Sermon Tone Analysis

Life can be really tough sometimes.

People die.

We get sick.

Friends leave.

People get divorced.

Cars break down.

Checks bounce.

People fight.

You disappoint people.

Others are rude.

We are sometimes ridden with guilt.

And sometimes we just plain do not feel good—whether physically or emotionally.

We wonder what the point of all of this is.

Yet there is one thing about difficult circumstances—everyone has to live through them.

Sometimes we bring these things on ourselves—like the terrorist who did not pay enough postage for his letter bomb.

When he got the letter back he forgot it was a bomb…opened it up and blew him to pieces.

Sometimes we are trying to do nice but it turns out bad—like the housewife who came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle.

Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood, breaking his arm in two places.

Until that moment he had been happily listening to his IPod.

Sometimes bad things just happen despite all our efforts—like during the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Many animals were killed but some were able to be saved.

Apparently it cost about 80,000 to rehab even one seal.

It was a costly endeavor.

At one ceremony the people were celebrating two quite costly animals and their release back into the wild.

As they released the seals back into the water the many on-lookers celebrated with shouts of applause.

But within one minute both seals were eaten by a killer whale.[1]

Or sometimes you’re trying to help your fellow man and they don’t like you for it and so you end up getting thrown in jail and treated harshly.

And you think that God might be doing something in this and so you appeal and you end up spending the next two years of your life on house arrest—chained to a guard non-stop as you fight court battle after court battle until you can take your case to the head ruler himself.

That was Paul’s circumstance as he wrote this letter to the Philippians.

I doubt it would have made the news but lets pretend for a moment that Paul’s circumstances made the headlines.

Paul was quite likely the greatest evangelist in the early church.

His mission travels and church planting efforts spread the gospel all around the known world.

As we read in Acts this started stirring up trouble for some local communities.

Like in Ephesus when the gospel takes such a root that they had a bonfire of all their magic books.

The local idol makers started losing money.

And so they worked to shut down the apostle.

Paul was quite likely the greatest evangelist in the early church.

His mission travels and church planting efforts spread the gospel all around the known world.

As we read in Acts this started stirring up trouble for some local communities.

Like in Ephesus when the gospel takes such a root that they had a bonfire of all their magic books.

The local idol makers started losing money.

And so they worked to shut down the apostle.

Furthermore, Paul was hated by the Jews and he the more he was known the more unpopular he became throughout the Roman Empire.

He was a troublemaker.

After that Ephesus riot the great evangelist was finally arrested.

What do you think would have appeared on the Jewish news site that morning?

What do you think would have appeared on the Jewish news site that morning?

TROUBLEMAKING CULT FOLLOWER FINALLY SLOWED BY AUTHORITIES

What about the Roman news sites?

JEWISH RABBLE ROUSER NOW CHANGED TO ROMAN GUARD

And from our perspective each of those leads would have seemed accurate.

The Philippians likely would have been concerned about Paul.

They wonder how Paul is doing and we get the hint they are curious about what this will mean for the advance of the gospel.

Will this slow things down?

Will this hinder kingdom growth?

If I were Greek speaking I’d use the word proskope (pro-skow-pay) which means “hinder”.

The headlines would read PROSKOPE.

Hindered.

But the headline in heaven is different:

READ TEXT

Paul just surprised them and us.

Rather than Proskope it’s actually pro-ko-pay…advance.

So the news headlines had the whole thing backwards.

The heavenly press would have read something like:

INFINITELY WISE GOD CHAINS ROME TO GREAT EVANGELIST

Paul was chained to a Roman guard.

Rome was now chained to the apostle Paul.

From the outside it looked like evil and darkness was winning, but in reality God was doing what he always does—advance His kingdom and promote His glory.

This is great news for us.

God is on a mission and it will not be thwarted.

Regardless of what the news headlines read, know that there is always another story taking place.

It is a story which overrides all other stories, even though it is quite often the one playing in the background.

This is great news for us.

God is on a mission and it will not be thwarted.

Regardless of what the news headlines read, know that there is always another story taking place.

It is a story which overrides all other stories, even though it is quite often the one playing in the background.

And that’s what I want us to see this morning.

Life is going to be tough.

Being a Christian doesn’t shield you from this—in fact it might even make things worse for you.

It’s “in Christ” that Paul is “in prison”.

But isn’t this comforting?

It’s comforting to know that the people who God used to write the Bible and those, like Paul, who lived in the Bible times aren’t all that much different than we are.

When he was chained to a Roman guard the guy who wrote this letter would have been experiencing the same type of temptations that you and I face.

We all face difficult circumstances—the question is what are we going to do with them?

Some people never get over their sufferings.

They spend their lives wondering why.

Why did this relationship end?