Pastor Aaron Cordeiro
October 6, 2013 - W1340

There are certain things in our life that we simply do not have control over so we shouldn’t worry about it. We will leave that stuff to God. But there are things we can do something about and that is what we will talk about today. We will learn what the Bible has to say about faith particularly in the area of Godly living. We will learn from Paul as he talks to the church of Philippi what will be revealed to us in living a Godly life.

Paul says, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed-not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence-continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling  for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.  Do everything without grumbling or arguing  so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky  as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.  But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.  So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.” ( Philippians 2:12-18 NIV)

The church of Philippi dwelt among this very strong Roman culture, so here we have Paul trying to remind them that even though they live in such an environment that they are still citizens of Heaven.

He is speaking to them as people whom are very close to him, they value the same things and believe the same things. Paul is saying that regardless of whether he is with them or not, they are still living their Godly lives. God is saying if you can live your life without grumbling and blaming others then you will be someone who is pure and blameless. The “Word of Life” is the Gospel or is actually Jesus Christ, He who lived out His life in righteousness. So, when we follow or receive the “Good News” we receive the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore we hold onto the “Word of Life” or righteousness. Paul also says that because of their faithfulness to the Gospel, he is glad that all he did was not done in vain and that it was a worthwhile pursuit. So though he has sacrificed, they can rejoice with him. But what does all of this mean to us today?

If you are so willing to pursue a Godly living in a Godly way, God will present to us - with great pleasure, Godly strength to do so.

Why is this important to us? It is because we are still human. We are a people with feelings and emotions. Scientists have this to say about it: It is a law of nature which is known as “the Second Law or Thermodynamics”. They say that if we leave something of a natural matter to itself, without nurturing it or caring for it or doing anything with it, it will simply decay or fall apart. So examples in life is if we just leave our marriage to be or leave our children to be then naturally it will fall apart. So what do we do about this? Paul points out then that there is a supernatural gift to deal with such supernatural things and that is with supernatural strength that comes from living a Godly life so that God will- with great pleasure give us that Godly strength.

This teaching comes from a man who gave his life to pursue this and he knows, and has seen and experienced it all. He confesses to how this has affected his life and has seen it transform everything. So he knows the commitment to living this Godly life.

It is in this too that I am reminded of that commitment that my wife and I made 4 years and 9 months ago to be committed to the raising, teaching and caring of our children. It is quite a commitment and I pray for mercy every day. When we make that same commitment to Christ believing that Jesus is Lord, God will give us strength.

We, do however, need to be careful as we read these words because some people can often misinterpret what in truth God’s word is really saying. For example some people will read that to work out our faith in fear and trembling means that we have to work for our salvation. So often we will think that we are just not good enough to work for all this and we think we have to do a ton of good works in order for us to get this thing called salvation. But there is something important that we have to understand and that is:

I.    Jesus worked for your salvation, but you must work your salvation out of you

He already worked for our salvation two thousand years ago, He did that on the cross. So we don’t have to work to get it because it’s something we already have. Jesus did the work for us. We simply have to it out of us. In Greek the word for “Work out” refers to something we already have, but if we want to receive the total benefits of Heaven as citizens of Heaven, and to receive that strength from God then salvation is something we must work out. So how do we do that?

· We should never lose our sense of AWE for God

Think of how majestic God is. When I read the scriptures and I come face to face with God, I see just how majestic He is. He is HUGE, He is magnificent. He is the only one that can and has delivered you and me from sin and death. Until we can let that sink deep down into our soul and realize how close to death we were only then can we truly see the wonderful gift of life He gave us.

What a sense of awe we have when we totally realize we will live eternally with God. But what does this do for us? It keeps the focus on God and not ourselves. See when we only live in the world of “me” or “I” or “mine” then we tend to shift our focus onto thinking that we are not good enough to be of any worth. At that point we are trying to do things and do good works because we think that we would never be good enough to receive God’s grace. The focus then turns onto becoming what it is WE have to work for instead of what GOD has already done for us. Think about this deeply and never lose the sense of awe for all that God has already done for us.

One great example is taken from the story of Esther. Because Esther had found favor in the kingdom, and lived as Queen in spite of being of Hebrew background. Well it came a time when Esther’s own people were being put down by the enemies of the area and Mordecai pleaded with Esther to help. Since she was so favored by the king, he begged her to talk with his majesty and stop the chastisement of her people. Esther then cried out to the people to stop everything they were doing and go into fasting and prayer over this situation, because she realized only God can make things right. She was in awe of God to realize it is only by HIS divine power that any of this can stop. She put her own life in His hands.

In Psalm 57 David was being surrounded by his enemies, but the first words he said, shouted in fact in this Psalm was: “Be exalted oh God above the highest heavens may your glory shine over all the earth” (Psalm 57:5)

So even though David was at death’s door he realized that God is the only one who could see him through this very difficult situation. David showed his sense of awe of God by this example. Therefore, never lose your sense of awe and work out your salvation with fear and trembling. This is what Paul is teaching us. Which now brings us to the next point:

· Always start with humility

What is salvation really? Well it is to bring wholeness or oneness. It is to bring unity with Christ and one another. So Paul teaches us that we need to be a people of humility, if we want to be in unity with Christ and with others, if we want to live a righteous life-we need to be humble. We should never allow ourselves to be higher than anyone else. Here we must realize that God is the Creator, and we are the created. Our lives depend on Him and the fact that we have life is a gift of grace from God. That is humility. To work out our salvation with fear and trembling is to have a sense of awe, and to have a sense of humility. However many times we misunderstand what humility is. So let me first tell you what humility is not.

Humility is not self pity. There are those who ponder over only all the rotten things they did. Or only refer to themselves as scum of the earth that they are not worthy. And they think that because of this that we should feel sorry for them because they are just a piece of trash that God picked up off the ground. Humility never puts the focus on self, self pity does that. Humility should put the focus on God.

Humility is also not self degradation. This is something that we put ourselves down with. One example is when someone sings a worship song and someone compliments them on it. Maybe they had a slight undertone or a simple mistake or maybe not, but when complimented, says “oh no, I really blew it, I did a lousy job” and they degrade themselves even though the compliment said how moving or heartfelt it was. When that is done, then the focus goes back on self. But think about it, who gave the gift of talents to us all whether in music or other areas? God gave the gifts, yes. Well when we put ourselves down we are also putting God down. It’s almost like saying ‘Oh God what you gave us is not enough”. The focus is taken off of God and is put on us. Humility is in loving God and serving God the best way we know how and honoring Him by it. Humility is about God and others, not self.

The best example we have is Jesus. He gave up His throne, His Kingdom He gave it all up for us. He humbled Himself to become human, came down to earth and died a gruesome death for us on the cross…for us! He never used anything or any power of God that He could have used at anytime, no, He humbled Himself. He chose to simply serve God the Father and the people. He put us first and He honored and obeyed God His Father. If that is not humility, then I don’t know what is.

I really love the story of Moses in Numbers 12:1. It is the part where Miriam and Aaron was criticizing Moses. Zipporah, Moses’ first wife had died and Moses married a Cushite woman. Now there is nothing mentioned about not intermarrying with the Cushites, because they were also God believing people. So there was nothing wrong about it. But Miriam is very critical of Moses for doing so. Aaron their brother was a pretty laid back guy and tended to agree with her. They both also criticized the fact that even though Miriam is a prophetess and an important figure among the women, and that Aaron is a leader, as a high priest, they complained about all the power God gave to Moses. In essence they were jealous of Moses.

What they failed to realize is that God can hear all their conversation. Think about it, God hears all our conversations, and knows our every thought. God called all three of them out of their tents and Holy Smokes…because that is what happens…God came down in a pillar of cloud or smoke and said “How dare you criticize God’s anointed. Moses is someone of great humility and I speak to him face to face. We are very close.” When God’s anger burned against them He then left in a pillar of smoke, and Miriam became white as snow with leprosy. Aaron pleaded with Moses to ask forgiveness for them so that Miriam would be spared. Moses asked God to forgive them. Moses even said he didn’t feel anything against them either. That alone is amazingly humble. The fact that in spite of them bad mouthing him Moses was so forgiving. So Miriam was healed. But she would have to live outside of camp for a while so she could learn the consequence of sin and coming against God like that. Sin like this can and will destroy relationships and destroy the will of God, so she had to come to understand this.

To work out your salvation with fear and trembling is to understand the power of God and how massive He is and where you start is in humility. God loves it when His people are humble. The Bible even says He gives grace to people who are humble but He opposes those who are proud, those who think they got it all together without Him.

So Paul is saying that there are some stuff that we got to work out of and it starts by realizing how majestic our God is. The only key that will unlock the oneness or wholeness in God is that thing called humility. With humility comes grace and we can all use more grace right?

So we really need to:

II.     Allow God’s saving grace to affect everything.

· Especially your gratitude.

See the only way you can get to this part is to actually live this part out. What that means is to have a sense of awe and humility. Think about God’s amazing grace as the equalizer that affects everything in your life, the way we think, the way we speak to people, everything that we say.

When we live in awe of God’s magnificence in our lives and we are humbled by His loving grace, we stand out in the crowd and people will ask us what is different about us. If we can fully understand our salvation and let it work out and through us it will affect everything and everyone we encounter. We will then be able to shine His amazing grace and we will have a different attitude to life and be the shining star in the vast darkness of a hopeless world.

The best part of this is that not only will the world see this but God will see this also as it says in Isaiah 66:

“These are the ones I look on favor with those who are humble and contrite in spirit, who tremble at my word. Hear the word of the Lord you who tremble at His word. As a mother consoles a child, I will console you and you will be consoled oh Jerusalem, when you see this you will be happy and you will be revived.”(Isaiah 66:2b, 5a, 13-14)

So you see Paul is trying to teach us that yes although God has given us our Salvation, there is still more and that is we need to work salvation out of us. We can’t just sit back and say, “Okay, I’m saved now, so all I have to do is be good until I go to Heaven.” No, Paul is saying that we have to work it out of us so that it affects everything about us and we can stand out and be like shining stars, radiating God’s light out to every part of our life. Don’t keep it within us, there is a God size person in each of us and we can shine hope into a darkened world and give the world we live in a New Hope.

Tory Winward was a star athlete at Kaiser High School and won 2 gold medals and a bronze in the Junior Olympics. Later, he turned to drugs and crime. He was arrested for 17 felonies. While in prison he found God and was released from prison after 8 years of a 20 year sentence. When he came out he was greatly blessed by God including a family and a good life. But he fell back into the world of crime because he was a “Sunday only” believer. He was sent to Federal prison for another 20 years. He then again found God. This time he was transformed completely. He was once again released early on bail. He is now actively leading a small group Bible study in his home and has become victorious in Christ.

His life was indeed transformed once he realized the magnificence of who God is and how in his humility is now able to shine God’s light into an imperfect world.

1) What does Salvation mean to you?

2) How can you make your Salvation work its way out of you?

3) In what things are you in Awe of God’s magnificence?

4) What are examples of humility you can see in things around you? Or in the Bible?