Joyfulness and God’s Sovereignty
Philippians 1:12-30
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
July 17, 2022
There is a Peanuts cartoon that is quite amusing. Linus is probably the theologian of the Peanuts characters. There is this deluge of rain and Lucy looks at the strength of the storm and says, “Boy, look it is raining, what if it floods the whole world!!!?” and Linus steps up and he says, “It will never do that, in the 9th chapter of Genesis, God promised that would never happen again and the sign of that promise is the rainbow.” Lucy displays a great smile and says, “You’ve taken a great load off my mind.” And Linus says, “Sound theology has a way of doing that.”
The phrase “The Sovereignty of God” is an important concept in Christian theology.
But it is not an idea for professional theologians to get into ivory tower and debate. It is not theoretical at all. It is a distinctive way of seeing the world that affects very practically the way we live our lives, especial during difficult times.
The idea of the sovereignty of God is the biblical metaphor of God on his throne, high king of heaven, the image of God on his throne. It’s Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah chapter six where King Uziah has died, the king of Judah and the nation’s future is called into question, but Isaiah is in a vision and he is invited into the throne room of heaven and he is able to see that even though Judah’s throne is empty, heavens throne is occupied, God is reigning, God is sovereign, says the prophet Isaiah.
The Sovereignty of God is the understanding the apostle John gained. He is in prison in the island of Patmos because a Roman emperor named Domitian ascended to the throne and was dealing out death and persecution to the Christians. John himself had been arrested and exiled to the Island of Patmos where he was no longer able to interact with his friends and his churches, but in that time on the Island he receives a vision which is the book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament. And he was afforded a glimpse into the throne of heaven like Isaiah had been and he saw that even though Domitian had occupied the throne it was the Lord who was in the throne for ever and ever reigning over the universe. God is sovereign, says John.
The sovereignty of God is the image Jeremiah uses in the potter and the clay in Jeremiah chapter eighteen. The potter takes the clay and shapes it as he wills to conform to the image he has in his mind to this vessel and if it ceases to look like what he sees in his mind, he smashes it and starts all over again. The potter is sovereign over the clay. Paul uses that same image in speaking of God as sovereign, the potter and the clay.
The sovereignty of God is the churches song, whether you notice it or not, we sing about it all of the time. We do this when we sing of songs that allude to God’s reign and God’s rule, its often in the hymns we sing because it is the way we live. I love the beautiful song about God’s creation, “This is my father’s world,” and the last stanza says…
“This is my Father’s world: O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: Why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King: let the heavens ring! God reigns; let earth be glad!”
You can hear it in so many other of our songs, from Christmas carols to contemporary music, we sing it again and again, God reigns, God rules, God is sovereign.
The idea is that contrary to the way circumstances often appear, God has not abdicated his rule or his throne, God is sovereign Lord. God has infinite capacities to take the events of the world and shape them like the potter with the clay toward his purposes. To accomplish what he attempts to accomplish, not just in one life, but in the entire universe, he is sovereign.
He is the one who took the worst thing that human beings have ever done which is saying something, because we’ve done a lot of evil. One day we took a sinless God and crucified him, nailed him to a tree outside of Jerusalem and God sovereignly took that suffering and used it to reunite a world to himself that had separated the world unto himself to forgive the sins of the world.
To grasp that understanding of God’s power and God’s involvement with his world offers a perspective of our lives and the way we see the world so that we can live differently. It is extremely practical; all sound theology is.
I don’t know if anyone has ever demonstrated the practicality of that biblical doctrine, the sovereignty of God any more clearly than the apostle Paul throughout his life. He’s writing to his friends in Philippi from what would eventually be at least a four-year imprisonment, two years in Caesarea and two years in Rome and maybe longer. And his says in Philippians 1:12, very casually:
“I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel…”
Consider this phrase: “What has happened to me.”
“What has happened to me” summarizes it, it really says something because he has a number of real difficult things in his life. But in the context of his relationship to the first readers, his friends in the city of Philippi, when he say’s “What has happened to me” he meant this:
He had been arrested in Jerusalem, in Acts chapter 21 you can read that story. He was arrested, beaten and taken into custody. There was a death plot that had organized against him where some people swore they would never eat until they assassinate Paul.
In Acts, chapter 23 he e was moved from Jerusalem for his own protection on to the coast of Caesarea. And over there in Caesarea he spent two years in prison with one Roman governor after another, refusing to grant him his freedom, to appease his Jewish leaders or just because they really did not care much about his life.
Two years in the prison of Caesarea. Finally, he appeals his case to Rome, he could do that because he was a Roman citizen and they put him on a boat and they shipped him off to Rome and on their way to Rome there was a shipwreck in which the vessel was completely destroyed, Paul barely survived and those who were with him. He’d been through that recently. Finally, he made it through Rome and when the book of Acts ends he’d been there for two years, living under house arrest when he would rather be out, traveling the world, establishing churches, visiting his friends. Four years his life had looked like this. Can you imagine!
And when he says “What has happened to me” that’s what he’s talking about. He said, “What has happened to me has resulted in the advancement of the gospel.” These facts are for Paul, just mere circumstances, they’re transparent to him, he can see through them and he can see behind them the hand of God at work. “What has happened to me” has helped me to spread the gospel, literally it has rather advanced the gospel.”
In what way is that true? Well because of what has happed to him, Paul was permitted to share the message of the gospel with Roman officials, high ranking Roman officials in Palestine. Felix, the Roman governor, he occupied the same role that Pontius Pilate occupied during Jesus’ life.
When Felix moved on there was a fellow named Festus who came along and he was the Roman governor. Paul got to share the gospel with Festus. Festus had a visitor from the Herod family, a man named Herod Agrippa and Festus said, “I want you to hear this fellow Paul that we have in prison, he’s got interesting ideas.” And so Paul got to present his story and the gospel to King Agrippa as well. Finally, he was on his way to Rome and the ship wrecked and all of the people aboard the boat for certain, thought they were going to die and Paul got to share the gospel with them and assured them that God is going to protect them and deliver them through this time.
When he finally ends up in Rome, he’s under house arrest and there was a stream of people who are coming to him to inquire about his life and he was able to preach the gospel to them. The last word in the book of is a Greek word. It is an adverb, you don’t normally end a sentence with adverbs, but it is the word “unhindering.” He was preaching the gospel “unhindering” under house arrest.
Not only that, when he’s in Rome, he tells the Philippians that because he’s been in prison he’s got this Roman guards that are with him. Every so often the shift changes and guards are with him. They have to listen to every word he says. We’re not really sure who the real prisoner is in this case. They’re a captive audience for him and they are taking the message they are hearing from Paul and sharing it among what’s called the praetorian guard, the imperial guard. We hear in Philippians four, verse twenty-two, that even those in Caesar’s household have heard the gospel because of Paul’s imprisonment.
And in addition to that, he says other believers in Rome have been embolden by Paul’s testimony to preach the gospel more vigorously.
So he looks around and he says, “All these things that have happened to me have actually served to advance the gospel, to take it into places that it might never had gone before and for that, Paul says, he rejoices.
Because of his imprisonment, the gospel reached these new places.
For Paul, that mattered more than his circumstances because that is the thing to which he is devoted.
Notices what he says in Philippians 1:18:
“What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.”
In verse 21: “For me living is Christ and dying is gain.”
This is a really important perspective because the rest I am going to tell you about the sovereignty of God doesn’t make any sense unless this is where are hearts are. If we are most concerned about our own comfort, if we are most concerned about our own advancement, if our ambitions are selfish ambitions to advance ourselves in the world, the sovereignty of God is not a doctrine that will provide any kind of practical comfort to us.
But if like Paul, our lives are committed to following Christ, serving Christ, obeying Christ, then what matters most of all is God’s purpose being forwarded by what is taking place. If that’s the case, my life matters little, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
What does it matter? Only that Christ is proclaimed. That’s Paul’s perspective and out of that comes this understanding of the sovereignty to God. With confidence in God’s sovereignty, and the focus of life on service to Christ, Paul experiences this surprising joy in the midst of these uncomfortable circumstances. That’s the practical outcome for someone committed to Christ with confidence in the sovereignty of God.
Now you and I are clearly not first century apostles, but like Paul, we are followers of Jesus Christ and our lives are devoted to Christ’s purposes in this world; we are both as individuals and church are devoted to that and we believe that God is sovereign over human history and so it’s possible for us to live in that same unexpected joy as he did. “I rejoice and I will continue to rejoice” he says as God’s purposes advance.
Most of us have some experiences in our lives that when we look back through the rearview mirror, see them in retrospect, we can see in ways which God was orchestrating things in ways we didn’t notice when we were right in the middle of it but we can see them over our shoulders. That’s good, we see God working out his purposes in our lives that way. But I have to tell you that it is much harder when the trial or the difficulty, the suffering or the chaos is right on top of us. It is a little bit difficult at times to see the hand of God and rejoice in that. The trial themselves are like clouds that cover the sun and we can’t see beyond that at times.
But it is walking by faith, not walking by sight that comes into play here. The same God who took care of things in the past and show himself to be sovereign we can now see. We believe that He is doing a special work now whether we can see it or not.
I heard the story of an economist that address the issues of recession pending with a bunch of business leaders. And she got before them and she took a white sheet of paper and she put a black dot in the middle of it and she held it up to them and she said to the person in the front row, “What do you see?” and he said, “I see a black dot.” She asked one person after another, “What do you see?” and they all said the same thing. They said, “I see a black dot.” She said, “All of you see a black dot, none of you saw the big white sheet of paper. That’s the end of my speech,” she said.
Too often, out of pain, or out of fear or out of confusion, we see one small thing and are incapable of seeing the bigger picture of God’s hand at work around us.
What I’d like to suggest, with Paul being our guide, where do you look to see the hand of God at work? Where do we look to observe God’s sovereignty at work about us in the midst of trials? We might think of it as we ask some questions such as:
Where are God’s purposes being advances by these circumstances? Okay, there are not pleasant circumstances, but can I ask where are God’s purposes and how are they being advanced? Will this circumstance bring my life in contact with other people I would ordinarily not want to be in contact with? They may be doctors or nurses, they may be healthcare workers, they may be law enforcement officers, they may be any kind of people you can imagine.
Our circumstances often take us to be in contact with folks that we wouldn’t ordinarily be in contact with. Those are paths we had not planned to take, those are people that we did not plan to meet. But many of those people are people in who’s God is already at work. And in a sense God has allowed our lives to intersect their lives.
That’s sovereignty that God’s takes suffering and struggles and brings us together so that witness may be borne there in those lives.
The question is, can we keep our focus on the fact that even in the midst of our trials we are Christs ministers, Christ’s voices? Will my demeanor, my response to my circumstances, my response to those who are crossing my path, will my words be viewed by those people as reflective of Christ or not? Will my response encourage others? That’s a good question to ask. Where, in the midst of these circumstances is the opportunity for the gospel to be advances?
Ron Janka was youth pastor at a church. He never met a stranger. A joyful person, positive, upbeat, genuine. He was diagnosed with Lou Garret’s disease and yet he was confident. His attitude was, “God is going to heal me or he is going to use this.” He went through several years and gradually it took him down, and down, and down.
By the time he was near the end of his life, Ron had a routine where every morning he would have his hospice nurse to play a song for him by a Christian recording artist named, Mathew West. The song was called “Strong Enough” and he would listen to that every day. And then he decided he would contact Mathew West so he emailed him and told him about his routine and told him how helpful this song had been to his life and how it was encouraging. Well, in a short time Matthew West was intrigued by this story and they made arrangements to meet on Zoom and they had a terrific conversation.
This is what Matthew West, the recording artist said;
“When I got the Zoom call I could just tell there was something different about him. Here he was in hospice care yet he seemed to have peace on the call. He spent the entire time encouraging me. I was so moved by that. We sang together and we talked, it was a very special interaction. Little did Ron know that at that point I was actually really struggling in my own life. I was really discouraged. We all know what 2020 was like for us. Most people were hurting in 2020 and I was no different.
My tour bus was parked, I was trying to keep my family’s spirit high, I was trying to take care of all of my employees, so I was pretty discouraged. And here’s a guy like Ron on a Zoom call encouraging me. I just couldn’t shake the thought that he was spending some of his last words, his last minutes on earth with someone like me, a complete stranger. He was seeing beyond his own need to help encourage me, that really moved me, I’ll never forget it.
Now when you get home, get a box of Kleenex and on your computer search for a song “Wonderful Life,” a song that Matthew West wrote and the story of Ron is in the video, it is a very powerful testimony. But here is the story from Ron, asking,
“How will God use this?” What was important to Ron was Christ’s purposes, not being healed from Lou Garret’s.
Our situations are a little less extreme, not always, but it is a good question to ask, “Where are God’s purposes being advanced by the circumstances I am encountering today?”