Take your Bibles with me and turn to Philippians 2. Philippians 2. In light of it being a holiday week, I wanted to preach to you this morning on something I think is appropriate for Thanksgiving. So we will go back to Luke 13 next Sunday. Today we are going to look at a few verses in Philippians 2.
We have a holiday this week we call Thanksgiving. It was instituted to celebrate when the Pilgrims came to our land looking for religious freedom, and almost completely died off from starvation the first year they were here. In their second year here, they were helped by the native Americans (who wanted them to help protect them from other tribes) and they declared a special day of thanksgiving with a feast. They were joined by the local native Americans in the area and the feast lasted for three days.
In 1863, President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday and the rest is history.
But thanksgiving actually didn't start in 1621 with the pilgrims or in 1863 when Lincoln made it a national holiday. Special days of Thanksgiving were actually a church tradition that was common in European protestants before the pilgrims even came here.
And those church men probably based their Thanksgiving celebrations on the Biblical celebrations of Thanksgiving. The jews celebrated the feast of the Tabernacles every fall at the end of harvest to commemorate when God led them through the wilderness (where they lived in tents) and to give thanks for the provision of the year.
I love Thanksgiving. I love everything about it. The food. The day of rest (although it typically isn't a day of rest for all the mom's who are slaving in the kitchen all day.) Football. Pies.
But there is one thing I don't like about modern thanksgiving, and that is the emphasis on shopping. I get it. It's the kick off of the Christmas season. Stores need to make money and they make a lot of money around Thanksgiving. But there is something sad about how we take a day that's supposed to be about giving thanks for what we have and have made it about getting what we want.
Here is where we are at. We have a holiday called "Thanksgiving", but we are not a thankful people. Not even close.
Most people are complainers. Most people are grumblers. Complaining and arguing have become national pass times.
Most Americans have full refrigerators, wear nice clothes, drive a nice and reliable vehicle, watch endless content on a TV screen that would have only been available to the super rich 30 years ago. And yet we spend our time complaining about how bad the economy is from the $1200 computer phones we keep in our pocket.
This is something I have really noticed since I started my current job at Rural King. In many ways we are pampered there. I mean, there is always fresh fruit and popcorn in the hallways. We have a free soda machine and an espresso machine. It seems like every other week there is some event for us to go to. Last week I got to take my whole family to Texas Roadhouse before it opened for free. Its silly all the stuff they do. And do you know what I hear all the time?
They are probably paying for that fruit from our 401k.
Every nice thing is met with a complaint. Nothing is good enough.
And the sad reality is that Christians can fall into this same trap. We can become indistinguishable from the world around us - complaining about the same things, arguing about the same issues, grumbling about our circumstances. But God has called us to be radically different.
And that brings us to our text this morning. We are going to look at just three verses. Philippians 2:14-16
[!bible] Philippians 2:14-16 - KJV 14. Do all things without murmurings and disputings: 15. That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; 16. Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.
There are so many things I want to point out in these verses, but for the sake of time, I want to make three points, I want to talk about the world we live in, the testimony God wants to see and one simple rule that helps us have that testimony.
Let's pray and we'll jump into that.
The first thing I want you to think about from these verses is...
1. The world we live in
Verse 15 says that we live in "in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation."
That's actually a really interesting phrase, and I want to break it down for you.
Let's start at the end. The word "nation" there probably doesn't mean what you think it means. Actually, this is a commonly misused word in modern english. Most people don't know what a "nation" is.
A nation IS NOT a country. I know our currency says "One nation under God." But nation does not mean country. Nation means "people group."
And the specific word in the greek here is "genea" - it is usually translated as "generation" or "age" and what it means is "all of the people living at the same time." In other words, Paul is talking about the culture you live in, the people of your generation, your age.
So don't read this and think "I don't live in Philippi - that ain't my nation - I'm an american." No, this phrase refers to the fact that we all live among people who are "crooked and perverse."
The word "crooked" there is interesting. Its the word "skolios." What does that sound like? It sounds like "scoliosis" to me.
Scoliosis is when your spine is bent out of shape. My two oldest daughters have scoliosis and had to wear a back brace nearly all the time for years to straighten them out. That's the picture here - morally and spiritually bent, twisted out of the shape God intended.
Perverse means "corrupt, opposed to the plans of God."
So what this passage is saying is that we live in a world, surrounded by people who are crooked, who are bent and who are corrupted and opposed to God and God's plans for the world.
Now here is what that means for you practically: "You live in a messed up world, surrounded by messed up people, and God isn't surprised by that."
Sometimes we get surprised by it. Sometimes we think "man, things are getting really bad, people are really messed up." But God tells us this over and over and over again in the Bible.
This world isn't our home and we shouldn't be surprised when people in the world act like bent and perverted people - because they are.
That is the world we live in.
The second thing I want you to see in this text today is...
2. The testimony God expects
Look at verses 15-16 again:
[!bible] Philippians 2:15-16 - KJV 15. That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; 16. Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.
We live in a crooked world, but do you know what God wants us to do in that crooked world? He wants us to shine. He wants us to be lights.
The world is darkness, and we are to be the lights.
Now, there are three things here to think about, specific things about our testimony that should shine to people.
First, people ought to see our character.
Verse 15 says we need to be "blameless and harmless, without rebuke."
Blameless means that we have integrity. That there is no place for us to be accused. That we do what we do with integrity.
Harmless actually has a double meaning: It means both what it sounds like - that you won't hurt anyone, and it also means pure and without hypocrisy.
The people around you ought to feel safe with you, they ought not to ever be afraid that you are the guy who is going to stab them in the back. And they should know that you are the real deal.
Without rebuke. That means you give no occasion for legitimate criticism. That doesn't mean you won't be criticized, but you should live your life in such a way that the criticism will be illegitimate.
I think of Daniel when I think of this: Daniel was a man who was a light in a dark world. And they really went after him, they didn't like the blessing they saw in his life, but all they could ultimately do is to accuse him of being too faithful and to make his faithfulness illegal.
That should be our testimony. If someone is going to complain about us - let it be based on our faithfulness and not on our crookedness.
What does your character say about your testimony? What is your reputation? At work? In your family?
Are you shining in a dark world or is your light like a little tealight whose battery is almost dead. You blink once in a while, but people have to strain to see it.
People should see our testimony.
Second, people ought to hear our message.
Verse 16 says "holding forth the word of truth." The idea there is that we are offering the word to the world. They see our testimony and they hear our message.
A few insights here:
First, it's not enough for us to just live right. People need to hear our message too. Your lifestyle might be your loudest sermon, but it's not a clear sermon if you aren't also sharing the gospel with people.
People don't get saved because their neighbor is a righteous dude. People come to Christ because they hear the gospel from their neighbor who is a righteous dude.
A second insight is this - If you don't have good character - people aren't going to want your message. If you are a crook and a cheat and a back stabber, who cares what you have to say?
So people need to see our character and people need to hear our message.
Third, people ought to know we are God's sons.
When people hear our message and see our testimony - they ought to say to themselves - those people are different. Those people are shining. Those people are God's sons.
The greatest example of this I think of is when Jesus was on the cross. There was never a darker display of the crookedness and perversion of the world than that day. And as Jesus hung there, one of the cruel Roman soldiers who put him there and tortured him said "Surely, this is the son of God."
Think about this - maybe some of your trials are there so that the people around you can see how you live through them and say "that guy is different, that guy must be a son of God."
Maybe you are sick or things aren't going well at work or you are dealing with something in your family so that lost people can look at you and say "that person is different" and that can open them up to the message.
So God expects a shining testimony - character people can see, a message people can hear, and an identity as God's sons that's unmistakable. But how do we cultivate that kind of testimony? That brings us to our final point...
3. One simple rule that changes everything
I was reading recently about New York City in the 1980s. If you've been to New York recently, it is a beautiful city. It's clean and feels somewhat safe. If big cities are your thing, it's worth the visit.
But it wasn't always so clean and safe. In the 70s and 80s it was known as dangerous and dirty. When the people were putting their heads together to try to find a solution they came up with something called "the broken windows theory."
You see that they learned that if a building had a broken window, and people just got used to it - then in no time that whole building and neighborhood would go downhill. And so one of the keys to revitalizing the city was they looked out for broken windows and made sure they were fixed immediately - this one simple thing made a huge difference and had carry over effects to people's attitude and helped turn the city around.
I believe that verse 14 is kind of a broken window test for our testimony. Look at it again:
[!bible] Philippians 2:14 - KJV 14. Do all things without murmurings and disputings:
Murmurings. That means complaining. Disputings, that means arguing or bickering. All things means "all things."
This little command tells us that as Christians, a key to our testimony, a kind of broken window test, is the words that come out of our mouth.
Are you complaining? Are you criticizing? Are you squabbling?
That's a broken window in your testimony and if you let it go, it's going to effect your witness to the world.
Do you know what? God hates complianing. He hates murmuring. If you want an example of that, just look at the Old Testament. There are so many examples.
Do you know that after God delivered the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Literally three days after they walked across the red sea, they started complaining. They had God's presence leading them in a physical form in a cloud by day and fire by night and they complained.
So God gave them manna. God provided food for them miraculously every single day. Do you know what they did about the manna? They complained. They murmured. They wanted meat.
This made God so angry that he gave them meat, quails from heaven and then as they were eating it and chewing it God had had enough and sent a great plague.
They wandered through the wilderness up to the edge of the promised land - God showed them it was a land flowing with milk and honey - and what did they do? They complained and they grumbled. And God said "Ok, you get forty more years in the wilderness."
You see? Complaining was the broken window that destroyed an entire generation. It kept them from the Promised Land. And it will keep you from the abundant life God has for you.
God hates it when we complain and grumble and I think that this verse teaches us that it destroys our testimony.
If you are grumbling all the time at work, you don't have a strong testimony. If you are bickering about how things are done - you don't have a strong testimony.
If our church becomes a place where everyone is whining and complaining and criticizing all the time - do you know what it will do? It will destroy our testimony with the lost world.
If you are the complainer on your family chat - you aren't going to have much of a testimony with your family.
Listen, this is a command, and it is applicable to all of our life. Whatever situation God has you in, don't complain. Don't grumble. Don't dispute.
- If you have health issues, don't grumble about it.
- If you have things going on in your family - don't murmur and dispute about it.
- If things aren't going your way at work - don't murmur and dispute about it.
Maintain a spirit of gratitude to God no matter your circumstances and people will notice.
Here's a conclusion that builds on the Thanksgiving closing:
Conclusion:
So let me bring this home. We live in a crooked and perverse generation - a world that's bent out of shape and opposed to God. But God has called us to shine as lights in that darkness. He wants people to see our character, hear our message, and know we are His sons.
And here's the one simple thing that makes all the difference: Do all things without murmurings and disputings. Don't complain. Don't argue. This is the broken window that, if left unfixed, will destroy your testimony.
This week we celebrate Thanksgiving - a day set aside to give thanks. But I want to challenge you to go beyond just Thursday. I want to challenge you to make thanksgiving a lifestyle, not just a holiday.
Here's your challenge: Starting Monday, go 24 hours without complaining about anything. Not out loud, not even in your head. When you catch yourself about to complain - and you will - stop and thank God instead. Thank Him for what you do have. Thank Him that you're not getting what you actually deserve. Thank Him that He's working all things together for your good.
You'll be amazed at two things: First, how often you're tempted to complain. You'll realize just how much of a complainer you've become. Second, how it changes your whole perspective when you replace complaint with gratitude.
And here's what I believe will happen: people will notice. Your family will notice. Your coworkers will notice. The lost people around you will see someone who is different - someone who shines in a dark world. And that will open the door for you to hold forth the word of life.
Listen, God has you exactly where He wants you. Your circumstances - whether good or difficult - are an opportunity for you to shine. Don't waste that opportunity by grumbling and complaining. Be a light. Be grateful. Be different.
Let's pray.
