There Are Only Two Ways

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. So before getting to this passage, I want to define gospel because I've used that word a couple times. And I'm going to be using it a lot more today. The gospel is the good news that through Jesus, sinners can be made right with God.

It starts with the problem that we are sinners, that we're more sinful than we can even imagine. And it ends with the solution that we are more loved than we ever dare believe, which is pretty cool. Yeah, Jesus lived the life we should have lived, and he died the death we should have died, so that he can do an exchange with us. And that's pretty cool. So, for those who participate in Jesus' exchange, we inherit everything that's rightfully Jesus'.

That's reconciliation with the Father, peace with God, life everlasting. And the gospel at its core, it looks back at the finished work of Jesus on the cross, in light of the future, in light of eternity. And so we're in this like tension place of being in the middle, of looking back at what Jesus did and looking forward to its future effects. So, that's going to be key to understanding how we're going to talk about this passage today. When we talk about the gospel, how it affects how we live today, and faith.

Because it's our goal to live in light of the gospel. Like, if Christianity is true, if the gospel is true, then to live in a way that's inconsistent with the gospel is insanity. It's crazy, it's dumb. And I think that often we just don't, we don't think, we don't realize that, man, this is true, and I really believe this, and I need to be living in light of it. I know I often find myself afterwards saying, man, why did I do that thing that just didn't make any sense?

You know, it's like trying to breathe underwater or something. It's just like to do it. I mean, you can do it, but reality doesn't work that way, and it's going to end up bad. So, let's get into today's passage. Today's passage is from Philippians.

I know there's a sermon PowerPoint. They're all like black slides with white words, and we'll have the text on there. It's from Philippians 3, 17 through chapter 4, verse 1. Oh, that was awesome. So, if you don't know much about Philippians, I'm going to give you a little bit of context to help you understand it.

So, Paul, he's an apostle. He's writing the letter of Philippians. He's in jail, and he's writing this letter. He's probably imprisoned in Rome at this time, and we know from the book of Acts, which is another book in the Bible, that Paul was going to Jerusalem, and he knew that when he got to Jerusalem, he would probably be imprisoned. He said that the Holy Spirit was testifying to him everywhere he went, that oppression and imprisonment waited for him in Jerusalem.

And then this prophet says, hey, if you go to Jerusalem, they're going to bind you and imprison you. And that's what happened. He said, you know, thanks for the word of prophecy. Not changing what I'm doing. I'm going to go and get imprisoned.

I think, man, if I received a word like that, I would go the opposite way. But Paul's better than me. So, he knew full well he'd get arrested. He does get arrested, but he's a Roman citizen, because this is 2,000 years ago. There's Rome.

And he appeals his right as a citizen to have Caesar hear his case. So, it's basically like a local court saying, you're guilty, and him saying, hey, I appeal to the Supreme Court, or whatever the higher court is. So, now he's in Rome. He's in chains. And he may be released, but he may actually be killed.

He says earlier in this book of Philippians that he doesn't know how it's going to end. So, he's kind of on death row. Maybe he's going to be acquitted. Maybe he's going to have his head chopped off. It's kind of a rough place to be.

And so, he's writing to his friends, believers in Philippi. And one thing that is really powerful about the book of Philippians for me is, I mean, it's scripture, so it's true. But any time that someone writes from prison, or someone writes when they're, like, facing death, everything becomes, everything that's not important kind of fades away. And they're really focusing on just what's important. I think about, like, Dr.

King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from Birmingham jail, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his letters from prison when the Nazis had imprisoned him. Like, these are worth our attention. And today, Paul's letter is worth our attention.

So, we're going to read it. The next two slides have the verse on it. So, brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many of whom I have often told you, and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their God is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.

And it continues on, saying, But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. Therefore, I lost my place, Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm, thus in the Lord, my beloved. Okay, so he starts with something interesting. Back on that first slide, he says, Join in imitating me. Oh, and you think, Why?

Why would I imitate Paul? Like, if Caesar doesn't like what he hears, Paul's dead. What if Caesar really doesn't like what he hears, and he says, All you Christians are a problem. Now all the Christians are persecuted. Like, Paul's making some questionable choices.

So why should the Philippian Christians imitate him? If that was going to be their fate? You know, in churches, sometimes we take for granted that we should try to be like Jesus and be like the apostles, well, the apostles after Pentecost when they got stuff together. And we never really think about what happened to them. So of Jesus, the apostles, minus Judas, plus Paul, that's 13 people.

And of those 13 people, 12 of them died a violent death. Peter was crucified upside down. Jesus was crucified. Paul was probably beheaded. And the only one who didn't die a violent death, according to church tradition, is John the apostle.

And that's because he survived. They threw him into a vat of boiling oil, and he didn't die. I'll bet he wished he was dead. So we're thinking, oh, you know, you should be like Jesus. I mean, Jesus was beaten and crucified.

And so why should we imitate them? Because he says, Join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example. So he's not just saying just me. These other people who are living like me. So we're called to imitate Paul and the apostles.

Why? Frankly, because they lived lives that were consistent with their belief that the gospel is true. They weren't just living for nice lives here and now. They lived with a deeper hope. There's an eternity worth living for, worth going to prison for, and even worth dying for.

And do we believe that? Do I really believe that what is in this book is worth my death? I mean, not everyone does. Some people just really blatantly don't. Some people are atheists and they just don't even believe that there is a God.

And some people, I think, this is easier for me to fall into, are functional atheists. They're Christians, but they live their day-to-day life like they're not. You know, maybe even they're moral and they go to church, but functionally, they're not living with the end in mind, with the fact that there will be a day in which we stand before God. Yeah, these people are motivated by right-now things. They want comfort right now, sex right now, status or money right now, or approval and fame right now.

I heard this quote that, like, 50% of middle schoolers, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, is Instagram famous. And I think that's a pretty, I just didn't even know that was a thing for a career choice. But, yeah, whatever our idol is, we all have something that we're tempted to live for that's a right-now sort of thing. But Paul, who's calling it, that's the song that we're going to hear So let's take a look at it, Paul, these people, and calling us to imitate him in today's passage, used to live for these right now things, too. You know, he started out, if you don't know Paul's story, I'll give you a little summary of it.

He started out seeking the approval of others, seeking glory, seeking to be great in his field. That's until he had this, like, radical 180-degree turnaround. To many who had known him, like, if you had been Paul back in his earlier days, Saul, it was such a radical change, he changed his name. So if you'd known Paul in his Saul days, and then saw him afterwards in his Paul days, you would have thought he went just crazy. He lost it.

So he was on the up and up. He was of the elite of Judaism. He says in Galatians that he was surpassing his peers. Like, so he was moving up the ladder way quicker than everyone else. Yeah, and a part of what he was doing in seeking approval was he was actually persecuting Christians.

And so he was on a work trip to persecute Christians because he thought they were wrong and stupid. And he also thought that doing that would give him more clout with the bigwigs back in Jerusalem. So he's on his way from Jerusalem on a work trip to persecute some Christians when out of a sudden he has a rat out of out of nowhere just a radical encounter with Jesus himself. And he just changes everything. He goes AWOL.

He spends three years in the desert and comes back. And not only is he hanging out with Christians, but he has actually become a Christian. They say the Paul or the Saul who used to persecute us is now preaching the Christ he persecuted is what happened to him. And so did he lose his mind? Like he was on the fast track.

He went from being a future leader of Israel to being on death row before Caesar. Like the guy definitely needed an intervention. He was making some like he he was going the wrong way. So had he gone insane? Or had Paul waken from insanity to actually understanding how the world really is?

Had encountering Jesus, it obviously changed everything. But did it change everything in a way that was good? I think yes. I think yes, if you're looking at the long view, the eternal view. And I think that's that's Paul's expectation.

He says join in imitating me. He's not saying that what he's doing is crazy or different. It's normal or what he expects to be normal. And I think that that's the case when we encounter Jesus and we really know the gospel, it will change us. It may look different than Paul, but hopefully we start living our lives in light of the gospel.

So people fall into two categories all throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament, there was this idea of the people of promise. They're usually called to Israel and everyone else. And in the New Testament, they're called things like the sheep and the goat. Or they're called the seed of the first Adam or the seed of the second Adam.

Or in Revelation, those who worship the beast and those who worship the lamb. There's always a division of two people. And here, Paul does the same thing. So if you can go through a couple slides to where I start showing the verse again with walk in different colors. Paul uses this word.

Oh, you're awesome. Thank you. He uses this word walk to show these two kinds of people. So there are those who walk as red for stop, green for go. So red as enemies of the cross of Christ.

Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly and their glory and their shame. And then there's walking according to the example of Paul, which he describes then on the next slide what that looks like. On the next slide, it'll say what that looks like. Thank you.

Oh, sorry. I think this slide somehow got out of order when I transferred them. Maybe the one more slide. Sorry about that. Perfect.

But our citizenship is in heaven from which from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. So there's these people who walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. They probably were actually believers because Paul isn't cursing them in the beginning of the thing. He says these people are denying the gospel. These people aren't denying the gospel, but they're living for right now things.

They paraded around as Christians when they were actually idolaters. And their real value were on shameful things, things that pass away, earthly things. And their end for following these things that aren't going to last is going to be destruction along with those things. So these people are the people who, though they call themselves Christians, aren't actually Christians. Those are the red, the red for stop.

But then there's us. And so it has this nice little, not only parallel structure, but if you can go back to that previous slide with all the red all over it. We see that he has three things here. Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly.

I think that's like comfort and material things that they're searching for. And they glory in their shame with their mindset on earthly things. So on the one that we were just on with all the green, we have three things here. Our citizenship is heaven. We're waiting for a savior.

And the savior will transform our lowly body. And so he said to this parallel structure of these two kinds of humanities that we see all through the Bible. And I do have one slide that has both of those side by side, if we could pull that up. And so which way will we walk? Whether we want to or not, we're living in one of these ways.

Either we're living like someone who knows they belong to heaven, or we're living like someone who knows they belong to earth. We're either awaiting for a savior, or we're wanting present comforts. We're either going to be transformed into Christ's likeness by his power that transforms all of creation, or we're going to be destroyed because we're setting our life on things that are going to pass away. I think about all those people who have all this wealth and riches and they die and then what? It just, I don't know, goes to someone who didn't even earn it or is going to squander it.

And so for those of you in here who are believers, you're in the left column and that's awesome. But then I asked myself the question of, am I living in that way? Yes, I am a believer. Yes, all of those things are true about me. But am I believing that in my day to day?

If I do, it's going to determine every single choice that I make. Like Seth said, it's going to determine how I respond to difficulty. In the book of James, there's a little verse that says in chapter one, verse two, he says, consider it all joy, brothers, when you face trials. And then he says why you should do that. But what's key is that verse consider it or count it.

So it's like, if you believe this, when these things come up, you're going to think about them in this way. Am I filtering these things that come to me through the gospel? Or I'm going to say, yeah, this is actually a good thing because of the long view. So this is the part right here on this and which way will we walk. This is the part that I've been wrestling with for at least a year.

Like the extent to which I believe the gospel is the extent to which I will walk as if I have a life that's going to go on after this. But the extent to which I'm just seeking creature comforts, the extent to which I'm upset when trials come is the extent to which I don't believe the gospel. And that's been really convicting for me. So I want to give an example that my team leader used that helped me think about sin. So sin is just anything that doesn't please God.

You know, we often think of like bank robbery or something crazily sexually immoral. But it can be all sorts of things just like, well, I'd say not believe in the gospel. But sometimes we treat sin as a cup of delicious, I don't know, juice or something I can't get in Turkey, Mountain Dew. I really like that. You know where you think, this is a cup of delicious Mountain Dew.

And that's sin. So whatever sin that's tempting for you, that's what that Mountain Dew is. And you're like, oh man, I want that. But God says it's bad. So even though I know it's delicious Mountain Dew, God says it's bad.

So I have to fight, you know. And then it becomes your beliefs versus your willpower. You know what's going to lose every time? Your willpower. Because you actually believe that that Mountain Dew is delicious.

You're going to take it, you're going to drink it. But if your thinking is transformed to believing the truth, because the truth is it's not Mountain Dew, it's rat poison. If you think, well that's... That's rat poison. All of a sudden, I have no temptation to drink from that cup.

The belief has disarmed the temptation. And that's what the gospel and the Holy Spirit affecting the gospel into our hearts and causing us to believe it has the power to do. So whatever that temptation is, if I believe that it's actually, that God's word is true, that it's actually bad, that it's actually rat poison, I have no desire to do it. I have no desire to drink it. And that, that is really powerful.

And so in the same way that those, remember those enemies of the cross of Christ, they're not believing the truth. They're believing that right now is what it's all about. They're not believing the truth that the right now stuff is going to pass away. And so they're living coherently with what they truly believe deep down inside. But unfortunately, what they believe isn't true.

It's just not true. And so what we want as Christians is we want to take our minds and see them transformed to the truth, to the gospel. And that's what Paul was doing. He was empowered to live differently because he truly believed the gospel. And it raised him to something higher.

He wasn't tempted by the cup of poison because he knew it to be poison. And that's the key to biblical faith. So when God's word contradicts reality, we know reality must, the reality around me, I must be seeing it wrong because God's word is actually true. And yeah, God's word is going to stay true for all of eternity, even though my present situation will change. And so I want to share two quotes that go together from Mr.

Carson. Here then, Paul exposes his fundamental values. On one side stands everything the world has to offer, which Paul had attained. And he said he counts it as rubbish because it wasn't the most important thing, including the privilege of the world and the privileged world of learned and disciplined Judaism. And on the other side, it stands Jesus Christ and the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

Paul insists that there's no contest. Jesus and the righteousness from God that Jesus secures are incomparably better. And in a flow of history that inevitably runs toward judgment, that means we will stand before God and he'll make everything right. And for sinners like us, that's a problem. The great judgment, which only God's verdict matters, to be declared righteous by the creator God, this judge is infinitely more precious than anything else one can imagine.

It is infinitely more important than having all the rewards of the world, whether ecclesiastical, academic, societal, financial, or personal. Since that righteousness from God depends absolutely at this point in redemptive history on gaining Christ and being found in him, Paul wants it above all things. Everything else is just rubbish. The one thing that matters to cut all this short is Jesus and knowing him and having him and having him as your own. And so I'm going to close because I'm giving you a bunch of head knowledge, a bunch of context, and talk about how this truly affects our lives by sharing at least how I've been struggling with this.

Because this isn't just to be knowledge. This is supposed to transform your life as your life becomes more in line with the gospel. At four in the morning, I don't know if you've met my beautiful little daughter back there. My beautiful wife is holding my beautiful daughter. There's a lot of beauty in that corner.

She's really cute. And she's especially cute during the daytime. Any parent, I think, knows they're a little less cute at 3am or 4am. And sometimes I think, you know, it's 3am, I have to get up in the morning, and she's just crying or she's just not, you know, sometimes she's actually just smiling and talking, like babbling. And I think, this is really cute.

But like, I have to discourage this. You need to be going to sleep. So she's not thinking about going to sleep anytime soon. It's the middle of the night. And I get grumpy sometimes.

You get pretty grumpy. And then I think, if I really believe that serving my daughter and my wife will make me more like Jesus, if I'm really believing the gospel that this will bring him glory, why am I grumpy? Why is my heart and maybe my thoughts and words and actions too sinful? Why am I choosing my own comfort, the right now things, my own comfort of sleep, the God of my belly, like those people who walk according to the cross, or as enemies of the cross? God, forgive me and change me.

It's been so powerful for me when she's like awake in the middle of the night to say, okay, this is an opportunity to become more like Jesus. This has eternal value. Just a little thing like my baby crying at three in the night. And I think for all of you, in every situation, there's always going to be at least two options. And one of those options, you can say like, which one makes the most sense in light of the fact that my life's going to go on forever?

And the goal of this is to know Jesus. And the goal of this is to be made like Jesus. And one of the reasons why I've been wanting to preach this passage is sometimes since we live and work overseas, people come and say, wow, what you're doing is so amazing. And the truth is, it's not. Like, if we really believe that Jesus is good and worth it, then I feel like, I mean, I don't even believe that half the time.

Honestly, if I'm going to be honest, like I do a terrible job of living and believing the gospel. I just, I have a really nice apartment. I like my life overseas. Like, but if I, if I really believe the gospel, then whatever he calls us to, whatever obedience looks like is worth it. It's worth, it's just of more value.

It's of more beauty. It's of more glory for Jesus. It's of more eternal enjoyment than whatever else is. So when you're confronted with a thousand choices, a thousand opportunities to choose to live in light of eternity or to choose to live in light of right now, I want to encourage you as Paul does in the last verse. So there's one where it has the stand firm in blue.

He says, therefore stand firm. Thus in the Lord. He's saying, this isn't going to come naturally. You have to stand firm and decide I'm going to walk, not as an enemy of the cross of Christ, but I'm going to walk as one who's awaiting Jesus. This doesn't come natural.

This doesn't come naturally at all. And so we have to stand firm, Paul says, every time we have those choices and it takes practice and we grow. And I've already seen just since I preached this message or a version of this message a few weeks ago, just incredible growth in how I'm feeling generally most nights at 3 a.m. Just from practice.

And I think the same can be true for you. So we're going to close with two things. If you're a Christian, if you know Jesus as your savior, you're probably already seeking to do this. And yeah, and I think this is a driving thought for my wife, especially. I really admire her.

She's taught me a lot about this. And I know it is for a lot of other people. It is from what the word Seth had to say this morning. But Paul also says, and we can't say any differently, that he hadn't attained this. And I haven't attained this.

And Chelsea hasn't attained this. And Leon and Seth, none of us have attained this. We still have room to grow. So when we pray, or maybe Leon prays, I'm not sure how it's going to work this morning. I'm going to ask you to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal areas in which you're not believing the gospel.

The areas in which you have a right now perspective instead of an eternity perspective. And ask him to reveal those things. And when those things come up in life, to lay it down and say, Jesus, I want to have an eternal perspective. Now, if you're not a Christian, if you're not, if you don't know Jesus, I'm going to ask you to think about like, are you, by default, you're living for something that's going to pass away. Like this world isn't going to be here for forever.

And even if it were, you're not going to be here for forever. Are you ready for that? A lot of times we like to put old people or sick people away in nursing homes so we don't have to think about the fact that we all die. But the most certain thing in the world is death. And I want to make sure that everyone here is ready for that.

So I want you to think about, is there a God, it's not an idol, you know, like our Hindu friends worship, but is there a God that, that you serve? It could be sex. It could be a spouse. It could be a job. It could be surfing.

It could be, oh, I got a little too touchy there. So it could be surfing. It could be retirement, pleasure, happiness. It could be owning your own home, all sorts. It could be your children.

It could be all sorts of things. But one day this, this will pass away and it could. It could be quickly, it could be slow, I don't know, but it will. And there's going to be a day when that's just not going to do anything for you. And so I'm going to ask you to think, am I prepared for that to pass away?

And the answer is no. But Jesus, Jesus, yeah, He'll take, He takes all of us and He changes and transforms us, and He wants to do that exchange relationship with you. So you can talk to someone after the service about how to do that. But I'm going to close in prayer, and I think Miranda's going to come. Father, thank you that you are good and that your mercy endures forever.

In spite of the fact that we've rebelled against you, you chose love and you, that you came in Jesus and you died on the cross for us to exchange all the rights that Jesus had with us. Now we inherit them. Lord, we confess that we live for right now things. We make lesser things ultimate. We live for things that don't matter as much as you.

And we ask that you would change us and transform us and help us to believe the gospel. I pray, Lord, for the Christians in this room that you would expose the things in their hearts that are getting in the way of them believing in the gospel, the things that they're giving too much importance to. And for people in the room who may not know you, Jesus, I pray that you would move in their heart and show them that what they're living for is not going to last. It's not going to do anything for them after they close their eyes in death and wake up before you. And that you would bring them to know your good son, Jesus, that you are incredibly good, infinitely good and loving, and that you are a safe place to run to in the good times of life and in the troubles.

And that you are the only one that we can turn to for hope in death. In Jesus name. Amen.