Transcript
The Lord sets the prisoners free. The Lord restores the sight of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord will reign forever. Thy God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord. Indeed, praise the Lord. Come, let us worship God.
[music] ...
Three of the candles in our wreath are purple, a royal color. But it is also the color of humility and penance, setting the mood for the coming of the King. But today the purple gives way to rose. This candle symbolizes the joy of the
shepherds in hearing the angels' glad tidings of the Savior's birth. The shepherds are best remembered because they went out to share the Lord. And we too are called to share the Lord and in all things to glorify him. As the light in our wreath grows, let it remind us of how Jesus declared, The first who went out with that light were those lonely shepherds. Let us think of them as we sing and as we light the
third candle in our head. Amen. Amen. Amen. Two brief but important announcements. One is that tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 here in the chancel there will be a service of intercession for Mrs. McCord and for Dr. McCord. And you are invited to participate. And tomorrow evening here in the chapel at 7:30, the beautiful Christmas readings and carols by our choirs. And I certainly hope that you, in the midst of what I know is a very
busy time, can find an hour to come and share in that service and enjoy the beauty of the hour together. Here now the word of God as it is written in the letter of Paul to the Philippians, the first chapter, reading from the third verse. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you. Always in every prayer of mine for you, all making my prayer with joy. Thankful for your partnership in the gospel from the
first day until now. And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel thus about you all, because I hold you in my heart. For you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with
the affection of Jesus Christ. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Let the good news come now, our Father,
not only in word but in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full assurance, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. One night we were watching the Dick Cavett show on television. His guest was Germaine Greer. She was introduced as an eccentric, which may be the understatement of the year. Just how eccentric she is came out in her quip about being a faithful Roman Catholic who does not believe in God. You see, Germaine Greer believes the universe
should be run democratically, and that precludes a supreme being who is Lord and Master of us all. But beneath her flippancy, a deeper concern was also evident. At one point she exclaimed, if there is a God out there, why doesn't he do something? What bothers her, in other words, is what bothers many sensitive and thinking people. How can we believe in a God of justice and love when the world in which we live is so short
of both? How do we square our faith in a righteous God with our experiences of suffering in God's world? The questions are as old as the hills and as new as the morning newspaper. Moreover, they are questions which believers cannot evade. The Apostle Paul speaks to these issues in his letter to the Philippians. He answers Germaine Greer by claiming God is doing something about his world. You see, for Paul, the world is not an accident, but
a creation. And creation implies a purpose. God the Creator is not aimless. He may create the world out of nothing, but he does not create it for nothing. Paul's God is the one who pursues his purpose for the world. The Creator is the Redeemer who works toward the completion of his original plan. And in that completion, the love and the justice of God will be vindicated. Paul was confident of that, and in this mood he declares
to the Philippians, I am sure, I am confident that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. God's work is evident to Paul in the faith of the church at Philippi. His work is good because it serves his purpose. And that purpose touched their lives the day the Apostle came to this Roman colony in northern Greece with his gospel of God's redeeming love. Through faith, the
Philippians were initiated that day into partnership in the gospel. They became with Paul partakers of God's grace in Jesus Christ. Yet Paul's confidence is not in the faith of the Philippians. For their faith is not their good work, nor is his confidence in his own missionary activity. The reality of the church in Philippi is not his good work. Both are the products of God's good work. It is God who works in the proclamation of the gospel.
It is God who through the proclamation of the gospel brings people into faith. It is God who creates the church through the promise of the gospel. It is God who sustains the church through the promise of the gospel. And that gospel is grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You see, for Paul, the gospel is Jesus Christ. Jesus is God's good news. God's love was revealed in the life of Jesus. God's love was
rejected in the crucifixion of Jesus. God's love was reaffirmed in the resurrection of Jesus. And that series of historic events was for Paul more than the tale of the past. It was the key to the future. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God secures the future of the world. What we see in the ending of the story of Jesus is the beginning, which represents not only his destiny, but our destiny. In the resurrection, we
see God's purpose verified and confirmed. What God began on the day of resurrection, he will complete on the day of Jesus Christ. And that day is the day of his coming. It is the day of the completion of God's redeeming purpose for human life. Karl Barth calls attention to the unusual way in which our lives are bounded here. We are prone to say that our life is bounded by death. Paul says that the boundary is not
death, but the day of Christ. In his commentary on Philippians, Barth puts it this way, our life's goal is not the day of our death, our blessed departure from this world that forms the end, but the day of Christ Jesus, his victory in this world, its creation anew by him. It is this ultimate victory of Christ that compels Leonard Griffith to speak of a moral reason for believing in the second advent. He says only the second
coming of Christ can entirely justify his first coming. History must have an end, and unless that end be identified with Christ, unless it be the completion of what Christ began in the days of his flesh, then all the agony and striving of the centuries has been a mistake. The blood of the martyrs has been shed in vain, and our struggles and labors have been for nothing. But you see, it will not be for nothing. God's purpose
revealed and reaffirmed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus will prevail. That is Paul's conviction. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. For many of us, however, that conviction is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to sustain. Sometimes our experiences of life seem to challenge so deeply, so profoundly Paul's confidence. God's purpose for his world appears hopelessly frustrated by the realities of our
lives in this world. It's like the story I read recently about the naval captain. He was demonstrating the sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry on his new carrier to a group of congressmen. That's the day you want everything to go right. So a drone flew over the carrier at 10,000 feet and the guns blazed away, but not a shot scored. So the captain ordered the crew to fly the drone over the carrier at 5,000 feet. And
again the guns blazed and again the drone was untouched. Then the captain ordered the drone flown over the carrier at 2,500 feet and the results were the same. Finally, in total frustration, he bellowed to the crew, land that thing on the deck and beat it to death with your swabs. The point is that our experiences of life do deny the reality and the certainty of God's purpose. Paul himself wrote to the Philippians from a prison
cell. We do not know where or why he was imprisoned on this occasion. He was such a jailbird anyway. We only know that he experienced suffering in his life precisely because of his faith. But you see, Paul's faith was not in his experience of life. His faith was in the gospel, in that story of God's work in Jesus Christ. And that's why Paul never integrated the gospel into his life experience. Paul's way was to integrate his
life experiences into the gospel. And so he speaks here of his imprisonment as a defense and a confirmation of the gospel. For the apostle, the hardcore of reality was God's good work, which he began in Jesus Christ and which he will complete at the day of Jesus Christ. And that can be our confidence also if we allow God to begin his good work in our lives by our believing in the gospel. By faith, we join Paul
and we join the Philippians in that partnership in the gospel which makes us partakers of grace. And it is this experience of grace now that creates in us the expectation of its completion at the day of Christ. You see, the commencement is the guarantee of its own completion. And yet there is more. You see, between the commencement and the completion, there is continuance. God's completing work is going on even now. Paul's words may also be translated,
I am sure that he who began a good work in you will go on completing it until the day of Jesus Christ. We are on the way. From the beginning to the ending of God's good work. And on the way, God leads us into ever deeper levels of spiritual discernment and ethical responsibility. Paul's prayer for the Philippians is this, that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve
what really matters and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. That's his prayer for every Christian. The beginning and ending of God's good work is not a call to ethical passiveness. It is a call to an ever increasing sense of responsibility in the world and for the world. We become ethically passive only when we forget our
future. I love the story of the young seminarian who was told by his professors that he needed more experience in preaching. Sound familiar? So that summer he found a closed church in northern Vermont. A little village. Locating the deacons, he offered his services free of charge. They, of course, must have been Presbyterians because they gladly accepted his offer. And he began leading worship each Sunday morning in that little village. On one such occasion, he opened the
church early and was dusting the pews when a burly man walked in in a three-piece suit. Is this the only church in town, he asked? Yes, it is, the student pastor replied. Are you the preacher? Well, yes, I am. But why do you ask? The President of the United States is here on vacation and he wants to go to church. I guess this will just have to do. Well, the seminary student gasped for breath and
then took off like a scared rabbit for his room. And he took the four best points out of the only four sermons he had left and put them all together that morning and preached to Calvin Coolidge. Standing at the door following the service, he was approached by the President. Young man, the President said, that was a fine piece of work this morning. In fact, it was so good that I intend to be with you for the
next four Sundays. Now, what do you think that promise to return did for that young man? Do you think it made him passive with regard to his sermon preparation? No, on the contrary, it was the promise of the President to return that gave him motivation he had never had before. He never worked harder on his sermons than he did that month in Vermont. He gave each one the very best that he had. And at the end
of the month, Calvin Coolidge said to this young preacher, well done, young man, well done. Even so, the Lord Jesus Christ will say at his coming to those who take the good work of God seriously. Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will now set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, make us a hopeful people. Grant to us a
deep sense and conviction that you are indeed at work in this your world. Moving it ever closer to the fulfillment of your purpose. Give us a deep sense of your work in our own personal lives, even as we struggle through these days and years in theological seminary. Enable us to experience your presence and to know your power. Grant to us knowledge and all discernment that we may indeed be more faithful in the discipleship and the ministry
to which you have called us. Save us from all despair that comes from reading only the newspapers. Save us from the cynicism that becomes so typical of an age that has lost confidence in itself and does not know that it can have confidence in you. Enable us to work and to believe that the day will come when Christ shall indeed be vindicated in his love and justice and faithfulness. Make us faithful over small things that in
the end we may hear your praise and enter into your joy. For we pray in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of Christ our Lord. Let us sing the hymn of your mightiest name. For the one who lives on our hearts, Let us sing the hymn of your mightiest name. For the one who lives on our hearts, Let us sing the hymn of your mightiest name. See that your last time was a
day in creation and in life, Waiting for your salvation, Waiting for your salvation, Waiting for your salvation, Let us sing that hymn of your slogan, to the sea, to the sea, to the sea. His heart shall rise again in the hour of the sea, the day of his redemption, and he shall stand to be. And now the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you
all. Amen.