What Really Matters.

If we haven't met yet, I'm the associate pastor here at New Culture, and I'm so excited you guys decided to join us today. Make sure before you leave, if you're new here, that you're going and getting that little gift, and if we haven't met, that you come track me down.

I want to talk to you and connect. Last week, we opened our new sermon series on the book of Philippians, and we talked about how the church in Philippi got started and what that looked like. We talked about God's divine plan being played out, and we talked about how if you want God's divine plan in your life, you'll have to surrender your plan for your life.

This week, we're going to be opening up the book of Philippians, and at this point, the church in Philippi is up, it's running, it's been around for a little bit, and Paul is no longer with them in Philippi. Actually, Paul is in prison as a result of preaching the gospel. And while in prison, he writes this letter to the church in Philippi.

We're going to be reading out of Philippians chapter 1, verses 10 through 19.

For I want you to understand what really matters so you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ's return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation, the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ, for this will bring much glory and praise to God. And I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the good news. For everyone here, including the whole palace guard, knows that I am in chains because of Christ. And because of my imprisonment, most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speak God's message without fear. It's true that some are preaching out of jealousy and rivalry, but others preach about Christ with pure motives. They preach because they love me, for they know I've been appointed to defend the good news. Those others do not have pure motives as they preach about Christ. They preach with selfish ambition, not sincerely, intending to make my chains more painful to me. But that doesn't matter. Whether their motives are false or genuine, the message about Christ is being preached either way, and so I rejoice, and I will continue to rejoice. For I know that as you pray for me and the spirit of Jesus Christ helps me this will lead to my deliverance.

Philippians 1:10-19

My so what and my now what today: my so what is in the midst of everything we experience, Jesus is what really matters. In the midst of everything we experience, Jesus is what really matters. And my now what today is live for what really matters.

What Really Matters

Paul, in this portion, says this phrase. He says I want you to understand what really matters. And Paul is opening his letter to the people in Philippi. He greets them. He thanks God for their partnership and sharing the gospel. He prays a blessing over them. And he says I want you to understand what really matters.

And he starts to explain his current circumstances. His current circumstance is not pleasant whatsoever. And maybe we can't relate to physically being in prison. Maybe you can. That's not my business. We're not going to harp on being physically in prison.

But we can all relate to suffering. We can relate to being in pain. We can relate to being in different circumstances that we want to run from. We can relate to people saying things about us that aren't true or that are hurtful. We can relate to betrayal. We can relate to being taken advantage of. We can relate to circumstances out of our control, feeling like they control every aspect of our life.

We know sickness. We know grief. We know loneliness. We know suffering. And when we're in the middle of these places, it's very easy and it very quickly becomes that all of these things just start swallowing us alive. And the circumstance at hand is the most important thing. It is the only thing. And this is now the world: the circumstance that we're in. It is the only thing that matters.

And you know what's really crazy. Is that in reality, we think that everything is what really matters most. We have zero sense of priority as people. Like, we really do. Everything is the most important thing. So we exist in this constant crisis mode. Everything is urgent. Everything's number one. Got to get from here to there to there. Everything is the most important thing.

But because we think it's all the most important thing, we fail to honor any of it like it's of any actual significance. And I know that you know what I'm talking about. When everything feels like an emergency, like you literally look at your to-do list for the day and taking the garbage out feels like you might have a panic attack because it's so important. Like everything on the list is an emergency. Always in a state of crisis because you have no idea what really matters. Like what the most important thing is.

We know what it looks like in other people because we're really good at seeing these things in other people and not seeing them in ourselves. But the person who always has that just that little undertone of panic when they talk. Like it always just like buzzing underneath the surface. The person who uses the language of need, have to, must for everything. Like everything is a need to, everything is a have to, everything is a must all the time. And we don't know what really matters and we have no understanding of what that is.

And Paul says to the people, I want you to understand what really matters. There is something that's more pressing. There is something that's more important. There's something in the midst of everything you're experiencing that really, really matters.

The Fruit of Salvation

The scripture says, for I want you to understand what really matters so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ's return. May you always be filled with fruit of your salvation. The righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ. For this will bring much glory and praise to God.

The fruit of your salvation. The righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ. So I used to work with middle schoolers, which means that I had adventures every single day. Lots of adventures. And those adventures often consisted of the very interesting conflict that middle schoolers have with one another. It's very intriguing, but it's also like as cruel as conflict can get.

Like nobody, like middle schoolers hold nothing back when they're going at it with each other, right? So I had this thing that I used to say to them all the time, and I used to say it to them because it's how I try to navigate my life as best as I can. But so for example, let's say one of my girls was being catty and said some mean remarks about another one of the girls.

I would pull her aside. I would sit her down. And I would just look her dead in the eye and point blank ask, are you mean? And she would just kind of look at me. They never answered this question, by the way. It was always like, I'd be like, are you mean? Like, is that who you are? Is that your character? Are you mean?

And they would always just go, just scared, just shake their head. I'd be like, okay, then why would you step outside of your character and be mean if that's not who you are? We have to behave according to our character because how we act, how we treat others, and how we handle the situations in our lives tells others who we are. So if you are not mean, you just told everyone in this room that you are. You have to act according to your character, which is a rule I try to live by.

I'd be like, okay, this is what I want to do. Is this in line with my character? Okay, then maybe that's not what I should do. You know, a little judgment call. But Paul says, I need you to understand what really matters. Because if you understand what really matters, then your character will reflect it. You'll live in such a way that reflects that which really matters.

Being in crisis mode all the time, being burnt out from trying to do too much, becoming apathetic because when we are like everything is our hill that we're ready to die on, we eventually just stop being able to care about any of it, being flaky because when you're devoted to everything, you can't be fully devoted to anything. This is not the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ. This is not the fruit of your salvation.

And if any part of that description struck a chord with you, may I submit to you that perhaps you've lost sight of what really matters. In the midst of everything we experience in life, Jesus is what really matters.

The Message Prevails

Picking up in verse 12, it says, out of jealousy and rivalry, but others preach about Christ with pure motives. They preach because they love me, for they know I've been appointed to defend the good news. Side note on that: don't you just love how like Paul nips that everybody language? Like right away he just nips it. Everybody's talking about me. No, right away he's like, ah, some people are doing that. They have some people on my side too. But anyways, I love that he does that.

Those others do not have pure motives. They preach about Christ. They preach with selfish ambition, not sincerely, intending to make my chains more painful for me. That doesn't matter. Whether their motives are false or genuine, the message about Christ is being preached either way. So I rejoice, and I will continue to rejoice.

For they know that as you pray for me and the spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance. Paul says, hey, look, I'm suffering. My situation right now isn't the dream. And if the circumstances weren't hard enough, there are people taking advantage of my predicament to cause me more harm. And then he turns around and says, but that doesn't matter.

What really matters is that Christ is proclaimed. What really matters is that in the midst of my pain, Jesus is still encountering people. What really matters is more of him and less of me. And don't get me wrong, your suffering is immensely important. It matters to God. It should matter to your community. It is not a matter of no importance. It's a matter of where your eyes fixed in the midst of your suffering. Are your eyes fixed only on the situation and you lose Jesus in the midst of it. Or are your eyes fixed on the thing that matters most.

Something takes precedence in your heart. Like something, whether we mean it to be the priority or not, there something that takes precedence in our heart. And when it not Jesus. When it not Jesus that takes precedence in our thoughts. Then that fruit of our salvation cannot be born. It has to be Jesus that is at the root of everything.

Paul says, so I rejoice and I will keep rejoicing. I've been thinking a lot about what it means to rejoice in suffering. Because I'm like a deeply emotional person. I feel every, like the full range of emotions. Like all the way over here to all the way over here, I feel it all. And so sometimes it's confounding to be like joy and suffering. These are two different experiences. So how do I have both at the same time. This paradox is getting annoying.

You know what I'm saying. Like how do I do this. So I've been thinking a lot about what that means. Honestly, like in the past like two years, but even more so recently, what does that mean to rejoice in suffering. What does it mean to rejoice in pain, in sickness, in sorrow, in grief, in crisis. What does it mean to rejoice.

And I want to submit to you that what if rejoicing in suffering looks like being a non-anxious presence in incredibly anxious situations. What if rejoicing in suffering isn't negating that we are suffering. What if it isn't pretending that we're not in pain. What if it isn't lying to ourselves and acting like the circumstance isn't poor.

What if it's saying this is really difficult, but Jesus. And holding both of those things and saying this is a hard situation, but I have peace in the midst of the storm. Like what if rejoicing just looks like being able to endure. Like what if that's what it means. What if it means I have something to hold on to in the midst of my suffering. What if it means this hurts, but I still trust you. And that's rejoicing.

And suffering is not losing hope. What if rejoicing and suffering isn't thanking God for my pain. What if it's keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus through my pain. That is the fruit of our salvation. This is the deep-seated knowledge. This is more than like I memorize this. I know the verse. I know the scripture. I cognitively understand that Jesus is with me.

This is knowing in the depths of your soul that he is close when I feel alone. Even when I don't feel that he's still with me, he's still there. It is this deep-seated knowledge that my healing hasn't come yet, but I have faith to endure while I wait. It is this deep-seated knowledge that it feels like the whole world is against me. But if he is for me, then who should I fear.

It is this holding on to Jesus through our suffering. When we understand that Jesus is what really matters, we seek him more than we seek anything else. And when we seek him, we find him. And when we find him and we learn to dwell with him, he begins to bear that good fruit in our lives. Because it's him that bears that good fruit in us.

The scripture says the righteous fruit that Jesus Christ bears inside of us, right. So it's him. So when we dwell with him, he's able to do that. And suddenly in the midst of hardship, we reflect to the world around us that he's still God and he's still good.

Processing Suffering

So as I was kind of like writing this and thinking about this, I was thinking of like all the different levels of suffering. Because realistically I could sit here and I could like list off a million different things. But pain is subjective and suffering is subjective and I can't define that for you.

I love defining words. It's like one of my favorite things to do when I study the Bible. But I can't really define suffering for you because it's something that we experience and I don't get to say you did or you didn't suffer. Like that's not how that works.

So it's kind of trying to think and process through that. And really what I think is this universal feeling in the midst of suffering that we don't always use this word for it, but it's grief. It's grief. We all grieve and we all exist in these cycles of grief because most of our suffering includes loss. Most of our pain includes some sort of loss. It includes losing people. It includes losing the dream. It includes losing places that we love. It includes losing relationships.

We experience losses and we grieve. We are betrayed and we grieve. Grief marks our lives in all sorts of different ways and all sorts of different levels. And man, oh man, I get it. Suffering has this capacity to press you to dust. And like, if we're talking specifically grief, C.S. Lewis has a quote that I love, but it says, I never knew grief felt so much like fear. Like, it's so many different feelings, right. Like, grief in and of itself, it's this process of suffering. It's like, incident occurs, sad, feeling better, angry, feeling better, sad again. And it's like this up and down, like, roller coaster we go on.

And I know for me, in the past few years, I've had all sorts of grief. And one of the things that, oddly enough, I think has been the hardest to grieve is like this idea of grieving what I thought my life was supposed to look like, right. Like we all have, we all get faced with that at one point or another. This is what I thought my life was supposed to look like. When God said blank, this is what I thought he meant, right. Like this is what I wanted, but this is what I got. Like at some point we all come face to face with that.

And just one thing that I have learned through like two years of different phases and different waves of grief is that somehow like scripture said that God never changes and that he the same yesterday today and tomorrow. But my circumstances changed a million times. And when we talk about suffering I can guarantee you thought of your whole lifetime of experiences that you considered suffering. But from the first one to today, one God has never changed. And he has been steadfast in every single one.

The Hope That Remains

My hope is not in my circumstances being resolved. And I think that's sometimes where we get the let down with Jesus. It's like, I know Jesus is what really matters and he didn't do what I told him to do. But my hope is not in my circumstance being resolved. My hope is not in the end of my suffering.

My hope is in the Jesus whose blood was spilt so that he could wipe every tear from my eye. My hope is in the Jesus whose body was broken so that he could mend my broken heart. My hope is in the Jesus that left an empty grave behind. It's not in my circumstance. My hope is only temporary if I put it in temporary things.

But we get to hold an eternal hope and keep our eyes fixed on Jesus through our pain, through our suffering, through our circumstances. And in holding that hope, He's exalted and He is glorified.

When I'm overwhelmed with all the directions the world wants to pull me in, Jesus matters more. I know what really matters and it's Jesus. And in the midst of everything we experience, Jesus really is what really matters. So how do we live what really matters. Well, we prioritize seeking Him, and we prioritize looking to Him.

We have something here in our church that's called the rule of life. And there are these daily rhythms, these weekly rhythms, and these monthly rhythms that we've built to incorporate into our lives as a way to seek Jesus as our priority. One of those is the first thing we do every morning being prayer and scripture.

First. This is my priority is I look to you before I look to anything else. Before I think on anything else I look to you. That's one of the ways that we make Jesus who is what really matters be what really matters in our heart and be what's on the throne of our heart. Is the first thing we do we look to him. We have in there praying and fasting weekly and all these different things that help us look to him.

It's also about being in community. Like, yes, we always look up first, but he designed us to need to look out too. There are people around us in community to build us up and to help keep our eyes trained on Jesus in every single circumstance. It's always kind of like hard for me sometimes when I read Paul because he's like the king of everything is burning and I'm rejoicing. And I'm like, okay. But like the hope of Jesus is still Jesus. And I am suffering but he's not done yet. And that we can hold to that.

So we're going to keep seeking him and keep looking at him and keep allowing him to bear the fruit of salvation in our lives. So in the midst of our suffering we can show the world who God is.

Jesus is still Jesus. And I know the mountain looks huge, but God is bigger. And I know the circumstance looks impenetrable, but God is still seated on the throne. And we have this incredible, incredible gift of getting to look to him in the midst of our pain and he's how we endure it.

So in just a moment we're going to start worship and I just want you to take this moment to say these lyrics and mean it. That heart knowledge. That deep in my soul, you're doing something Jesus and I'm going to look to you until I make it to the other side of this. Jesus we thank you because you never change because you are who you say you are because even when everything is in chaos and we're out of control and we don't know what to do, your hand is still guiding us, your hand is still leading, and you're still working.

So Lord, I pray right now for every single heart that's being faced with whatever their suffering looks like. God, I pray that you begin to give them a peace that transcends all understanding, that you begin to give them a perspective that looks to you in the midst of it all. Lord, I pray that when their mind gets clouded by a million thoughts and they just start getting weighed down, that they might remember Jesus is what really matters.

Lord, I just surrender every circumstance to you. You are still God, and you are still good, and we trust you. Give us the ability to rejoice in the midst of it all, and to reflect to the world around us that you're still God.