Living Your Life for the Advance of the Gospel

Jack Lucas was born in North Carolina in 1928 on Valentine's Day, the son of a farmer. His dad died when he was just 10 years old. His mom, kind of not knowing what to do with him, sent him off to military boarding school. When he was 14 years old, he decided he had had enough of school. He went to Norfolk, Virginia, and wanted to enlist in the military. The problem is, you have to be 17 to enlist in the military, so he lied. He forged a parental consent form, bribed a notary, and enlisted in the Marines, trained as a rifleman and as a heavy machine gun crewman. As World War II raged on, his unit was sent to Pearl Harbor. He was promoted there to private first class. And the way his friends report it, on January 10th, 1945, he simply walked off of the base. They said that he was wearing his khaki uniform, he had an extra pair of pants and shoes under his arm, and he left. He was reported UA, unauthorized absence. Eventually, he would have been arrested for desertion. What he did was stow away on the USS Duel, which was headed for Iwo Jima. He eventually turned himself into the commanding officer on ship before they arrived. The commanding officer didn't know what to do with him, demoted him of his rank, but decided they would give him a weapon and send him ashore. So he joined the landing party. Five days after his 17th birthday, he, with three other Marines, was crawling through a ravine on Iwo Jima when they were spotted by 11 Japanese soldiers who opened fire on them and threw two grenades into the trench where they were laying. As his fellow Marines describe it, he yelled grenade, jumped over one of the other Marines on top of the two grenades. One of them exploded, threw him into the air. He landed on his back. The three other Marines assumed he was dead and they left. Later on, he was found by a medic. The medic said that he was still clutching the second grenade, which did not explode. He was transported to the ship, later to a naval hospital. And Jack Lucas would live. Eventually, he would have 21 surgeries. For the rest of his life, he carried in his body more than 200 fragments of metal. Some were the size of a .22 caliber bullet. He would set off metal detectors in airports for the rest of his life. On October 5, 1945, the South Lawn, Harry Truman would award him the Medal of Honor, the youngest Marine ever to receive it. Now, I can promise you that his example has been used by countless sergeants that are seeking to rouse and inspire listless young cadets in the Marines. It may have even been used by some fathers of 14-year-old boys seeking to rouse them. I mean, you can tell a person what they're supposed to do as a soldier. but a living example is worth a thousand lectures. You know this, even in your spiritual life, the power of example is huge. That's why we read missionary biographies, right? We don't read a missionary biography of Hudson Taylor or John Patton or William Carey or Amy Carmichael because we assume that our circumstances are gonna be the same as them. We read those biographies because as we see them go through things that are much greater, much more difficult in many ways than what we go through, we're able to tell ourselves, well, if they can trust the Lord in that, then I can trust the Lord in this. I would argue that even greater than biographies is someone that's right in our lives, someone that's right next to us. So a friend loses a loved one, but still clings to faith in God's goodness. A church member goes through unemployment, but they just keep saying, I'm just trusting the Lord to provide. A fellow mom starts talking about a book that she's reading, and you think, how does she even have time to read a book? You hear someone sharing a story about trying to talk about Christ in the workplace, and you're inspired to do the same. The power of example is a huge part of the Christian life. In our passage this morning, Paul is going to use his example to try and help the Philippian church. We said last week that Paul turned a thank you letter into a manual on Christian discipleship. He began by telling them that partnership in the gospel is the key to fruitfulness in the church. As they care about people believing in Christ, both here and there, and as they trust God to help them approve what is excellent in their decision making, they're gonna bear fruit to the glory of God. As we dig this week further into this situation, we get a better sense of what they were up against. Right at the end of what Rachel just read, we heard the words opponents. Suffer for his sake. Conflict. And you realize that these believers were not living on easy street. Philippi was a city that was loyal to the emperor. It was founded by former soldiers. It was a wealthy place and it was proud of its patriotic worship of the emperor cult. This is not a place where saying that there's one true king and it's not Caesar is gonna be a popular thing. It's not gonna be well received. It's the kind of place where Christians were gonna be viewed as those tearing at the fabric of society. They're the ones threatening the unity of the prevailing cultural orthodoxy. It's a bit, friends, like where you and I live. I'm not a prophet, but it doesn't seem likely that standing for biblical truth and the exclusivity of salvation by grace through faith in Christ is gonna get more popular over the next 10 years. We are likely to experience cultural pressure, opposition, opponents, conflict. But even beyond that, you and I face the greater challenges of affluence, the persistent temptation to worldliness, a constant buzzing of distraction. What we really need is a good example of someone who's gone before us who can show us how to live for Christ in this kind of a hostile environment. So this letter is for us. If you're taking notes this morning, the main idea of our text is that loving the right things leads to living the right way. Loving the right things leads to living the right way. We'll have two points. Number one, loving the right things. Loving the right things, that'll be verses 12 through 26. And then second, living the right way, that'll be verses 27 through 30. So let's dive into this. What we really have in this first section, beginning in verse 12, is Paul bringing them into his situation. He describes it in a number of ways. You see just in verse 12 there, he says, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. You say, well, Paul, what has happened to you? We need to remember back to the book of Acts. He's planted a number of churches on three great missionary journeys, and then he intends to go to Jerusalem. He was warned that bad things were going to happen. And when he gets there, he steps into a hornet's nest. You'll remember he was accused by the Jews of bringing a Gentile into the temple. It's not what he did, but he was accused. A crowd gathers, tries to kill him. He's arrested by the Roman police. leader of the contingent of soldiers there. While they're trying to figure out what to do, the Jews decide that they're going to try to kill him. He gets shipped to Caesarea. He has several trials there. The governor doesn't know what to do with him, so he appeals to Caesar. He says, I wanna stand trial in Rome, and this is where he's been shipped. On the way, you'll remember he gets shipwrecked, he gets bitten by a poisonous snake, finally makes it to Rome. So a lot in that little phrase, what has happened to me? Now he's under house arrest in Rome. And we might wonder if Paul is discouraged about any of this. I mean, Paul, how are you feeling about your couple decades of ministry now? I mean, from one perspective, it's not going well. He's not speaking at conferences. He doesn't have a stable ministry. He doesn't have a retirement account. So they might think that his latest trouble's gotten him down. He wants them to know how he evaluates it. So look there in verse 13. He said, it has become known throughout the whole Imperial Guard and to all the rest that he is imprisoned for Christ, that I'm imprisoned for Christ. So what's he mean here? What he means is that because guards work in shifts, I don't know if it was a four-hour shift or an eight-hour shift, and they're coming through like clockwork. He sees each one coming and thinks, great, someone else I can talk to about the gospel. And they just keep coming, right? Apparently, they're talking about him, and so word is spreading. Phenomenal evangelistic opportunity. Get arrested, get jailed, share with the guards. But he thinks it's even better than that. Look at verse 14. Because he's noticed that those in the Church of Rome, most of the brothers, he says there, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Now, I don't know exactly how this went down, because it could go either way, right? I mean, if the leader's imprisoned, you might become scared and quiet, but that's not what's happened here. The leader's been arrested. So Keith is in jail, okay, but the rest of us go, if Keith's in jail, we gotta share the gospel more. I mean, that's kinda what's happening here. So in Paul's mind, this is a win-win, this is a double win, okay? But wait, a problem arises, verse 15. And this is gonna take some detective work for us. He says, some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. Later he talks about these preaching Christ from envy and rivalry. He says, the former proclaimed Christ, verse 17 now, out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. We need some detective work here. What exactly is going on? Who are these guys? Well, it seems like they're preaching the true gospel. That's how I take it. I mean, when someone is out there preaching a gospel of faith in Christ plus good works, Paul goes bananas. He doesn't want anything to do with that. He immediately calls it out. I don't think that's what's happening here. It also seems that he includes these in the brothers of verse 14. Some have thought that maybe these are not Christians. He says they're not sincere, and it's hard to imagine how people would be trying to cause the Apostle Paul grief. So it's possible they were not believers and it was something like they're going around, hey, have you heard about this Paul guy? He talks about a Jewish carpenter named Jesus who was the son of God actually and died on a cross to pay for our sins. Can you believe this guy? Could have been that kind of word spreading through non-Christians. I take it more probably that these are Christians in the church that don't recognize Paul's apostleship. They just see him as a newcomer and someone who's not very impressive. They start doing a bunch of evangelism, motivated mainly by increasing their tribe over against those that are loyal to Paul. So, maybe hard for us to imagine, but let me ask a question. Is it possible to do ministry with poor motives? I think the answer's got to be yes, right? I was thinking about my first couple years in China doing campus ministry. There were a number of different teams on different universities there. We would gather periodically for trainings, and one of the things that we'd have to do is share how many students were involved in our ministry at our campus. Now, do you think? that I paid attention to the numbers, okay? Yes, Fudan had 100 students. That's way too far, okay? We only had 20 or 30, but Tongji, they started at the same time as our ministry, and they had like twice as many people. I'm always trying to figure out, well, how'd they get so many people? And sometimes, was my motivation and rallying my team for evangelism a little bit to catch up with Tongji? If I tell you yes, are you going to think I'm a terrible person? It's possible to do ministry, at least partly, with wrong motives. But what's amazing in the midst of all this envy and rivalry and selfish ambition is that the Lord can use us at all, first of all, but then Paul isn't down about this. I mean, this is friendly fire, right? These are people motivated by bringing him grief while he's imprisoned, after all he's been through. What does he say in verse 18? What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. So let's ask a question. We're talking about loving the right things, valuing the right things. What does Paul love here? What does he value? What matters to Paul? We can start with what doesn't matter. The American dream, for one. He doesn't care about his comfort and his security all that much. He also doesn't care about the size of his ministry, apparently. If you come to our church, you go to that gospel preaching church, okay. He doesn't even care about his own reputation. I mean, this just, it boggles the mind. Think about that. He just cares about the gospel going out, more people sharing it, more people believing it. What does this look like for you and me? Well, friends, you live somewhere. Your house doesn't matter as much as the people in your neighborhood hearing the gospel. You work somewhere, your career advancement doesn't matter as much as people hearing the gospel in your place of work. You have a reputation, I'm sure you care about it on some level, I do. Mine as well. But our reputations don't matter as much as people coming to know the Lord Jesus. So this is the first thing we'd have to say that Paul loves and that we are instructed to love. The spread of the gospel. In his words, the advance of the gospel. Do you love that? But let's keep looking here because Paul turns from what has happened to him to what will happen to him. Beginning at the end of verse 18, Yes, and I will rejoice. He begins to look forward. I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance. Well, what's he talking about here? What does he mean, deliverance? We might hear it, think it's pretty straightforward. He means that he's gonna be delivered, he's gonna be found innocent and released from prison. I think he's actually being intentionally ambiguous here, because that's one option. They pray for him. And the Spirit, through those prayers, works, he gets the not guilty verdict, and he's set free. But we keep reading, verse 20, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now, as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. It's very interesting. He sets out both alternatives, doesn't he? Deliverance either means he is found innocent, set free, or that by full courage, all the way to the point where he's killed, he can keep testifying to the truth of the gospel. There's only one outcome that truly scares Paul, right? What is it? That he fails to honor Jesus. As Christians, we bear the name of our savior. We're united to him by faith. This is His grace, and though we still carry around in us the sinful nature, we still do sin, we are not always as courageous, as bold as we would like to be, we're still desiring that Jesus Christ would be honored through our lives. A lot of the time that means repenting of our sins and saying sorry so that people around us can see that we're trying to do the right thing by his grace. But this is the second thing that I want us to see that Paul loves, that we should love too, bringing honor and glory to Jesus. So again, let's stop and ask ourselves, is that what I love? the opportunity to bring glory to the Lord. There's one more thing that we need to see here that Paul loves. Let's pick it up in verse 21. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. If which I shall choose, I cannot tell. I'm hard-pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus because of my coming to you again. Paul thinks he's gonna make it. After he's considered both alternatives, he thinks it's more necessary for their progress and their joy in the faith. Remember we said that? That's the point of the letter, if we had to sum it up, their progress and joy in the faith. And the other churches need help and encouragement. And because he figures God's gonna answer their prayers so that they can glory in Christ Jesus when he shows up, for those reasons, he thinks he's gonna live and continue to have fruitful labor. But, but, he's not sure which he would prefer. Now, he's not being suicidal here. He doesn't have a death wish in that sense. He's got fruitful labor on the one hand and departing to be with Christ on the other. And that, he says, is better by far. I think this is the second greatest verse on heaven in the Bible. It's just my opinion here. The first greatest verse, in my opinion, Matthew 25, 21, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. So you want to know what heaven is like? It's entering into the joy of God. All right, that's the first greatest. The second is right here. What is heaven like? It's better by far. That's how he sees it. Well, why? Paul would say it's because of Jesus. Because being with Jesus is gonna be that good. The third thing he loves after the advance of the gospel and the honor of his Lord is just being with him. To live here is all about Christ for Paul. So to die and have the veil torn and not to see in the mirror dimly anymore, but to see face to face, that is the best thing that he can imagine. So he says to die is gain. You know, I think the most spiritually poisonous thing that you and I can start to believe is that heaven is supposed to be here and now on earth. That will kill your Christian life. When we start forgetting the hope of eternal life and what it is, life with the Lord, in the kingdom of God, with sin gone, with no more tears, no more crying, no more pain, to be with Him. We live in a comfortable age in many ways. We've extended life expectancy. We've got modern healthcare and conditioned air. I am thankful for that. We have painkillers, and we have a million different amusement and entertainment options out there, right? So the danger for us is that we start getting numb to the reality that this world is not our home, that this is not what we're longing for. The death of a Christian is not a tragedy because you can't kill a Christian. You can only translate them. can only send them home. You know, I think about Betty Parr a lot, because I'm living in her house. Her mail still shows up at the door. U.S. Postal Service doesn't know this isn't her address anymore. But we trust that she has gone to join the great cloud of witnesses in heaven that is cheering us on. With the Apostle Paul, and all the other saints through history. And if they could say something to us, they would say, don't forget to live as Christ and to die as gain. It's better by far, so keep pressing on with faithfulness, but with your eyes on the prize. And that's where the sermon should end. But Paul has us where he wants us now. The example was laid out, now for the exhortation. So let's consider, secondly, living the right way. Let me read verses 27 through 30. Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything. by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. Now, there is a nuance here that it's hard to capture in English and in our translations. He says, only let your manner of life, be worthy of the gospel. Other translations might say something like conduct yourselves. And they aren't wrong. He is talking about how you live. But to say conduct yourselves in a manner worthy, usually Paul uses the verb for walk. So Ephesians 4.1, walk in a manner worthy of your calling. He doesn't use that word here. Here he uses a word similar to the one he'll use in chapter three, verse 20, where he says, your citizenship is in heaven. So something here like only let your citizenship, the way you live out your citizenship, be worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the idea. And he's playing on the idea of their dual citizenship, right? The Philippians were proud of their Roman citizenship. Wasn't granted to everyone in the Roman Empire. Their city was special. They had helped Emperor Augustus to win a battle on the plain of Macedonia here, and so he granted citizenship to them. They loved that. He wants them to realize that even more important than their Roman citizenship is their citizenship in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. They are to see themselves as an outpost, a colony of heaven. living there in the Roman Empire. So since you should be people who love the Lord Jesus and want him to be honored and his gospel to be advanced, well then live like it. Live like kingdom citizens. And he gives them three ways. Three ways they're supposed to do that. First, stand firm. He says stand firm in one spirit. You know, much of the Christian life is just standing firm, refusing to be moved. Even when Paul describes the Christian life like a battle in Ephesians 6, how does he begin? He says, stand firm in the Lord and in the strength of his might. We stand firm in terms of what we believe. We take our stand on the truth of God's word and we just plant our lives there and we don't move. We also stand firm in terms of how we live. We build personal disciplines of prayer and Bible reading and community disciplines of serving in a local church. And by God's grace, we just keep doing them, month after month, year after year. I went to Southern Seminary. Al Mohler, when he showed up there as president, he preached a first sermon with a great title. He kind of played on the phrase, don't just stand there, do something. The title of his sermon was, Don't Do Something, Just Stand There. And he was trying to capture the idea that the great truths of the Christian life that you and I believe are ones that we should just be immovable on. We shouldn't become bored with them. We should just keep believing. The sad thing is that so many fail to do just that. I was reading about a famous missionary About 100 years ago in China, Pearl Buck, you may know her because she won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1932 for her amazing novel, The Good Earth, which is just the greatest portrayal of rural Chinese farmers in the last century that you'll ever read. Before she was an author, she was the daughter of missionaries and a missionary herself. She was trained in Lynchburg, Virginia, Randolph-Macon Women's College. Over the years, her understanding of the Christian gospel was constantly changing. She wrote at one point of what she viewed as the crisis of missions. Listen to what she said. The old reasons for foreign missions are gone from the minds and hearts of a new generation. The worn out doctrines insisting on original sin, the virgin birth of Jesus, and miracles arouse only indignation. The practice of presenting an eternal choice between heaven and hell in a single moment of decision as offered by a preacher belonged to a magic religion propagated by our forefathers. The Chinese ought to be protected from such superstition. She moved. Probably many would say she stayed current. evolved. But friends, God's truth doesn't evolve. He delivered it to us. It was the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It's for you and I to receive it, to understand it, and to believe it. Are you moving or are you standing firm? Now, when he says stand firm in one spirit, the ESV, English Standard Version, thinks this is the human spirit because spirit isn't capitalized. I think it's a reference to the Holy Spirit. In other words, we are standing firm together because what unites us is we all have the Holy Spirit, and he's the one who's gonna enable us to stand firm. But this is the first way that we live out our citizenship, by standing firm in one spirit. Let's notice a second way. We strive for the faith. He says, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. First metaphor, we're standing firm. Now the picture is moving forward. We're striving towards something. What are we striving for? The faith of the gospel. Now what does this mean? Paul has already talked about the defense and the confirmation of the gospel up in verse seven. Other places he talks about contending for the gospel. This language refers both to the clear, and true presentation of the good news of Jesus Christ, his full humanity and divinity, his sinless life, his substitutionary death on a cross for sin, his resurrection from the dead, the offer now of pardon, forgiveness for anyone who will turn away from their sins and trust in him. the eternal life that's promised to all who will believe, both in our corporate gatherings here and individually as we scatter all throughout Charlottesville during the week, we're trying to make that message clear. That's what we're striving towards. But it also means striving to make that gospel credible by the way that we're living our lives. It means that we try to live out the gospel in our schools, in our workplaces, in the gyms we go to, in the activities we do, in our neighborhoods. We're striving to back up the proclamation of the gospel with a life that's credible. Not perfect, we get it wrong and then we go try to make it right. We try to live humble, repentant lives. In our corporate life together as a church, it means when someone is calling themselves a Christian, but not living as a Christian should, and they won't repent, we're to put them out of membership to clarify, no, no, no, Christians don't do that. They don't embezzle money from their company. We're trying to clarify the gospel so that people in Charlottesville can see a true representation of it. And did you notice how much Paul emphasizes our unity here? He's already said we're standing firm in one spirit. Now he says this striving is done with one mind and side by side. And I think that's beautiful. With one mind. We don't agree on everything. We unite our minds because of this great common purpose, side by side. You know, I was thinking some churches have gotten into having a mission statement on the website. I don't know if we have that, but I don't think we need to come up with one. We just use this. Okay, this is it. With one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. I just don't think you can improve on that. Who'd you vote for in the last election? What do you think about masks, vaccines, global warming? What news agency do you get your news from? Got opinions on any of those things? I do too. They're just not all that important here. That's not what got us together in this room, right? That's not what brings us together. We're here. Because we believe there's only one way to be saved and it's by faith in Jesus Christ. We're filled with one Holy Spirit that makes us one body of Christ. That's what makes us, us. You know, when the service ends, You turn to talk to each other, and we should do that. And you can talk about whatever you want. So I'm not giving you a law here, but we should lean in to the things we share in common, not the kind of other hobbies and other stuff that we could do out there. Those things are fine. Okay, if you like golf, that's fine. You can talk about golf. I don't like golf. Don't talk to me about that. But we should turn and talk about what's the Lord teaching you? what's going on in your spiritual life these days? Brothers and sisters, let's try to get good at that, at just turning to each other and just asking how the other person is doing spiritually, being a good listener. Let's play up those things that speak of our unity as we strive side by side. So stand firm, strive for the faith of the gospel. There's a third important way we're to live out our citizenship. Don't be afraid. He says, not frightened in anything by your opponents. Now, they had reason to be afraid, right? Surrounded by unbelievers, different religion. They would have been viewed as unpatriotic people, as I said. They probably would have been viewed as bigoted because they insist on the exclusivity of worshiping Jesus. Many other religions in the Roman Empire were okay. You worship your way as long as you also worship the emperor and do the things that make you patriotic. They couldn't do that. They were unwilling to do that, and it was going to cost them. So when he says, for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, he says that because they were suffering and they were going to suffer some more. Now, it's not a good thing when believers are persecuted. So when they lose their friend, or they lose their job, or they lose their freedom, or they lose their life, there can be an unnecessary romanticization of that sort of thing. Persecution is not fun. We should not wish it on anybody. We don't celebrate it in that sense, but we're not supposed to fear it either. Why? Well, for one, when we stand firm and aren't afraid, he says here, it's a sign to others of the destruction that's coming, but the salvation that awaits the believer. So it becomes, in Paul's mind, just another way of proclaiming the gospel and making it clear when we're not afraid to be persecuted. And then he finds this other benefit of it being granted to us to share in his suffering, that it's a great honor in his minds to walk in the footsteps of our Lord, even if only in a small way. It's a gift. It's granted. Do you view it that way? You're not gonna do something stupid and then get persecuted. That's not what we're talking about. I'm talking about you're trying to be faithful, you're trying to talk about Jesus, you're trying to live for Jesus, and something comes that leads you to suffer. That's following in the footsteps of your Lord. It gives him honor. The problem for you and I here is that we have too much freedom. The whole thing is actually much easier, I can tell you, when there's official state-sponsored persecution. In that situation, the mind is clarified, the prayer meetings heat up. They're not boring. You're focused spiritually and mentally. When you have a members meeting agenda item, who will raise the pastor's children if he and his wife are put in prison? It does something to the unity and the clarity of the mission of the church. We've got it much harder here in the US. The fear is still there for us, it's just a different fear. Here, it's fear of man, largely. We're regularly afraid of what the soccer dad next to us is gonna think of us if we lean into the conversation about the gospel. But the text says we shouldn't be afraid. Even if we get viewed as a Jesus freak over there, or maybe we actually get into some trouble at work, maybe we do lose friends over it, but we remember these words, to live is Christ. Paul's words, it's my eager expectation and hope that with full courage, now as always, Christ will be honored in my body. Or, if I'm to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Those things matter. So beloved, let's pray that God by his spirit will make us not afraid, that we won't be afraid, that we won't live in fear. It's how we live out our citizenship. We should conclude. Loving the right things leads to living the right way. If we love the advance of the gospel, the honor of our Lord, And in the end, just being with him, which is better by far, it's going to lead us to live the right way, standing firm, striving for the faith of the gospel, not being afraid. We talked at the beginning about the power of an example. And all of these things, Paul is a wonderful example for us, better than any war hero or medal of honor winner. But he would be quick to point out that he was merely following in the example of his Lord. At the end of the day, Paul was a sinner, like you and I are. We don't always live the right way, because we don't always love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourself. But Jesus did. Jesus lived out for you and I what it truly looks like to love the right things, because He loved the Father above all else, and He lived the right way. And that's essential for you and I, because we trust in Him both for our justification being made right before God, but also for our sanctification, that He'll work His life in us through the power of the Spirit. So friends, let's pray and ask the Lord that we could say with Him to live is Christ and to die is gain. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for what you've done in our lives. We're grateful for the offer of salvation through faith in Christ and pray that if any here have not trusted in you that they would do that even just this morning. We pray that you would help us to live faithfully following the example that's set out before us in scripture and leaning into the power of the Spirit. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.