Being Stars Against the Dark Night
Philippians 2:12-18
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
September 4 2022
Joe Delaney would not consider himself a believer, he wasn’t even sure there was a God. He wasn’t raised going to church. He did not have much exposure to religion of any sort and one hot, humid, July day in Cincinnati he was in his backyard, playing catch with his eight-year-old son Jerod. They were throwing the ball back and forth and they were talking about all kinds of things, how the Cincinnati Reds were doing, about Jerod’s school, about things going on in their lives and then there was a period of silence as they tossed the ball back and forth. And Jerod broke it with a question that really shook his dad, he said, “Dad, is there a God?”
Joe said that at that moment he felt like he’d moved from the back yard of Sandlot games to the major leagues. He suddenly had to give an answer to that he had not deeply thought about, he didn’t know to answer it or keep quiet. He said it was like losing a ball in the sun and you did not know if to move or stand where you are, he felt kind of paralyzed.
And finally, he decided that he would opt for honesty and he said to his little boy, “I don’t know Jerod.” Jerod wasn’t put off by his Dad’s agnosticism, he started probing a little deeper and so he said, “Dad, if there is a God, how would you know it?” and Joe said, “Jerod, I really don’t have any idea, I only went to church a couple of times my whole life and I have not thought a whole lot about that kind of stuff, I really don’t know a lot about those kinds of things.
And they went back and forth, throwing the ball. Suddenly, Jerod stopped and threw his glove down and said, “I’ll be right back, Dad” and he ran into the house and came back with this silver Mylar balloon inflated with helium that he got at the circus a couple of days before and a little index card and a pen and he knelt down on the ground and started writing. And his Dad said, “Jerod, what are you doing?” and he said, “I’m sending a prayer to God airmail” and before his dad could protest, Jerod wrote, “Dear God, if you are real and if you are there, send people who know you to Dad and me.”
Joe kept his mouth shut and watched as Jerrod released the balloon and went on up to the blue sky and kind of disappear in the distance.
Paul wrote to his friends in Philippi these words, in Philippians 2:12-18
12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
13 for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
14 Do all things without murmuring and arguing,
15 so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.
16 It is by your holding fast to the word of life that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labour in vain.
17 But even if I am being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you—
18 and in the same way you also must be glad and rejoice with me.
Paul is urging his friends in Philippi to live in such a way with God and with one another that they develop a testimony to the world, what might be called a testimony of contrast.
Where they stand out from the darkness of the world like stars in the night. This testimony is not a holier than thou kind of morality, which is the way that many in our Christian culture for many decades they thought they needed to do it. The way they stand out from the world was being odd for God or condemning the world’s behavior or any one of a set of things to try to set ourselves apart from the world around us and that’s not what Paul is calling them to do.
He’s calling them to live a life, a testimony of contrast, like starts against the dark night. That light stands out against this crooked and perverse generation which is lived out, he says in verses 15 and 16, and that’s not only called to contrast itself with the darkness of the world, it’s called to do what light does in the darkness, that is to transform the darkness into light.
In Ephesians 5:6, Paul told his friends in Ephesus that they were children of the light. They used to be part of the darkness, but now they are no longer, but they are children of the light and they needed to live as children of the light, to have an influence in the world.
Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the light of the world and nobody lights a lamp or a candle and puts it under a bushel, a jug and hides the light. Rather the light shines out and is trying to penetrate the darkness and make a difference in the world. Paul is calling his friends to live toward a testimony of contrast
How does a church, how do we as individuals, as believers of Christ, develop a testimony of contrast? How do we effectively stand out against the world? Paul’s words are very helpful in understanding something about that. It is more simple than we might imagine to live out. We’re urged to develop a testimony of contrast to the world, by using words regularly that give life.
This is route to the transformation of our lives. That road, that pathway of the transformation run right through our heart, the core of our being, our will, our spirit, our inner person, as the Scripture calls it. That’s the route to transformation that is from the inside out.
How do we know it’s happening? How do we know that our life is changing in any way? One way of learning that is by listening to our own words. Because what we say, how we say it, and how we talk about things, reveals what’s going on in the inside. Jesus, said this, he taught us this in Matthew chapter twelve, beginning in verse thirty-three, he said,
33 ‘Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.
34 You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
35 The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure.
36 I tell you, on the day of judgement you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; 37 for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.’
Jesus said, the heart reveals itself in the way the mouth speaks. We talk about what’s in our heart. We express the nature of our hearts through the way we speak to one another. The things we say, the things we talk about. Our words reveal the heart, that’s Jesus who said that.
Gentle hearts speak gentle words, kind heart, speak kind words. Content hearts speak grateful words. Joyful hearts speak joyful words. And in this passage Paul address two behaviors that need to be addressed in order for us to be developing a testimony that contrasts to the world about us.
Today, we’re focusing on the first idea.
He says, “Do all things without murmuring,” and “do all things without arguing.”
When he says do all things without murmuring, he uses a really ugly word in Greek. It’s found in Acts chapter six when the widows there among the Greeks were being neglected in the distribution of food in that early Jerusalem Church. Luke, telling that story says, “there arouse among us a “gagusman,” isn’t that an ugly word. A grumbling, a complaining, a murmuring. He says do everything without a “gagusman,” without murmuring.
Back in the wilderness one of the sins that the people of God found themselves committing regularly as they interacted with God was they murmured against God, they murmured against Moses, they complained, things were not fitting. Paul says, “You want to stand out in the world, do all things without murmuring, without complaining and he says, “Do all things without arguing.
Grumbling never made anyone more than Christ, did it?”
Have you found a passage anywhere in the New Testament where Jesus was complaining and murmuring? It never made it. Grumbling is a preoccupation with our own posture, that’s what it is. It is a demanding task, “I want things my way!” and when they are not my way, we complain and we grumble.
Paul says, “You want to stand out from the world, stop that.” Learn not to grumble. And arguing never made anyone more like Christ. It is a preoccupation with my own opinion, my own wants, my own need to be right so we argue until the other person agrees that we’re right and it never made anyone like Christ.
Suppose we do everything without murmuring, without arguing. He’s calling us to live out with a different set of questions than the ones lived out by the world around us. Our world is preoccupied with its own comfort, its own agenda, its own self-interests, its own protections, defending its own turf. That’s what preoccupies the world around us. And Paul says, “You want to stand out like stars against the dark background, do everything with our complaining, without arguing. Because those words indicate what is going on in our hearts.
It’s everywhere, it’s in the political confusion of our nation. It’s in our community, in our homes, that argue and complaining, preoccupation with our own comfort, preoccupation with our own agenda and our need to be right, it permeates everything and Paul says, “Why don’t you just let go of that and shine like starts against the darkness?”
When we join in with that behavior, with our own complaints, with our own arguments, we blend into the world perfectly. We become just like it, we bow to its agenda and we adopt its ways.
Consider this picture that was taken some time ago. It is a picture of a moth; can you see it? Maybe this will help.
This moth blends in perfectly against the background of that old oak tree.
And when we murmur and complain, we become camouflaged and our Christian testimony disappears as it blends in with the world around us, our distinctiveness cannot be discerned. We look and sound just like the world around us that does not know Christ and we lose our testimony. Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth. If the salt can somehow lose its saltiness, it would be useless and when Christians blend in with the rest of the world by living with the same behaviors, the same agenda, rather than something distinctive, we as salt have lost its saltiness.
Paul’s challenge to us is, “Pay attention to your words and to our behavior because our spiritual destiny depends on this. We are destined, in God’s plan, to be made into the image of Christ, to become Christ like, to become spiritually matured. What he says it to be blameless, children of God, innocent, without blemish. And when we learn to live without demanding our own comfort and without insisting on our own preferences, then God uses that to change us and it shows up in our words.
We learn to live like Christ. It says in just a few verses earlier ad we read in recent days,
Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was[a] in Christ Jesus,
And as a result, when we start living that way, we come out of hiding.
You’ve seen these images in recent days, coming back from the James Webb Telescope, this beautiful picture of the grandeur of God’s creation. Well, it is also a grand expression of the grace and goodness and power of God when its children, when you and I, stand out like stars, against the darkness of the universe, the darkness of the world.
What would be the impact, you think, in our hearts, the way we are inside, if we went a whole week without arguing or complaining? What if we did it for a month, I mean none. What if we did it for a year? What would be the impact on the kind of person we’re becoming if we let go of our own need for our comfort, our own need for our own preferences and learn to live without murmuring or complaining. When our words give life, then we stand out against the world whose words are constantly taking others down.
The Psalmist prayed, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you” (Psalm 19:14). This is the word of the Lord.