Being Good Citizens of Heaven

Well, I don't know if you've noticed or not, but we're in an election year. Anybody else notice that? Are you like me becoming wary of everything we hear? Night after night on the evening news and in the newspapers, I am wary already of political messages, promises, attacks, attempts to dig up some kind of dirt 20 years ago on somebody and make the other candidate look as negative as possible. I'm already wary of that. And we've still got a while to go. I'm also amazed at the attempts every election year to use the church, to politicize the body of Christ, to identify the church with a particular candidate or a particular political party, to paint a dire picture if so and so gets elected, forgetting the fact that Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That's a pretty good recommendation. We don't have to fret and worry. Whoever gets in office, God is going to continue to build His church. In fact, church history would tell us that quite often the church does its best work under the worst political conditions. That's the way it was in the first century in Rome. So I get a little weary of all of that and don't misunderstand me. I do believe that we should be good citizens. I believe as good citizens we should vote. I believe as citizens who believe the Bible, we should vote our biblical principles on the issues of the day. I believe all of that. But we will not as a church. You will not hear from us any endorsement of any candidate or political party because that's not where our responsibility lies as a church. Not what our unity is built on as a church. Rather, we will emphasize being good citizens of heaven. And that's exactly what Paul does in the book of Philippians. We're tracing this letter as he writes to the Philippians and as the Philippian church received it and read it, we're kind of going through it with them. And so this morning we find our place in Philippians chapter 1 verses 27 through 30. Now invite your attention to that passage where we find that Paul encourages, challenges the Philippians to live as good citizens but he reminds them your citizenship is in heaven. I'm not talking about Roman citizenship. Talking about heavenly citizenship. Now up to this point in chapter 1, Paul has been speaking about himself. He's been talking rather autobiographically. Chapter 1 has to do with suffering for Christ. And Paul has been talking about what it's meant to him. He's in prison in Rome. And he has suffered but he sees that as a glorious opportunity to spread the gospel into the far reaches, the inner recesses of the Roman Empire even into Caesar's household. And so he counts as a great privilege to be in prison for Christ. And then he talks about his future. He may die. He may live. He's not sure what will happen. He's convinced that the Lord will spare him, spare his life. But he could die and he says whether I die or not that doesn't matter. My life is focused on Christ and that's all that really matters. Now in verse 27 he turns a corner in this book and he begins to challenge the Philippians and the rest of the book with a couple of minor exceptions, he will direct his regards to the Philippians. And the very first thing he says to them is I want you to understand what it means to be a good citizen of heaven. Here's how he says it, verse 27, he says whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Now that word conduct yourselves is a very interesting word. It's the Greek word Palatino Mai which literally is the word we get in our English word politics from. Interesting, isn't it? The word literally means to live as a citizen. It's only used one other time in this form in the New Testament. It's worth taking a look at that. In Acts chapter 23 and verse 1 Paul says this when he's standing before the Sanhedrin at an illegal trial. He says Paul looks straight at the Sanhedrin and said my brothers I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day. When he says I have fulfilled my duty, he uses the same word in the same form that he uses at here in Philippians 1. Palatino Mai, I have fulfilled my duty as a citizen before God. I've done my duty as a citizen in an honorable way. Remember Paul had been arrested in the temple and he was charged with starting a riot, which of course he had not done, but that was the charge of the Sanhedrin and the other Jews against him. And Paul wants the Sanhedrin to know I have fulfilled my duty as a citizen. I have done everything I'm supposed to do legally under God. I have done the right thing. It's interesting that Paul uses another form of this word one other time. It's in Philippians chapter 3 and verse 20 where he says to the Philippians but our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. So he's talking to the Philippians and twice he talks about how to live as a citizen, reminding them of their heavenly citizenship. Now that would be very critical, very applicable to the Romans, to the Philippians. Some of you may recall that when we started this book, I mentioned to you that the city of Philippi, which was the first major city Paul went to in Asia Minor, or actually in Macedonia, that city had been declared a Roman colony because of an important battle had been won there by one of the Caesars. And so it had been designated a Roman colony, very few cities in the Roman Empire got that privilege. It meant that every citizen of Philippi was also considered a citizen of Rome and got special tax breaks and land breaks and all that kind of thing. So citizenship meant a lot to these people. They were very proud of their Roman citizenship. Paul says, I want you to remind you that your citizenship is in heaven. And you are to live, conduct yourselves as good citizens of heaven. How are they to do that? And how are we to do that? What does it mean to be a good citizen of heaven? What does it mean to be a citizen that lives out our heavenly life on this earth? What does it mean to be a colony of heaven planted on this earth? Well Paul describes what it means to be a citizen of heaven in these next few verses. Most of all he says it means to live with consistency. Look at verse 27. He says whatever happens, conduct yourselves, in other words, live as a citizen in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Remembering, as he will remind him, that I'm talking about heavenly citizenship, your citizenship is in heaven, conduct yourself, live as a good citizen of heaven in this way in a manner that is worthy of the gospel of Christ. Now the idea of consistency is found in that word worthy. It's literally the word that means fitting or something that matches something else, something that is fitting for another thing or that matches something else. Do you remember a few years ago when everybody was giving those parties that coordinated clothing, color wise with your face and hair and you were supposed to be a winter or a spring? Is that the way it worked? You were a winter or a spring or something? I never understood that. I just figured if you were a winter, you were a white or drab gray. If you're a spring, you wear green, if you're a fall, you wear brown or rust colored. If you're in summer, you just wear swimsuit. That's it. That was good enough for me. I never understood that kind of thing. But there was a big deal about that. I don't know if that still goes on or not. There was a big deal a few years ago of color coordinating everything and making sure that your color hair didn't clash with your clothes, that everything matched, that everything was fitting. Some of you are good interior decorators and you really have your home. Everything is just right and every picture matches another picture and it goes with the decor of your furniture and everything is just so and the angles and the colors and the right things on the right walls and all of that. Some of you do a great job at that and nothing clashes in your home. That's exactly the concept Paul's talking about here. Nothing should clash between our lives and the gospel. So we should be living in a way that is fitting, that is color coordinated with the gospel. In other words, what we claim to believe, what we preach the gospel, we should be living out every day of our lives. And that's the meaning of the word here worthy. Our lives we need to live as heavenly citizens in a way that fits, that color coordinates, if you will, with the gospel. Our lives need to back up the gospel. Now the need for that consistency is very apparent because this world desperately needs to see people who are living what they say they believe. There is nothing this world needs to see more than people who are living out what they say they believe on Sunday when they sing songs, when they pray prayers, when they profess to know the gospel and no God. This world needs to see that lived out on Monday and Thursday also. Reminded of a story I heard about a man one time, two guys were talking about this guy and one of them said, did you hear about Harry? Harry embezzled the company out of a half million dollars. The other guy said, oh my goodness, that's scandalous. I never always wondered about Harry. Kind of wondered if Harry was a scoundrel. And he said, well that's not all. When he left town he took Tom's wife with him. And the other guy said, oh that's awful. He really is a no good, isn't he? And the guy said, well that's not all. When he left town he stole a car to get away. And the other guy said, well Harry really was a terrible person wasn't he? I just always wondered about Harry. And the guy said, well that's not all. When he embezzled the money and left town with Tom's wife and stole the car to get out of town he was drunk when he left too. And the first guy said, that is absolutely terrible. And the worst part about it all is I wonder who's going to teach Harry Sunday School Class this Sunday. Ouch. I hope that could not be said of anyone here. But I think we all need to look very carefully at whether or not the way we live on Monday and Thursday supports what we profess to believe on Sunday about the gospel. Because the world desperately needs to see that the gospel makes a difference. That our life is color coordinated with the gospel that it fits together. One writer has said this, Keith Miller's his name. He said, it never ceases to amaze me that we Christians have developed a kind of selective vision which allows us to be deeply and sincerely involved in worship and church activities. And yet almost totally pagan in the day and day out guts of our business lives and never see the contradiction. It's true. For many people who claim the name of Christ go to work on Monday, do business over the phone, cut a deal with somebody, talk to someone in your office, deal with a child in a classroom, and you would never know that you're a Christian. The way we conduct our lives is not always color coordinated with the gospel. It doesn't always fit with what we say we believe. And Paul is saying, I want you to live with consistency. Live in a manner that is fitting, that is color coordinated, that is worthy of the gospel. So how we handle our bills, how we talk to people, how we fulfill our obligations, and keep our word when we've given our word to someone, how we react to disappointment and tragedy, how we do our work, all of those things need to be color coordinated with the gospel. They need to fit with what we say we believe. So the way we live is consistent with what we believe. To live is a good citizen of heaven then. First of all means to live with consistency. But secondly, Paul says it means to live with cooperation. Notice what he says there in verse 27. Middle of the verse, he says, then, whether I come and see you, or only hear about you in my absence. Remember, he's just told them that he's convinced God's going to let him get out of prison so that he can serve them and other believers more. And he says, you know, maybe from a distance, I may get to see, I may not. But regardless, whichever happens, this is what I want. I will know that you stand firm in one spirit. I want to know that you're going to stand firm in one spirit. Now the word stand means to stand to be firm, to hold your guard against opposition. And we need to do that. We need to stand solidly on the truths of the Word of God and not back off of them. And when anyone opposes the Word of God, we need to stand our ground. We need to stand solidly on the truth of Scripture. The basic content of the faith, the truth of the Word of God. We need to stand solidly on that. But that's not all Paul says. He says, I want you to stand firm, but do that in one spirit. In other words, do it with unity. Now how do you stand against opposition, but do it together? You have to understand who your enemies are. That's how you do it. See the only way you can stand against the opposition is to understand that the enemy is one who tries to undermine the Word of God and deny the Word of God and go against the Word of God. But people in the church, people who are believers in Jesus Christ, we're on the same team. We're fighting for the same thing. We're brothers and sisters. We are together. We need to understand who the enemy is. We are to stand firm, but we're to do so in a cooperative spirit with one spirit, one outlook, one attitude, one purpose. Now even in the church, there will be many different views on many different issues. Remember talking with a family in our church just last summer. They were ready to leave our church over a perception that we were taking a stand on a certain political issue. So I spent several hours with them explaining to them the place our church is, where we are. We are not a political action machine. We take stands and unashamed stands on the issues of the day morally and biblically. And if politicians talk about those issues, it may sound like we're taking a stand on political issues, but we take a stand on biblical issues. And we're to stand very solidly on those, but we are not a political organization. Thankfully they understood that. They realized where our church was. They came back to our church. It's one of the reasons why I said what I said this morning. I realized we're in the heat of a political campaign. You would not believe the pressure that is put on pastors to take sides, to take stands on parties and candidates. And we're simply not going to do that. We're just not going to do that because that's not the place of the church. Now we will take a stand on the issues of the day. And we will encourage people to vote according to those stands, Biblical principles, on issues like homosexuality and abortion and justice for the poor. Those kinds of things. Those are Biblical issues. But we won't take political stands for candidates. You see, that's not where our unity lies. We are to stand together against the enemy who would deny the word of God, but we are to stand together even though on some issues in life, even personalities or preferences about music styles and things like that, we made different. But that's not where our unity lies. Our unity lies, our cooperation lies, our one spirit lies in standing against the enemies of the gospel, against the enemies of the gospel, standing on the faith of the Word of God. Not too long ago, I think it was the last summer I read a book on the Revolutionary War. It was really about the whole American Revolution. And it was a very interesting book. They made the point in that book that if the 13 colonies had been united with one another, we could have won the war in about a year. But because there was so much infighting among the colonies, it took eight long years of bloody battle. If you've read any about the war, or I'm reading a book now on Alexander Hamilton, and it really describes the tensions that were involved during that time between the 13 colonies. Really amazing. General Washington was ready to quit in the middle of the Revolutionary War because he could not get the 13 colonies to work together. They forgot who the enemy was. The enemy wasn't the other colonies, but they were fighting for their own piece of the pie and did not want to support colonies in the south if they were from the north. I didn't want to support Massachusetts if they were from South Carolina. They didn't want to contribute to the army as a whole just to their militia. They only wanted to fight battles on their soil, not up north. It was just amazingly disunified. And it is a miracle of the providence of God that this country ever came into being. Same thing happens in many churches. We often forget who the enemy is. We are not each other's enemies. There's so much infighting in the body of Christ today. Not just in local churches, but across the board. In the body of Christ, people fighting over music style and worship style, and which translation of the Bible to use, and how you should dress when you go to church, and those kinds of things. And those are not the issues. The issue is the gospel. The issue is the faith, the Bible, the Word of God. So we stand against opposition on those issues, but we stand firm in one spirit together on those issues and would be unified because the Bible teaches unity is God's plan for the church. Unity is God's plan for the church. I've heard it said from time to time by other pastors, none on our staff, thank the Lord, but I've heard it said from time to time, you know, it's good to have a little strife and disunity in the church. You know the devil's working. That's the most silly thing I ever heard. If you know anything about your Bible, you know the devil's working anyway. He's always working against us. If there is strife and disunity in the body of Christ, that just simply means the devil's getting the victory. That he's got the upper hand, and that's nothing to boast about. In fact, James says it this way, in James chapter 3, verses 14 through 17, he says, but if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, notice the terms of disunity here. Do not boast about it, or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder in every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is, first of all, pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and sincere. Be a wonderful Bible study just to take all of those terms and describe what they mean, and what they mean about the inner workings of a church, and you'd see two vitally different attitudes toward either not working together or working together in the body of Christ. Unity is God's plan for the church, not strife and division, and everybody selfishly pulling their own direction. Paul talks about this quite often. He'll talk about it three times in the book of Philippians. This is just the first. But he also mentions that in Ephesians, in Ephesians 4 of verse 3, he says, make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. In other words, work hard at this, work hard at keeping unity. It's one of the reasons why I preach on this quite regularly and mention it in sermons when we come across it in a text, because it is very important and it's hard work to let little things go and to major on the majors and keep unity in the body of Christ. Paul said this in Romans chapter 14, he said, let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification or building up of each other. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. Now he's not talking about whether or not you disagree about whether you should eat in the fellowship hall or not. He's not talking about that. He's talking about in the New Testament times of an issue that really was a difficulty for the early church and that was whether or not to eat food that had been sacrificed to idols and then sold in the market place. Did that somehow contaminate you when you bought that food with idols or even another Jewish problem? Should you eat meat at all that had not been cleansed and so forth like Jewish Old Testament law said? That was a huge issue for the early church and there were people who were dividing churches over those kind of issues. Now that would not be the issue Paul would talk about if he were here today. Paul would talk about the kinds of issues we face, differences that we may face in personal convictions about how we ought to live out the Christian life, not about Bible truth. We take a stand on those very firmly but issues like I mentioned before is contemporary Christian music right or wrong. Should we only sing hymns? Should we sing words off a screen or out of the hymnal? Should we allow women to wear slacks to church? You know there are whole groups of people who make issues over those things and the Bible says those are not the issues to divide the work of God over, to destroy the work of God over. There are more important issues and the main one is to stand for the gospel. We stand against opposition on that but we stand together firm in one spirit because unity is God's plan for the church. So when Paul says what it means to live out your citizenship in heaven on this earth he says it means to live with consistency and to live with cooperation but he's not done. Look at verse 27 very end of the verse. He also says we need to live with conviction. He says then whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence I will know that you stand firm in one spirit. Here it is contending as one man for the faith of the gospel. There are some things we are to contend for, to contend means to strive for, to stand up for, to not let slip and that is the faith of the gospel. Now whenever Paul or other New Testament writers talk about the faith they're talking about the core teachings of the Bible that we hold dear in the Christian faith like the fact that this is God's Word, that Jesus Christ is God in flesh, that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that's the only way to be saved not through any works that we do, that Jesus Christ literally arose from the grave, not somehow mysteriously or spiritually, but literally bodily rose from the grave that he is literally coming back to this earth and a second coming. I mean those are cardinal truths, doctrinal truths that if you don't believe those things you can scarcely call yourself a Christian. That is the faith, the body of doctrine that has been given to us. Jude would say it this way in Jude 3. Dear friends although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. This body of teaching doesn't change. It has been once for all delivered and deposited in God's Word. No new truth added to it. This body of teaching is what God wants us to stand for and contend for. Now to contend for it means that we stand firm for it, we defend it, we protect it, and we got to know what we're defending, we got to know what we believe first. You know there has to be a balance in contending for the faith, there has to be a balance between contending and communicating the faith. Always church has to work at keeping that balance. It's very easy for us to swing to one balance or the other. Churches that swing to the end of the spectrum of contending for the faith, they're all about deep Bible study and knowing what the faith is but they rarely ever, rarely ever communicate that faith to other people. That's an unhealthy extreme. We must have good Bible study and Bible teaching, Bible preaching, that's very important but we also have to communicate the faith. See, there has to be a balance. It's also possible for some churches to swing all the way to the extreme of all we want to do is communicate the faith. Just get busy, get out there, share the faith, work, be busy, serve, those kinds of things but we're not spending any time learning the word of God so we don't really know what the faith is. There has to be a balance and in this chapter Paul is striking the cord of contending for the faith, understanding what the faith is, what the Bible teaches so that you can defend it. So we're to have that balance of contending for the faith and communicating the faith. On the one hand we preserve the faith, on the other hand we propagate the faith. On the one hand we defend the faith, on the other hand we disseminate the faith. On the one hand we protect the faith, on the other hand we promote the faith. It's got to be a balance in those two and in this passage Paul is emphasizing the understanding, knowledge of the content of Bible doctrine that we are to contend for and defend and protect and preserve. That's contending for the faith. But notice again, he also says we are to contend as a team. Here's how he says it. Into the verse contending, by the way the word contending comes from the Greek word, Athleto, we get our word athletics from this Greek word. So we're to be involved in an athletic pursuit and he describes it as one man for the faith of the gospel. His terminology is very descriptive here. The way we are to contend for the faith is to do it in teamwork. Now this is March Madness time conference tournaments end up today with the second best conference in the country, the ACC, next to the Big East. Now that's an issue we can contend and be divisive over and still be unified, right? Okay. But anyway, that ends and then they do the pick tonight and the tournament is set and March Madness begins this week. I love March Madness. I love the NCAA tournament. But you know the best teams are not usually the teams that have a superstar that does it all. There may be a one or two outstanding players on a team but the best teams are the teams who work together, all five and then those who come out of the bench, fit in well, know their role and they work together as a unit. Paul is saying we need to contend, athletic, athletic, as one man. We need to work as a unit as a team together, again emphasizing the unity that we are to have as we contend for the gospel, as we stand for the gospel. So if we are to live out our convictions, if we are to live out and contend for the faith, we need to do that with conviction. That's how we live out our citizenship on this earth. But one other thing, if we are to live as citizens of heaven on this earth, the Bible says we need to live with courage. And Paul describes that in the next three verses to live with courage. He talks about suffering. Notice what he says in verse 28. Continuing the thought of verse 27 contending as one man for the faith of the gospel, he says in verse 28, without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved and that by God, for it has been granted to you. It's a privilege for you. On behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had and now here that I still have. Paul is talking about suffering here. And he says that if you're going to live out your citizenship, if you're heavenly citizenship on this earth, you've got to live with courage. And let me talk for a moment about our suffering today. The Philippians were, they understood what Paul meant when he talked about suffering. He said it's the same kind of suffering you see in me. When I had in Philippi, remember what happened in Philippi when he was there in Acts 16. He was beaten within an inch of his life thrown into prison. They saw his suffering and he describes that in verse 30. You saw the suffering I had and you still hear about the suffering I'm having now. I'm in prison in Rome. So they knew what kind of suffering he was talking about. Sometimes it kind of slides over our head because we think, you know, we don't suffer like that. Do people suffer for Christ today? Sure they do. Even in this country, the Christian faith is marginalized and ridiculed by those in the entertainment industry, by those in the academic world, by our culture as a whole. Just look at the word fundamentalist, a good word that used to describe people who believe the fundamental truths of the Bible. But now, if you're called a fundamentalist, basically you're being categorized with Islamic extremists, you're the same kind of person. So that's how people view us who know Christ as our Savior and who stand on the Word of God. But that's really nothing compared to the suffering of many Christians across the world. There are at least 13 countries that have official, this was according to a reader's digest article, listed the countries on a map, 13 countries that have official policies of persecuting Christians, 250 million Christians at risk in those countries. In a recent Israel My Glory report, the magazine by Mission Friends of Israel, they talked about many of those places and talked about what's happening today, particularly in our world as a result of radical Islam and attacks upon Christians worldwide. They listed country after country in Africa. And I could go on, I could list these countries in Nigeria where one attack left 10 Christians dead, nine churches destroyed 61 people injured, 500 people homeless because their homes had been burned. All of them were Christians and they were targeted by extreme Muslim groups. One pastor said there was nothing I could do. I did not know the fate of my wife and children. He hurried to the local police station only to be turned away. The police were turning away Christians because they thought the police station might be attacked too. And so women and children were running out into the bush to protect themselves, but radical extremists had already hidden there and began to hack them, kill them again, others. Now I could go on with story after story in Sudan of 20 Christian young people injured, five Christian young people killed who in an extremist detonated a grenade walked into their meeting as they were singing praise and worship choruses. This is just in the last few months. In October of 2007, similar thing happened in Nigeria. October of 2007, a bookstore operator in Gaza who had been threatened by radical extremists was killed. Over and over and over again it goes. You heard the stories about the three Turkish young men, a missionary and two national pastors back last April, April 18th, who had four young Muslim men who were coming to them pretending to be interested in Bible study. And when they showed up one morning, they took the missionary and the two national pastors and bound them and slit their throat and cut out their intestines and did all kinds of unimaginable horrors to them and killed them. That one was in the news. Most of these reports are not in the news. But in the 1900s, there were more Christians killed for their faith that in the first 19 centuries of put together. There are people suffering all over this world for their faith in Christ. And you say, we ought to pray for them and yes, we should. And we ought to be thankful that that's not happening in America. Well, that is not happening in America, but be careful before you get too comfortable. I believe we may face suffering in this country someday. We may well face it. And if we're not ready for it, we will crumble like sand. The two issues that we could potentially face suffering for in the very near future are Islamic extremism in our country and the homosexual lobby and hate crimes laws. It's already happening in other parts of the world. Democratic countries, pre-Countries, in Australia. Evangelist Danny Nalia was asked to do a seminar in March of 2002. After 9-11, some Christian churches asked him to do a seminar in a major city there. He's a well-known evangelist in Australia. He did the seminar on Islam and quoted some from the Quran, critiqued some of the things. And there were some Muslims who were in that meeting. They filed charges against emitter hate crime laws. He was arrested, threatened with five years in prison, actually took five years of his case for his case to go through the legal courts, $540,000 in legal fees. He was found guilty. It was required that he apologize publicly. It's been $67,500 in newspaper advertisements to publicly apologize and never say anything again against Islam. He refused. And so his case was appealed. Finally went to the highest Australian court where it was thrown out. Thankfully. It's happening in Sweden. We're a man by the name of Ocaigrina pastor and elderly pastor. Very meek and gentle man who wouldn't be angry at anybody. You wouldn't think was charged with a hate crime. Hate crimes are already law in many European countries. He was charged with a hate crime after in a Sunday morning message like this. He said in his own church that homosexuality is a sin according to Romans chapter 1. A tape was sent to the police. They arrested him. He was found guilty, convicted, sentenced to one month in prison. Homosexual lobby groups were enraged that the sentence was not harsher. He appealed his sentence, went to the highest court in Sweden and it was overturned, thankfully. It's happening in Canada where a printer in 1996 by the name of Scott Brocky refused to print letterheads and literature for a homosexual group. They took him to court. He was required to pay $5,000 and write a letter of apology. He refused to do so. He went to the board of inquiry to defend himself and he was told this was their decision. He was told you can only practice your religion in the privacy of your home and in your church, not in your business or in public. That is scary. That's in Canada. It took him nine years of legal battles and $150,000 in legal fees to gain a partial victory and not be imprisoned. You say, boy, I assure him, think well things like that don't happen in America. You're not listening to the news, are you? 1996, David Ott. Just ordinary guy like us, member of a Bible believing church in Madison, Wisconsin, going through a car wash one day and he notices the car in front of him, has a gay pride sticker on it. He went up to the owner as they were paying their bills and he said, you know, I noticed your sticker on your car. I just like to share something with you. I used to be a homosexual myself and Jesus Christ saved me and I was delivered from that lifestyle. There's hope for you too and the guy got enraged and said, I don't want any of your Bible thumping and he let out a string of expletives. David Ott backed off and he said, I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I guess maybe I came on too strong. I'm sorry. And he apologized and went away. Five months later he was served with a summons by the sheriff's office. He could face a year in jail and a $10,000 fine because Madison was constant as such a liberal city. His lawyers did not think they could win a case there. They settled out of court. And David Ott was forced to go through sensitivity training, 50 hours of community service, one year probation and pay $7,000 in legal costs, all because of what he said to someone at a car wash. That happened in Wisconsin. You're probably familiar with the case in Philadelphia in 2004 where 11 church members peacefully protested a large homosexual rally in public in downtown Philadelphia. They were arrested, caused of disturbing peace, accused of disturbing the peace. They were kept in jail overnight. They were given eight charges, three of them felonies. They were looking at years and years in prison. One of the charges was ethnic intimidation, which is the goal of the homosexual lobby today to paint any description negative of homosexuality, even if we say what the Bible says about it being a sin, to paint that as a racial discrimination type of crime. And that's how it falls under hate crime legislation. And so these people were kept in prison, thankfully, a few months later their case was thrown out. But we may well suffer someday in this country. We need to be ready for that. Based on the homosexual lobby and radical extreme Islam in our country, we may well face persecution and prosecution under hate crime legislation. It could very well happen in the very near future in our country. Now, if it does, what does Paul say about it? Here's how to respond to suffering, verse 28, without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. And what I've said this morning is not intended to frighten us just to alarm us in the sense that we are alerted to what's happening and to wake up. But we're not to be frightened. The word frightened is a word that was used of a horse being scared and raring up and breaking ranks and running away. What Paul says is maintain calm, composure, confidence in the Lord in the midst of opposition regardless of what that looks like. And you know what that'll be? It'll be a sign to those people who are accusing, you who are opposing you, that they are against God. Eventually, that will become apparent and it will be a sign that you will be saved or delivered by the Lord. Ultimately, now talking about how your court case will turn out, but ultimately, we're on the right side. That's what he's saying. So don't be afraid. Don't be startled by that. How should you review suffering? Well, it's for the sake of Christ, verse 29, it's on behalf of him. We're suffering for him. And it's a privilege. It's given to us. It's granted to us by God to suffer if we do suffer. It's a gift of God. Not only to believe on him, our salvation is a gift, our faith is a gift. It's also a gift to suffer for him. That's why the Apostles saw it. You know what they said in Acts 541, don't you? They said when they left the Sanhedrin after being warned not to teach in the name of Christ, they rejoiced that they'd been counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name. Rejoiced. They'd been counted worthy. It was a gift of God. It was a privilege to do that. That's how we should view suffering. And then we should view it in verse 30 by recognizing we're in a pretty good group. Paul says, you're just suffering, you're going through the same struggle you saw that I had, and you now hear that I still have, you're just going through the same thing I've gone through. When I suffered in Philippine, when I'm now suffering in Rome, puts us in pretty good company, doesn't it? If we ever suffer, we're in good company. So that's kind of good to know. Paul says, living out your citizenship as a heavenly citizen in this world means that you live with courage. You live with courage. You're not startled. You're not frightened like a horse that runs. You stay the course. Very calmly, confident in the Lord. And that will become a sign that you are on the right side that God will deliver you. What does it mean to be a good citizen of heaven? It means that we live with consistency. It means that we live with cooperation with one another. It means that we live with conviction. It means that we live with courage. May God help us to be good citizens, good citizens of heaven. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the challenge from your word today through Paul. To live, to conduct ourselves as good citizens of your kingdom. We pray, Father, that we will faithfully carry out our citizenship in heaven as we live out our lives on this earth. And Jesus, name we pray. Amen.