Thoughts From Philippians 1 - Part 3

 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. 13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. 14 And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Phil. 1:12-18

         We play a game in the pool called categories. One person is "it" and they are on one side of the pool alone. They say, "The category is favorite ... and they say food, or breakfast cereal, or movie, or cartoon, or restaurant, singer, etc. Because my grandchildren are Generation Alpha, they ask things like favorite YouTuber which I have one answer to and it is Mike Winger. (They never guess it so I usually have to change to Mr. Beast) Mike Winger hosts Thinking Biblically and he does a lot of apologetics and preaches through complete books of the Bible. He also does off the cuff answers to questions about the Bible live on Fridays. Lately he has taken a break from a lot of his teaching and been exposing the cover up culture in the church, specifically in the charismatic churches. There are sexual predators and grooming behaviors, there is greed, there are people researching data on attendees so they can pretend to have supernatural knowledge about that person, there are lies such as, "I've fasted for 40 days" and they haven't, just about anything you can imagine and it's a disgrace to Christianity.

       Paul, too, had teachers in his day that as they say on The Bachelorette (so I don't use the same illustration two days in a row) are in it for the wrong reasons. These teachers were in it for selfish ambition, jealousy or dislike of Paul or a host of other reasons, but Paul was more concerned with what are they teaching? If they were teaching the correct gospel, it's like, "I don't care why you are doing it, I'm just glad the gospel is going out there." Paul figured that God would discipline them for their sin but in the meantime more people need to hear.

       So is Mike Winger wrong in going after fallen teachers rather than false teachers? (I asked him that today on Twitter but don't imagine he will ever even see it) Just to make it clear, he definitely goes after those who are teaching a false gospel, no doubt. But what about fallen teachers who should be disqualified to preach because of their sinful lives but yet are preaching the true gospel? It's hard to say. For one thing times are different. Today, the gospel has gone out to the world but in Paul's day it hadn't and that was of primary importance to him. Secondly, I sometimes boo at baseball games. My wife hits me and says I'm being mean to the players who are trying their hardest (some don't but that's beside the point). My response to her is that I never boo the players, I boo the coach for playing them. Maybe that's what Mike is doing. He is "Booing" the authorities over these fallen teachers for not taking them out of the game.

      A takeaway is if you were saved at a service where Robert Morris, Tony Evans, Carl Lentz, Bill Hybels, Ravi Zacharias, Perry Noble, Johnny Hunt or others - you still are saved. The truth of the gospel went out, and you received it despite the tainted messenger. If you love a worship song written by a fallen Christian artist, I say if it is truthful enjoy it. Of course, every time you stream it the artist gets paid so there's that.

       Let's focus on us. Are our motives pure? Is our lifestyle reflecting Christ? Are we vocalizing the gospel to everyone where God has located us? Then good job! Keep it up!