Barriers to Christ Likeness

It was October 14, 1947, when our own West Virginia native Chuck Yeager became the first human being to break the sound barrier. Aviation historians mark that as the greatest flight between the Wright brothers flight in 1903 and the lunar landing in 1969. They say this was the most significant flight between those two record-setting flights. On that day in 1947, Yeager climbed aboard the X-1 jet, which you see him standing by there for the ninth time. The X-1 jet was one that was lifted up by a B-29 bomber and then was dropped, like a bomb. And the pilot would gain control of it and then kick the jet engines in and begin to fly. But they were never expecting to break the sound barrier. They were testing what would happen when you got close to the sound barrier. And several flights had already been made and pilots had reported that when you got close to Mach 1 speed, 700 miles an hour, that the plane would violently shake and scientists believe that breaking the sound barrier might actually crumple the plane and kill the pilot. And so Yeager was out to reach near Mach speed again that day and when he was dropped from the aircraft, took him a few moments to gain control of the plane and finally got its nose down, kicked the engine in and started up and reached 42,000 feet. He made a few manual adjustments. He only had 30% of his fuel left by this time and he decided to make progress toward his goal of 0.97 Mach, just short of the speed of sound. But something happened that nobody expected. As he reached 0.97 Mach, evidently something was wrong with the instruments or something, the needle just fell off the charts and he broke through the sound barrier, all the shaking and the violent, he broke through the sound barrier and all of a sudden it was just clear, smooth flight. He said it was like flying on glass. He said, Grandma could have been up here sipping lemonade. It was so quiet and peaceful. He said all the anxiety over getting there and then realizing once you broke it, it was smooth flying once you break that barrier. It was an amazing discovery and was a giant leap forward in aircraft technology. Well, we're going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about breaking some barriers to get to where the real smooth sailing is, the smooth flying is on the other side of that barrier. The barriers we're talking about are things that keep us back from experiencing and living Christ-like lives. For the last several weeks we've been in Philippians chapter 3 and we've seen that Paul is talking about Christ-likeness and that is his passion, that is his goal, that is what he wants more than anything else in his life. Now that he's been found by Christ and Christ has taken hold of him and saved him, he wants to be more like Christ and to know Christ in a deeper, fuller way than he ever has before. He wants that to continue to grow. He likens it to a race being placed on a racetrack and running a race headed toward the goal and making progress. And last week we saw that he says, we can finish that race well. We can run in such a way that we have the right examples and we're alert to the enemies around us and we have the right expectations in front of us and we finish that race well. But then he goes into chapter 4 and it's not like he changes the subject, you can see the very first word of chapter 4 is therefore. He says therefore my brothers, you whom I love and long for my joy and crown, that, what I've just talked about, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends. So there's a real close connection between what he said in chapter 3 and what he's saying in chapter 4. What he's going to do now in chapter 4 is to give several what seems to be unrelated commands. But they're not unrelated. I think what he's doing is he's dealing with several issues in the church at Philippi that's holding them back in the race to be Christ-like. They're barriers that are keeping them from breaking through to that smooth flying of being more like Christ. And so he's going to give them some commands and they're going to sound very positive, but in a sense he's addressing some very negative things in the church at Philippi, some barriers to being more like Christ. So that's what we want to do this morning. Find out what those barriers are and how we break through them to become more like the Lord Jesus and continue to run that race well. The first barrier that Paul talks about is instability and it's there in verse 1. He says, therefore, my brothers, you who my love and long for my joy and crown, and that's reminiscent of his language to the Thessalonians when he called them his joy and crown and was rejoicing over them. He couches this in very kind and gracious language. He says, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord. He's your friends. So what he's saying to us today is dealing with instability and what he's saying to us, as he said to the Philippians, is that we must stand firm. Now please understand when he says we must stand firm, he's not saying we must stand still. He's already talked about the fact that the whole Christian life is one of progress continuing to run the race. We're not to stand still. We're not to stand still as church. We're not to stand still. We're to be making progress toward being more what God wants us to be. So he's not saying stand still. Stand still means that you're satisfied with where you are. It means that you feel no need to make any progress or advancement for Christ. You just kind of like to hang around where you are. And that's not what Paul's saying, but he is saying stand firm. There's a big difference in those two concepts. Stand still means just kind of hanging around where you are and be satisfied with where you are spiritually. Stand firm means that you're going to be attacked from all sides. Don't let it knock you down. That's what stand firm means. And so we're going to face attacks of all kinds. We face attacks of Satan. All kinds of attacks. He will do anything he can to discourage us, to defeat us, to get us involved in some kind of sin that will destroy us. And we'll do anything he can to mess us up and trip us up in the race. So he's going to throw all kinds of stuff at us. And the Bible says as he's throwing stuff at us and we're running this race, we can stand firm and not be knocked down, not be knocked off stride, not lose the course in the race. That's what he means when he says stand firm. Any problem you face can be an attack of Satan trying to knock you down and get you to quit running the race. And when a lot of people face those attacks, they do quit. They get discouraged, they get defeated, and they decide just to quit, just to give up. And what Paul is saying is we need to learn to stand firm when those attacks come and keep running the race and don't stop. Don't get knocked down. And if Satan does succeed in tripping you up, don't stay there. Get up and start running again. That's the concept here. Stand firm. But he doesn't say just stand firm. Notice what he says there in verse 1, he says, you should stand firm in the Lord. So we must stand firm in the Lord. And that's a very important qualifier on the end of that phrase stand firm. Because you see, you will not be able to stand firm. I will not be able to stand firm. We've all fallen plenty of times when we tried to stand in our own strength. And with our own power and our own courage, unless we learn that he, the Lord Jesus, is the source of our strength, as we just heard sung a moment ago, only he can lift us up. He raises us up. We're only strong when we're on his shoulders. We're only strong when we're strong in the Lord. If we don't understand that, then we will fail. We'll be defeated. We'll be discouraged in the race. It is his strength, his sufficiency that we need to fight the foes, to be able to stand firm when Satan attacks us from all sides. You will not be able to muster enough courage to stand or to stay in the race on your own. You need to recognize we must stand in the Lord. And so when those attacks come, what do you do? You cry out to the Lord like the psalmist did so many times. You cry out to the Lord. What I need your help. I need to see you in this. I need your strength. I need your sufficient grace in this time of attack in my life. Paul said much the same thing to the Ephesians. If you'll just hold your place here and turn maybe one page back in your Bible to Ephesians chapter 6. He said much the same thing to them in Ephesians 6 verse 10. And he said finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. And then he defines the struggle in verse 12. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, because we're facing a spiritual battle, therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, when you're getting hit on every side with evil, you may be able to stand your ground and after you've done everything to stand. So this concept of standing firms, a very important one in the mind and thought of Paul, you're going to get attacked. You're going to get a lot of stuff thrown at you in life that will tend to knock you off balance. And what he's saying is if you keep your eyes on the Lord and you find your strength in him, you'll be able to stand. And not only will you be able to stand, you'll be able to stay on the track and keep running the race. So break through that barrier, the barrier of always falling down, of always being defeated, of always letting Satan trip you up, break through that barrier of instability by standing firm in the Lord. But a second barrier, Paul deals with in verses 2 and 3, the barrier of disunity. And we've seen this before in this epistle, at least a couple of other times. He's dealt with it very clearly. But here he names names. Look at this in verse 2. He says, I plead with the Odia and I plead with Sintica to agree with one another in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, local, loyal Yoke fellow, it's easy for you to say, loyal Yoke fellow, help those women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with climate and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life. Now I want you to notice the problem here in the church at Philippine. The problem is addressed in verse 2, Yodia and Sintica cannot agree with each other. That's the problem. You've got two women who are fighting in the church. They're involved in a dispute of some kind, a feud of some kind. They have let personal grievances disrupt their fellowship in Christ and their relationship in the body of Christ. Now can you imagine what it would have been like if you're sitting in the church in Philippine on Sunday morning, you know, AD, whatever, 60, whatever, and you're sitting in the church in Philippine and this letter is being read. Letter from Paul, you just heard it's, everybody's at church because we've got a letter from Paul and they come to chapter 4. And they're Sits Yodia and Sintica and they hear their names. They got their names in the Bible but it was not for a good reason. They are called out for causing disunity. That's a very serious thing. It's a reason why Paul addresses it in such graphic terms. It's a very serious thing to disrupt the unity of the body of Christ. Very serious thing. And so Paul calls out these two women and says, I plead with you. Get together, agree in the Lord. And he calls on some other people to help them. He says, my loyal Yoke fellow, and the word literally is some scholars believe it is a proper name. Sizzegas is the Greek word. Some people think he's addressing another person by the name of Sizzegas. You help them. And his name means Yoke fellow, one who pulls well in a double harness, one who works well with other people, one who's a peacemaker, one who can help these two ladies to get together. You help them because he says they had a testimony back in verse 3. He says they had a testimony of helping me. When we were working there in the church in Philippi, they contended at my side, he says, in the cause of the gospel. But something has happened. And it's sad when good people who have loved the Lord and have served the Lord well get it odds with each other and get out of sorts with each other, get mad at each other and a few to erupts and they won't speak to each other. And neither one will take the initiative. They're going to wait on the other one because their pride is so much they will not say, I'm sorry or let's work this thing out. It's sad when that happens in the church. I think I was preaching on this passage and he was reading the names and he had a little bit of trouble pronouncing them and he said these two women are odious and soon touchy. And even though he may have mispronounced the names, I think he got the concept right, one of them is kind of odious and one of them is soon touchy, a little too touchy about things. Maybe that was the problem. And they're at each other's throats and they're feuding and they're not agreeing in the Lord. That's the problem. And that is a huge problem in the church of Jesus Christ today. Karen Mainz writes, her husband David Mainz is a well-known radio teacher. Karen Mainz writes a parable about this in a little sketch which she wrote called a brawling bride. And in that sketch, she painted a vivid scene describing a suspenseful moment in a wedding ceremony. Down front stands the groom in a spotless tuxedo, handsome, smiling, full of anticipation, shoes shined, every hair in place, anxiously awaiting the presence of his bride. Sounds just like Jake. Last week, my son-in-law. Sounds just like. Anyway, all attendants are in place, looking joyful and attractive. The magical moment finally arrives as the pipe organ reaches full crescendo and the stately wedding march begins. Everyone rises and looks toward the door for their first glimpse of the bride. Suddenly, there is a horrified gasp. The wedding party is shocked. The groom stares in embarrassed disbelief. Instead of a lovely woman dressed in elegant white smiling behind a lace veil, the bride is limping down the aisle. Her dress is soiled and torn. Her leg seems twisted, ugly cuts and bruises cover her bare arms. Her nose is bleeding. One eye is purple and swollen and her hair is disheveled. Does not this handsome groom deserve better than that? And then the clincher alas, his bride, the church, has been fighting again. You know, someday we're going to be presented to Jesus Christ. The Bible says, as a spotless bride, without stain or wrinkle. In the other spot, we're going to be presented to Him. You don't want to appear at the door, all bloodied and battered because you've been fighting with each other. You know, we don't want that. We want to be ready to be presented to Christ as a body of bride that represents His glory. And we can't do that if we're fighting with one another. I thank God for the unity of this church through the years and it remains strong as far as I know to this day. But it is an area where Satan always attacks the body of Christ. And I want to warn you. I just want to warn you. It will be undoubtedly, I have seen it happen in many, many churches. It will undoubtedly be the source of much attack in the days to come. So be careful. And I know your leadership, the other pastors and the deacons are very aware that we need to cover this church in prayer in these days as we search for a new senior pastor because Satan will do everything he can to try to get in and cause little pockets of Yodia's and Sintiqas fighting with each other, you know, and get all out of sorts over this or that or the other. And he'll use that to disrupt the focus this church needs to have on prayer in seeking for the next man of God to lead you. So disunity is terribly disruptive to the work of God. What is the solution that Paul gives? The problem is disunity. What is the solution he gives? Notice again in verse two. He says, I plead with Yodia and I plead with Sintiqa to agree with each other in the Lord. Now notice how he addresses each of them equally. He doesn't say I plead with one of them or I plead with Yodia and with Sintiqa. He makes sure that his address to them is very well balanced. I plead with Yodia and I plead with Sintiqa. The very same comment made to both. You know why he did that? Because what Paul is stressing is something the Bible always stresses and that is both parties are responsible to put an end to this. The Bible teaches that whoever becomes aware of a source of contention or a problem between you and someone else, whoever becomes aware of that is the person who's to take responsibility. Never, never does the Bible ever allow us to wait on the other person. Never does the Bible say that you should, well that person hasn't spoken to me, they haven't come to me. They started it. I've kept it up a little bit but they started it so I'm waiting for them. Never does the Bible give you that option. In talking about conflict management, Jesus said in Matthew chapter five, if you're at an altar in the temple and you're offering your gift to God and you there suddenly become aware and you remember that someone has an issue against you. In other words, you've done something wrong and you become aware of it and you realize somebody's out of sorts with you because you've done something wrong. He says, you better just leave your gift there, go home and take care of that and then come back and offer your gift. If you become aware that somebody else has something against you, you've done something wrong but you become aware of it, you take the initiative to make contact, make things right. Jesus also said in Matthew 18, if your brother sins against you, in other words, if he's the one now that's done something wrong, he says, you go to him and make it right between the two of you. So you see what Jesus was teaching? No matter which side of the argument you're on, if you're the one that started it or if you're the one that's been offended, if you're the one that's aware of it, you are responsible to go make peace. You never have an option to wait on the other person. Jesus also taught that we need to take care of the beam in our own eye before we start talking about the speck and the other guys eye. You see, we need to look at ourselves first, address our own issues, what we've done and then go to that person and make things right. That's what Paul's saying here. I'm telling both of you ladies to deal with this issue. And then he says, here's the way you deal with it. You agree with each other in the Lord. What Paul is not saying that you have to agree on everything, the way you look at life, the way you dress, the way you talk, every little thing, you have to agree on it. He's not saying that. He's saying agree with each other in the Lord. In other words, focus on what you have in common spiritually. You are in the Lord. You both belong to Christ. You may drive different cars or chariots or whatever horses or whatever in that day. You may do different things in your lifestyle. You may live a little differently. But you are both in the Lord. Focus on your spiritual unity in Christ. You know what that tells me? That tells me we can have unity in the church if we focus on the right things. If we focus on things like what is the church really for? Spiritual purposes. We are for evangelism. We are to reach people with the gospel. We are for worship to come together to exalt our great God and worship and adore Him. We are all about fellowship. That's what we're to be about where we care for one another and we share lives with one another. We encourage one another, do all the one another in the New Testament, what we're supposed to be doing. We're all about discipleship where we're supposed to be learning more about the Word of God and challenging one another to grow up in Christ. We're all about ministry serving others showing the love of Christ by meeting others needs according to 1 John 3. It's how the love of Christ is shown through us. So those are the spiritual purposes and that's what we need to agree on. Somebody might say, well I don't like the NIV. I like the New American standard better. It doesn't matter. I like the King James better. That doesn't matter. That's not the focus of unity. The focus of unity is what we do with the Bible we have. Are we reaching people with the gospel and fellowshiping with one another? Some people say, well I don't like that contemporary music or I don't like all the old slow hymns or they don't sing it fast enough or loud enough for me. That's not the issue in the body of Christ. The issue is, are we reaching people with the gospel? Are we doing ministry and fellowship and worship? All those things. We can agree on those things, you see, and that's what we need to agree on. Be in the Lord. That's what Paul says. Deioda in Sintica, that's what he says to us today. This unity is a barrier that keeps us from being Christ like and we need to burst through that barrier, break through that barrier by focusing on the things we have in common and agree with one another in the Lord. And then whoever needs to help with that like Cisegus or Clement or others, fellow workers, they need to chip in and help with that. There are some of you like that in this church. Loyal Yoke Fellows who pull well together in a double yoke and you can help someone else understand how that's done, how you pull together with somebody so that you don't focus just on yourself but on others, disunity. Then if you would look at the third barrier that Paul talks about and that is discouragement in verse 4. Now again, he makes a positive command but he's addressing these barriers in the church that would keep them from running the race well. That's what he's talked about in verse 1. That's how you stand firm. That's how we do what we said in verse 3. He says in verse 4, rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice. Now the opposite of rejoicing is discouragement. The plague of discouragement, and it is a plague, may have come about in Philippi because of the disunity. I mean, he follows right on the heels of talking about disunity by saying rejoice in the Lord always. It could be that the discouragement and the difficulty, the kind of being down and stuff in the church was because of this disunity that was happening and it was creating ripple effects. This sin has a way of doing that in the church. It creates ripple effects and gets other folks cast down and discouraged. That so easily happens when circumstances control us like evidently they were these two ladies. And so the plague of discouragement sets in and Paul says this is a way to break through that barrier and that is rejoice in the Lord always. That is the remedy. The remedy of joy for the plague of discouragement. The remedy is the remedy of joy. Rejoice in the Lord always. I love the way Paul says this. Let's just take it apart. Fraze by phrase, word by word. Paul first of all says rejoice. Now it's a command to rejoice but he's not saying just try to work up some joy. Joy is the natural outflow of a person who's walking in the spirit. Joy is a part of the fruit of the spirit. You know Paul talks about a ninefold cluster of fruit in Galatians chapter 5. Love, joy, peace, mentions six others. Joy is a part of that cluster. And the idea is if we are filled with the spirit our lives are controlled by the spirit we will rejoice. That's a natural response. What is it then that keeps us from experiencing the control or the filling of the spirit? The Bible indicates two things. One is sin, the other is unyieldedness. If we sin we are grieving the spirit according to Ephesians 4 verse 30. We're grieving the spirit. We're troubling the spirit. He's not in control. And so any sin in our lives grieves the Holy Spirit and we're not experiencing joy when we're grieving the Holy Spirit with sin in our lives because the Holy Spirit is not in control and so joy does not flow. Unyieldedness can do the same thing. Paul said to the Thessalonians quench not the spirit. In other words don't put out the fire of the spirit. The Holy Spirit is in you to drive you to motivate you and sometimes with our unyieldedness our unwillingness to say yes Lord I will go wherever you want me to go do whatever you want me to do I will live the way you want me to live whenever we don't do that we quench. We put a wet blanket on that fire that drive the Holy Spirit and so there's no joy. But joy comes when we are obedient to the Lord yielded to him confessing sin dealing with sin in our lives and joy as a natural result of in the control of the spirit that comes the filling of the Holy Spirit that comes. So Paul says rejoice. The way you do that is deal with sin get it right for sake put it behind get right with God yield yourself fully to him for each day each step of the way and you will experience joy and then notice he says not only rejoice he says rejoice in the Lord. I'm glad he said it that way because we don't rejoice in our circumstances because circumstances will sometimes discourages and defeat us and that's not where joy is to be found. Joy does not depend on money. Joy does not depend on good health. Joy does not depend on success. Joy does not depend on the day falling in line just exactly like you had it planned. Joy is not dependent on those things. All of those things can be going wrong and you can still be joyful because joy is a deep seated sense of all being right with God that contentment that peace inside that rejoices in him. Not our circumstances but in him. Not only does joy not depend on our circumstances. Joy doesn't depend on us. It's not rejoice in yourselves. All I have to do is look at my own sinfulness and imperfection and I could be covered with shame and sadness and that's what it does. If you focus on yourself you'll be covered with shame and sadness and guilt all the time. So joy doesn't come from introspection looking at yourself and trying to work up some joy by thinking about the good things about yourself. Then come that way. Joy comes from focusing on the Lord. I think one of the best biblical examples of this is an obscure Old Testament prophet by the name of Habakkuk. Habakkuk wrote a small book, only three chapters. And the book of Habakkuk is really a debate between Habakkuk and God. In the first chapter, Habakkuk is praying and he's saying God, the people of Judah are so wicked. They are so sinful and so evil. You need to judge these people. And God says, okay, here's your answer. I'm going to send the Babylonians to judge them. And that really took Habakkuk off guard. Habakkuk said, oh, wait a second, God, the Babylonians, they're worse than we are. I don't understand that at all. I mean, I can see you judging your people not with them. The Babylonians, I don't understand that at all, God. And that's when God told him, Habakkuk, the just, lived by faith. You can't figure everything out. You can't see it, you just lived by faith. You trust me. I know what I'm doing. And then later on he tells him, I'm going to judge the Babylonians also. And so Habakkuk at the very end of his book, these are the last three verses of the book. This is what he says, though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls. Now stop right there if you can tell your eyes away from the screen. What he's describing is exactly what would happen when the Babylonians invaded Judah. They would strip the land bear, there would not be an animal left, there would not be any crops left in the field. They'd burn everything. Everything is gone. You look around you, there is nothing to be happy about. And Habakkuk says, even though all of that happens, look at what he says next. He says, yet I will rejoice. How can you rejoice? Habakkuk and the midst of all of that. Read on, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. Not the crops, not the animals, not good things happening. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. You know what that's talking about? Stability in rocky, craggy places. He makes me stable. Okay? He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights and then he gives a little musical notation. He says, let's put this to song. Man, this is worth singing about. So let's put this to music. See what Habakkuk is saying? In the worst of circumstances, and if you read the book of Lamentations, the Babylonian invasion was the worst of circumstances for Judah. I mean, the siege on Jerusalem got so bad that mothers were actually eating their children. Can you imagine that? This is the worst of times in Judah's history. And Habakkuk says, even though everything is gone, I can still rejoice in the Lord. Now, the only way you can rejoice in the midst of any circumstances is to rejoice in the Lord. And that's why Paul finishes this out by saying in verse 4, rejoice in the Lord. Always. Always. This is not a little bit of happiness when everything falls into place, you know. Everything's going well. And there are plenty of sheep in the pen and crops are coming in so much I can't handle it all. It's not a little fit of happiness when that happens. This is rejoicing in the Lord. All times. Is that impossible? No. As we have seen, you can rejoice always when you are rejoicing in the Lord, when you're focused on Him. Charlton Heston died just about two months ago, April 5th. Six years prior to that, he had revealed publicly to the world that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. It's really a courageous statement. And he knew that he would probably become, as most people with advancing Alzheimer's become, a person that nobody recognized and maybe he himself in all likelihood would not even recognize. He would not be Charlton Heston anymore. He would be a different person in a sense because of the ravages of that disease. And so he made this public statement back in 2002. And shortly after he had made that revelation and told people that he was struggling with that disease. He and a friend, Tony Marcus, were flying from Los Angeles to Utah. And he looked over at his friend and his friend kind of had his head down and looked real sad. And he said, Tony, why so glum, pal, you upset or have sad about me? And Tony nodded his head. And Charlton Heston said, you don't need to be upset or sad about me. I got to be Charlton Heston for almost 80 years. That's a pretty fair deal. That's a really positive way of looking at things, isn't it? But you know, we've got something better to say. We've got something even more positive to say. No matter what's happening in your life right now, you can say, you know what? I get to be a child of the King of the universe. I get to be a child of God. I get to be in his family. I have a home waiting for me in heaven. No matter what happens to me here, I get to rejoice in the Lord. You see, I'm his child. I get to rejoice in him. That's something to talk about. That's something to rejoice in. No matter what is happening. And that's the only way you can rejoice always is if you rejoice in the Lord. And that's so significant, Paul says, man, I want to say that again. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again. Rejoice. You see? He's really driving that home and saying this again. Rejoice in the Lord. Discouragement keeps a lot of people mired up in the race to where they're not running very well. You can break through that barrier if you rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say, rejoice. It can be done. There's one final barrier, however, we've got to break through in order to get that smooth flying of Christlikeness. And that is selfishness. Selfishness. Look at verse 5. He says, let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Now the opposite of gentleness is selfishness. But in order to really come to that conclusion, in order to understand that, we have to understand what the meaning of gentleness is. So let's talk for just a moment about the meaning of gentleness. And it's important to spend a couple of minutes here because this word is a very, very rich word. And whenever I say that, I mean this word has got a lot packed into it. A lot of meaning that no one English word can translate. And that's the reason why if you read several different translations or several different paraphrases, you'll find a number of different words used here. Because this word is difficult to translate. It means the kind of spirit that yields to others, that is considerate of others, that has a sweet reasonableness about it that is flexible, not always demanding its own way. It's the opposite of being obstinate or stubborn or an unbending spirit or selfish, really. Probably the best antinim, the word that's opposite of this, would be selfishness. I love the way Maxi Dunham, who's written a very good commentary on Philippians, describes this word. He says, our translation uses the word gentleness. It is a lost word. I'm afraid as a description of Christians. Our way of relating is assertiveness, bluntness, cartonist, presumption. It's shaped by the brusque world in which we live, a world that's characterized by those traits. He says, what yeast in the leaven, and that's a misinterpretation of the parable in Matthew 13, by the way, but we won't get into that. What yeast in the leaven might we become if we cultivate a gentleness? He goes on to describe it this way. This is no soft virtue. I love this description of gentleness. He says, it is rather a bent of character that controls our capacity for rage and activates our capacity to love. The gentle are courteous and kind, exercise restraint, practice reticence in speech, knowing that words can wound and silence may be more affirming than chatter. The gentler people who do not intrude into another's life but are available to aid and respond to others' needs. It's a wonderful description of this word. This kind of thing Paul's talking about, the meaning of gentleness is this kind of spirit. This kind of spirit that puts others first is the opposite of selfishness. That's the meaning of gentleness. But I want you to see Paul talks about the scope of gentleness. Who all should we be gentle to this way? Verse 5, let your gentleness be evident to all. Everybody. Not just people who are gentle to you, that's kind of easy, you know, when people are kind and consider it selfless with me. It's kind of easy to be that way with them. But he's saying everybody. This means people who may oppose you, people who may be against you, people who may mock you, ridicule you, persecute you. Even false teachers, Paul says in 2 Timothy 2, the man of God is supposed to respond with gentleness and kindness. Rebuke firmly, yes, take a solid stand but do it with a gentle spirit. It's very difficult to do to others who are not gentle to us but he says, do that toward all. Again, from Maxi Dunham, I want to quote, he tells a story about a lady by the name of Mrs. Tilly. He describes her as a little Methodist woman from Atlanta who never weighed more than a hundred pounds in her life who looked about eight years younger than God. But she joined forces with a group of 40,000 women in the 30s and 40s in what they called the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Linching. She was fighting racism in the South, in the 30s and 40s. Can you imagine? In Atlanta, in the 30s and 40s. This elderly lady did weigh a hundred pounds. She was active in advocating the desegregation of public schools, got a lot of obscene phone calls, calling her everything but the gentle woman she was. She did not let the calls deter her. She stayed on the path of doing what was right and just. She knew racism was evil, no one could intimidate her. She knew that as a white woman she was through with it and wanted her town, her state, her country, and the world to be rid of it too. She would not stoop to the tactics of intimidation that others were using with her. Now, this was in the day before answering machines. She had an engineer somehow rig up her phone to where when people called late at night, she didn't answer and they were going to leave all these, you know, invectives, harsh, cruel messages, calling her all kinds of names, telling her to stop, you know, that kind of thing. When they picked up the phone, they heard a rich, baritone voice singing the Lord's Prayer. Said the phone calls lasted about two weeks and then they stopped. She responded with gentleness. This little elderly lady, hundred pounds, responded to hate with gentleness. Paul says, let your gentleness be evident to all, to everybody, even when it's difficult. And then he gives us the motivation of gentleness. What would motivate us enough to do this? Well, look at the last four words of verse five. The Lord is near. Now, a couple of things that probably means, Paul may have in mind the word is often used this way. The fact that the Lord is close at hand. He's looking over your shoulder. He's right there. He's watching you. He's waiting to see how you're going to respond to people who provoke, to people who irritate, to people who are mean to you. He's waiting to see how you're going to respond. Are you going to be gentle? But also because of the context, Paul may have something bigger in mind here. He's just talked about in chapter three. We eagerly await a savior from heaven. So he may be talking really about the coming of Christ, maybe near. Christ is standing at the door ready to come. James uses the word, the Lord is near in that sense in the book of James, chapter five. And so Paul may be thinking of that too. Either way is true. The Lord is close at hand watching us and he is ready to come at any time. The motivation for gentleness is when he comes. I want him to find me living the way he's told me to live. And not just living the way this world lives, brus, cart, cut people off, give them their dew. You know that kind of thing. We're not to be living that way. Paul says, gentleness. I have used this man as an illustration so many times. You're probably tired of hearing of Charles Spurgeon. He was a great preacher in London back in the late 1800s, the last half of that century. He was a great preacher and took a tremendous stand for the Lord when liberalism started sweeping through England from Germany. But Spurgeon had a friend by the name of Newman Hall, another pastor. And Newman Hall had written a book called Come to Jesus. And after he published the book, another pastor in London wrote an article about Newman Hall, which just cut him to shreds. It's very, very vindictive. And Newman Hall just patiently took it as long as he could. And then when the article started gaining a little popularity and some other people jumped on the bandwagon, started criticizing Newman Hall. Newman Hall had as much of it as he could take. And so he decided to write a letter to this other pastor who had published this article about him. And he wrote a letter. And it was, I mean, he just bent in his spleen. He just was letting it all out, all these anger and pent up resentment and all. He was just letting it flow. And it was worse than the article, the guy that written about him. But before he mailed it, he took it to his friend Spurgeon, said, Charles, I want you to read this. See what you think. Spurgeon read it very quietly at his desk. And then when he finished, he put it down. And he said, it's very well written, Newman. And he deserves everything you've said. There's only one thing you've forgotten at the bottom there where you signed your name. You forgot to put under your signature author of Come to Jesus. Newman Hall picked up the letter, looked at Spurgeon for a moment, smiled, ripped it into threads, threw it in the trash can. How can people who say, come to Jesus turn around and cut each other to shreds? That was Spurgeon's point. And it was a good point. How can we who claim the name of Christ not be gentle with each other when Christ was that way with us? Paul says to the Philippians, there are some things that are standing in the way of you being Christ-like and running the race well. There are some hindrances. We've got to break through those barriers. We've got to get through those. And he would say the same to us today. We need to burst through the barrier of instability by standing firm in the Lord. We need to burst through the barrier of disunity by agreeing in the Lord. We need to burst through the barrier of discouragement by rejoicing in the Lord. We need to burst through the barrier of selfishness by treating each other gently in the Lord. Let's pray together. Father, we get tripped up so easily. We get, we balance off of these barriers so much and never break through them. I pray that you would help us as your people to break through these barriers that keep us from the smooth ride of being like Jesus. I pray, Father, that we would not stop short of becoming like you as best we can this side of eternity. Or help us to take your word seriously in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.