Pilgrim Benham @GraceLifeSarasota

All right, let me take a few moments to introduce you to our guest preacher today. It's good for me to take some time off every once in a while to recharge and refresh. I don't like taking time off, but it's good, okay? Pilgrim Venom is preaching today.

Let me tell you a little about Pilgrim. So, Pilgrim is a longtime pastor here in Sarasota. He's right now the Dean of Academics at Calvary Chapel Bible College that just moved to Bradenton last year. He's doing a great job there.

Let me tell you something else about Pilgrim. We've been friends for a long time. I've supported his ministry. He supported mine.

There are three pastors, one in New York, one in Pennsylvania, one here in Sarasota, that I actually send my sermon notes to every week for accountability. I ask them to check in. Am I right with scripture? Am I going through?

Am I doing? Pilgrim is one of them. So, you know that I trust him to bring the Word of God to our beautiful church family. And so, Pilgrim, why don't you come on up here?

Where are you at? Come on up here. Give a hand for Pilgrim. Hold on.

And he's like 6'11", so let me just space it up here. Take care. Oh, thanks, Pastor Joe. Good morning, Grace Life.

It is such an honor for me to be here with you this morning. If the sermons are good, I don't know if I get the credit for that. If the sermons are bad, if Joe does a bad job, is that my fault too? I don't know.

Love your pastor. Love his fashion, his shoes, his hair, he's just a man. Listen, this is my first time here on Mount Beniva, and I do know that reference, so it's an honor for me to see what God's doing. This is incredible.

What God has begun in you, he's going to carry it on a completion until the day of Christ. So, be grateful at what God's doing here. Alright, let's get our Bibles out. And someone asked me between services, is your name really Pilgrim?

Your parents did that to you? And I said, listen, my parents were hippies. So, it could have been a moonchild at this point. But I think I've told you this before.

I was asked my dad, why did you go with Pilgrim, of all names? And he said, well, you know, you were born around when Star Wars came out. We were going to name you Luke, but we didn't want to embarrass you. It's like, so you named me Pilgrim.

Thanks. That was a lot of fun in middle school. So, listen, if you're a visitor today in Grace Life, it's not your home church yet. We're going to dive into Scripture.

And there's going to be some good takeaways from this sermon. But, Pastor Joe asked me to pray and consider giving a word of encouragement from God's word about you. Okay, and this is very challenging because the word of God, it's for us, but it's not like every verse is about us. And so, I went to the Lord and asked them to give me a clear word.

And so, Acts chapter 16 is where we're going to be. And I want to share with you today. Some sections from the New Testament about a church that I think is very similar to Grace Life. We heard it earlier.

This church was scrappy. I like that phrase, scrappy. They didn't start out like most churches started. This church had blue collar workers.

They had rich. They had poor. They had everyone in between. This church actually had women in recovery, from abuse, from drugs, from exploitation, and from much more.

This church was actually incredibly diverse and was known outside of her four walls for being joyful and expressive and generous. Does that sound familiar? A little bit. Yeah.

This church loved its shepherds and was known for gospel partnership, not only in their area, but even beyond. They were known for generosity and for shining in the community. And we're going to talk about today the church in Philippi, the Philippian church. We actually have a letter in the New Testament called Philippians.

And what I want to do is start in the book of Acts and walk through a little scenario, a little history. And in keeping with Pastor Joe's method, we're going to look at the history in Acts 16. We're going to look at some theology about the church in Philippi. And then we'll wrap up with personal where we can take something, some meat home, right?

And chew on that this week, so to speak. So, let's go ahead and look at Acts chapter 16. We're going to start right in the middle of the action. This is going to feel like a movie, maybe you guys in the action movies turn it on and right at the beginning, right when the credits like stop, there's just boom, explosion.

And you're right in the thick of action. And that's where we're going to start in Acts 16. You can see on the screen, starting in verse 25, it says, about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. And the prisoners were listening to them.

And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were open and everyone's bonds were unfastened. It says, when the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword. And he was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.

But Paul cried with a loud voice, do not harm yourself, for we are all here. And the jailer called for lights and he rushed in and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and he said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved you and your household.

And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and he set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.

This is God's word, thanks be to God. Now a lot of things happen before this action scene that we jumped right into the middle of in Acts 16. So if you're new to Christianity, let me just kind of list them out for you to give you the back story, the history. I think we'll have some of these on the screen.

So this has already happened. Jesus has already ascended back to heaven. The Holy Spirit has come at Pentecost. The gospel has begun to be spread throughout the region.

What's the gospel? The saving good news that Jesus Christ lived was crucified, buried and risen from the dead and he's king. That is the good news. And this was beginning to be spread throughout all of the region, events through persecution.

There was a guy named Saul, one of the main persecutors of Christianity and he has come to faith in Jesus. This is a huge turn of events. Saul is now known by a new name. His new name is Paul, the Apostle.

And he is invited by his good friend Barnabas to come up to Antioch. There's a church happening there. And as soon as he becomes a part of the leadership team, Antioch becomes the missionary sending church in the New Testament. So then what happens is that church, hearing from the Holy Spirit, sends Paul out with his team on a second mission strip.

And on this trip, Paul suddenly has a vision of a man begging them to come preach the gospel in Europe in Macedonia. So Paul obeys that vision and goes. And the team gets to this town, Philippi, which is a major Roman colony. Now, normally Paul would go into the synagogue and preach Christ to the Jews.

The problem was, in Philippi, there was no synagogue. You need 10 Jewish men to found a synagogue and they didn't even have that. So he walks up to the river and there's a handful of Jewish women who are praying and hanging out by the river. And so Paul says, well, let's go there.

He shares the gospel. And what happens is this rich woman named Lydia gets saved. Well, after that, as Paul's sharing the gospel this young slave girl who's demon possessed starts basically being provoked by Paul's message. And the demon is really upset with this good news.

And so she starts chasing after him or following after him and calling out these actual truths. And finally, Paul, it's kind of funny, he gets annoyed at this young girl yelling at him. And so anyone have teenage daughters? Okay.

And it's not saying they're demon possessed. But you know, so finally he's like annoyed, he's provoked, the scripture says. And so he casts the demon out. And the slave girl's owners realize we just lost all of our money.

We lost our income. Our business is sunk. And so they drag Paul and Silas before the city officials, they make false accusations against them. And the crowd, the whole city joins in.

Paul and Silas get stripped and severely beaten. And after this, where we pick up the next 16, they're thrown into the maximum security prison. And so do you remember what are Paul and Silas doing at midnight? Do you remember the text that singing?

Yeah, they're worshiping. They're praising God. They're not singing around by the way. They're singing hymns.

They're not sitting around singing sad songs like you do when you have a breakup. You're singing a bell. We know you. We've seen your posts.

I've seen some of those Facebook posts. Life is over. Right? They were doing that.

Think about what they'd endure. They came obediently. There was a vision. I'm supposed to have success here.

And what happens? They're beaten. They're left for dead. Now they're in prison.

And how do they respond? God, you are good. God, you are glorified. We trust you.

Even when the circumstances didn't go the way we thought, we got punched in the mouth. We're going to keep going. And what happens next? We see a great earthquake.

Prison doors open up. Chains fall off. And by the way, that's what happens when we worship. When we worship, creation is impacted.

When we worship, bondage is broken. And it says the prisoners were listening. The world pays attention when we're truly given our lives to the Lord and worship. But the jailer, he's undone.

Why? Well, if anyone escapes, his life is over. He will be put to death by wrong. And we know how wrong puts people to death, don't we?

It's very painful and humiliating the death by crucifixion. It's going to be a long drawn out death. So what does the jailer do? They're gone.

He pulls his sword out to unalive himself. And Paul says, stop. Right? And so we're not going anywhere.

And so it says, we just read it. He falls down at Paul's feet. And he asks the question the world is asking through religion. He asks the question, what must I do to be saved?

Did you know that's what religion is trying to answer? The world says, hey, you know what? There's pain and religion says we have the answer for that. The answer of escaping the plight and pain in this world is get to work.

Go do something. That's what religion says. You have to overcome your desires and cease them. Or you need to do this many Hail Marys.

You need to do the spiritual calisthenics. Then you will be saved. But Christianity is different than that. Paul does not say any of those things.

He doesn't say, well, you need to go to church. You better read your Bible. You better tie 10%. You better floss every night.

He doesn't say that. He doesn't say that. Hey, that's because Christianity is not about you doing anything. It's about God and Christ doing something on your behalf.

And you trust in that by faith. That's the gospel. So Paul says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Put your faith in him.

He's done the work. He has said, it is finished. Not get to work. So rest and trust.

And you will be saved. And within an hour, within an hour, that jailer is baptized. His kids are baptized. And he's inviting them to have probably barbecue over at his house.

It's in the Bible. So track with me for a minute. Track with me. This is how the church in Philippi got planted.

Very different church than the rest of the New Testament stands out and apart. And how did it start? Some obedient people following God. A whole lot of Holy Spirit intervention.

Lots of persecution and opposition and pain. Don't miss that. But people getting radically saved. Imagine what that church gathering looked like.

I think it'd be a lot like what we experienced here on Sunday. We have the blue collar policeman. The jailer. And he's worshiping.

Lifting his arms. Right next to the girl who previously was owned by as a slave. So this guy's used to putting chains on people. She's used to being chained and dragged around.

And so how awkward is that? Right out of the gate. Then we have over here Lydia. The scripture says in Acts that Luke, the historian records, she was a purple cloth dealer.

So what does that mean? She was like a fashion designer. Purple cloth was what was used by royalty. Very expensive.

So she's dealing with kings and queens and top shelf rich people. And now she's standing next to this girl who's essentially homeless. And so just imagine what this worship would have looked like. Very diverse church with the odd stacked against them.

But what does Paul say in Philippians one? He says this right out of the gate. Before he's like, you know, after his grace and peace. And I Paul, he says, I thank my God.

In all my remembrance of you. Every time I pray for you, I thank God. Always in every prayer of mine for you. All making my prayer with joy.

Why? Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Paul says, as soon as I think of you, even come into my mind, I'm thanking God for you. Incredible church.

Why? Because God gets all the glory and how this thing got started. It's all about Jesus. When we planted a church in a liquid ranch, we had these t-shirts that said it's all about Jesus.

And we love that. That's what Philippi was all about. So let's get into the theology of the church in Philippi. There's three things I want you to sort of take away today about this church.

The first one is redemptive identity. We're going to get into each one of these. The second is radical generosity. And the third is resilient joy.

So we're going to unpack each one of those. So first redemptive identity. What does that mean? Some big words here.

What I mean by that is they had an identity, like who they were, that was not shaped just by the Roman citizenship. It was not based upon their social status. It was shaped by the gospel. Look at this verse, Philippians 1, 27.

Here's the plus. Above all. The most important thing he says is live as citizens of heaven. Conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, the good news about Christ.

So above all, so above your citizenship as a Roman citizen, above your status, you are a citizen of heaven. So it didn't matter that some in the church were rich and others were poor. It didn't matter that some were old and others were younger. They weren't bothered that some had a checker passed whereas some in the church had that childhood that we all sort of envy, where there were no problems at all, stability.

That didn't matter. What mattered to the Philippian church was outside of them. They had an identity that was bigger than their city, bigger than their country, bigger than their political party, their gender, their socioeconomic markers. What was that identity?

Citizens of heaven. They knew who they were and who they were. They understood that though we have a lot of differences and sometimes those differences in this world divide us, you know what? There's something that unites us, that the world doesn't understand, that we call upon King Jesus and he has our allegiance.

So the church had a redemptive identity that was bigger than who they were. Secondly, they had radical generosity. So it started with Lydia, the rich fashion designer. She opens her home, imagine, two a bunch of strangers, a bunch of Christian strangers.

And then it continued with the jailer. We just read that the night that everyone was going to bail, he invites them over to his home. He brings over some ragtag valance to have barbeque. And they didn't stop just with their own needs in the church.

Paul says in Philippians 4, look at this verse, he says, it was kind of you to share my trouble. Isn't that a great verse? You were kind by sharing my trouble. You didn't just say, oh, thoughts and prayers.

You actually were a participant in it. You were burdened for me. You carried me through that trial. He says, you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, like the very start of your church, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me and giving them receiving, except you only.

He's like, you know what? You guys set a great example. You were partners with me, partners in my support and in my trouble. When something happened to someone else, this church was affected.

And they were willing to give so sacrificially that others would be blessed and the gospel would advance. Now, it's kind of funny. Later in 2 Corinthians 8, Paul seems to almost shame this other church, the church in Corinth, by sort of comparing them. We'll get to this in a minute, but sometimes when we compare ourselves with others, that's like a healthy tactic and sometimes very unhealthy.

And so what Paul does is he says, hey, Corinthians, you know, like the church is in Macedonia, Philippi, they were really supportive more than you guys. And so he's sort of like maybe shaming them into giving a little bit more. But we know heaven's not impressed by the amount, right? It delights in the sacrifice.

Remember Jesus, he pointed out this widow who gave a coin or two versus the rich who were kind of giving out of their excess. So that's the church of Philippi. They didn't have a lot, but what they had, they said this is owned by God. They had a real radical generosity.

But certainly they had resilient joy. They were going through hardship and uncertainty and persecution. And yet the believers in this church, they rejoiced in Christ even at midnight in prison. Why?

Because they're joy, they're not weird. Like you guys are really odd. It's just, you don't understand that you're really going through it. No, they knew what they were going through.

But again, their worship was focused on the Lord, not their circumstances. Somebody am in that, right? Paul reminded them at the beginning of his letter and somebody you don't want to amen this. Okay, just say with me, Philippians 1, 29 and 30 says this, this is Paul, it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, oh yeah, but also suffer for him, his sake.

Wait, what engaged in the same conflict you saw I had and now here that I still have? What's he saying? Hey, we love talking about God's sovereign in your salvation. He's chosen you to believe.

But he's also sovereign in your suffering. He's chosen you to be like the master and the servant's not greater than the master is he. If they persecuted Christ, we should not be surprised. Peter says, don't think it an alien thing that you also will suffer.

I know we don't love to hear that. I'd love to have some brand of Christianity that says there is no more suffering. That sounds great. That's called heaven, folks.

It's coming. It's coming. But Paul says in Philippians 4, to rejoice in the Lord always. And he's like somebody didn't hear that in the back.

I'll say it again, rejoice. He says, let your reasonableness be known to everyone. And here's why. The Lord is that him.

What does he mean by that? Well, he's saying, hey, the reason we can rejoice is not by skirting around trials. That is usually our reflex. We don't hopefully don't lean into pain.

We usually avoid it. There's some of us that get in that cocky moment. We're like, all right, give me pain. Bring it on.

And we self sabotage. But most of the time when we go through pain, we try to avoid it. That's not the reason we rejoice, just to avoid trials. Another reason is not pretending the trials don't exist.

They're just kind of like, don't worry. Be happy. They're on a trial. That's not real life.

Some of you, including me, have experienced unconscionable evil and great sin. You've committed it or it's been committed against you. Let's not have a fairytale Disney world Christianity. There's real raw pain in this room today.

The reason we can rejoice is not by getting away from trials or pretending they didn't happen. It's to understand they have a timer. But they're going to expire one day, right? He says, the Lord is at hand.

That means there's coming a day where the judge will be standing at the door. And he says in Revelation, he'll wipe away every tear. And every pain and every thought that was bitter and grief that you would never walk away from. That's going to come to an end one day.

It's going to be wiped away. It's going to be healed in you. It's not just going to be wiped away. Let's just dismiss it.

He's actually going to work in such a way that it is restorative in your life. God promises to do this. And in the meantime, the Lord is at hand. He's right there with you.

He says in the scripture, he's near to the broken part of it. Anybody ever experienced that? I know I have. He's near to you.

And that brings us to the personal section. So this is the sermon preview that we did this week. A church doesn't need celebrity, wealth or size to shake the world. It does need the right kind of people.

Amen? Okay. So you think about how that's written. Actually, I wrote that.

So you read that and go, I hope I'm that right kind of person. So here, this is for us today. This is as I said, a meet to bring home with you. There are some things that can fall apart in the church of Philippi.

There's some things that threaten those three things. And here at Grace's Life. So the first thing we talked about was redemptive identity. That doesn't happen accidentally.

We are a people in our very nature, even our sin nature, that we actually love to segregate and discriminate and isolate. And it's not because we're pushing people away. It's that we like people like us. And when we huddle up with people like us, that naturally causes us to be suspicious of those who are not like us.

And that causes us to divorce and divide. You don't believe me. But how about we do what Pastor Doe does? And I'll give you a list.

All right. Let's do that. All right. I see.

I know what's going on. I read this sermon every week. Early on a couple times, I'm like, no, I mean, that's a bad sermon, bro. Yeah.

He's on fire lately, though. I'll tell you what. That's awesome. Amen.

He's mad. He doesn't want that much attention. Yeah. Here's a list.

Here's how we divide race, ethnicity, political party, income, education, generation, age, personality, preferences, secondary doctrines, social status, or past mistakes. In our fallen state, we do what we do with sports. Any bucks fans here? Come on.

This is our year. This is our year, guys. Shaking back. Okay.

We do what we do with sports, which is good. We do an us versus them. We wear the flag. We wear the jersey.

We're all about it. Hey, but the problem is when we do that at church, when now it's our team versus another Christian, now it's an us versus them mentality. And so we probably just, we like to sit with the same people who are like us. We have them over.

The same people. We avoid the awkward people or the people different than us, the difficult people. The people who have heard us. We never talk to them again.

We go to the 9 AM service. Right? Maybe that's where the people are in that service. Not you.

Right? We assume, if you have a friend at 9 AM, sorry, we assume the worst about people that we don't know. We build invisible walls and we call these walls comfort. But listen, the church at Philippi was never supposed to happen.

Naturally. It never would have happened. You have a wealthy business woman. You have a formerly demonized slave girl.

You have a hardened Roman jailer. They had nothing in common except Christ. Jesus brought them together. The gospel didn't erase their race and their differences.

There's nothing wrong with having an identity in being an Italian. There's nothing wrong with that. Don't minimize that. The fact that we have different kind of personalities and affections.

We don't need to minimize that. But what we put above all of that, what our primary identity is. It's not a Floridian. It's not an American.

I'm a citizen of heaven. So let me give you the hack. Here's the hack. Here's how we do this.

Philippians 2, verses 3-3. I'd love for you to jot that down. I'd love for you to meditate on it this week. Memorize it.

Very powerful text. But Paul says, don't get into the selfish ambition of vain stuff where you're better than everyone. He says, here's what you do. You need to all tune like a musician to the same chord, the same note.

And that note is the mind of Christ. Jesus didn't come and say, it's time for me to be worship. He came and he emptied himself to the lowest place and he was a servant. Even obedient to death on a cross.

And God exalted him. So that's the hack. So we don't like try to be humble. We try to be like Christ.

And this gives us the mind of Christ. This gives us a new identity in the church. And again, your flesh and the world and the devil are going to try to pull at this and cause division in this church. I know it.

It's a church that God is using. You are. So know this. That this is an attack.

So come together with the mind of Christ. Secondly, radical generosity. Remember, they're not the wealthiest people. But they could have been stingy, even in poverty.

And said, you know, I just can't afford to help anyone else out. I'm going to take care of me and mine. And that's our natural instinct. We got to hold on, protect what we have, find security in our control.

But generosity requires a deeper conviction. It requires that we look to God as the provider, not our paycheck. The Philippians weren't generous because they were wealthy. They were generous because they learned generosity is not about money.

It's about trust. So they could give because they had learned their security was not what they possessed but in the God who provided for them. A child who trusts his father, he doesn't stay up at night wondering, why is the pantry getting empty? I don't know if Dad's going to do it this month.

No. He just simply trusts that his father will provide. So the question is not do I have enough. The question is, do I trust my provider?

The Philippians were radically generous because they discovered the safest place for their resources was not in their own hands, right? But in God's mission. And so they trusted that what God gave to them was enough that they could trust him to provide not only what they needed but what others needed as well. And finally, they could have lost very easily their resilient joy.

And the reason we lose our joy, let's just think about this, it's usually one of four reasons, right? And it's always focusing on circumstances. That's how we lose our joy. We think these things will bring me joy and they're the actual things that Rob has to enjoy, right?

So one of these four years usually robs you a joy. And I want you to really think, dive in for a minute, on some things in life that have taken away your joy. Number one, what we've lost. Okay?

So maybe it's failure, disappointment, pain, unmet expectations. Make you think that your best days are in the past behind you. Maybe recently you lost a friendship, a job, your health, right? A situation that you thought you had and it can cause you to lose heart losing that.

Okay? Secondly, what we don't have, right? So here's how this sounds. If I just had a little more money, if I just had a little better health, a different job, a different spouse, a different season of life, then I would, if I finally had a boyfriend or a girlfriend, then I'll be happy.

And instead of seeing what we are blessed with, we're looking out the window and wondering what's still missing. Okay? Certainly we, I'm sorry, this is convicting right here. If this doesn't make you say amen, at least say, ouch.

Okay? We want what others have. I heard some oches. Remember years ago when the 32 inch TV was perfect?

I love my 32 inch TV. Yeah, right. Then you saw your neighbor's 40 inch. You're like, man, I got to get that 60 inch, right?

Comparison causes us to question God's goodness because we measure our lives against someone else's. Okay? And then finally, number four, this is real bad. What others think?

I went through this until I turned 40. Now I don't care. Okay? When our identity is tied to someone else's approval, right?

Either their criticism and rejection or their approval, right? And their, their love and their acceptance, if that's what we're banking everything on, that can actually steal our joy because man will always fail us. Okay? The problem with affixing our joy to circumstances is they're always changing.

Let's see the joy of the Philippians was anchored, not in what was happening around them, but in who Christ was within them. Okay? So the amazing thing is that their first experience of the gospel was rooted not in comfort but in conflict. In all of these wounds and, and prison and weeping and worship.

Okay? So, grace life, circumstances are going to change. People are going to change. They're going to let you down.

Seasons are going to change. You might be at the end of a really bad one or the beginning of a good one. It doesn't matter. But when your joy is rooted in Christ, your foundation remains unshaken.

And so I want you to see today that, and I started with this, the one who began a good work in the church in Philippi and a great slide will be faithful to carry it on to completion until the day of Christ. So a couple closing points here. Never underestimate what God can do through a church like Philippi. A church that refuses to be divided because its identity is rooted in Christ.

A church that refuses to hold tightly to earthly things. Why? Because it trusts in a heavenly Father. A church that refuses to lose its joy.

Why? Because it knows this world is not the end of the story. And listen, Fransteria Sota does not need another impressive church. It needs another Philippian church.

It needs, amen. It needs a church where the outsider comes in and finds family. Where broken people find grace. It's the name of the church.

Grace life. A church where the generous reveal the heart of God. And a church where suffering will never silence our worship. And my prayer for you is the same prayer Paul had for the church of Philippi.

In chapter 1 verses 9 and 10, he prays this, that your love may have found more and more. With knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent. And so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. May you continue to be a church that has a redemptive identity, radical generosity, and resilient joy.

Amen. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your grace today. Grace in our salvation.

But not just that. And not just grace at the end of our days when we lay our life in the grave. But Lord, there's grace for life today. Help us to be conduits, not just recipients that we receive and we pass on the grace of God.

We love you and we worship you today in Christ's good name. Amen.