Jan 10, 2010

Series on Philippians #7

The Christian’s “if-then” Gauges
Philippians 2:1-2


Let's pray...

Every car has a set of gauges on the dash. Some cars just have the bare minimum: how much gas, engine temp and speed.

But, I was in a rental car the other day that told me more than I wanted to know.

Besides fuel, speed and temp, it told me how long before my next fuel-up, what kind of miles-per-gallon I was getting, what the temperature was like outside, whether or not my tires were properly inflated and more and more and more.

One guy honked at me because I was sitting still at a green light, switching through all these gauges on the little digital screen.

There is a point to all this. You see, all of those gauges are important if you want the car to do what it is designed to do and if you want it to do what it is supposed to do at it’s top performance.

In Philippians 2:2, Paul gives us a snapshot of what we look like as individual Christians and as the CHURCH when our gauges are all in check.

But, we can only run at that level as individual Christians and as the CHURCH if we monitor the “gauges”. And we find those gauges with each “if” in verse one. Let’s read it again and then we’ll unpack it.


If you wanted to title this message, I think a good title would be: The Christian’s “if-then” Gauges. Or, if you are a Christian, you can personalize it: _________’s “if-then” Gauges.

And we’re going to dissect these two little verses and I pray that you will see that — just like ignoring the oil pressure light will devastate your engine — ignoring your spiritual “warning lights” will cause your discipleship to malfunction. And it will bring your spiritual walk and the effectiveness of the church to a halt.

First, let’s look at each “if” in verse one as a spiritual gauge for each of us as individuals and for the church body as a whole.


Encouragement, in the Greek, is Perakleesees – which means more than just encouragement, it also means a stirring address, but also a comfort. So the first gauge measures with the question for you; Does your union with Jesus Christ stir your heart with affection and boldness in the Gospel Mission and does your union with Jesus Christ comfort and sustain you, or encourage you when things do get difficult.

Think of your own dashboard now. Picture it with this gauge. Are you full or empty (or somewhere in between) with encouragement that comes from a knowledge and reliance on your union with Christ?

Moving on Paul finishes verse one by fleshing out some of what comes with being truly united with Christ.

In the last weeks we’ve been clear that a good portion of our union on this side of eternity is struggle and hardship and suffering and persecution. But there is so much more, even on this side and it all rests in our hearts.

The next gauge is comfort

In our union with Christ we begin to feel – really feel the LOVE of Jesus.

Oh! I pray that you might not go another night without feeling His love for you. And this is more than some greeting card and candies type of emotional love. This is a deep love for you that translates into a deep and abiding commitment to your betterment.

We talk week after week of His love. Of course it is most clearly a love demonstrated on the cross, where He showed such a deep commitment to our betterment, such a deep love that He actually died to save us.

But also, before that His love is seen in His humanity; where we know that He suffered under every temptation that WE suffer under.

His love is not some ivory tower love, where He looks down and “feels for us”, but doesn’t understand us.

No! He understands completely and that is why He is at the right hand of the Father, right now, interceding on our behalf - on your behalf (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25; 1 Jn. 2:1).

And not only the humanity, where He took on flesh; and (though I hate to say only) not only His death on the cross;

There is also the love demonstrated by His Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, Who was sent to us and who now wades the waters of this world with us.

His love guarantees that we are never alone. In the crowded streets and in the quite solitude, He is with us in His Spirit. I pray that God would take my ineffective words and some how stir your heart so that Christ’s love would be much more than head knowledge for you tonight.

I pray that His love would INVADE you! And look again why I want to see that invasion in your heart:

Friends, look again at your gauge. Do you find comfort in His love? Are you full of comfort, or empty? Are you somewhere in between?

This gauge can only be filled if we continue to fill up with the Gospel.

Remember, the bloody cross and the empty tomb aren’t just things we need to hear once and then we’re done.

The Gospel is the life of the Christian. We are filled up, but as many pastors like to say, we leak.

As God fills your tank with knowledge of His love through the Gospel, the world comes in and tries to displace that fuel with gallon upon gallon of worry and doubt. And what is worry and doubt except us forgetting that God loves us and has our best in mind. We may struggle here, sure. But this isn’t it. He says lose you life and gain me! He says keep your gauge on full by preaching the gospel to yourself everyday.

When you wake up, remind yourself, “God loves me.”

When you’re getting dressed, “He proved His love for me at the cross.”

When you’re holding back a snide comment toward your boss or a co-worker; or when you find yourself in an opportunity to cheat our steal, or gossip, “I am no longer a slave to sin. I am a child of God.”

When the doctor gives you that bad report, “Through Christ all things are possible.”

When it seems that your life is close to an end, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

If you do this, your comfort gauge will stay closer to full than empty.

And as we as a church, as the body preach the same Gospel truths to one another — in regular conversation and in corporate worship, our church gauge will remain full as well.

Now back to he text:

We talked about fellowship or Koinonia a few weeks back. Remember it is a partnership that is bonded by a common goal. What’s our common goal with the Spirit and with each other?

The goals are to glorify God (1 Corinthians 6:20, 31); to win souls (Matt 9:35-38), and to be sanctified in our own walk’s with the Spirit (Jude 1:22-23; 1 Thessalonians 5:14; Thessalonians 2:13; Galatians 6:1-2).

And listen to this passage from Hebrews 10 where we see that As His ambassadors, as the family, as the CHURCH we not only benefit from the love of Christ through union with Him — We also participate. Here Hebrews defines fellowship with the Spirit

First the writer of Hebrews reminds us of the source, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Always important:

Hebrews 10:19-25

Then through Faith in that loving gift, we take action. Having fellowship with the Spirit provides us with a call to action today.


Church, that’s fellowship with the Spirit.

Here’s how you make sure this gauge remains full or gets filled.

The next time you are talking with a fellow believer, from whatever church, start prompting and pushing and persuading them. Be like Christ, co-labor with the Holy Spirit and stir the brother and sister’s hearts toward love and good deeds. And, be open to prompting yourself.
Be like that encouraging teammate on the sidelines, or the coach, if you’ve been put into that level of authority, but prompt them, encourage them, persuade them to get in gear for the Gospel.

A lazy Christian is responsible for his or her own lack of passion, but the mirror’s going to have to turn on us at some point if we see a lazy or half-hearted disciple and we don’t say anything; and we don’t do anything.

This motivation, this stirring isn’t just the job of the preacher to get you motivated. Let’s all get to it.

Now for the last gauge:

This goes back to our talk from Philippians 1:8


If you remember “the affection of Christ Jesus” has also been translated, I long for you “in the bowels of Christ Jesus” – That was an old time way of talking about the innermost point of the soul or spirit where our most honest feelings are found. The same Greek word for “affection” in 1:8 is used in the English translation of “tenderness” here in 2:1

My question to you then is similar now. See, Paul keeps pointing us back to fellowship and asking, is your fellowship Christ-like? Is your fellowship Christ-honoring?

He says if…you have a deep compassion for other Christians. That’s the gauge that you need to look at on the dashboard of your spirit.

Do you feel this way? Do you feel this deep – core level compassion for other Christians?

Some of you might honestly say, "I’m not sure." That’s fine; we’ll get to you in a minute.

But first onto those who know you don’t feel this.
If not, why not? Maybe it’s because you are more concerned with your own comfort or wants? Maybe it’s because you’ve been wounded before and now you don’t want to get close?

Why aren’t you more compassionate? Why isn’t that gauge full? I can’t give you the answer. But I know you can find the answer if you begin to pray earnestly to God for clarity.

It may be because you have never truly experienced the truth of God’s saving grace in your life.

As a friend likes to say, “You can’t give away what you don’t have.”

Maybe tonight is the night that you need to step over from the category of an enemy of God, to the category of His adopted child.

You do that by recognizing your own sinfulness and placing your trust in Jesus Christ who lived a sinless life that we could not live, then died the death that we should have died in order to absorb the punishment that we should have received.
And through Jesus’ death and His resurrection, we are made into new creations, with a clean spirit and a promise of eternal life with Him — with God. Instead of in Hell without Him.

If you’ve lacked compassion, if that gauge is empty or running on fumes, and you know that it is because you’ve never truly known Jesus Christ as your Savior, then I pray that you would place your faith in Him tonight.

But again, that’s just one camp, if you are doing these things that Paul has in the “ifs” category. Then where do you go from here? You’ve checked all your gauges and you say okay, I’m ready to roll.

What’s is it to operate at top performance? In this analogy of the car and the dashboard gauges, what is the driving experience in the Christian life and in the life of the church body as a whole?


Any preacher will tell you, one of the hardest things to do in a sermon is to draw out useful applications from the lesson that fit with the Scripture. Paul makes it real easy this week.

At least, he makes it easy for me to give you a charge. He makes it easy for me to file marching orders as you go out.

You’ll have to report back how easy these order are to execute. And the ease or difficulty that you find in living out this command should give you a pretty good clue as to where you stand on those “ifs” that we just went over. You can quickly glance at the gauges and say, Yup; I think I’m good to go. But when you actually take to the road, you’ll find out quickly if one of your gauges was broken. He says IF all those things are true:


Paul says if all the “ifs” are in you, then bring him joy by being like-minded. Unified in Love. Unified in spirit. Unified in purpose.

All of these are group dynamic issues. You will find out if your gauges are right, when you look at your relationships and your effectiveness and contribution in the church.

By like-minded, Paul is saying, be in agreement together, cherish the same views, and be harmonious.

And when He says having the same love, another way to say it is Maintain the same love, the Greek implies that this isn’t like a yes I love them. Like you love someone in the abstract, more obligation than real feeling or dedication.

No this is something that you cling to. This is a love, that you would be alarmed if it was taken from your hand.

1 John 4:7-8 says this:

Do you Maintain A Christ saturated love in the fellowship? Are you forming those kinds of bonds with the people around you at church?

And here’s where it will probably sting some of you. Do you realize this love is to be shared among ALL, ALL, ALL, ALL Christians?

Are you clinging to this kind of love with other Christians in the workplace?

Here’s where it stings me – Are you forming that kind of love and clinging to it with other Christians in your own neighborhood?
Do you even know the other Christians in your neighborhood?

Let’s move on. In addition to clinging to the love for one another, are you, ARE WE one in spirit and purpose?

“Purpose” at the end of verse two is the same word as what is used to say like-minded in the middle of verse two.

Anytime the Bible repeats itself take notice. What’s the idea between like-mindedness? Again, be in agreement together, cherish the same views, and be harmonious.

One more time. It is a call to unity. Unity in the Spirit.

That’s the clarion call for us as a church. And Paul says IF we check our gauges and they are full we will perform as we are designed to, as a body and it will complete our joy on this side of eternity.

We’ve taught about the gifts of the Spirit here before. I point you there again. Dwell on these words this week in your quiet time. While you pray and while you stop and listen. Ask the Lord, Am I empty in any of these areas?

If so Lord fill me up, so that I can do my part as a part of the body, as a part of the church, as the part of the mission to DRIVE the Gospel into the dark night and bring on as many new riders as we can find.

Let’s pray (for a filling of encouragement from being united with Christ,
A filling of comfort from his love,
A filling of fellowship with the Spirit, and
A filling of any tenderness and compassion)…
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