Ridiculous Joy #6 - In Perspective
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the 'Ridiculous Joy' series looking at Philippians 2:12-18 teaching about the presence of joy we can experience when we live in the correct perspective to God's love and mercy.
Message Transcript
So, let me ask you a question as we begin looking at this passage in Philippians. Do you think that by and large, people in our culture see the church, see Christianity, positively, negatively, or neutral? If you had to choose, what would you choose? My guess is most of us sitting here, watching online, Strip District, and Butler would say, you know what? I think that most people see Christianity fairly negatively right now. And there's a variety of reasons for that. And what has happened is that's led many people to say, I don't want anything to do with church or Christianity that's formal. I'll be spiritual without being religious. I'll have my own version of spirituality, but don't give me the church, don't give me organized spirituality. Let me just simply kind of relate to God on my own.
And the way that many people see Christianity, especially the organized version of it, is as a group of judgmental people who hate people who disagree with them, who are largely irrelevant to the places where they live and are known more for what they're against than for what they're for. In fact, I would go so far as to say most people, when they think of the Christians that they know, don't think of joyful, happy, positive people, but they think of negative, judgmental, and unhappy people. That's how most people look when they say this is kind of what I see. And within the church, sometimes it's not that strikingly different. And here's what I mean.
Within the church, there's a tendency to think that what is faith or what is Christianity is to pick yourself up, do better, try harder, and make yourself into the person that you need to be. You need to be missional, you need to be radical, you need to do more, and try harder. And so, as a result, even sometimes in the church, what happens is people say, I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I want to continue with this. And certainly, it isn't always filled with joy.
Several years ago, I had a weekend where I wasn't on to teach, and I didn't have any responsibility here. And so, my family and I wanted to still attend church, but we said, let's go to a different church for the weekend. So, we went to a different church, and this will sound like I'm trashing on a different church. I don't mean to, but this will make sense in a moment. I went to the church, and it was their weekend where they said, we're going to teach about pornography and what's wrong with pornography. Now, just to be clear, I think pornography is evil and is not a good thing. So, just going to say that before I say anything else, just so you know where I stand. But here's what the message was.
It was, pornography is dangerous, it destroys your lives. Here are all the ways it destroys your lives. So, you need to resist pornography. You try really, really hard. Here are all the ways you can try really, really hard to resist pornography. And now you can have victory. Go. And I remember kind of sitting there thinking, is that really the Christian message? Yeah, the Bible is not supporting people who look at pornography. That isn't my point. But the Christian message isn't, do better, try harder. It's the message of grace for those of us who blow it. And you may say, well, are you saying it’s, okay? That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is sometimes the Christian message gets reduced to this idea of if you want to be a good Christian, here are the things you will do, and it can be any number of things.
And what happens is we then get into a subculture where we're told we have to do these things, or we're not quite enough. And what happens is if we say whatever the topic of the week is, check I'm that, I do that, then we feel good about ourselves, we feel prideful. And if we don't do it, then we feel insecure. But the message of Christianity is radically different. And if you're here today and you're somebody who says, I'm not sure where I am spiritually, if I believe, or if I don't believe, I want to especially help you to see that the message of Christianity is something better than just try harder to do better, but it is a message of what Jesus Christ has done on your behalf.
And if you're a person of faith, I hope that by looking at this passage in Philippians chapter two, that you and I will be able to look at this and say, what would it mean for you, for me, to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Because in Philippians 2, verse 12, we're told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And you may say, well, that doesn't sound like grace. That sounds like fear and trembling. And so, I'll come back to that.
And then we're told in chapter 2 verse 15, that we're to shine like stars. What that means is that people of faith should be the people that other people look at and say, there's something different about them. And what we've said throughout this series is that this series is about Ridiculous Joy. Paul was in prison and yet he had joy. But his joy wasn't simply the fact that he just said, ah, don't worry about anything. Be happy. His joy was rooted in his understanding of the message of Jesus Christ, the gospel. And here's what you see in chapter 2, verse 12. Here's how it begins. It says, "Therefore my dear friends." And any time that there's a therefore in the Bible, one of the things that you can do is you can just stop and say, what's it there for? In other words, why is that word there? And usually what it means is if you look back to what's right before that, that you will see what that word is there for.
And last week, Brady did a great job of walking us through the first 11 verses of chapter 2. And what happens in chapter two is we're told about Jesus' obedience and sacrifice, about how he goes through the cross. And then it says, "Therefore, my dear friends," my loved ones basically. "As you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but it's much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation in fear and trembling." And I think this shows us the first of what I'm going to say are three attitudes that contribute to the lack of understanding of what it means to shine like stars. And that is this, and that is that my choices don't matter. Sometimes what happens inside the church community, is people start to say, well, if it's about grace then what I do doesn't matter. But this word obedience that's used here and in the original language, several words are used for obedience. The word that's used here is a word that means to answer the door.
And so, what he's saying here is as you've always answered the door. In other words, every time that God has revealed something of himself, you say I'm going to go and answer the door, that is the sign of obedience. And he's saying, I want you to work this out. I want you to do this with fear and trembling. Now again, you may say, well, that doesn't sound like grace, that sounds like I better work at something really hard to make sure that I'm okay in this regard. And here's why I say that our choices don't matter when we have the wrong view of this, is sometimes what happens is we start to think that either I can do whatever I want, it doesn't matter, which is a reduction of the law of God, or we start to lower the loss so that we can somehow get over it. And to work out our salvation with fear and trembling simply means that we pay close attention and understand how many times in places we may not answer the door completely.
And what this means is that we understand that it matters how we live for how we come across in our communities and our worlds, because there's often a lack of congruity between our behavior and the way that we are perceived in this world. But it also matters for your joy and my joy. And here's what I mean when I say that. If you buy a car and you say, you know what? This is a nice car, and this is going to provide me all kinds of great opportunities. But in your mind when you buy your car, you say, you know what? I don't really care about the owner's manual. You know how when you used to buy a car, you used to get an owner's manual, big, thick thing, you'd stick it in the glove box and leave it there until you had a problem. Now, most of it is online, so you don't have that.
But if you were to say, you know what? I know that the owner, the creator of the car, the owner's manual, the creator of the car, has a bunch of stipulations for how I should drive this, but I don't care. It feels restrictive. In fact, I don't want to have to pay $3.25 for gas every time I need a gallon of gas. I'm just going to put water in my car. What would happen? What would happen is soon this car that you spent money on, that you had, wouldn't work. And it wouldn't be because the car was somehow defective. It would be because you said, I'm not going to answer the owner's instructions with a sense of obedience. And here's why it happens for some of us in this world.
And that is we go through the world saying, well, if I'm saved and I can do whatever I want. Or if I have a perception that if I just bring the standard down a little then I'm good. Instead of saying no, what I do, my choices actually matter for my joy, because God is the one. If you believe he created the universe, who created you, made you, and he's given us a manual, a book that tells us how we can live. And the obedience is not so that we say, oh, I'll earn my salvation. The fear and trembling part are for us to say, if I refuse to ever answer the door, then I have to ask the question if I know or care about who Jesus Christ is.
And so, there's a call here to say, I'm going to take God's word seriously. This is what it means when it says a little later about the word of life, that you're taking, what God says is what is essential for your life. And I get it. There are times if you own a car, especially when you first buy a car, that the first time you have to change the oil, either yourself or take it somewhere and pay that, you're like I shouldn't have to do this. This should be mom and dad's job kind of a thing. But when you understand what's in it, you say, this is for my good ultimately that I take care of this. And to not answer the door is in many ways, just to say, God, I want you to stay aloof from me. So that's the first attitude.
Here's the second attitude, and that is my confidence doesn't matter. Sometimes the reason the church or Christianity is thought of as being maybe irrelevant or somewhat judgmental is that a lot of times people don't have a sense of confidence. Here's what verse 13 says. "For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." So, work out your salvation in fear and trembling because it's God who works in you. And these two things go together in such a way that it helps you and me to understand that we're called to something, but God is at work, doing something simultaneously. And this is the good news of Christianity.
This is why I can start and say that ultimately, if you simply have a talk that says, here are all the problems with pornography, here's what you should do. That it's really just a Ted Talk with a Bible verse to support the idea because the gospel message is God is at work, God's doing something in you, and God's hand can bring about change in your life that you can't bring about on your own. And it's God who does something in you that brings about ultimate change. And that is where our confidence comes from. I have a friend who makes food from time to time and will invite me to different events where he's got food. And I've learned that anytime he makes food, my answer is yes. Because he is a phenomenal cook. He can make things that you're like, how did you do that?
And the reason I mention this is because of his invitation, whenever it's offered, it doesn't matter to me what he says, because my confidence is in him. There are some things he makes where it's like that does not sound good. But yes, because I know from experience every time that he's made something it's been outstanding. And here's what happens when you come to have confidence in what God has done, is you start to say, even when it doesn't make sense to me, my confidence is in how God is going to work. Therefore, I will continue to move forward even when what I read in the owner's manual, what doesn't seem to make sense to me, actually is for my good.
I heard about or read about an episode of the Amazing Race. I've never watched that show much, but in the episode, there was a woman named Kelly and she had a boyfriend named Ron, and they were doing the Amazing Race together. And evidently what happened was Kelly, and what they do is they kind of film you in real-time and everything, got up in the morning and read her Bible. She was a person of faith and she read first Corinthians 13. And she said I like to read first Corinthians 13. This was all captured on camera. And I like to read it almost every day. And I like to put my name in so that I kind of see myself living out first Corinthians 13 day after day. And so, she read it and she said, Kelly is kind, sort of love. She put her name in. Kelly is long-suffering. Kelly is patient. Kelly is this. Kelly is that. And she kind of went through the whole thing. And then she went about her day, and she and Ron, her boyfriend, got on this journey.
And I guess the show can get kind of tense when you disagree about which direction you should go or how you should do things. And Ron was from the South, which is detailed, that'll be important in just a moment. And so, Ron and Kelly disagreed, and she got frustrated with Ron. And so, she broke out and said, "You are a redneck piece of trash." Now, the important reason is I think if you're from the South, I don't think that's a compliment. That's just where I'm going with this. And so here she was. Kelly is patient. Kelly is loving. Kelly is kind. Ron, you're a redneck piece of trash. And everybody who is watching the show is like, oh, that's what a Christian does, but here's the thing.
It's easy to sit back and say, oh, bad, bad. And that may not be a great example of what a Christian looks like, but yet it's a great example of what Christianity actually is because every one of us at one point or another has a moment like Kelly, where we say I intend to be somebody who says I follow Jesus Christ. And then we turn around five minutes later and break out our version of “you redneck piece of trash.” And what Christianity is saying, is I'm going to continue to work out my salvation with fear and trembling while knowing that God is working in me. And that doesn't mean that I don't have standing with God. In fact, it's evidence that God is still working in my life because I'm still feeling some sense of conviction about the law of God. When the fear and trembling really needs to start is when you and I stop feeling any conviction about the law of God.
And that leads us to verse 14. And here's the third attitude that sometimes destroys the way that Christianity is seen in our world. And that is that my countenance doesn't matter. And this is verse 14. It says, "Do everything without grumbling or arguing." And I find this striking because here Paul is coming off of this great statement about what Jesus Christ has done. Jesus went to the cross for humanity, therefore obey, as you've always done in my presence, in my absence, he says, and work out your salvation, knowing that it's God who works in you. And then what does he say? How does he apply it? He says, do everything without grumbling and complaining. How would your life look different if you did everything without grumbling and complaining? How would Christianity look different if Christians stopped grumbling, arguing, and disputing everything? Do you think it would look different? Do you think it would seem more joyful?
And I would say that these two words connote to nuances of a countenance. The grumbling, I would say connotes the idea of I deserve better. And the reason that I say this is because the word means a low muttering, kind of discontent that's used before an uprising. And if you study where else this word is used, one of the places it's used is in first Corinthians 10 verse 10, where the apostle Paul again is writing. And he's talking about the children of Israel, how they grumbled in the wilderness. And he says, don't grumble like the children of Israel grumbled in the wilderness. And he uses the same word. And what it means is that you're just constantly saying, I don't like this, this isn't to my liking, this isn't good. And what it is, is it's a consistent attitude that says I deserve better. And here we come back to the message of the church.
You see if the message that you believe is the Christian message is, do better, try harder, and if you do better, then God takes care of you, then when something goes wrong in your life, you have one of two options. You either say, I didn't do enough, or God let me down. But if you understand the Christian message to be, it isn't about what you and I do, it's about what Jesus Christ did on our behalf. I don't deserve it. Then you can live without a constant sense of complaint because what you're then living in is a place where you're saying, I know that God has done for me, what I don't deserve. Therefore, I don't have to complain about all the things in my life that are going in a direction that I don't like that they're going. So many times, what happens is complaining dominates our lives even when we've come to faith and Jesus Christ. And then we wonder why we don't have joy.
One author put it like this. This is not from a Christian perspective, but he said, "Here's what complaining does. It makes things worse than they appear or are, it becomes a habit in our lives, it becomes a confirmation bias where we start to confirm that things are as bad as we think they are, it leads to one-upmanship where we start to say, I have it worse than you." Have you ever been around somebody who you tell them something that's challenging in your life? And they're always like, well, let me tell you how bad it is for me. "It kills innovation," he says. "It favors negative people, it creates cliques and pessimism," he says, "is bad for us physiologically."
Just as a fact, the more pessimistic you are, the more physiological problems you have. And the reason that he writes about it this way is that he's saying, here's what happens when you complain, you create a cycle of negativity that negatively impacts your lives. Now that's just a sociological observation. But here in the inspiration of the Bible, Paul is saying, if you want to work out your salvation, you do it by having a countenance that doesn't complain, that doesn't say I deserve better. And then secondly, in the disputing or arguing word, verse 14, that says, I know better. What arguing and disputing is, is it's saying in essence, I will take the opposing view. I know better than what you know, and here's what's real. And that is considered success here. The more successful you are, the more successful I am, the more we think we know better. And the more likely we are to argue and dispute with people and with God. And again, it kills our sense of joy.
I remember years ago, when I was in high school, I played on a basketball team for the school. And one of the coaches that I had, after we had a bad loss or two, and I was kind of grumbling, disputing, kind of sideways with stuff, came into the locker room. And this is one of those moments you remember as a kid. And he said, Bjorklund. By the way, he used more colorful language than what I'm going to use here. He said, "Bjorklund, here's one of your problems," he said. He said, "You're always negative. And whatever I decide to do you think you have a better way." And then he said this. He said, "Until you change this in your life, you will always struggle at everything you do."
Now, I'm 17, I'm sitting there and I'm like, you're wrong. I wanted to dispute him, but as I reflected on it, I realized he was right. And it started a process for me of saying, I don't want to be the person who's always disputing and saying, you've got the wrong idea, I've got the right idea. And now I realize that that's a spiritual thing because notice what Paul does here. He says, "Do everything without arguing and disputing, then you will be." And there are three words that he uses here. It says you'll be blameless, you'll be without mixture, you won't have impure motives if you do this, and you will be without spot. I think they're all the same thing with a shade of meaning. "And you will shine like stars in this crooked and perverse generation."
In other words, in a world that says we complain and argue about everything, you will be distinct if this is what you do. And then he ends by saying, "And this is how I will have joy and you will have joy." Notice how he ties it back to joy. He says, "The joy you will have is when you say I have a different countenance. Now here's what I'm guessing is true. And that is some of us who are gathered today, say yeah, but you don't know the hard things that I'm dealing with. You don't know my spouse. You don't know my kids. You don't know my parents. You don't know my boss. You don't know my finances. You don't know all of those things.
And all I would say is neither did Paul when the Holy Spirit inspired him to write this. And what he said is do everything, not do most things, do everything without grumbling, arguing, or disputing so that you will shine like a star and people will see the difference of your savior. And the way that that comes about, back to the, therefore, is understanding what Jesus Christ has done and being so taken with God's goodness in your life that you say whatever I'm walking through today, as hard and challenging as that may be, I can have a ridiculous joy because of what God is doing. And I'm going to obey, work out my salvation because God is working in me, and live without grumbling, live without arguing. After all, my life is not defined by the negativity around me.
And I believe that if people of faith live like that, if I live like that, if you live like that, that it would change the way the church is seen. So, do you want to be part of the solution, or do you want to sit back and say, look at all that's going wrong? God's invitation is to say live with joy and let it start with your countenance and with answering the door of my call and your life over and over and over again.
God, we thank you today that you are gracious, that when we don't answer the door, so to speak, that you keep coming around and inviting us in and that you really are for our good. God, help us to see that and believe it, and base our lives on it, so that we can live without a constant state of saying, I know better, I deserve better. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Thanks for being here. Have a great day.
