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Formally discussed it, but as I was prepping for the sermon, I think it’s worth mentioning, first of all, we read the passage of text that we’re going to be preaching from. And second, we pray and we ask the Lord to help us be clear communicators of God’s Word. And though, you know, those things may seem insignificant and just very standard by this point, if you’ve been in our church for any time, we do this just to keep the church grounded in the Bible and humble to God. So and it’s just another layer of accountability also. So we pray that if there is a time when the teaching of Red Village fails to be grounded in the Bible, that you as the congregation would be well trained and convicted enough to call that out.
So, yeah, as mentioned before, we’re going to be in the book of Philippians. So let’s go ahead and turn to that. Let’s open that up. We’re going to cover the whole book over the summer, but just for today, we’re going to be in chapter one, verses one through 11. If you’re newer to the Bible, Philippians is kind of near the end.
It’s in the New Testament and even near the end of the New Testament for the Bibles and the seats, it’s in page 570 for all the blue Bibles or 636 for the blue and white Bibles. So we do desire to ground our teaching in the Scripture once again. And if you don’t have a copy of the Bible for yourself, we’d love for you to take that. Or if you can think of somebody who would like that, please take that with you. So it’s probably going to be on the screen as well.
But let’s read the Word of the Lord together. So this is Philippians 1:1:11, 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 see. I thank my God in all my 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’m sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in defense of and confirmation of The Gospel, for God is my witness. How I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. Amen.
Let’s pray.
Lord, what a privilege it is just to have the Scriptures at all at our disposal, and so much more privileged it is to have them really in our pockets at any time we’d like. And even more privileged it is to study them and let them examine us and let them convict us. And. And so I ask now that you would work through me in spite of my shortcomings, that we as a church would hear and know and respond to the Scriptures again. Lord, what a grace it is to us to know that as we humbly examine your word, that your word works through us and it examines us and it searches us and it convicts us.
So we ask that this time would be used for you, for the good of your church, for the raising up of the saints, for the furthering of the gospel, and for the salvation of those who do not know your salvation yet. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen. So before we get to the heart of the text and in order to better understand the full meaning and implications of the text, it’s always important to understand what’s going on in and around the creation of what we are studying. So just due to the nature of the book of Philippians being a letter, we can get a decent sense of what is going on in the first verse, just because it reads like a typical letter or message.
It says, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons. So right away we get two things. We get the author and the recipient. So who are Paul and Timothy who this starts out with? Though addressed from Paul and Timothy, this letter is actually agreed on by all serious scholars to be primarily from the hand and the mind of Paul Timothy, who’s a known disciple of Paul, mentee of Paul, he might be mentioned as well as just a sign of endearment given to the Philippians, just because both Paul and Timothy have a history there in Philippi, but for today’s purposes, know that this is written by Paul, primarily by Paul, and Paul himself, as many of you may know, is a large figure in the history of the church.
So Prior to becoming a Christ follower, he was a prolific, actually persecutor of Christians. As we can see in Acts, chapter 7. First mention of Paul is in the scene in the stoning of Stephen. Stephen was one of the first deacons in the early church. At that time, Paul was going by the name Saul.
And then Saul is later mentioned in the eighth chapter of Acts, where he is essentially, he’s acting as a secret policeman on a vendetta against Christians. And Acts chapter 8 says that Saul was ravaging the church and searching the streets and the homes and pulling people out of their homes and imprisoning them with their Christ followers. So Paul was truly an evil man on an evil mission. But then, after having a miraculous encounter with God, which you can read about in Acts chapter nine, Paul devotes his life to proclaiming the gospel, establishing churches. He’s discipling young believers and discipling young churches that he had previously established.
So much of his writings to individual disciples or churches, they live on, and they make up a decent portion of the New Testament. And God just used Paul as a cornerstone of the early church. So that’s Paul. But what was going on with him when he wrote this? So this letter to the Philippian Church is part of what’s called the prison epistles.
So he wrote this while he was in prison, likely in Rome after being originally arrested in Jerusalem by Jewish authorities, really just for stirring up insurrection by preaching the Gospel.
Now, what some might call a great irony, but what Paul calls a great win for the gospel.
So this letter, this book of Philippians that we were studying, Paul was written, Paul wrote from a jail cell. So Paul had gone from the jailer to the inmate and the persecutor to the persecuted. In verse 12 of chapter one, we’re not going to study it today, but it says this. He says, what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel. And later on, we see that the Gospel has become known to the whole imperial guard and to Caesar’s household through this imprisonment.
So that’s Paul. He’s in jail, likely in Rome, just for proclaiming the Gospel. But what about the church in Philippi specifically? And Paul has a very interesting history that’s laid out through the Book of Acts with the city of Philippi and establishing the church there. I think this is really important to understand, especially as we are on the onset of studying the Book of Philippians, because it’s going to add a lot of color and add a lot of background to the message he gives to the Philippian church.
So this is on his second missionary journey, Paul gets a message from God in the form of a dream, urging him to go to Macedonia. So Paul then said, I’m going to go to the biggest city in Macedonia, which is Philippi. So he brings along Silas and Timothy, who he was discipling on this missionary journey. And then Paul and Silas, they do some evangelizing and ministering, but they eventually end up removing demonic forces from a slave gore Silas slave girl whose owners were exploiting her as a fortune teller. And the owners bring those charges.
But more importantly, a lot of public animosity against Paul and Silas. This ends with Paul and Silas being publicly beaten and thrown in jail. And then kind of the final, nearly end of the establishment of the church in Philippi. I assume many of you will remember, but maybe, like me, you forgot it wasn’t Philippi. So Paul and Silas are thrown in jail, publicly beaten in Philippi, as they are just early on in their ministry.
So while they’re in jail overnight, they start to pray and sing hymns, which were actually open received by the other men in the jail. But then God sends an earthquake that unchains the prisoners and opens the prison doors. Then that sets in course a chain of events in which the prison guard and his whole family become Christians and join the church in Philippi. So after the earthquake seen in prison, Paul then reminds the city leaders who allowed his beating and allowed his imprisonment to happen that he’s actually a Roman citizen and that as a Roman citizen, he was not treated to a fair and just legal process. So he uses this tactic to put some leverage and some fear back into the leaders of Philippi.
But the city leaders still ask Paul and Silas to leave. So Paul and Silas, they agree to this handshake deal with the leaders of Philippi, and they visit their new congregation in Philippi once more, and they head back out on their journey. So this is the first act of the establishment of the Philippian Church. So you have to understand here, this is a. It’s a wild ride.
So there’s ups and downs. And I think it’s fair to think there are these tensions and looming fears in the hearts of the Church of Philippi, just due to the fact that the establishment of their church was so grounded in turmoil. So as Paul and Silas depart for their journey and leave Philippi, the Philippian Church would have had reason to be thankful, yet be on edge, because on one hand, Paul leverages his Roman citizenship and knowledge of the Roman law to broker some restraint from local authorities against this young church. But on the other hand, it was a combination of public outrage and the green lighting, you could say, from local authorities that led to the beating and imprisonment of Paul and Silas that so marked the establishment of the Philippian Church. So just keep this tension in mind as you think about the rest of this letter.
This was the groundwork for the establishment of the Philippian Church. So that’s all the background. But now what is the message Paul is sending to the church in Philippi? Now, this is some, probably 10 to 15 years later after the establishment of the church. And so what now does Paul want the Philippian Church to know?
So, like the rest of this letter and the rest of the book of the Philippians, Paul’s message in this passage is it’s a strong tone of encouragement, which is really starkly different from the tone of some of the other letters to his churches. And his message is going to fall into three main categories. They’re going to kind of be our three main points for today. So first main category, encouragement by reminder. Encouragement by reminder.
Specifically a reminder of what God has already done for the Philippian Church. Some encouragement by reminder. Second, encouragement by promise. And specifically what God has promised he will continue to do for the church in Philippi. So first, a reminder what God has already done.
Second, a promise of what he will continue to do. And then third, and finally, an encouragement by the conduct of the Philippian Church. So let’s get into this first point here, encouragement by reminder. These first two encouragements find their grounding in verse six. So I’m going to read this again, specifically this first part of verse 6 where it says this, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you.
So when we look through this passage and we reflect on the history of the Philippian Church, we should be in utter amazement at all that God has worked together in order to create and sustain this church. And Paul calls upon that historical record as a source of encouragement. So let’s look at what God has already done. Let’s look at what Paul lays out. So first of all, who is it that Paul is referring to as the one who began the good work in the Philippian Church?
It’s the Lord working through the saving work of Jesus Christ. And when you think about everything that had to happen again to get everything just right for. For the Philippian Church to be established and prosper, you have to attribute that to the sovereign and divine work of God through Jesus. So the two main characters we have, again, we’ve already gone over this, in the establishment of the Philippian Church, we have Paul and we have the Philippian Church. Start with Paul, formerly a man zealous to see Christians persecuted, now a man who comes right out in the first line of this letter to the Philippians as a servant of Christ Jesus.
So. So if not for the miraculous work of God in Paul’s life, many of the early churches would have had a different story. Now, could the Philippian Church have existed and established without the work of Paul? Most certainly God could have done that. But God did use the man who previously ravaged and persecuted Christians before encountering Jesus.
He used that same man that ravaged Christians to establish the church in Philippi. God did that. Secondly, how did God use Paul to specifically plant the church, the Philippian Church? He sent a vision to Paul of a Macedonian man urging him to come to Macedonia and help us. It reminds me of some of our missionaries that we support.
Ali, a man who grew up in deep Islam in the Middle East. And he just kept having these dreams, dreams of Jesus and led him to find a Bible. It’s amazing. This is the incredible work of God. So similar to that, Paul gets a vision in a dream to go to Macedonia, come and help us.
So he goes to Philippi, he gets thrown in jail, and it seems doubtful that the ministry in Philippi will continue. But God then sends an earthquake which leads to the conversion of the jailer and his family. And lastly, on the miracle of the establishment of the church at Philippi, Paul is able to broker and use his Roman citizenship to keep the local authorities at bay from further squashing the Gospel and further squashing the church. So the narrative of the establishment of the Philippian Church should be a source of encouragement and is a source of encouragement. Paul uses it as a source of encouragement for the Philippian Church in just reminding them of what God has already done for them.
So the pattern that Paul lays out as an encouragement is this. Remember your conversion. Remember everything that had to go right? Remember everything that God orchestrated on your behalf in order to confront you with Jesus.
Secondly, second point in encouragement by reminder, as Paul’s second source is an encouragement by reminder. We’re going to look back at the text and see some of the things that Paul has said about the Philippian Church. So Paul’s going to reference their consistency, the consistency of their support to him as his second encouragement. Starting in verse five, he says this, your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now. And then later in verse seven, he says, for your partakers with me of Grace both in my imprisonment and in defense and confirmation of the gospel.
So this church just had consistency. They knew and they understood the dangers of Paul’s message. And the second act of ministering the gospel in Philippi, the establishment of their church got Paul and Silas beaten and jailed. So the Philippian Church would have been very well acquainted with the cost associated and the commitment associated with partnering with Paul in the gospel.
So for a little bit more lighthearted example here, there’s something called the Waffle House Index. This is an unofficial measurement of the severity of a hurricane or tornado developed by fema. So if you don’t know what FEMA is, it’s the national agency that oversees the government response to natural disasters. So Waffle House, if you don’t know what it is, it’s a very basic and greasy 24 hour breakfast food chain which my wife refuses to step foot into.
But despite all that, they have developed a reputation for being some of the last businesses to remain open during major storms. And they have developed a corporate strategy. They have teams called Waffle House jump teams and they have a red light, yellow light, green light system of how long these restaurants can stay open in the midst of hurricanes. And the former FEMA director said this, if you get there and the Waffle House is closed, that’s really bad. So at risk of creating extra biblical historical fiction, Paul is setting up the Philippian Church as the standard bearer by which he can judge the severity of a situation.
So you know, he’s planted, I don’t know how many churches by this time this letter is written, but you know, there’s comings and goings of people from the churches and they’re supporting him. They’re bringing him, we see one time, I need a coat. They bring him a coat. They support him financially. But you can just look into this and it’s like Paul has this mental log of like, man, I’ve seen the Philippians here, I’ve seen the Philippians here.
They sent me this, they sent me that, they cared for me there. What about the Corinthian Church or what about this church? But the Philippian Church in the midst of hardship and persecution, could be viewed by Paul in the same way that FEMA views the Waffle Houses during the hurricane, Right? So assuming that Paul again had wrote this during his imprisonment in Rome, that his imprisonment in Rome, there’s this range of 10 to 15 years from the time of planting the Philippian Church to when he was writing this letter in prison in Rome. And all through that, Paul reminds them that they have been a consistent partner in the gospel.
So just one more funny story here. I don’t know if you saw it on the news here recently, but Tim Keller died this weekend and he was if you don’t know who he is, he’s just an incredible Christian figure, had an incredible impact on speaking into postmodern worldviews in New York City and his ministry there. I was just reflecting on that as I was writing my own sermon. And if you ever listen to, like Tim Keller’s sermons, his illustrations are always like novels, operas, classic literature. I was thinking about this as I’m writing out this illustration about the durability of waffle houses.
So you get what you pay for here. You can send your complaints to Jay at the end of this. But no, seriously though, there is a we cannot miss the consistency in the partnership of the Gospel from the Philippian Church. So just to wrap up this first main point, when Paul was looking for a source of encouragement towards this congregation in Philippi, he started with what God had done already to give them an encounter with Jesus through the work of Paul. And he finished with how they had held firm to the gospel despite the cost and the trials.
Now, the second main point here, encouragement by promise. Encouragement by promise. So Paul’s additional source of encouragement was to remind them of the promise of what God will continue to do for them. So we’re going to read the entirety of verse six now says this, 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. What an incredible promise.
And as it relates to the Philippian Church, Paul uses this to speak into and address any questions of their fate that they have from now until eternity. The day of Jesus Christ refers to when we’ll meet Jesus in heaven after our death, or when we’ll see Jesus again when he returns to earth to make his final judgment. And so what Paul is saying here is that for those who have been truly born again, you can have the confidence that once you’ve truly placed all your faith in Jesus, you’re forever bound by the promise that you will stand holy and justified before God through the work of Christ on your behalf. Now, why does Paul feel the need to encourage the Philippian Church in this way? I don’t know if we can know for certain, but if there was some specific thing in the Philippian Church that caused him to write this.
But we can know that Paul included this powerful statement at the end of verse six because I think it so embodies the essence of the gospel. And Paul was a man who just drenched himself in the gospel at all times. And this just. He uses the gospel to address the core issue of every doubt about a person’s possibility of losing their salvation. And the core issue with a person who is doubting that they’re able to be saved or they’re able to stay saved is simply a gospel issue.
And that person. We just need a refresher on what value you brought to your own salvation at the point of conversion. We bring nothing of value to our own salvation, which is why we need saving. So if we could stand justified before God on our own, what would we need Jesus for? So when Paul is writing this later part of verse six, he’s saying, God alone initiated your salvation and God alone sustained your salvation.
He’s peeling back these layers of the hearts of the Philippian Church where these heart. You can kind of look into it, you can say, like us many times, the Philippian Church is seemingly thinking that the work of Christ for them at the point of was for them only at the point of salvation. But after that they had to keep earning it, they had to keep proving it. But that grossly undercuts the depth of our need for a Savior and grossly undercuts the depth of our ability to save ourselves. So Paul’s writing this to fend off performance based salvation.
The essence of the Gospel is all about what Jesus does on your behalf. The only doing that needs done to be a partaker of grace, as Paul writes here in the Gospel, is to put your absolute faith in Jesus. And when you start to think that you could lose your salvation with Christ, it’s only because you started to believe that somehow you did something to earn it, or you have to start doing something to earn it. So let me say this again. When we think about why the Philippian Church, and then why Red Village Church, why we get these concerns about losing our salvation, it’s only because somewhere in our hearts we have started to believe that we have earned it somehow and we’ve missed the point of the gospel.
So the essence of the gospel is that without Jesus, we’re completely hopeless in our state of sin and completely helpless to remove ourselves from that state. And only through Jesus can we ever, at the point of salvation or at any time afterwards, have any hope on the day of Christ. So those are the first two main points. Let me just recap those real quick. First, when you need spiritual encouragement, look back at what God has done for you and know that you brought no value to the table for your salvation.
It was the work of God.
Second, when you need more spiritual encouragement for what could happen, remember the promise that true salvation in Jesus is for eternity and there is nothing you can do on your own that can earn that eternal promise. So as you think about your conversion and the holding of your faith, know that it is all because of the work of Jesus on your behalf. So finally, here let’s think about Paul’s final encouragement, which is an encouragement by way of conduct. Another way to say it might be encouragement by the way of future conduct. We’re going to see this in verses 9 through 11.
So if your mind works like mine does, it kind of defaults to the easiest way out. My initial hang up with this text is that kind of, if you take it at a surface level, glimpse, verse 6 of this text seem to imply that we don’t really have any work to do anymore. We don’t. It’s taken care of. We can just kind of kick back.
Paul’s writing and Paul’s life come into a strong opposition to this notion of laziness. So let’s look into it here. We’re going to now look at verses 9 through 11. And here we see our purpose. Paul writes this.
It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. So it is so interesting to me that Paul wraps up this little section of Scripture which has really been. It’s been all about what God has done and what God will continue to do. But he wraps it up with a plea for this church to press onward as a proof of what God will continue to do through them. So this calls into really this theological idea.
It’s called the perseverance of the saints. So Wayne Grudem’s systematic theology says this when he’s talking about the perseverance of the saints or the doctrine of remaining a Christian. He says it is clear that continuing the Christian life is one of the evidences that a person is truly born again.
So we need to make sure that we’re thinking about Christian service not as a means to justification before God, but as a proof of God’s promise that he is sustaining our salvation. So when we think about the value of joyful Christian service, we have to again remember the gospel first. We have to put the Gospel first, when we think about this, because of what God has done and because of what God promises to continue to do for believers, when we strive toward doing things that are excellent and pure and blameless before God, Paul encourages us to strive towards what pleases God. And that comes from understanding that we should do what pleases God in response to the gift of salvation, not as a requirement of our salvation. It’s a response to the gift, not a requirement.
So we’ll try to wrap this up here. So for the church in Philippi and for Red Village Church, how do we live in light of these truths? First, we need spiritual encouragement. Think of and remember and speak of what God has done in your life. And think of and speak of and remember what he promises he will continue to do.
And really, this comes down to just a constant refreshing of yourself and the gospel. The basis for the gospel comes down to these two main ideas. First, we are in great need of a savior. Second, we cannot save ourselves. So the sinful condition of our hearts before a holy and just God excludes us, makes it impossible for us to stand justified before God.
And the sinful conditions of our hearts leaves us unable to achieve that right, standing on our own merits. So at no point in your spiritual journey have you been able to say that you have not needed a savior. And at no point in your spiritual journey have you been able to be your own savior. But after encountering Jesus, putting your complete faith in his life is worth his life, his work, his life, his death and his resurrection, and therefore his standing in on our behalf. When we are in Jesus, at no point are we at risk of losing our salvation.
Secondly, remember that joyful servitude under God is a proof of your salvation, not the means to your salvation.
Have we been joyful servants? Are we joyfully serving the Lord? Are we joyfully serving the church? If the answer is yes, then give thanks to God for the gift of your salvation. But if the answer is no, take stock of your life and know that Jesus stands ready to accept all those who trust in his name and profess their faith in Him.
So that’s all. Let’s pray.
Lord, what an amazing text this is.
Thankful for how it convicts us, thankful for how it convicts me and it challenges me. And I pray that when we doubt, we would look back at what you have done, we would remember the miracle of our salvation, and we would remember the promise that you will hold us. And when we truly put our faith in you, that you will finish the good work you have started in us. For the day of Christ. So I pray for those of us who have Whether you’ve been a Christian for years or we’ve never known the freedom of salvation in Christ, I pray that we would position ourselves as joyful servants in light of Jesus.
Never not in need of the gospel. Jesus always stands ready to offer salvation and what a gift that is, Lord. And pray that your spirit would move and convict us where we need it. In light of this text.
We’re so grateful for your word. We’re so grateful for Christ, through whom we can stand holy and justified before you. It’s in his name we pray. Amen.