Brainard, Lee: Work Out Your Salvation ~ Philippans 2v 12

All right, this morning's message is from the text, Philippians chapter two verse twelve, Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Been thinking about this verse off and on for a long time. It's a verse that a lot of people, it it doesn't even seem to fit into their thinking, because the whole concept of having work and salvation together, they know that we don't work to get saved, and so they don't know what to work- do with this verse. But this verse is a practical verse. This verse isn't telling you that you have to work to get saved, but this verse is telling you that when God gives you this massive gift of salvation, you're supposed to do something with it. And so... God has given us an amazing opportunity. God has given us something that's an active offer. It's not a passive offer. We don't just get saved and then sit in our easy chair or be a couch potato. Now, the Greek word here for work is katargazamai, and if you do a word study on this in the Bible, and if you do a word study like in a Greek lexicon, you will discover that this verb is used for things like working a farmer's field or working a mine. Now, if you own a field, you own it, but you don't gain anything from it. If you own a mine, well, yeah, you own the mine, but unless you work that mine, you don't get any profit from it. It's the same way with your salvation. God gives you this free gift of salvation, and and you can just let it sit there and not do much, or you can actually just invest in this opportunity and work it. And when you work your Christianity like you should, following the Lord Jesus Christ, it's a profitable field. It brings you an amazing harvest of blessing. It's like a profitable mine. You find all kinds of rich treasure in this mine, but it takes effort on your part. It doesn't just work for itself. It's not like an ever lovi- an ever living pop machine, every time you push the button, you get a free pop. It just doesn't work that way. You have to work for the soda pop. So we have this opportunity, and and it's worth working. Now, it also says with fear and trembling. Why is there fear and trembling here? Well, let me start with this. It's a childish and unbiblical Christianity which says there's no place for fear in the Christian life. It's unbalanced. Yeah, there's a few verses that talk about there's, that the believer doesn't have to fear, but we need to balance those with a few passages like this that tell the believer to fear. Well, how do you balance them? This is how you balance them. We don't have any fear that we're ever going to stand before God as a judge if we're a believer. He's not our judge anymore. We have passed from death to life. There's no chance that if, if you're a believer, there's no chance you're ever going to spend eternity in hell. Not, not, not one in a billion, not one in a trillion. But... you do stand before God as your father, and he will discipline you. If you don't go his path, he will discipline you. He has ways to work obedience in your heart. He has ways to make you learn what you're learning slowly. He's making ways, has ways to make you learn well what you're learning poorly. He has ways to take you and make you into what you are destined to be. Now, I want you to understand this. To understand this verse, you've got to understand that God has a destiny for you. God doesn't just look at you like the, the poor little guy that's been beat up and trampled on and feels like his life is forty or fifty percent past and wasted and, or the, the poor little woman who's struggling and frustrated and discouraged and, and, and nothing's going right in her life. He doesn't look down here and see that. He looks at that person, and he's got something he wants you to become in this life, something that honors him, something that glorifies him, something that's fruitful for yourself and fruitful for God, something that's fruitful the work of God, something that's fruitful for eternity. He has a vision for you. He has a purpose for you. He has a destiny for you. And once you lay a hold of that and this starts to take a flame in your heart, then you see this golden opportunity to walk before him, working out your salvation with fear and trembling, and it becomes a joy. Let me tell you, we see these people that start these massive businesses, like Amazon started in a garage, right? Well, did that thing just go from a garage to what, this colossal thing we wish wasn't even here anymore in a day? No. But he worked his field. He worked his mind. He worked the opportunity given to him, and he put in long, hard days and long, hard effort for a temporal reward. I just want you to get a vision for that kind of determination and purpose with an eternal picture in mind. An eternal picture, eternal reward, eternal fruit down here. Now I'm going to give you a couple verses on the Lord disciplining, because the Lord's got this vision for you, and if you start lagging and lollygagging and, and getting lazy, he's going to discipline you, and he's going to get you in line with his vision, with his goal, with his purpose, his destiny for you. In Revelation three nineteen, we read, I rebuke and chasten those whom I love. Be zealous, therefore, and repent. Now, it's amazing how many times people get this all backwards and confused. God puts a little discipline into their life, and they start, oh, God doesn't love me. No. Daddy gave you a weapon because you needed a weapon. Daddy got your attention, didn't he? Yeah. And why? Is it because he's a mean bully? No. He knows if you stay on that path, you're gonna hurt yourself. And he doesn't want you to hurt yourself. He wants you to live in your destiny. He wants you to live in your purpose. I want you to understand something before I go on here. Everyone has this idea that they want to be true to themselves. Well, you know what? God wants you to be true to yourself too. Doesn't want you to mold after what Lee Brainerd thinks you should be, or what Joe Blow thinks you should be, or what the hardcore Baptists think you should be. No, God wants you to be what you should be according to something that's being honest to yourself, but I want you to understand this. There are two versions of yourself. You need to understand this. There is your old man version. That's what you would be if you were going to live for yourself in this world. And you can live a dirty version of that, you can live a clean version of it, but it's still living for yourself. And there is a version of yourself, what you're going to be true to yourself if you follow Jesus with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength. And that's just as true to yourself, and I'm telling you, if you go after this version of yourself, you are going to find more happiness, more fulfillment, more satisfaction than you'll ever find if you try and find satisfaction for yourself in your old man version. The new man version is still true to self. It's even more true to self than the old man version. And this is where God's trying to get you. This is your destiny. This is his purpose for you, and he's going to get you there, even if he has to discipline you. So this is why Hebrews twelve five and six says, my son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and he scourges every son whom he receives. And it goes on in that passage, if you endure chastening, God deals with you as sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, all believers become partakers. As soon as you get saved, you put yourself over here. You leave from God as your judge to God as your father. And you, if you have God as your judge, you might get away with a lot of junk in this life. That a believer will never get away with. Oh, but the end is good. Now, I want to make sure that you understand this point. I'm going to clarify this point. Faith is not merely some notions rattling around in your head. I want you to be done with that. If you got any vestige of that left in you, be done with it. The Bible says in James, even the devils believe, and they tremble. They got the same facts rattling around their head that a lot of people in this country have rattling around their head, and those devils are afraid. And there's zero hope of salvation for them. None. Faith. Faith is a heart attitude that, that makes an investment in the things of God. Let's go back to that field that you need to work. Let's go back to that mine that you need to work. This is what the faith attitude is. Faith attitude seizes this opportunity when... when the Lord Jesus walked by the fishermen in the boats, Peter and Paul and James. What do we hear? Come follow me. They left their nets, and they followed the Lord Jesus. Why? Because this is the greatest investment opportunity in the history of the world. Here you've got a man, and and Jesus says, I'm gonna make you fishers of men. And then you got Matthew, the tax collector, sitting at the tax table counting money. And the Lord Jesus says, come follow me. Well, why would he leave that and follow the Lord Jesus? Because this is the greatest investment opportunity in the entire world, in the history of the world. He's gonna count treasure in heaven instead of counting shekels and denarius down here. It's an investment opportunity. Faith is an investment opportunity. It's the heart in action. It's something in your heart that's on fire. It has a purpose, has a vision, has a drive. It's not merely facts in the head. Now, let me give you an example of how this faith works. I was reading a couple years back in the, in Josephus, the history of the Jews, and the, and maybe you're familiar with the story, at least the, the basic outlines, but in seventy AD, the Jewish people were in rebellion against the Roman Empire, and the Roman army surrounded Jerusalem. And General Titus sent an offer of surrender to the Jewish people, and it says, if you will repent and believe and call upon Caesar, call upon the name of Caesar, you'll be saved. Gave them the opportunity to live. And what did they do? A few of them snuck out of the city. They laid down their weapons, they trusted the offer of pardon, and they called on Caesar. Call on Caesar means to own him as your lord and your savior. They had to do something with this message. It wasn't enough to own as an academic fact that they, that the message was probably true. This was a life or death situation, and this is what the gospel is. When the gospel message comes out to the world, it's a life or death call. You've got all of eternity and eternal damnation surrounding the whole world, and everyone in that world is guaranteed to die and spend eternity in hell. And the offer calls, repent and believe and call upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. The same message, except instead of having temporal significance, it has eternal significance. And we have to do something with this message. We've got to sneak out of the city because Jerusalem refused to surrender. And the whole city perished. Mil- over a million people perished inside the walls of Jerusalem when it fell in seventy AD. But a few snuck out. They trusted the offer. And a few sneak out of the world, and they trust this offer. Oh, and what a blessing it is to trust this offer. Let's take a little bit different illustration. This one's from my life. It's an attitude. Years ago, I had a tremendous opportunity with a Wall Street firm. A once in a lifetime opportunity. This company trained you for a small fee, you invest in the company, they trained you to be a prop trader on Wall Street. That means you just trade in stocks. You take a small family of stocks, you watch them, you trade them, whether you go long or you go short. And I was trading on the big board, which is the New York Stock Exchange. Now, I, I was trading in their practice program, so it wasn't cost them a lot of money to train me, and I traded on the NASDAQ, and I had a great opportunity. I had wonderful training. I had a wonderful textbook. I loved the job. I loved the people I was working with. I had all the necessary brains, but I lacked one thing, maybe two. I lacked the patience. And I lacked the perseverance. I got frustrated because I wasn't winning right away. And I got discouraged. Those two things don't mix very well. That usually gets pretty explosive and breaks stuff, doesn't it? Well, that's exactly what happened. Because if you're going to be successful in the stock market, you need to plan your trade and trade your plan. And that's the only way to succeed. If you plan a trade and then break that plan, you're going to go bankrupt. You can't survive. This works the same way in the Christian world. We have to have patience and perseverance, and we need to plan our walk and walk our plan. What this means is, when- when you're looking at your Christian life in your best moments, when you're sober, write down on paper how you're going to live your Christian life. Write down on paper that you're going to study the Bible, that you're going to pray, that you're going to be diligent in your work, that you're going to whatever it's going to be, like I have, I want to try and talk to people on a regular basis. I'm not an evangelist, so I don't talk to people every single day, but I want to be talking to people on a regular basis about the things of God. Set this down on paper, what you're gonna do. Set your Christian goals down and how you're gonna reach those goals. Plan your walk. And then walk your plan, because you're gonna wake up days when you don't feel like praying. You're gonna wake up days when you don't feel like walking with God, and you're gonna have to go back and look at that paper, and you're gonna have to walk your plan. This is how it works. This is a good way to do things. This works for me, and you may not do it exactly the way that I'm saying this, but everyone that's successful in Christianity comes up to a place where they plan their walk and they walk their plan. Because if you just go through life in a haphazard way, you're gonna have a haphazard. And it just doesn't work that way. Not if you're going to live at a more successful level as a believer, a more fruitful level. So how do we work this out? It says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Well, God has given us this gold mine of faith. He's given us a gold mine in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's given us a gold mine in the Word of God, and we've got to go work it. And it all starts with the Word of God. You will not find anyone successfully and fruitfully following and victoriously following Jesus that's not a diligent reader and student of the Bible. It's, it doesn't exist. And the only examples you're gonna find is people that are stuck in a prison somewhere without a Bible. And they're clinging tenaciously to the few verses that they have in their heart, and praying tenaciously according to the few verses that they have in their heart. It says in Romans ten seventeen that faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of God. You want to increase your faith, you want to be stronger in faith, you want to grow to the point where you have victory, then you've got to be in this book. There's no other solution, there's no other way. This is where mining that mine and and getting the f- harvest out of the field comes from. It's in this book. This is where it all starts. We also read in John chapter eight, and this is a verse that I got assurance of salvation from forty years ago. John eight thirty one and thirty two: If you are truly my disciples, you will continue in my word, and in my word you will discover the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Man, if you want to be set free, if you really want to have victory over your besetting sins, over your discouragements, over your frustrations, over your anger problems, whatever you have, over those dark fits that come over you and feel like it's going to choke you. Whatever it is, there is victory available, and it is in the Word of God. It sets free. What a blessing. What a blessing. You are not cursed to a life of frustration and defeat. You are not in a prison cell of defeat that you cannot be set free from. This is, to me, is hugely encouraging. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way, we read in Psalms, by taking heed according to their word. How does the word clean you up? Well, the word is the laver or the bath of washing. We read this in Ephesians chapter five. This word is like the fuller soap and the refiner's fire, we read in the Old Testament. There isn't a stain on your life that this word cannot clean up. There isn't a defilement in your mind that this word cannot renew. There isn't sin in your heart that this word cannot obliterate. Just give this word the opportunity. This word is sharper in Hebrew, it says in Hebrews, it's sharper than a two-edged sword. It's able to divide between the soul and the spirit. It's able to divide between the desires of the old man and the desires of the new man. Well, here's where it's going to start, the rubber's going to start hitting the road, because now we're in the word of God, right? Now we're starting to get things that come into us and start to become part of our faith. And now we're going to read in second Peter that it says, add to your faith virtue. Well, what's virtue? Virtue is, is nobly and boldly and courageously doing what is right. All the knowledge coming in from the word of God won't do you any good unless you purpose to live it, to believe it, to walk in it. So once you get this virtue, this purpose to live what you've learned, now you add to your virtue knowledge, it says. Notice the order? If you're just gathering knowledge, but you're not living with a purpose to live in this and to walk it, you're just storing up knowledge that's not going to do anything. But if you have this virtue part down first, if you purpose in your heart, Lord, I'm going to read your word, and whatever it says, I'm going to believe it, I'm going to live in it, I'm going to walk in it, I'm going to talk about it, I'm going to be diligent in it. Now, when you add knowledge, that knowledge goes somewhere. And then it says, add to your knowledge self-control. Discipline. This, this is a purposed order that we're reading here. You have desires in your old man towards laziness. You have desires in your old man towards unruliness and recklessness. You've maybe even got habits of recklessness in you, where you start down a good path, and all of a sudden it just, you wipe out. Well, why? It's right here. You add to your faith virtue, you add to your virtue knowledge, and you add to your knowledge discipline, self-control. Now, uh, this is where I talked earlier about there's work. We've got work involved in salvation here. We don't have work involved in salvation to get saved, but we do have work that comes after the point of salvation, working to get you to be conformed to the image of Christ, and it takes effort. Takes a lot of effort. I just, I wish you could just walk into McDonald's and say, can I take the supersized sanctified meal, please? And, and it costs a hundred bucks, but you just do one supersized sanctified meal at McDonald's, and now you're perfectly holy for the rest of your life. Wouldn't that be awesome? I think it would be, but it doesn't work that way. No, e- every day, it's just a plain, healthy diet of the Word of God and prayer and fellowship with other believers, and taking in from men and women that have a knowledge, a deep knowledge, a broad knowledge of the things of God. If you do these things, if you add to your faith virtue, and you add to your virtue knowledge, and you add to your knowledge discipline, you are going to go forwards. But if you don't do this, you're going to get the snot kicked out of you by the devil and by the flesh and by the world. You'll just get all messed up. And then, and then when you get the snot kicked out of you, you're going to feel like crap, and you're not going to want to be around other believers because you feel dirty, you feel discouraged, you feel frustrated, and now you're going to make things even worse. They won't get better. Oh, but now you're going to add to your discipline. It says now add to your discipline patience. Why? Why? Why do we got this order? Because you're going to find out as you go forth in this Christian living, that things don't happen as fast or as easy as you'd like them to. You're going to find out that actually getting to walk a victorious Christian life is a lifelong battle. Oh, pretty quick you get the biggest things to fall away, if you're diligent, and then you get middle-sized things to fall away, and then you begin to realize as you start going down this path that I had no idea how defiled I was. I had no idea how much garbage was in my mind. I had no idea how much garbage was in my heart. I had no idea how much I needed salvation by grace alone. None. Oh, but it's, it's glorious when you get there. Now it says in second Peter chapter one, after it goes through all this add, add, add, add, add stuff, it says, if you do these things, if you do these things, you shall never fall. I want you to understand this. If you get diligent in this, you can come to the point in your Christian life where you will never fall again to your besetting sins. Doesn't mean you won't be perfect. You are still going to be a human being. You are still going to fall short of the glory of God. But you can come to a point where you walk in characteristic victory, where you're not going to fall to your besetting sins again. And you're going to be growing more and more in the image of Christ every day. And people are going to see the change. People are going to appreciate that change. If you don't do these things, you are going to wallow in defeat and discouragement. So it's up to you. Are you going to be s- go on a path praying, Lord, help me to be diligent in this. Help me to do these things. Help me to live the second Peter chapter one Christian life. And be diligent. And I know this works. I know this works because the word of God says it works. I know it works because I've seen it work in many, many people's lives. And I know it works because I've seen it work in my life. And I've seen it work in the sense if you do these things, you won't fall, and I've seen it work in the negative sense. If you don't do these things, you will fall. I've seen it in my life too. I know what it's like to walk a defeated life, and I know what it's like to walk a victorious life. Now, I want to encourage you here. This is the most amazing opportunity on the planet. There is nothing like this. There is no opportunity out there that offers you even a one millionth of the return on this investment. It's just a matter of getting it from the Bible. So that's a matter of going to the Bible. It's a matter of digging into the Bible, a matter of letting the Bible renew your mind and fire your heart and frame your heart and manage the garden of your heart. Your garden, your heart is going to grow stuff. You can't stop it. If you have a piece of dirt in your backyard and you just let it, you plow it up and let it go, what's going to happen? You are going to have weeds like there's no tomorrow. And your ga- your heart is just like a backyard garden. If you don't do anything to it, it will fill with weeds. It's guaranteed. And if you're a lazy gardener, those weeds are going to be choking out every good thing that you're trying to have grow in your garden. You have to have some diligence and discipline if you want the garden of your heart to bring forth good fruit. But you will never regret the effort you put into that. You will regret it if you don't. Let's just visit this faith and patience just a little bit more. We read in Hebrews six twelve, don't let yourself get lazy, but imitate those whose faith and pray- patience inherit the promises. Faith and patience. It takes some patience. Takes diligence. It takes determination. What is patience? Patience is you're going to keep going even when things are not working the way you hope they'd work. Patience or endurance is just continuing on even though the job is five times harder than you think it was gonna be. You stick with it, and the investment will pay off. One last illustration. We read in, I'm not gonna read the passage entirely, but I'm gonna read part of it. First Corinthians nine twenty four through twenty seven, we read, do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is tempered in all things, in other words, disciplined in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty. I fight not as one who beats the air, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified. Now, this is an illustration here that's applicable to the Christian life. Athletes that succeed, whether they s- succeed in the college level, the professional level, the Olympics. That's not a three-week fast training program. These people have trained for years to compete in that event. And they're going for a gold medal or for a trophy that has only value down here in this world and has no value in eternity. The believer takes that kind of disciplined approach. They, they pursue their Christianity with that kind of discipline, and we receive an eternal, infinite reward that can never be blotted out, can never be lost. I want you to think about this. And the Bible's telling you, I want you, this is God talking to you, I want you to pursue your Christianity with the same kind of diligence that someone that's trying to win a gold medal in the Olympics pursues their event. So it doesn't matter if you're being called to be an evangelist, you're being called to be a Bible teacher, you're being called to be a, like, lead Bible studies and do discipleship. Maybe you're just called to be a, a help and help people in different things. Maybe you're called to work behind the scenes. Maybe you're called to a life of prayer. Maybe you're called to, to helping with the administration of church affairs. There's dozens of gifts, and they're not all involved in direct evangelism. They're not all involved in preaching and in public ministry, but they're all important to the work of God. And wherever your call is, wherever your gift is, throw yourself into it as a disciplined believer. And I want to know, I want you to know, every believer, no matter what their gift and call is, has an obligation to study the word. No exceptions. Every believer, regardless of their gift and call, has an obligation to be consistent in prayer. And every believer, even if you're not an evangelist, has an obligation to do some evangelism. That's- that belongs to every believer. But if we determine to be diligent in this, like we're an athlete training for a gold medal, then we are going to have success. God will bless, and God will honor. He will not forget your effort. He says, I will n- I am not unjust that I will forget your labor of love. He won't. And he is such a giver that he's going to make your efforts, your giving, look like stealing. So let me just leave you with that. Be encouraged. The reason that many find Christianity unsatisfactory and unfulfilling is they put almost no effort into it. I have never met somebody who really went after Christianity like a disciple in the New Testament, who actually followed Jesus, who ever regretted it, who is ever unfruitful. So what that comes down to is, is your following of Jesus. If he was on earth today and he was the one calling and he said, come follow me, would you get up and follow him? If he, if he said to follow you. That's, that's the rub, isn't it? We need to follow him with that kind of a heart. Nobody can be satisfied with a hobby if you don't put time into it. Nobody's satisfied with a business opportunity if you don't put time and effort into it. If, if you, if you get a golden business opportunity handed to you and you're lazy about it and haphazard, that thing is going to go belly up, and it will be a huge frustration to you. And Christianity will disappoint too, if you're not diligent about it. So let's work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It's the difference whether we're going to have a fruitful field or an unfruitful field, or whether we're going to pull wagon loads of gold and silver and precious stones out of the mine, or whether we're just going to have nothing but nothing. Work out our salvation with fear and trembling, because if you don't and you're a believer, God will discipline you. And work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Why? So you only get one opportunity. This life is it. When this life is over and you stand before the Lord Jesus, according to First Corinthians chapter three, you can stand before the Lord, and when it comes time for reward, yep, you're going to be in heaven. You have eternal life. But your entire life will burn up as wood, hay, and stubble. There's nothing there but ashes. Or you can stand before him with gold and silver and precious stones. It's up to you. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we do pray that you would work in our heart, that you would encourage us, that you would challenge us, that you would stir us, that you would fire us to live for you, to live for Jesus with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. Lord, you hold out to us so much potential, so much potential blessing, so much potential growth, so much potential fruits, and Lord, help us to walk in it with some degree of success. In Jesus' precious name, amen.