Philippians 2:12-18 • Sacrifice of Joy
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles at Philippians chapter 2 as we consider verses 12 through 18.
The Lord planted a seed of blessing in our family some years ago in the form of a Sunday school panel of experienced parents, parents who had already raised their children who were giving some thoughts of how to help for those of us raising teens. Our children were in their middle teens at the time and we were really struggling with one.
And one of those couples not knowing how important were their words to us simply made this observation.
They said it's sometimes interesting how the child that you struggle most with in their teens is the one that you're so close to in their adult years.
You've invested so much that when the adult years come, you're actually closer to that child.
I feel some of that hope and comfort as I think of this passage that I would have to tell you just honestly is one of the passages in Scripture that I have most wrestled with in life.
And yet having wrestled with it and seeing so much of what God intends to communicate, it's now one of the most precious to my heart. I love the idea of sharing this with you. Let me ask that you would stand as we would honor God's Word and consider what the Apostle Paul says as he has just reminded us of God's great gift in Jesus and then follows with these words. Verse 12 of Philippians 2, "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only 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 to 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 and rejoice with me."
Let's pray together.
Father, would you pour gladness into our hearts even now?
As we recognize a culture that's about to celebrate fright night and yet desire lives
that are not full of fear but are like a child at rest in our Father's home, not just when we're here at church but at school and work in homes that sometimes may be very troubled, that we have felt the settled rest of your spirit in our hearts because of the love that Christ has shed abroad there.
So grant us that we might worship you this day and in learning who you are, go through all of life without the fear that so often is so difficult for us. Grant us vision of Christ and His peace in our hearts, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please be seated.
One of the most encouraging and insightful conversations that I can remember in some time occurred in my office this past week when a respected, able, retired businessman was talking about his passion to take so much of what he has learned from a career in business and communicate it to the generation coming next.
And I ask him, why would somebody who should just be spending all your time sharpening your golf game be concerned about investing in the lives of young leaders coming behind you?
This is what he said.
He said, "I have had to consider what it would be like to step back into my company during my career-building years without fear-based motivation.
What would have been the impact on my family, on my marriage, on my health, on my testimony? If I would have worked with peace of mind, what difference for others would it have made
if I actually had the ability to walk with health in my soul rather than fright in my heart?
Because of fear-based motivation, almost everyone I knew practiced materialism as though it was the way to keep fear at bay.
But there are never enough material things to make you unafraid of losing them.
So people at the company hide from fear with more money, with higher positions, or taking positions from peers, or they distract themselves with affairs or pornography or alcohol or sports. People are willing to do almost anything, jeopardize virtually everything put at risk what is most dear to them, family, wives, children, character, anything to escape fear.
And I had to ask myself, what would it look like to operate without fear? And can I help anyone else to do that?
Not to live the life of fear that I have lived or am living.
Is it really possible?
Is it really possible to work without being fear-driven, to provide for a family without risking it at the same time? To make a living, meet a deadline, manage people without fear being the fuel in our tank or the tiger on their backs.
Fear is not just an issue in business, of course.
It's the issue in homes as moms worry about what other people will think if my child does something wrong.
Or how I will ruin my child if I don't do everything right.
Students fearful of losing opportunities or scholarships or relationships.
And ministers fearful that you will not get other people's approval or hit the numbers that everybody is expecting.
We all know what it means to live in fear and be motivated by it. And yet curiously, the antidote to that fear is found in this passage of Scripture where at the end of verse 12, the apostle writes these seemingly horrible words, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." I mean, how does that help? And by the way, for those of you well-versed kids who at least memorized your primary verses, doesn't it sound a wee bit wrong?
"Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." I mean, didn't Paul remember that he said, "By grace you are saved through faith and that not of yourselves." It's the gift of God, not of, not of works lest anyone should...I mean, did Paul forget that?
No, he didn't forget. I mean, just a few verses later in the same verse, he's going to write these in the same book. He writes these words, "If anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh," that is what you do, "I have more.
But whatever gain I had, I counted all my works as laws for the sake of Christ in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own according to the works of the law, but the righteousness which comes through faith in Christ." The righteousness from God that depends on faith.
Now, how can Paul be saying that? Just right here he's saying, "You need to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
for it's God who is at work in you both to will and to work His good pleasure." How do those things fit together?
Well, first we simply have to ask, well, what work has God done? I mean, Paul the Apostle has written this letter explaining a lot of the work that God has already done in behalf of anyone who would come to Christ. "For this same Jesus, though being in the very form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing.
And taking on the form of a servant, He came in human flesh and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." That was God's work, providing sacrifice in our behalf, but that's the past action, and it's not done. "For the Apostle continues here in verse 13 saying, "And it's now God who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure." As though it wasn't just something in the past that God did, but even now the King of the cosmos, the creator of all things, is now indwelling us to perform His good pleasure. Knowing our weakness, our sin, our frailty, our stumbling, He nonetheless is saying, "I'm going to work in you to accomplish my good pleasure." And what's that supposed to be doing? It's supposed to be saying, "You're not to be working with fear in everyday life, but to be working with confidence that God is at work in you." As though God is saying, "Regardless of what you're facing, I got this."
And when you recognize that God is the one working, He's the one working through you, it's no longer just performative religion that we are following, we are walking in faith. And as we walk in faith, we work out, the language the Apostle is saying here, our salvation
with fear and trembling, yes, because of the work that God has already done in us. I mean, that word "work out" in the Greek actually is a very important word because it's not about manufacturing something. It's not about creating something. That "work out" is our English translation of a word that means to fashion or to form something that already exists.
So that it's saying, "Here's the clay of your salvation. This is what's already been provided." Now, now live out the implications, fashion, shape it according to God's work that is in you. The path has already been laid, walk the path. The book has already been written. Read the chapters.
You are living out the implications of what God has already done. Lots of you already know, we explained it off and saying, "You work out what God has already worked in." We are already having the foundation of our salvation. Now we are living out the implications of it.
Now what it means to work out our salvation can be variously described. You were saying it's working it out might be compared to Tim Gunn on Project Runway.
Okay, I can't talk about something other than baseball and fishing. Come on.
Work with me. I'm going for another demographic here.
You know that when those designers come to Project Runway, the materials have been supplied. The machines have been supplied. The models have been supplied. And they still are in the throes of how do they design something that represents them well. So Tim Gunn says, "Work it out." It's all been supplied you now, work it out. Now here's where the analogy falls apart. Those designers live in absolute fear and trembling that if they don't work it out well, they're out of there.
And the Apostle is saying something exactly the opposite. Work out your salvation. Yes, that which God has provided, live out the implications of it with fear and trembling. And here's the trouble that we face. It is very clear that in the Bible, sometimes that phrase, "Fear." Fear and trembling is a reference to terror and fright as though you are facing an enemy or a crisis with fear and trembling. But the very same phrase is used in the context of worship to refer to reverence and awe.
What is the context here? Remember the Apostle has just said that because God in the form of Christ came and became obedient to death, Paul concludes, "Therefore God has highly exalted him." That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Are we talking about an enemy or are we talking about the context of worship? We are talking about the context of worship. And here is that notion that when you come, you come not just with a sense of God's going to get me. No, he's the one who provided for me and the reality of God providing that salvation. I am living in reverence and awe in every phase of life, in everything that I do because I'm recognizing despite my flaws, despite my weakness, the fact that I don't know what's going to happen from this circumstance, God is at work in me and through me to bring about his good and perfect plan. And when I begin to recognize that, it's just an awesome concept. It's meant to knock me to my knees, not just cause my knees to knock, but actually cause my knees to give way and honor and worship and to say, "I'm just falling down and worship before the Lord." This reverence and awe is what we recognize when we sing so often, right? If I recognize all that God is and all that he's done, we fall down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus.
I'm just blown away in reverence and awe.
And so now I'm laying my crown, all my doing before Jesus. I'm working out with reverence and awe, the wonder of what God has done to me. I'm living out the response to the salvation that he has accomplished in me. And the source of that reverence is all that God is and all that he's accomplished. And what it's basically doing, it's replacing my fear of the world, my fear of circumstances with the awe of the Creator who indwells me and saves me. I'm replacing fear with a better fear. I'm replacing trembling with awe. I'm replacing fright with reverence and the profound effect upon our lives of replacing fear with awe.
I experienced it in a profound way when I met recently one of the Christian leaders, a young man of the house church movement in China.
I'm going to spend some time talking about him for a little bit because I so much identify with where he's been and so much want to understand where he's going as he has replaced fear with awe.
Here's what he said to me, "In my family, the gospel was something that you did.
You learned the Bible and you behaved like a Christian." That's what it meant to be a Christian.
My father was imprisoned by the Communists because he was a surgeon who believed in Christ.
The soldiers asked, "Do you believe in Jesus?" He said, "I do."
They said, "Do you want others to believe in Jesus?"
He said, "Yes, I do."
Then they said, "If others believe, they will not be loyal to Chairman Mao."
And so they put him in prison.
Not just him, but his four siblings as well.
Said my friend that I was talking to now, "He did what a good Christian should do. His suffering was his identity. It's what made him a Christian and not him only, but his siblings who were also suffering for the Lord. I admire them," he said. "I respect what they did, but as I look at their children, my seven cousins, only one of them is a believer today."
Now wait, the parents had suffered so much, they'd lived so well, they'd sacrificed so much for the sake of Christ, and yet as you look at the next generation beyond them, only one of the seven cousins is a Christian. What happened?
Said my friend, "I struggled too to be a Christian, being raised in a home where the gospel was something that you did.
To satisfy my parents' expectations and my ambitions, I became a computer engineer.
But that wasn't enough for those whose Christianity is proven by their suffering.
So I gave up a computer engineer career and I went to seminary in America to prepare to suffer as a pastor of a house church in China.
But the gospel was still something that you do.
So I studied hard and made good grades and hated church and fought with my wife.
As a computer engineer, I perceived the gospel as about getting all the right documents on my hard drive and getting the right performance out of my operating system.
I was getting all the right information. I even believed in God, but I was empty, miserable, and terrified that I could not live up to the expectations of those who were expecting me to return.
One morning I headed off to seminary class after a fight with my wife that got physical.
And at the base of the stairs, going away from our apartment, I collapsed.
I cried out to God, "Please, God, change my heart."
The only way I knew to explain what I was asking for was as a computer engineer. I was trying to be a Christian by getting the right documents and performance out of me. And finally I said, "God, I need you to change my operating system."
I asked Jesus into my heart and asked for him to give me the peace that he would love me despite my performance.
It's another way of thinking that I'm not working out my salvation with fear and trembling that if I don't match up, if I don't perform enough, I'm out of here, I'm rejected, I'm done.
Instead of saying, "No, I'm in reverence and awe that the King of creation would die for me and then he would come and by his Holy Spirit indwell me with this promise, I am now working in you my pleasure, my will, my purpose for your world and the world of those around you. I have taken what is weak and frail and miserable and sinful and I say, "I'm going to use you for my own joy and glory," says God. And when we see that, God knows the worst about me and he's not waiting for me to perform enough to love me, but he just sent Jesus for me, sends his Spirit into me and is using me for glorious purposes.
I fall down, I lay my crowns at the feet of Jesus and say, "God, it's not fear driving me now, it's reverence, it's awe, it's wonder at the goodness and the greatness that's in you. I'm not living the gospel of performance, I'm living the gospel of trust in the awareness of how great and wondrous you are and it begins to change the way that we see the world, the way we motivate other people, the way we motivate ourselves.
I'm the reality for all of us in the church is that not only we but our children so often perceive what Christianity is about is getting good behavior.
If I can just get good behavior out of you, I'll be happy and God will be happy with you.
And yet the gospel is something far different. It's this understanding that our behavior is only a response to the grace of God that is in us, that we are working out what has been worked in us by God's grace alone, that we are claiming Him by faith in His work, not by confidence that our performance will ever be enough, that our knowledge will ever be enough. By faith we live in awe and wonder. By faith we live in the confidence that gives us patience with ourselves as well with others because we hear God always saying to us, "I'm working in you to bring about my good will, your brokenness, your difficulty. Yes, that's all real. It needs to be faced. Work it out.
But with reverence and awe of how much I love you, what I've done for you, all my work in your behalf." And when that begins to take over, the awe replacing the fear, we're kind of stoked with confidence, filled with patience, able to face people who are frustrating us and failing us and our own failures and begin to say, "You know, I hate what that was, but I'm just filled with wonder that God could still use me and work beyond me." So God is calling us by the reverence and awe of who He is and what He has done to first work in the confidence of His work, but then actually to have our lives confident of the brilliance that shines through us if we are actually living in the confidence that's Him.
I mean verse 14 kind of takes the work to another level.
Having now worked with reverence and awe for what God has already accomplished, Paul writes, "Do all things without grumbling or disputing." Now listen, depending on what operating system you're working out of, you will hear those verses very differently.
If you're in the operating system of fear in which you're saying, "All right, do all things without grumbling or disputing," you're thinking, "Well, what causes you to grumble?"
Well circumstances that upset you. And what causes you dispute?
Well, people that you're upset with.
And so you can hear the Apostle saying, "All right, don't grumble and don't dispute, all right? Don't be a grumbler and don't be prickly with other people. You just be a nice person."
And if we hear that, what we are hearing God say, "You be nice and then you'll be okay with me."
But what God is saying is, "No, I'm asking you to live out of awe."
God, knowing you're not always a nice person.
Sometimes you are ornery. I mean, not the people here, but other people out there somewhere. You know, some people are ornery, some people are prickly. And so he says, "Listen, what if you actually were able to say, God is at work in me? God is taking my weakness, my sin, my impatience, my lack of peace, my fears, and he's working past it." Then you have certain abilities like the world does not have. And you can actually honor this calling, as it were, to do all things without grumbling and disputing. And the consequence is, verse 15, 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. He's already declaring what you are. You're this evidence of Christ in the world. So that that power of Christ that is in you, if we can kind of move the clouds away of being grumblers and being prickly with other people, that people begin to see this light of Christ shining through us. Now, listen, the light isn't in you because you failed to be grumpy. The light isn't in you because you're no longer prickly. The light is already in you. And as you're able to deal with people with the confidence and the peace that God is in you by his grace, not by your performance, that God is accomplishing things beyond your weakness, beyond your pitfalls, beyond the impatience that you experienced yesterday, God is still at work in you, both to will and do his good presence, that you begin to say, "I can begin to push away these clouds of my own grumpiness with people by my prickliness without getting my way." And what's happening is Christ is beginning to show himself through. This is not about earning.
This is about reflecting the radiance of the awe of Christ in you.
And when that happens, it changes how you approach life. I'm not saying this is easy. Not at all. I think of the words of a young man, again, in my office this week, when he would be able to say, "I just had the worst day of my career.
I was taken off supervision of one of the major projects of my company and told that in the light of this new initiative, I'm going to be reporting to one of my peers."
Or others who have heard, due to company cutbacks, "I have to drop two pay grades to stay employed."
Or any of us who begin to say, "I'm just tired of hearing about I need to serve others in worship practice or in outreach practice or whatever this church is going to be doing next. I want me to be served, tired of those other people." And to recognize that what God is saying is all that is in some measure totally understandable.
But the way in which you deal with the fact that perhaps the company or a peer has shunted you aside, if you actually believe that the king of the universe is indwelling you and saying, "I am working all things together for good." And the way in which I am doing that is I am indwelling you among other things so that in you, as you are working out the implications of your salvation, I am accomplishing my perfect will and purpose in you and through you. But Lord, don't you understand how mad I am? Lord, don't you understand how disappointed I am? Lord, don't you understand how impatient I am with being asked to do things I don't like doing? The Lord says, "I do understand that, but here is the promise that you can be a child of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation. And when that happens, you begin to shine as lights in the world."
I was reading this past week the biography of Abigail Moorewood, the ballerina.
Okay, let me think about this project runway and now ballerinas.
All right, hang with me.
She writes of what it means to be a Christian serving God with joy despite what she identifies as the pressures of perfection.
She writes, "It is hard to be a ballerina in a competitive troop with contracts lasting only 35 weeks because the assumption is your skills and your muscles will only last a brief time."
So we will only give you a contract for 35 weeks resulting in intense competition, cutthroat politicking and immoral escapism among the many dancers in the troop.
She says this, "Each day is grueling and the opportunity to be a star, not on stage, but shining with the light of Christ in a crooked and twisted generation."
So even though the contracts only last 35 weeks, she has been in that troop for seven years as a ballerina, long outlasting the normal expectation of one in that profession. And she writes what actually drives her. She has had in those seven years a weekly Bible study for the other dancers and says this, that enables them to share their brokenness and struggle that the stage would never allow.
"But because the Savior welcomes them in their brokenness, they begin to understand how His glory can shine beyond their darkness.
And mine too, because by sharing the gospel with them, even I learn that when perfection fails, which it ultimately will, I worship a Savior who will not fail."
I love it.
We fall down.
We lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus.
I'm just in awe.
He knows my failures. He knows my weaknesses. He knows I am grumpy. He knows I am honored. He knows I am prickly. He knows I struggle so much with the hard things that happen, with the people that have treated this way and that way. He knows it all. And He will not fail me.
And so I just say, God, I'm in awe of You. And the recognition that He is working through broken creatures like me, four broken creatures like those around me, is giving me this sense of wonder and design and the need that I want Him to radiate through me. I want Him to show Himself. I want to be this light in the world despite the brokenness and the crookedness and the twistedness. Sometimes it's me.
And so He begins to give me hints of how I keep finding that light, that radiance, that joy of His salvation that He provides, not that I make.
The words that Paul talks about in verse 16 are, how do you get past the brokenness? He says, "Hold fast to the word of life so that in the day of Christ, Paul says, I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain." Now, I'm just going to be honest with you. If you're saying, "I want to live purposely now, what's going to help me?" You can hear those words from a fear-operating system and say, "All right, that means I need to hold fast to the word of life. I need to read my Bible more. That way God will approve me. I need to give Him a few verses as a bride now so He'll be nice to me." And so I read my Bible. I go to church. I do the good behavior things so that God won't hurt me.
Or you can perceive it as the words say, "Hold fast to the word of life."
As though in the crisis, when the clouds come, when the difficulties come, and you're trying to claim that peace of your own salvation that God has secured, you have to keep kind of being reminded of it in the midst of the events of the world that will eclipse what the word has promised. He says, "Hold fast to the word of life." And that's not measuring up. It's not earning. It's claiming the wonder of the goodness that God tells us about in His word. I mean, I think of those years that Kathy and I were struggling with a particular child.
And just plain talk here. You know, when there's that kind of deep tension in your family day after day after day, it can just, you know, it can drive couples apart. Really it can do that.
But it can do something else.
If you say, "God put you, my wife, into my life so that we could support one another and cling to one another and pray with each other," that what you begin to understand is, nobody is saying to me, "Brian, in order for God to approve you, you need to cling to your wife." I'm saying, "I want to cling to my wife!"
I mean, our prayer life has never been better. And in some measure, we've never been closer than when the Lord was saying to us, "Listen, here are these challenges now. Here are these difficulties, even the tension in your own family that you would never have wanted. Hold fast to the word of life." Here is God's wondrous provision for you, reminding you of His grace, reminding you of His power, of His sovereign working in your heart, His sovereign working in your life so that when fear is about to take over and the stress is about to eclipse all things, you say, "Oh, I remember again."
It's awe of what He's done in my heart and life. He's preserved my eternity. And now in reverence and awe, where I'm tempted to run away, to get angry, to get mad, to take things in my... I fall down.
I lay my crowns at the feet of Jesus.
And when I cling to life that way that's in His Word, I'm not earning His affection. I'm simply clinging to the testimony of His heart for me that's already in place. And that gives me strength and it gives me hope and it gives me peace. And it's driving out the fear that otherwise are bringing out the worst aspects of my character and life. And the difficulty of doing that, the apostle is well confessing, even in verse 17, because he's saying, "You hold fast to this," verse 17, "even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith." Now because we are kind of Western, modern Christians, we no longer get the image. I mean, you know that Paul is in prison and he doesn't know if he's going to come out alive. And so he says, "Even if I'm being poured out as a drink offering for your faith, I'm rejoicing and I'm glad." Do you recognize that was...what that was about? In the Old Testament when you would bring your animal sacrifice as this mark of the atonement that ultimately Christ would provide by His sacrifice, it wasn't just the animal that was put upon the altar, but as the animal was being offered, as that smoke was going up to God, you would take a flask or a cup of wine and it would be poured out upon the altar and the heat of the altar would just vaporize it. As if to say, "Here is the prayer going up to God and now it's nothing that I bring anymore." God is, is it where I received the emptiness of my offering, but it has become praise to Him?
And now Paul is saying, "Even if I in my life am going to be vaporized and the eyes of men, I'm glad and I'm rejoicing because I believe God is at work in me, both to will and to do His good pleasure." And that sense of reverence and awe for what God is accomplishing through the Apostle becomes His willingness to say at the end of verse 17, "So I'm glad and I rejoice with you all, likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me." One, because I believe that my labor is not in vain. That's what he says at the end of verse 16.
And because my labor is not in vain, my joy is not insane.
Even if I'm to be poured out as a drink offering, vaporized for your sake.
God's going to use that. Eternally, He's in me working out His good pleasure for all eternity of the people that He puts in my life. And for that reason, I bow down.
I lay my crowns at the feet of Jesus.
Don't labor in vain.
I'm even glad to know that whatever I'm offering, He's going to use for His purposes.
And for that reason, I rejoice. It gives me confidence and peace even in the face of my greatest challenges.
Awe drives out fear.
The young Christian leader that I was telling you about in China expressed it this way, as awe had replaced fear in his life.
He talked to me over breakfast one morning of what he hopes to happen by his ministry in China. He simply said this, "China is the largest nation in history to have wiped out all religions in Communist mainland China, the largest nation in history to have wiped out all historic religion." What he says means for us Christians, as we are seeking to establish Christianity through these churches in an oppressed situation throughout all China, what we virtually have is a blank slate to operate with so that we, now millions of Christians in China, are able to plant new faith in the very DNA of that culture. So what he is saying is we believe that in a generation or two, China will be the largest Christian nation in the history of the world.
Now I want you to hear the person who is saying this. I mean, he should have been afraid of all this. I mean, do you recognize he went to seminary while he was abusing his wife?
He was raised in a Christian home and was ready to reject it. He heard the gospel but didn't understand it. He believed in God but did not honor God except in a kind of a surface level.
I mean, of all the people who should say, "God shouldn't have any purpose for me. It ought to be this guy." And yet he is profoundly moved with awe and reverence that God knows the worst about me. And is still pleased to work in me for his good pleasure, all things that he intends.
I want you to know that. I want you to know that we are not living a performative Christianity. If I can just measure up, if I can just do enough, if I get my kids to behave well enough, then God will be pleased with me. I want you to know that he has said as your faith is not in your performance but in Christ on your behalf, that when you say, "I'm just in awe of a God who cares that much for me," then your life begins to reflect the goodness that is the light of your salvation in everything past your weakness, past your corruptions, past your difficulties. When you actually are being motivated now, not by fear of what other people think, not by fear of measuring up, but actually living in the awe and the wonder of a God who has been gracious to you through no merit of your own.
And says, "I'm going to use you."
Doesn't make any difference.
I think of those all accounts of Rembrandt, the great artist who we don't usually remember actually had apprentices preparing most of the paintings that we now call great.
We say, "Well, why did he get the credit?" Well, because the apprentice would get the painting even to a very fine level, but always Rembrandt had the genius to come along and with just a few brush strokes, just a little additions, would take what was good and make it absolutely brilliant.
And so sometimes the apprentices would say, "Well, what good is it? What I do since you're the one who has to perfect it?" And Rembrandt's answer always was, "Believe me.
I treasure your work and I will use it. Trust me."
That's what God's saying to us. God, this is all I got to bring. You know my past, you know my brokenness, you know how I struggle every day now. He's, "But bring me your work.
Work out your salvation with reverence and awe."
And God says, "I'll use it.
You trust me.
Work out your salvation with reverence and awe, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work His good pleasure." Wow, what a God.
I wish I could shine for Him.
You can.
Bring your work and He will use it.
Trust Him, not because it's your work, because it's His working through you.
Praise God. We fall down. We lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus and He will make it glorious.
Father, so teach us the gospel again. We know it so well and yet what obscures it from us is our own expectations and other people's expectations and even we live the gospel of trying to measure up, remind us of the one who gave Himself up for us so that by faith in Him we are moved not by fear but by reverence and awe to please you knowing that you use our weakness, our frailty, our fault to bring about your own pleasure.
And when we know that, we can get off people's backs.
And we can live without the fear that drives us to and be the light of the world in a crooked and dark generation because we are at peace with the God who makes us His own by the work of a Son in whom we place our trust.
Take away fear.
Replace it with awe.
This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.