This is Church of the Resurrection in Whedon,
Illinois.
This week's sermon is by Bishop Stuart Ruck
and is part three of Free to Sacrifice,
a series on Philippians.
I was gathered around a huge bonfire many,
many years ago in the upper peninsula of
Michigan.
I was part of a larger Christian camp
and I had students that I had been
pastoring and reaching out to from the University
of Illinois at Chicago and we were now
doing kind of a special week together up
in the UP of Michigan.
To my right was a former gangbanger, Puerto
Rican from Humboldt Park in Chicago who had
just made a decision to become a follower
of Jesus.
Over here was a young African-American sister.
She had just that day for her first
time in her life seen a live deer
and was so afraid by that from her
city experience that she was hoping to go
home that day and I talked her out
of it.
It was new for her.
Latina over here who will be leading us
in beautiful worship in a few minutes.
After that time of beautiful worship, I didn't
know it then, we would enter into a
massive conflict, all of us.
A kind of major bonfire argument that was
fueled by significant cross-cultural differences, immaturities on
all of our parts, and the challenge of
working in an environment with people that were
very new to the faith, people that were
still choosing Jesus, and like I mentioned, profoundly
different cultures.
I would again and again in those five
years of serving at the University of Illinois
at Chicago in the city, scratch my head
at moments of incredible joy, these unbelievable breakthroughs
in people's lives, as well as tedious, complicated
conflicts.
I would scratch my head again and again
and I would say to myself, how did
I get here?
How did I find myself here?
My background would not naturally lead toward this
situation and opportunity.
I stayed in school.
I went to a private college.
I grew up in Indiana.
Here I am in one of the major
cities of the world, profoundly multi-ethnic opportunities.
I would scratch my head and I would
say, how did I get here?
Do you ever scratch your head and say
to yourself, how did I get here?
Dishes are stacked up at the sink, 9
.30 at night.
How did I get here in this family
with all these people that eat so much
and then make so many dirty dishes?
Hearts beating before you go in for your
annual review with your boss.
You're not sure how it's going to go.
How did I get here in this job?
You're a student perhaps looking and calculating that
even if you never slept until Christmas break,
you could not get all the work done
that's ahead of you.
How did I get here?
What am I doing here with all this
pressure and work?
Do you ever scratch your head and wonder
that how did I get here?
When I asked that question in those days
after that bonfire, I could confidently say in
answer to that question, Jesus sent me here.
That's how I got here.
I was clear on that.
I wasn't clear about a lot of things,
but I was clear on that.
Jesus sent me here.
He sent me to sacrifice my energy, sacrifice
my hours, sacrifice the best that I had.
He sent me here to sacrifice.
It is so important in the sacrificial Jesus
life that every follower of Jesus is called
to live, that you are clear how you
got there.
That you are clear that Jesus has sent
you.
Jesus has called you.
Jesus has asked you to come into a
certain place, a job, a family situation, a
neighborhood, a roommate dynamic, a classroom.
You've been called there by Jesus.
This was not of your own doing.
You're not actually running your own life.
We have two profiles in sending, two profiles
in sacrifice, and these beautiful little vignettes around
a person named Timothy and a person named
Epaphroditus.
I titled the sermon originally Two Sons of
Sacrifice.
I changed that title, Sent to Sacrifice, because
as we're teaching about the call of the
sacrificial life, I want you to understand that
the sacrificial life most often starts with a
sending.
That the way that the sacrificial life actually
works out and the way that it actually
gets catalyzed and what it's connected to, the
sacrificial life is connected to Jesus sending you.
I hope this will be clear.
I hope this will be concrete as you're
called to live the sacrificial life in Jesus.
I hope, I hope in this Bible time
you'll become freer to sacrifice.
I hope if you're not a believer yet,
you'll go, okay, wow, this is about sacrificing
your life?
That's what followers of Jesus do?
If you walk away as a not yet
believer, that's exactly what I'm talking about, and
I hope it gets clear.
Okay, first question we've already touched on.
Key question, where has Jesus sent you to
sacrifice?
Where is Jesus sending you, preparing you to
sacrifice?
First key question.
Second question, are you willing to get gritty?
And gritty could be a kind of synonym
for sacrifice.
I just say it so much, these sermons,
that I needed another word.
Maybe something a little more vivid.
Are you willing to get gritty?
You can get gritty Timothy.
You can get gritty Epaphroditus.
They were gritty in two different ways.
I don't want you to think that sending
always has to do with being sent to
a different location, although it might.
But I do want you to understand that
to live the way of Jesus is to
live the way of him who was sent,
our Lord himself, and to live as one
who is sent, you in your life.
Where has Jesus sent you?
Look with me, Philippians 2, you guys, verse
19, I hope in the Lord Jesus to
send Timothy.
Okay, when we study the Bible, it's like
throwing a rock in a pond, and you
start where the rock hits, which is the
text we have right here, Philippians 2.
Okay, so that's our rock, okay?
But then you know, ripples go out.
So when you study the Bible, you want
to let your ripples go out.
You want to understand what are the larger
contextual ripples that are going out to understand
what's happening within this passage.
So there's some things that are happening.
First of all, one of the first ripples
we get is that this is actually travel
plans.
This is Paul writing a letter.
He's writing a letter to a church that,
by the way, he started because he was
sent there.
He didn't send himself to Philippi.
He didn't say, you know what, I'm going
to go to Philippi.
I mean, you could say that and be
in accordance with God's will, but in this
case, it was radical.
He was going somewhere else, and he had
a vision.
He had like a waking dream where a
man from Macedonia, where Philippi is located, came
and said, come here and help us.
When Paul got into all kinds of challenges
in Philippi and a lot of joys, he
could look back and say, well, I know
that I'm supposed to be here because Jesus
sent me through that crazy man in that
Macedonian vision moment.
So this letter actually comes out of one
who's been sent.
That's like the genesis of this letter.
But here we're dealing with travel plans.
But Paul says, even dealing with travel plans,
I hope in the Lord to send Timothy.
For Paul, even travel plans can have a
gospel center.
This guy is crazy.
I hope you read enough of Paul for
him to bother you.
I hope you've read enough of Paul and
taken him seriously enough for him to irk
you.
You should be bothered by Paul at times.
I mean, is he just so spiritual?
I can't just work out where Timothy is
going in power.
I have to say, in the Lord.
Is he just one of those overly spiritualized
persons?
Yes.
If spiritualized means packed with the Holy Spirit,
which is the meaning of the word in
the New Testament, spiritual is for the spirit,
a spirit person.
He is a full of the spirit person
who is always thinking about the gospel.
What's the gospel?
The gospel is the unbelievable news that Jesus
has been sent to earth by the Father
to die, resurrect, to save us from our
sins so we can be used and be
sent to others.
That's the gospel.
Jesus died and was resurrected, sent to earth
by the Father to save us from our
sins.
And Paul is bringing up the gospel in
travel plans.
I hope in the Lord Jesus to send.
Travel plans.
Okay, next ripple out.
Send.
Words used four times.
Look for repeated words when you're doing your
Bible study because it helps us to get
an idea of what's important to the writer.
He uses the word send four times.
Another layer out.
Well, we know that send is a really
important word for those who follow Jesus in
his way.
As a matter of fact, one of the
very first things Jesus said after he resurrected,
one of the very first words that came
out of his mouth, of all the words
he could have said after he resurrected, he
met with his followers.
He was resurrected.
He looks at them in John chapter 20,
verse 21, and he says, As the Father
has sent me, so send.
Emphasis on send.
So send I you.
So send.
That word there, send, in John 20, 21,
is the exact same word here.
I hope in the Lord to send Timothy.
I have found it necessary to send you
Epaphroditus.
Where has God sent you?
The first thing you must be clear on
is that being sent is a gift.
Gifts and grace are synonymous in the New
Testament.
It's a grace.
To be sent is a gift.
Here's why.
You can't, or at least you shouldn't, give
yourself a gift.
Gifts come from others.
They're initiated from someone else who has a
love, a care, a concern for you.
That's the nature of a grace.
That's the nature of a gift.
You don't send yourselves.
Jesus sends you, for he himself was sent
by the Father.
When you are sent, you are sent with
Jesus and from Jesus, who himself is a
sent one.
Indeed, at the very heart of the character
of who God is, is that he is
a sending God who sends his Son to
this earth.
His Son then sends those who would follow
him to this earth for the purpose of
sacrificing their lives as Jesus himself sacrificed his
life.
The cross is so many things, but one
thing it is, be certain, it is a
majestic picture of the God who sends to
rescue.
It's a majestic picture of the God who
sends his own Son to rescue.
So sending is really important in understanding what
it means to live a gospel life, a
kingdom life.
You are those who have been sent by
him who was sent by the Father.
It's a gift.
It's a grace.
You don't give a gift to yourself.
I mean, unless you get to a pathetic
place in your marriage.
This is happening to Catherine and me more
and more, where it's like, well, you know,
it's our anniversary.
I'd kind of like this.
You'd kind of like that.
Just get it for yourself and just call
it a gift.
It's just pathetic, isn't it?
Now, Catherine's going to say that didn't happen
this anniversary.
No, it probably didn't.
I'm not sure we even gave each other
a gift this anniversary.
But it's pathetic to give yourself a gift.
When you're in that position of giving yourself
a gift, you have to stop back and
go, how did I get here?
Right?
No, no, no, no, no.
Being sent is a gift from Jesus.
It's a grace.
This is why this is important.
If you have a heart to sacrifice, here's
where your temptation will be.
To think that in your sacrificial life as
a teacher or a mom or a dad,
a celibate, single, whatever it might be, that
you're winning with God.
You're winning with God.
You'll sacrifice.
You'll sacrifice as long as you can keep
a sense of, I'm winning with God.
I'm actually impressing God.
We don't sacrifice to win with God.
We sacrifice to be on the way with
God, for he is a sending God.
We don't sacrifice to win with God.
If you get there, you can easily slip
into what's called works righteousness.
You're trying to earn your place with God.
He knows you way too well for that.
He knows that some of those sacrifices that
you made were driven by a selfishness to
be recognized as a highly sacrificial person.
He knows that.
He knows how complex the human heart is
and how dark it can be.
You will never win your way with God
through a profoundly sacrificial life.
Oh, it's so much better.
You will enter into the way with God.
As the Father has sent me, so send
I you.
You've been sent in to sacrifice to live
with Jesus, to be with Jesus.
That's the gift of living a sacrificial life.
It's Jesus.
It starts with Jesus.
It ends with Jesus.
Back to my first sermon a few weeks
ago, Jesus always, to live Christ, to die,
to sacrifice, gain.
That's what Paul's thinking about.
That's how we live lives of free sacrifice.
Where has Jesus sent you?
To live a sacrificial life.
Are you clear on that?
You may need to discern your sending.
You may need help from other followers of
Jesus to discern your sending.
Maybe you're not clear you've been sent.
Maybe you're not sure that where you are
right now is the place where you've been
sent.
Maybe there's a sending coming and you need
discernment about where you're being sent from the
Lord Jesus.
Be assured this is the heart of God,
the heart of the character of God.
He will bring you through the church, through
the Bible, through the ministry of the Holy
Spirit, clarity about being sent.
The Christian life is not just circumstantial.
You don't just live a circumstantial life where
you move from one circumstance to another.
You don't live a status quo life.
That doesn't say you don't live a life
of peace or a life of in the
Lord being settled in the Lord, but you
live a life of being sent.
Oh yes, the Lord saves us, but he
also sends us.
Here's the challenge when we live the life
of being sent to sacrifice is that we
can lose our love.
We can lose our love for those to
whom we've been called.
You know what Paul says earlier in the
passages that we read?
Do all things without grumbling or disputing that
you may be blameless and innocent.
What's happening?
What happens is that we grumble and we
dispute.
We lose our love for those that we're
called to.
If losing your love is too intense, we
lose our like.
I'm not saying you don't love your kids
anymore, but you may not like them very
much right now, but you're called to them.
You may not like your students if you're
a teacher very much right now.
You may not like your teacher very much
if you're a student right now.
You may actually have lost your like.
You may have lost your love.
You may have forgotten that the reason that
you're here is because Jesus has sent you
and he's calling you to an ever-renewing
call to yet again love those you're sent
to, serve those you're sent to.
Don't, Paul is saying implicitly, not explicitly, don't
lose your love.
Complaining is very likely a sign that you're
losing your love.
You've lost your sending context.
You think you're just living circumstantially and your
circumstances are really hard.
Well, they may be really hard, but the
sending understanding will help you zoom out to
go, now this is a Jesus thing.
This was a Jesus call.
I'm in this marriage called by Jesus.
I've given you this quote before.
I'm going to give you it again because
I found it so important.
It comes from one of the great, great
Christian thinkers, Augustine of Hippo, African bishop.
He says this about the life of sacrifice.
The greater one's love is, the easier the
work.
The greater one's love is, the greater your
capacity to live in Jesus who sent you
to begin with, the easier the work.
I know that many of you live really
difficult, sacrificial lives.
If you're not living one now, you're going
to at some point.
It's going to come.
And you will hit points where you will
think, I cannot do this anymore.
I can't work at this job anymore, though
Jesus has called me.
I can't stay in this country anymore, though
Jesus has called me.
I can't handle this family situation, even though
Jesus has called me.
I know he's called me.
Your choice in those points is to increase
your love for the gift of Jesus.
Are you willing to get gritty?
Sending is, by its very nature, biblically understanding
it, incarnational.
We're going to do a four-week series,
by the way, on the incarnation during Advent.
I'm very excited about an exploration of John
chapter 1 together, coming soon.
But incarnation is necessarily gritty.
Our Lord, Jesus, is fully human.
Skin, organs, hair, a brain.
In ancient Near East first century life, very
gritty.
He got tired.
He was hungry.
It was gritty living.
That is the heart of being sent.
You're not sent into a theoretically amazing love
situation where you see yourself as this unbelievably
impressive icon of sacrifice.
You're sent into grit, which is often very
daily, even hourly.
Are you willing to get gritty?
There's a Timothy gritty.
I'm from Rome to Philippi.
But it is time in Rome where Paul's
in prison.
Here's what's happening.
We don't know all the details, but we
know what happened for ancient Near Eastern prisoners.
There were no meals provided for you.
You would starve, were there not those who
would care for you.
There was no medical care.
Prison was an absolute and utter devastation, unless
someone was sent to care for you, as
Timothy had been.
What is Timothy primarily doing?
He's probably not primarily preaching the gospel on
the street corners of Rome at this point,
or planting a church.
He is primarily doing what?
Cooking meals and washing dishes.
Do you ever just wonder, like, why so
many meals in life?
If you don't wonder that, you don't cook
for people.
So many meals.
I mean, like, the way we've handled it
at the Ruck House is we just all
hate lunch.
If you just, like, hate lunch, at least
you, like, have only two to worry about.
Breakfast, lovely, begins the day.
Dinner, kind of a romance with dinner, it's
wonderful.
But lunch, we hate lunch.
You starve at our house.
I mean, like, we're looking for food under
the table.
It's not true.
I'm going to get so much trouble with
Catherine.
I should have preached that at the 830,
not the 1030.
So many meals.
So many dishes.
That's what Timothy is doing.
There's a kind of domestic grittiness to Timothy's
call.
Paul calls him my son.
There's like this familial relationship where, like a
son, he is caring for his spiritual father.
He's picking up the vomit after his spiritual
father is sick because of the conditions in
the prison.
We can only assume.
There's a gritty sending that so many of
us are called to, and we think that's
just life.
That's just circumstances.
That's just a difficulty.
No, that could be the gospel if you're
sent to it.
That's the gospel work of a mother or
a father or a brother or a sister
or someone caring for an ancient parent.
Kath and I had a neighborhood mystery solved
this week.
We'd be up early on our front porch,
and every morning around 6, 15 a.m.,
we'd see one of our neighbors pull into
his driveway, pull in after being gone.
And we'd say, where has he been?
He doesn't have a night shift.
Where has he been all night?
We don't know.
And this guy was walking to my car,
and that neighbor was across the street, and
I just heard that his mom had passed.
And I said, hey, I just heard your
mom passed.
I'm so sorry.
He never walks across the street.
He walked across the street.
He stood right in front of me.
I said, yeah.
Last couple of days of my mom's life,
she hated to sleep by herself in her
house.
So I'd go over there every night, sleep
in the house with her, come here early
in the morning, shower, and then go to
work.
It's gritty.
It's Timothy's sacrifice.
He was called into that.
Sermon to his mom.
Be ennobled.
Be empowered, if you recall, to Timothy Grit.
Sacrifice.
Remember, you're sent.
Epaphroditus Grit.
There's a different feel to Epaphroditus.
Timothy's, clearly, just his one service after another.
Epaphroditus is not called son, interestingly enough, although
perhaps Paul would have viewed him as such,
but he calls him brother, fellow worker, fellow
soldier.
And he says, and you're Philippi's messenger and
minister to my need.
We learned that he was ill, near to
death, verse 27.
Paul says, so receive Epaphroditus in the Lord
with all joy and honor such men.
For he only died for the work of
Christ, seeking, risking his life to complete what
was lacking in service to me.
This kind of sending sacrificial grit is one
in which there is higher risk, higher physical
risk, very likely.
To even travel in the ancient Near East
was a high risk proposition.
You didn't get in a plane, land in
Rome, and make your way to the prison
through an Uber.
You didn't do that, right?
High risk from bandits.
High risk from disease.
Perhaps he had a disease amongst the many
diseases that would have proliferated through an ancient
Near Eastern prison.
This Epaphroditus grit had to do with risking
his life on behalf of the church who
sent him.
They couldn't all go, Philippi couldn't all go
to be with Paul, so they raised someone
up from within them, and they sent him
on their behalf.
He represented Philippi to Paul.
And how much that deeply meant to Paul,
for he loved Philippi so deeply.
Note, by the way, I can't do much
on this, the supernatural.
God has mercy, verse 27, on Epaphroditus in
his illness.
We don't get more detail.
Some commentators wonder, was there a laying on
of hands?
Was there a word of healing, a ministry
of healing?
We don't know exactly how Epaphroditus was healed,
but we know that Paul viewed it as
supernatural.
That when we are sent, and sent in
the high risk situations, as well as Timothy
grit situations, the presence of the supernatural, the
presence of the power of Jesus, who himself
has been sent, and is there with us
in our sending, is there.
But indeed in Epaphroditus, we see somebody who's
gone cross culturally from his own city to
another city.
He's gone with high risk.
Let's be clear that the work of global
mission is still the work of the church.
That for so long, global missionaries were perhaps
wrongly idolized in some ways within local churches.
But let me be assuring to you that
we no longer have that danger or fear.
We have perhaps forgotten the urgency of global
mission.
And that there are people who are called
on our behalf, when we can't go, to
go places we will never go.
Because they're gritty Epaphroditus callings.
They're called to go cross culturally.
They're called to go into great risk and
physical risk.
I remember asking a long-term global missionary
who was doing a sabbatical here at resurrection.
He's getting ready to prepare to go back
to his home country.
Well, leaving his home country, going to the
country.
He's been called to a mission.
And I said to him, how are you
feeling about it?
He said, I wake up every night at
4 a.m. terrified.
That's how I feel.
I wake up every night at 4 a
.m. terrified.
Honor such men.
Honor such women.
And we do.
And we're very committed at resurrection to the
work of global mission, short-term, long-term,
partnership.
But to those who go on our behalf,
Epaphroditus did.
So we have to be able to say
both things in one sermon.
Let's be of the Timothy grit that most
of us are called to.
But not at the exclusion of the Epaphroditus
grit.
We just sent out from our lovely church
community, Scott and Marissa Cunningham to go to
Madison, Wisconsin.
I wish you could have seen their faces
when Calvin spent the evening with them two
nights before they were to leave.
Now, they were resolute, knowing they were, they
knew they were called.
But they were very sobered.
Two young boys, brand new city, no guarantee
of a financial future.
People just don't do stuff like that unless
they're sent by Jesus, who was sent by
the Father.
We asked Scott, Marissa, what else can we
do for you guys?
How else can we serve you?
We're so blessed that you're going on our
behalf to Madison.
Scott just said, man, I just want res
folk there.
We just need res folk on this team.
So I'm just bringing that to you as
one application of this sermon.
I'm asking those of you who may be
sent by Jesus to go to Madison, to
go to Madison, Wisconsin.
There may be some of you who are
being stirred to an almost cultural, perhaps to
Madison.
How did you get here?
What are you doing?
Your answer can be clear and resolute and
confident.
I'm here because Jesus has sent me to
sacrifice my life.
I'm sacrificing like a Timothy.
I'm sacrificing like an Epaphroditus.
As the Father has sent me, Jesus said,
so send I you.
In the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Thanks for listening.
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