morning, and I think you were too hard on everybody.” She never does that. Even when I preach sermons I’m not proud of, she’ll go, “Oh well, you’ve done better.” I’ve never heard her go, “No, that wasn’t a good sermon.” But she said, “I think you were too hard on people, and I don’t think it was a good sermon.”
I said, “Well, why do you say that?” She said, “Well, like me. We have kids. I volunteer at the church. I’m busy with women’s Bible studies and stuff. Everybody I know is a Christian. I don’t know any sinners. I don’t have any friends who are lost.” I said, “Baby, I don’t write it; I just preach it.” She didn’t say anything after that, actually…even during lunch.
I came home Tuesday. We were living over in Parkview. I came home Tuesday and she said, “I went down to Mountain Park Park,” which just sounds funny how they say that, isn’t it? Mountain Park Park. Why do they do that? This is supposed to be an educated community. She said, “I went over to the park and I signed up for a tennis team.”
I said, “That’s wonderful, honey. You’ll love it. That would be good for you. That’d be great.” She said, “No, I thought maybe I’d go looking for sinners.” I said, “Well, maybe that will be. I think mostly nice people play tennis. I don’t think that’s going to be the most likely place you’re going to find a lot of lost people, but maybe. It might work out for you.”
She came home after her first practice, and she looked almost white. She said, “I found the sinners. The coach used some words I’m not even familiar with.” I said, “What were those words? I’ll help you. I’ve heard most of them.” She said, “The captain of the team, she screams at people. It’s really a strange place.” I said, “Well, that’s just perfect.”
She said, “Now there’s one lady on there. Her husband is a youth pastor. She’s really nice. I talked to her after, and we’re going to work on this team and try to lead them to Jesus, get them in the kingdom.” I said, “This is wonderful, baby.” They just started talking to these ladies. She never actually invited any of them to church, but the captain of the team one Sunday morning shows up in church with her husband and her kids.
It was just wonderful. Over a period of several months, they just kept coming. I thought sooner or later they would just go, “No, this is not for me,” but they just kept coming. Then they went to camp with us. All of them came into the kingdom. It was amazing. I baptized them all. It was so fun.
About eight years ago, one afternoon Jody got a phone call. It was this lady named Lynn. She said, “Jeff was up in the Blue Ridge and he was riding his bike and hit some gravel and hit the guard rail, and they’re Life-Flighting him.” I won’t drag out the story, but Jeff died. I remember when they put Jeff’s casket right there. I was sitting over here with Jody. I looked at her and I said, “Baby, I am so glad you decided to play tennis.”
Now this is not an advertisement for tennis, but this is something we as a church need to recognize. People need Jesus, and they need Jesus really, really badly. The darker the night the more necessary the light. We need to be that light. We need to be intentionally penetrating that darkness, because the darkness can never crush out the light.
You are the light of the world. What a powerful responsibility. Some of you work in jobs and you’re the only believer on that job. Don’t be shaped by that culture. Let your light shine. I’m not saying you have to leave tracts at everybody’s desk when they go to lunch. I’m not saying sneak a CD in their mailbox when they’re not looking.
I’m saying if you live differently, you live with joy and worship and praise, and you make up your mind your reaction to difficulty is not going to be the same way the world does it, that when things happen our reaction is not going to be grumbling and mumbling and murmuring and we’re going to go, “Look, this isn’t the way I want it, but we are going to worship the Lord, we’re going to praise the Lord.”
When Paul and Silas were thrown into prison, they did not mumble and grumble and cry out, “Why me?” They said, “We’re going to worship. We’re going to praise.” God inhabits the praise of his people. When God breaks into a situation, there is no army, there is no government, there is no system of cultural bondage that can resist the love of God. Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you so much for you. God, you’re amazing. Lord, we don’t want to be some kind of holy huddle where we just gather together and encourage one another but we don’t go out into that world that needs you so badly.
With our heads bowed and eyes closed just for a minute, I’m going to ask you something. I want you to think about somebody you know who needs Jesus really bad. They’re a friend of yours. I’m not going to ask you to come forward or anything like that, but I want to pray with you. If you say, “I have a friend who needs Jesus and I want you to pray with me,” slip up your hand.
God, you see that. Lord, there are so many. Lord, break our hearts for these folks.
Okay, put your hands down. How many will say, “Buddy, I don’t have a friend, and there’s not anybody who comes to my mind, but I want to reach out. I want to be one of those kinds of people who are a friend of sinners, and I want you to pray for me that God would put somebody in my life I can be Jesus to. I can shine that light”? Amen. Amen. God bless you. Amen. Amen.
Lord, we ask you for fruit. Lord, we want to war for the next generation. We want to war for the community. We want to war for the souls of those who don’t know you. Lord, we don’t want to be wanderers; we want to be warriors. Lord, do that. May your light break through us. In your name we pray, amen.