Philippians 1:1-6 • Complete Joy
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
We begin the fall sermon series from the book of Philippians. When you think Philippians, think jails because Paul is writing this book of Philippians, a letter that he is sending to a church, a house church back in Philippi. He is writing this letter from a jail in Rome where he is imprisoned.
This letter is written to a group of people whose circumstances are described first in Acts chapter 16. You may remember the Apostle Paul is actually in another part of the world in the Middle East and he gets a vision called the Macedonian vision where a man from Greece, that's southern Europe says, "Come over and help us." And so Paul and Silas begin what we think of as the second missionary journey and they begin at Philippi, this Greek town where Paul crosses all kinds of boundaries, a Middle Eastern Jew going to a Greek southern European city and he meets with a group of women in prayer, not to Jesus Christ but we're not quite sure what they're praying to, by the river side. And so as he begins speaking a Jewish man to a European woman, strange things in those times he tells her about Jesus Christ. Her name is Lydia.
She is a seller of purple cloth, a business woman, and she believes and from that point not only begins to support Paul financially in his mission to the world but spiritually as well supports him and others in the church.
That's not the last woman we see at Philippi. Paul and Silas begin to minister inside the town and there's a slave girl who begins to follow after them. She has a fortune-telling demon within her and she follows Paul and Silas day after day saying, "These men are from the Most High God!" And she mocks them saying, "They will tell you the way of salvation!"
Finally Paul has enough of it and he says to the demon, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. The demon comes out of her, but so does her fortune-telling ability."
So her handlers are deprived of their income. They get mad. They take Paul and Silas to the authorities and they have them beaten with rods.
It's not just an old custom. In a few months you will send me to Malaysia and you may remember Malaysia occasionally makes the news. When Muslims convert to Christianity in Malaysia, they are beaten with what?
They are beaten with rods by the government as well. Still happens, still happens in our world.
Paul and Silas are not only beaten with rods, they're put into jail and at midnight after they have sung their songs, what happens? An earthquake opens the doors. Paul and Silas do not leave knowing if they leave it will mean death for their jailer. And the jailer when he discovers they have not left says, "What must I do to be saved?"
Paul and Silas say, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, you and your household." The whole household is baptized that night. And after that night Paul continues on his mission. It's supported by years from those at Philippi will read about it as we go on through this letter in later weeks. As they continue to say, "We want to tell others the good news and help you to do it."
But Paul is betrayed by his own countrymen. To save his own life, he appeals for a trial before Caesar. And so he's sent to Rome where he's waiting for years for his trial.
And it's while he's waiting that he writes this letter.
If you've ever locked going through the letters in your grandmother's attic and finding hopefully the one from Abraham Lincoln to her, you know, or going to ancestry.com and looking at those documents of your heritage, this is the letter to the first church of Europe.
As the Apostle Paul is writing to these people who are the great, great, great, great, great, other church of us all of European heritage or those touched by European missions, this is that early letter. Let's stand and honor God's Word as we see Paul's Word to the first European church of all time.
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 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. Let's pray together.
Father, thank you for faithful Christians in the world today who under oppression are still strong from the name of Jesus Christ.
Thank you for the heritage of our forebears who because of faith in Jesus Christ witnessed against trial and persecution so that we might name the name of Jesus and become part of His mission to the world even now. Would you help us this day to see not only the precious gift that is ours but the gift to share?
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Please be seated.
You know how the songs of our youth stay with us. I mean not just the wheels on the bus go round and round, you know, but whatever songs were popular when you were in high school, you know that decade that's still advertised on late night infomercials for only three payments of 1995, you know, or the songs of your early church experience where your faith was becoming real, where you recognized that there was hope in your pain, that there was an answer to the emptiness so that somewhere between muscle and nerve, between heart and soul, God was planting deep into the very fiber of your being a love for Him by the songs that you sang. It's one of the reasons, of course, that changing our worship practice can be so difficult for us because of the songs and the melodies that have such meaning to us.
I think of one song that had such meaning for me. I learned it when I was in high school. It was in a time that my parents, my mother and father were struggling to stay together. We changed churches, which meant that I changed youth groups and was no longer able to see the friends that I was closest to. I felt alone and scared.
And a song that meant so much to me at the time was one that I wanted to believe and still struggle to know could I? These words, "Real joy is mine.
No matter if teardrops start, I found the secret.
It's Jesus in my heart."
Well, it rhymes and it's sweet, but is it true?
No matter if teardrops start, I have found the secret to joy and it's Jesus in my heart that in the moments of darkness, and I must tell you as I think back to that time in high school and my life, the shadows that would come upon my heart, I almost feel my heart constrict even now as I tell you about it. That believing that there is a joy that is deeper than our circumstances, that is not just a result of our circumstances, that's a profound faith in a God who loves us, who's working all things for good, so much so that even in the darkness we can begin to claim the joy in the morning, that even in jail would allow an Apostle Paul to say 15 times in this brief letter of the joy that he felt in the Lord Jesus Christ, only 104 verses. And 15 times the writer from the jail speaks of his great joy in Jesus Christ. Where does that joy come from that's greater than the darkness, that's greater than our circumstances? We understand just in these opening words, as Paul talks about the joy in the partners he now has in the gospel, the joy he has in the provisions of the gospel and the joy that he has in the prayers that he makes for the work of the gospel. The partners that he has in the gospel are so unlikely, just the opening words of this letter, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus. These are unlikely companions.
Paul, by this phase, an older aristocratic Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, having gone to the Harvard of the Jews, the school of Gamaliel, circumcised on the eighth day, a Pharisee, as for zeal, pursuing Christians to the point of killing them because they did not believe in the Jewish standards that he thought they should believe.
This is a man of great pedigree, and he's traveling with Timothy, a man whose parents were both Jew and Greek, which meant to a Jew this young man is a halfbreed, without regard or respect in either community. And yet here is Paul, the aristocrat and old, traveling with a young pastor who in his own time would have been disrespected by everyone else, and they are traveling together as servants of Christ Jesus. The word just means slaves.
Servants doesn't quite do all that we should do, and we say, "How could it possibly be?" Not only they're traveling together, but Paul keeps talking about joy when he's traveling with this person who would embarrass him in any sort of social setting, and as a slave to Christ Jesus.
How can you have joy if you're a slave?
Only if your master is someone very, very good so that your servitude is a matter of gratitude.
And that is precisely what Paul is saying. We are servants of Christ Jesus out of gratitude, living in response to the great joy that he has given us by his grace. And he hints at what that grace is by the following words. At the end of verse 1, he's writing to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and the deacons. Now the words are just strange to any Jew who would be reading this letter. You're writing to all the saints at Philippi? Listen, the word "saints" in the Old Testament just means holy ones, and it was only applied to the covenant people, only applied to the Jewish race. And now Paul is saying to these people like the Roman soldier and like Lydia, the Greek business woman, and perhaps even to the slave girl who had the demon in possession, you're now saints in Christ Jesus. And so that we don't think he's just talking about the officers of the church, the ones who have somehow risen to some respect and regard, he actually says it very carefully to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons. As though I'm not just talking to the officers when I call you all saints, I'm talking to everybody.
And what Paul is doing for us is bringing very important things to mind. First, for every baptized believer, we're not just baptized into autonomy and into independency, but into a network of a corporate church with mutual accountability and authority so the church can perform its mission by the ascent, the cooperation, even the correction of everybody in its ranks so that we're moving forward together.
And everyone who is in that corporate body, not just those in authority, is called a holy one. How could that possibly be?
Because they are saints in Christ Jesus. We're not just in a network of authority and accountability, we are nesting in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Paul talks about joy many times, virtually every three sentences in this little letter. But that phrase "in Christ Jesus," or one form of that phrase "in Christ Jesus," "in Christ," that phrase is repeated 20 times in this same letter, as though that joy is somehow intricately connected to being united to Christ. And the way I perceive it, what it means to be in Christ Jesus is in my own mind just thinking of that analogy of those Russian nesting dolls. You know what I mean? One doll fits in another doll, fits in another doll, in another doll. And we are in Christ Jesus, which means that His righteousness, His purity, His provision is ours. We don't stand before God on the basis of what do. We are in Christ Jesus. And because we are in Christ Jesus, the Apostle Paul speaks of our spiritual status before God the Father. To all the saints, to all the holy ones, because we're perfect, no way.
But because I have put my hope, my trust in Christ Jesus. And in Him I recognize that I am nesting, resting, have the provision of His great grace. It's even provided when you begin to see what it means to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons. And He begins to express the fact that I'm praising God because you're in partnership with Me in the work of the gospel. That's an amazing thought, that we are partners in the work of the gospel, that we're not just to think of our nesting in Christ Jesus, but the other eggs in the nest.
Lots of different people, different kinds of people, a Roman jailer, a Greek business woman, a slave girl, whoever is now gathering with them in the church. Paul is thinking of them all, these different kinds of people who are now together in Christ Jesus, and what a statement that is, that despite the world's divisions and antipathies and differences, that they are all in Christ, that they're unified in the work of the gospel and the message of grace in Him.
I can't help but tell you that I was so thankful for how well you all received Pastor Devereaux Hubbard last week. As you said, there are differences in our society, we recognize, but we are receiving you in Christ Jesus.
And the same message was given to me as I pastored at St. Paul's in Devereaux Hubbard's place, as the people received us with fellowship and joy and love, and we begin to recognize this is not just political correctness, this is the witness of the gospel from the earliest times as the Apostle Paul is telling us to break down the walls of divisions by the work of Jesus Christ, who enables us to move across all lines of division and race and ethnicity and demographics for the sake of the statement of the gospel. You are in Christ Jesus, and that new identity is what not only makes us rejoice in what's been provided to us, but join with others in celebration of what God is doing. I read just this last week an article by Mark Galley in "Christianity Today," and he writes these words.
We are currently experiencing a God moment when God is shining His burning light on how our nation and our churches are fractured by racial division and injustice.
In the past two years, we've seen image after image of injustice, violence, hatred across racial lines.
Moderate white evangelicals who make up the bulk of the evangelical church are seeing more clearly than ever how racism is embedded in all of our society from business to law enforcement to education to church life.
And in all that we are seeing God call His church to seek justice and reconciliation in concrete ways. We've started to see a fresh division that was revealed to the church at Pentecost when all the people came to Jerusalem of different languages and nations to praise God together in one tongue by that amazing work of the Holy Spirit.
We are seeing again what it means for all peoples to be worshiping at the throne of the Lamb from every tribe and nation, language and people in Revelation 4 and 5 of the relevance of Paul's teaching that Christ has broken down the dividing walls that are between us as He did at Philippi.
Voices in the media and politics may label conservative Christians who are weary of being politically and socially marginalized as being anxious to marginalize others.
And sometimes we deserve that label.
But it is not true of our shining moments when Billy Graham started refusing to segregate his crusades in the 1950s, when promise keepers made racial reconciliation for men a priority of the 1980s, and when the Apostle Paul said we are all united in Christ in the first century,
we were learning what it meant not just for us, but for all those that are part of Christ Church to be one in Him. And we celebrate it because we recognize when we celebrate our oneness, we're ultimately celebrating what Christ has done for us. We are in Christ Jesus. And if you're in Christ Jesus, you have the same benefits of the grace of the gospel that I do, and we are brothers and sisters in the gospel, and we celebrate that to celebrate what God Himself has done for us. And that reality is so clear to Paul that it just makes him bubble with the provision of joy that God has provided. That provision of joy is verse 2, which is so familiar to you. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Why did grace and peace so often travel together in the Apostle Paul's salutation, the beginning of all those? Why does he keep saying grace and peace?
Well because grace is about peace with God being provided, and peace is about grace from God being believed.
If you have grace provided, you have peace provided as well. And that grace is just expressed here in wonderful words. How does God provide the peace of His grace? Verse 2, it's a gift, right? Grace to you. The word in Greek just means gift. Grace to you. It's not something you earn. It's not something you deserve. It's just a gift to you. And it comes from God the Father, the originator of all things, the Father of all nations, that God who made all things by the Word that came from His mouth. That same God says grace to you.
I'm going to give you something.
And when you recognize that gift as the provision of the life of His own Son paying the penalty for your sin in mind, you say, "That's an amazing gift." But it does something else. It actually brings you closer to the Father when you understand the gift.
My grandfather on my mother's side died when I was quite young, so I don't have many memories of him. And the memories I have early on are a little bit mixed. I mean, my memory of my mother's father is of a crusty, chain-smoking retail store manager who liked Boston people around.
And when you're a little kid, that's a scary person to have for a grandfather.
And when I went with my brothers and sister to visit my grandparents' house there in Knoxville, Tennessee, I must tell you that they didn't keep a lot of toys for kids like us, and so you were kind of desperate to find a way to spend your time when you were at the grandparents' house. And I can remember one time finding in a corner of the kitchen a little top with a string on it that perhaps an uncle years ago had discarded.
And I found that top and thought, "Oh, something to spend the time with."
But my older and bigger brothers knew that the top was for them, so they took it away from me. And I don't remember how I complained if it was in words or tears or both, but into the kitchen came my grandfather and he pointed at me and he said, "You come with me. Now I am in terror." Oh, no.
And he took me down to the basement.
I did not know what we found out soon that he was very, very sick.
But he said, "I'm going to give you something better than that top."
And he took off a shelf, his tackle box fully loaded, and gave it to me and started me on a life habit that's really bad. But anyway, I have loved fishing ever since. And you know, that tackle box signaled a few things.
I didn't earn or deserve it in any way. It was pure gift.
But the second thing I learned from that gift was it brought me closer to my grandfather.
The fumes and the crustiness suddenly melted away.
And when we and our sin and our weakness perceive only that we are justly deserving of the wrath of God, it is the gift of Jesus Christ that's meant to close the distance between us and our Heavenly Father so that we recognize He's for us now. And the magnitude of that gift is expressed even in the words here, "Grace and peace you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Every word is special. He is the Lord. He is the one who has master over all things in this creation. God has given him that right and that privilege and that status. And though he has that master status, he is Jesus. The word just means deliverer. He's the Lord who comes to deliver us. And He does it as the Christ, which is the word for Messiah, the anointed one, the sacrifice to be made to give us purity before God. God is saying, "I have given you a wonderful gift. It is the Lord, Jesus your deliverer, who is the Christ, the sacrifice that I have anointed to provide what is necessary for you to be right with me. And He's my own son. I do it so that I have many children, sons and daughters out of this wonderful church that I am building from all nations and peoples. And Paul just sees it and you can see him almost chortle there in prison. Isn't this great? What a great cause for joy this is, this provision that God has given. And when you perceive that, when the prison is closing in, the prison, whether it's real or the prison of the habits or the addictions or the situations that you are in, if that
grace is really perceived by you, then somehow it begins to push back the darkness as peace itself begins to settle over you despite the unsettling events. God is for me now. He has shown me that by the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you really grasp that, there's just a peace that God grants to you. I couldn't help but thinking about it, reading recently in John Leonard's book, Get Real, about sharing our faith, not with just, you know, standard words and phrases that only Christians understand, but just how do you get real about telling people about your faith?
And he describes an example from his own experience, and I've seen this reflected in what some of you do when you go out to eat. John Leonard describes just sitting down at a table to be served by a waitress and as she took the order of the people there, he said, "You know, we're from a church and we're going to pray for our meal afterwards." He said, "Is there anything that we could pray about for you when you bring our meal?" And the waitress kind of went, "Ugh." "No, I can't think of anything I want you to pray about."
And so he said, "Well, that's fine. Well, maybe just when you bring our drinks, you know, if you've thought of something by then just tell it and I'll pray for it."
A few minutes she came back with the drinks and she kind of looked furtively around the restaurant and then sat down very close to him so that she could speak very softly.
She said, "I've been a drug addict almost all of my adult life.
I have only been clean for six months.
Would you pray that God would keep me clean?"
He said, "I can pray for that."
And then he said she turned over her left hand with the palm side up and pulled back her watch where he could see the scar of her recently having tried to take her own life. And she said, "And would you pray that God would make me happy?"
And he said, "Yes, I can pray for that too."
Is that real?
Does God really bring happiness into such troubled lives?
If you believe that you are nesting in Christ Jesus, that the sin and the weakness and the shame is somehow covered by His righteousness, that you are robed in the reality of who Christ is and what He was willing to do for you so that what you do is you stand before God pure and right and shameless, then you begin to say, "There can be peace in you now because God who made all things, who continues to control all things by the word of His power, that same God is for me now.
And He's going to work all things together for good. I don't even understand how that happened, but that's His Word's promise. And I believe that now. And when you believe that, you have grace and you have peace.
It is the intention of the gospel. And when it really comes upon you, the way it did to those people at Philippi, you don't just want to kind of hold it. You want to tell somebody. Let me tell you about the grace and peace that I know. Let me share this with you. And it's the very thing that Paul is praying about with such rejoicing. He says in verse 3, "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you," that is the church at Philippi, "always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I'm sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. I'm rejoicing," listen, he says, "in all of you, not just the officers, not just the recognized good people, the long-term prayer, I'm rejoicing for all of you in Christ Jesus because I recognize that that work in you has made you want to be partners in the work of the gospel from the first day until now." I mean, it's a literal statement. Lydia, from the first day of perceiving the grace of God for her, took her business earnings and began to support the life mission of the Apostle Paul so that what had touched her heart would touch many more hearts. That was from the very beginning. And Paul will, toward the end of this letter, we'll get to it eventually, will begin to thank the Philippians for their gift of giving and receiving so that as he went from their place to minister across the world, they never forgot him. They said, "The grace that's touched us, that saved us, that freed us, we want other people to know." And their hearts were so changed that their priorities changed. And they wanted their partnership, their giving in the gospel to spread the mission of grace and peace because they recognized if they were eggs in that nest, God meant them to fly and sing.
And they were going to enable, every way they could, the message to fly and sing across the world. And the reality of that is still hard for us. Sure it is because, not a mystery to you if you look at the back of the bulletin, right? We're struggling financially in a community that's struggling financially. And the great temptation is to fold our tent and pull in our wings. Instead of saying, "No, listen, is there ever a better time for a community to hear the wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ that gives you grace and peace, joy in the morning, even while you're still in the dark?"
It's in the time of struggle that the joy and peace can make so much. And our leaders of this church, the deacons and the elders, I'm just going to tell you they have struggled nobly to kind of put together next year's budget to say, "How do we steward well, and at the same time not forget our mission? How do we keep both pieces in play?" And it's just wonderful watching men of faith struggle in unity for the work of the gospel and the protection of the church and doing both so the gospel can fly and sing.
It's part of the beauty of being a church of Jesus Christ is people are saying, "I'm in partnership with the gospel. What can I do to maintain this great message?" And Paul tries to encourage them by saying, "I'm telling you why you should do it because I am sure," verse 6, "of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion."
Now maybe it's hard to hear that here. What if you were one of those Chinese pastors who by the hundreds are singing, "Great is thy faithfulness."
They will go home to worship in secret, not in a place like this. They will go home to worship in small numbers because the government will not let them worship in large numbers. And yet despite all the pressure upon them, they say, "God is working all things together for good and He's shown us His grace and peace and the gift of Jesus Christ. Great is thy faithfulness. Regardless of what the world brings, I know what heaven holds and I will say, "Great is thy faithfulness." And so he gives praise for the church. Remember again, the very first church of Europe who they can't possibly perceive it are going to multiply and multiply and multiply and multiply and influence so that you and I are sitting here today.
And this is the promise that God is making to His corporate church, not just back then but even now. He's not just talking about finishing off the work of the gospel. That word completion is also about filling up the work of the gospel. That all churches who are faithful to the mission of God of the testimony of Jesus Christ are part of the completion that God is doing. And I just rejoiced in this week to see the many ways that God has taken this church, not just sending me off somewhere to do something for the gospel, but what people here are doing for the sake of the gospel, completing, being made complete for the purposes of God that He gives to this church.
I was with some of you last Monday night as Mike Jackson was doing the evangelism of the seminar. And do you mind my saying to you, I listen to Mike talk about evangelism and I go, "How does he do that?" I mean he is so able and skilled and zealous. And I think, "I don't have those gifts."
And I think, "But he does.
God is working all this corporate body to bring it to completion." And I look around the room and there are people from their teens to their 70s. There are singles and there are marrieds. There are young couples there that just had babies days ago. And they are still here to learn to evangelize. And I think God is completing His work. He's filling up the church by all the kinds of people who are coming to say, "We're meant to sing and fly this message of the gospel." I think of Mike Flynn, who's doing such an amazing job, not only reaching men in this church, but across the region trying to help men understand how important the gospel can be to him. I think of Sarah Alkire, who is working with women, not just in our church, but women across our region who are considering what it means to be ministers for the gospel, to work with women who know Jesus and don't know Jesus and through the programs have children and women by hundreds meeting here on Tuesday mornings. And we say, "Well, it doesn't serve us." It's not meant to serve us. It's meant to say God is doing something through His people that helps the gospel to shine and flow. And that's ultimately what the apostle is praising God for. He is doing this. There's just this divine intercession whenever you perceive it. God has entered my life to bring the message of His grace and His peace. That divine intercession when you perceive it creates kind of a supernatural selflessness
where we're no longer just concerned about our bank account and our worship style and our church process. We are saying, "How can we multiply the gospel?"
And when we begin to see God doing that through all generations and ages and people and races, and when Joel is the one that we're celebrating today, somebody who's just new in this church, right? And do you see what he's doing? He's helping serve coffee. He's help greeting people as they come in the door. He's playing our worship band. He's telling you about the faith that's spreading from him. We just say, "I am sure of this. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion." Not just finish off the work. He is filling out the work by the church that is faithful to his purposes. As I look at all the things that God is enabling you to do, that you're so willing to do for the sake of the gospel, I just have to back up and say, "My, oh my, you are saints."
Well not every day in every way, but in Christ Jesus, you are saints.
You have to believe that, that you are holy ones for a holy purpose. And because you are holy ones for a holy purpose, I praise God that the prayer of the Apostle Paul is one that I can say when I'm in China or Malaysia, wherever you send me, this prayer,
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, taking my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 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. I praise God for you and the God who claimed you and the work that he's given us to do. Praise God. Will you say amen?
Amen. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for a church in the ancient world and a church in today's world that can be such an inspiration to us of the church we should be for the world. Grant your spirit to so teach us of the glories of grace and peace that we want the message of Jesus to fly and sing. Help us to be those partners in the gospel we pray for Jesus' sake. We ask it in his name. Amen.