Paul's SingleVISION
by A. Gene Veal

These verses give a perfect expression of Paul’s faith and his SingleVISION or seeing God in all things.  As he is in these extreme circumstances, he mentions in passing, the kind of faith that he has in God. I believe that the word "faith" is being kicked loosely around these days. Many will pat you on the shoulder and say that you have got to have faith. Others say, "If only you had faith." Others give you that sickly Christian grin and say, "Only believe, brother, only believe." It is a time we should see what the Scriptures teach concerning faith, so that we know how it all operates.

Remember, we mentioned that Paul is going to write to the Philippians about their problems, but to begin with he says, "I want you to know about me and my circumstances." In all probability the Philippians were concerned about Paul. Probably Epaphroditus had brought Paul the news of their concern and they were likely saying, "Poor Paul."

It is understandable. If you had been through what Paul had been through - five years of being lied about, depressed, misunderstood, framed, and now sitting in a dungeon under Nero’s palace not knowing if next week you will be dead or alive. It is no wonder the Philippians were saying, "Poor Paul. It’s so hard for him to be in that situation."

Perhaps you can understand how he might feel. Paul was a world traveler. Maybe you aren’t. Those who love to travel seem to have something in their blood. You don’t exactly put down roots. There is a joy in it. God chooses you to do something and He puts in you the desire to do it. So sometimes you think it was your idea and it was, but it was also God working in you that desire.

As Paul traveled, today he is here, a year later he is over there. After eighteen months in Corinth, he picks up and he’s off again. Move - move - move and wherever he goes he is as free as a bird proclaiming the gospel. But now for five years he's been cooped up inside a prison, under house arrest for awhile and now in a miserable dungeon.  Poor Paul, indeed. He must feel all hemmed in.

Look at what this did to the cause of evangelism. Before, God had Paul's voice in many cities. Now He doesn’t. Now Paul's voice is silent behind prison bars - this is terrible. The greatest voice God has, has been silenced. It is all so terrible. This is how the Philippians felt.

So Paul begins by saying, "Now Philippians, I want you to understand. Things are not what they seem to be. It has turned out quite other than the way you are thinking." First of all, look at the guards. They are the ones that had special duty inside Nero’s palace. Paul is being guarded by Roman guards. He speaks of it in many of his letters how he was chained day and night to a Roman soldier. The Roman soldiers kept changing guards and Paul kept having someone new chained to his wrist. But for two years he walks with a man chained to his wrist.

Conversation was bound to ensue. "What are you here for? What’s your crime?" "No crime. The only crime I’ve committed is that I have declared Jesus Christ is Lord."  They would begin to question more - a man who is here in prison because of his faith?  They didn’t know any faith that was worth going to prison for. You could shop for gods in Rome. There was a temple to any god you want. Of course, once it begins to get rough serving that god, forget it. No god is worth dying for. No god is worth spending even a day in jail for.

They would see Paul’s back. Imagine what it looked like ... a mass of scars and knots where he had been beaten so many times for the sake of Christ. They would begin to wonder at this man who had a God Who was worth getting beaten for, a God Who was worth being in jail for 5 years. Who is this Jesus? Who is this man who is in jail for doing nothing?

It isn’t long before it gets around on the street. Soon the barracks are full of talk. There is this man in jail who has done nothing, who is one of the best citizens of Rome - but he is in jail for his faith. This person that he claims died and rose again is God. It wasn’t long before some of the Roman soldiers were accepting Christ as Lord and were proclaiming Christ in the barracks and from the barracks to the streets.

It was quite a thing to be chained to the Apostle Paul. You understand, in those days they didn’t read silently. It was only around 400 AD that we even heard of people reading silently. If you go to Brooklyn today certain Jewish rabbis on public transportation will read aloud if it is the time of prayer. That is exactly the way the early Christians were. Here Paul is not only proclaiming the gospel, he is talking to his God in the presence of the Roman soldiers. He gets out his Scriptures and he reads aloud. It is his private devotions, but the guard is there in the midst of it, like it or not.

Also, people came to visit Paul and Paul would share the gospel. Remember that Onesimus, the runaway slave came to know Christ at that time. The Roman soldiers were there watching it all. It must have been powerful.

Another thing, most of the letters of the New Testament were dictated right there in jail. That’s why we refer to them as Paul’s prison epistles. The Roman soldiers continually heard the gospel and they went out and shared everything they heard. It was the gossip of Rome. They had never had a prisoner like that.

Paul said, "This is tremendous!" He said, "You say I am shut up. Don’t believe it. I now have a voice that is being put all over the city of Rome."

There had been a church in Rome for many years, going back to the day of Pentecost. Acts 2 says that there were strangers in Jerusalem from Rome who came to Christ. They went back to Rome and began what became a large church. But it wasn't easy. You were living right under the shadow of the Emperor who you were supposed to worship as lord and god. The Christians were the only ones who were stubborn on that point. Gods were plentiful and as long as you raise your hand and swear allegiance to Rome you could worship any god you like.  But Christians wouldn’t. They said, "Our Jesus is Lord over the Emperor, too." They wouldn’t bend and it was tough. Opposition was strong and they usually just tried to keep quiet.

But now when the gossip of the streets is this man in jail proclaiming Christ, the Christians come out of the woodwork. Suddenly they are everywhere. When someone brings it up in the market that they have a friend in the Praetorian Guard telling about this prisoner who talks about Jesus, Whom he alleges is alive from the dead and Lord of all - suddenly they are coming out and saying, "Oh, well, I have known that Jesus for years." They found boldness they didn’t have before. "If Paul is in chains and causing a stir, I can open my mouth." And boldness came over all the Christians like a prairie fire. Everybody in Rome was proclaiming or hearing the gospel.

But there were some Christians that got mad at Paul. Before Paul came along, if anybody had anything to say in terms of proclaiming the gospel, it was these men. They considered themselves the best when it came to being preachers. Suddenly they were no longer number one. Now this fellow in jail was the one everybody was talking about.

They proclaimed Christ in such a way as to make Paul unhappy. He says, "They tried to add affliction to my bonds." As far as we can understand, they said, "My prayer group is bigger than your prayer group. You go tell Paul that we have more listening to us than listens to him."

Paul laughed at that. He said, "If that is the worst they can do to me, Christ is being preached. I don’t care how they are doing it - Christ is being preached." So he said whether positively or negatively, my being in jail has spurred people onto proclaiming the gospel.

He said (v.12), "the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel" The word he uses here is a word that he most likely borrowed from the soldiers. They used it to describe the engineers who went on before the army to clear the way and break down  the trees so that they could march through.

Paul is saying, "I came to jail and it has ended up that my being in jail engineers the pathway of the gospel.  Because I have a chain on my wrist and I am here for the sake of Christ, a path has been cleared. Now the gospel of Christ is going forth like a great army through the streets of Rome."

Now this is the way Paul chose to look at what was happening to him. Believe me, he did not have to see it like that. The way you see it is your choice. He could have said," You think it is bad. You haven’t heard anything yet. Let me tell you how bad it really is." The Philippians had not heard all that had been done to him. Now this would have been a golden opportunity to tell them the rest of the story. 

He mentions enough. He tells them his real feelings as we will see in a moment. But he chose not to dwell on all that was happening. He could have mentioned the food, the insects, the rats, the rashes, the stench, the handcuffs, etc. No, he is a person who looks THROUGH his circumstances and sees God at work in those circumstances.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I did not say he was denying his circumstances. To deny is to lie. That would be mind over matter at best. You can’t deny it is happening. He would say, "Yes, I am in jail. I do not know what is going to happen next." It was very real to him, but he chooses to look through (not deny) what is really happening to him and to see God at work in it.

This is what God told John on the island of Patmos. John walked into the REAL half of the universe. In this half of the universe it looks bad. In the other half of the universe John saw God sitting on a throne. In this half of the universe it looks as if the emperor is the Lord, churches are suffering persecution, etc. Then in Revelation chapter 4 he walks into the other half of the universe and says, "LOOK! A THRONE! And one sits upon it" and he saw where the true government of the world originates. He saw in the invisible half of the universe the originator of the visible half of the universe.

The One Who sits upon the throne is the controller of life. He is the One Who moves life to its conclusion. He is the Master Planner. He is the Architect of time. It is under His control.

Don’t live in a universe that has two gods in it. It isn’t that there is the God of Light and the god of darkness and they are fighting it out to see who can win. God is unbeginning Light. The devil definitely BEGAN as a creature and as the first spirit to fall, he’s no god with a capital "G". He merely works against God, but he can only work within God’s active permission.

So we don’t have two gods fighting it out. There is one God. He is over all. He rules over every detail of His creation and He actively causes all things to work together for good. Sometimes things are so dark until you walk into the other half of the universe (using your imagination) and see the way things really are (the reality).

Paul, though he is in a dark situation, is looking through it and he is seeing God. He says, "Now, seeing God I see that things are working together for a vast good that you Philippians obviously have not seen." Everything was wrong, but Paul says he sees through it and sees God.

See V. 16 - "Knowing I am appointed for the defense of the gospel" Again he takes a word from the soldiers. "Appointed" was a word used in the barracks of Rome. When a soldier came to the barracks, he would look at a list to see where he was appointed for duty that day. His commander had it written on the list of appointments for the soldiers. So when that guard showed up to be handcuffed to Paul, he had been appointed.

Paul says, "O.K., as I dictate this letter the guard will know exactly what I mean when I say I have been appointed here. The soldier was appointed here under the authority of Nero. I was appointed here by the Lord of heaven and earth. I am here by appointment. It wasn’t some accident or coincident or that the devil won.  No I am here by appointment."

Note how Paul begins his letters from prison. "Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ." That must have spun the minds of the guards because there, stamped on his handcuffs, was the seal of Rome. It indicated that he was a prisoner of Rome, of Nero, or of circumstances.

Paul says, "No! I am not. I am a prisoner of Jesus Christ. Which means Nero cannot set me free unless God says so, any more than Pilot could have set Jesus free. Nor can Nero hold me if God wants to set me free, for I am God’s prisoner, not Nero’s."

Think about that! You can never be a prisoner of circumstances. You can never be kicked around like driftwood on the shore of time. No! There is a plan here. There is Someone Who controls all things for His glory.

Of course, there was more to this than even Paul could see. Paul was deliberately looking through the darkness to see what he could see, but there was a lot more to it that he never saw. For starters, we would never be reading Philippians unless he had gone to jail. (See article on How Paul Prayed) It was only because he was in jail that Philippi sent the financial help and you now have the letter to the Philippians.

Today millions, maybe billions, of people have been blessed by this "incidental" note from Paul. Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon were written from prison. All of this part of the New Testament was born out of Paul’s prison experience.

Doesn’t it make you smile to think that the worst the powers of darkness could do, under the limitation by God, was to spur the Jews to shut Paul’s mouth, to stop him from preaching the Good News. Paul, now shut up, unable to travel, unable to speak, in jail - and God says, "Thank you." When the powers of darkness threw in their monkey wrench, God grabs it and says, "Thank you, I can use that. I have wanted him to sit down and write what I have revealed to him. Now he can get at it just as I have planned." Paul became the writer to the church of all time because of the "evil" that Satan actively willed and spurred evil men to do. Think about that.

The soldiers are sent all over the world by Rome, so Paul is training them, not only leading them to Christ, sharing his prayer with them, sharing the scriptures with them, but he equips them to be missionaries all over the world. And look at this. God has the Roman government pay all the expenses of these missionaries. Wow! Is that not a demonstration of God’s sovereignty?

Those soldiers were the first to hear the epistle to the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon. The gospel came to Sweden, Norway, England, Scotland, etc., about AD 60-61. Political church historians put it much later but when the "official" missionaries sent by the church arrived at these places, they found tombstones in cemeteries with the sign of the fish on them. The dates on those tombstones preceded the arrival of the official missionaries. Where did they hear the gospel? Very likely it was from Paul by way of the Roman soldiers.

Shut him up? He sent the gospel all over the world and even preached it to Nero. On the surface it did not look like it really was. We want a God Who will take us out of our problem and wrap us in cotton where nothing, no evil, can get to us. We want Him to give us happiness forever.

She was working on her sixth husband. She had already failed to find fulfillment in five of them. She was still seeking. For a woman to dismiss husbands like she did may be common in this day but this was very unusual for her day. She was probably very demanding of them to make her happy. One by one they failed. Now working on her sixth husband, she is still unhappy.

If Jesus had followed modern methods of evangelism, He would have said, "If you want joy, real joy, let Jesus come into your heart." She would have accepted immediately and God would have become husband number seven. Do you understand what I mean? Nobody could make you happy, so you invite God to try to make you happy.

Jesus didn’t do that. If you remember, Jesus said, "Lady, you had better start worshipping God. And those who worship God, worship Him in spirit and in truth." Now she is the last person on earth that I would have spoken to about worship.  Jesus does because she had to learn that God is All and in all - not her. The universe is bigger than you and your happiness. Take your place as a worshipper of God. Then you will find joy, true joy; but if you make God the person Who has to make you happy, you will never find joy. It will always be over there - somewhere else.

We can’t grasp this God Who doesn’t make us happy all the time. We want a god who is husband number seven and he had better make us happy. And, of course, if he doesn’t make us happy, then we get very upset and we battle with depression. So we can stand before life in tears and say, "If only it had been different."

Faith, as expounded by Paul here, is not the ability to get something from God. Faith is resting in Who God is. It is responding to His unchangeable character as revealed in Jesus Christ. Do you understand that? Read it again. Faith is not the ability to get something from God. Faith is resting in Who God is. It is responding to His unchangeable character as revealed in Jesus Christ.

That is almost a foreign language to people today. You can go into any bookstore and in the self-help section you will see books by the dozens on faith. You can go to conferences and sales seminars everywhere and you will be bombarded with information about faith. There are books like The Magic of Believing, Think and Grow Rich, The Power of Positive Thinking, etc. All of these books say, "If you have enough faith, you can do anything. Anything you can imagine (they mean visualize) you can achieve. If you only believe, you can get out of life what you want." They even quote the Bible.

America has bought that hook, line and sinker. Believe - believe - all things are possible - just believe. Then someone comes along and marries that with the church. Now if you believe God, you have life by the tail. You can make God do anything if you only have enough faith. Just name it and claim it. With just a little change, the church has the same pagan theology as the world and they call it Christianity.

It was a tragic funeral. A man, a leader in a certain community had been dying of cancer. Everyone in the city who believed this pagan definition of faith, banded together to pray for his healing. Now that was terrific, that was good, except they said, "God had got to heal this man." The man died. His widow spoke at the funeral and said, "I murdered my husband. I didn’t have enough faith. If only I had had enough faith, I could have made God heal him, but I didn’t have enough faith. He died and I am a murderer."

In all her grief, I must credit her with consistency in logic. She went away in utter despair as did the rest of the community.  They felt that God had let them down.  Or they had failed. "If only we had had enough faith we could have made an unwilling God do what we said He should have done." Do you see?

A woman told about her boy who had become a cynic and a critic and had left the church. The reason: he had received certain teaching that said that if only he believed God enough, God would have to make him prosperous. He went bankrupt. He said, "God, you lied to me. I believed you and you didn’t make me prosperous." He said, " I am finished with you and the church."

Think of your little pea brain that is already struggling to understand - shall it now come before infinite, unbeginning Wisdom and say, "You will do what I say?" I don’t think that is prayer and I don’t think that is faith. I think that is the highest form of arrogance.  Shall I, the creature, subpoena the creator and demand for Him to do as I say?

That "faith" brings no joy. It brings no contentment. There is no triumph. There is only despair. We feel, in fact, that God cheated us.

Faith has a Siamese twin ... HOPE. Faith always is mixed with hope. You kill hope and you kill faith. They operate together.  Therefore we trust in God, we rest in God and we do request of Him that He do what we understand to be His will. But if it turns out that He has another way, then we confess and we rest in His wisdom; for faith is not the ability to get God to do it my way. Faith rests in Who God is.

That is why Paul can say what he says there. His faith in God does not depend on God getting him out of jail, rather he rested in the God of infinite Wisdom Who knew what he was doing. Whatever happens, it is OK. He just prays that in everything, whatever, life or death, God shall be glorified in my body.

HABAKKUK - The book is only 3 chapters, but we see that he had a problem. In the beginning, he says, "God, this is terrible. This is terrible. Have you seen the reports? There is lawlessness. There is injustice. The whole world is falling apart. I don’t know what things are coming to. The end must be coming. This is a terrible day to be alive. As for the Chaldeans, well, you must stop these people." This was about 700 BC.

God says, "You had better get to your watchtower." So he does and at the end of the third chapter after he has waited upon the character of God, he says,

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights."

That is, "If I stand in the middle of economic disaster, if I go bankrupt - yet will I rejoice in the Lord my God." Before that he was saying, "God if you will only do it my way, clean up this mess, make me prosperous, then I can trust you."

Now he says, "Even if the whole lot falls to pieces, I will rejoice in the Lord my God." He has changed his stance of faith from "I love you because of what you do" to "I trust you because of who you are".  That is the difference.

THE THREE HEBREW CHILDREN - They were ordered to bow before the golden image. They refused. They were hauled in before the king. He orders them to bow. The furnace is heated seven times hotter. Now look at this good arrogance of faith: they say, "Our God is able to deliver us from your hand, BUT if He doesn’t, we still won’t bow before the golden image." They did not say that there was a prayer group praying for their deliverance and that the king did not have a chance. They said, "Our God is able - of course He is - but know this Nebuchadnezzar our faith doesn’t depend on God doing what we would like Him to do right now. So burn us if you will, it won’t change us. Our God is not served because He gets us out of tight situations. He is served because of Who He is. So we will not bow."

DAVID - If ever a man knew covenant faith, it was David. He stands head and shoulders above every other character of the Bible except Jesus as being a real man who walks in covenant with God. He did mighty things because he rested in God. He stood before Goliath and down came Goliath because of covenant faith.

One day his child got sick and David, as usual, with covenant promise went in to pray, and pray, and pray. The child got worse and worse. The child died. The servants were afraid to tell him, expecting him to be destroyed in his faith. After they told him, David got up and said, "Prepare me some food. I’m going to take a shower."

The servants are amazed. All this praying and God didn’t answer. The child is dead. "Now you get up and ask for food.  What are you doing?" David said those famous words, "The child shall not return to me but I shall go to see the child." The New Testament equivalent is "We sorrow not as those who have no hope." David did not say, "If only I had had enough faith, the child would not have died."

Faith rests in God’s character and even if everything is falling down around me and I’m confused - this one thing I know - GOD IS GOOD.

PHILIPPI - It looks as if the enemies are winning here in Rome.  It looks very much like the opposition has finally won but they haven’t. Things aren’t what they seem to be and I am at rest. I look through the darkness. I pierce all the confusion. I see a little bit of what God is doing in all of this. And what I don’t see, I rest in the character of the One I know. I know He is working all of this out for His glory. His greatness is to be seen in this, if not now, later. But God’s glory shall undoubtedly be seen in this.

Wherever you find yourself, you could feel that God let you down because you did what you were told to do and you believed. But it didn’t work out that way. So now you feel as if you have been steam rolled by the Devil. But understand, no Devil can steam roll you without divine permission.

If you find yourself in trouble right now, you can rest in the God Who is your Father - THE ALL WISE SOVEREIGN GOD - UNBEGINNING WISDOM - rest in Him even if you don’t understand. And if the tears flow, let them sparkle with hope. Don’t be ashamed of your tears. It’s all right. You are still human. The resurrection has not happened yet.

As you rest in hope of the glory of God you will come close to what Paul is talking about here. You will know deliverance, deliverance within your situation. So whether in life or in death, whether in that you wanted to happen or that which you would to God had never happened, but that whatever is, there in it Christ shall be magnified in your body. THAT IS TRUE FAITH AND THAT IS THE OUTWORKING OF GOD’S PLAN.  That is SingleVISION.

Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen. 
(I Timothy 1:17)

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