God is at Work In You and Through You

 Philippians 1:6, 9-11

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Sermon for TSLSITCY     Final sermon here         11/16/25

God is at Work In and Through You

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Well, here we are. This is the day we have all been looking forward to.  Suddenly, Immanuel will be without a pastor. Pastor Rickbeil will try to do his best, and we all know that it will be very good.  

I have looked forward to this day with a sense of dread and excitement and nervousness, with a complex of emotions that only the pastors and perhaps their wives among us can imagine.  They have been here before.  Really, the only thing I can say is the first line of our text: "I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."  

If you are despairing, remember that God is in charge, and He loves you.  In other words, good thing or bad, God is at work, so we may have hope.  And sinful human beings are at work so we know how messed up things can get - but we always have hope in God.

God is at work in the Church - and He has always been.  He often has different goals than we do, and often different ways of accomplishing what He wills, so we must always walk by faith - not by our perceptions or understandings.  Our text this morning underlines that fact for us.  It tells us plainly that God is at work in us – and through us.  And that is our theme - God is at work in and through you.

First is the work - Paul calls it "the good work", which God is doing in you.  It is the work of faith.  He has begun that good work in you.  Paul reminds us that our faith is not our doing or our choosing, but the creation of God in us.  He began the good work in us, not we ourselves.  But Paul is saying more here.  He is also saying that God will continue that good work - Paul uses the Greek expression "He will perfect it."  That doesn't mean that He will make it flawless, but that He will bring it to completion or to the goal which He has for it - which is your salvation.

Paul is confident in God for this.  He is confident that God can do it, and that God wants to do it, and that God will do it.  Your persistence in the faith is God's doing - just as we confess in the Catechism - "I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him."  We confess that we cannot come to Jesus, nor remain in faith without God at work in us.  He will continue to do so until Jesus comes again.

The second point is that God is also at work through you.  It is by His working that your love will abound more and more.  That love is the love which you have for God - part and parcel of faith.  It is knowing and believing the love which God has for us that causes our love.  John writes in his first Epistle that "we love because He first loved us."

Paul speaks about his prayer that your love abounds in real knowledge and all discernment.  This is God working in you.  He works real knowledge in you as opposed to the so-called knowledge of the world around us.  We have that debate in our society all of the time.  The so-called knowledge is what everyone "knows" but simply isn't true.  It is about all of the lies of our culture.  Homosexuality being a normal "affectational preference," is an example of the so-called knowledge.  The right of a woman to choose to abort her baby is another example.  So-called knowledge hates Christ and Christianity and loves the pagan, or the eastern mysticism and "spirituality".  I received an email quoting an article from Time Magazine a while back - I mean, email, right? - which offered a quiz purporting to help you discover you how spiritual you are.  My responses rated me as "highly skeptical, resistant to developing spiritual awareness".  The thrust of the article was that Jews and Muslims were people who could use both science and religion, but Christians were just religious and superstitious.  So-called knowledge.

The real knowledge is what the Bible reveals to us, namely the truth, and He who is the Truth.  The world is frightened by the capriciousness of luck and life, but the Christian knows that God is with him or her, and loves them, so they have nothing to fear.  The world is confused about what is right and what is wrong and why – the Christian has God's Word to guide him.  The world is unsure of why we are here, and how intelligent life came to be – in fact a real evolutionist, like Behavioral Psychologist B.F. Skinner, will tell you that genuine intelligence doesn't exist, and can't exist.  We Christians know our origin, and we know also our purpose, and we understand the will of God for us.  And, again, what is the will of God?

The unbelievers have to wrestle with guilt and a gnawing fear about the possibility of a final accounting - a judgment day.  We have eternal life and salvation as God's people, and the full and free forgiveness of all of our sins.  We know about Jesus, about His death in our place on the cross, and about His resurrection, which proclaims and proves the forgiveness He proclaims to us is real and true, and valid.  Your sins are forgiven.  "Whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life."

God also works in you all discernment.  He guides your mind and helps you discern true from false, holy from profane, and right from wrong.  Without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, people tend to be stupid.  "Professing to be wise they became fools," so says Romans 1:22.  You have probably witnessed it when people cannot figure out whether stealing little things is still stealing, or cheating on their taxes is still wrong, and they think they have a right to act out their twisted fantasies even though they would agree that someone else doing those things would be sick or evil, or both.  Faith enables you to see the black and white where your reason would tell you there are all sorts of subtle shades of grey.

The result is God working through you to love others, and to approve the things that are excellent, and be filled with the fruit of righteousness.  God keeps speaking to us through His Holy Word, but no one has to tell a Christian the importance of worship, or of prayer, or of compassion for someone else.  Those things just make sense to one who can see the shape of reality.  We need worship and the Word of God, and we know that our brothers and sisters in Christ need us there as much as we need them there, bearing witness to their faith, encouraging us, and supporting us in this fight against the devil, the world, and our own flesh.

God works concern for our fellow man because God loved the world.  He loved the world by sending His Son to live for them, too, and die in their place and redeem them.  We, as His children, share that love-agape love.

Of course, the selfish and the self-centered make sense to us too - we all carry the traitorous flesh which still serves sin.  But the Holy Ghost works that good work in us and teaches us to discipline ourselves and do what is holy and righteous in Jesus Christ by His power.  Paul says that we have been filled with the fruits of righteousness.  Even our good deeds and our holy lives, though they call for discipline and deliberation from us, are not our own.  They have been poured out in us by Jesus.  When we do what is holy, we do what God placed within us to do.  This echoes what Paul says in another place "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself for me."

Naturally, then, everything we do is to the glory and praise of God, as Paul says in our text.  It all flows out of the good work which God has begun in us, and continues to do in us–– and it flows through us to others.  That is why Christians are good neighbors and good citizens of their country.  What God works in us also works through us, benefiting our neighbors and our society.  Recent history shows us what happens when those who call themselves Christian abandon the Word of God by and large and begin to live their lives for themselves, rather than living for God and the neighbor, as God works in the hearts of those who are truly His.  See Antifa and BLM as recent illustrations of this truth.

Let's think for a moment; to whose glory is Oral Roberts University?  Who is glorified by the Crystal Cathedral?  Where does the praise seem to be focused when you consider a ministry (so-called) like the Bennie Hinn ministry?  Who makes all the money?  Then look at what standing faithful brings to the child of God.  There is little worldly glory, and it is not often immediately evident what God is doing through the humble circumstances of His faithful people.

But we know.  We know that He is working our salvation by bringing that good work of faith to its ultimate goal, which is our salvation.  He is perfecting it, in the sense of using that good work to accomplish His good and gracious will for us, and when we don't stubbornly resist Him, through us in the lives of others around us, and in the life of our community.

So, we come to the end of the ministry of Pastor Fish among the good, godly people of Immanuel of Bartlett Township.  I will leave behind friends, associations with my fellow pastors, and the congregation of people that I love, and for whom I pray every day, and will continue to pray for as I head to Montana. You think you have the difficult part, and I am skipping off happily into another life. You have no idea how difficult this is just to keep my voice under control. We each need one another's prayers. 

And it is my prayer along with the Apostle, this morning, that "that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."  Then we will know that we have God at work in us and through us.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

How Great a Love

 1 John 3:1-3

 See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.  Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.  And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

 All Saints Day (Observed)            11/02/25

How Great a Love

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

If someone were to ask you what is the greatest love is, what would you tell them? Jesus once said, "A greater love has no Man than that he lay his life down for a friend."  

I find it hard to argue with Jesus. But Jesus was speaking about the love of one man for another. The love He was describing is also the love which God had for us in sending His Son to die for us. And that is the Gospel.  

Nevertheless, there is another love, one that is almost as great, if not as great, pouring out of the heart of God. That love is the love which our text this morning speaks about. Our theme this morning is, How great a love. 

The bloody and awful sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for us and in our place is truly a great love. Nonetheless, the love of which our text speaks is both prior and consequent to the cross It is the love of God for us. He calls us His children. I know it seems like it ought to be bigger when someone dies. Simply calling us his children is, in human estimation, merely words. But they are the Words of God.  

Keep in mind that God spoke, and everything that exists came into being. The world was framed by the Word of God. All the creatures of this world, both animal and vegetable, were created at the mere Word of God. Only humans were created by the direct work of God, more than words, but being formed by God in some fashion which we cannot put into clearer language because the Bible doesn't give us anything more direct than "He formed man of the dust of the ground." It sounds like pottery work, sort of. 

When God said let birds appear in the heavens, they appeared. He created the sun and the moon and the stars by saying they should be, and they were. So when our text tells us in no uncertain terms that God has called us children of God, He wasn't merely describing; He was making it so. We who believe, his children, are in fact children of God. 

That is something more, significantly more, than merely being "called" children of God, as humans might do it. That's one of the reasons we who believe do not like or easily tolerate unbelievers and hypocrites being called "Christians."  Our frustration with such things shows up in what we call "church discipline," which finally results in excommunication, sometimes. It is a process of addressing sin that God's Word prescribes. Of course, our judgment does not make it so. At least not every time. Jesus does give us the authority to retain sins, and Excommunication is certainly a retaining of sins. Our judgment is not final, however, God's is. Should the Church err in its judgment and excommunicate those who ought not to be excommunicated, the judgment of the Church does not stand.  That is not common, however.   

Church discipline exists to warn our brothers and sisters against sin and against what appears to be happening – leading them away from the faith. Excommunication itself is rare, as it should be. The steps of discipline before excommunication ought not to be rare, but sadly, they are.  

But enough about church discipline. We, the children of God, fight in this world to keep clear what God has called the children of God. Our text says that when Jesus appears again, all of those who are genuinely His children will appear with Him, and they will be just like Him. We will be just like him. The only thing we will not be that Jesus is, is divine. Other than that, we shall appear just like Him. The reason we will appear just like Him is that we shall see him just as He is. The reason we don't look that way now is that we look just like He was. We look just like He was, because He took on our nature and appearance, and became man, fully and truly human, to be just like us. So the promise of the text is, just as Jesus became true man for our salvation, we shall just like He is with everything except divinity. He is God, and we are not, but we will be something more than merely human by the grace of God.  

 That God calls us His children means that even in this life we are more. We simply cannot define that more, or feel that more, we are simply more, God's children. Our text takes two verses to say God called us His children, and so we are. And the next verse says , We are now "the children of God." It is frustrating for a preacher not to be able to describe what those words mean precisely, because the Bible doesn't say, but it is something wonderful that we we shall discover in the "Parousia," the return of Christ. 

All of those that we have wept for as they passed from this life, who clung to Christ with their heart and trusted in Him alone, are already more; they just don't have to carry around the sinful flesh any longer. The Saints who have passed from this life are in glory with Christ. Again, I cannot describe with too much detail what they are like or how they are doing, or where exactly they are geographically, because the Bible doesn't say. God wants us to look forward to something by faith, and tells us it is wonderful, No sin, no sorrow, no sickness, no more death, and that we shall be just like Jesus because we are going to see Him as He is. And just like He became one of us we shall become whatever He is – except, of course, He is God and we will not be.  

The result of this knowledge is that we should seek to purify ourselves. Our text says, "And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. "OK, that means put sin behind you, at least as much as you are able. You should call upon God to strengthen you and help you. It's not a long-distance call; the Holy Spirit dwells in each believer. John says we seek to purify ourselves Just as Jesus is pure. We are children of God. We seek to be like God as much as possible in this life. 

We rejoice in the hope of everlasting life. The word "hope" Does not refer to that weak and powerless thing that we use the word to describe so often in this life. The Christian hope is an absolute certainty of which we are fully confident – but we haven't seen it yet. We do not hold it in our hands - we trust God and take Him at His Word and His promises.   

Saints are something special. You are Saints. That's not my opinion, God said so. So great a love God has for us, that He not only sent His Son to die for us, He named us and claimed us as His children, to be just like Jesus. 

Let us give thanks to God today and every day, and every Sunday especially, as the children of God, the people of God, people who are just like Jesus except we are still wearing this sinful flesh. But those who have gone before us in what we erroneously call "death" are no longer burdened by the flesh, but they are still alive, more alive than we who sit here inhaling and exhaling and dreaming about how alive we are. How great a love! 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)