Is your comfort crushing your calling?

Introduction

We are on. Good morning. Thanks. I stuffed up the run sheet this morning. I skipped the briefing at the start of service and didn’t see things were rescheduled, but it’s my birthday, so I do what I want. We will hear from Matt later. We haven’t cancelled that interview, but we’re going to put it on the end of the sermon this morning. That passage we just read, we’re reading through Philippians. It’s a letter from Paul who’s in prison.

I don’t know if you caught wind of this, but as we read that section in Philippians chapter 2, how much you are reminded this is a letter to a church as Paul sends greetings and talks about the coming and going of visitors to the church in Philippi. We get a few tones of language in this particular part of the letter. We get the language of family. Timothy is like a son to a father, is the way he expresses it. Apaproditis, he says he’s like a brother. We get this family language, but it’s not the only kind of language we get in this section of the Bible. We get this soldier language as well. In particular, Apapraditis is called a brother, but he’s also called a coworker and soldier is Paul’s language.

There’s a package in this section of Philippians chapter 2 where we hear it sounds a bit like a letter being sent home from the front line. I don’t know if you get those vibes. We’ll look into it more, but that idea of the message that goes home updating them on what’s happening on the front line, you can imagine how much emotion would be tied up in that kind of message, waiting to hear what could be happening. In Australia during the first world war those messages predominantly came through telegrams and telegrams were written out on a pink bit of paper and so they got known as the pink telegrams and so people dreaded the pink telegram coming to their door because usually the update from the warfront wasn’t good news and because it was a telegram it was quite brief language as well if you look up the Australian history stuff on that.

There’s two examples of messages from the front line. One is a telegram and one is a letter. Unfortunately, both examples are to a lady called Mrs. Allen a year apart. I don’t know if it’s the same Mrs. Allen. Her dress has changed. So hopefully it’s not the same Mrs. Allen because the poor lady is getting a lot of bad news. The telegram is quite brief. Let me read a quick example. It’s not to the person. It’s actually written to the messenger of what they are to convey. It’s very brief to the point says Peter Allen of 13th Battalion previously reported missing now killed in action. Please inform mother Mrs. Allen of 63 Pitwater wrote and convey deep regret and sympathy. That’s pretty heavy message in only a short number of words to be fair.

The letters that came in weren’t much better or much easier. There’s another example to a Mrs. Allen and it comes from Captain Wells from the front line updating her on her two sons. Once again, even though this is a personal letter, the message from the front line is not good news. He first explains what happened in the battle and then he says there was a faint possibility that your two sons were taken prisoner but if you have not received word then I think we must make up our mind that they fell galliantly in that glorious charge. Please accept my deepest sympathy. What a difficult thing to process the just let’s just conclude they have died. He adds a PS at the end. PS. If they were killed, they would have been buried with their comrades in the field of battle. That’s it. That’s the message. You can imagine, maybe hard to even truly imagine the amount of emotion tied to that kind of frontline message.

What we get here is a very similar kind of message from Paul. Although for Paul, this is good news coming from the front line, particularly about Apaproditis. We’re told that he nearly died, but he’s going to the good news is Apaproditis is coming to you. He’s going to show up with this letter saying, “Good news. I’m still alive.” That’s the message that’s coming. Apaproditis himself is bringing that message. What it is as we look at this passage is a reminder that there is a battle going on. While we receive good news from the warfront in Paul’s message, there’s a reminder that we are not just at home getting the message, but we ourselves are in a battle. This passage gives us both a call to the cause. It gives us a reminder of the battle that is going on and it gives us a reminder of the sacrifice the cost that is paid.

The Call to the Cause

The first thing is the call to the cause. This is what we see. While Paul is praising the work of Timothy, we get a reminder of what the actual cause is that Timothy is called to. So he praises Timothy. He says, “I have no one else like Timothy.” We read in Philippians 2:20 who genuinely cares about your welfare. Then he says, “All the others care only for themselves.” What you expect to happen there is you expect the s to say, “All the others care only for themselves.” But not Timothy. He cares for you. That’s what you expect him to say. That’s not what he says. He says, “All the others care only for themselves and not what matters most, which is Christ Jesus.”

Caring for the Cause of Jesus

You hear what’s happening there? Rather than Paul saying Timothy cares doesn’t care for himself, he cares for you. Paul takes it one step higher. He says Paul cares for the cause. He cares about what Jesus cares about. And sorry, Timothy cares about what Jesus cares about. There’s a reminder here that it’s not just about loving each other. It’s not just about a Christian club that cares for each other, but there’s a greater calling beyond that. This isn’t just brothers in arms looking after each other. This is brothers and sisters in arms looking after the cause, fighting for the cause. There’s a call to the cause, we’re told.

The Battle Within Ourselves

There’s also a battle going on. In fact, right in there in Paul’s own words, we hear that the battle is within ourselves. What is the thing that Timothy is fighting against? What’s the opposite to caring for the cause of Jesus? Paul says caring for themselves. That’s what the other guys are doing. Timothy cares for the cause of Jesus. The opposite to that is self-centeredness. The battle that we see in this particular part of the story is a battle of self. We hear that language of battle in different places in the Bible.

The Christian Walk as a Battle

I don’t know how you feel about the idea of thinking about Christianity as the Christian walk as a battle. I think it’s quite hard to connect with that idea right at the moment because I think in recent history particularly I guess it will depend where you have lived in the world and what your world experience is particularly I think in Australia recent history has felt like wars are quite politically controversial right wars are always politically motivated It’s always politics involved, but in our recent history, it’s kind of hard to question whether what what wars, what battles seem like they need to happen and what ones don’t. The idea of connecting to that idea, there’s other points in history and other places in the world where people feel less questioning the battle. It’s a question of survival more than it’s a question of politics in some spaces in the world.

The Internal Battle

We come with that language. We also come with a little bit of the fear of how battles have been used inappropriately in the past. There’s a danger when we come to this much easier to grab hold of the family language and say we’re a family of believers. We’re not soldiers. Every year at Riverston Festival there’s the parade and many of you have had kids in your schools walk in the parade in the festival. There’s often a group a contingent of churches that do that. We’ve never really got behind it as a church, the first year that I was in Riverston and it was proposed to me that we would get go to the festival that the person said to me, wouldn’t it be great if all the Christians were marching down the streets of Riverston singing Onward Christian Soldiers? That turned me off pretty heavily. The idea of what message that communicates in a climate that we’re in, in a world that we’re in. That’s not the message we want to communicate. It is a biblical idea, but we want to be careful how we apply that biblical idea.

Not Against Flesh and Blood

There is a battle going on. We’re told Paul says, not against flesh and blood, but evil forces. That leads us in a difficult place where some would attribute everything that happens in their life and in the world. It’s like another demon, another evil force under a rock. That’s not actually the part of it that Paul draws us to right here. The part that Paul draws us to, the battle is an internal battle. The battle is against self-centeredness is the battle we see here. That’s the picture of what it looks like in this passage. to be marching on as a Christian soldier. That every day is a daily death to self. It’s not the glorious roar of the charge into battle, but it’s actually the daily death of self.

The Armor of God

That is why when Paul in he writes to the church in Ephesus, he says, “Put on your armor.” a fairly well-known part of the letter, the armor of God. There is this picture of kind of like this soldier who’s going to have a charge into battle. But as he draws his picture of the armor, it’s not the kind of things that might draw us to a glorious battle, right? He doesn’t say, you know, put on your grappling hook of exorcism so you can tear the evil spirits out of them. Or he doesn’t say fill up your super soaker of holy water so you could like it’s not that kind of language. The language is put on your belt of truth. Put on your shield of faith. Put on your chest plate of righteousness. You see what’s going on there? These are the things that are protecting us are things that are in our own core being as we are transformed by the Holy Spirit.

The Sword of the Spirit

In fact, the only weapon of offense in the the only attack weapon in the armor of God is the sword. You say, “Oh, the sword of the spirit.” You know, we get moments where the Holy Spirit comes on Samson and he has, you know, put on the sword of the spirit, are we going to have like the power of Samson? Or put on the sword of the spirit, we’re going to have the warrior spirit of David. But Paul doesn’t say that’s what the sword of the spirit is. Paul says, “The sword of the spirit is the word of God.” This is the picture we have of what it looks like to be a Christian warrior, a Christian soldier. It looks like a daily death to self. That’s something we wrestle with as Christians. Paul uses this language. He says my old self has been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. The daily death to self is not some sort of just kind of burdening ourselves with we’re not worthy but it’s actually a transforming of God’s spirit in us that we die to self so that we can live for Christ.

The Sacrifice

Charles Spurgeon gives this this language when he thinks about the Christian walk and how it’s a daily thing. He uses this language. He said, “When you sleep, think that you are resting on the battlefield. When you walk, suspect an ambush at every hedge.” He says, “There’s danger about all the time.” This is what the Christian walk looks like. Fighting for the cause is not a glorious rush into battle most of the time. It’s a daily. It’s the It’s the in and out day to day making the choices to live for Jesus. There’s a cause. There’s a battle and we’re told there’s a sacrifice. One of the great things we hear from this story is that the danger turned out to be good news. This is, let me read it again for you. This is the story of Apaproditis. This is the pink telegram that he’s bringing himself that he’s going to be sent himself to share the good news. Meanwhile, I thought I I should send Apaphroditis back to you. He was very distressed that you heard he was ill and he certainly was ill. In fact, he almost died, but God had mercy on him. I love the bit Paul adds, not just mercy on him, but Paul adds, “And he had mercy on me so that I wouldn’t have another sorrow to deal with.”

The Good News and the Bad News

He says, “Oh, that’s nice of him to worry about Apaproditis that way.” Good news, Apapraditis is alive. The bad news, the challenge that sits there is that there was a great struggle to be overcome. We’re not given much detail on what Apapraditis was wrestling with other than the fact that he was ill. But what we are told in verse 30, for he risked his life for the work of Christ. So whatever happened, it was in the work of Christ that it happened. The good news is he’s alive. The bad news is that there was a sacrifice to be paid in the first place. The bad news is that his very life was in danger.

What Does Sacrifice Look Like?

I think that’s difficult once again for us to think about what does it look like to live a life on the front line in Christian battle and think about what does sacrifice look like when we hear a story like this and hear that some are sacrificing their life for Apapraditis close to death and for others in history in the world today people are actually giving their lives for Christ for the cause what does that look like for us day day in and day out. I think it’s actually much harder often to try to figure that out because there is many things you could do that could put your life and your health at risk for the sake of Christ. Talk about this a bit in in ministry amongst people are employed in ministry. the idea of ministry burnout and how hard do you push yourself for the sake of the kingdom and obviously people can and do push themselves to to great points of illness. I’ve worked with a number of people over the years who have had significant illnesses come from what’s been concluded as stress. You can sacrifice your life like Epaphroditis to the point of illness. What do we do with that? Is that something we should do?

Persevering in Ministry

I used to have this kind of feeling I I I personally am reasonably driven. I’m reasonably driven in ministry and I kind of had this feeling I just want to push myself and make a difference, right? I just want to make a difference and if I fall in a heap at the end, at least I achieved something in the meantime. The problem is I’ve watched some guys in ministry who have done that and when they fall in a heap, usually they bring their whole ministry crumbling down with them. They usually end up doing something because of the stress that undermines their ministry, makes people lose faith in them as a person. Actually all the hard work they’ve done in the first place comes crumbling down because they actually came crumbling down. The answer is don’t push yourself so hard to make a difference if the result of that is you actually undermine the difference that you sought to make. Figuring that out, what does it look like to be sacrificial in our lives to persevere in faith knowing that some are pushing themselves to the point or even God is calling people to give their lives. I think it’s a harder line to draw than we often can can understand.

There is something to be said about persevering in our ministry includes sustaining our persevering. You see that if you use the illustration of war, the idea of rushing the front line, there are moments that that happens in war, there’s also moments that it’s wise to stay in the bunker for the sake of the war that the sacrifice has to be balanced in the right places. Both those images are helpful for us to think about. It just becomes difficult at times for us to work out when to rush the front line and when we should be in the bunker. I do want to say this though. I think one of the challenges we have is sometimes we say, “Ah, I I’m worried that I’m pushing myself too hard and so I need to say no to some ministry opportunities.” Because I’m I’m too busy and I’m too my life is too full. I think sometimes we say no to the ministry opportunities where we could have said no to something else in our life that was making lifeful. The reality is we fill our lives all the time. This is the conversation that happens with most people as they head towards retirement.

A Shift in Priorities

One of I don’t know many retirees who wanted to retire. I only know one. Everyone else I know, retirement is a young man’s dream, a young person’s dream. As people get to retirement, it’s usually something they are concerned about, fear, what am I going to do with my life? How am I going to fill my time? How am I going to find purpose? There’s all those kinds of questions. The question, how do I fill my time? I don’t know anyone that has had a problem with filling their time once retirement starts. In fact, the opposite happens that most retirees say, “I don’t know how I fit anything else in ever before because my schedule is now full of all these things.” We don’t have a problem filling our schedule. I don’t think generally speaking, that is a challenge that most of us wrestle with. The challenge most of us wrestle with is the schedule is too full.

Sacrifice Looks Like Lots of Little Things

The question of a daily death, the question of battle of priorities in our life is sometimes it’s saying no to certain ministry opportunities that might cause us to push too hard. The reality is at times it’s saying no to other things in our life that might fill our life up. There are things that look like sacrifice and sometimes that sacrifice might be a personal effort even sometimes for some in parts of the world their very lives. For many of us, sacrifice looks like lots of other little things that we have filled our life with, that we feel like we can’t live without that really are things we should think about sacrificing. This is what we’re called to. We are on the front lines fighting the fight for Christ.

Thinking Like It’s a Time of War

There’s a shift in priorities when we think about the fact that we’re on the front lines and we’re in a war. You think differently about priorities in wartime than you do in times of peace. What you invest in during wartime is different to what you invest in during times of peace. Paul uses this line when he writes to Timothy. says, “Soldiers don’t get tied up in affairs of citizen life, for then they cannot please the officer who enlisted them. There’s a shift in priorities if we’re fighting the cause, if we’re on the front line, if this is what we’re called to do.” Just take a moment to think what difference would happen in your life if you were thinking like this is a time of war rather than a time of peace. I think there’s things you’d think about for in terms of forgiveness in terms of holding resentment for longer periods of time that we may be quicker to move towards forgiveness if it’s a time of war versus a time of peace.

Investing in the Cause

I think you’d think differently about the places where you serve and the people that you invest your time into. I think you’d be more likely to invest in the cause than you are into personal gain. I think we’d think differently about our children and how we value the time with them and what we’re pointing them to and what we’re teaching them. There’s a shift in priorities and there’s a sacrifice that comes with it. We’re called to pay that sacrifice. I want to talk a little bit about where we are as a church as a church and some of the sacrifices we face. This is not new to you. We’ve been talking about this for a little while. We face significant challenges as a church as we think about growing and the opportunities in this area and reaching more people. We face particular thoughts and challenges. We think about an increasingly multicultural area and reaching out to different cultural groups. We face certain challenges when we think about moving to a new site and building a new church.

This coming Sunday we celebrate 140th anniversary and we want to at that celebration celebrate more than 140 years of ministry that has happened in this part of the world in this little patch in Sydney. We want to celebrate that. We also want to think about the legacy that’s been created from that ministry as we look forward say wouldn’t it be great to have 140 more years of fantastic ministry in this area. As we think about a new building there’s a and as sorry as we celebrate the opening of this building over here we are at the same time thinking about a new building that we want to build up on Hamilton Street. Next week we got some announcements we’re going to make about our new building. Come along next week and find out more about that. I will give you a little sneak preview. One of the things we’re doing next weekend is is launching our fundraising campaign towards the new building. Our calculations with all the assets and opportunities we have is that we’re about $1.8 million short of what we need to build that building. The Dasis is helping us a little bit with fundraising towards that and we’re going to step in and do some of that fundraising ourselves and in particular by the end of September we’re looking to raise $200,000 to pay for the DA essential component we need to get the next stage going and so we’re going to launch that next week. There is an obvious sacrifice that comes as a a church for that.

As we are just going to shift things a little bit, I’m going to invite Matt Gibb up here. The interview you’ve all been waiting for. EMTT said it’s good he got to be on the camera on the live stream twice this morning. So, come on up, EMTT. Yeah, good job. Well done. Thanks, Just want to tangent things a little bit and as we think about sacrifice and a very very specific application for us as a church. Matt Matt works you work for Dunham Company who they are involved in helping lots of organizations but particularly Christian organizations in fundraising and achieving outcomes. Matt, that’s that’s kind of a space you’ve plugged yourself in recent history. Tell us a little bit about why Christians should get on board with fundraising opportunities and giving sacrifices. Yeah, sure. First of all, Dan, happy birthday. I think it’s I think it’s very apt maybe that you’re talking about giving on your birthday. So well done. I look I’m a preacher’s son, right? So I got to have three points in my in my response, right? The first thing I’d say is that giving when we give, it aligns our hearts with God. God in scripture talks about where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. It’s a way of saying to God, my treasure is yours and I want you to have it. The second thing it does is it actually helps to advance God’s kingdom work. Obviously for us it’s about well the next however many years God gives us here in Riverson is not here but it’s up on Hamilton Street. How can we help to to build towards that? The third thing it does is that it it animates us as givers. It’s a spiritual discipline that’s up there with prayer, reading your Bible, all that sort of stuff. It helps to animate us because it helps to grow our faith and our gratitude and our joy as we give to the work of God. Yeah. Great.

Matt and I were chatting just recently and talking about I I think as in ministry, it’s often hard to talk about money from the front. It is actually something we’re called to. That was a helpful reminder from us as we think about legacy as a church, like why should Christians think about legacy and what that looks like? I think it is phenomenal. We’ve been here for 140 years. I don’t know too many other places in Australia nearby here that would be that can claim we’ve had a church on this location for 140 years. That’s phenomenal. I think the first reason though why we need to try think about legacy in all of this is that it actually gives people opportunities to connect beyond ourselves and also engage with Christian ministry for generations. We don’t have any 140 year old people here in the church that I’m aware of. No. Okay. Peter Jensen’s here next week. There have been there would be people I’m sure within the community who would be who would have been connected with the church for generations and whether they currently attend or not there would be people here in the Riverston community who know oh yeah you guys have been here for 140 years. For us as a church congregation to come and to give and to ensure that our church can can last for you know into the the years and be self sustainable into the coming years. It’s going to be really important for us to connect with in that way with each other. It also when we do that it gives us a chance to partner together to take the gospel to Riverston. We don’t have to go into exotic places and record scripture like Dave Syninden does. We don’t have to go anywhere else to do mission work. We can do mission work right here. We can do mission work from our chairs and simply give money to a church to help promote God’s work throughout the coming years. Yeah. Yeah.

The school in Riverston celebrates 141 years this year which means this church was built just the year after the school was built. The station is 142 I think and so yeah churches Christians have been involved in setting a legacy in this area right from an early stage and in the new development we’re seeing happen it is fantastic we have an opportunity to build a larger facility. it there is no other than schools there’s no actual large kind of gathering spaces in this area. These are part of the legacy that we want to plant in the church here. Something helpful you were talking to me about is a little bit about how we don’t just think beyond ourselves in terms of legacy but how we actually fundra beyond ourselves. Tell me a little bit of what that looks like. Well, I think Dan laid it out pretty clearly less than five minutes ago about when he talked about sacrificial giving. That’s obviously giving beyond ourselves and helps us to trust God. It’s not just about making sure that our church survives and stays in Riverston for the next 100, 200, 300 years as the Lord carries, but it’s also about growing ourselves spiritually. It’s actually more than that. I think as as we go into this season of fundraising and going, we need to raise this amount of money. It’s about asking ourselves, well, actually, who do we know? Who are we connected with? Who could walk walk alongside us to partner with us to go, hey, you know what? I know how much this church means to you, and I I can see the work that God’s been doing in your life through the work of this church. I’m actually going to come alongside you and contribute some money or pray or you know, check in with you about your progress frequently. That I think is one of the ways that all of us can help serve God is by thinking is by you know finding those people, having coffee with them, having lunch with them, whatever, and saying, “Hey, guess what? Let me tell you about the work God’s been doing in our church.” and getting excited about it and allowing these people to see the vision that the church has for the next however many years we’re here and allowing them to see the work of God in your life that’s been brought about through the faithful teaching and preaching of God’s word over 140 years and getting them excited about the church and saying you know what how can we make sure that this happens into the future. So I think that’s probably the biggest one that as a church community besides just giving sacrificially ourselves thinking about how do we bring in someone else on this journey with us. Yeah, I think I I found that really helpful to think through myself and it’s one of the things we’re thinking through by launching our fundraising campaign this coming weekend.

We want to think about maybe maybe our church doesn’t have the capacity and and maybe $1.8 million is a lot of money. Maybe we don’t have the capacity within ourselves to raise that kind of money, but maybe we have the connections that might help us people that would get on board with that cause. One of the things I want to encourage you with this coming week, the 140th anniversary, we are going to launch the fundraising campaign while we celebrate history. We have a number of people in the room that we’ve invited already. So our state member Warren Kirby, the the two Blacktown counselors who are in charge of our ward. I don’t expect politicians to give money out of their own pocket to the our cause. There might be other ways that we might find benefit in partnering with those sorts of people. We want to encourage you that if there’s people in your life that you think might fit that kind of brief that having them come along this coming Sunday to hear a little bit of history here, but also the story of our hope and prayers for the future could be really a helpful way to partner together. I think the other thing is to I think we if it was up to us, I think we could raise 1.8 million just on our own. If we can bring others along the on the journey with us, that’s going to grow God’s kingdom and allow God’s kingdom to flourish even more in Riverston in the coming years. Let me finish this and then we’ll we’ll wrap things up. Yeah, we are in inviting our whole church to be on this journey and to say is this something we can do that banding together we can make a difference in building a building that is larger and more modern in a space to reach more people. What would it take for us to sacrifice that? I want to invite you personally in your families to consider what you might be called, what God might be calling you to do towards a project like that. Would you join me in thanking Matt?

Let me just pull things around and wrap things up. That’s third time. There is a call to us to be more than just living in in comfort as Christians. The question, one of the questions for us is, is our comfort crushing our calling? What does it look like to be passionate in following Jesus? There is a balance we want to build in our lives where we think about persevering for the gospel in a way as much as we can that sustains ourself. We can have a greater impact in this world if we are able to sustain ourselves in our perseverance. There are moments I think that we’re probably on the other end of that spectrum where we are finding ourselves seeking places of comfort and getting comfortable rather than stepping up to the calling God is calling us to. While we did take a moment to talk specifically about what that looks like in fundraising, I do want to pull that back to what it is for you. What is the places of comfort in your own heart that you might be that your comfort might be crushing your calling for serving Jesus? Thinking about what it looks like to have those kinds of priorities that we do have a calling in Christ that there is a battle of daily self dying, dying to self daily there are sacrifices that God calls us to. The question is what is God calling you to? Let me finish by praying.