Well, hey, good morning, church. If you would, grab your Bible. Philippians chapter one. If you're new in church and new to the Bible, there are lots of books in the Bible, so we'll be in Philippians.

Find out we're in the New Testament. The big number you see is the chapter, small number is the verse. Okay? And by the way, bring your Bible to this series, okay?

Always bring it, but especially this one, okay? Let's be Bible toters. It just sounds awesome when you're flipping through the Bible together. So be sure and bring that in this series.

We're launching Philippians. We're going to spend seven weeks in this, and the book is very warm, very happy, very Jesus exalting. There's really no controversy that is being dealt with at length here. This book is very encouraging.

So we'll be in chapter one this morning, verse one. Let's get to work. Okay? Here's what Paul says, and I'll give you some context as to how we got the book, and we'll go from there.

Here's how Paul begins usually his letters. "Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all God's holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi." That's the city that this church was in. "Together with the overseers and deacons," those are the leaders. "Grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." So, a little bit of context.

So you may not know, Paul was a apostle, which means Jesus sent him out to preach the gospel, to travel. So Paul traveled thousands of miles over a few decades, planted churches, began new churches in major cities all over Greece, and one of his stops was this city called Philippi. It's a Roman colony, which we'll learn about later in the series, probably the year 49. Okay?

A long time ago, roughly 2,000 years ago. Plants the church. They loved him. There was this really sweet connection that Paul had with the Philippians.

They supported him, they sent money, they prayed for him the way no other church that Paul planted, and it was dozens of them, they loved him the most. 10 years later, Paul lands in prison. He's in jail. He's in Rome. He's under something like a house arrest, and they hear about this, the church does, and they get really anxious.

They're really afraid for Paul, so they send him a gift. We don't know what it was. Could've been a gift basket with mixed nuts and chocolate turtles and Starbucks gift card. I don't know what, but he gets the gift, and it really encourages Paul, and then he writes a thank you note back to them, and it's this letter to the Philippians.

And he tells them, "Look, I'm okay. Jesus is working. Things are going well here, though I'm in prison, but you keep going. You press on towards Jesus.

You hold onto him, and you keep going," and that's the book of Philippians. That's kind of where we are. I want to focus this morning on verses 12 to 18. Go back and read three through 11.

It's a great prayer that Paul prays for them. But I want you to see how Paul viewed his own situation. It is remarkable the way Paul interpreted his story in jail and what happens with this. He's suffering.

He's awaiting a trial and likely a death sentence, and the way he views it is astonishing. So you're going to see that, but you're going to see what God does in your suffering, in your adversity, in your conflict. What is God doing in all of that? And I'm going to argue he's doing everything in that.

So in the failure, in the conflict, in the adversity, when the dreams are shattered, when the rug just gets pulled out from beneath you and you fail, and your health fails, and your job goes, what is God doing in all of that? Well, there's a lot that you're going to see. So we're going to get to that in a bit. But let's first talk about suffering, which is why you all came this morning.

You were hoping we'd talk about suffering and how hard life is, but maybe you did. Maybe you did. So when it comes to suffering, adversity, conflict, whatever word that you want to use, I want to say it like this. For you to live, you have to suffer.

You're going to have to go through hard things. If you want joy, and you want to be a resilient person, you're going to have to go through suffering and conflict and adversity. You need pushback. You need opposition in order to flourish, and I can prove this at every level of being a human, okay?

Let's just take one that we think about a lot is fitness, okay? How do you get fit? You have to suffer. We got guys in here that have these massive biceps and forearms.

Now, you skip leg day. I notice. You be skipping. But you got these huge arms and just these ripped up veins, and how'd that happen?

You had to suffer. You spent months and years tearing your muscles down, breaking them down through bicep curls Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and drinking nasty protein shakes and creatine. You suffered, and that's how you got ripped up arms, okay? You look at musicians and athletes and vocalists and artists that are great.

How are they great? They had talent, but they spent so many hours suffering and sweating and failing and trying, and we call this the grind. Okay, you've heard that word. You're just spinning your wheels, and you're not moving.

You're just going. But eventually, something clicks, and you move forward. You have to suffer. Take relationships.

If you want a great marriage, get ready to go to war. It's war, okay? It's just years of pain and dying to yourself and admitting when you're wrong and forgiving and repenting. I saw a couple on YouTube a while back, and they had to be in their upper 80s, and they're at some party or something, and they're dancing.

It's very slow, but they are dancing, they're twirling, and they're hugging, and they're kissing. It was disgusting. And do you realize, though, what it took to get there? How much labor it took to be at upper 80s still kissing and laughing that many years later?

It took war, okay? Admitting wrong, repenting, forgiving, saying I'm sorry. That'll feel like death. Whenever you say, "I do," you're saying, "I'm dying," is what you're saying, okay?

Now, if you're like, "Oh, not us, though. We're different," then you're engaged, so congratulations. We'll see you in counseling office in a few years. But if you're really willing to suffer, it's awesome.

We could spend hours on this. To live, you're going to have to suffer. You're going to have to go through hard things and face hard realities to grow. We know this, but here's the problem.

I don't want to, and you don't want to. I don't want to go through hard things. I don't want to hurt. I want to be cozy and comfortable and relaxed and just chill out.

We don't want to go through hard things and face adversity and pain because it just hurts. We want the cozy way. We want the safe and predictable way. That's why whenever you go and buy a chair, you buy a La-Z-Boy.

You don't buy a risky boy. Like you're not trying to just take a bunch of risks and just get less comfort in your life. You want more of it. And it's discomfort that bothers us.

But I'm just telling you, if you want life and you want joy and the strength that you want, it's on the other side of discomfort and struggle. It's where you have to look at hard realities, turn and face them, grab on to Jesus' hand, and walk through them, and then see what God does. That's the way to joy and life. I'll give you a part of my story.

So I've been doing this, preaching, for 26 years, okay? Most of my sermons were terrible. A few were okay. I think two were awesome.

So my batting average is real low here, okay? And I'll be honest with you, when I first started doing this 26 years ago, I was terrified, I was nervous, and I had no clue what I was doing, okay? I can tell you with utter confidence, 26 years later, I'm still terrified, I still get nervous, and I have very little clue as to what I'm doing. I rewrote this five times this week, okay?

What I'm saying is I'm struggling here. You're like, "Yeah, us too." That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying this was a harder path for me. Public speaking wasn't on my radar for a career path.

I'm like, I don't know what to do with my hands. Like, I have no idea But this is the thing that I love. To get to do this and the way God has used this just in me, let alone if anything out there was icing on the cake, it's what he's done in me through this. This was the harder path.

I would choose it a thousand times over. And I would just bet there are stories like that right out here. This was the harder way, but there was more joy behind it. That's what God does in our suffering.

So here, I have one goal this morning. I want you to see how God uses your sufferings so that you won't waste it. And by waste it, what I mean is you think that God is making a mistake. You think that God doesn't love you.

You think that God is punishing you or getting back at you, and so you want to hit the eject button. I'm going to encourage you to hold on and see what God's doing in your difficulties and your adversity. Okay, so three things I want to show you from Paul's story. He flips the script, he uses your story for good, and then he increases your joy.

That's what God does in suffering. He is doing 10,000 things through your situation to bring all of these things about, okay? So here's what happens. One, he flips the script.

Only God can take your difficult and chaotic and confusing and painful situation and just flip it and bring good from it. I don't know how God does this, but God just can take the worst story and bring good from that. Just in his mystery, his sovereign power, and his unsearchable wisdom and knowledge, he just is able to bring-- We're going to sing here about how God brings beauty from ashes. He takes bones and makes them into armies.

He turns our graves into gardens. That's not just some fairy tale. That's Bible stuff that God does. And I don't know how, but God flips the script.

So, J.R.R. Tolkien had a word for this that he made up, eucatastrophe. So, a catastrophe is a sudden event that causes great destruction, suffering, or a complete failure. Maybe some of you are there right now.

A eucatastrophe, from the Greek eu, meaning joy, it's a joyful catastrophe. God flips it, a sudden event that brings great deliverance, joy, and salvation. God just turns it. He turns the tides on what seems horrible and just flips it around, and now it's good.

And I don't know how he does it, but he does it. I'll show you how Paul says this. This is verse 12. "Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel." Did you see it?

What has happened to him, he's in prison, he's under house arrest. He's labored for all of these years. He's traveled. He's preached the gospel.

He's planted churches for all this time. Now he's in jail. You'd think Paul is done. You would think that this would just be useless, pointless suffering.

Now Paul's story is over. Now he can't preach the gospel and spread the good news anymore. And Paul says, "Actually, what happened to me served to advance the gospel." The word for advance is a military word. It means to clear a path for an army so an army can march through.

And that's what happened. Look at verse 13. "As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ." So here's what's happening. Okay, Paul is in Caesar's palace, the real one, not the one in Vegas.

There's no Aerosmith show later, okay? I get that's confusing. This is the real one. He's in Caesar's palace under house arrest.

House arrest meant you can have some freedoms, you can have visitors, you can get gift baskets, you can write letters, you can do things like that. But what often would happen is that they would attach you to a soldier. So Paul says the whole palace guard, the Praetorium is what he's talking about. If you watched Gladiator Part One.

Part Two was terrible. What are they doing? But Part One, that's who deals with Maximus, is the Praetorium. These are elite soldiers.

These are killing machines. These are cold-blooded, elite warriors. They would guard governors, they would guard high-ranking officials, and mostly the emperor, who was the most powerful human alive. These are his bodyguards.

And so the way that historians, you can look this up, the way this worked is if you're under house arrest, you would have a Roman guard attached to you in chains. And so what a historian says is that they would take these four-hour shifts of changing out with the soldiers would guard the prisoners. So here's Paul in prison. He's literally attached and chained to a soldier all this time.

Now, I did the math on this, of course. Paul's there for two years. That's 17,502 hours that Paul is attached to a Roman soldier. What do you think Paul's doing?

Well, take a wild guess. He's talking about Jesus. He won't shut up about it. The whole time, he's just talking about-- And Paul says, "The entire palace guard now and everybody else in the household, they know why I'm here.

It's because of Jesus." So Paul uses all this time. I mean, this has got to be annoying. It's like, "Oh, that guy again. Give me a murderer or something.

Not this guy again." And then a new shift changes, a new guard comes, and Paul preaches the gospel to him. So for all this time, Paul's preaching the gospel, and by the way, he writes. We know that he writes Philippians, he writes Colossians, he writes Ephesians, he writes Philemon while he's attached to a Roman guard. You would think it's over for Paul, but now he's preaching to what thousands would hear about this.

He wrote what now millions have read. You see what God did? He just flipped the script, that what happened to him actually served to advance the gospel, not stop it. You can't stop God's work in your life, what God's doing, what God's moving.

I don't care what circumstance or what situation you're in. You can't stop the work of God in your life. God just turns these things and brings good from all these things that seem painful and chaotic, even evil, God brings and uses and brings out good for these. So back in the Old Testament, there's a guy named Joseph, and he's got some brothers that they all hate him because he's the younger brother.

He has the coolest clothes. He always wins at Fortnite. They can't stand the guy, okay? Well, they plot to kill him.

Actually, it turns out they send him off into slavery into Egypt, and they tell their dad that a wild animal attacked him, and so he's gone now. He goes to Egypt, spends years there, suffers in prison. He's falsely accused. Then he rises to power, if you've read the story.

Now he has all this wealth, all this wisdom. Decades later, his brothers go down to Egypt because a famine has hit, and they go down there to beg for food. Well, guess what? Joseph is there.

The one they betrayed, the one that they sent into slavery into Egypt, he's there in power now, and they see him, and they're groveling at his feet, and they're begging him for mercy and forgiveness. You know what Joseph does? He starts weeping when he sees his brothers, and he's so concerned about them, and here's what he says to them, one of the greatest verses of suffering and how God flips the script. He says, "You intended to harm me, but God intended." It's the same word, by the way.

"You intended this, but God intended this. He intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don't be afraid. I will provide for you and for your children." You see what God did?

He just flipped the script. That what they meant for evil, God meant that for good. God brought good and salvation. What they meant for death and destruction, God brings good and blessing.

He flips the script. That's a eucatastrophe. So I'll just ask you like this. What do you feel chained to right now?

What's the circumstance that's just weighing you down that you think, "This is pointless. God's not doing anything through this. God's not going to use this." Would you just hold on? Because God will bring good.

God will work in his unsearchable wisdom to bring good from your story. As broken and as painful as it is, you put it in his hands, and he slowly, over time, flips the script. The Bible calls this waiting, by the way, and you can trust him as you do it. Second thing God does is he uses your story.

Your suffering, by the way, it's not just about you. The church needs to see people walk through hard things and hold on to Jesus. I need that, and you need that. So here's what Paul says, and I love this, 14, "Because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters," these are Christians who are in Rome, where Paul is.

So Paul's imprisoned in Rome, writing to Philippi. It's not that far away, but he's in Rome. There's a church in Rome, and they know that Paul's in prison. They've visited him, and most of them have become confident in the Lord, so their faith has been strengthened, and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.

It's because of his chains, because of Paul being in prison, being in jail for this long. They see this, and they see Paul's joy. They see Paul using all of this for God's glory, and it strengthens them. And they say, "Well, if Paul can do that in here, surely we can do this out there." Yeah.

And they start proclaiming Jesus is Lord in Rome, by the way, where Caesar reigns, and they're saying Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord over all things, and it's because of Paul's chains. So do you realize that when you suffer well, it does something to us. When we see you holding on to Jesus in the midst of pain, and job loss, and health loss, and all the things that life just hurls at us. When we see you, and listen, no one suffers perfectly.

We all have low points. But when you faithfully follow Him, it wakes us up. It's like smelling salts for us. Gray, one of our pastors, he has these military-grade smelling salts backstage.

And I didn't know how powerful these things were, so like a dummy, I just crank the lid up and just and breathe it, and I think I went to heaven. I don't know what happened. I saw new colors I hadn't seen before. I think I saw an angel.

I am awake off of Gray's military-grade smelling salt. That's what suffering does. How often do you hear of someone that's just going through it, and yet you see their prayer life and the verses they're hanging on to, and they're on the front row with their hands up. And you think, "Wait, if they're holding on to Him during all this, surely I can now." Yeah.

Because our faith just gets so flimsy and so fragile. Mine does. If my power goes out, within 30 minutes, I lose all hope. I'm like, "Well, I guess there's no God.

He wouldn't do this in July if there was a God." It's just the smallest things just knock us off balance. And you need Christians who have said, "I've been there. He's good. You can hold on to Him.

You can trust Him. I've seen it. I've tasted it. I've seen how good He is.

You can hold on." Amen. This is what the author of Hebrews-- I love this verse, Hebrews 13, "Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison." Put yourself there. They're holding on to Jesus in prison. Just imagine you're there with them.

Their suffering is for you. And he says, "And those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering." You hear what he's saying? Get in the game. They're suffering.

They're holding on. Let this encourage you, and lift you up, and strengthen you right now in your suffering. But church, we just need your story. We need people who have reached the point where they have said, "At some point, Jesus is all that I have." They said, "Unless Jesus moves and works, I'm not making it." Yeah.

And then it dawned on them, "Jesus is all that I need. He really is all that I need. This whole time, He's all that I needed." And that just does something to us. That strengthens us.

That makes our faith soar. We want to worship. We want to hold on tighter to Him because of you and what God's doing in your story. All right, last one, and I'm done, I promise.

And I've wrestled all week with how to talk about this. He does something with your joy in the midst of suffering. And I don't know the situation. The last part we're going to look at is really strange.

We don't really know what's happening. I seriously have read 15 scholars on this, and no one really knows exactly what's going on, but here's my stab at it, okay? So you had some people in Rome that were maybe angry at Paul or something, and they want to one-up Paul. It's very weird.

Okay, I'll read it for you. "It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel." So they're with Paul. "The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition." It may shock you, there are guys that stand on platforms for their own glory, not Jesus' glory.

I know that's hard to comprehend, but that happens. They're doing this, and they're not doing it sincerely, "Supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I'm in chains." So I think what's happening, there are Christians who are at odds with Paul. We don't know why. There are times that Christians just disagree.

Even in the first century, they had disputes. Okay? That's just how it was. And for some reason, you had some people think, okay, they knew who Paul was.

He's influential. Everyone knows about Paul. The whole palace guard now knows about Paul, and they say, "Hey, Paul's on the bench. Now's our shot.

Let's get in there. We'll do this our way. We'll preach the gospel. We'll make a name for ourselves, and we'll get back at Paul." That's what's maybe happening.

It's very strange. I love what Paul says, though, verse 18, "But what does it matter?" I like yelling that. What does it matter? You're in jail, and you're fighting about who's preaching the gospel.

Paul's appalled by this. What does it matter? The important thing is, in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached, and in this I rejoice. You can't touch Paul's joy.

That's right. You hear what he's saying? He's saying, "Guys, I'm in prison. I'm attached to a guard.

I can't even go to the bathroom by myself. I'm in jail. I don't have time for this. I don't have time for these disputes.

I don't care about who gets the glory. I don't care about how many likes I have, how many followers, how many views. I don't care about my brand. I just care about Jesus." Yes.

"And I just want people to know who this king is. That's all I care about." That's right. And his joy, it soars because of that. See, this is what I think happens in our suffering, is it has a way of loosening our grip from things that maybe start to matter too much to us.

And I know that's different for all of us. I'm not trying to say that that's one certain thing, but all of us start to hold onto things too tightly, and suffering kind of has this whittling effect to where you go through hard seasons, and some of these things, they become less important to you. For Paul, it was his name, and the glory of preaching, and being known, and traveling. Didn't matter to him.

Paul could be so wounded by this, he could be so hurt by this, but instead, he's just rejoicing that the gospel is going out because that's what his joy is in. And so suffering has this way of loosening our grip and really just honing our gaze in on Jesus and who He is. And when that happens, your joy, it just goes through the roof, even in prison. And here's the secret to all this, and I'll leave you with this.

The secret that I think of why Paul could view it this way, he says it down in verse 21, "For to me, to live is Christ." My life is Christ, Paul says. That's why his joy is untouchable. His life is in Christ. That's all that matters to him.

That's why if this is true of you, you can go through anything. You can face any reality, any conflict, any pain. You can make it if this is true of you. But here's the thing, all of us have a way of answering this question that might get us off track.

We would say things like, "Well, for me to live is my career. For me to live is my children's success. For me to live is my physical beauty. For me to live is my wealth.

For me to live is my yard." You'd be surprised. Those are good things, but your life can't be in those things, because if it is, here's what happens. Suffering can take all those things away. It can question all of those things.

And so if your joy rests on something that suffering can take away and it goes, you're going to go with it. If you're leaning all of your weight on something else besides Christ, when those things fall, you're going to fall with them. But if Christ is your life, then your joy becomes untouchable. You can face anything and hold onto him through that.

And the reason you can is because there's no one that suffered more for you than Jesus. No one has done more to love you and show that he's for you than him. He didn't just risk his life for us, he gave his life for us. But then God flipped the scripts and raised him from the dead, and now he reigns as King over everything and all the details of your life.

And listen, one day you're going to see him. You're going to see his eyes filled up with tears of joy over you, and all of this is going to be worth it. You suffering and holding onto him, it's going to be worth it when you see him. So let's keep going, church.

Let's keep trusting, keep holding onto him. Don't waste your suffering. Let me pray for you. Father, thank you that you bring joy in the hardest of things, that you have purpose, and you have good, and you have a plan in all of this.

God, I don't understand how you do it. I don't know. But God, I believe and I've seen that you bring good from the worst of circumstances. So God, help us believe that.

Help us to hold on, to not hit the eject button, to not think that this is pointless, that you can't use this, because God, we've seen it. And so Father, we ask for more. God, increase our faith. God, you know how fragile it can be.

Would you strengthen us? I pray for those who've never said yes to Jesus, who are hurting and who are trying to figure out some way through pain and suffering. Would you grab them in the midst of that and show them how good you are? Father, we trust you.

You're enough for us. Help us to believe that. In Jesus' name, amen.