1. "With God, the down payment makes the whole mortgage sure. The first bite guarantees us that the whole satisfying feast will be ours."

2. "You can be in circumstances as bad as being ingested by a marine monster, and God can still save you."

3. "The story of mortals like you and me is the tasks unfinished and the promises undone. But God is not like that."

4. "His promise is as good as His deed, His Word as good as His bond. When God converts us, His work isn't ended, it's begun."

5. "Christians sin, but we do it despite our new nature, not because of sin's rule in our lives."

6. "Ask how many incomplete bridges you hope to drive on as you head back to the district today. The purpose of the bridge is to span the river or the valley. Getting you 80% of the way across is not good."

7. "Even the earliest fruit of His Spirit in your life promises the whole glorious completed harvest that is to come. The dawn in this case doesn't just precede the day, it promises the day."

8. "Our surprise at our own sin has to be matched and met by our certainty that it will end. That even the longest of battles will end in victory. That for the Christian, all stalemates are temporary and our victory in Christ is certain and unending."

9. "Confidence is the link between understanding and joy."

10. "Navigation by fears of possible futures never works well. No, we navigate by what we do know about tomorrow."

Observation Questions

1. According to Philippians 1:6, who is the one who began the good work in believers, and what does Paul say this person will do with that work?

2. In Philippians 1:6, when does Paul say the good work will be brought to completion?

3. How does Paul express his level of certainty about this promise at the beginning of verse 6?

4. According to Acts 16:14, what did the Lord do for Lydia when she heard the gospel message from Paul?

5. In Philippians 1:1, who does Paul address as the recipients of this letter?

6. What phrase does Paul use in Philippians 1:6 to describe what God initiated in the lives of the Philippian believers?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Paul identifies God—rather than the preacher or the believer—as the one who "began" the good work? What does this tell us about the nature of conversion?

2. How does the timing of completion ("at the day of Jesus Christ") shape our understanding of sanctification as an ongoing process rather than an instantaneous event?

3. What is the relationship between God beginning a work, continuing that work, and completing that work? Why must all three aspects be true for the promise to bring genuine comfort?

4. How does Paul's confidence in God's faithfulness to the Philippians serve as an encouragement to believers who are struggling with doubt about their own spiritual progress?

5. Why would Paul, writing from a Roman prison, emphasize this particular truth about God's persevering work to a church that might fear persecution?

Application Questions

1. When you experience ongoing struggles with a particular sin, how does knowing that God will complete His work in you change the way you respond to failure and discouragement?

2. The sermon emphasized the importance of Christian community in helping believers see evidence of God's grace in their lives. Who in your life knows you well enough to encourage you when you cannot see God's work in yourself, and how can you cultivate that kind of relationship?

3. Are there people in your life whom you have been tempted to "write off" spiritually because of their struggles or failures? How should the truth that God continues His work until completion affect how you treat them?

4. What specific fears about your future—spiritually, relationally, or circumstantially—tend to rob you of joy in the present? How can confidence in God's promise to complete His work help you navigate those fears this week?

5. The sermon noted that "confidence in the conclusion gives you joy in the journey." What is one practical step you can take this week to remind yourself of God's promised completion when circumstances feel discouraging?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Acts 16:11–34 — This passage recounts Paul's ministry in Philippi, including the conversions of Lydia and the Philippian jailer, showing how God began His work in the very church Paul addresses in Philippians 1:6.

2. John 3:1–15 — Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus about the new birth illustrates the sermon's point that God alone initiates spiritual life in those who are spiritually dead.

3. Hebrews 10:32–39 — This passage describes believers who endured hardship with confidence in their future inheritance, demonstrating how assurance of God's promises sustains perseverance through trials.

4. Hebrews 12:1–3 — Here we see Jesus enduring the cross for the joy set before Him, exemplifying how confidence in the future outcome transforms present endurance.

5. Romans 8:28–39 — Paul's declaration that nothing can separate believers from God's love reinforces the doctrine of perseverance and God's commitment to complete what He has begun in His people.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Uncertain Beginnings of Washington, D.C.

II. Spiritual Discouragement and the Doctrine of Perseverance

III. God Converts: He Who Began a Good Work in You

IV. God Completes: He Will Bring It to Completion

V. God Continues: The Ongoing Work Until the Day of Christ

VI. God Gives Confidence and Joy

Detailed Sermon Outline

We know Washington, D.C. today as a magnificent city it is with broad avenues and stately buildings, expansive parks, rich traditions.

But it wasn't always that way. Back in the early days of our republic, where to place the national capital city was a political football like no other. Should it be on the Hudson? Should it be on the Delaware? What about the Susquehanna?

When in July of 1790 it was finally settled that it would be placed on the banks of the Potomac, between Rock Creek and the eastern branch of the Potomac, many were skeptical that such a wilderness could actually become a seat of government, like London or Paris.

In 1791, 38-year-old Andrew Ellicott was engaged by President Washington to lay out the boundaries of the 10-Mile Square District. Starting with the southernmost tip of the square, marked by a boundary stone you can still see just six miles east of here at Jones Point Park, just south of where the Wilson Bridge lifts 495 off the soil of Virginia to make the leap over to Maryland, There, Ellicott and his associate, Benjamin Banneker, began their survey. They surveyed from there 10 miles northwest to a point in Alexandria, and then taking a right angle, heading another 10 miles over the Potomac to a point just beyond the main bed of Rock Creek for the northernmost point of the district. There another right turn and a 10-mile line going to a point about two miles east of the eastern branch of the Potomac, what we call the Anacostia River. And there they made another right angle turn and closed the boundaries by connecting the final 10-mile stretch from that point back across the Potomac to Jones Point where they had begun.

Pierre L'Enfant was engaged to make the first plan of the new city. The core of it was to be the Congress House, as they called it, the Capitol Building, on the west end of Jenkins Hill. The mile-long avenue running northwest to the President's Mansion, as they call the White House, and then the President's Mansion itself. And they assumed that the departments of the executive branch of the government would grow up around the White House. Well, friends, that was the plan for the city.

But for years and years, almost nothing seemed to happen.

The whole area was impoverished and depressing. The few houses that were there had only mud floors. Even after years of work in 1795, one young stonemason described it like this, and I quote, the five streets are so pompously laid out in the map, but their avenues cut through the woods with not a solitary house standing. The hills are barren of everything but impenetrable woods. And the valleys are mere swamps producing nothing except myriads of toads and frogs of enormous size.

What houses there were were often abandoned in mid-construction and the heat was so bad that the livestock were killed at night so that they wouldn't instantly spoil. Even five years later in 1800 when the congressionally mandated time for the city to be prepared to receive the government would expire, though the most basic frames of the President's House and the Senate Chamber had been completed. Writer Fergus Bordewich says the city presented a panorama of abandonment more than it did a would-be capital. Stones marking out non-existent avenues poked up through briars and blackberries. Footpaths meandered among cornfields, muddy ponds, brick yards, workers' hovels, and ruinous houses abandoned by failed speculators.

At high tide, the waters of Tiber Creek rose to flood Pennsylvania Avenue. Horses sometimes drowned trying to cross Rock Creek.

Friends, that picture of our capital city begun but unfinished caused many people in the first decades of our nation's history to wonder if the district and its city of Washington would really take root and survive.

For some here today, the blighting work of the last few months have raised similar questions about your own spiritual life.

Some of you listening to me right now may have decided even to come to this meeting by the barest of margins.

Your Christian life has simply felt too remote and too lonely, too abstract, to invest any more in, too unsuccessful in your laboring against sin, to leave you with any confidence that you can ever thrive as a Christian. Maybe you have questions about whether you can even survive as one.

That's what brings us to the great Bible truth of the perseverance of the saints that we read of just a moment ago, and that we see so clearly in our passage for today, Philippians chapter 1, verse 6. Philippians chapter 1, verse 6.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Paul writes this little letter to thank and instruct the Philippian church, addressing as we can see up in chapter 1, verse 1, the elders and deacons and all the saints, that is the members of the church. But he begins by encouraging them. Let's notice what Paul first says about God in our text here in Philippians 1: Verse 6, number 1, he says that God converts he who began a good work in you. When we read that, we have to immediately ask, well, who is the he? He who began a good work in you?

Well, it was Paul who brought the gospel to Philippi. That's true. I mean, we can go and read the wonderful story in Acts 16 as he spoke to Lydia and her friends and then to the Philippian jailer a little bit later. In that sense, Paul began the good work among the Philippians. But that's not what Paul's talking about here.

Paul refers in the third person to someone else. He.

Well, if it's not the preacher, the evangelist, then who could be said to have begun the good work in you? Well, in Philippi, both Lydia and the jailer believed. When they heard the good news of Jesus. But Paul doesn't say here that he was confident that you who began a good work in yourselves will bring it to completion. No, he refers to he who began a good work in you.

So if he's not talking about Paul in his preaching or the Philippians in their believing, who's left?

It's interesting that in Acts 16, once Lydia heard the good news, we do read in verse 14 that the Lord opened her heart. It was God who had begun the good work in the Philippians, just as He had granted to Cornelius the gift of repentance in Acts 10, or to the Ephesians the gift of faith. So here we see that it is God who converts the sinner. Is the good work referred to here. You are the converted.

You're like the Philippian sinners, really all sinners whom God has converted. God is the great beginner of this work. No one else can give the new birth that Jesus described to Nicodemus in John 3. God alone can raise the spiritually dead to life. Spurgeon, when he preached on this verse, had the wonderful image of Jonah learning this truth.

You know where Jonah says salvation is of the Lord? Where did Jonah say that? Down in the belly of the fish. Spurgeon refers to what Jonah learned in the great fish college. When he was in the belly of the fish, he learned that salvation is of the Lord.

Friends, if you're here and you're not a Christian, this is the great good news we have for you. You can be in circumstances as bad as being ingested by a marine monster, and God can still save you. God can forgive you of your sins because of what He's done in sending His own Son.

Sending Him on a rescue mission from heaven. He sent His only Son to rescue us who could not rescue ourselves.

Friend, you need to be forgiven by God because of your sins. And God has provided the way that forgiveness can come through the sacrifice of Christ. His death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice for all of us who would turn and trust in Him. And if you will repent of your sins and trust in Him, God will give you that new life. If you want to know more about that, talk to me or any of the others around you here afterwards.

We'd love to talk to you about that. That's the good news that we know that God is the Lord of. He is the one who's begun this good work. But then notice the great promise that Paul writes of here is number two, that God completes. It's not just that God converts, but number two, God completes.

It says, He will bring it to completion. So the same God who begun the work in you will complete it. Friends, become convinced of that, that conversion is not fundamentally the work of the unsteady will of the human, but of the will of the sovereign God of the universe, the Creator and Sustainer, the Judge of all, and you become convinced that the task will not be derailed.

You know, I can be out in the car and tell Connie I'm going by the store and she can give me a list of things for me to find at the store. And she can have some measure of certainty that I will bring back a related set of objects. But perhaps not all of them, and if the store is out of something, or maybe I won't bring back all the right ones, maybe I mistook canned for frozen, or smoked for fresh, or potatoes for vegetables. Well friends, the story of mortals like you and me is the tasks unfinished and the promises undone But God is not like that. No knowledge is lacking in God to reveal to him facts which would alter his stated purposes.

No power is lacking to see his purposes through. No wisdom is lacking which would lead him to rethink his ends for our lives or his means to achieve them. Friends, with God, the down payment makes the whole mortgage sure. The first bite guarantees us that the whole satisfying feast will be ours. In these matters, God is not like us.

The aim of His purposes is never off. His love never fails. The homecoming is certain when the first step of the journey's begun. So for us, we find ourselves in darkness and confusion. The present confuses us.

When we look to the past, even what we've experienced, we see being closed over to our gaze through the rising mists of fading memory.

And when we look ahead to the future, our ignorance makes us as blind as a bat. But to God, all time is open. The past, the present, the future are all in His ever-living, ever-knowing sight. His promise is as good as His deed, His Word as good as His bond. When God converts us, His work isn't ended, it's begun.

That's what He says here. That's why Jesus used that image with Nicodemus of a new birth. A life newly begun, not finally ended.

But the additional truth that Paul is bringing into view here to these Philippian Christians who may have been troubled at their own trials, maybe they were reconsidering what had happened to Jesus, after all He was crucified. Paul writes of that in chapter 2. Maybe he was reconsidering what they had demanded of them, take up your cross and follow Me. Maybe they've even been sobered by Paul's arrest. He's after all in prison in Rome now.

Paul casts their fears aside by telling them that the God who saved them will fulfill His promises. He will do what He promised. He will complete what He's begun. With God, when we hear that He has begun, it is as sure as if it When we hear the words, it is finished, so that they won't mistake this and then take it to mean that they will see no more trials in their lives. Paul is clear about when this perfecting will take place.

You see that there in the verse. When will this perfecting take place?

At the day of Jesus Christ.

Paul uses this singular day, the day of the Lord in the Old Testament, the final day when all of history culminates in God's ancient eternal purposes coming to pass, Paul points to this coming day as the day of fulfillment, of completion, of the final finishing of the task. So, Christian, don't misunderstand. We're not promised that our first day is our last, that our sanctification is entire the moment that we're truly saved. Christians sin, but we do it despite our new nature, not because of sin's rule in our lives.

Before conversion, the weak rebellion of the conscience convicts, but after conversion, the ruling power of God's Spirit wars against our sin, liberating us from destructive habits, teaching us life-shaping truth from His Word, sustaining us with real hopes. And here we have the sweet promise of its final success.

Now let me point out not more words in verse 6, but a necessary implications of these words. Number 3, God continues. God continues.

Do you see that in the verse? Implied. Do you see why it's important?

First, we see this simply by the fact that if God has begun this work, and if God will finish it and complete it at a certain point in the future on that last day, then it follows that in between now and then, the work is ongoing, it's continuing. Last week we thought about one thing that that means for us, as our statement of faith says on the work of sanctification, it is progressive. That is, it's not instantaneous. It doesn't all happen at once. It stretches out across the days of our life.

But another aspect that I want us to consider today is the simple assurance that it will continue.

And it will continue until it is finished, completed, until it reaches its end point. Well, why is that so important, you ask? Ask how many incomplete bridges you hope to drive on as you head back to the district today. The purpose of the bridge is to span the river or the valley. Getting you 80% of the way across is not good.

However hard some days may seem, however unending some battles may feel, however discouraging some setbacks may be, Philippians 1:6 assures us that God will not give up on us. It is not in His plan. In fact, what is in His plan is to continue with us through 2020, just like He did through 2018 and 2019. In fact, He will see our spiritual renovation through until we're all grown up and finished and complete, just like He meant us to be when He made us.

Now I think some people here may be wondering because of their own sin, or because of the hardness of their circumstances, or how life just has them feeling close to despair today. Maybe wondering whether God is just done with them.

You know, maybe His grace was strong when my marriage seemed good, or in my last job, or when we were able to meet together at church and sing 10 songs loudly without even thinking about it. But now, now, God just seems far away. And I'm nowhere near done. I'm just feeling done in.

But beloved, this verse is a promise from God to your soul that even the earliest fruit of His Spirit in your life promises the whole glorious completed harvest that is to come. The dawn in this case doesn't just precede the day, it promises the day.

To use theological language, the fact that God has removed sin's penalty from you because you're truly trusting in Christ alone is matched by the fact that He is breaking sin's power over you today and finally will remove even sin's presence from you entirely on that last day.

Now it's not only kids who ask, Are we there yet?

We Christians ask that a lot too. Our surprise at our own sin has to be matched and met by our certainty that it will end. That even the longest of battles will end in victory. That for the Christian, all stalemates are temporary and our victory in Christ is certain and unending.

You understand why this point was important for the Philippians. They had just heard that Paul was in a dungeon in Rome, the man who had brought the gospel to them. How terrifying could that be for some of them? Philippi was a Roman colony. If they're doing that to the chief among us, what will they do to us?

If you don't think that you'll ever make it home. You'll probably just stay right where you are, you'll give up. Well friends, Paul knew that the Philippians shouldn't do that and didn't need to. Really the amazing thing was because of what Paul saw of God's work among them, even when they were unsure of themselves, Paul was confident and he knew that they wouldn't give up. Oh friends, do you wonder why you should join a good local church?

And let other people get to know you so they can read the evidences of God's grace in your life better than you can sometimes. When you are confused by your own carnality and stupefied by your own sin, that you can have brothers and sisters that you've let get to know you honestly enough and elders that have served you and taught you well enough that they can say to you, Yes, what you did there was wrong. It was wicked.

But I've seen God do this and this and this, and I am confident that He is at work in you. Sister, keep going. Brother, I believe God's work in you is real. I see the fruit of His Spirit marked in your life.

Friend, do you have that kind of confidence in your own spiritual life? Not in yourself, but in God's work in you. In you? Do you have good evidences you can share with your friends today about His work in your life in times past and how that gives you hope for His continued work in your life today and tomorrow until He's done? Sometimes just stopping and looking and sharing can help to give you that hope and share it with others too.

Do you know why you want to make as your friends, the wisest, most godly, spiritual people you know, because in part, friend, you need their help. It's a long journey from here to home for many of us. And we need the help that God provides in good and godly brothers and sisters. Are you forbearing like your heavenly Father is? Are you feeling tempted in these fractious days to write someone off?

Before God writes them off?

Praise God, He's not dealt with you and me that way. Well, the point here in this brief message is not so much the how we do this, but the who. This is God's work. He will complete it. How much more powerful a symbol of that do we have than of that supper that Jesus called us to take in His memory?

We could never have done that for ourselves. He has done that for us. Which brings me to my last point, number four. So God converts, God completes, God continues. Number four, God gives confidence and joy.

You see how Paul begins the verse, and I am sure of this.

Friends, confidence is the link between understanding and joy.

Sometimes we stare at a situation and we're mystified or confused or at least uncertain. But then we get some crucial piece of understanding and we become confident of a certain outcome of success, and with that confidence then a joy begins to grow up in us. Because we know the outcome will be good.

We know that's right. We know that confident joy about tomorrow transforms our experience of today. Couple of illustrations of that. Number one, kids. Let's say you know you've got a test coming up next week and it's Friday and you're about to go into the weekend and you know the test is early in the week and you've got to study.

What if you get some communication from your teacher telling you all of a sudden, you know what, I'm canceling that test. Debt test. Does that affect your weekend? Yes, that affects your weekend. You all of a sudden have a better weekend.

Knowledge, confidence of the future affects the present. Or how about this, tomorrow's Labor Day. A lot of you have the day off. Does that affect about how you're feeling right now and about tonight? Yes, it does.

Your knowledge, your confidence about the future affects the presence right now. A great place to go for this in the Bible is the book of Hebrews. Hebrews 12:2, we read that Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him. The joy wasn't the cross, but it was what would come after the cross, the result of the cross. That's the crowning jewel in the argument of Hebrews there in instructing the believers how to deal with difficult and trying days.

The author in chapter 11 of Hebrews, just given a list, a catalog of characters from the Old Testament, who because of their certainty about the last day, their faith in God and His promises, they faced the most difficult circumstances with the most amazing confidence. And even before them, in chapter 10, the writer to these Hebrew Christians had mentioned their own examples of accepting a hard thing today This is in Hebrews 10:34, the confiscation of their goods because they knew they had better coming, better tomorrow, better and lasting possessions. That's Hebrews 10:34 you could read later. Friends, confidence in the conclusion gives you joy in the journey. Confidence in the conclusion gives you joy in the journey.

Philippians is sometimes called the letter of joy. Isn't it remarkable that this most joyous of Paul's letters was written from a Roman dungeon? Why would that be? Would it be because the dimming of our lesser hopes all around us sometimes draws our attention to the greater and ultimately infinitely brighter hope that we have ahead of us forever in Christ.

I love that statement that we read together earlier. I'm so thankful that this truth is part of our shared citizenship in heaven and shared membership in this church, that the power to preserve is God's. And is part of His commitment to preserve us. We believe that such only are real believers as endure unto the end. That their persevering attachment to Christ is the grand mark which distinguishes them from superficial professors.

That is, people who just speak on the surface calling themselves Christians, but they're not. That a special providence watches over their welfare, and they are kept By the power of God through faith unto salvation. Brothers and sisters, knowing this, we can be glad. And we can be strong with the adversities we face. And we can be thankful that God has so provided for us.

Friends, there are so many things we don't know about tomorrow. We don't know when we'll meet in the district again. We don't know when we'll sing together with abandon again. We don't know when we'll find that spouse or see this issue resolved in a family member's life. And all our ignorance means is that we shouldn't try to navigate today by any of those things we don't know about tomorrow.

Navigation by fears of possible futures never works well. No, we navigate by what we do know about tomorrow. And what we do know is that He who began a good work in us will carry it on until it is done, complete, finished on the day of Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray.

Lord God, we give youe thanks and praise for saving us. We thank youk for sending youg only Son to be our sacrifice, our atonement at the cross. We thank youk for the symbol of the meal youl give us. We pray that yout would instruct our hearts to trust yout more even by this simple token. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.