Distinctive Joy

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info visit us at thrive-fl.org. Joy is God's invitation to rejoice with Him over the future that you have in Jesus Christ. So we go from this grandiose, huge, cosmic theological statement, and now we're going to get practical. It's from theory to practicality, or as FGU says, from ideas to impact. Have you heard that like a hundred times over as their marketing passage? And we get a little hint of that. To get a little hint of what I'm talking about, I found this book title that I thought would be good for us to look at today. It's called, How to Swim, The Essential Guide to Learn to Swim Like a Professional. Sounds good, right? So if you read the book, tell me what happens. You should in theory learn how to swim. Do you learn how to swim? Yeah, that's the. Knowing about swimming is different than knowing how to swim. And Paul doesn't want his followers in Philippi to just know about Jesus, he wants them to know Jesus. Huge difference. And he doesn't want them to just know, he wants them to dive in. He wants them to get wet. He wants them to try it out, to put it into practice. And so Paul knows he has talked grandiose, now he's going to talk practically. Therefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I'm to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad rejoice with me. So we're gonna look at this practical sermon on not how, not on learning about swimming, but how to swim with these three points. How it says, God says, work out what God has worked in. How Philippians says, work out your salvation as God has worked in you. To shine like the stars, that's what the lights in the world are, and then how in the world do we do this? Because those are imperatives. How do we bring that about? So working out what God has worked in, I think that's a good way of putting it. Paul writes, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Now, wait a minute John, you know, that seemed, what do you, work out, work out, what, is Paul saying we have to work for ourselves? No, he says work out yourself. He doesn't say work for your salvation. Huge difference. Otherwise, he'd be contradicting himself where he has said elsewhere in his letters, like Ephesians, by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. See that? It's not a work. It is a gift of God. It's not a result of works. So working out your salvation means taking the salvation that is given you and putting it in to practice. And by the way, when you look at the Greek word, I know you're gonna get so tired of Greek words here sometimes, but when you look at the Greek word, and I'm putting it up, unlike English, you can tell whether it's singular or plural, and this is a plural imperative. In other words, y'all work out together your salvation, which is a totally different idea than you individually work to do this. It's a plural imperative, meaning it's directed at us. We are to be different and to work that out. This is a communal imperative. N.T. Wright says it this way, working out your salvation isn't earning salvation, it's figuring out what this business of being saved means in practice. Okay? It means don't just read about it, don't just say it, don't just know it, live it. In other words, don't read a book on swimming, jump in the pool. I know there are, it's a lot easier in the Christian life to try to keep things kind of theoretical and at a distance, you know. I have known people who have learned and learned and learned and learned and learned and learned and learned and learned and have gone to Bible study, Bible study, Bible study, Bible study, study, study, study, study, study, and then never actually do anything with it. Okay? And it's like, well, I got to know it all before. No, you don't. In fact, you can't. It's just like I have to know everything before I jump in the water. No, you just get pushed in. You know, even like babies get thrown into the water to figure out and they learn while they're doing it, right? Probably most of the time when you've learned the best is while you are doing something rather than sitting there and reading about it. Not to be against reading textbooks, okay, but just the idea, ...