David Donnan

These are my notes used for my sermon. If you watch what actually you was preached you notice some/a lot of variance. There still may be some devotional of information value.

There’s this famous saying of Jesus in the Gospel. It is from Matthew 11

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Here is the thing… this can be hard to believe. I have had several days where I would look at my to-do list, calendar, worry, or circumstances and think, “This does not look like it is going to be a light day, week, or season.”

Maybe you have been there?

So how can this be true? How can the Christian life really feel light? Well I think Paul answers that in our introduction to Philippians.

Today, we begin our journey through the Philippians. I want to encourage you to take the card in your bulletin and memorize this passage (Also, a note, the card is the New Living Translation not the NIV for our eagle eye viewers).

In this series we will spend more time on the background and characters here. For today, Philippians was written by the Apostle Paul, a leader and martyr of the church. Some say Paul is the most important person in regard to the spread of Christianity after Christ.

Paul is not writing to the Philippians from his podcast studio, a nice ivory tower study, or from a fancy mansion. Paul is writing from prison.

Hear these words from Philippians chapter 1, verse 1 through 11.

May God add his blessing to the reading of his word.

How many of you feel a little overwhelmed sometimes? I think calling this letter to Philippians is good… but maybe better: Paul’s letter to the overwhelmed, the anxious, maybe even joyless.

Many scholars actually say this letter is about joy even in spite of the hardship faced by the local church.

Well we all have hardship today. Whether it is feeling overwhelmed, the stress of trying to get everything done, the struggles of health and aging. 

What Paul has just said here though can help us. He tells us what we can do… nothing… well not exactly nothing.

Let’s look at verse 6 again: being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Notice who is going to do the work, who will carry it on to completion: Is it the preacher? Is it the seminary presidents? Is it political leaders? What about Sunday school teachers? 

Paul is confident that “he” who began the good work… or as the NLT makes clear “God” will carry it on to completion.

This is what it means to be Holy, we are trusting in God’s work, his grace not our own strength.

This past week Brandy won the Donnan family reunion 5k… now we have some real speedsters in our family. But the 5k was not based on speed. It was based on guessing your finish time then running without a watch and whoever was closest was the winner.

You had to run in faith and see where you ended up.

In a similar way, we do this with our spiritual life. We set out to run our race but we also know there is a part we just do not know. A part we can just not quite know the timing of. Yet, we will see at the end where we ended up.

So how do we actually do this? We can’t throw away our phones and watches every day.

Well we do it together. I saw one of the coolest formations at the Pinewood middle school game on Thursday. Towards the end of the game Phillip (names of youth changed for privacy) was in at running back and Willie was the QB. For a moment it was just the Glennville Methodist backfield. The GMC package. Two Methodists together moving forward.

Church, there is work to be done… but we do not do it alone. We do it beside each other. And most importantly we do it trusting in God. 

The work that he began in you… he knows about it. God has not forgotten about it. Christ just didn’t die on the cross and forget about you. The Holy Spirit just didn’t forget about comforting you in your loss.

No, the one who began this good work is still working. Let us trust in God to do this and keep our eyes open to how He is doing this.

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Amen.