Series: On The Way to Joy: A Study in Philippians

• Launch Jukebox
• Download
• Subscribe

(The following story was the conclusion to this past weeks sermon.  We've placed it first on this page because many people have asked for copies of it.)

Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts.  They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside.  "I hate you!" she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument.  That night she acts ona plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times.  She runs away.

She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.

Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she's ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she's ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car-she calls him "Boss" -teaches her a few things that men like. Since she's underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse, and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.

She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline "Have you seen this child?" But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.

After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. "These days, we can't mess around," he growls, and before she knows it she's out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don't pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. "Sleeping" is the wrong word-a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.

One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she's hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she's piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball.

God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart.  My dog back home eats better than I do now.  She's sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.

Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, "Dad, Mom, it's me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I'm catching a bus up your way, and it'll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you're not there, well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada."

It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn't she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.

Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. "Dad, I'm sorry. I know I was wrong. It's not your fault; it's all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?" She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn't apologized to anyone in years.

The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires, and the asphalt steams. She's forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God.

When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, "Fifteen minutes, folks. That's all we have here." Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice. If they're there.

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They're all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads "Welcome home!"

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, "Dad, I'm sorry. I know..."

He interrupts her.

"Hush, child. We've got no time for that. No time for apologies. You'll be late for the party. A banquet's waiting for you at home."

(Taken from "What's So Amazing About Grace" by Philip Yancey)

1.  There Are Two Ways to Be Distant from God

Story of Prodigal Son in Luke 15

There are two ways to be break your relationship with the Father:

• Being Very Good
• Being Very Bad

The last few weeks we've been looking at ways of being distant from God by being very good:

• We looked at Paul's resume
  • Hebrew of Hebrews
  • Tribe of Benjamin
  • Pharisee
  • Perfect in Legalistic righteousness
• We looked at people who tried to combine Christianity with Other rules
  • Jesus + Circumcision = NOTHING

Now Paul shifts his attention to people who are distant from God in the other direction.  They are being very bad.

2.  Exegesis of v.18-19

Destiny is destruction

Starts with the bad news.

Revelation 19:20 - And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur.

Mark 9:43-48 - And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.'

God is their Stomach

God = Ultimate Set of Authority

If its your belly, it means you recognize no authority outside personal satisfaction.

Appetites dictate life.

Sin of Gluttony = Consuming more than you use

Re:       Food, that would mean consuming more calories than you burn in a given day.

Re:       Drinking, that would mean consuming more alcohol than your body is able to safely handle.

Re:       Shoes, that would mean buying more shoes than you can wear in a given month.

Gory is in their Shame

Reversal of Moral Standards

Isaiah 5:20 - Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Mind on Earthly Things

No view beyond the immediate

3.  Our Distance from God Hurts People

4.  Why Are Christians Different?

-Followers of Jesus are not defined by our goodness or our sinfulness

 We are defined by our citizenship in heaven

A.  Background of Philippi's Roman Citizenship

42 BC - Battle on the plain outside Philippi

• After Julius Caesar was assassinated, Mark Anthony & Octavian stayed loyal and went to war against Brutus & Cassius.
• They made the Philippians honorary Roman Citizens
• Populated the city with veterans of the WAR
  • Houses
  • Farms
  • Wealth
  • Titles
• This would ensure that the city was fanatically loyal to Caesar

Current Caesar was NERO

He had two term that he wanted to be known by (his PR image)

- Kurios = Lord

- Soter = Savior

"Our Lord & Savior Nero"

"Caesar is Lord"

Poem by Claudian, an Egyptian Greek of the 4^th Century:

Rome, Rome alone has fund the spell to charm

The tribes that bowed beneath her conquering arm;

Has given one name to the whole human race,

And clasped and sheltered them in fond embrace, -

Mother, not mistress; called foe her son;

And by soft ties made distant countries one.

This to her peaceful scepter all men owe, -

That through the nations, wheresoe'er we go

Strangers, we find a fatherland.  One home

We change at will; we count it sport to roam

Through distant Thule, or with sails unfurled

Seek the most drear recesses of the world.

Through we may tread Rhone's or Orontes' shore,

Yet are we all one nation evermore.

Roman Tactics:

• systematic ravaging of an enemy's territory. Crops were destroyed or carried off for Roman use, animals were taken away or simply slaughtered, people were massacred or enslaved.
  • The enemy's lands were decimated, denying his army any form of support.
• conduct punitive raids on barbarian tribes which had performed raids across the border.
• Mass Crucifixions

George Burton Adams:

"It was a genuine absorption, not a mere contented living under a foreign government.  Local dress, religions, manners, family names, language, and literature, political and legal institutions, race pride, disappeared for a all except the lowest classes, and everything became really Roman, so that they (the new Romans) nor the Romans by blood ever felt in any way the difference of descent."

B.  Our Citizenship in Heaven is Similar

* we are not moved to heaven

- The kingdom of heaven extends to us

* great victory won

5.  Interacting With Our New Citizenship

Story - Kid from Grand Rapids using the restroom in Rwanda

#1.  Find Someone Who Can Explain the New Customs (v.17)

Pattern of life (Celtic Christianity)

Bottom Level = Day-to-day things of life

• Plant a crop
• Fix a water pump
• Discipline a child

Top Level = Transcendent Things

• Who is God
• Where do we go when we die

Middle Level = Questions of the uncertainty of the near future, the crises of present life, and the unknowns of the past.

• How do they two realms interact with each other
• When should I pray
• Did this bad thing happen because I failed or someone else cursed me?

#2.  What Parts of your Life Don't Match your new citizenship

We eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Eagerly Await"

• Living life as if he's on the brink of return
• Living like it matters how you get through the day

Grace is shockingly personal. As Henri Nouwen points out,

God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved,
not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end,
nor because thousands of people have been converted
and are now praising him for his goodness.
No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found.

#3.   Seek the Holy Spirit (v.21)

What will our heavenly bodies be like?

• Perfect
• Sinless

The Holy Spirit is the promise we have TODAY that reminds us what we will have some day.

Ephesians 1:13-14 - And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession-to the praise of his glory.