Introduction
A prominent international evangelist, who I’m sure many of you will have heard of, once told the story of a very passionate young Christian called Hien Pham, who interpreted for him on his tour of Vietnam in the early 1970s, shortly before the communist regime swept to power in that country. When that happened, as in North Korea today, nobody was allowed out of the country, and no one knew what became of this man.
But 17 years after that preaching tour, Hien emerged from the shadows. His story of what happened to him was both dreadful and wonderful in equal measure. When Vietnam fell to the Vietcong, he was imprisoned in a forced labour camp, accused of cooperating with the Americans. He was then systematically indoctrinated with Marxist propaganda against Western values and his Christian faith.
It took several years of this relentless treatment for Hien to begin to doubt his faith. “Maybe” he thought, “I have been lied to by Christians. Maybe God does not exist after all. Maybe the evil West has deceived me.” And one afternoon, Hien’s resistance finally broke. He decided that, when he woke up the next day, he would not pray any more or ever even think of God again. The communists’ brainwashing had done its job.
The next morning, Hien woke up and, as he had resolved the previous day, he chose to not turn his heart to the Lord. That day, as it happened, he was assigned the disgusting job, that everyone dreaded, of cleaning the prison latrines. As he emptied an oil drum that was used to collect toilet waste, there in the filth, on a used bit of toilet paper, he noticed some English print. He carefully picked it out, washed it, pocketed it and, once his fellow prisoners were asleep that night, began to read it.
It was a fragment from the Bible, from Romans 8: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. For I am convinced… nothing can separate us from the love of God.”
Hien broke down right there and sobbed. He was familiar enough with the Bible to know that there was no more relevant verse in all scripture for someone on the verge of abandoning his faith than this one. On the very day that Hien chose to give up on God, God showed that he had not given up on Hien. And literally, in the midst of that squalid filth, the Lord broke through and spoke to him of his faithfulness.
It turned out that an official in the camp was using old, confiscated English language Bibles as toilet paper, so Hien asked if he could have the job of cleaning the latrines permanently. Each day he picked out sheets of scripture, cleaned them, and collated them for night-time reading. God’s word sustained him through the indignity and ordeal of that prison camp.
There’s more to that story, and I’ll tell you what happened next later, because it’s even more amazing, but I wanted to share it with you because it resonates so strongly with our passage of Scripture this morning.
We’re looking at the letter to the Philippians, which was written under conditions of house arrest in Rome by the apostle Paul to the young church in Philippi, about 800 miles away, that he had planted several years earlier.
Paul has already spent two long years in jail in Caesaria on the mediterranean coast in Judea. The wheels of justice have been turning painfully slowly, and he is now in Rome still awaiting trial, a process that will last another two whole years.
That’s four “wasted” years. 1,460 days, during which Paul could have been breaking new ground, preaching the gospel where it had never been heard, planting new churches, making vital apostolic visits to lay good foundations, appointing local church elders, resolving problems, training leaders, building and sending teams… and the list goes on.
But he’s stuck, remanded in custody, unable to come and go, and he’s attached by a length of chain, day and night, to a Roman guardsman. Days, and weeks, and months pass by. The date for his trial, where he will have to defend himself against ridiculous, trumped up charges, never seems to come. Rome’s inefficient judicial system is tedious to the point of maddening.
You know that feeling of drawn-out frustration and discouragement, don’t you? If my train is delayed, or I am stuck in traffic, everyone I know will hear about my inconvenience or read about it on social media. The thought will cross my mind; Why is God allowing all this delay and nuisance in my life?
But here is Paul, writing this letter. He includes no complaint about the harsh conditions of his imprisonment, no list of hardships, no grumbling about the food or the hard bed; there’s no trace of protest or hint of self-pity throughout the letter.
And if Paul could send them a photograph of himself with his letter, it would no doubt depict a man holding up his iron chains. But behind those chains there would be a man’s face with light in his eyes, beaming from ear to ear. Because the overwhelming personal emotion he describes to them throughout this letter is his joy.
How can this be? How can he be so cheerful under circumstances that are so depressing? Let’s read it together and see if we can find out:
Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. 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.
It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defence of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 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.
Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.
Prayer…
Unstoppable advance
You have probably never been literally imprisoned, but you might know what it feels like to be stuck in a rut, caught in a terrible bind with no apparent way out. You might feel you have plenty of reasons to be in low spirits. Maybe your glass looks very much half empty because you are bedevilled by doubts. You could be anxiously awaiting test results, or stressed about your finances, or weighed down by family problems, or by a precarious job situation, or a conflict in church, or long-term illness, or trouble with your neighbours.
How do you transform your world so that your glass is half full? Or, even better, brimming over?
What Paul does here is pan out to see the bigger picture. What is God doing behind the scenes? How, in his providence, in his plan, is he working all things for good because you love him and because he has called you?
Usually, you can’t see that at first glance. Hien Pham couldn’t possibly have seen God’s purpose for him at his lowest ebb. We walk by faith, not by sight, don’t we? Think of Joseph in the Old Testament; sold as a slave by his brothers and then jailed on a false accusation of sexual assault. Everything points to God abandoning him, forgetting him and forsaking him. But at the end of his story he can say to his brothers, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” The Bible teaches that not one raindrop falls to the ground unless God ordains it because of his invincible sovereignty in all things.
It seems likely that Luke, Paul’s travelling companion, wrote his Gospel during Paul’s two-year incarceration at Caesaria. He would have had time to interview the disciples, and Jesus’ mother Mary about the most unusual birth of her first child. He would have had time to consult public records, confirm all the historical details, check all his sources.
And it is almost certain that Luke wrote Acts during this two-year house arrest in Rome, because Acts ends with Paul in Rome, awaiting trial. If Paul had been constantly on the move, Luke would never have had time to research and write his Gospel and Acts. Little picture; Paul is inconveniently incarcerated for 4 years. Big picture; the entire world gets Luke’s Gospel and Acts and we are still reading them to this day.
So, in v12-13 Paul, who is in chains not for an actual misdemeanour but for preaching the gospel, remember, sees the hand of God not despite all his setbacks, but in all his setbacks.
He can see that all the disruption and inconvenience and red tape and bother to him personally is not at all hindering the progress of the gospel; on the contrary, it is actually turbocharging its expansion! And Paul wants his readers to know this - he wants us to know this - so that we will not be inhibited or discouraged by apparent setbacks to our faith, but rather energised and emboldened by them.
In 2006 the atheist academic Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion. It was an energetic and quite angry attack on all religious belief, but especially Christianity. He caricatured faith as “belief without evidence and reason,” and he described teaching children Bible stories as child abuse.
Many, many people identified with Dawkins and others saying similar things at that time and it seemed like a great surge in aggressive atheism might give our Christian faith a bit of a battering.
But two years ago, another book hit the shelves called Coming to Faith through Dawkins. Not despite Dawkins. Not even though Dawkins. But through Dawkins. I read it a couple of weeks ago and it’s brilliant.
It’s the stories of a dozen former atheists, strongly influenced by The God Delusion, who as a direct result of engaging with Dawkins’ arguments found in the end that they didn’t convince intellectually or satisfy spiritually. And each contributor has come to a living faith in Jesus that changed their hearts in a way that atheism never did – or ever could.
“Because of [not in spite of] because of what has happened to me…” (all that obstruction and hostility) Paul says in v12, because of that, “…it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.”
Paul, it seems, is being detained not just by any old junior prison officer, but by the Praetorian Guard. These are Caesar’s inner-core trusted personal bodyguards, elite troops. And they cannot get away from Paul. They are, literally, a captive audience. With each change of shift every four hours these select military men find themselves attached to a man so on fire for Christ, they cannot help but get singed.
So much so, that at the end of the letter, when Paul is signing off, he sends greetings from all God’s people, “especially those who belong to Caesar’s household.”
Right at the heart of the empire, in Nero Caesar’s actual palace, people are coming to faith in Christ. No wonder Paul is rejoicing in v18. He’s elated because he’s seeing that the message of the gospel is impossible to repel.
The devil’s resistance to the progress of the gospel is like King Canute sitting on the beach forbidding the tide to come in, but having to move his chair back every three minutes as his ankles get soaked.
And notice, all this is not in spite of his circumstances. It’s because of his circumstances.
Verse 14 says, “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.”
Don’t you find that speaking to others about your faith usually requires a bit of courage? Paul uses the words “dare” and “without fear” with respect to sharing the gospel. Talking about Jesus feels risky to us in a way that talking about sports, or the weather, or TV box sets, or holidays does not.
Why do you think that is? Why is sharing our faith so uncomfortable? It’s because none of us likes rejection. We live in a world that is naturally resistant to the gospel because the message of the cross is offensive to proud, self-sufficient hearts.
Unless grace is at work, softening the heart to respond, nobody welcomes the opportunity to learn about their sin, God’s holiness, the coming judgement, and the urgent need to respond in repentance and faith in Christ, who alone can save us from hell. Nobody wants to hear that. It’s an affront to our ego and self-reliance.
That’s why it takes courage. If the way I talk to unbelievers about my faith does not require boldness in any way, it’s probably not the gospel.
Let’s repent today of our dread of personal rejection, let’s repent of our fear of the repudiation of the gospel, and let’s ask God for a renewal of courage and boldness, inspired by testimonies of people like Hien Pham and the apostle Paul, and energised by our faith in God’s sovereign power.
Unsavoury attitudes
In v15 Paul makes the shocking observation that while most are confident to proclaim the gospel without fear, some are doing so “out of envy and rivalry.”
Who are these people and what on earth are they doing? Unfortunately for us, we have very little to go on because Paul chooses to not go into detail. He doesn’t slag them off, he doesn’t run off a list of their indiscretions, he doesn’t give them pejorative nicknames. It’s very gracious of Paul to not vent at all about how out of order they are.
Clearly, they are Christians and not false teachers. When Paul describes false teachers anywhere in his letters he is scathing in his criticism and explicit in his warnings.
No, these people in v15 are obviously believers, and their message is clearly the gospel. What distinguishes them from the others is their envious and competitive attitude towards Paul. They appear to be taking advantage of Paul’s imprisonment to promote their own ministries and become better known than Paul. They seem to think nothing of adding to Paul’s already considerable hardships by, as v17 says, “stirring up trouble” for him.
Unshakeable affability
Paul would have every reason to feel aggrieved. And hurt. How does a man who is passionate in his faith respond to that kind of aggravation?
Verse 18: “What does it matter?” he asks. Who really cares? So what? Whatever. If it means that more people are hearing about Jesus, I’m fine with that. At the end of the day, that is all that counts. Wow. What an amazing attitude.
US church leader Rick Warren attracts a lot of criticism, some of it sadly from Christians who are jealous of his success. I love what he says about that; “You cannot control the lies that people may speak about you, but you can control the truth… Live in such a way that people have to make stuff up in order to accuse you.”
When people criticise me, I usually feel quite defensive and, in my mind, compare their worst behaviour to my best behaviour. But I try to ask myself this question: what would it look like if I compared my worst behaviour with their best behaviour? I would be so much more gracious than I am, and I would reflect Jesus so much better than I do.
Anyway, Paul moves from the impact of his circumstances on others to the impact on himself. What is he feeling as he awaits his fate? What's going to happen? When - and how - how will his trial end?
“Because of this I rejoice” he says in v18. Despite all his troubles and woes, he’s in a really good place.
And he says in v19 that he expects, as an answer to prayer and by the power of the Holy Spirit, that his case will be dismissed, and that he will be released.
Notice his faith is in the sovereignty of God, and not in the skill of his lawyer. I don’t doubt he was ably represented, but that wasn’t ultimately where Paul’s faith was located. He's convinced that he will be vindicated. But even if he is not, whether in life or in death, Christ's greatness and fame and glory will increase. Christ is going to be honoured.
That is Paul's focus, v20. That Christ is magnified in my life, whether I live or whether I die. Is that your ambition? Is that your passion?
Well, the evidence of history suggests strongly that Paul was cleared of all charges and released this time round. And with that, I circle back to the story I started with.
Ending
So Hien’s faith, remember, is being nourished by fragments of scripture, salvaged from the latrines. The day came when, through an extraordinarily God-given set of circumstances, Hien was released from that labour camp. But he was still stuck in Vietnam, and he began to make plans to escape the country. Fifty-three other people planned to escape with him. Hien started to secretly build a boat.
All was going according to plan until a short while before the date of their departure when four Vietcong knocked on Hien’s door. When he opened it, they confronted him and said they had been informed that he was planning to flee the country. “Is it true?” they asked. Hien denied it and concocted a story that seemed to convince them, so reluctantly they left.
But that night, Hien was not at peace about what he had said, so he made God a promise. He prayed that if the Vietcong ever came back again, he would tell them the truth. Just a few hours before they were due to set sail, those four men turned up at his door again. “We have our sources, and we know you are trying to escape the country. Is it true?”
It looked like he had been busted. Hien said, “Yes, I am. I plan to escape by boat with fifty-three others. Are you going to imprison me again?” They leaned forward and whispered, “No. We want to escape with you!”
It was an incredible getaway. All fifty-eight of them found themselves in the South China Sea, sailing straight into a violent storm. Hien cried out to God, “Did you bring us here to die?”
But those four Vietcong who joined them at the last minute, were all fishermen, skilled at sea, and were it not for their sailing experience and ability, all on board would have certainly perished. In the providence of God, they all arrived safely in Thailand.
No matter how bad the news is, how dire my personal outlook is, how badly life seems to be going, how gloomy the future appears, Philippians 1 tells us that we serve an invincible, omnipotent, sovereign God who always works all things together for the good of those who love him – do you love him today? – and who are called according to his plan.
Alleluia, let’s stand to pray…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 18 May 2025
