Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, who's got a Bible this morning? Anyone bring their Bible, wave it in the air? Tell the devil he's got no chance in my life because I am a man or a woman of the word of God. Amen. All right, come on. We're going to open up to Philippians chapter three. Mark started a series, but then forgot he was away for a week. So I'll let him finish the series about revival ready when he's back. But we're going to jump into Philippians this morning. Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 through to 11.
[00:00:27] This is Paul speaking, and he says, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish. Some translations say dung, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. The not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, that depends on faith. That I may know him in the power of his resurrection and in the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
[00:01:18] There are passages in Scripture, I don't know if you've experienced this before, that when you read them, it has a bit of a reaction within you.
[00:01:29] There are scriptures that I don't like very much because they do something inside of me. They tackle me in my flesh, they tackle me in my comfort levels. And this passage is definitely one of those that over the last couple of years, God has continually brought me back to this pass passage.
[00:01:49] Because there's a challenge in these words that if we were to wrestle with. There is a desire in Paul's heart that he expresses for each one of us. He says that I may know him. I may know Christ in the power of his resurrection. So that's the power that raised him to life and the fellowship of his sufferings, the power of the resurrection, the miraculous power of God and walking with him through suffering.
[00:02:26] Paul's great ambition is to know Christ. And he's saying knowing Christ will happen when we understand both the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of the suffering.
[00:02:39] He says there's two places we can know him deeply, the power and in the pain.
[00:02:45] I don't know about you, but I prefer one of them much more than the other.
[00:02:50] How many people are on the side of resurrection power? You prefer that? The miracles, the breakthrough when you hear somebody's been healed miraculously, I love that. I love it when I hear of somebody who had a need in their life. And then all of a sudden there is this miraculous provision.
[00:03:07] Money appears in bank accounts. People put money in people's hands, and we say, yes, God, your resurrection power is at work here.
[00:03:15] When marriages that were failing, they surrender themselves back to God and God brings their marriage back together.
[00:03:21] I love that.
[00:03:23] But Paul says it's not just in the power of resurrection. It is also in the fellowship of a suffering.
[00:03:31] We were walking through pain, when we walk through disappointment, when we walk through the difficulty of loss, that we would know him in his power and also in the pain.
[00:03:49] Does anyone know something of both of those? Come on, give us a wave. If you have seen the power of God and the fellowship of his suffering, Amy and I, many of you will know a little bit of our journey.
[00:04:02] We had a longing and desire to be parents. We thought it would happen like it did for everybody else, and our journey would be, yes, let's have a family.
[00:04:09] I know people who planned out their family, like the timing and the boys and girls, they said, I'll have a boy.
[00:04:16] Two years later we'll have a girl. And then two years later, we'll have a boy.
[00:04:21] It's like, which book did you read to get that right?
[00:04:27] And so we just assumed that because we'd done everything right, because we'd done everything according to what God wanted us to do, that was his expectation, or that was our expectation of God, please give us what we deserve and what we expect because we've done things the right way.
[00:04:44] That wasn't our story.
[00:04:47] That wasn't our story. God wanted to give us a gift of suffering, the gift of a trial. Who loves the gift of a trial? Who. Who?
[00:04:58] No, not many of us, but, you know, there's a particular pain and longing for something good and having no control over whether it'll happen or not.
[00:05:13] Then somebody announces wonderful news. That person you've been praying for gets their miracle and you're still waiting.
[00:05:21] What do you do with that? How do you process that? What does that look like when we have to walk that out? In reality, during the season, we were pretty open with it. You know, us, we share pretty openly.
[00:05:35] We share the journey that we're on.
[00:05:37] And as we shared that in our journey, we saw other people get the miracle that we prayed for. We saw them have children and family, and they got their miracle and we didn't. And we walked through that journey.
[00:05:49] We saw people also Go through the pain of suffering with infertility themselves, infant loss. We saw miscarriages.
[00:05:59] We saw that deep, dark pain of suffering.
[00:06:05] You know what takes grace to celebrate somebody else's difficulty or somebody else's success when we are walking through our difficulty?
[00:06:14] We've got dear friends, the frost, the family who are pastoring a church back in New Zealand, very good friends of ours. And their journey was similar to ours. And their journey started 10 years later than ours. Did they younger than us, and they came to us, they said, you've told us your story. Would you partner with us? Would you pray with us as we walk through our journey themselves? And they started a podcast called Carry Confetti.
[00:06:40] They made a decision that in their pain and their struggling and in their suffering, they would carry confetti for the moment when somebody was ready to celebrate their news, that they would throw confetti when somebody said, hey, I've got a miracle, a testimony of God, and would we have that in our spirit that says, you know, I'm going to celebrate. I'm going to be ready to celebrate when I see the power of God's resurrection in somebody else's life and also walk with somebody through their suffering. And this is where Paul's words, they become more than just a sermon title. You hear the cry of a heart, of a man of God, saying, I want to know Christ.
[00:07:19] Not know about him, not have information on him, not even work for him or do the work of the ministry, but I want to know intimately Jesus Christ. I want to know him.
[00:07:35] When the future you pictured begins to change, you discover whether your hope was in the picture or whether your hope is in Jesus.
[00:07:44] And when disappointment comes and challenges come, who's in the picture? Is it my plans? Is it God's plans? Is Jesus the focus of my attention?
[00:07:57] What's interesting is that before Paul speaks of the power and the suffering, he begins to outline all of his achievements.
[00:08:06] He says, I've been the greatest Pharisee. I've achieved the letter of the law. There's no one like me. I've done all of these things. But then he says, but I count all of that as loss, as garbage. I line that up with knowing Christ, and that's garbage.
[00:08:23] It's not like he was lining up donuts and donut kebabs and saying, choose one. He's saying, it was donuts or dung.
[00:08:32] There was nothing that I did or achieved that is like knowing Christ.
[00:08:39] I want to know Christ.
[00:08:44] See, we can find ourselves as we go through life, our position, our Title, our value, our importance, becoming a part of who we are.
[00:08:54] But our goal, our desire as Christians is to know Christ and to make him known to others.
[00:09:01] And I would ask the question, is the goal that people would know my contribution to the kingdom or that people would know Christ through the way I've lived my life?
[00:09:15] So let's unpack these two this morning, and you've got communion with you. Don't worry. We haven't forgotten, but really felt that coming out of this message and as we. We listen and we hear this together, that there's going to be an opportunity for us to celebrate and pray with those who have seen the power of his resurrection, and also those that are walking through suffering. There's a beauty in doing this together, doing life together, knowing Jesus and the power of his resurrection, that I may know him in the power of his resurrection. The foundation of our faith lies within this resurrection story.
[00:09:54] See, sin had done its worst.
[00:09:56] The enemy had managed to get Jesus to the cross, or so he thought. But Jesus chose the cross. Remember, he wrestled in the garden, but then he chose the cross. At any point, a legion of angels could have come and just ended the whole thing.
[00:10:12] But Jesus chose the cross. So the devil was there, celebrating. We finally killed him, the Son of God. Yes, victory is ours. And three days later, Jesus storms hell and death defeats all of the darkness.
[00:10:31] The grave couldn't hold him.
[00:10:34] And the resurrection declares that what looks final is not final when God is involved.
[00:10:40] See, darkness does not have the last word.
[00:10:44] Loss does not have the last word.
[00:10:47] Sickness does not have the last word. Death itself doesn't have the last word. You ask Lazarus.
[00:10:56] He was having his rest in heaven.
[00:11:00] Jesus says, lazarus, come forth.
[00:11:05] Jesus has the final word on your circumstance. On my circumstance. Jesus and has the final word. And his resurrection power can change anything in a minute.
[00:11:18] But Paul doesn't want to merely just believe that the resurrection happened.
[00:11:22] He wants that power, that same power to be operating in his life.
[00:11:28] As followers of Jesus, we can have that resurrection power. We have not. We can have. We have that resurrection power in our lives.
[00:11:37] Romans 8:11 says, the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead lives in us.
[00:11:44] And so there's power for me today. There's power for you today.
[00:11:49] Power to forgive, power to love when it's difficult, Power to stand when circumstances want to knock us down.
[00:11:58] Power to witness when fear tells us to be quiet.
[00:12:02] Power to hope and keep trusting in the promise that God has for us.
[00:12:09] Sometimes we can imagine that resurrection power prevents weakness or takes weakness away. But it's actually revealed.
[00:12:18] We defeat an impossibility of declared victory when Jesus overturns that verdict.
[00:12:25] Resurrection power does not pretend the tomb is not real. It knows that the tomb is not the end of the story.
[00:12:32] And so we boldly ask for healing. We boldly ask for breakthrough.
[00:12:37] We boldly ask for that miraculous power to come into our situation.
[00:12:46] And when we don't see the miracle of the moment, we pray that that resurrection power would be in the day, that we need strength to walk through it again, and the next day and the next day. Because how many people know that sometimes there's a miracle in waiting?
[00:13:03] It doesn't happen immediately. Even Jesus prayed for somebody once. I love that this was recorded, that the healing was gradual. It was a partial healing. That wasn't a lack of Jesus power, that he didn't get it right on the first time.
[00:13:18] I think it was a story, it was a shadow. It was telling us that actually sometimes the miracle takes some time, because sometimes a miracle has to meet somebody else's miracle, that it's all in God's amazing tapestry, weaving our stories together.
[00:13:39] Have you ever asked those difficult moments.
[00:13:42] I don't know if I can face tomorrow.
[00:13:44] Anyone gone to bed at night saying, I don't know if I can do tomorrow.
[00:13:50] But I love the.
[00:13:51] The writer of the hymn, what does he say? He says because he lives, because Christ lives, I can face tomorrow, I can face today.
[00:14:05] I can know Christ in the power of his resurrection.
[00:14:12] Secondly, knowing Christ and the fellowship of his sufferings. And as I. I said earlier, that this is the one we don't find as easy to work through.
[00:14:21] We like to see the miraculous the instant. We like to see God moving miraculously in our lives.
[00:14:30] But we can know him in the fellowship of his suffering. We can know him through pain. We can know him through difficulty. We can know him through prayers that don't seem to be answered as we would have liked them to be.
[00:14:44] Often I want the power without the pain.
[00:14:49] I want resurrection Sunday.
[00:14:52] I'm not a fan of Good Friday.
[00:14:57] I want the empty tomb and the angels, but I don't like the cross.
[00:15:05] But Paul refuses to separate them.
[00:15:10] He doesn't say the power of his resurrection or if you want to choose it, the fellowship of the sufferings, he says. And he puts them both together. He says, knowing Christ will be found in the power of the resurrection and in the fellowship of his sufferings.
[00:15:27] To follow Jesus is to walk the road that Jesus walked, to die, to self, to release our claim to control and everything.
[00:15:37] Any control freaks in the house you like to have it all worked out.
[00:15:43] How many people find that God doesn't always like our plan.
[00:15:46] He's got a slightly different one. We don't think it's better, but it is.
[00:15:51] And he takes us on this journey, doesn't he?
[00:15:56] The one who meets us there is not distant from pain.
[00:16:02] Jesus doesn't stand at a distance shouting advice at us.
[00:16:07] The writer of Hebrews says, we've got a great high priest who's known temptation, has no in difficulty, has no in physical human weakness, and yet he didn't sin.
[00:16:22] So we have a Savior who knows what it feels like, when it feels like that, and yet he can still say. And we can say, not my will, Father, but your will be done.
[00:16:41] The suffering draws us into a deeper sense of communion with God.
[00:16:48] I think of communion as a common union, sharing with God, sharing with one another that union of power and suffering.
[00:17:04] And when we receive empathy, when we receive his power, we have the ability to then walk the journey with other people.
[00:17:14] Pain can make us bitter, but surrendered pain can make us tender to allow us to be able to walk with somebody who's feeling and experiencing pain themselves.
[00:17:26] Not because we understand every part of the journey or the detail of their story.
[00:17:31] And I would counsel all of us, when we hear somebody speak of their story, don't jump in and interject with, hey, I know what you're talking about. Because there was a time when I and often we want to put ourselves into that story.
[00:17:46] The empathy sits in that moment with somebody and says, hey, you feel in pain. I'm so sorry you're feeling that. But come on, let's share this journey together. Let's share in the fellowship of suffering with Jesus and with each other.
[00:18:05] Second Corinthians 1 says, God comforts us so that we can comfort others.
[00:18:14] When you went through your trial, when you went through suffering, I'm going to assume that all of us have in some shape or form.
[00:18:25] How did it change you?
[00:18:27] How did it shift who you were as a person?
[00:18:33] Was there a greater empathy, a greater compassion that came on you when you then walked with somebody else and saw what they were going through?
[00:18:44] If it turned us bitter, then we haven't truly known Christ.
[00:18:51] But that's not the final story. If that's where you find yourself right now, if you are in this place of angry with God, tell him, don't hold it back.
[00:19:04] God's not going to fall off his throne because we're angry with how we think he should have behaved or acted.
[00:19:10] Tell him As I said before, a lot of the psalms are pretty much that. Just put dear God at the front of it.
[00:19:16] Dear God, my enemies are all against me. Strike them on the jaw. Just put dear God in the front of it and you've turned it into a prayer.
[00:19:25] But you look at all those psalms, where do they end up? And yet will I praise him.
[00:19:31] It's okay to go through suffering, but don't let it make us bitter, let it make us tender before God and before others.
[00:19:40] This is fellowship, the joining together with him, knowing, experiencing him through that suffering.
[00:19:50] You know, our journey with infertility taught us that as we waited, we prayed for others, as we we hurt. As we walked through that journey, we noticed and began to notice more and more the pain that people are carrying.
[00:20:04] Not everybody shares their pain, and I don't recommend you do to everybody. You put yourself out there and it comes with challenges, but share it with someone, allow someone else to be in that fellowship of suffering with you.
[00:20:21] Find a friend who will pray with you, who will agree with you for that resurrection power to be with you, to heal you, to sustain you through that journey.
[00:20:33] That is fellowship. Not an explanation for every painful thing, but the presence of Christ within that pain.
[00:20:42] During infertility, we wanted God to change the outcome. Of course we did.
[00:20:46] We didn't have children. We wanted children.
[00:20:49] But Jesus didn't only offer an outcome, he offered himself.
[00:20:55] And I remember at that point of God, will I follow you and serve you regardless of whether you give me what I want?
[00:21:03] I was flat on my face, crying for a week. In my quiet times with God, they weren't quiet, they were sobbing, slobbering. Messy times with God. And I felt like he asked the question, will you follow me even if you don't get what's your heart's desire?
[00:21:18] And through those tears, it was like God, yes, I will. I want to know you.
[00:21:24] You know what happened next?
[00:21:25] Nothing. For years still.
[00:21:29] But ah, he took me to that depth of pain, that depth of suffering. And at that point, I chose him.
[00:21:38] Come on. If you are in that place right now, say, I want to know you, Jesus, and I'll see my resurrection moment one day.
[00:21:47] If it hasn't happened today. I want to know you in this moment.
[00:21:54] Jesus presence is not a constellation prize when the outcome we wanted hasn't arrived. His presence is our treasure. His presence is everything. And knowing him is what our pursuit should be.
[00:22:07] We can lament, still have faith. We can pray, Lord, change this. And also, Lord, meet me in this when we're Considering our suffering this week, whatever that looks like for you, Are we just praying, God, get me out of this, or are we saying, jesus, thank you, you're in this with me?
[00:22:31] In the 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul pleads for a thorn to be removed. How many people would like to know what that thorn was?
[00:22:40] I don't think it was recorded for good reason. For that exact reason. Ah, well, I didn't have that. I don't have that thorn. But either get proud or jealous, or was it a person?
[00:22:50] Was it a relationship?
[00:22:52] Was it an illness?
[00:22:55] Was it a bad habit he couldn't get rid of? We don't know.
[00:23:01] But he realized that there was this plea. He was pleading for God to take it away. But God instead says, my grace is sufficient, my grace is enough.
[00:23:13] Grace that's not earned by works, but through faith in Christ Jesus. My grace will sustain you even when it's difficult.
[00:23:23] So Paul could say, when I'm weak, I am strong because I am in Christ. So I have Christ's strength in me.
[00:23:30] Even when I am the natural am weak.
[00:23:35] And that's the mystery of Christian suffering.
[00:23:38] The weakness is real, but so is Christ's strength.
[00:23:42] The tears are real, the pain is real, and so is his comfort.
[00:23:48] The unknown is real, but so is his faithful promise that will be fulfilled and at just the right time.
[00:23:55] The suffering is real, but it's not Lord. Jesus is Lord.
[00:24:03] So what if we found power in the pain?
[00:24:08] What if that power came as we walked through that?
[00:24:13] We must not treat resurrection power and the fellowship of suffering as two separate seasons. One we move out of and into the next.
[00:24:21] Right? I'm out of suffering now, and I'm into the resurrection power. What if those two go hand in hand on the Christian journey?
[00:24:29] Because there will be a time, praise the Lord, where there will be no more tears, there'll be no sickness, there'll be no more death. And that comes in the resurrection life.
[00:24:39] But for now, I'll just look around and live a day or two, recognize that his power and his suffering, it can all be together.
[00:24:53] The resurrection shows his power is often revealed through suffering.
[00:24:59] The hands of the risen Jesus still carried the scars.
[00:25:05] Thomas said, unless I see proof that you've gone through this, I'm not going to believe you really exist.
[00:25:14] Jesus kept his scars.
[00:25:19] I mean, he was raised back to life. Surely God could have done plastic surgery at the same time and cleaned up the scars, right?
[00:25:29] But he kept the scars.
[00:25:32] He kept the scars to show us. To say, I suffered like you, suffered the pain you feel, I felt it. And the scars still hold power.
[00:25:44] Amy has a beautiful scar.
[00:25:49] We call it a Ziploc bag. One child out, zip it back up, and out comes the next one. She had to have Caesareans as part of having our children.
[00:26:00] A beautiful scar that brought for something some three amazing human beings.
[00:26:07] Come on, we've got scars. I've got a scar on my. On my finger. I tried to take a net off a goalpost and my finger, my ring got caught and I almost de gloved my finger.
[00:26:20] That was an interesting day.
[00:26:23] I can still see the scar when I feel it. There's a little bit of nerve sensitivity there, but there's no pain here. I'm healed. But that scar reminds me of a moment in always take your ring off when you play football. Sometimes our scars are life lessons that allow us to go back and say, I don't have to do that again.
[00:26:44] I've learned from that.
[00:26:46] But the scar is also a reminder of what Christ has done in and through the suffering.
[00:26:53] Satan came to God and says, or God says, have you considered my servant Job?
[00:27:00] Satan says, well, you've given him everything he needs.
[00:27:03] Of course he's going to worship you. Of course he'll follow you because he's got a perfect life. He's got the life everybody dreams of. You take all of that away, he's got nothing.
[00:27:12] The story of job is 40 plus chapters of lament of advice, some good, some bad, and this lamenting of what happens when life isn't perfect.
[00:27:29] But Job makes a statement. He says, and I know that my redeemer lives.
[00:27:35] You can take all of that away. But I know he knew Christ.
[00:27:40] Paul could have said, look at Job. He knew Christ.
[00:27:45] He knew Jesus.
[00:27:47] Because Job could declare, I know even in the middle of the pain and the suffering, I know that my redeemer lives.
[00:27:55] As I said earlier, resurrection is our future. It's our present now and it is our future. And there will be a time where there's no more sickness, tears, death. And we are with Jesus and we're celebrating and we are worshiping and we do that here and we will do that later.
[00:28:11] But for now, what we walk through with the power and the pain, the power and the suffering, we have an opportunity to love others as we walk through the story that I may know him.
[00:28:27] So perhaps the question is not only, what am I prepared to lose, but maybe we want to ask the question differently and say, do I want to know Jesus more than I want to control the outcome of my story?
[00:28:45] Can I Suggest that maybe for some of us. And I'm putting my hand up because I know how I'd like to write the end of my story.
[00:28:53] And I feel like God even just recently says, could I have the pen back please?
[00:29:02] Because I'm going to write the story a little different.
[00:29:09] Because I got a different chapter.
[00:29:19] Some of you know that Amy hasn't been well and we having some tests and had an MRI and seen neurologists and.
[00:29:34] We're just waiting for the blood work to come back for some tests over the weekend. But it's looking like Amy is going to have to walk through the journey of Ms.
[00:29:42] And us together as a family.
[00:29:47] God is good.
[00:29:50] I had to hand God the pen this weekend and say, would you continue to write our story?
[00:29:59] I want to know Christ and the power of his healing, his resurrection.
[00:30:06] Can he heal? Of course he can.
[00:30:09] In the natural. It doesn't look great, but I want to know him also in the power of the. In the fellowship of his suffering.
[00:30:23] And I don't want this to be about our story because I want us to come around his story.
[00:30:29] But I share this because we have this thing called communion that has a promise of death that became life.
[00:30:40] And as we close this morning, as the team come and as we.
[00:30:43] I want us to come together in communion.
[00:30:50] And des kind of led into it, even at the start saying, what has God been doing? What's. What's happened in your life?
[00:30:57] I wonder whether we could be brave enough this morning to get alongside a couple of other people and maybe very briefly you can say, this is how I have seen the power of God's resurrection in my life. And maybe someone else is going to say, well, this is the suffering I am walking through.
[00:31:18] And then together we take communion. Why do we take communion? Jesus says when we meet together, we should do it.
[00:31:24] We should do it because we remember his death and his resurrection.
[00:31:29] And I wonder this morning as we take the bread which represents Jesus body broken for us, that we would sit there and pray with somebody else for the resurrection power to be manifest in their life, the miracle they're believing for, would we also sit with somebody and say, as you are walking through your suffering, guess what? I'm with you too.
[00:31:56] Jesus said, how will people know that you're my disciples?
[00:32:02] If we were to stand in front of a judge and jury and evidence had to be given that we love Jesus and that we are his disciples, how would the world know?
[00:32:14] Jesus says, the way you love one another, the extravagant love which is a part of our DNA that goes beyond what I can even manage myself. And a little bit more.
[00:32:26] I wonder whether we could knowing and seeing and experiencing God's extravagant love. Whether in these few moments, as we worship together, as we take communion together, we would extend extravagant love to one another.
[00:32:45] What is our desire?
[00:32:48] Our desire, like Paul, is that I want to know Christ.
[00:32:53] I want to know Him.
[00:32:55] I want to know the power of his resurrection. I want to know and experience the fellowship of his sufferings.
