Striving Together for the Faith of the Gospel

I'd like to start out the sermon today by quoting from a book by Will Durant. I've written it here, but it's in his third volume. It says, he writes here, They met in private rooms or small chapels, and organized themselves on the model of the synagogue. Each congregation was called in Ecclesia, the Greek term for the popular assembly and municipal governments.

Slaves were welcome, and no attempt was made to liberate them, but they were comforted by the promise of a kingdom in which all could be free.

They were primarily from the working class, with the sprinkling coming from lower middle classes and an occasional one from the rich. They lived for the most part orderly and industrious lives.

Financed missions and raised funds for others, women were admitted to the congregation and rose to some prominence. Lucian, in about 160 AD, describes the imbeciles, Christians, as distaining things terrestrial and holding these as belonging to all in common.

A generation later, Tertilian, declared that, quote, we Christians have all things in common except our wives. I've been reading from an extract from Wilderant's History of Civilization, Volume 3, Chapter 28.

How many people here are familiar with Wilderant? Just a few. Okay, probably should. Wilderant's an interesting individual. He's an American historian. In the 1920s, he set out to write a history of the Napoleonic Wars, early 1800s, and he realized that he really couldn't describe what was really happening in the Napoleonic Wars unless he could describe, really, the French Revolution, but then he realized he couldn't describe that unless he went back to the Enlightenment and then back to the Renaissance and then back to the Middle Ages. And eventually, he decided he had to go all the way back. And so, in 1935, he published his first volume on the story of civilization, starting with Mesopotamia and the Chinese 6,000 years ago. And he wrote 11 volumes. It became his life work. He didn't actually finally publish his history of the Napoleonic Wars until 1975, shortly before his death. He and his wife worked on it. He's agnostic. He went to seminary, but then he, as the seminary views it, sort of backtracked on his thinking. So he's not particularly fond of religion, per se, but he nonetheless, in this volume, begins to describe what the early church was like, what the New Testament church was like. And he describes a group of people who were unified and who struggled and yet worked together to accomplish amazing things. And even a man like Will Durant had to admit and write about it. And I wanted to start that sermon today to describe how a lay historian, a secular historian, would describe the unity and purpose of the church, the early church, the New Testament church, and shortly afterwards.

And the more I study the early church, the more I feel an affinity for who these people were, whether it was in Jerusalem or Antioch or other places. And I begin to see similarities between the 21st century and the 1st century, both in terms of opportunities, but also in terms of risks.

And even though Will Durant describes this unity of purpose and spirit, this this ecclesia, as he points out, he also points out that it wasn't long after that great divisions came. And if we kind of continue on that discussion, he talks about how there was a great disunity that came afterwards. And there are indeed great challenges to being unified and working together in harmony. And I'd like you to turn to Philippians 1 verse 27 to start out, because I don't think this was lost on the Apostle Paul, certainly not on Peter, as we'll read as well.

And so Paul encourages the church at Philippi, and of course these letters were read extensively throughout Asia Minor and throughout the Roman Empire, to be united despite their differences.

And so in Philippians 1 verse 27, reading here from the New King James, he says, only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel. And so today I'd like to take a closer look at this teaching of Paul in verse 27. There's a lot in here to unpack with respect to what it means to be a one mind and one spirit. Both for them and for us, there are implications and we're implications.

You know, Margaret Mead, a famous American writer from this last century, once wrote, always remember that you are absolutely unique, just like everyone else.

You know, we bring our set of experiences with us everywhere we go. If I look out in this in this congregation, I just see such a diversity of people from all backgrounds and walks of life. And we bring our hopes and our fears and, yes, our immaturity and our shortcomings with us into the ecclesia. That's just the way it is. We are who we are and God knows that and He's called us.

And yet, despite this, Paul tells the church in Philippi here to be worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Why does he say it? What does this mean to be worthy? What does this mean to be of one mind? What does this mean to strive together for the faith of the gospel? As I said, Will Durant shortly after in his volume here describes the first three centuries of the church.

And quoting here, he says, The followers of Christ in the first three centuries divided themselves into a hundred creeds.

And he goes on to enumerate them. The Gnostics, the Marcions, Montias, the Ecratites, the Docetists. And he goes on and he names so many that hardly I've never heard of. Most of us never heard of. It's hard to even pronounce them. What are these groups? And we may wonder that, but really, does it matter in the sense of, why did that happen?

And could it happen today? And has it happened today? And will it happen again?

Today, I'd like to analyze the different parts here of Philippians 1, verse 27, and examine their implications for us. There's three parts that I've broken it into. 2. What does it mean, let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ? What is this concept of worthy? And what is he talking about? And number two, what does it mean to stand fast in one spirit, one mind? What does it mean to strive together for the faith of the gospel? What do these things mean? And what are the implications on church unity, on our congregational unity, on our ability to get along, to work together, to be coordinated, and to really reflect that early New Testament church that we read about in Scripture? The title of today's message is taken from that verse, striving together for the faith of the gospel. Striving together for the faith of the gospel.

Let me go back to the first point. Let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ. I want to read it in the in the Phillips version. I enjoy the Phillips version. I have it written down here. I have the Bible here with me if you want to take a look. It says in the Phillips, but whatever happens, make sure that your everyday life is worthy of the gospel of Christ. But whatever happens, that is how the Phillips translates it. It's also how the new international version translates it. Several versions in French have the same concept. The word only doesn't really convey that. You could kind of think of it in those terms like, whatever else, only like focus on this.

Like, this is the thing. But really that concept of the Greek word monon, monon, is really whatever happens. Whatever comes, whatever circumstance, comma, let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ. So what's Paul talking about? Well, he's probably talking about financial difficulties. He's probably talking about health problems. He's probably talking about when our plans go awry, things don't work out the way we wanted them to do, wanted them. He's probably talking about betrayal. He's talking about all forms of injustice. Whatever circumstance we might be in, whatever happens, we have to keep in mind that we have to live a life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Now, I'll just tell you, for me personally, I find that sometimes I say stupid things.

I don't know if that ever happens to you, probably, right? Hopefully. I'm not the only one. I say some I say some stupid things sometimes. Sometimes unkind. It happens. And I find that it happens when I'm stressed. It happens when I'm not feeling well. Maybe I didn't get enough sleep. Maybe I'm a little stressed with my work. Maybe if I haven't eaten, I get a little hungry, get a little cranky. If I'm having a bad day, there's a lot of reasons why we do these things.

And when that happens, my human spirit takes over really where God's spirit should be operating.

That's what's going on there. I'm allowing myself to get into these situations. And I have to take responsibility to make sure that I'm getting my sleep and I'm not stressing out and I'm keeping perspective and I'm managing these things. Otherwise, I'm going to fall into that anxiety. I'm going to fall into that upset. I'm going to, you know, what's this person doing here?

What do they think they're doing? And then I'm going to start, you know, defending myself or attacking or whatever it might be. And it's at those times that this unity comes.

It's often not our finest hour when those things start to happen. And of course, there's quotes along this line. I think George W. Bush has said this, and I think he's quoting some others, but, you know, we tend to judge ourselves by our best intentions and others by their worst actions.

And so the fact is we may have good intentions, but we do and say things that we probably shouldn't have. And then we irritate other people, and then they say and do things they shouldn't have.

And then now we have a dispute, and then now we don't know how to solve it. And then it sort of festers, and then it gets to something bigger, and then the benefit of the doubt is not given, and then you know, and it goes on from there. And so this is where disunity comes from, and we judge others' intentions, and we need to stand up for our rights, and so forth. And so these things happen, especially when we're in this kind of environment. So given that, what does it mean here, this gospel of Christ? Let's understand this, and then we'll put the two together. What's the gospel of Christ? Well, I hope we know that answer. I hope we know that answer, right? Mark 1, verse 16. You know, Christ came coming preaching the kingdom of God. That's the gospel of Christ, this future kingdom, and what it's going to mean. It's good news. It's good news of the kingdom of God, and it represents a time of peace and love and joy, and a time when we're going to be able to figure out how to work out some of these differences that we might have among ourselves and be submissive to God, have that perfect guidance. And so Paul is bringing these two things together to say whatever the circumstances, that vision of what that kingdom is about is what should be guiding our conduct with one another. How often was Christ sarcastic in his comments to his disciples?

How many times did he lose control and say hurtful things because he was angry, tired, or hungry?

How many times did he allow his human nature to push aside the Spirit of God working within him?

Zero. The answer is zero. Zero times. He set the standard. That's the standard of conduct. This is worthy of the gospel of Christ. This is the standard of conduct. And sometimes we can think our anger or accusations are entirely justified. You see, Christ overturned the tables in the temple, and so he was exercising righteous anger. And that's what I'm doing right here. This is righteous anger. Sometimes we can go to that real quick without realizing that's just our pride speaking. That's just kind of, you know, justification for bad behavior. And so we understand there's this standard that Christ has exercised. And we don't have to take my word for it because Peter described it. So let's go over to—you can keep your place there in Philippians—but let's go over to 1 Peter 2, verse 21. Peter lived and worked with Christ for three and a half years.

If anybody knew Christ, Peter did. And this is how he describes his master. This is how he describes his master here in 1 Peter 3, verse 21 to 23. Did I say 1 Peter 3? Sorry, 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2, verse 21 to 23. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow his steps.

Who committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth. If we've ever had a dispute or issue with somebody in our family, or someone in the church, or someone in our work, somebody that like that, we can suffer. And it says, Who, when he was reviled, did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously. This is the standard.

This is part of what Christ preached. This is what the kingdom of God will be like.

Whatever situation Christ faced, he set an example of what it means to walk worthy.

Paul also uses this term, worthy, in Ephesians 4, verse 1. Let's turn over there.

Ephesians 4, verse 1. He uses a similar type of phraseology here, writing to the Ephesians.

In Ephesians 4, verse 1, he says here in Ephesians 4, verse 1, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you to have a walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. A very similar type of phraseology. Now, this word, worthy, here in Greek, is the same word that's used over in Philippians. It's the same Greek word.

And it's the word axios. That word's actually kind of beginning to become more in usage. I think there's a news organization called Axios. It's the word in English that we get the word axios.

You know, if you've got kids in a playground and they're on a teeter-totter, right, you've got that thing right in the middle. And that, you know, one kid goes on this side and no one goes on that side and he goes back and forth. It's that pivot point, right in the center. That's an axios.

But according to the Expositor's Bible commentary, it literally means to bring up one side of the balance. So it's a reference to scales. So if you were in the marketplace and you had silver or gold or something that you were going to use to buy things and you were going to buy a certain weight, they would have this balance. And it would balance the goods you were going to buy. Okay, how much money do you have? It's a way of determining value. That's where the word comes from. It brings up the other side of the scale. And the same commentary says that there must be a balance between what we profess and what we practice. So we can say all these things over on the one side. That's what we profess. But what we practice has to balance it. We can't be all talk, right? We actually have to practice. But there's also another concept in here, which is that on the one side we have the sacrifice of Christ. And then the other side we have our behavior. Now we can't, obviously, ever do anything that would bring the balance and scales up to that side. But there's nonetheless our response to grace.

And I think I've probably shared this, but when I had to explain to an administrator at my daughter's school as a Christian school why I keep the Feast of Tabernacles, why are you going to keep the Feast of Tabernacles? You're a Christian. Why are you doing that? That's something that the Jews did. Are you trying to earn something here? I use the Scripture. I said, well look at Ephesians 4, verse 1. It says, to walk worthy of this vocation, of this calling. This is my response to grace. Christ died for me. This is how I love God, because He says to do this. And I believe He says to do this. You may not believe He says to do this, but I believe He says to do this, and therefore I'm doing this. And He's like, okay, I understand. We profess that we're in the Church, but in our way of being, our way of reacting with others, do we put into practice what that means?

We keep the Sabbath, we keep the Feasts, but I'm really talking about a mentality, a spiritual and relational behavior, which is where we must allow God to change us, to transform us. What's our first reaction? What's our first reaction to things? Is it calm? Is it giving the other person the benefit of the doubt? Is it putting ourselves in that position and saying, you know, there must be something behind that. And so this passage, along with the passage in Philippians, gives meaning to Christ's sacrifice for us, His gospel, His sacrifice. It's on one side of the scale. Our behavior has to reflect that great sacrifice, our spiritual state.

Being worthy means that we are ever mindful of what our profession is, what our vocation is, and we practice that, what Christ has done for us, and we desire to honor that in our human relations, in our relations with one another. Let's go back to Philippians 1, verse 27, and look again.

Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, our conduct, our everyday life, when we're talking with one another. And again, it's every day. It's not like we're all dressed up when we come to church and maybe we've prayed and we've had a chance to sleep in, we're feeling a little bit better. No, it's every day. How is our behavior? Let's go to the second point. What does it mean to stand fast in one spirit? We'll keep reading here. Let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs. How are you doing there in Seattle? How's things going? Things going well? People getting along, doing some things together?

That you stand fast in one spirit. You stand fast. The first thing I want to share here is that if we're talking about unity, we're not talking about conformity. At least not with one another.

We're very different than one another. You know, I don't think we realize how different we are from one another. Sometimes we might look around and think, yeah, you're like, yeah, we have a lot of things in common. Maybe we're very different, all of us, from one another. We're not to conform to one another, but we're to conform to Christ. That's where the conformity comes. The conformity to Christ leads to the unity in the church. Once we're conformed to Him, our ability to interact and work with one another in unity becomes possible. Our ability to interact with one another is the key after we have conformed to Christ. Look at Galatians 3 verse 27. Let's see how Paul describes this to the Galatians, because he gives a really powerful example here. Galatians 3 verse 27.

We'll start in verse 26 just to capture the thought. Galatians 3 verse 26.

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. We've put on Christ. We're conforming to His image. And then he says there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So we are clothed with Christ. We look like Him. We dress like Him. We talk like Him. We walk like Him. That's our goal. Sometimes we don't always do it.

But that's our goal. And in verse 28, Paul uses three contrasts which really should speak to us. It certainly, I think, spoke to them at the time. He talks about men and women. Is it difficult for men and women to sometimes get along? Are men and women different? Oh yeah, very different. Very different from one another. The way that we think, the way we speak or don't speak. In society today, what do we hear about?

Unequal pay, unequal opportunities. Why are women this and why are men that? It just goes on and on and on about differences between men and women. Was it difficult for a slave to be in a congregation with a slave owner? Maybe the slave's owner himself. Think about that for a second. Think about the inequality. Think about the victimization of a slave walking in resenting his slavery vis-a-vis those who are free. That'd be pretty hard. I think having conversations, free and slave, you know, oh yeah, I got to get back. How is it going? Oh, it's bad.

Nothing you could do. The slave and the free person were in the same congregation figuring out how to work together, figuring out how to be unified.

Greek and Jew. You know, what were the problems? What problems did the Jews have?

They were pretty snooty sometimes, looking down on everybody else. Oh yeah, yeah, we're the chosen people. And the Greeks would look at the Jews and go, man, you guys are so arrogant.

What's up with you? And so, if you had a person of Greek descent come in and there's somebody Jewish, that, you know what they call it? They call it racism. That's what they call it today. That's what we're talking about here, Greek and Jew. We're talking about people who are coming from some background and they have to kind of get over that and be able to work together from different walks of life. So Paul is bringing out three areas where you would definitely have disunity. You would definitely have disconnects. You would have definitely have hurt feelings and all sorts of people speaking past one another and saying, none of that matters. We are one in Christ. One in Christ.

If we think we can live our little lives alone in our houses and read our Bibles, it's just us and God the Father and Jesus Christ. That's what we're gonna—we are so wrong.

We are so wrong. That's not what Christ is talking about. He's talking about a coming together. This is what the Ecclesiastes is about. This is what Philippians is about. We are called in the church to serve one another, to support one another, to love one another unconditionally, because that's how Christ loves us unconditionally. Now, obviously we can do some pretty bad things, and if we do those things and we don't listen, well, we know what that answer is going to be.

That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is we're very understanding. We're very sympathetic. We're very empathetic. We're giving people the benefit of the doubt. We're letting people be in that not-so-great space that they're in at the moment, because maybe this is not a good time, and let them kind of come back and walk back maybe some of those things they said. Let—give them some space to come back and say, I'm sorry, before we start piling on with why they're so wrong.

And hopefully that same person does the same with us when we're not in a good space. Yeah, they could tell us why they're why we're wrong, and they're probably right, but that's not going to feel very good at that moment to hear that. Christ said that we need to love our enemies.

He said we need to pray for those who spitefully use us. That's how we treat people that don't like us. Imagine how we're supposed to treat people who we do care for and love.

We're never supposed to hold grudges or do anything like that. Look over in Matthew 7, verse 12, and let's see Christ describe this directly. I'm kind of paraphrasing things here, but let's read what the word says. Matthew 7, verse 12.

Matthew 7, verse 12 says, Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. For this is the law and the prophets.

Now we can love God, but we have to love our neighbor.

He's quoting Leviticus 19, verse 18. You don't have to turn there. You can note it.

Leviticus 19, 18 says, You shall not take vengeance nor bear grudges against the children of your people. Bear grudges. That's kind of the end result of a whole bunch of misunderstandings. You shall not bear grudges. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

Could Christ be any more clear? Could He be any more clear? The whole law and the preaching of the prophets are founded on the principle of treating each other with respect and love.

That's the whole law and the prophets, the two great commandments.

And we don't hold grudges. We have to deal with that.

Let's go back to Philippians 1, verse 27, and let's read another part of this same section.

It says, That you stand fast in one Spirit.

Stand fast. You know this word, stand fast? It's a simple word in Greek called steko.

S-T-E-K-O. Steko. And it's interesting because the same word is used in Ephesians 6 in terms of the armor of God. Peter uses it in terms of resisting Satan, the adversary.

It's used with respect to being faithful to the truth. You know, we're going to lose our job over the Sabbath, or we're having some difficulty where we've got to just stand fast in the truth.

We've got to put on the armor of God to fight against Satan, who goes about like a roaring line. That's what that word is. Stand fast. Steko. Have we ever thought that it takes that kind of determination to be unified in the church? Because that's what he's saying. He's using that same kind of stand fast. When we think about standing fast, we think about immorality in the world, you know, all the craziness going around. We're going to hold firm to our convictions. We are not going to compromise our faith against all of these forces coming against us. It's that same concept.

We are not going to be disunified in the church. I am not going to allow this to affect me.

It's that same kind of vigor of spirit that it takes to maintain unity in the church. Stand fast in one spirit. That's... it's a powerful word that Paul decided to use that we need to follow.

It is not easy. We can so easily offend one another. So easily. So easily offend one another. We can so easily decide that we have had enough. We have had enough, and we're just going to take our marbles and go home. I don't need to play with you anymore. You are mean, you are unfair, I'm going home. And we can so easily do that. But is that really what Christ expects of us?

Several years ago, Gary Petty gave a talk at the General Conference of Elders.

And it was on the program. It was on the program. It was on Monday. There's different seminars.

And the title of his talk was Disillusioned with the Church. I have never seen so many people in a seminar. I have never seen so many... I mean, it was standing room only. I'm like, I need to go there. And I went and people just crowding outside the door. I guess I'm not going to hear that. You can barely see him. There's something that really resonates with people about how we have been hurt. How we have been hurt. And they wanted to hear what he had to say. People have been hurt. We've been hurt by our brothers and sisters in the church. But instead of giving up, instead of separating, Paul says, stand fast. A lot of times we're going to think about doctrinally. And yes, there are references in other places doctrinally. But he says, stand fast in one spirit. Let's go to the third point here. After he says, stand fast in one spirit, he says, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel. With one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel. Now, this term, striving together, the New King James actually gets this right. It's together. Sometimes some translations will just say striving. In certain French translations, it will say battling. They use the word battle. Another translation will say fight. And so striving is beginning to get the sense of it. But the real key is striving together. It's the together. It's something we do together. We do not do this alone. Unfortunately, in our society right now, there is such a low level of trust in institutions, in each other. And we can be affected by that in the church. We can have a low level of trust. And I think there's a lot of people who don't come to church anymore because they're just, they're like, you know what? I don't want to be controlled. I don't want to be manipulated. I don't want to be hurt. And so they stay away. And it can affect us. And instead of coming together in common cause, like that model of the New Testament church, we're like, I just can't deal with that. But the key is together. It says striving together. And this striving, or battling, or fighting, sometimes we can think about this in military terms. But the word is actually from the field of athletics. This is actually more in the field of athletics than military. The Greek word is son atelō. S-O-N-A-T-H-E-L-O. The son is, it's two words. It's a combination of two words in Greek. The son is with, or a union, together. And the atelō, well it's athletics. It's athletics. It means competitive sports. It's like a sports team that works together to win a competition. That's what atelō means. So son atelō, it means that if a sports team is going to win, it's got to practice together. It's got to figure out how to communicate. It's got to get the roles and responsibilities right. It's got to determine who's in charge and who's going to call the plays. If it's going to win, it's got to coordinate and do all that. And it's got to practice before it gets out and actually goes on the field. That's the concept of striving together. That's where this term is coming from. And so if this was being read in Greek, this kind of analogy of a sports team would be coming to people's minds. You're working together. You're practicing. You're figuring these things out. And this one mind here comes from the idea of this Greek term of one man. It's like one person. It's like the team is so unified. It's like they're a single individual just figuring out what needs to be done next.

A husband and wife is supposed to be one. There's supposed to be one individual, one mind, one spirit. That's something I think we can understand from Genesis 2, verse 24. I won't turn there for sake of time, but John 17, 20, we read that during the Passover. It says that Christ prayed that we might be one as He is one. Christ and the Father are one. We are one spirit. We are unified as one body. This is that oneness of mind that we work together so, so much that we just kind of know each other. And, okay, I think that person's going to figure this out here, and I'll let them do that, and I'll do this, and we'll work together, and then we'll advance, and then we're going to win the game. That was the concept that's described in here with Sonatello.

I want to quote again from Will Durant about the early church. He says this. This is on page 603 of this volume. One faith united the scattered congregations. Christ was the Son of God. He would return to establish His kingdom on earth, and all who believed in Him would be rewarded with eternal bliss at the last judgment.

Now, I think in the church we would understand we wouldn't use the word eternal bliss. Again, I'm quoting a secular historian. We'd say eternal life. That's what we'd say. We'd say eternal life. But I think he describes what this church was like, and I hope he's describing what our church is like, what our ecclesia is like.

One faith uniting the scattered congregations. Christ is the Son of God, who's going to return to establish His kingdom on earth and reward all of us with eternal life. We in the church know and understand these things. And what we fight and we work together is for the faith of the gospel. That's what it says. It says, With one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel. That's what the one mind striving together is attempting to accomplish.

The faith of the gospel. Faith in this sense here is a body of beliefs. That's what's being described. We're striving together for this body of beliefs. We work together in unity to represent this body of beliefs, to preach this body of beliefs, if that's our role.

Whatever our role is, it's about this body of beliefs. We effuse it. It's just coming out of us. We're so excited about it. People can tell who we are because of it. We live it. We have a responsibility to live it.

Unfortunately, in the centuries since the church was founded here, shortly after this, heresy crept into the church. Heresy crept into the church. What Paul and Peter and John preached was contorted and forgotten and changed and manipulated. In that same discussion, Will Durant explains that in the second century, there began to be arguments about the date of Christ's return. Eventually, the church, by this time we'll call it the Catholic Church, decided that the kingdom of heaven was already on earth.

The kingdom of heaven was already on earth. And they introduced a new idea. The idea was that you would go to heaven when you died. And again, I want to quote him here. This is the same volume. Quote, Even belief in the millennium was discouraged by the church and ultimately condemned. Faith in Christ's second coming had established Christianity, but hope in heaven preserved it.

He describes something we know very well in the Church of God. The Catholic Church modified the doctrines and teachings of the apostles, and they introduced the idea of going to heaven, and they told people that their life down here on earth was actually the kingdom of God. This is, again, I'm just quoting a secular historian, describing this transformation that occurred in the second and third century as these different disputes and things came up. And that's why we have programs like reading your Bible every year.

That's why we have programs where we come together and have Bible studies. That's why we talk about these things in church, because we're striving together to preserve this body of faith. This is the responsibility of the church. This is not the responsibility of the ministry. It is, in the sense, as their church members.

It's each of our responsibilities, because this is what happened shortly after Paul wrote this. Fifty years, a hundred years after Paul wrote this, suddenly the kingdom of God is not something that Christ is preaching that's coming on his second return. It's what we're living right now, and when you die, you're going to go to heaven. It just completely changed. Philippians 1 also has an echo of Jude 3. Let's go over and look in Jude 3, because this striving together for the faith of the gospel is also something that Jude talked about.

Jude 3, verse 3 and 4, we see the same admonition towards us. Beloved, while I was very diligent to write you concerning our common salvation again, we get this concept of unity, I found it necessary to write you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. This is what we're contending. It's an interesting thing. Striving, contending, battling, fighting. We have that same echo. For certain men have crept in unnoticed who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turned the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jude saw it. He saw these things coming into the church, and he said, Hold fast. This is ultimately what we're doing. So it all comes back to how are we advancing this? How are we living this? This is what, this was a common theme. Individually, we should feel responsible for preserving the faith. If we lost this meeting hall, if we no longer had regular church services, would each of us be ready to take responsibility for reaching out to others and fighting, contending, striving, as it says here, contending for the faith? You know, I'll just say this.

Sometimes we're so scattered, and I've often thought, if each of us had to conduct our own church service because there wasn't anybody around, and we invited our neighbors, and we described what this is, I'm not saying we're going to do that. I'm just saying, are we ready to really describe this? Can we defend this faith? Do we know what this faith is?

Can we answer these arguments? Are we taking our study to that level where we're individually taking responsibility to really understand what this faith is? And when we don't understand something, we call somebody up because we're striving together. Hey, you know, I'm studying this. What does this mean? I'm not sure what this means. Are we taking it that far? When we understand these things, when we understand conformity to Christ, unity in the church, we can have confidence that we maybe don't have right now.

And I want to read... I want to go back to Philippians 1 to conclude this final point and to finish up. Because Philippians 1, verse 27, is the first half of a sentence. And the second half of that sentence is in verse 28. I'm going to read verse 27 and 28 as one sentence. Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or I'm absent, I may hear of your affairs that you stand fast in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel, and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation and that from God.

We live in an age of anxiety. We have all sorts of concerns about what might be going on. If you turn on the news, you are just going to... you're going to get it, right? Oh, we're worried about this and we're worried about that. It's an election year and what's going on in Ukraine and what's going on in Gaza and what's going on with inflation?

It just goes on and on. But when we stand fast and we do these things described in verse 27, we don't have to be terrified by whatever adversary might come at us. This is really the anecdote to anxiety, because we're doing what God has desired for us to do, and we can have that confidence that comes from that, the confidence of our salvation. It's time to put our faith in action.

There's many quotes on this. I'll quote President de Gaulle of France. He said, The noblest principles in the world are only worthwhile through action. Our profession and our practice is an imbalance. It's time to put our faith in action with a focus on leading a life, conducting a life worthy of the gospel, standing firm with one Spirit, and contending or striving together for the faith of the gospel. When I consider Paul's words to the Philippians in the first century and to the church today, I see a lot of similarities. I see a lot of similarities, a lot of opportunities, and a lot of risks.

In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. We just had that holiday. We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. Wilderant described an early church where unity and peace reigned. And a few years later, he describes divisions and doctrinal changes. Let no one say that about the modern era of the church of God. And I mean the 21st century church of God. We know the story of the 20th century, at least the end of it, don't we? Let no one say that of the 21st century era of the church of God. It is up to each and every one of us to strive together for the faith of the gospel.