What if we really loved each other?

What would it look like if we really looked out for one another?

I am sure that our family has eaten enough chicken from Chick-fil-A over the years to fill an entire car with chicken. Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, is famous for saying, “I know when a person needs encouragement; I can tell just by looking at them–it is a skill I have a perfected over the years and I am never wrong. What’s more, I can teach you how to do it and it is an invaluable tool in business and in social life. All you have to do is check and see if the person is breathing. If they are breathing, they need encouragement.”

Truett is right–we all need encouragement. We are going consider how to be Christ encouragers. So if you are breathing, be encouraged and let’s consider how to be counted among the encouragers.

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Grace Fellowship Church
Buddy Hoffman
Series: Philippians: The “What Ifs” of Faith
October 13, 2013

What If We Really Loved Each Other?
Philippians 2:1-4

We are in this series of Philippians, and we’re calling it The “What Ifs” of Faith. If you have a handout sheet there, it just says, What If We Really Loved Each Other? I was working on this passage, and I kept trying to outline it before it had to go to press, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. At the end of this message today, you may still not have an outline, but I actually do have one.

But what happens in this particular passage is it intertwines between a path toward peace and really a path toward war. It’s an interesting passage. Let’s read it, and then we’ll talk about it a little bit. “So if there is any encouragement in Christ…” (Philippians 2:1) Now you understand when you read that, that’s rhetorical. Obviously, there’s encouragement in Christ.

Then grammatically they hang on one another. All of these that are stated here are hypothetical in nature, and they overlap just a little bit. “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:1-2)

Now this word mind again comes up over and over, and he’s calling them to agree with one another. The church at Philippi was a great church. It was an amazing church. It was a church that, all through the years when Paul was preaching and planting churches, didn’t forget him. They sent him help. They sent money to support him. They were really the primary support base Paul had besides his own work.

He loved this church, but they had issues. One of those issues… Well, look what it says. “Do nothing from [rivalry] or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” This is the hinge everything else is going to be built on in this chapter too. Really the whole book. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…” (Philippians 2:3-5)

Then he’s going to go into this doctrinal statement about the nature of God and the fact that Jesus was God of very God. The theological term they use here is the kenosis, and we’ll get into this. But he’s addressing this issue that among the church there were some factions, some divisions.

How many of you have been involved in churches for at least 10 years? How many of you have ever been caught in the middle of a church squabble? Let’s call it a fight. Not even a split, because churches don’t split; they splinter. They’re like glass. You drop them and they break. Churches are actually both more resilient and more fragile than you think they are.

They’re more resilient. I know that because I’ve been pastoring for so many years, and if they weren’t more resilient, I would’ve destroyed several churches by now. C. H. Spurgeon said, “I know the Bible is the Word of God because it has endured so many years of bad preaching.” It’s an interesting thing.

It’s like your children. There’s a sense of fragility, but also kids are a lot more resilient than you think they are. They can take a lot more, but then there is this fragility that’s involved. The church is the same way. If you’ve ever been involved in a church squabble or fraction or that kind of thing going on, it’s painful. Later on, Paul is going to call out two women by name, and he’s going to say to the church, “Help these two women get along.”

Now let me ask you a really simple question…How would you like to go through all eternity knowing that in one of the books of the Bible you are named specifically by Paul because you were not getting along with someone? I suppose somehow or another maybe they’ll change their names. I don’t know. “No, that was the other lady.”

The passage we have in front of us, and I probably shouldn’t use this title… I was working through this yesterday afternoon, and I was just looking at what he’s talking about here. If I were going to rename it (and you can use this or not, or this may be offensive to you), I would name this How Not to be a Spiritual Vampire. Or maybe My Life as a Spiritual Vampire. Or My Experience with Spiritual Vampires.

Now then, I know none of you have ever watched one of those vampire movies, but they’re around. They don’t really exist, so don’t get afraid or anything. But spiritually they do exist. There are people who, when you get around them, just suck the life out of you. Do you know what I mean? Now then, if you don’t know what I mean, you are one.

There are people who you get around and they just breathe life all over you. When you’re feeling a bit empty and hollow or inadequate or spiritually low, you just know if you get around these kinds of people… We all have them in our lives. They’re encouragers. Barnabas’ name literally means one with the gift of encouragement. We all need Barnabases.

I have friends who I went to college with, and every time I hear them pastor or hear them preach, I walk out feeling like, “God must hate me.” There are people who you hear talk about God, and you go, “God is really fond of me.” Amen?

How many of you have ever read The Ragamuffin Gospel? If you haven’t read that, write it down on your notes. It’s by Brennan Manning. Read the book. It will bless your heart, and you will feel the love of God. He has a phrase in that book. For some of you, this is going to mess your mind up. He’s a priest. Sorry about that, but there are Catholics who know Jesus. I know some of you think that’s not true, but I’ve met a few of them, and actually, Luther never came out on his own. Man, am I stepping into it this morning!

He was someone who discovered grace after he was a priest. Now let me tell you something else about Brennan. Brennan not only was a Catholic priest; he was an alcoholic! His view of God was so legalistic that he carried it around so harshly. It really just ate him up. He talks about when he really found the understanding of grace. He was living down in Louisiana, and he was looking at the early records of the church. When you hear us talk about someone coming to know Jesus, we use this phrase, “They came into the kingdom.”

Do you know what phrase they would use? “They were captured by the power of the great affection.” Isn’t that good? They were captured; they were captivated by the power of the great affection. They understood that God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit loved them, and not only loved them, but liked them.

See, there are a lot of people who know, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life,” and they believe God loves them, but they have this hesitancy to understand that he likes them. He’s fond of you.

Let’s just work our way through here. What we’re going to talk about is the difference between this life-sucking attitude and this life-giving attitude. We’ll look at this life-giving attitude in this series of five hypothetical questions. Verse 1, chapter 2: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ…” (Philippians 2:1) Any encouragement in the Messiah. The word that is used there, encouragement, literally just means to call someone to your side. If there’s any sense in which we understand that Jesus the Messiah has called us to walk with him…

Let me think about it this way. When was the last time you read through the Gospels, and you were reading through Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and you felt and you heard Jesus calling you, “Just walk with me. Just walk with me. Just walk with me”? Do you hear what I’m not saying? “Go do something for me.” Now God wants us to obey him, and he has a work for us to do, but the work we do for him comes out of that fellowship with him, out of that relationship we have with him, that calling to his side.

Imagine for a minute you’re Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. As in any day imaginable, they were not popular people. I don’t know if they kept records on all the Tea Party of that day or not, but I can tell you they were just not popular people. Jesus comes along and he sees Matthew, who is one of the least popular people around anywhere. He is viewed as a traitor and a collaborator with the Roman government.

He says, “Matthew, why don’t you come walk with me? Come walk with me. I want you to come be my disciple.” Some of the other disciples were actually part of the Zealot Party, and they were known for carrying around these little daggers in their pants. They carried it around just in case they got the opportunity to stab somebody like Matthew. Jesus called some of those zealots to be with him.

Jesus went down, and as he was going down to Jericho (actually as he was coming back out of Jericho), there was a man there. His name was Zacchaeus. Remember Zacchaeus? Now when I was in Sunday school, we used to sing a song about Zacchaeus. Did any of you do that?

“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.”

That’s all I’m going to do. Zacchaeus was a repulsive man who had taken advantage of everybody in town. Whenever I think of Zacchaeus, if I were casting a movie of that particular scene, I would cast Danny DeVito as Zacchaeus. So just imagine Danny DeVito up the tree. Everybody hates him, and Jesus walks by and says, “Hey, Danny boy, why don’t I go to your house today and eat?”

Now that doesn’t sound like much to us, but in that day when you ate at somebody’s table and you shared table fellowship with them, that was the equivalent in their mind of saying, “He’s okay. We’re together.” Do you know what? Jesus was exactly saying that. “Zacchaeus, I like you. I want you to be my follower.”

Do you know what happened when Zacchaeus felt the love of God? He repented! He repented. Jesus didn’t go in there and say, “Zacchaeus, you’re the lowest, sorriest, no-good crook in this town, and the reason I came here is to let you know how low you are,” and then he went, “Oh yeah, you’re right. I think I’ll give all this money back.” Do you know what happened? He comes in, and he eats with Jesus, and he sees the love of Jesus.

Now here’s the question for us, honestly…Are we convicted by the love of Christ? If we aren’t, we should be. The love God has for us! This is what Romans says. The love of God leads us to repentance. Some of us need to just sit and marinate in this encouragement, this invitation to walk with the Messiah.

Now the second one. Again, these kind of intertwine. “…any comfort from love…” (Philippians 2:1) I know God loves me because God is God, and that’s the kind of God he is. I have no, “Do you really love me?” But do you know what really boggles my mind? It’s that God wants me to love him. Do you get that?

When Jesus goes to Peter after Peter has betrayed him… Peter has been bad. A little girl comes up and says, “Are you with him?”

“No!”

“Well, you sound like you’re with him.”

“I don’t even know him!” And then he says, “I’m just going fishing.” Then they go fishing, and there’s Jesus making fish on the side of the lake. Jesus calls out, “Peter!” Now let me ask you something. Do you know somebody who you really love and you love the way they call your name? You can hear it in the way they call your name.

My mother died of Alzheimer’s years ago now, and to this day I hear in my mind the way she called my name. Whenever I would pick up the phone and it was her, she would always say the same thing. “Hey, Bud.” The price of hearing that voice… I would love to hear that again. Do you have anybody like that? Your wife and your kids. My grandkids call me Dedaddy. I love to hear them when I pick up the phone. “Hey, Dedaddy!”

Jesus and Peter had walked together for three years. Jesus is over on the side and he says, “Peter,” and Peter jumps out of the boat and swims to the shore. What does Jesus say to him? “Peter…” What? “…do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?” Any comfort from love…

There’s a passage in the book of Revelation 3. It’s written to the churches, and there’s a church called Laodicea. He says, “I wish you were just cold or I wish you were hot, but your lukewarmness makes me want to upchuck.” I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about Christ wanting to upchuck, but Jesus goes, “Your lukewarmness just makes me sick.”

This is what he says. Remember this? Now he doesn’t say to this to lost people; he says this to the church. “Look, I stand at the door and knock. If you’ll open the door, I’ll come in and we’ll dine together. If you’ll just open the door, I’ll come in. I’m initiating this. I’m coming to your house, to your place.”

It always concerns me, I have to tell you, when I think about the church, when I think about Grace Fellowship, if Jesus is standing at the door and saying, “I just want to be with you. Let’s dine together. Let’s be together.”

The third one, he says, “…any participation in the Spirit…” (Philippians 2:1) That word participation really does it such a lack of justice. I don’t normally say this, but if there’s a Greek word you need to learn, you need to learn the word koinonia. Koinonia means that which is bound together. When it talks about the early church, they broke bread together, and there was the fellowship of the Spirit. There’s a koinonia of the Spirit.

One of the things that has been a joy of my life, and one of the greatest treasures of living, is traveling to other places with other churches. Sometimes in places where you don’t even share the same language, but experiencing the koinonia among the family of God.

How many of you have done that? You’ve been someplace? I remember one time way down somewhere, and we were in the Amazon somewhere, and we were underneath this kind of building that was just not really a church; it was just kind of a hut. I was reading from the Scriptures, and they were looking, and they were translating. I’m looking at these people who we really don’t share anything in common with at all. If I tried to explain you to them, they would go, “What?”

The lifestyles and the cultures are so different, but you could feel the koinonia of the Spirit. The same Spirit that was in me, the Holy Spirit, was in them. He says, “Listen, if there’s any fellowship in the Spirit.” Now you understand the fellowship of the Spirit. There are three big things the Spirit wants to do in our life. If you have come into the kingdom, he is resident in you.

That’s a pretty cool thing that the King of Kings, the Holy Spirit, the God of creation, if you have said, “Lord, I want to be in your kingdom, and I receive that gift you gave to me on Calvary, that forgiveness of sins, and I want to be in your kingdom,” here’s what happens at that very moment… In John 3, it uses the phrase born again. You get born a second time, and the Holy Spirit moves in. How cool is that?

Do any of you have the Holy Spirit talk to you? Either he’s not resident or you’re not listening, because the Holy Spirit talks to you. He does. Right now he is talking to you. To some of you he’s saying, “You’re not listening.” To some of you he’s saying, “I enjoy talking to you.” To some of you he’s saying, “Are you hungry too?”

Listen, resident in; ruling over. The Holy Spirit is a gentleman. He’s not just going to push his way through. The Holy Spirit is resident in, and when he is resident in, Galatians 5 speaks of the fruit of the Spirit. When you let the Holy Spirit rule over, it says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Now all of us acknowledge that even though the Holy Spirit is a permanent resident, he isn’t permanently ruling. We’ve all had experiences where we have just jumped up, shoved him off the throne, and let somebody have it. Right? Say amen. All of us.

Now then, here’s the third thing about the Holy Spirit. He wants to be released through you. He is resident in. He wants to rule over. He wants to be released through you to your children and to your mate and to your family and to your neighbors, to people at school.

So the fourth thing he says is, “…any affection…” (Philippians 2:1) That word affection there again is a little different than the word fellowship and the word love. Affection has to do with your feelings. It’s the word in Matthew 9:35-38 where Jesus looks at the multitudes and they’re scattered like sheep without a shepherd. This is the word that is used there. Jesus was moved with compassion.

If you grew up in Sunday school or church… Did any of you grow up on King James? Okay, this one might’ve really thrown you. Here’s what it says in the King James. I remember the first time I read it as a kid, wondering what in the world that meant. It says Jesus saw the multitudes, and his bowels were moved with compassion. I knew what a bowel was, and I knew what a bowel movement was, and I really thought, “What in the world does that mean, that his bowels were moved with compassion?”

Well, it’s an idiom they used. But you understand it if you think about it. Have you ever seen something, and when you saw it you felt sick in the pit of your stomach? It just made you feel sick. You see those children who are starving, and it makes you feel sick. You see somebody abused, and it makes you feel sick to your stomach.

Have you ever seen something that made you so sick it made you throw up? When Jesus looked over at Jerusalem and saw the abuse, the spiritual abuse that was going on, it just made him sick. He says, “If you have that kind of affection in the Spirit.”

Then number five is, “…and sympathy…” (Philippians 2:1) That again is very close. It’s there intertwined tightly with this idea of affection. It’s, “Do you feel somebody else’s pain?” Sympathy is with passion. Do you feel other people’s pain?

If you have these things, he says, “…complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:2) Now what he’s not talking about is that you have my mind and I have your mind; it’s that we have Jesus’ mind. In relationships, there’s always this tug-of-war where I want everybody to think like me, or you want everybody to think like you. There’s this pulling back and forth. He says, “Listen, we don’t need this pulling back and forth. What we need is the mind of Jesus. We need the heart of Jesus.”

Now he also goes through the causes of that. What causes people to be joy suckers? What causes them to just pull the pleasure out of life from other people, and maybe what causes us to do that? There are three things. Beginning in verse 3, he says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3)

That selfish ambition or self-seeking or competitive spirit is a political term, and it means self-promoting. It means seeking advance at the expense of others. It means putting yourself as the center of the issue. Self-promotion has a way of making everybody sick except the one who has it.

Then he talks about this arrogance or conceit. The older translations use vainglory. It’s the exact opposite of humility. It’s where we have this hubris about us. He says, “Don’t be a person who is possessed with hubris and arrogance.”

Then he says, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4) He really addresses the issue of icy indifference where we become apathetic. We don’t care about what other people need, or we don’t care about the problems other people face.

I know sometimes we go through periods of almost a compassion overload because there are so many problems. You look in every direction. There are issues and problems. There are wars and there are kids who are hungry. You look at our downtown campus down at Midtown. Just the other side of that area they call “The Bluff.” There are hundreds of kids who don’t have any chance at all.

It is not my goal for us to feel guilty about all the world’s brokenness, because it’s impossible to solve all the world’s brokenness. But we can still care. There are situations where we can actually intervene. I don’t know what that means for you and you don’t know what that means for me, but there are situations where the Holy Spirit stirs something inside of me and I know it’s the Holy Spirit saying, “Do something about that. Step into that gap.”

We have a really good friend. When Jody and I first started pastoring, we graduated from college and got married, and we were like 22 years old. Do you remember when you were 22? You don’t know anything. You don’t even know what you don’t know.

I knew a couple of things I thought I knew. I thought God had called me to pastor, and I was like one of three or four people who believed that. I was sort of half believing it, but I thought, “I’m going to go out to Idaho, and I’m going to give this thing a roll. If it doesn’t work out, I had this wonderful job before I left here in Atlanta, and he always said I could come back.” I said, “I’ll just go back and do that.”

We were driving out to Idaho. Have you ever driven across Wyoming? It is a wide state…wide, wide, wide. Like they could just pave it over and turn it into a parking lot for California. It’s just flat and wide. Jody had grown up north of Chicago in this little town called Lake Geneva. It’s like paradise, except it’s frozen.

So we were driving out across Wyoming, and Jody cried all the way across Wyoming. She went, “What are we going to do?” I said, “I’m not quite 100 percent sure, but we’re going to start a church.” She said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “Well, we’ll find some place and I’ll start teaching the Bible verse by verse, and we’ll make disciples, and the church will grow.” She went, “Is that really your only plan?” I said, “It’s all I got, baby. It’s all I got. I grew up in church. I’ve seen this work. I think it’ll happen. We’ll just give this a shot.”

We were out there. We’d been at it for about three years. This little girl was about 14. She got caught in the middle of some really terrible domestic situation, and Jody just said, “Let’s just have her come live with us.” Now we were really raising each other and were not ready to raise another person at all.

She came to live with us. We didn’t even have any space. It was like, “Are we doing the right thing here?” She got through high school and got off to college and moved off and got married. She just got this huge burden for kids who nobody cared about. So she said, “I think I could help.” She opened this home for kids who nobody cared about. I’m talking about really emotionally dysfunctional kids who couldn’t care for themselves.

That home filled up, and she bought another house. That house filled up, and she bought another house. That house filled up. I hadn’t seen her for a long time, and Jody went to see her. She came back, and she said, “You ought to go down there and see what she’s doing. It’s amazing.”

So I went down. She was walking me around and showing me these kids. She said, “I want to introduce you to this kid.” I said, “Okay.” We went in, and she said, “Let me tell you about this kid.” He was sitting in his room, fully clothed, not quite normal, but pretty normal. She said, “When we got this kid, he couldn’t feed himself. He couldn’t dress himself. He couldn’t brush his teeth. He couldn’t read. He was completely dysfunctional.”

I said, “How did you get him here?” Do you know what she said? “In his intake interview he was sitting there without a stitch of clothes on, and I said, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ So this kid hadn’t answered any questions, but all of a sudden he popped up his head and said, ‘An astronaut.'”

Now I don’t think there’s any call for naked astronauts. But she’s a genius. Do you know what she said? She said, “That would be wonderful. Do you know what? If you’re going to be an astronaut, there are some things you’re going to have to learn.” He looked at her, and she said, “Astronauts need to know how to put their clothes on.” So he started trying to learn to dress himself.

She said, “Astronauts need to know how to feed themselves because way up in there in space nobody is going to bring you your Tang. You’re going to have to learn to feed yourself.” She went through this whole thing. “Astronauts need to learn how to read.” So she took him down to the comic book store and found all these science fiction comic book characters, outer space stuff, and she said, “Which ones do you want?”

So he bought a stack of these comic books, and she sat somebody down there with him, and he would look at the pictures and he would read them. Most of them he’d just memorize, but as he memorized them, he learned to read. I walked in the room, and I said, “Hey, I heard you want to be an astronaut.” He goes, “I am going to be an astronaut.” Now he didn’t become an astronaut, but he learned to read. He learned to dress himself. He learned to count. He learned to take care of his bodily functions.

For some of you here, God has put dreams in your heart…deep, deep dreams. You’ve lived with a bunch of vampires who have just absolutely sucked it out of you. They’ve just sucked it out of you. Some of you are those suckers. Now let me just say something to you. God may have put a dream in your heart and you may not ever, like this kid, be an astronaut, but God may use that dream to get you somewhere else way down the road you never would’ve gotten to any other way.

Don’t you want to be a church of life givers, of believers? When Jesus picked the disciples, they were nobodies. They were worse than nobodies. Nobody believed in them. But do you know what? After they had been with Jesus, do you know what they said? “Those who have turned world upside down have come here also.” Do you know why? Because when you’re a life giver, it’s an upside-down world. The rest of the world are life takers. We have the Holy Spirit. We have life. Jesus says, “I am life, and I am come to give you life and give it in abundance.”

Don’t you want it? Yeah, don’t you want it? I do. I want it. I want to be part of it. I don’t want to be part of just crushing people. I want to be part of that movement of the life that believes. I hear this from pastors all the time. They say, “Oh, we’ve lost America. We’ve lost a generation. These kids don’t love Jesus.” I just say, “You’re not talking to our kids. Our kids love Jesus.” You come over here on Wednesday night and they’ll teach you how to worship. You’ll be jumping up and down, and you’ll be going, “I’m not sure about that.” God likes it.

I talked to somebody a while back, and they said, “Well, I’m just really not one of those who like to raise my hands.” Well, guess what? You didn’t get to write the Bible. Do you know what he said? “I would that all men everywhere lift up holy hands.” Yeah. “I don’t like that. I’m Presbyterian.” Listen to me; you were preordained to raise your hands.

I know some of you are going, “I’m just not that emotional kind of person.” I know that’s not true. I’ve been to football games with some of you. I’ve seen you yell at umpires at baseball games. I know that’s not true. If there’s anything in the world worth getting excited about, it’s that the Creator of the cosmos is crazy about us! Let’s pray.

Lord, thank you for you. You are such an amazing God. We have such a finite understanding of how you not only act toward us but feel about us. Lord, in a group this size there are all kinds of pains, all kinds of hurts. There may be some here this morning who need to come into the kingdom. They just need to come into the kingdom. Some here just need to loosen up and admit that what has been done to them they’re doing to others, and they need to be encouragers. Lord, change us. Help us have your mind. May the mind that was in Christ Jesus be also in us.

Around the room there are places to have Communion. There are some on the corners. There are some in the back. There are some in the front. I’ll come down here and stand for a moment or so. If you feel like you’ve never come into the kingdom and you’d like somebody to pray with you, I’d love to pray with you this morning.

If you have some other needs, we’d be happy to pray with you. We’ll take a few minutes and do that. But let’s just sing together and worship him. Let’s give God what he wants. He says, “Do you love me?” Let’s just say, “Yes.” Let’s love him back! Lord, in your name we pray, amen.