On Sunday, October 25, 2020 at Wildwood Community Church, I preached a message based on Philippians 2:19-25.  This message was part 4 in the “Attitude of a Servant” series.  Below you will find questions related to the message for personal reflection or group discussion.  You will also find sermon audio and video to listen to/watch, download, or share.

 

Sermon Questions:

1. Pray
2. Read Philippians 2:19-30
3. Who are some of the people you have “followed” in life as they “followed Christ?”
4. Timothy is an example of someone who genuinely cared for the spiritual lives of people.  On a scale of 1-10, how would you consider your current concern for the spiritual growth of others?  How is that concern demonstrated in your life?
5. Epaphroditus was willing to risk his life for the advancement of the Gospel.  Are there any “risks” you are reluctant to take today that are inhibiting your ability to be fully involved in Jesus’ mission?
6. In what way are you tempted to “hang on” to resources and not share them with others — for their good?  Paul was a great example of generously giving what he had for the benefit of others.  Where are you challenged to share what you have been keeping?
7. What stands out to you most from this passage?  Any particular takeaway?

To access these questions in pdf format, click here.

 

To listen to sermon audio offline, click the link:

Attitude of a Servant #4 10.25.20

 

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To watch the service stream, use YouTube online:

 

For 30 years now, I have been following Jesus.  Three decades ago, I understood the gravity of my sin, and my need for a Savior … and God (in His grace) led me to Jesus, and my life has forever been changed.

Though my journey began in the basement of East Cross United Methodist Church, it did not stay there.  Following Jesus has taken me to Bartlesville, Norman, Nevada, Russia, Dallas, Ovilla, Coppell, Norman (again), Mexico, France, and beyond.  It has taken me into the Scriptures, church and small group communities, worship services, hospital rooms, housing projects, and summer camps.  I have followed Jesus while single, married, and as a father.  It has been joyous, difficult, life-giving, death-requiring, jubilant, lamenting … and more.

Throughout these years of following Jesus, I often found myself in a parade of sorts … Jesus was leading it, but there were a string of people following after Him.  Often I found myself following someone who was following Jesus.  In this way, they helped connect me to Him:

• My mom and Dad raised me in the church.
• Dwight Nash and Debra Villiger introduced me to Jesus.
• Dwight Darrah prayed for me to follow Jesus, and ultimately to be a Pastor.
• David Croninger listened to me and encouraged my faith.
• David and Hazel Kirchman taught me to pray.
• Kimberly Robinson showed me unconditional love.
• Todd Stewman introduced me to discipleship.
• Bill Boldt showed me what fearless evangelism looked like.
• Bruce Hess introduced me to faithful biblical exegesis.
• Tom Robbins showed me what it looked like to care for your flock.
• Wayne McDonald gave me a chance.
• Bob Reed pointed me to God’s grace.
• Mashall Brackin taught me generosity.

… and on and on I could go.  I do not mean to leave anyone off this list, but simply want to remember in a moment the faith of those who have gone before me … and memorialize how it has impacted me.  

As Hebrews 13:7 says, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.  Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”  Like Paul, these all (and many more) have invited me to “follow them as they follow Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).”  And I have been blessed as I followed.  

Who has impacted your life?  What are their names and how has God used them in your life?  

For the Philippian Christians, they had many they were following.  They were certainly following Jesus (see Philippians 2:5-11), but they also were following Paul the Apostle and the examples of a few other choice servants as they followed Christ.  In this Sunday’s final message in the “Attitude of a Servant” series, we will look at Philippians 2:19-30, as we see the examples of servant heartedness demonstrated by two men: Timothy and Epaphroditus.  May we all add the names of these two servants to our list of those whose example has aided us in our walk with the Lord.  Hope to see you Sunday in our 9:00, 10:15, or 11:30 worship services (inside and with children, student, college, and adult classes running), 8AM in our outdoor chapel service, or 10:15 online (wildwoodchurch.org/live).

On Sunday, October 18, 2020 at Wildwood Community Church, I preached a sermon based on Philippians 2:14-18.  This message was part 3 in the “Attitude of a Servant” series.  Below you will find questions related to this message for personal reflection or group discussion.  Also, you will find the sermon audio and video to listen to/watch, download or share.

 

Sermon Questions:

1. Pray
2. Read Philippians 2:14-18
3. What are some of the examples of the “darkness” that you see in the world today?  In what ways does Jesus “light this up”?
4. How might Jesus use you and your fellow Christians to light up the world around us?
5. What are some of the things Paul mentions in 2:14-15 that might inhibit our ability to shine as Jesus’ light?  Which of these do you most struggle with?
6. Are you holding fast and holding forth the word of life to those around you?  What are some ways you can do that this week?
7. Whose faith can you celebrate this week?  How will you celebrate it?
8. What stands out to you most from this passage?  Any particular takeaway?

To access these questions in pdf format, click here.

 

To listen to audio offline, click the link:

The Attitude of a Servant #3 10.18.20

 

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To watch the service stream, use YouTube online:

 

I want you to look at the nearest unnatural light near you.  (By this I mean NOT THE SUN.  Don’t lookout the sun.  That could do some real damage.)  Look at the nearest lamp, overhead light, etc.  Now, imagine that you were to take the cover to that light, and put a dark tint over it (like you would on a car window.)  What would be the effect?  Would the light bulb produce less light?  No, the bulb would have the same wattage.  But the effect of the light would be greatly reduced.  The tint on the shade or cover would cause the environment around the lamp to not be as illuminated as it otherwise would be.

Of course, you are probably wondering WHY I would ask such a weird question.  People get lamps to provide light.  Why would anyone put a dark tint on their lamp?  Good question.

I use this illustration today because in Philippians 2:14-18 Paul refers to Christians as lights that are intended to shine into the darkness of this world.  Jesus’ intended mission for you and me is that we would shine His life and light to a world that is dark and dying. Therefore He has placed His light inside us.  However, when we spend our lives complaining and focused on personal agendas, it is like we are putting a dark tint on the Gospel.  The Gospel is still powerful, but if we remain selfish and proud, the Gospel’s illumination might be dimmed in our culture.  This passage is a call for us to remove the tint of our sin so that the Gospel may shine in all its brilliance. 

This Sunday at Wildwood in our 9:00, 10:15, and 11:30 services (indoors and with classes for children, students, college, and adults), 8:00 (outdoor chapel service) or 10:15 online (wildwoodchurch.org/live), we will be in part 3 of our “Attitude of a Servant” series as we will learn how to shine in this world for Christ.  Make plans to join us this weekend!

On Sunday, October 11, 2020 at Wildwood Community Church, I preached a message based on Philippians 2:12-13.  This message was part 2 in the “Attitude of a Servant” series.  Below you will find questions related to the message for personal reflection or group discussion.  You will also find the sermon audio & video to listen to/watch, download, or share.

 

Sermon Questions:

1. Pray
2. Read Philippians 2:12-13
3. What are some of the reminders that this world AND you are a “work in progress” (i.e. not “there” yet)?
4. Of the 3 aspects of salvation mentioned today, which aspect do you most often think about (Justification, Sanctification, or Glorification)?  After looking at this issue more today, was there something specific about salvation that encourages your soul today?
5. What is one way you need to “work out” your salvation at this moment of your life?
6. Do you feel you have a healthy reverence for God (the “fear and trembling” referenced in 2:12)?
7. Spend some time in prayer asking God for both the desire and the strength to live a life that is glorifying to Christ.  What are 2-3 action steps you can take this week to live in obedience, in light of the desire and strength available to us in Christ?
8. What stands out to you most from this passage?  Any particular takeaway?

To access these questions in pdf format, click here.

 

To listen to sermon audio offline, click the link:

The Attitude of a Servant #2 10.11.20

 

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In Charles Dickens’ classic tale “A Christmas Story,” Ebenezer Scrooge is visited one fateful night by three spirits: the ghost of Christmas past, present, and future.  These ghouls remind Scrooge of his history, reveal the impact of his life today, and show him the legacy he will leave if he does not change.  Together, these three encounters drive a deep change in Ebenezer’s life that ultimately all will see.

In the Bible, as God explains to us the notion of our salvation, He also visits us with three important concepts:  salvation past, present, and future.  The one term of “salvation” could refer to any part of this process … or refer to the summary of the entire thing.  Here are the names of the “spirit” of salvation past, present, and future:

“Justification”  – Salvation Past.  All believers in Jesus Christ can look back on their lives and relish in the fact that they have been justified in Christ.  To justify means to “bring in line with” or to “make righteous.”  If you “left justify” a block of text you are formatting in a word processor, you bring that text in line with the left “standard” of your document.  In a similar way, when someone believes in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, they are “justified” by God and brought in line positionally with the righteous life of Jesus.  When God looks at us, He no longer identifies us by our sin (that is forgiven in Christ), but He identifies us by our connection to His Son Jesus who has justified us into His perfection.  This is a past action that we continue to be blessed by.  (see Romans 4:5)

“Sanctification” – Salvation Present.  All believers in Jesus Christ are not just “saved in the past” but are being “saved in the present.”  By this, we mean that there is an ongoing aspect to our relationship with Christ where we are shaped more and more by our Savior into daily practice of His way of life, character, and mindset.  When my son was born, he had all the DNA of a Robinson, but as he grows up, he is learning how to practice that identity more and more in this world.  He is maturing in his application and understanding of his identity.  In a similar way, our Heavenly Father continues to parent us throughout our lives as we grow toward maturity in Him.  (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23)

“Glorification” – Salvation Future.  All believers in Jesus Christ do not just have a hope for this life, but we have a hope for all time.  Jesus has given us eternal life, and this life will include a time when we will shed this earthly tent of a sin-stained body for an incorruptible form that we will reside within forever.  This process is called “glorification” and it commences at the time of our death or rapture, and culminates in the Kingdom, New Heaven and New Earth, when we will reign with Christ and then reside with Him with a glorified body. (see 1 Corinthians 15:50-58)

For the believer in Jesus Christ, salvation past, present, and future combines to encourage us that God will indeed “bring to completion” (Philippians 1:6) the work He has begun in us.  Our salvation is not just a past event, and then nothing else ever happens.  This should encourage us greatly.  Sometimes we look back on that moment when we were “saved” and then we wonder why we still struggle with sin, or why every promise in the Scripture is not already being experienced by us now that we are a child of God.  The reality is that our salvation, though secured in history by Jesus’ death and resurrection and appropriated in our past (at the moment of our belief), is still being developed in the practice of our present, and carries with it an amazing future hope!  

When we remember salvation past, present, and future, it should renew our spirits in a way that ultimately all will see.  One of the primary ways our present salvation (or sanctification) plays out is demonstrated in the way we interact with one another.  This Sunday at Wildwood, in part 2 of our “Attitude of a Servant” series, we will look at Philippians 2:12-13.  In these verses we will see how the unifying and humble Spirit Christ has worked IN to our hearts and minds must be worked OUT in our interactions with one another.  God has both given us the power to enable this action AND gives us a desire to see it happen.  We will look at this aspect of our sanctification this Sunday at Wildwood Community Church in our 9:00, 10:15, 11:30 worship services (inside and with children, student, college, and adult classes running), 8:00 (outdoor chapel service), or 10:15 online (wildwoodchurch.org/live).  See you Sunday!

On Sunday, October 4, 2020 at Wildwood Community Church, I preached a message based on Philippians 2:1-11.  This message was part 1 in the “Attitude of a Servant” sermon series.  Below you will find questions related to this message for personal reflection or group discussion.  You will also find the sermon audio and video to listen to/watch, download, or share.

Sermon Questions:

1. Pray
2. Read Philippians 2:1-11
3. What are some of the things/issues that threaten the unity of the church today?  What solutions do you see being tried to “fix” this dynamic?  How effective are those solutions (from your perspective)?
4. In the message, there was a quote from Moises Silva related to this passage which said, “The true obstacle to unity is not the presence of legitimate differences of opinion but self-centeredness.  Shifting attention away from ourselves becomes the challenge.”  To what degree do you find this position both taught in Philippians 2:1-11 AND believable in light of your experience?
5. What are the areas where you struggle the most to be humble?  What would it look like for you to live out humility in that setting/area?
6. In 2:5-11, we have one of the finest “Christological” statements (i.e. truth about who Jesus really is) found in the New Testament.  What stands out to you most about this description of Jesus found here?
7. A right understanding of Jesus is NOT just to tickle our minds, but to inspire us to a proper response.  How does knowing Jesus influence your willingness to sacrifice for others?  How does knowing Jesus influence your willingness to wait for a greater reward?
8. What stands out to you most from this passage?  Any particular takeaway?

 

To access these questions in pdf format, click here.

 

To listen to sermon audio offline, click the link:

The Attitude of a Servant #1 10.04.20

 

To listen to sermon audio online, use the media player:

 

To watch the stream, use YouTube online:

 

Can I be honest with you all for a moment?  It is hard to talk in 2020.  And this makes it super challenging, because (to some degree) I talk for a living. 🙂

People today have strong opinions about lots of things … but that is nothing new.  It’s not like a person having an opinion is anything novel.  However, 2020 has a number of contagious conditions that have infected nearly all of us … and these “viruses” ARE novel for our day.  What are they?:

Access to unprecedented, unedited amounts of information … that we don’t trust.  Think about it.  Not that long ago (in my lifetime), there were 10 TV channels, and only a couple of hours of “news” on every day.  Sure every town had a newspaper, but it only came out once a day, and focused on local affairs.  Today, the internet, cable TV, smartphones, blogs, podcasts, etc. have created a seemingly endless flow of information at our fingertips that is talking about things all over the planet.  We are able to dial in to a brand of news or media that perfectly suits our proclivities and distrust all other information that does not fit our narrative.  And, that beast is fed every second with more data.  Minimized are the network editors who control the narrative, as anyone with an IP address can publish their opinion for the world to see.  This has led to an environment where people talk past each other, citing sources the other has not heard of, while dismissing the others’ reports as “fake news.” 

Hyper-connection, masked by technology.  Social media has allowed people to stay “connected” to more people than ever before.  Some scientists have indicated that the average person is capable of effectively keeping in community with only about 120 or so people at a time.  Technology has made it possible to have 3,000 “friends” following our activities and opinions on Facebook and Instagram.  At first glance, this sounds great … until we realize that people are a lot “meaner” on screens and keyboards than they are face to face.  Because of the distance technology allows and the lack of nuance in a lot of written communication, people are way more prone to fight online than in person.  Rather than sharing ideas online that lead to great in person conversations, lots of online point/counter point leads to hurt feelings online and avoidance of face to face meetings.  Online, people are an idea (or a collection of ideas) … in person they are, (well) a PERSON, someone created in the image of God.  Primarily interacting through screens has robbed us of a lot of our “humanity” and decency in interactions.  Screens have made our relationships less relational with challenging results.

Echo chambers we live in that have us only hear those who agree with us.  Social media giants Facebook and Twitter are not charities … they are businesses.  They want to show you what they think you want to see so that you will keep coming back to their site so they can show you advertisements they have sold to the highest bidder.  This is the way it works.  Social sites have figured out that if they only show you content that makes your blood boil, you will leave one platform and find another … so they develop sophisticated algorithms to show you more content that you agree with, like, etc.  This creates a phenomena known as “echo chambers” where you only hear the perspective of people who think like you do.  To some degree, this also happens in our everyday lives among our peer groups, but the sheer volume of info shared on social media has taken this to a whole new level.  The effect this has on us cannot be undersold.  We think we are right because “everyone smart around us thinks like we do.”

I could go on, but you get the point.  What this has led to is a world where we are convinced we are right, have “experts” to back it up, and we have a platform to proclaim that perspective to the world.  What could go wrong?

Well, plenty … and it even has impacted the church.  Christians living in this age are not immune from this effect.  Since you are most likely reading this on a social media platform, you are aware of the conflict that is held in the public square between Jesus followers every day.

I am not immune from these kinds of squabbles … and neither are you … and neither is our church.

Threats to church unity, though, are not new.  They are as old as the church.  Sure, they did not have Twitter back then, but the gossip grapevine still existed, and conflicts occurred.  One place where the unity of the church was threatened was the First Church of Philippi.  They had their fair share of conflicts and differences of opinion.  But Paul writes to them and admonishes them (in an impassioned way) to be unified.  He did not call for them to be uniform (he knew differences of opinion would exist) but he did not want them to fight one another … we saw this last Sunday in Philippians 1:27-30. 

But in the midst of the divergent opinions that existed in the Philippian church, Paul did NOT tell which opinion was “right.”  He did not even tell them that the problem was someone else’s to fix.  Instead, he appealed to each and every believer in that church, and invited them to SERVE. ONE. ANOTHER.  

Of course Jesus had modeled this lifestyle for them in His earthly ministry, but even more than just giving us an example, Jesus invites us “IN.”  If we trust in Him, we are “in Christ,” and we have access to His mind, His mission, and His love.

This Sunday at Wildwood, we will be kicking off a new sermon series called “Attitude of a Servant.”  In this 4 part series, we will walk through Philippians 2 and see how we might live in accordance with the mind of Christ as we pursue unity in the faith.  This week we will be in one of the most famous (and important) sections of the New Testament (Philippians 2:1-11).  We get to see who Jesus really is, and how knowing Jesus changes the way we interact with others.  Hope you make plans to be with us at 9, 10:15, or 11:30 (inside and with children, student, college, and adult classes running), outside at 8:00 AM in our chapel service, or online in the stream at 10:15 (wildwoodchurch.org/live).

Let’s gather together, listen to the Word of God together, and resolve to serve one another in our increasingly fractured world.  See you Sunday!