The Power Of Being A One Thing Person | Joel Gregory

0:00 Well, good evening, church. What an anticipated delight and privilege it is to be here with Pastor Tim and with the Times Square Church. I know you've been praying, as I've been praying, that God might speak to us this evening from His Holy Word. He's right, I do teach preachers at Baylor University down in Texas, and then on weekends and other times, I'm what the late Dr. Gardner Taylor called a hit-and-run preacher. And I'm so pleased to share this hour with you and anticipate what God is going to do in these special services yet to come. I want to call your attention tonight to a subject, the power of being a one thing person. I want you to join with me in a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote from his prison cell in Rome.

1:05 While he was in Rome, in prison, Epaphroditus brought him a gift from the church in Philippi. northern Greece, Macedonia. And this is a thank you letter. I suppose history's most famous thank you letter that Epaphroditus carried back to the church at Philippi where Paul had not been for 10 years when they sent his gift. And in the first chapter of this, he writes to you about the power of being a one thing person. Let's join Paul in verse 12 of chapter 1. I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel. So that it's become known throughout the whole Imperial Guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ.

2:13 And most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear. Now, some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I've been put here for the defense of the gospel. And the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition. not sincerely, but intending to increase my sufferings in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true, and in that I rejoice. Okay, I'll continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance.

3:15 It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that by my speaking with all boldness, Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death. And here it is. The power of being a one thing person. For me, living is Christ, and dying is gain. Pray with me. Lord, eternal God, our triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. we have adored you and praised your holy name, exalted you and lifted you up as worthy of our praise.

4:13 And now we come, Lord, in confession of anything that would stand between us and between you, cleansed by the blood of your Son. And we ask that at this time you would take these words, ancient words written in a prison cell long ago and cause them to slip the bonds of this printed page and be your living word for us tonight. Speak, Lord, in power to your church. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, those people that we know by initials tend to be people who lived or were known for one thing. If I say the initials TR, a native of this city, Theodore Roosevelt, usually one thing comes to people's mind, and that is walk softly and carry a what?

5:14 Big stick. If I say FDR, we remember him because he said we have nothing to fear. You can complete the sentence. MLK, we know by his initials because he said I have a dream.

5:38 JFK, I remember hearing the words when he spoke them. as a sixth grader watching a television. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Isn't it interesting that the people we know by their initials made statements of focus? They tended to be one thing people. The opposite of that by the author H.G. Wells. He had a character named Mr. Polly, and he said, Mr. Polly is not so much an individual as he is a walking civil war. The gavel was not in anybody's hand in the parliament of his personality. There was no one thing, no north star toward which his life navigated. Surely we could put alongside these other one thing people.

6:35 And this 21st verse of chapter 1 in Philippians, For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain is the power of being a one thing person. We should never forget where Paul was when he wrote this. This was written from jail. Now, when you think of jail, don't even think of a city jail, a county jail, a state prison, or a federal prison. And he was in a squalid, rancid place where he had to provide his own food and take care of himself in Rome in desperate circumstances when he said, for me to live is Christ. Now, Paul spent at least seven years of his missionary career in jail. I'm sure when the Philippians got word from Epaphroditus that Paul was in jail, they might have said, again?

7:32 I was telling the elders before we came out here, if I were writing a letter from prison, chapter 1, verse 1 would be, get me out. And yet in the four letters he wrote from prison, Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, not one time did he say that. But he did give you the reason that he could triumph even where he was. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. It's interesting what people do with prison. You put an Adolf Hitler in prison. In between World War I and World War II, you get the hateful Nazi track Mein Kampf, my struggle. Somebody said for every word in it, 200 people died. It was life taking. And yet you put Bunyan in prison at the little village of Bedford in England and you get Pilgrim's Progress.

8:29 You see, you can put someone in prison, but you don't have to put the prison in someone. I want to hand you a truth tonight, and if I were to put this sermon in a single sentence, it would be this. Your life will have peace, power, poise, purpose, to the degree you are a one thing person. I want to hand you some things that will change, first of all. being a one thing person enables you to deal with life's inevitable disappointments. The apostle had an aspiration, and his aspiration was he would come to Rome, take up a missionary offering, go to Spain, and march off the map with the gospel. He wrote that in the book of Romans. He didn't found the church at Rome. He wrote them, said, I'm going to come, take an offering, and you send me to Spain.

9:22 That was his aspiration. but his situation was one of incarceration. Somebody said that's a lot of dislocation between your aspiration and your situation. What he wanted and what he got were two different things. And is he bitter? Is he anxious? Is he angry? No. In fact, he writes to us, I want you to know don't worry about me over in Philippi, a thousand miles away from here, because this has furthered the gospel. He uses a technicolor word in the language of the New Testament that refers to somebody marching in front of an army, hacking their way through the undergrowth so others can come behind them. He said, just because I'm here, the good news of Jesus Christ has been furthered. And he explains that. He says, first of all, the Praetorian Guard heard it. We'd say today the Secret Service.

10:15 Those were the troops that were in charge of the prisoners of Caesar. They were the best of the best, the creme de la creme. They had heard the gospel. History tells us that they were chained to Paul four hours at a time. Can you imagine what it was like to be chained to Paul for four hours? I expect Lepidus came to relieve Maxentius, and Max said, you better get ready, Lep. All this man talks about was being on a road one day to somewhere called Damascus, and he heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, and he saw a light, and he lost his eye. And he says, now this man is raised from the dead. That's all he's talked about for four hours. Those chains became electric chains, transmitting the power of the gospel. And Paul said, as disappointing as it is to be in jail, the gospel is reaching people it could never have reached.

11:09 And then look what else he said, everywhere else. Everywhere else. That this little Jewish itinerant evangelist was in jail for Jesus was being talked about all over Rome, the capital of the Western world. When the women went shopping in their daily market visits, they said, have you heard about this man named Paul who said somewhere over in the east Jesus was raised. The Roman senators in their togas, their garbatas, were talking about this prisoner, Paul, who says Jesus was raised. Even little children playing their games on the streets of Rome. But everywhere else, just because he was raised. Paul says, just because my disappointing circumstances are not what I wanted, because I can write over them for me to live is Christ, he's transformed.

12:02 Now here's where I wish I could sit down to your kitchen table over a cup of coffee or tea and just talk with you. Sometimes after I preach a sermon like this someone will stop me in the back and say Joel you just don't understand my circumstances. And they say it as if they're the first person in history who had circumstances. actions. Come close to me. Let me clue you in. All God's children got circumstances. Thanks a lot. And the power of Christ, the power of Christ is shown to be the power of Christ when in your lives, because of a single priority, he transforms your disappointing circumstances.

13:04 I don't know what they are. You don't know what mine are. You know, Shakespeare said, troubled seldom come as single centurymen. When they come, they come in battalions. Down in Texas, we say when it rains, it pours. And life's circumstances are like that. Trials of health lead to trials of wealth, lead to vocational trials, domestic trials, psychological trials. One thing builds into the other. Life has circumstances. And I know this in walking through Jesus. Sometimes I've been up, sometimes down, sometimes level with the ground. To the degree you're a one thing person. And you can say for me to live is Christ. He, in the most mysterious way, transforms those disappointing circumstances for his sake. I think the pastor said I was teaching last few weeks in England.

14:02 I was at Oxford University. in the college where I was teaching has the couch, the divan, where the first modern foreign missionary went to be with the Lord. He died. William Carey was a missionary to India. And William Carey on that couch in the 18th century went to be with Jesus. I sat down on that couch, Pastor, because I remembered a story about William Carey. He was the first missionary in the whole world in the modern mission movement. He raised the money to ship a printing press from England to India. He translated the Bible from the indigenous language so that they could read it. And then one night a fire burnt down the press, burnt up all his paper, and burnt up his translation. He was shattered. He sent a telegram back to the pastor who was supporting him in the little British village of Kettering and said, all is lost.

15:00 A month later, his pastor Andrew Fuller sent a word back to him. Carrie, that fire is the best thing that ever happened to you. It's taken your work off the back page of the London Papers and put it on the front page. Now everybody wants to help you. And it was the beginning of everything good that happened to him when it looked like a disaster. I don't have the right or know what your difficult, disappointing circumstances are. But I've got a Christian lifetime of knowing. If you hand them to him and write over it for me to live is Christ. Amazing, transformative things can happen. But wait a minute, let's lean into this another one.

15:53 being a one thing person enables you to endure life's difficult relationships. I'm preaching to somebody who gets up and goes to work because you work for a boss that seems to be born to give you trouble. I'm preaching to somebody for whom those relationships are under the roof where you are. What do you do about life's difficult relationships? Well, look what Paul says. Wouldn't it be enough to be in jail for Jesus? But on top of that, there were jealous, irritating other preachers, preaching within earshot just to irritate Paul, to make his handcuffs cut into his wrist, his fetters cut into his ankle. He said just to irritate him.

16:47 He said there's some who preach Christ out of goodwill, but some out of envy and rivalry. What a despicable thing to do. When I think about if I could have done anything to help the apostle Paul, I'd give anything to do that, but here were people who were preaching just to irritate. We don't know who they were. Maybe they were the people called the Judaizers. Everywhere Paul told people about Jesus, they came behind them and said, uh-uh-uh, you can't be a Christian until you become a Jew. That is, they added something else to the gospel. Or maybe they were the founders of the church at Rome. Paul didn't found the church. Maybe they were jealous when this famous theologian preacher showed up. Sometimes the green-eyed monster of jealousy can invade the church itself. Somebody said to dwell above with the saints in love, that'll be glory. To dwell below with some of the saints I know, that's a different story. It's true, folks. You heard it here.

17:45 All right. Did you hear about the two porcupines, those little beasts with quills? They were caught out in the Yukon in that great snowmass when the first Arctic storm came. And they didn't have time to get back to their porcupine den, so one looked at the other and said, if we don't get together, we're going to freeze. But they also found out the closer they got to one another, the more they needled one another. That can be true even in the Christian fellowship. That's what happened to Paul. Preachers who were preaching just to make him jealous, irritate. What did he say? He wrote over it his one thing person motto. for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. And he said, if they're saying anything good about Jesus, good on them, it's not going to bother me.

18:46 Let me tell you something. I've been in Christian work all my adult life from the time I was a teenager. Say something in Christian work that will help you a lot. And that is, stop worrying about what God is doing to use somebody else and work on what he's doing to use you. In the last chapter of John, you remember Jesus showed up there when those seven disciples went AWOL, cooked breakfast for them on the shore, and when they got there and had fish with Jesus, Jesus was talking about Peter and he was talking about John and he told Pete, said, Pete, when you were a young man, you went where you wanted to. When you're going to get old, they're going to take you where you don't want to go, and they're going to execute you. Well, all of a sudden, John got worried, and Pete got worried, and Pete looked at John and said, well, what's this man going to do?

19:43 And Jesus said in a loose translation, what's it to you? You follow me. If you write over everything in the Christian life in and out of the church for me to live is Christ, and measure relationships by them. It has a remarkable transformative power. Clarence McCartney was a preacher in another area. He told a story about some of those early would-be Atlantic navigators. Before Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, a number of people tried to be the first person to cross the ocean without stopping. He told about one of those pilots that took off from on the East Coast, trying to make it across the Atlantic in a tiny, primitive, fragile, single-engine plane. And he heard something gnawing under the cockpit.

20:38 And he saw insulation falling off the wires in the floor of that tiny, primitive aircraft. And he came to deduce that it was a stowaway rat eating the insulation off the wires over the Atlantic. and he decided it's either going to be the rat or me.

21:01 And he took the plane higher and higher and higher until it got up in an atmosphere where the rat fell out. Now, I'm tempted to say there's something gnawing on you. Somebody. Take it up higher and higher into an atmosphere where you have a single priority for me to live is Christ. I don't have time to testify to that. What I've seen God do with irritating individuals in my own life when I lifted it up into that atmosphere, that's why Paul could say, I rejoice. And I will rejoice. A single priority transforms difficult relations.

21:57 I didn't say it makes them go away, but it transforms them if you lift them up into his presence. But the last thing I want to say is this. Being a one-thing person enables you to really embrace and even triumph over life's uncertainties. That's the big one. Paul is in jail in Rome waiting for Nero, one of the craziest people who ever ruled anything, to hold a private trial and say, you live or you die. Several years earlier, Paul was in prison in Caesarea on the seacoast of Israel, and he exercised his right as a Roman citizen. He said, I appeal to Caesar. Any Roman citizen could say that.

22:49 Then you went to Rome and you waited for years for your moment to get before the most powerful man in the world. That's where he is, in jail, live, die. Is he anxious? Is he worried? No. Did you see what he said? He said, I don't know what's going to happen. he said it may be that I'll get out. And if I do, there's going to be fruit for my labor. I may get to write 2nd Philippians and 3rd Philippians. I may get to go to Spain and take the gospel. I may get out, but then he says on the other hand, I may not. And here's what he says in the language of the New Testament, not to be technical, it's a rare, triple, triple superlative. He said, if I go be with the Lord, it's not far better or far, far better. He said, it's far, far, far better.

23:50 Paul said, if it's my time to loose the ropes that hold me to the harbor of time and I sail out into the ocean of eternity, that's far better. He says, I don't know which one I'd choose. He's waiting whether or not he keeps his head or not. You know, if people don't know anything else about Shakespeare, they generally know one line from his play Hamlet. Hamlet was a prince in Denmark. His father died taking a nap in the garden. A couple of months later, his mother married his father's brother, and then his father started appearing to Hamlet on the roof of the palace there in Denmark, saying, my brother killed me by pouring poison in my ear and I want you to avenge me. His father's brother married his mother.

24:42 That's where the other famous line from that play comes from. There's something rotten in Denmark. Hammerson a mess. To be or what? See, you know that. You know Shakespeare, right? He doesn't know if he be, because if he be, it means living with the mess at the palace. But if he not be, he looks at the raw red throat of death, judgment and eternity. And he doesn't know whether he wants to be or not be. Paul turns him upside down. He says, if I be, I'm going to get to serve the Lord. plant another church, write another letter, find another Timothy. If I not be, it's going to be with him immediately in glory forever.

25:44 Church, the statistics on mortality are remarkably consistent. One out of one. Unless you leave here like Enoch, who walked with God and was not, or like Elijah, who took off in a fiery chariot, it's been one out of one. And you are not ready to live until you're ready to face this question. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. I don't know how it happened, but church history tells us tradition. Sooner or later, after the last chapter of the book of Acts, one of those Roman guards came to that underground prison and lifted up the iron grate under which Paul lived in the darkness. I'd like to think that guard had become a believer.

26:43 He said, Brother Paul, the word has come down from Nero. I hate to tell you what I've got to tell you. Thank you. I think Paul blinked back that bright Mediterranean sun, said, Max, I've told you for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. They took the man who wrote 13 letters in your New Testament, bound him and took him out the south gate of Rome. You can still go there. Walk on the same cobblestones. Laid him down, and there was a Roman with a long axe at the end of a long pole. I wonder if he said to Paul, face up or face down. I think Paul said face up.

27:29 Said he wants something over your head. No, eyes wide open. And for a moment, it was the light of the sun on the blade of that earth. But in the next moment, it was the light of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. He breathed new air, and it was celestial. He heard the same voice that had spoken to him those decades before, so, so. But this time, oh, well done. He saw a sea, and it wasn't the Mediterranean. It was a sea of glass around the throne of God. For even now, he's joined that great cloud of witnesses and is encouraging you from these very words right now.

28:31 Now, come close to me. I want to sit down, but I'm going to ask you this. This sermon very clearly talked about three things, a life with a single priority, and more than heaven. That's why Paul wrote, we're more than conquerors. The Spirit of God is impressing you with one of those. Probably most of us are dealing with all three, but one of them is in the forefront. you walked into this place tonight with a difficulty, you're listening wherever you are, and your life seems to be a puzzle inside of an enigma, inside of a riddle. I wish you could understand Jesus standing here, as it were, with a beautiful basket.

29:24 I don't know what kind of basket he would have, but it would be a beautiful basket. Could you imagine taking that bundle of things you call difficulty? putting them in that basket. Take it, Lord. Or maybe it's a relationship that's poisoning your life, staining your days, haunting your nights. Could you imagine him with a basket?

29:55 It's labeled relationships. And that thing you can't solve, you put in that basket. are haunted by your life. Future uncertainties. My God, what a world we live in internationally, nationally, financially. I don't have to even tick off the boxes. You know what it is. And then your own life and family and health and uncertainties. Could you imagine him with a beautiful basket? and you took that whole bundle of uncertainties and just put it there and said for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Incidentally, how would you fill in the blank if that were a fill in the blank tonight?

30:48 For me to live is just honest to God. What would you write in there? I mean, if it were the truth about you, the one thing that wakes you up in the morning and you go to sleep thinking about, for me to live is. How would you fill that Bible? Not easy to be that honest with yourself sometimes. for me to live is some other human being. Let me tell you that, if it's another human being and that blank, you're bound for disappointment. You think you meant Mr. Right, he's only Mr. Half-Right. That's...

31:35 No human being can fill that blank. For me to live is my career, my degree. What would you put there if it's other than Christ? There's an opportunity for you tonight to put his name there if you couldn't honestly put his name there.

31:59 I want you to understand clearly the basics of how Philippians 121 becomes something for you as a one-thing person. Paul wrote elsewhere in the book of Romans, how that happens is near you, it's even on the tip of your tongue. If you will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, I don't mean theoretically, he was really dead from the top of his head to the tip of his hole, eyes closed in death, hands stiff in death, tongue still in death, body cold in death. And yet on that first Easter morning, those hands reached out, those eyes opened, those feet walked, and he came back to life.

32:55 And if you'll confess he's Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. It's a beautiful word. The word means rescued. It means made whole. I'll tell you this. I don't have a ghost of a chance without that.

33:19 I'm a preacher, preach all over the place. I don't have a ghost of a chance without that truth. I go to a lot of conventions, and one thing they do in so many of them are those crack and peel labels. You know what I'm talking about? They write your name on it, put it on here, you know, you take it off, you stick it, and I leave it on and wear it back to the hotel. You know, I had a funny thought in one of those conventions. What if instead of my name, they wrote on that my sin? Well, he walked up to one another and said, well, how are you hateful? Well, ha, ha. I'm doing okay, Lusty. Now, here's the truth of the thing.

34:16 When Jesus Christ bled to death on that cross, every one of us come by and take those labels off and put on him. What it means to be saved, redeemed, born again, however you want to call it, is that you came to that cross, took all the labels of you and put them on him. And beyond here or here tonight, there's one somebody.