Welcome to Walk in the Truth podcast.
How do we know where to find answers to the toughest questions in life?
While the simplest answer is the Bible, where do we start this search and how do we discover
this truth?
Today, in this teaching podcast, John Metter, lead pastor of Cross City Church, takes a
specific text of the Bible and helps us find truth for the life we're searching for.
We are so glad that you're with us this morning and if you have your Bibles, please take them
and turn to Philippians chapter 1 today.
If you don't have your Bibles, we certainly have them under seat backs and we also have
them on the tables at the back.
We even use page numbers to help you find where they are in those versions of the Bible
if you need those.
We want you to turn to Philippians chapter 1 and verse 21.
Over the last couple of weeks and for the next two more, I'll be preaching a series
of messages that deal with some of the basic most important questions in life.
One of them is, why are you here?
Why are you here?
Last week we looked at who are you or who am I?
What is our identity?
How does God see us?
And this week, a question about the why.
Why are you here?
Would you stand with me as we read Philippians chapter 1?
I'm going to read the first few verses after verse 21 down to verse 26.
It's a very significant passage of scripture for me because it was very present in my life
recently this year as I went through cancer surgery and cancer discovery before that.
And this text spoke to me very, very loudly.
In fact, the Bible I'm preaching out of today is a blue large Bible that was given to me
by my staff before I went into surgery.
So it's a very meaningful Bible for me today.
And actually this text is highlighted because this was the text that God spoke to me so
powerfully in those days.
This chapter 1 beginning in verse 21 the apostle Paul is talking about life and death and the
present threat upon his life.
He's in prison anyway.
He's already gone through so much as an apostle of Jesus and so death is very near him most
of the time.
And yet at the same time he knows that if he dies he's with the Lord and that's good.
But at the same time he knows that if he's going to remain he's got to know why.
What's my purpose for leaving me here on the planet?
So here's what he says here in verse 21.
For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Now that verse alone doesn't stand up and stand the test of time in your life.
This is how he begins a larger section.
So again for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
I'd like for us to say that verse together.
It's short, it's brief.
Hopefully you see it on the screen here.
Verse 21.
Let's say that together.
For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Boy that can be a great motto for your life.
He goes on and says, but if I am to live on in the flesh this will mean fruitful labor
for me and I do not know which to choose.
But I am hard pressed from both directions having the desire to depart and be with Christ
for that is very much better.
And yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.
Convinced of this I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress
and joy in the faith so that your proud confidence in me may abound in Christ Jesus through my
coming to you again.
Father, today I pray that you will let this text speak to every heart in this room.
Father, I know all of us are at different places in our lives and all of us have different
ideas of how long we'll be here and what our purpose is.
And today I pray that you'll bring them all together to where Paul was and where you want
us to be in terms of our why.
I ask this in Jesus' name and everybody said amen.
Please be seated.
If you've been with us over the years you know that I've shared several near death encounters.
And I had a near death encounter when I was six years old.
I remember very little about that near death encounter but I do know that my father picked
me up and put me over his shoulder and carried me across the street to a local clinic that
was there.
And I had had a penicillin shot and so I was having an adverse reaction to penicillin.
So my body just went into shock and my heart stopped beating, I stopped breathing and so
he was rushing across the street.
I was still conscious when he was doing that.
And later on they laid me down on a stretcher and injected a shot of adrenaline I believe
directly into my heart.
It resuscitated my life.
And later on my parents said they didn't know if I would live or die.
Of course I didn't know all that was going on but I do know I had that near death experience.
And then on my honeymoon, day two, Acapulco, red flags on the beach.
This Oklahoma boy does not know what a red flag on an ocean beach means.
And it means you can't swim because the undertow is too strong.
Trying to impress my dear broad, I run headlong into the waves, dive in, because I have swim
in a swimming pool, right?
And immediately was sucked under by the undertow and it was a long time before I surfaced again.
And during those moments I thought I'm going to die on my honeymoon.
One day married, right?
And eventually I came to the surface and didn't have the heart to tell my wife for another
few days that I nearly died in that encounter.
A few years later I was actually standing in a mechanic shop and had a 45 caliber pistol
loaded with the finger on the trigger by another man pointed at my head.
And I knew that I'd had a near death experience with that.
That's another story for another day.
Oh, it's a good story but it's another day.
But you know in moments like that you don't have the time to think.
You don't really have time to evaluate and think through what is the purpose of my life
what's the why of my life.
You don't even have time to pray.
You just are in that moment either going to live or die.
But what I experienced early this year was very, very different from that.
I discovered a lump on my throat and discovered it was stage two cancer of the thyroid.
And visiting the surgeon that was getting ready to do surgery on me a few days later
and hearing the explanation of possible outcomes that could take place from that cancer and
that surgery.
And this particular surgeon is a young surgeon very, very good at what he does.
I would say his bedside manner has a little bit to be desired as he gave me the good news
first.
And the good news is we're probably going to be able to take care of that cancer.
You're probably going to get it out.
You're going to have to remove all your lymph nodes and it'll be this long and recuperation
and so forth.
But the bad news is what's next.
In the bad news he told me all the bad things.
You could die in surgery.
You could lose your voice and never again speak for the rest of your life.
Think like that.
So it was a lot for a few moments.
Not entirely expected.
And I remember coming back to the car with my wife and sitting down and thinking through
the visit we just had.
And four things immediately hit me and hit me in the days after that.
One was an immediate peace that came over my heart.
You don't normally naturally get an immediate peace when you have that kind of diagnosis
or that kind of explanation.
But immediately I felt the peace of God come over my heart.
That's what the Bible calls the peace that passes all understanding.
Because it doesn't add up.
It doesn't make sense if you're going to find peace in a moment like that that would normally
be filled with turmoil.
The second thing that took place was a reminder.
A reminder of an interview I'd had with four ladies that had dealt with cancer.
Each of them had dealt with breast cancer and they were calling themselves the bosom
buddies because they'd been through it all, all the treatments and all that happened.
And I included them in the ninth chapter of my book, God's Not Done With You.
In fact, the title of that book alone came back to remind me God's Not Done With You.
And I was happy to be reminded of that.
The third thing that I discovered in that process was a praying church.
A praying church.
I've said before in praying for other people, if I ever get sick, I hope to be in a church
like this that knows what it means to pray.
And lo and behold, I did get sick.
I did get cancer and I did need prayer.
And I cannot thank you enough for the incredible amounts of prayer and expressions of prayer
and the cards that came and everything else that told me I was a prayed for man.
I would not be surprised if I was one of the most prayed for people on the planet during
that period of time and I'm very grateful to you for doing that.
And I know you're grateful for when brothers and sisters in Christ pray for you when you
really need prayers.
Aren't you grateful for that?
Thank God for that.
So I felt at peace.
I had a reminder.
I realized the prayers of God's people were going to accompany me through this.
And then finally, I got a word from God.
Now when someone tells you, you get a word from God, you have to kind of ask the question,
what does that mean?
What does that look like?
How does that actually happen?
But Kim and I sat together in the car after we came out from that doctor's appointment
and she says in the silence, what are you thinking?
And the first thing I said to her was, Philippians 1 21.
I'm thinking about Philippians 1 21.
Now there was a reason that I was thinking about Philippians 1 21.
I'm not going to say to you that I was thinking about it just because I'm spiritual and have
all the verses at the right times to come to my mind.
That's not what I'm saying.
But it just so happened that I was studying Philippians 1 21 and preparing for the message
that coming Sunday.
Great coincidence, right?
And it just so happens that I'd ingested that text and had discovered its truths and had
poured over that and immersed myself in it and found them to be riveting.
It just so happens that the text dealt with life and death situations and the why if you
remain.
It was so, so meaningful.
And it just so happens that it answers the why question for Paul and for anybody that
wonders about the purpose of life.
And God just spoke to me through this text in a very, very personal way.
The way he would to any of you if you were looking for God, reading day in and day out
for God to speak to you about something, he will speak to you in that way as well.
And I want to emphasize God didn't shout.
He didn't whisper.
I didn't hear him audibly.
He just had a word for me there.
The way he does for everyone that opens the scripture and expects him to speak.
Look, the Bible that you have is not just a Bible that deals with the historical truths
of history.
It's not just a book of doctrine.
It's literally God's letter to you and he will speak to you from his word.
You need to know that.
And if you know that God's going to speak to you from his word, you're going to open
the Bible, right?
And you're going to find a way to get in the habit of reading God's word.
So there I was, Philippians 1 21 was dominant in my mind and it had prepared me in advance
for what I heard from my doctor on that day.
And I was grateful.
And so I'm coming to you today and I want to speak to you about this text and what it
says to Paul and what Paul means it to understand for us to understand about it, what it meant
to be in that moment and what it should mean to you in the days ahead.
I find Paul making four very clear statements here in this text.
And the first one is found in verse 21.
And I'm going to personalize this in the sense of using the personal pronoun of you because
God did speak to me.
God did speak to Paul through these same words, but he intends for you to hear it for you
as well.
And the first point I want to bring out is you have a future to anticipate.
You have a future to anticipate.
Now look in verse 21 again, for it to me to live as Christ.
And that's the focus of that message today.
Most of what we say today is going to be based on that text, that part of the verse.
But the other part of that verse says for it to me to live as Christ and to die is gain.
And I want to spend a moment on that because Paul is saying that I know that I have life
ahead of me.
I don't know how long and I know my life at this point has been filled with threats, but
I know that if I die, that dying is going to gain me something that I could never have
while still on this planet to live as Christ to die is gain.
Now you need to remember that death has an advantage for you as a believer in Jesus that
we don't have while alive.
The benefits that we get when we die are beyond anything we can imagine here and now.
And I walked through this text earlier this year and I hope you'll remember that you gain
the presence of Jesus like never before when you die.
You know we talk about the presence of Jesus in worship, the presence of the Holy Spirit.
We talk about the presence of God in our life.
But the first thing Paul thought of when he thought of dying was not the process, not
the pain, but the presence.
He said for it to me to live as Christ, but to die is gain.
He was thinking about all that he was going to have and who he was going to face.
Now the apostles were mesmerized by this idea.
Paul said it like this in 2 Corinthians 5.
He said, we are of good courage I say and prefer rather to be absent from the body and
to be at home with the Lord.
You guys have heard this before in funerals.
Absent from body, present with Christ.
Say that with me.
Absent from body, present with Christ.
That's a theologically solid concept that the moment when you die as a believer in Jesus,
you close your eyes to this physical life and you open them to a spiritual world in
which you stand face to face with Jesus Christ.
Now that's a great, great threat isn't it?
That's a great opportunity isn't it?
Amen.
Somebody celebrate.
Ron Dunn used to say it like this.
He had had many, many surgeries and many illnesses through the years and he used to say, do not,
do not bring me back if I die.
Do not bring me back.
He said, if I see the face of Jesus and then you bring me back, I'm going to be very angry
at you.
We gain the presence of God.
We gain the face to face sight with Jesus.
John in 1 John chapter 3 verse 2 says, we know that when he appears, we shall be just
like him because we will see him just as he really is.
Man, you can't, you can't duplicate that on the planet.
Some of us have seen celebrities and we've seen famous people and some of us have even
seen famous people up close.
I remember seeing Muhammad Ali 15 or 20 years ago for the first time I saw him face to face
and my heart literally didn't stop beating.
It was beating very, very fast because it was Muhammad Ali.
I mean, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, Muhammad Ali, right?
And he was the guy that I watched all my life growing up.
But that's nowhere in comparison to what will happen when I see Jesus Christ face to face.
You're going to have to have a glorified body to see him face to face because you can't
handle seeing Jesus face to face and still just being a human body.
The apostles were talking about the fact that we will have the presence of Jesus in a way
that is almost unimaginable.
We also gain the promises of Jesus.
To die is gain means that everything that God has promised us that has not been fulfilled
on earth will be fulfilled in eternity and many of the promises God gives us are eternal
promises.
For example, if you read Revelation chapter 21, you'll see some of that.
He says, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, there will no longer be any
death, there will no longer be any mourning, there will no longer be any pain for the first
things that passed away.
Can you imagine a life without pain, without mourning, without death, without all the awful
things that we deal with day in and day out, that the promises of Jesus will come to pass
when you die?
Now, if you wonder why we're very enthusiastic about helping people who don't know Christ
come to Christ, maybe you need to remember what we just said.
When you come to Christ at death, you see the presence of Jesus and the promises of
Jesus.
We want people to know they have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
We want them to know that they don't have to fear death because to live is Christ but
to die is absolutely gain.
Heaven is that place of every promise of Jesus untouched by human unbelief and sin and depravity
and decay and hatred and injustice.
It is unlettered glory.
A few years ago my wife and I did a mission trip to the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas
and I know some of you will roll your eyes and say, yeah, some mission trip that probably
was.
We were training pastors in the nighttime and the evening because they worked in the
day.
So all day long, Kim and I had a chance to walk on those famous beaches of the Bahamas.
Eleuthera is 110 miles long and about three miles wide, meaning that it was all beach.
On one side the Atlantic, on the other side the Caribbean.
And it was gorgeous.
It was untouched because very few of the citizens went to the beach at all.
It was just part of their backyard to them.
They just weren't out there.
And so I remember one day we walked on the beach and looked at all the glorious things
in the ocean, on the beach for four solid hours and never saw another human being in
four hours.
Just one dog that came running up to us with a dog collar that said, great vine Texas.
That's all we saw, literally.
We love that place.
Can you imagine a whole earth, a whole world that God has created that is unlettered, unmarked
by humanity?
The new heavens and the new earth.
You and I will experience that to live as Christ, to die as game.
But Paul here is not talking about heaven as much as he's talking about what he's going
to do while he stays.
Paul realizes he's staying for a time so he's not just talking about heaven.
But he is saying that if you die, that's not a bad thing.
And let me just tell you something, as a believer in Jesus, facing death in any form, whether
expected or unexpected.
It's not a bad thing to look ahead and say, if I die, Christ has me covered in His blood.
If I die, I have a home in eternity that He has prepared for me.
If I die, it'll all be good.
I want you to know that's real today.
It's real.
And if you have a relationship with Jesus Christ, then it's real to you as well.
So first of all, Paul says, you have a future to anticipate.
And then he gets into the details of what it means to live here and now.
Secondly, he said, you have a work to do.
You have a work to do.
Notice what he says in verse 22, for if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean
fruitful labor for me.
And I do not know which to choose.
He said, I'm hard pressed from either direction.
Now Paul's actually rotting as though he gets to decide whether he stays or goes, but that's
not actually the case.
He's simply presenting it that way.
He knows he's at a critical juncture in his life.
He's actually in prison at this moment when he writes this letter.
And he's been in prison many other times.
As a matter of fact, once Paul was called to ministry, he did not have an easy life.
We're not talking about a guy that had the comforts of life that you and I have.
We're not talking about somebody that always had food on the table.
Paul said, I know what it means to be hungry.
I know what it means to be full.
I know what it means to have much.
And I know what it means to have nothing.
In one particular chapter, he detailed all of the hardships he went through, beaten with
numbers of times, beaten within an inch of his life, even left for dead, shipwrecked
in the deep all by himself, bitten by poisonous snakes while on mission, all kinds of things
Paul went through.
Life was not easy for Paul.
And he said, I'm hard pressed in either way.
On one hand, I could leave this hardship behind and go be with Jesus and I'll be just fine
with that.
But I know that if I remain, I have a purpose of why, a mission.
And I believe that that's what I should do.
He says, basically, I've got a fruitful work ahead in my remaining days.
Paul says, God is remaining me here for the purpose that he has for me.
And that's when I want to pose a question to you, what's your why?
Why are you here?
Why are you breathing air and taking up space?
Why are you getting up every day?
What drives you?
What motivates you?
What is your why in life?
Paul says, my why for God leaving me on the planet is fruitful labor on your behalf.
I'm going to help you grow in your faith.
There are going to be a number of things that I do, but I'm here for fruitful labor.
What's your why?
I read a very interesting story about a young woman by the name of Vanessa Chaput, 24 years
old, was jogging recently on a paved path near Ontario, Canada.
And suddenly, outside the path where she was running, not one, not two, but three bears,
three grizzly bears appeared in front of her.
Of course, being from that part of the world, she knew that that was an extremely dangerous
moment.
So she did everything she could to protect herself, but it didn't work because the largest
of the grizzly bear overtook her and literally gripped her head in his jaws.
So here she is gripped in the jaws of this massive grizzly bear.
And all of a sudden she starts thinking about her purpose and her why.
And she said, you know, I'm not ready to leave my daughter behind.
I'm not ready to leave my husband behind.
I believe that I have some other purpose in which to live.
And somehow during that encounter, she was pushing back and the bear unexplainably let
go of her head and they ran off into the woods.
She was left with numbers of lacerations, hospitalized for 10 days.
She has 35 or 40 stitches on her head, a broken arm.
She said, I'm very shocked at how lucky I was that day.
I'm thankful for God watching out for me for that day.
She said, but I refuse to die because I have a purpose to live.
I want to live for my family.
She reminded me of Nietzsche's reflection over the years.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
I think that's a good statement.
This guy was an atheistic philosopher who didn't have the benefit that we have of a
purpose that God gives us.
But he says, you can go through almost any how if you know why you're on the planet.
And I would say to you as a believer in Jesus Christ, you have the greatest why that any
other people on the planet have for why you are here.
So Paul is saying you have a work to do and he saw himself as having a work to do.
Now, you may not have a life death thing going on.
You may not have a grizzly bear crushing your head at the moment, but something may be keeping
you from knowing your why from God and you need to get around it.
Maybe you need to push aside the sin in your life.
Maybe you need to put away the temptation.
Maybe you need to stop wasting the time that you've wasted in your life and find out what
the why is.
You are presently alive and you have a purpose.
God has you here.
You can know this every day you wake up.
You can know this that you wake up because God has a purpose for your life and you should
find out what it is and live in the fullness of that purpose.
Purpose and why's are all the way through the book of Philippians.
In Philippians chapter three verse 12, Paul said, not that I've already obtained it yet
or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which
also I was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.
That's a gripping purpose.
Christ gripped me.
Why did he grip me?
I want to lay hold of that because he gripped me for a reason.
Robert Lewis used to say, this is what makes you slam your fist on the table and weep.
In other words, the purpose for which you were called, the meaning that you have in
life causes you to be moved more than anything else.
So what's your purpose?
What's your why when it comes to life?
I would tell you this, some of you have had near-death experiences in your life.
How many of you have had near-death experiences?
Would you raise your hand?
There's a number of you in the room.
Some of you probably have had them without knowing that you had them, things that could
have happened that didn't.
But if you've had a near-death experience, if you've had something like that happen to
you, then you realize I've got to have a higher purpose for me being here.
That higher purpose is something more than, oh good, I get to face rush hour traffic again
in Dallas-Fort Worth, or oh boy, I get to enjoy another feudal cowboy football season.
That's another thing to live for.
Or I get to watch a few more sunsets.
No, it's got to be higher than that.
It can't be about some activity that you do or don't do.
It's got to be fruitful labor.
That's the phrase he uses, fruitful labor, significant, meaningful labor.
The emphasis is not on the work.
It's not how hard it is.
It's that it will make a difference in someone's life.
Fruitful labor that counts in the life of family or kingdom or friends or the world.
And it will be somewhat different for every person in this room.
One verse that came to me over and over as I was walking through those weeks from surgery
onward was Psalm 90-12.
Most of you know this verse pretty well, so teach us the number of our days so that we
may present to you a heart of wisdom.
And David is simply saying, the psalmist is saying, look, Lord, teach us to use our time
wisely.
I know there's a million ways that we can evaluate our time and analyze our time, but
the reality is we only have so much time, so how do we do it well?
I'm encouraging you like Paul was to find your focus that you need to have while you're
here.
God has not left you here just to take up His faith.
Paul had one primary focus and who he was here for was the Church of Jesus.
And that's who he was writing to.
That's who the fruitful labor was for.
There are several groups of people that God began to speak to me about in this time period.
The first was my biological family.
The fact that I've got six adult kids now, one grandchild that you hear me talk about
a lot and an amazing wife, and my responsibility and my opportunity to invest in their lives
more.
That's a big important part of why I believe God has left me here, to invest in their life,
to know that whatever God is doing, He's going to do something through whatever I've gone
through in their lives.
If you've got children, you know it's really important to you that children respond to
God in a good way, that they are sensitive to God or they are open to God.
And when they're not, you really pray for them to do that.
I remember one of the responses that all six of my kids gave me were good responses.
They were loving, they were encouraging.
But one of my sons wrote me a text and he said this.
He said, I don't know what to do.
He said, referring to me as his dad, the man who fixes all my problems has a problem I
can't fix.
And all I know to do is get on my knees and pray.
And little did he know that that's all I ever wanted my kids to do, get on their knees and
pray, to trust God in a fresh way that maybe they didn't do last week or last month or
last year, that God would use any of us.
And I think most parents would say, God, do anything to me as long as my kids would find
faith and be able to walk with you in the way I know they can.
I felt an enormous responsibility to my biological family to love them well, to appreciate them
well.
I can't even begin to enumerate the ways in which my wife demonstrated such faithful support
during that time.
What an incredible woman my wife is.
And I want to love her well.
When we talked about the cancer thing, she said, well, you're not supposed to go yet.
We have some more things to do.
I've got more things I want you to do for me.
And I was like, okay, I'll live for that purpose.
We've got some plans here.
But Paul was referring not to his biological family, but to the church family, the faith
family.
He said, I'm here to build your faith.
I want to have fruitful labor with you.
And what an incredible purpose to be about, to build the faith of different individuals
or all individuals in the church so that we might all aspire to follow Jesus.
Paul had that as a heart.
That's what he wanted to do.
And that's what God left him there on the planet to do in this most significant church
at Philippi.
And I will say to you, I feel a renewed sense of purpose as a pastor of this church.
What a privilege to be a pastor of Cross City Church.
An incredible privilege for me.
One that I do not take lightly.
In any days that I have, I want to invest them well in the body of Christ here at Cross
City Church.
I'm extremely thankful for the opportunity to do that.
And I see that in Paul's life as well.
I'm here for that purpose, he said.
Third statement would be, you have a blessing to impart.
A blessing to impart.
He said, convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for
your progress and joy in the faith.
That's his way of saying, I'm going to bless you in every way I know how.
I'm going to serve you in every way I can so that your faith and joy grows.
Paul said, that's why I'm on the planet.
I could be with Jesus, I would love to be there, but he's left me here for that purpose
to help you, to bless you in your faith with Jesus Christ.
Paul was basically saying, I've got more to impart to you, more to teach you, more to
share with you, and I want to do that.
And why shouldn't he say that?
You know, sometimes when you go through hardship, you have more to give than if you were just
going through normal life.
When I interviewed those women for that chapter of the book, God's Not Done With You, these
four bosom buddies talked to me about the joy and the excitement of what God was going
to do in spite of, and some of them had pretty drastic kind of prognosis.
And they said, you know, through it all, God came to me and helped me and strengthened
me and gave me grace.
And through it all, I was able to help point my family to how to weather tough times in
life by relying on Jesus Christ.
So what God did with them in their season of life, and some of them have done that more
than 20 years ago is when it took place for some of them, they saw that they could impart
a blessing even in pain.
And I want to challenge you on this.
Even in pain, we're here to impart a blessing.
We're like a messenger delivering the good news that God knows, God cares, God is able.
The only time you can really say that knowingly is when you go through pain and suffering
and hardship.
But in that pain and that suffering and that doubt and that uncertainty, you can come out
of that time and look at others that may be going through it and say, trust me, I've been
through that fire.
God is real.
He'll meet you right in the middle of it.
He will not abandon you.
He will not leave you alone.
I am thankful we have a God like that.
That real, that personal, that attendee to who we are.
Thank God for that.
Paul is saying that to the people at Philippi.
To impart a blessing means to exercise your gifts, to use your resources, to use your
words, to aim your influence of helping people grow in their faith in Jesus Christ.
That's a high calling, but it's also a whine calling.
You can't do better than to point people in the direction of following Jesus.
You can't be a better influence than that.
Paul was doing that.
He said this in 1 Corinthians 11, be imitators of me as I also am of Christ.
And I can imagine that some of us in this room would say, well, I can't quite be like
that, like Paul.
I'm not sure others can say that about my life the way they could say it about Paul's
life.
But I can say, why not?
You have obviously more time on the planet to live.
Clearly you're still alive and breathing and taking up space right now.
And so because of that, God's left you on the planet for a purpose.
Think about the first line of this passage, for to me to live is Christ.
What does that mean for you?
How do you take steps to do that in a tangible way?
And while you're pursuing that, teach and write and mentor and counsel and spend time
and pray and influence and serve in every way you possibly can.
Because when you do that, you're helping build the faith of other people.
So we ought to be asking the question on a daily basis and sometimes only a kind of a
close touch to death will get you thinking about it.
We ought to be asking the question, how can I live in such a way, speak in such a way,
interact in such a way as to impart a blessing to other people as a result of a gospel filled
life?
How do I help others find that life as well?
I can say, he can say, it was a well-lived life of faith.
That's what we want.
And it's important that people say that about us.
And then finally, you have a witness to leave.
There's an interesting twist of words here, verse 26, that catches us off guard at first.
He says, so that your proud confidence in me or your boasting in me may abound in Christ
Jesus through my coming to you again.
The proud confidence is sometimes rendered in translators, they use the word boast, but
not in a prideful way.
Paul said, I know you're not bragging on me, but you see the line after that, proud confidence
in me may abound in Christ Jesus.
In other words, if you're going to say any good thing about me, Paul said, about my life
or my influence, you're going to attribute it to Jesus and his work in my life.
Years ago, I attended a funeral in our chapel here and I was seated next to another pastor
who served here years ago.
And after the funeral, he turned to me and said, you know, a lot of good things were
said about that person's life, but did you notice that nothing that was said was remotely
connected to Christ?
And I thought about it and I thought, wow, we did hear a list of all the things this
fellow did and all the ways he was involved, but not one reference to doing anything in
the power of Christ or the character of Christ or the gospel of Christ.
And we both concluded that would be an empty life.
That would be an empty remembrance of life.
In other words, if you're living life apart from the power of Christ, it's not going to
be a fulfilled life.
It's not going to have in it what you want.
Paul is saying in the end, I don't want my witness to disappoint you and I certainly don't
want my witness to disappoint him.
I want the witness I leave you to point to the greatness of the Savior that I serve.
Let me ask you this question today.
If your life were to end today, what would it point to?
I've asked that question of myself in recent months.
What witness would you leave behind?
What one sentence epitaph would be on your gravestone?
What would people say about your life before they moved on to other things?
And they will move on to other things very quickly.
I've actually thought of that to the degree of wanting my funeral to look a certain way
at the point in a certain direction, as you should.
Don't worry, I don't have a funeral date planned yet, just a funeral.
I want my witness, Paul said.
Any fragrance that still remains in my life, I want it to point to Christ.
If I come back to you, if I'm spared of death and I come back to you, I want it to leave
behind something that's worth leaving behind.
And dear friend, I think that's what all of us just want.
Paul says basically, make life count.
Make it count with a purpose, make it count with a meaning that in eternity will still
matter.
Because as the old line says, soon one life will be passed.
Only what's left, only what's done for Christ will last.
Only what we do in serving Him, only what He does through us will last.
Now there's some things I know now that I didn't know when I walked into that surgeon's
office.
Now I know that my thyroid cancer is often successfully treated.
Now I know that the surgeons and the doctors in Canada just often have expertise in dealing
with this.
And now I have several friends that have come to me now and they're close friends now because
they told me about their experiences and their encounters and some of them had this 20 years
ago so I'm not worried about length of life as it pertains to this.
God may take me tomorrow, I don't know.
But up front, I'm glad I didn't know any of those things.
Because I didn't want and I didn't need assurance of some medical ability, I needed to face
the reality of life and death in a way that made me think more deeply about my life and
my death.
The threat of cancer seems less serious to me right now because of those things but it
in no way diminished the encounter I have with Christ to make me think more deeply about
my why.
I know why I'm here.
Why are you here?
What's your purpose?
And I assure you if it's not clear, there is one man that can make it clear and his name
is Jesus and he will make it as clear as you'll let him make it.
And you can live the rest of your days with that kind of focus, that kind of passion,
that kind of why.
That's what I want for you.
That's what he wants for you.
In just a moment I'm going to close this in prayer and there'll be three invitations
that I make to you.
One of them is that we have decision stations at every entrance as you leave today, one
back to my right and one to my left.
Decision stations are there to provide for you someone that can converse with you about
spiritual decisions.
For example, if you're in this room today and you don't have the confidence that when
you die that you'll spend eternity with God in heaven, we want to talk to you about that
and help you get the answer to that so we can have that conversation where you can place
your trust and faith in Jesus and know that you've done that and know that he's responded.
So we invite you to stop by the decision stations.
I would also invite you to join us if you're a guest today in our guest reception room
right outside the center exit doors across the hallway.
It's a glass room.
I'll be in there.
You'll be able to see me there and I'd like to talk with you for just a few moments.
And if you're a guest today we're going to invite you to eat with us free.
We have a food truck out there and it's free to all guests and we want you to come in that
room and I'll give you the way to get that food and we want to just visit with you and
tell you about Cross City Church.
Third invite is this.
Come back next week because I'm going to answer the question, how can I live the Christian
life?
You talk about it all the time, but how can I do it?
What means are available for me to actually live for Christ, to die to old things, to
be alive to the new things that he wants.
Give me the details about how do I do that specifically, practically, and you're going
to get as practical as you can possibly imagine next Sunday morning.
How can I live this life?
Would you stand with me as we close in prayer today?
Okay while they stand, you want to do that?
Yes.
Is that right?
I'm just learning that we're going to have an impromptu baptisms in here.
Someone's come to faith and they want to be baptized right now.
I think we ought to let them do it.
What do you think?
Sometimes they put messages on the back of the screen, but I never look at them, so I
don't know.
So here we are.
All right.
We're all ready to go.
Thank you, pastor.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're so excited.
This is Jonathan.
Jonathan was setting exactly where you're setting.
We're going to grab a seat right there, right where you were setting.
And he watched the two baptisms take place and God just moved in his heart in that moment.
Jonathan had already prayed to receive Christ, had gone down a road and kind of drifted a
little bit as a lot of people do and said, you know what?
Today, today I need to be baptized today.
So he came out, met with Sharon for a little bit.
I had an opportunity to visit with him and Jonathan's here today because he wants to
follow Jesus Christ and being baptized.
Jonathan, what is your testimony?
My name is Jonathan.
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and I am not ashamed.
Amen, amen, amen.
Jonathan, because you're a professor of faith, it is my great privilege to get to baptize
you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Bear with Christ in baptism.
Raise to walk in a new way of life.
You are dismissed.
Have a wonderful Lourdes Day.