The reason I take one Sunday a year and preach someone else's sermon is so that you can see the names of those who stood where we stand. The good news of Jesus Christ is not unique to us. We didn't discover it. The gospel we preach is the same gospel that Martyn Lloyd Jones will preach to us today. Robert Murray McCheyne, Jonathan Edwards, JC Ryle, George Whitfield, William Tiptaft, Spurgeon, and August Toplady all preached the same gospel. We stand where they have already been. We stand here face to face with one of the sublimest and greatest statements ever made, even by this mighty Apostle of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There is a sense in which anyone who faces this verse must feel that he stands on very sacred ground. Now Paul, as we have seen, is comforting the Philippians who were concerned and troubled about him. He has told them how this imprisonment of his has turned out "rather unto the furtherance of the gospel', and added, you remember, that it was his earnest expectation and hope "that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.' |
