Northside Church - Sydney
DNA of the Christian Life – Week 1: Worthy
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. D-N-A. It means dioxyribonucleic acid. If you didn't know and you think of what science got to do with Christianity, well, I'm going to show you in a second. But D-N-A is the core building blocks of all living organisms. Whether you're a plant or a dog or you're a human, you have DNA. And the funny thing is that a life in all its complexity emerges out of simplicity. And so here's the thing. Wouldn't it be great if the Christian life or Christianity could be that simple? And the good news is that it can be. We just often confuse it a bit in the church. And that's why over the next six weeks, we're going to be going through the book of Philippians, looking through at the core building blocks of the Christian life. Now, what makes Philippians distinct from all the other books that the Apostle Paul or Paul, however you want to call him, wrote is that when he talks to the Ephesians and the Corinthians and the Colossians, Paul is always saying, do this, fix that. What are you doing here? Do this, do that. The thing that I found discovered about Philippians this week when I've been studying through it is it's the only book the Paul writes where he's not correcting the church for something. So I thought that's a nice positive way to start. And so in that way, this book, look, this book's filled with, it's filled with the sort of verses that your Nan would hang at the back of her toilet if she's a Christian. You know what I'm saying? You know, when Nan's they do doilies and there's all sorts of nice signs or there's something printed on a coffee cup. All those lovely Christian phrases that we see, you know, chapter one, to live his Christ to die his gain. And chapter two, live a life that's worthy of the gospel that you've received. You know, chapter three, I count this all as rubbish compared to the surpassing knowledge of knowing Jesus Christ or, you know, that classic one in Philippians 4, 13, you know, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, right? If you're a Christian, have you been around the church long enough, you've heard them all. This is a YouTube fanatics best friend. You know, some people do those really fluffy PowerPoint presentations on YouTube, nice things. That all comes from the book of Philippians. That's why it's such a great look to look at. But look, here's why it's practical, particularly if you're not coming from a Christian background tonight. Philippians is great because it helps answer questions like how do I become a Christian. What does true humility look like? What does it mean to live a worthy and a meaningful life? How do I rejoice in the middle of suffering? How do I get over stress and anxiety? How do I constantly focus on the good and the right things in life? All of that's going to flow out of this book. Now, here's the good news for you guys. It's only four chapters long. It's a short book. You can print it out on two A3s, and so I encourage you to be reading through the book of Philippians, bring your Bibles, bring your iPads, bring your Galaxy tabs, or whatever, if you have to, into the place. Read through the book of Philippians. We're going to be reading through together, and it's perhaps the best picture of what a mature Christian looks like and what a mature church looks like. Before we dig into it, regardless of where you are tonight, if you're not a believer, if someone's invited you here tonight, you've got to check out this place. You're going to check this Jesus guy out. Then come hang out with us for six weeks and see what your life could look like in one year or three years or 50 years from now. This book's for you. If you're a believer, you know, if you're born in the church, you know, you're born onto the platform, they smack your backside, the first breath, the out of the word Jesus, right? You're growing up in church all your life, but you find yourself growing a bit stale. This book's for you too. It doesn't matter where you're coming from. It's such a relevant book, and so wherever you are, it's a gift, it's rich, it's packed full of the exposition as to what it means to be a Christian. So before we dig in, let's have a pray. Heavenly Father, the words we're about to speak tonight, they're not mine, they're yours. Just pray through your Holy Spirit, Father, that you really take us to a place other than the lives that we have been living this week, and you fix our vision upon you, Lord Jesus, in something greater, something bigger, something more worthy, something more exciting. The Christ shaped us mold as Father through your word, and we pray this now in Jesus' name. Amen. The part of the reason why we've been doing this series is because it's been one of the most exciting periods of church that I've had to hear in my ministry here at Northside, because now we've had a lot of people who've been quite new to the faith, a lot of people who've made decisions for Christ, who've had our Christianity explained courses have been full, and so really it was a time to say, "Look, what does it mean to be a Christian? What are the building blocks, the DNA of the Christian faith?" And so to do that, we're going to look at Philippians 1, verse 27 to 30, where Paul says, "Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ." Now, I won't read all the passage, because here's the problem. What does that mean? He doesn't really define what the gospel is. You know what I think part of his problem is, this section of Philippians is a bit like on that TV show, How I Met Your Mother. I don't know if you've seen that show on television. There are a few fanatics out there, but basically the deal with how I met your mother is that you watch all these episodes of what life was like before the point where this couple got married, right? And so that's what happens in the book of Philippians. Paul's currently in jail. He's in prison. We don't know where. And he's writing this letter, which is quite ironic because he talks about joy a lot, yet he's in prison. And so we need to do a bit of a How I Met Your Mother trick. So here's what I want you to do. Keep your finger in Philippians chapter 1, but turn also back now to Acts chapter 16 for me, where we get a sense of how all of this began. You see, when you think about churches in Europe, what do you think? And cathedrals, stained glass windows, big pompous, I think of St Peter's Basilica in Rome. You're in for a treat tonight. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm taking right to the first ever church in Europe and how people came to believe in God. You see, this is a great section of the Bible to answer the question more. How am I saved? We talk about the word salvation, sort of, you know, we talk about all sorts of words, salvation, justification, sanctification. Basically, you're right in church if you say any word that ends with shun, right? But we throw salvation around all the time. We think, what does it mean to be saved? Let's have a look at an example. Now, you can do a bit of, you can do a bit of a comprehensive exercise for me because we're going to look at three characters quickly. We're going to look at Lydia, we're going to look at a slave girl, we're going to look at a jailer. I spelled it the American way because PowerPoint was having a bit of tears on me. But look, here's the questions that I want you guys to ask. Who were they and how did God win them over in that sense? Let's have a look at Lydia. It says on the Sabbath, which means a church day, we went outside to the city gate to the river where we were expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down, we began to speak to the women who had gathered there and one of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. So I said that already, we see she's a bit keen, she was in church. And the Lord opened her heart to responder pause message, which means she was converted, she was saved. When she and the members of her household were baptized, biblical, she invited us to her home. If you consider me to be a believer in the Lord, she said, come and stay at my house and she persuaded us. Now, who was Lydia? It says she was from Thyatira, which meant that she was from a city outside of Philippi. She was an expat. She was living in there. She was an intelligent lady. She was in the synagogues. She was a fashionista. She dealt in purple cloth. It meant that she was a successful fashionista. She had a fashion business. And so in that sense, she was intelligent. She was wealthy. She was sort of like the Jennifer Hawkins of Philippi, right? Expat, she probably would have had a house in Sydney, house in L.A., house in New York. She was wealthy. She was intelligent. She was a socialite. That's who she was. Now, how did God win her over? It says Paul goes in here to the women that were gathered. You know what he did? He busted into her connection group study. So imagine this. All the girls are there. They're all watching Joyce Meyer on DVD. They're really getting into all the teaching and Paul comes in and he pushes the pause button and he says, girls, do you understand what's going on? And she goes, ah, yeah, I get it now. Not that I'm saying that Joyce Meyer is a bad teacher, but I get it now. I see what he's saying, Paul, bang. She's converted. And so there's an intellectual process that happens there. She thinks about it. She's already seeking God. And that's who she is. So here we have this fashionista. And that's how the church, that's how the church began. First church ever in Europe. Now let's have a look at how else the church begins to grow. Ah, let's turn here to, let's see where we go. I think we'll go to verse 16. Follow along. It says, "And then once when we were going to a place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future." The Greek there says she had a spirit of a python. Basically it was saying that she was demon possessed. And it says, "By which she predicted the future, she earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of her shouting, 'These men are servants of the most high God who are telling you the way to be saved.' She kept this up for many days and finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and he said to the spirit, 'In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to get out of her.' And at that moment the spirit left her. Now who's this girl? Here's the thing, she is in stark contrast to Lydia. Whereas Lydia is really in control of her mind. This poor girl is literally manic. She's screaming at them. It says for a number of days she's following them around. Whilst Lydia was really rich, fashionista, the Jen Hawkins of Philippi, this girl was really poor. Lydia was racially from out of town. This girl was a Greek. She was different racially. So it's different socioeconomically, different in her. She wasn't seeking God but she knew who these guys were. She knew who Jesus Christ was. And so look, how do we translate this in the modern sense? If Lydia's the Jen Hawkins of Philippi then, this girl is probably like a young teenage prostitute being pimped out on the streets of Kings Cross. And the amazing thing is that Paul comes around and says there was hounding her for days. It wasn't like she wasn't carrying the Paul and Luke flag and she was absolutely annoying the daylights out. And I think almost in a moment, I wonder how he said it, where he says almost like Jesus Christ, get out and bang in an instant. No thinking and she's converted suddenly. See the difference? While Lydia was talking about seeking God in the synagogue with the girls of Bible study, this girl bang, God wins her over in an instant with a moment of raw Holy Spirit power. This one saved by intellect, another one saved by raw Holy Spirit power. Now, you know, here's the funny thing, if you, this is his girl set free. If you went and set free a prostitute from her two pimps in Kings Cross, what do you think is going to happen to you? I'd run. I don't know about you. I would run. I would get out of there as quickly as possible. And look, it's no, it was no different back then. Look at verse 20. When the owners of the slave girl realized their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and so on. So when the pimps found out about this and they dragged him into the marketplace to face the authorities, they bought them before the magistrates and said, these men are Jews. So what are they doing here? They're stirring up racial insights here. And so after that, these guys, this is Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul ends up being stripped and ordered to be stripped and beaten. And it's his after they were severely flogged, they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. So it goes from a nice conversation in the synagogue. Now these guys are in jail. Last way to start church. And so it says they were flogged. And listen here, verse 24, it says, when they receive these orders and put them in the inner cell. So the guards told to look after them carefully. When he gets the orders, he puts them in cell and he fastens their feet in the stocks. Now, when we think of stocks, we often think of, you know, it's funny things that want a brother's movie world, where you have your photo taken, you know, put your head through the hole, enhance. That's what we're thinking right when we think stocks. But that wasn't the case. Stocks in first century, a Roman colony like that was literally a technique where they would bind your ankles and they would twist your legs out sideways and your arms behind your back. And they would lock you up like that for hours on end. So your muscles would spasm. They literally tortured these guys. A jailer that's told to look after them carefully is now torturing them. Now, let's read on. That's where they are. That's the picture, not one of brother's movie world. The muscles are spasming. And it says, verse 25, "At about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing. My God is mighty to serve. He is mighty to serve. His arms are up behind it." Like, look, isn't me or is Paul one of the most frustrating characters alive if you hate God or the gospel? I mean, you say to Paul, you know, we're going to kill you and he goes, "Fine, today is going." And you say, you say to Paul, "All right, now we're going to torture you. Fine, I'll sing. My God is mine. Okay, we'll keep you alive then. Great, to live is Christ." We'll say, "We'll keep torturing you, Paul. Fine." I consider that the present sufferings of this world are worth nothing compared to the glory that I'll receive. Don't you reckon Paul's one of the most frustrating guys if you hate the gospel, just a little bit of a side note there? They're singing. Now, look, the jailer, who is he? Who is the jailer? He's obviously a guy. He's a hard nut. He would have been an ex-Roman soldier. He's not seeking. He's not in the synagogue. He wants nothing of intellectual stuff. He wants nothing of this charismatic pow-wow that happens with the slave girl. None of this sort of spiritual, experiential stuff is just, "Let's get down to business." And this guy is like a blue collar ex-army guy that lives in the suburbs. So if Lydia's, the gen Hawkins, slave girls being pimped out at the cross, this guy's just your average Joe Blow, hard nut living in the suburbs. How does God get him? It says here, it comes through, and the boys are singing, and then suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. It wants the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose. And the jailer woke up, and when he saw that the prison doors were wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners would escape. Why would he do that? I've had a bad day at work. No need to get radical. But you see, back in those days, in Roman colonies, the person responsible for a prisoner, if that prisoner escaped, would be killed. I call that sort of employment incentivization. You guys work off commissions. These guys worked off getting killed if they lost the prisoner. And so, look, how does God win him over? You know, what does Paul do? The doors are flung wide open. They've stopped seeing now the chains have fallen off. This guy's pulled out the sword. He's about to dive on his sword, and he's about to plunge that sharp thing through his stomach. He has a voice from the prisoner that he thought escaped and said, "Don't do it! We're still here. We're still here. It's okay. It's fine." You see, it wasn't intellect. It wasn't this Holy Spirit power. It was an example. A man, an XGI, full of duty, full of serving the Roman Empire, sees a person carrying out their duty to a higher government and a higher authority, and he thinks, "Where the heck do you get that from?" I want that. What does he say? "What must I do to be saved?" Incredible. So, look, you guys get in the picture now. You're still with me here. You know, average guy in the burbs all the way through. He's won over, not by intellect, not by power, but by example. So, we have this CEO fashion nista, this demon-possessed slave girl, this blue collar guy from suburbs, all converted, intellect, power, example. This is how the first church begins. Now, why are we talking about this? What do we learn from these odd beginnings in this sense? Now, when Paul writes in verse 27 now, as I turned to Philippians, live a life, whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, this is what he's thinking about. He was there. He saw it. He's not in prison, trying to get creative. Oh, yeah. Let's find a nice catchphrase. No, he saw this happen. He had a picture of how the gospel can't be stopped by the walls that we build called churches. Absolutely phenomenal. In an instant, Paul saw how God defied the barriers of intellect and of socioeconomic divisions and of manic mental health issues, of demon possession, of indifference. You see, he saw how God saves people. Look, what does it mean for us today? If you're honest with yourself, you're going to do life with people who are just like you. You'll hang around with people who like what you like, who want what you want, who do what you do. So, what it shows us is when you see how the churches really meant to be, there's absolutely no way that these people would come together, naturally. Absolutely no way. And so, what we see the gospel doing here is it creates this community that never would have happened in the natural world. It was a supernatural community. It was blowing through all the barriers that normally keep us divided as people. Now, what we see is possible with the gospel to push beyond racial and socio-economic and spiritual lines. Here's the thing now. Here's the question, can it push beyond something else? Can it push beyond our circumstances? And Paul says, yes, that's where we get tonight. We finish up, I just want three applications from verses 27 to 30. We're just going to dwell in it, first and foremost. Paul says, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. You know, what does that mean? First and foremost, it means unity in diversity. 27, whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Now, living a life worthy of the gospel is unity in diversity. That's what we saw. It goes back to the mysterious ways that these guys came together as a church. You grow in this new community. So, you've got Lydia with all the wealth and the slave girl with nothing, and you've got this other indifferent guy. That's what church is supposed to look like. So, what does it look like to live lives at a grace field and seeking God and worthwhile? Look, I don't think it's easy for us in the West where everything here seems so polarized. It's either one way or the other. You know, you're either labor or you're liberal. You're either AFL or you're rugby. You're either from the north side of Sydney or the south side of Sydney. You know, there's no one here from the south side. Is there? That's just a joke. But wouldn't you agree? Like, we're so polarized in our society today that everyone has to stick by my way, and my way of doing churches this way, and my way of worshiping is this way, and my way of belief is this way, and my political ideology is this way, right? And so, that's how we all come into church. We all come in with the way the Americans say, you know, Burger King in America, have it your way. We always got to have it, we've got to have it your way. It's my way. We're individualistic. You know, look, here's what's happened. This is what happens and what Paul was speaking against here. But when you come into church with that attitude is that you deny, you break down the very thing that makes the church beautiful. You break down the very beauty that makes potentially a homeless guy from the Hope Street Mission, my brother, your brother. You break down the very thing that makes the soccer mum from the suburbs in the Mazda CX-7, because you need them when you've got kids, apparently, that makes her our sister. It's the very thing that breaks down your average Joe Blow, like this hard nut, blue collar sort of guy, our brother. You see what I'm saying? You don't just go beyond what the Bible is commanding us to do tonight. You break down the very community. Jesus was seeking to build in that sense. So, where else does this take place in the world? If we, as members of the Northside Community Church, are not looking around our connection groups and not looking around ourselves and not looking around at our breakfast meetings with people and saying, "You know what? If it weren't for Jesus, there'd be no way that I'd be hanging out with these people." Seriously, if we as a church are not looking around in our groups and saying, "If it weren't for Jesus, there'd be no way I'd hang out with these people." We're not doing true church. We're not doing how Jesus intended his church to be. That's what it means to have unity in diversity. It makes us all one regardless of our diversity. And so, look, even if we agree or disagree with each other at the end, we've got brother and we've got sister, we're one. So, first of all, it's unity in diversity. Second of all, quickly, let's have a read through here verse 27b. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I know that you will stand firm in one spirit. Contending is one for the faith of the gospel, one spirit, contending, striving. Another way to translate it there. If you've got your Bibles with you or if your iPhone app lets you, just highlight that word, contending or striving for a little bit. Paul's going to continue to use it. And so, striving, he says, I know you shouldn't write in your Bible, but it's okay, you can. God, I'll let you do that. Look, here's what I think we do. I think we read the Bible. We read Lydia and the slave girl and the jailer and we think the characters of the Bible are totally different from us. We think that Lydia wouldn't struggle and the slave girl wouldn't struggle with the bitterness, with the fact that a parent sold her into slavery. The jailer wouldn't have struggled with the failure of his duty in that sense. Paul says that striving, living a life worthy of the gospel, is striving in the face of opposition. Look, it means to struggle. The underlying Greek word there is sineth leo. It's where we get the word athletics from. It means literally to come together and to struggle against an opposition or in some form of competition. But it's about struggling and striving. So, look, let's speculate for a minute here, struggling, striving. Do you think Lydia still probably struggled with pride? 13 years on. Paul's writing this letter. Thinking how his wonderful kids are doing, do you think she's still struggling? She was the wealthiest one there. She was probably funding the church. She was bankrolling this thing. You don't think she had her moments of church where she's going, you know what? I wish this slave girl would get her act together. You don't think 13 years on that the slave girl is still struggling with bitterness or frankly that 13 years on, that the slave girl is still not having issues with men because of what these blokes did to her. You don't think that 13 years on that this indifferent jailer was still a bit of a tough nut smacking people around the head, telling them to get their life in order. We've seen people like that in church, right? Come on. You don't think it's that struggling. You see, where do we ever get the notion that somehow the Christian life is about committing life to Jesus and then it's all fairy tales and zippity doodah, bluebird on my shoulder, boxkicks. Seriously, Paul says that it's a struggle. Unity only ever happens in the church when there's effort and a struggle against a common opposition, a common opposition of self-interest, common opposition of our natural bias to want to form clicks, common opposition of our desire to want to keep people out because this is our safe little space. That's the struggling that Paul talks about here. So we struggle, a life worthy means unified but also striving, struggling, finally let me end with this. Verse 28, it says, "Without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you," you're saying the Christian life is living a life worthy of the gospel, is living a life of fearlessness in Jesus Christ. Fearlessness. Paul is saying here that to non-believers in the world around there, he says, "We're always chasing, we're always scared, we're always trying to find significant in purpose in the glamour and the glitz and the success and the status." And he says, "By your very example, you will be a shining light to people. There will be some secret nuclear fuel rod within you that allows you to have courage in the face of opposition and your very example will continue to share and spread the beauty of this funny thing that we call the church." He says that you reveal that there is something more and beautiful and tangible. Fearlessness. Here's why I think it's hard for us. More often than not, in the Western world, let's be real. We're not going to get overly persecuted for our faith. I may not end the violent sense, not that someone's going to kidnap you and kill you and torture you for your faith if we're real about it. Not here in the Western world. But let's get a bit more real here. There are still people who take these steps of fearlessness. Think about our mission team to Madagascar, for example. They were office workers. They were students. There's nothing overly dangerous about that lifestyle, so to speak, other than the bar at Macquarie Uni. But there's nothing dangerous about that sort of life. Yet they pick themselves up and they go to a country and they begin to serve and they begin to bless this community that if it weren't for the providence of God, if it weren't for His protection over them, if they just happened to walk into the wrong alleyway and cross the wrong sort of people, there would be people there that would rather see them dead than doing the good in the country of Madagascar. Why would they do that? Fearlessness. To live is Christ and to die is game. It's a radical dynamic, guys, that you need to read in the first chapter of Philippians. But the Christian life, the DNA of the Christian life, should be one of fearlessness. Now let me ground it a little bit more. I'm not talking, let's not get that radical. But it means we shouldn't be afraid to share Jesus with our neighbor. What's the worst that could happen? Don't get invited to Friday night drinks? We have an opportunity to show the beauty and the wonder and the reason for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, that's probably not going to get us killed, is it that difficult to share it with a neighbor? And frankly, in a world where I see more and more people are seeking and they want this, they want this worthy life. So guys, it's fearlessness in Christ. So you and I are seeking diversity in unity. Are we striving, struggling in our faith? Christianity is not about box keeps. We're growing in our relationship with Jesus to the extent that we're fearless. If a mature Christian life, if a life worthy of the gospel is a life of unity and diversity, of striving in the face of opposition, of fearlessness in Christ, if that's what it is, are you growing? Are you maturing? Are you a Christian? The questions we've got to answer, they're legit. It's the beginnings and the DNA of the Christian life. You need to work it out this week. Let's pray.