The Drink Offering
Dear Church,
In last week’s sermon I didn’t have the time to talk about the ending of the passage in Philippians 2, which goes like this:
2:17 But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. 18 So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.
Paul talks many times, in this letter and elsewhere, about suffering as a servant of the Lord Jesus. People, looking and listening to him, may think that he resented all the hardships he had to endure and it’s with these words that he gets rid of any misunderstanding. The drink offering was an offering that was poured onto the altar for God. Drink offerings existed in contemporary pagan religions as well. So, both Jewish and Gentile Christians would have understood the imagery. Consider the liquid in the pitcher as representing one’s life. The act of pouring out the drink represents or, is a visual image of one’s life being poured out -- almost like one’s life-blood being poured out. The angle of the pitcher would tilt forward until the final drops fell onto the altar, representing the last breath of a person’s life. Paul uses this image to say that his life may be coming to an end. He is in prison, after all. Though he feels confident that he will be released, you never know; things may take a sudden turn for the worse and he may be executed. So, he says, “Even if my life ends in death, and the final drop of the drink offering is poured out, I am glad and rejoice!”
Paul, however, doesn’t only see his life as an offering to God, he sees the lives of the Philippian Christians as a sacrifice as well. The drink offering, that is the sacrifice of Paul’s Gospel ministry, is being poured on top of, or joining with, or added to another sacrifice, that of the suffering of the Philippians. It is moving to know that our labours and suffering for the Gospel are seen as a holy sacrifice upon God’s altar, pleasing to him. Jesus, we know well, was the Great Sacrifice, the Lamb who was slain for our sins.
Paul is saying, “What a joy! What a reason for rejoicing -- to not only suffer for Christ, but suffer alongside you, my Philippian brothers and sisters.” This rejoicing and joy obviously applies to the Philippians, too.
For what will you and I pour out our lives? If not for Christ and his Gospel, then for what? Let’s not run the race aimlessly or in vain, chasing after useless things. Let’s labour for Christ. Let’s become a church of co-labourers for Gospel ministry, to build up the church and to reach the nations. I hope that all of us can say, when the end of our lives draw near, “My life was a drink offering, a sacrifice unto the Lord and so, I rejoice!”
Soli Deo Gloria
Pastor Peter
