To Live is Christ.

I'm going to invite you all to find your way back to your seats. And in case you didn't know, Be Real did just go off, so if you need to take care of that really fast, no judgment. I just did and you're all in it. So welcome everyone. Hey, good to see you. We're excited to be back today. A lot of us were just at fall retreat this weekend, and so it might be a little more sleepy, but you know, we still got more.

So we are continuing our series through Philippians today, and our series is "To Live is Christ." Today the message focuses on that classic verse, to live is Christ, to die is gain. I feel like this is one of those scriptures that are probably on bumper stickers, on t-shirts, that we've seen tattooed on people's bodies. And you're like, do we know what that means. Like, do we really understand what it means to say to live is Christ, to die is gain.

We're going to talk about that today and we're going to pick up a little bit in the verses we read last week and continuing on. So if you have your Bibles with you and you would like to turn to Philippians chapter 1, you can do that. And as always, sometimes we don't do a good job mentioning this, but we do have Bibles available. If anyone wants a Bible, you can grab those on the shelf. They look cute on the shelves, but they're also free for you to take.

To Live is Christ

But we're going to read Philippians 1, verse 18 through 26. It says this.

But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice. For I know that through your prayers and God's provision of the spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet, what shall I choose? I do not know. I am sworn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. But it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again, your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.

Philippians 1:18-26

Let's pray again today. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word. And God, I pray that even now in this moment that we would not take for granted that we get to hear your voice and we have access to you. We have access to hearing from your word, hearing from your voice, and learning from you today through the life of your son Jesus, through Paul, the apostle.

God, we thank you for that, that we have this honor and privilege to learn and to grow closer to you. And so we just ask God that through the power of your Holy Spirit, would you speak to us. Would you do what only you can do and take these words and help them to transform our hearts. We ask this in your name. Amen.

So what today, the one thing to get out of this is to live. What is to live. It's Christ. So what do we do with that. Well, we need to ask the Lord to show us what it is that we need to die to in order that we may live life in Christ.

Heaven in Mind

The first verse in 18 says, but what does it matter. The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice. So Paul here is rejoicing in Christ being preached above all else. That's what was bringing him joy, is Christ being preached above all else.

Then it says, I will continue to rejoice. For I know that through your prayers and God's provision of the spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. That Christ would be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

When talking about rejoice, right. To bring joy is to bring delight and that re before the joy is to return to joy, to return to that delight. So Paul is saying I am going to rejoice. I'm going to keep going back to that delight. I'm going to bring myself back to that delight.

The first thing that I see here in these first couple verses is that to live is Christ is to live with heaven in mind and hope and expectation. Paul is living with heaven in mind and he's living with this hope and this expectation. He's making it clear what he's saying to us, that everything that he has been through was for the glory of God. To live or die, no matter what, he wanted Christ to be exalted.

Now, I think it's important for us to take a minute and remember who Paul was. Paul was someone that used to kill other people who followed Jesus. Paul, before he was Paul and his name changed to Paul, he was Saul and he was persecuting Christians. And so what stood out to me as I was reading this is he's saying, I will in no way be ashamed. And I think about some of the things that I feel shame over. Some of the things that have gotten me stuck in life because I just can't get over the shame that comes with some of the things I've done.

And you think of Paul, the confidence that he's saying, the hope and the expectation of saying life in Christ, life in Jesus is no more shame. Even for someone that was persecuting Christians, that was killing Christians. You think of one of the most famous stories we have of someone getting stoned and martyred for their faith was Stephen in Acts and Paul was right there. Paul was there persecuting him. Paul was there cheering on, celebrating his death. And now that same person is writing to us with this hope and expectation.

Talk about change. Talk about transformation. Talk about the opportunity for us to be changed and to be transformed by the power and the presence of God. He had heaven in mind, that someday there would be no shame, that someday all of that would be gone. He could have easily received and held tight to that shame and just think that his life didn't have purpose because of the things that he had done or the mistakes that he had made. But instead, he was seeking and he was saying, I want to have courage in Christ so that I may be exalted in his body.

Suffering and Purpose

Paul needs every ounce of courage because of the heavy sufferings that he knows that his work is going to bring. See, he had this awareness that by preaching the gospel and by following Jesus, that suffering would come. So I'm going to give us a bunch of references here in Acts, and most of it is in Acts 20 through like 25, 26, 27. If you want to read more, I'm going to give you bullet points here, but you can kind of go back later. Those eight chapters, if you want to read more about some of these things that happened to Paul, you can do it there.

In Acts 20, verse 23, it says, the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and persecutions are awaiting me. Okay. So he's aware of what's waiting for him. In Acts 21, Paul was kidnapped. That's where we read the story of Paul being kidnapped. In Acts 22, there's a story of Paul being threatened, arrested many times all throughout those chapters. He's ridiculed. He's ignored. He's shipwrecked. He's bitten by a viper. And tradition says and tells us that we don't see it exactly in the scripture, but that he eventually does die for the work that he's doing in preaching the gospel.

So when he's talking about the suffering that's coming, when he's talking about these things, he knows from experience. This is not something that he's talking about lightly. And even specifically when he's writing to the Philippians at this time, he already had suffered greatly in his ministry for the sake of Christ. He had already been mocked. He had already been beaten. He had already been stoned and left for dead, but did not die. And at this point, when he's writing to them, he was imprisoned.

So this is kind of the context of where he's coming from. And I know for me, I have no point of reference for that type of pain that he's enduring, right. I have no point of reference to think that okay, everywhere I go, suffering awaits. But yet to go anyways. What kind of person does that. Who lives that type of way. Well, he says, for me, to live is Christ, to die is gain.

When I read this, all I could think is that Paul must have been onto something. To die is gain. It's to hunger for his presence above anything else. What does it look like to live as Christ. What do we gain when we die. His presence. If we're not alive here on earth and if we die, we go to heaven to be with Jesus and we gain his presence.

So he had this awareness that, okay, best case scenario, more people know about Jesus if I keep going. Worst case scenario, I die and go to heaven. He had this understanding that people knowing the presence of God and him pursuing the presence of God was of utmost importance.

The In-Between

In verse 22, he says, if I am to go on living in my body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose. I do not know. I love that part of the verse. I do not know. Can anybody else relate to those moments in life. I do not know. What am I supposed to choose. What am I supposed to do. Where am I supposed to go. You know, like, I know what's right. I know what to do. But maybe I don't want to do it. I don't know.

I love these moments in scriptures where I feel like the Holy Spirit just kind of reminds us, like, hey, it's okay that you're human. Like, there's a reason why I left you my Holy Spirit, to rely on. There's a reason that you have the Bible. There's a reason that you have church community. Like there's going to be moments where you don't know. And it's okay to say, I don't know. And if someone ever comes at you, like you have to have the answer, you can just say, hey, Paul didn't know either. Paul had moments like that too, where he said, I do not know.

One of the things that we see here is that Paul is showing us to die is gain, is to hunger for his presence. And to live is Christ is to hunger for others to experience him. See, he had this desire of saying, I am after the presence of God, but I also believe that it's so good and that it's so vital, like that is life itself, is Christ, that I am willing to do whatever it takes for others to experience his power and his presence too.

This was the way that he was living. So when he's asking these questions and he's having these moments, it's still in this context of recognizing what his purpose was, to spend time, to be and pursue the presence of God and to help others to experience that as well.

But I can't help but think for Paul, who had already endured so much, when he had already been through so much, how easy it would have been at any single point of his journeys. And if you read in Acts all about his missionary journeys, how easy would it have been for him to just stop. To say, well, I did some really good things. I hope a lot of people give their lives to Christ and learn what it means to live as Christ, to die as gain. And all right, I think I'm good now.

But we're sitting here today because Paul and the other disciples and the other people in the early church continue to preach, continue to endure, continue to suffer for the sake of the gospel so that we today can hear the good news in Madison, Wisconsin.

Don't Just Start, Finish

We have to be people that don't only start to pursue the presence of God and start to help others experience it. But we have to be people that are committed to finishing it and going all in to say to live is Christ, to die is gain.

Now, how many of you here today are really, really good at starting things, but maybe not so good at finishing them. My mom recently was cleaning out like my closet because I'll just confess, all three of my brothers when they moved out of the house like they took like every last crumb that was like in their rooms. I swear. And then you go back into my room up until like a year ago and it looked the same as if I still lived there like just never cleaned it out. But one of the last things she like, Abbie do you want all these like craft projects. And it's stuff from like when I was like five, six, seven. I was like really into knitting and now I'm like more of a crocheter myself. But I still like I have so much yarn, so many projects I probably have like 12 blankets that I started and never finished.

But it gets so exciting because I'm like I'm in this craft mood, especially this type in this time of year. Like already in my house it's like the candles are lit, Gilmore Girls is on and I'm like, oh what craft am I gonna do. Like it's like cozy season. Like that's what we do this time of year. Then the four seasons Midwest life, you kind of have your rhythms. It's just the time where I'm about to start a whole bunch of projects.

Last year I started making candles. I did finish them a few for Christmas gifts. But we start all these things. But then spring comes and I'm like, oh, I'm outside. And I'm like, I'm not finishing that, you know. And then by the time it's winter again, I don't like that blanket or that color anymore. And it just sits there and it stays.

But we're so good sometimes at starting things but not finishing them, because we lose the excitement, or we get bored, or things get hard, and we don't want to keep going anymore. The world is full of this. Full of this. I mean, it goes from anything of just things like projects around the house to new diets, or new weight loss plans or all the things that we buy and we never use and we never follow through with what we are going to do.

But whether it's failing to follow through on a personal project that will set you on track towards achieving those things that you really want to do, your goals, your commitments, a lot of this comes down to who do we have that we are helping us accomplish these things. The American Society of Training and Development, they did this study on people that started things and never finished. And this is what they found. They said that people are 65 percent likely to meet a goal after committing to another person. And their chances of success increase to 95 percent when they schedule ongoing meetings with other people to check in on their progress.

So this is what people have studied and they've looked into to say, what does it take for people to accomplish their goals. So you're 65 percent more likely if you commit to one person. You're 95 percent more likely if you schedule consistent times to check in with people and to track that progress. What I love here is in scripture is Paul is like really committing to his goal because he's writing to the Philippian church and then now to so many people that are reading this and saying this is my goal, this is what I'm going to do right, this is what you can hold me to. Like I am going all in for the gospel. I am giving everything.

And he does this in several places. You can see that it's not only the Philippians he's telling, but in Galatians, another one of his letters, Galatians 2, verse 20, Paul states this. He says, I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in my body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

He came to understand that Jesus Christ was the entire reason for his existing and his living. His entire reason. And he also understood that this part of saying to live is Christ was doing as Christ would do, all the way to laying down our lives for the sake of other people. We die to ourselves so that Christ can live in us. We die to ourselves to make room for Jesus.

But it's really easy for us when we first say yes to following Jesus and when things are going well to start out with the best intentions and to start out so excited. But get sidetracked so fast because one maybe we don't tell people around us maybe we're not letting other people in on the journey or two maybe we're not creating those spaces for people to actually speak into our lives and actually check in on us on a regular basis, which, shameless plug, this is why we're so passionate about communities and being in small groups is to have spaces to just say, how are you doing. Like, what's going on in your life. Those things that you said you wanted to do, those things that you said you wanted to become, how is that going.

To check in on one another in that. But Paul continues to say in verse 22, he says his fruitful labor that he's staying alive for is the labor to increase the joy of the faith of the Philippians. If they have greater joy by embracing Jesus, that is believing Jesus in faith, Jesus is made to look magnificent. That's what he wanted them to do. He wanted his labor to lead to them having this great joy.

What do we gain. The joy of others. And knowing that we are fulfilling our purpose to see other people come to the joy and faith in God.

Longing for Home

Verse 23, Paul says, I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. But it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. You see, Paul recognized here that life was about more than just accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior and then waiting until we get to heaven. He recognized that there was purpose for him to be here on earth, that it was necessary for him to remain.

And remember, he's in chains when he's writing this. Have you ever been betrayed. Have you been ridiculed. Have you been insulted. Have you been bitten by a viper. Do you feel like you're missing something in life. Do you feel like sometimes it's hard to belong. Well, one, you're not alone. This was Paul's experience. He was longing for heaven, but he knew the necessity of remaining here on earth in the body to do his part.

So let this be encouraging to us today that at times if you feel like you don't really belong here on earth, it is because you don't. If you feel like you're longing for something more, you're not alone, that you were created for eternity, that you belong in eternity, that this is not your home. Heaven is, so we long for home. Paul longed for home. It was hard for him to stay. Sometimes it's hard for us to stay.

Being crucified with Christ is painful. Following Jesus in all things in all ways it can be painful. Aren't you guys so glad you came to church today.

Verse 25 though he says, convinced of this, I know that I will remain and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith. I'm going to read that again. Verse 25, I know that I will remain and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.

For Paul to remain in the flesh he knew it was necessary. He understood that other people needed the presence of God and that he was able to carry that to them, that his work was not yet done. And so although there was this piece of him in this in-between of saying it would be better for me right now to just die, like I don't know if I want to keep going, but he still continued. He still remained.

Paul was confident and he was full of faith yet he still had these moments of I don't know. Even the great apostle Paul did not have this certainty about the future and what was to come. Paul survived imprisonment. He was set free. And then later he ended up giving his life for Jesus. He did all of this so that others could experience the presence of God.

The worship team you guys can get ready to come. To die is gain is to long for home. Paul longed for home and he knew that that was his reward, that someday he wouldn't be in pain anymore, someday he wouldn't be in imprisonment anymore, sometime he wouldn't suffer anymore, that this life was but a vapor, that this life was so short so that it was worth him giving everything for the sake of other people experiencing the presence of God.

Because he truly knew what it meant to say it's the presence of God that sustains me when I'm in prison and I'm in chains. How is it that I can still be free in Christ Jesus. He knew that it was the presence of God that sustains him when he's being beaten and flogged and in pain to say it's the presence of Christ that heals me even when my physical body doesn't feel it.

To die is gain is to long for home. But I want to go back today to just that simple statement, to live is Christ, to die is gain. What does it truly mean for us to live is Christ. Well, from what we see here and what Paul's given us, it might mean pain. It might mean remaining in hard situations. It might mean living for others more than yourself. It might mean looking at how do I magnify Christ in the midst of my pain. How do I magnify Christ in hard situations. How do I honor others and put their needs first.

How do I make decisions not based on just me, but how it's going to impact others. Paul made all of his decisions based on how it was going to impact others. How do we make decisions based on looking for ways for others to experience Jesus in the presence. How do we make that the priority. Paul was living for others to know and experience the joy of Christ. He was living for you to know the gospel, the good news of Jesus.

And to die, how do you live with the reality and goal of just the presence of God. How do we live being willing to die to everything else and anything else except the presence of God. How do we let the presence of God sustain us.

Sometimes we struggle with this and Paul, he's speaking on this because he knew the reality of not living in the presence of God. And I think sometimes one of the biggest ways that the enemy kind of gets us stuck and trips us up is this lie that we don't need the presence of God. And sometimes some of the ways that he gets us there is just by numbing us to the presence of God and making us think that we can find fulfillment and we can be sustained in other ways.

But Paul knew that it was only the presence of God that healed him. It was only the presence of God that transformed him. It was only the presence of God that brought purpose to his life when previously his life was to destroy so much. It was only the presence of God that can redeem him, restore him, forgive him.

So how do we hunger for the presence of God in that type of way. We need to hunger for the presence of God and for others to experience him. Paul hungered so much that he endured all things for others to know. So I want you to begin to think today, what is it that you need to endure right now. And how can that shift the way you endure when the presence of God is the priority. You being in the presence of God and helping others experience the presence of God.

And so I'm going to invite you to stand and we're just going to spend some time just in the presence of God today. And Ned and Lisa and I are going to be in the back for a few minutes and one of the things that's so powerful is even when Paul, you know, he's telling people like, hey, this is what I'm doing, like sometimes there's power in just saying to someone, will you partner with me in prayer. Like this is what I'm walking through. This is what I'm enduring. Right. This is what I need right now.

Or to just say, yeah, I want more of the presence of God. Will you pray for me. I mean, we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit and we believe in coming together as the body of Christ to seek him. And so we're just going to create a space for just a few minutes for us to just spend in the presence of God. And so if you guys want to stand, you can stand. And if you want to even maybe just even move from your seats a little bit, sometimes finding a different place to pray can even just shift kind of positioning and posturing.

So feel free to move from your seats, find a place to pray. You can come pray with us in the back. And just for the next few minutes, we are just going to talk to Jesus and we're going to hunger for the presence of God and just say, God, we want more of your presence in our lives.