Thursday, February 17th, 2011
Joy in the Shadow of Death
Last time we were in Philippians, we looked at Joy in Suffering. That was Sunday night. On Monday, the shop we’d taken our car to for maintenance called and said there was something wrong with the transmission that they couldn’t fix. On Tuesday I had to drive the car across town at 10 mph. It turned a 10 minute trip into almost an hour. And I had a caravan of very angry drivers behind me, who as they passed would mouth and wave thing that were not very edifying. On Friday Karie got sick, so I spent Saturday most of babysitting the girls.
So I’m really glad I had to preach on Suffering. And tonight I’m really excited I get to preach on death. This is the one downside of preaching verse-by-verse through the Bible. You don’t get to skip anything.
Last time we saw that Paul could have joy in suffering because of the advance of the Gospel. Verse 13 says because of Paul’s chains, Christ was known. Verse 18 says because of Paul’s critics, Christ was preached. Tonight we’re going to see that because of Paul’s crisis, Christ was magnified.
You say, “Now what was Paul’s crisis?” Hadn’t he been through a whole series of crises, “false accusations, shipwreck, snakebite, unjust imprisonment, unfair trial.” Well, that was just his suffering. In the next few verses we see Paul’s even greater crisis-the possibility of death. Paul was in Rome on charges of being a traitor. A guilty verdict would result in his what? Execution.
