Restoration Until Glorious

Well, from what Henrik and Manet told you, you probably figured out that I love working with my hands a little bit when I have a bit of spare time, and I've always loved mechanical stuff. And a few years ago, when my wife told me to get a hobby so I can get out of the house, I wonder why, I didn't have to think very long what that would be. So I hopped on eBay, and I was looking around, and I found this 1971 Land Cruiser short wheelbase. And I thought this unfinished project is what I'm going to do. So I started out thinking that I'm just going to make this thing up nicely.

It started off with just needing a thrust bearing, for those of you who know what a thrust bearing is, and a little bit of paint and a few panels that needed to be bolted on. And as I prepared to start the paint preparation work, I found a little bit of bog and under the bog, a little bit of rust and more rust and more rust. So eventually, I almost rebuilt the whole body of the thing. But anyway, the plan is to fully and completely rebuild this little thing that's in a thousand and one pieces in the shed. Now this is just my hobby.

I'm sure some of you may have a hobby, some project that you are working on. And like me, you may sometimes imagine what your hobby is going to look like or your project is going to look like once it's finished and completed. We offer all kinds of dreams and plans for the things we start out with. But, you know, unfortunately, there is this sad reality that with everything that you and I start, there is just no guarantee that you and I will finish it, is there? There's no guarantee that the things that you and I start we'll be able to finish.

I might lose interest in my hobby at home. I don't think so. But I might get sick or whatever. Something can happen to prevent me from finishing this thing that I started out thinking I'm going to finish this. However, this does not mean that we can make this sweeping statement that nothing is guaranteed.

I'm sure you've heard that said before. Nothing is guaranteed in life. Well, there are certain things that are guaranteed in life, especially in your life as a Christian. Paul tells us here in Philippians 1 that there's one of those certainties, stated to us and shown to us here in Philippians chapter 1. There is something that for you as a believer is a certainty, and that is that God, because of who He is, always finishes what He has started.

What does that mean, you might say? Well, let me tell you a little bit more about this hobby of mine in the shed. Like I said, initially, when I started out, I started to cut out some rust panels and replace them with new sheet metal. And lots of wiring has to be redone, and I thought I had to fix up some oil leaks and gaskets and things. So then out came the engine and in different parts went the engine.

And, of course, I need to put all this back together and then back into the car and then paint it. That's the plan. But why all this work? Well, because, you see, the elements have caused some damage to this little old four-wheel drive. As it went along life's merry way, it picked up some bumps and bruises here and there.

Some scratches and rust have crept in as well, let's just say that life damaged it. And because it is no longer what it is supposed to be and what it's supposed to look like, I want to restore it because I love it. I am not sure how long it will take, but in the end, I know it will be worth it. And you see, brothers and sisters, God started some restoration works, some restoration projects as well. In fact, each one of you and I here in this building this morning is a restoration project of God because you and I have been damaged by life and by sin.

Life and sin that is part of this life has taken its toll on us. It has left us with scars and caused us to be in a condition that is totally unacceptable to God. You know, we can look at this from two sides. We can look at it from the side of things that happened in our lives, in our past whether that is crime, whether that is other people's sinfulness that has caused scars in us, on us. You can also, and I think this is probably the more important point to look at or angle to look from, is that our own sin, our own rebellion against God has left us scarred and unacceptable to God.

You see because God made us for His pleasure. You read Genesis 1 and you'll see that God made us for His pleasure, for His glory. He made us to represent Him as His stewards to manage and rule over all the beautiful things that He has made. And to do that ruling and governing job and stewardship job in a godly way, in a perfect way. God wanted to be pleased with who we are and what we do and how we conduct and carry out the things that He has planned for us.

He made us to be people to display His characteristics. He made us to be people that will show forth towards each other and His creation, God's own love and justice and unity and harmony, and to live obediently before Him and praise Him and always glorify Him and love Him above everything and anything else. But then sin damaged all these beautiful expectations that God had for us. And then we became people who instead of seeking God, we rebelled against Him. We became enemies of God.

Instead of worshipping God alone, we became people who want to dig out the best deal for ourselves always every time. We became people who chose for ourselves false gods whether that be money or leisure or fame or immoral indulgences. And for us, life became not about God anymore, but all about ourselves. That's who we became. Before I go continue on, can you relate to this? Because it is important that we understand that this is who we are.

It's not just the criminals in jail who are God's enemies. It's you and I, brother and sister, because this is what comes spontaneously to us. And therefore, each one of us bears the scars of the sin and rebellion against God. Maybe you experienced a divorce or maybe you struggled and have been damaged by some sort of addiction. Maybe you are someone who hurt people around you through your anger.

Maybe you became a lonely person because you pursue money and career so hard that you've isolated yourself from friends and from family, even church family. Maybe you feel or have felt the pain of children who have, in spite of what you taught them, chose a different way and go and live dangerously away from God, immorally. Maybe you feel the pain yourself when you see the hurt and the suffering in the world where little children grow up orphans or hungry. Recently in August I started to work as a chaplain in a state high school and every day my heart breaks for these kids who are just so vulnerable and at risk because of parents who have walked away from God and exposed their children to all these incredible dangers of modern life. Friends, humanity's rebellion, sin has damaged God's beautiful creation.

We can see it. We can feel it. And just like my short wheelbase Land Cruiser, you and I are incapable of doing anything to fix ourselves. In fact, if God does not regenerate us, we will not even realise that we need some fixing up. And this is exactly what God has done and what He continues to do.

This is the point that Paul wants to make. God started to repair you, and He will finish it. Earlier in this chapter, we read how God has sent and Paul's saying to these people, trying to make this point, we read how God has sent this message of salvation into the Philippian church through His messenger Paul. We saw how a church started as people one by one started to accept this message and took Jesus as their healer and as his saviour and how they became partners, not only the recipients but partners in this healing work, in this restoration work that God is doing in the world. They join Paul as partners in the gospel work.

You know, fixing up my little four-wheel drive in the shed is not a Saturday afternoon job. It will take a lot of work and just to get it back on the road. And then after that, I'll still have to maintain it because the elements will keep on throwing punches at it. The apostle Paul writes to these people and tells them, my dear brothers and sisters in Jesus, I'm so thankful to God for you. I thank God for you every time I think of you.

And I'm so grateful that you share in the grace of God with me. I'm so delighted to know that even though I'm in jail and I can't be with you at the moment, that you've accepted this truth, that you needed Jesus to save you, and now you've joined me as partners in the saving work of Jesus to proclaim it. It gives me so much joy, says Paul, to know that what happened in you is the result of the restoration work that God has begun and I know God. I know He will finish it. Don't you worry about that.

And here is probably where the parallels of God's restoration work and mine back in the shed ends. Because, you see, as I said before, I hope that I'll be able to finish my work in the shed. But when it comes to God, we know that He will finish it. He will complete it, says Paul. I'm going to do my best and I'm going to do as good a job as I can, but I know it won't be perfect.

When it comes to God, though, it will be perfect whatever He's working on and finishes. And so the apostle tells his fellow believers in Philippi that he knows that God is going to finish the work that He started in them. But for them to grow in faith and maturity, they need to rely on the one who started all this. They need to rely and trust in God alone. And it is just at this point, it's a very pivotal point because I'm sure you have known people or seen people who have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

They started to live this new life and very soon unfortunately they start to rely on their own strength to keep on track and then fall very disgracefully. Paul says everything we are and everything we become in a positive sense is the work of God and only God can do that. So to grow in faith, grow in maturity, we need to trust and rely on God alone. When young people do profess faith in our churches, this is what they need to hear. God started what you have professed.

He planted this seed of faith in your heart, and only He can make it grow. This is what our ministry leaders need to hear. And remember, God started the work of faith in the people whom we lead. And for them to be what God intends them to be, we need to always and in every aspect of our ministry, point them to the Lord Jesus Christ alone who is able to finish and complete what He has started. Let me show you why.

Look with me at verses 9 to 11 again. And this is my prayer, says Paul, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. He prays that their love may abound in knowledge and depth of insight. You see those very two important words or phrases, knowledge and depth of insight. With knowledge Paul means that they'll be able to understand with their minds the spiritual truths that God teaches us in the word.

That's a definition, Paul's definition of knowledge. To be able to understand with your mind the spiritual truths that God gives us in the word. That's knowledge. And secondly, depth of insight is what you need to be able to make good moral decisions. So knowledge and depth of insight.

And armed with these two things, understanding spiritual truths and using spiritual truths to make good moral decisions will enable you as a follower of Jesus to the next thing Paul mentions here, which is to be discerning. In other words, to be able to make out for yourself what really matters in life. Again, a pivotal thing. Many people crash and burn in their lives, even their spiritual lives, because they do not have discernment to be able to work out for themselves what really matters in life. And this in turn, says Paul, will enable you to be pure and blameless until Jesus comes back to judge the earth and all people and bring into His kingdom those who are pure and blameless.

Am I preaching works salvation here? No. I'm not. Who are the pure and blameless that Jesus will come and gather into His kingdom for eternity? We've just talked about the scars of sin that we all feel.

So are we one of those pure and blameless ones? Because we've confessed. We've admitted. We've said that we can relate to those people. We can feel the scars of sin in our own lives.

So how can we be pure and blameless? Well, it starts by knowing and understanding that we are sinners in need of God's forgiveness. That's the starting point of the road that leads to being deemed and judged as pure and blameless by Jesus Himself. To understand, to know and understand that we are sinners, to see and feel those scars and acknowledge them and see and say, Lord Jesus, I need your healing forgiveness. You need to know, brothers and sisters, that the devil will always try and hurt you and lure you away from Jesus Christ.

And here is the key. Believe and trust in Jesus alone for your healing. Understand that you are a restoration project of God and that He will complete what He has started in you. I remember when we arrived in Australia ten and a half years ago in the congregation of Saint Mary's in New South Wales. In the industrial area there was a place called Sims Metal. I don't know if that's a nationwide company, I think it could be, but there's a place called Sims Metal and there was truckloads and truckloads of scrap metal being carted in there every day.

They have these huge conveyor belts, where all these pieces of metal, or little things that used to be a big car, is now just a little square cube of scrap metal right on this conveyor belt into a machine that chews it up and spits it out in different pieces. I guess my little four-wheel drive in a shed could end up in a place like that if I don't finish what I started with it. If Jesus was not the faithful God that He is, you and I could live in fear of will He finish what He started? But we know that He is the faithful God. We know that He gives us His word that He will finish what He has started.

When He comes back as judge, which could be over coffee after church or when your grandchildren or grandparents, we don't know. But when Jesus comes back, every person who has not been restored or made new in and through Jesus will be given over to eternal destruction and demolition of hell. I wonder if you have figured out yet what your destiny is. If you have not yet accepted the fact that you are damaged by sin, that you are unbearable in the sight of God, incapable of improving yourself, if you have not yet cried out to Jesus to take hold of you and to change you and heal you, if you have not yet surrendered yourself to Him to be restored, then friend, you are headed for hell.

But if you have given your heart to Christ and your life to Christ and asked Him, the Lord of all, to make you new, if you have accepted Jesus' death on the cross as the only and complete payment for all and given your life to Him to transform it into whatever He wants it to be, then you are saved. No one will be perfect while we live here on earth. All of us who surrendered our lives to Jesus will stumble and fall. We will pick up more scars, and life will continue to throw punches at us and hurt us. But our restorer's name is Jesus, the faithful one who when He is finished with something, it is perfect.

And He will deliver us in perfect condition to His Father. Finally, you know, a restoration project should show some signs of the restoration, shouldn't it? I wonder if I, if my plans succeed and I finish in a month or two, I wonder if I pull that four-wheel drive out of the shed one day after about five years of work on it, and I show, say to my kids, pull the blanket off, look kids, and it looks like the day that I started. I wonder what they'll think of me. The point that I'm trying to make is at least you should see that some work has gone into this thing and that it shows something of whoever worked on it.

It should show some, maybe at least some shiny paint or a proper running engine or something. The same with us, brothers and sisters. The Lord Jesus Christ is working on us, restoring us, and He's working towards perfection with us for when He will present us to the Father in perfection, not because of who we are but because of who He is and what He did for us and to us. And so our lives should show some signs of a work being done in us, shouldn't it? Paul says it should.

He says those who belong to Jesus and those who are being worked on by the Lord Jesus Christ, their lives, in other words your life and my life, should show some fruit of righteousness as proof that Jesus is working on us. In fact He said our lives should be full of it. Not just a patch here and there. Let me list in closing to you those fruit of righteousness. You listen to these and you decide for yourself whether your life shows who your restorer is.

And when you can see those signs, know that you're safe and saved. Love and joy, peace and patience, goodness and kindness, gentleness and faithfulness and self control. And in the end let me just finish with verse 11 because this is the most important part. In the end Paul says this is what it's all about: to the glory and praise of God. That is what it's all about.

It's not about you or me. To the praise and the glory of God.