Title: Live or Die (Philippians 1:18-21)
Contents
When you put hydrochloric acid on a blue litmus test paper, it gradually turns red to one side. In addition, when a red litmus test paper is dipped in aqueous sodium hydroxide solution, it gradually turns blue to one side. Litmus test paper is the means to distinguish between acid and alkali.
Today's message is an important piece of content that serves as a litmus test paper to check our faith. There are many modern believers who do not have access to the essence of faith and are just hanging around. It is said that there are cases in which the purpose of believing in Jesus is only self-centeredness, even though you are a good believer on the outside.
Once upon a time, a king was walking and he met an old man. Everyone showed respect to the king, but only the old man showed no manners. Then the king asked, “Who are you, the king of this country, who does not know me?” Then the old man answered, “I am a king too.” Astonished, the king asked, “What country are you the king of?” The old man answered, “I myself am the king of the kingdom.” No one would see this old man as a normal person.
But in reality, we love to live as kings of our own kingdom, and we don't want to give it up to anyone. To such a person, the Lord is either a symbolic master or nothing. Such people say, “I live for the Lord,” but in reality, they are busy living for themselves rather than for the Lord. The words to glorify God and to accomplish God's will are just words on our lips.
However, if you look at Paul's confession in today's sermon, he does not show any attitude towards himself or revealing himself. Rather, whether he lived or died, he wanted only Christ to be exalted. We too must imitate Paul's example.
Only to honor Christ
It is not as easy for us to adopt the attitude of Paul as we think. Most believers, when in the same situation as Paul, ask, ‘God, why is this happening? You are working hard for God, so why aren’t you helping?”
In this world, the unrighteous live well and die comfortably when they die. The reason is simple. In a word, they live only for themselves rather than for God or their neighbors. Their lives seem smooth because they do something for themselves. However, since we, believers, live a life centered on Jesus rather than ourselves, there are many things that we must do and must not do, and we face many difficulties. So Paul confessed, “Whether by life or by death, I want Christ to be honored in my body, for for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (verses 20-21). In this way, true believers do not lead a self-centered life.
In Numbers 14, before the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, Moses chose one man from each tribe to spy out the land of Canaan. Of the twelve returned, ten thought that the conquest of Canaan was impossible. Compared to them, they reported that they were like locusts, unable to possess the land. However, Joshua and Caleb were in the same situation, but they thought it was possible. So, saying, ‘They are our food,’ he said, ‘Let’s go up because we can possess the land.’ Those who thought no could not enter the land of Canaan as they thought and died in the wilderness. But Joshua and Caleb, who thought they could do it, entered the land of Canaan.
As President of the United States, despite being a person of color and a minority in American society, Obama usually cried out “Yes, We Can”. This empirically shows that the results vary greatly depending on how you think in general. If we are to live a life of faith anyway, we must think that we will live for Jesus Christ, not for ourselves. If we do, the future of ourselves as well as our churches and communities will be greatly changed.
promoting peace in the church
Something similar to the text is found in Romans 14:7-8. “None of us lives for himself, and not one of us dies for himself. If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” Romans 14:1 You can tell.
In the Roman society of Paul's time, all meat sold on the market was sacrificed to idols served by the state. Therefore, eating meat was interpreted as eating something sacrificed to an idol, and in the end it meant serving an idol. So those who said they had good faith refused to eat meat, saying, ‘We will not eat meat sacrificed because we cannot serve the idols of Rome. Then he criticized the meat eater.
But, Paul says, “there is nothing wrong with eating meat in itself.” When someone eats meat and says, “I eat meat because I need to be healthy to do the Lord’s work,” it is said to be a good thing. Conversely, even if someone says, ‘I want to eat meat, but I will not eat it because it is an idol sacrifice,’ it is a good thing. Do not use such things as a standard of faith or criticize others. What we need to be concerned with is not the trivial matter of meat, but the essential things, such as living for the Lord and dying for the Lord.
In our religious life, we often consider things very important according to our own thoughts and positions, and we often rebuke or criticize those who fail to keep them. If such things are essential, such as, "Will you believe in Jesus or Shakyamuni?" and "Whether the church lives or dies," you must fight with your life. However, you have to respect each other's point of view. This is because within the frame of faith, there may be things that are more important and things that are less important depending on the level of each person's faith.
Those with relatively good faith should be considerate of those with weak faith. For example, when you first start your life of faith, you may come to church while drinking or smoking. If a person with good faith sees it and criticizes it, saying, 'I can't even quit drinking and smoking while believing in Jesus', the new believer will be hurt and reluctant to come to church. In that case, it is not beneficial to anyone to think that one has good faith because he avoids alcohol and tobacco. If you pray for a person with weak faith and understand his or her position instead of criticizing, you will naturally cut off what you should cut off as your faith grows. This attitude is essentially a person who lives for Jesus Christ. If we truly believe in Jesus, we must not say or do anything that breaks the peace of the church or hurts others just because we are right. Those who want to honor Christ must live a life of reconciliation with the brothers who are members of Jesus, who is the head of the church, and especially consider the weak ones.
Rejoice in any situation
Paul was caught and imprisoned while preaching the gospel, but he did not blame God or complain at all because of that incident. Rather, I was happy and thankful. Because he believed that God had put him in prison for a good reason. What would you do if something like that happened to you? When God humbles himself, he says, 'It is good. Amen, and if you exalt it, it is good to exalt it. We must live a life of ‘Amen’.
Also, keeping in mind Paul's attitude toward the opposition, we should not judge or criticize people based on our own subjective judgment. If the window is dirty, the laundry that is visible through the window will also look dirty. First of all, you need to clean the window so that the laundry can be seen clearly. You should not try to expose yourself relatively by blaming others.
God is not pleased with our appearance. Rather than revealing myself, I must reveal God. No matter how great a person's mistakes may have been in the past, if God has forgiven them and accepted them, we should do the same. In that sense, Paul exhorts us to be “kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).
One day, deep in the mountains, a grumpy-looking woodcutter appeared from the forge with a freshly made ax blade. Chestnut, oak, and oak trees lived in that mountain, and there was an acacia tree that pierced the trees with thorns whenever the wind blew, making them tormented.
“Trees, I bought a new ax blade today. What kind of wood would you like the ax handle to be made of?” the woodcutter asked, and the trees all answered, “Acacia wood!” The woodcutter cut the acacia tree and took it with him. When he said, ‘It’s good that the troublesome acacia tree is gone,’ a woodcutter appeared with an ax and slashed the trees in the mountains. At that time, the trees lamented, ‘It is the cause of cutting down the acacia tree so that we can survive.
This is a story that reminds me that if I try to kill others in order to live, I will eventually die too. Usually, we make a lot of these mistakes without realizing it, but we have to be careful not to do it. A person who only lives a self-centered life cannot live a life of joy like Paul did under any circumstances.
A certain king has met a beautiful queen. Unfortunately, the queen passed away after one year. The king who has lost his queen is so sad that he goes to the queen's grave every day to live. He beautified the tomb and provided a place for him to rest. As a result, the area around the queen's tomb became a beautiful detached palace. But later, I was concerned about the tomb in the beautiful detached palace. So, in the end, the queen's tomb was moved to another location. Originally it was beautifully decorated for the queen's tomb, but later the tomb was moved to another location to preserve the surrounding beauty. When we refer to this kind of thing, we say, “The original meaning has changed.”
When we first believed in Jesus, we said that we would only live for Jesus, but as the years passed, Jesus, who should be at the center of our lives, was driven out and we became the center of our lives. We need to get rid of these self-centered thoughts and attitudes. A true believer always rejoices when he realizes that God has adopted me as a child for the glory of God and is using me for the church and the gospel. I hope that you will always recognize that I belong to the Lord, and whether you live or die, you live only for Christ, and do everything according to the Lord's will.