WWUTT 033 Who Are the Saints (Philippians 4:20-23)

The word saint is a label that gets thrown around a lot. You can do nice things for another person and be called a saint. You can pray to dead saints, according to the Roman Catholics, and there is a football team called the Saints.

Who Really Are the Saints in Christ Jesus

But who really are they? Well, the Saints are all of the people of God in Christ Jesus, when we understand the text. This is When We Understand The Text. My name is Pastor Gabe, and I have enjoyed this study of the book of Philippians immensely.

I hope that you have too. Today is our last day of exegesis. Exegesis meaning that we go through the text verse by verse. We digest what it says to understand fully what the Apostle Paul was communicating to his recipients.

In this case, the Philippians, also called exposition. So this will be our last day of exposition. We've got something like four verses to go through here, verses 20 through 23. Tomorrow, we'll review everything that we've looked at this week.

And then on Friday, for our Friday review, we're going to review the entire letter from start to finish and go through the entire thing as the Philippians would have heard it. Well, they would have heard it in Greek.

We're going to do it in English, but we're going to go from start to finish straight through. And if you've been with me through this entire study, then there are probably some things that are going to open up to you in a new way when you hear this from start to finish.

We're going to read the letter as it was meant to be read, as the Philippians would have sat and heard it. So that's coming up on Friday. Hey, if you've been with us through our entire study, I'd love to hear from you.

There are two ways that you can get in touch with us. Best way is by email. Junctioncitychurch at gmail .com is the email address that you can send to. Or snail mail is a great way to get something to us as well.

1220 West 8th Street, Junction City, Kansas, 66441. And you're mailing that to First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City. 1220 West 8th Street, Junction City, Kansas, 66441. Before getting into the text today, as we look at these final few verses, why don't we come to the Lord in prayer?

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you again for this word that we are able to see such an encouraging message that the Apostle Paul gave to the Philippians that we might learn from this what the Spirit expects of us.

Even though this was written 2 ,000 years ago, the Spirit still speaks volumes of truth from this to us even today. And so, Lord, I pray that as we continue to study these things and apply them on our hearts, that you would grow it in us and produce a fruitful harvest.

We have been all the more energized by the message of love that has come from this letter, from a God of love, that we go out with the gospel in love and teach it to others so that no souls might be lost, but that the full number of the saints would come to salvation.

Lord Jesus, we pray and ask these things in your name. Amen. Philippians chapter 4, and we're going to go ahead and start in verse 20. It's just four verses here, but in his conclusion, the Apostle Paul says, to our God and Father be glory forever and ever.

Amen. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus, the brothers who are with me greet you, all the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

What a great way to conclude this letter and include our exposition of the book of Philippians. Verse 20, the Apostle Paul says to our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. I want you to note something here, and maybe you've already recognized it.

The Apostle Paul is concluding his letter the same way that he concludes the hymn of Christ. Going back to Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 6, Christ, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.

Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. Even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

At the conclusion of that hymn. Okay, so what we see in the identity of Christ in this hymn when we went through this, we talked about how Christ is our example of obedience. When it comes to worshiping the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, the greatest commandment.

Jesus did that. And we see that concluded in verse 11. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Christ did all that he did for the glory of the Father. Jesus Christ is Lord.

All right? The second greatest command, or the one that is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is our example there as well. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself.

All right? So these things are the examples that we have in Christ Jesus for obeying all of the law and the prophets, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And Jesus did these things to the glory of God the Father. So as the Apostle Paul concludes this letter, Philippians 4 .20, he says, to our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. So Paul is taking the example of Christ and applying it.

All of this is to the glory of God. Though Paul has expressed deep love for the Philippians, though he has included them in this gospel mission, in this gospel work to spread the message of Jesus Christ around the world, making it all the way to Rome, the hub of the world at that time.

All right? It's like the capital city of the world. The gospel made it there. In fact, the book of Acts is basically about how the gospel message that we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John made it to the world, all the way to Rome so that it may go out to all of the reaches of all of the peoples.

And the Apostle Paul is including the Philippians in that work, though he has showed them great love and kindness and affection. All of these things are ultimately for the glory of God. And so reminding the Philippians even, as you have helped me with your monetary gifts, as I have included you in this mission's work, as we have labored together, as we have suffered together, and now as we have rejoiced together, all of these things are to our God and Father.

Be glory forever and ever, amen. Whatever we experience in this life that is just for a limited time, may all that we have done be to His glorious name, be to His praise, and then it accrues to your account, which was something that we mentioned yesterday.

It benefits your credit in the heavenly kingdom. All that we have done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ has eternal significance, and we will enjoy the fruit of that labor for all eternity. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever, amen.

But though he says amen, that's not the conclusion of the letter, for he has some final greetings that he wants to put out here. What does amen mean, by the way? It means so be it. That's very simply what it means.

It comes from a Hebrew word, amen. We tend to say amen, but anyway, it means so be it, so be it truly. Lord, let it be done. I had a youth pastor friend of mine that would say, engage, make it so. I don't know if he was a Star Trek fan or whatever that was, but anyway, that's what amen means.

So of everything the Apostle Paul has said here, he concludes with amen, so be it truly, to the glory of God the Father. And then we get into those final greetings, those last few verses. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus, the brothers who are with me greet you, all the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household.

So here's another question. We're talking about definition of words. What is a saint? Who are the saints? It's a word that gets used a lot. We talk about good people as being saint. Oh, she's such a saint.

She just loves everybody. She does great things for people, right? You've heard saint used in that way. We pray to dead saints. According to the Roman Catholics, we don't. We absolutely do not pray to dead saints.

In fact, we have it stated very clearly as the Apostle Paul said to Timothy, there is one mediator between God and man, the Lord Christ. So you cannot pray to a dead saint. No one is hearing your prayer.

If you're praying to St. Francis of Assisi, okay, he is not hearing your prayer. There is no patron saint of this thing that we can pray to. That's paganism, folks. That's what the pagans did. They prayed to all of these random gods that represented something, the God of the sun, the God of the moon, the God of the harvest, the God of the rain, all of these different things, God of rivers, God of rocks.

They had a God for everything. So when we have a saint applied to those things, when the Roman Catholics apply saints to those things and claim that those saints intercede for us before God or before Jesus, that's paganism.

That is not Christianity. That is not worshiping the Lord God as sovereign and as one and Christ as our only mediator. We do not have messages that are being sent to Christ through another means. We come to Christ in the presence of the Holy Spirit who is interceding for us before the Father.

That's it. Holy Spirit, Son, Father. There's no one else in that equation that we are to pray to. It is God and God alone, all right? So there's no dead saints we pray to, period. That is a false doctrine.

It is a lie. It is paganism. It is in Christ Jesus that Paul says to greet every saint and every saint is very simply all of those who are in Christ Jesus. The saints are all of the people of God in Christ.

And we see the word saints used multiple times throughout the scriptures. It comes up some 80 times, but it's not just common to the New Testament. Most of those times that you see the word saint used, it's in the New Testament.

Something like 60 times that we see the word saint come up. So only 20 in the Old Testament, and that's primarily in the book of Psalms and in the book of Daniel. There's probably no book of the Bible actually that has the word saint in it more times than the book of Psalms, depending on the translation you read.

Of course, I'm going from the English Standard Bible, the New American Standard, same way, New King James. If you're reading the NIV, the word saint doesn't appear one time. It's very disappointing. They use God's people or they'll use people of God, something that equates to that, but that's basically who the saints are.

The saints are the people of God, all who are God's children in Christ Jesus. They are the saints. The first place that we see the word saint come up in the New Testament, I found this very interesting.

I was looking at this before coming into this lesson today. The first place that you see the word saint come up in the New Testament is in Matthew 27, 52. And this was, in Matthew 27 is where you have the crucifixion of Christ.

And when he died, and then he came back to life again, Matthew kind of foreshadows his coming back out of the tomb by saying that when Christ came back from the grave, the tombs were also opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

So there were many saints who came out of their graves. The people of God who came before the cross, they came up out of their graves and went throughout Jerusalem and testified. Can you imagine that?

A saint coming back to life. And there are some scholars that have theorized that when Jesus ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives, that the dead saints that had risen with him 40 days before, they also ascended into heaven with him.

Very interesting thing to think about there. But anyway, you can go to Matthew 27, 52 and see that. That's the first place where the word saint comes up in the New Testament. So it acquaints the saints of old with the saints of new, those who are saints of God in Christ Jesus.

Then we see saints come up a lot in Ephesians. Paul uses the word a lot there because he is talking to a very beloved church, a congregation that he loves very, very much. And so equating them with the people of God and encouraging them to share with the people of God.

And so saints comes up a lot there. We've seen it come up a few times in the book of Philippians here, right at the very beginning. As a matter of fact, the beginning of the letter, 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 in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Beginning of the letter sounds a lot like the end of the letter, doesn't it? We got our definition of saints in the very beginning, to all the saints in Christ Jesus. There's our definition of the saints.

I really love a passage in Hebrews chapter six. And this is one that I come to describe saints fairly often. The apostle, or I was gonna say the apostle Paul. We don't know who wrote Hebrews. I tend to lean toward Barnabas.

But anyway, that's a discussion for another time. Hebrews 6 .10, for God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

So we have this discussion here about serving within the people of God being described as saints. That's who the saints are. It is all who are in Christ Jesus. If you are a follower of Christ, you're a saint.

To be a saint simply means to be a person who is holy. And you are not holy because of anything that you did. You are holy because of what Christ has done for you. He died on the cross for your sins. As it says in Titus chapter two, Christ died to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people who are zealous for good works.

That's the definition of saints right there. So we have been redeemed from all lawlessness. We've been redeemed in Christ Jesus. Our debt has been paid. And because he has imparted upon us his righteousness, we are seen by God the father as holy.

So we're holy because of what Christ has done and because his righteousness has been imputed to us. We have been clothed in his righteousness and God receives us as holy. We are a holy people. The apostle Peter says, before you were not a people, now you are God's people.

You are a holy nation. And that is who we are in Christ Jesus. We are the saints. So to be a saint is to be holy. And we show that holiness of Christ is upon us when we obey what it is that he has asked of us to do.

And we talked about that yesterday when we looked at second Peter chapter one. Peter encourages the Christians, continue in these things and you will not fall. Continue to imitate Christ and you will not fall.

Show kindness to the brotherhood. Live as saints of Christ Jesus. And so Paul says that there needs to be that continued brotherhood of the saints. Though there are churches in different places, we are still one body in Christ.

And so as he has included the Philippians in this gospel work, he encourages them to include others in this work. That's basically what's being implied in verse 21, Philippians 4, 21, where he says, greet every saint in Christ Jesus.

Greet all other saints the way that I have treated you. The brothers who are with me greet you. We know that Timothy is there with him. Some others that were there, as Paul was writing this letter, Epaphroditus would have been there too.

But of course, at this point, Epaphroditus has returned to the Philippians. But there's other brothers that Paul has mentioned because in chapter one, he talked about how the persecution that he has undergone has actually encouraged the brothers to become more confident in the Lord and they've become more bold to speak the word without fear.

That was in chapter one, verse 14. So we know that there are other saints that are with the apostle Paul. All of the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household, because Paul also talked about there in Philippians one, about those who are in Christ Jesus, who are in the house of Caesar.

There are some in the house of Caesar that have come to be believers because of the apostle Paul's imprisonment. So that continued encouragement to the Philippians by saying, hey, there's saints even in the household of Caesar.

We've got Christians all the way up into the big house of the world, okay? And they greet you as well. Verse 23, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, be with your spirit. Concluding this letter, the same way that he opened it with greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ.

What a great letter. What a great encouragement. And I hope that you've enjoyed every day that we have gone through this. Come back tomorrow as we review just these three days that we've looked at the end of this letter.

And then on Friday, we're gonna review the whole thing. Our gracious heavenly Father, thank you again for these words. Thank you for your patience with us that we might be given time and an opportunity in this period of sanctification to learn these words and be grown by them.

Your love is shown to us even in your patience with us and allowing us to grow in holiness, in matters of holiness. Continue to shape us in the image of your son, Jesus Christ, and bring us together with Christ, in Christ, into your heavenly kingdom.

Keep us steadfast until that day. It is by your power we know this can be done. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Saxony.

This began the Protestant Reformation, a protest against the corruption of Roman Catholicism in order to reform the church toward a more biblical and gospel-centered foundation. Still today, the doctrines of Roman Catholicism are far from sound.

Despite what a Catholic might tell you, the church actually does exalt the Virgin Mary as an object of worship and teaches that she brings us the gifts of eternal salvation as an intermediary between us and Christ.

However, 1 Timothy 2 .5 says there is one mediator between God and men, and that is Christ only. Nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about praying to Mary or any dead saint. In fact, Deuteronomy 18 .11 says that communicating with the dead is detestable to the Lord.

The Bible says that it is by grace you have been saved through faith, not of works. The Catholic Church, however, says that if a person claims that salvation is by grace through faith alone, they should be excommunicated.

Catholicism also teaches that a person can lose their salvation and must do acts of penance in order to get it back. But Romans 4 .5 says a person cannot be justified in such ways. The Catholic Church forbids their priests from marrying, but 1 Timothy 4 .3 calls this the teaching of demons.

It is possible for a person to be Catholic and also a born-again Christian, but if they truly read the doctrines of the Catholic Church and compare them with the Bible, a maturing Christian should not remain Catholic when we understand the text.

Conspiracy Theories, the Shemitah, and the Isaiah 9:10 Judgment

We've been taking questions this week that mostly have to do with conspiracy theories, and our question today has to do with the Shemitah. This comes from Erin in Kansas City. I've actually been there a couple of times this week, as a matter of fact, or not this week, this month.

You're in September already. I've already been to Kansas City twice. Anyway, she says, dear what? I saw your quote on CNN's website about four blood moons. Yeah, CNN grabbed a quote from our Twitter account and posted it in one of their articles.

Do you have any videos on the Isaiah 910 judgment? Some of my friends have been talking about it and the Shemitah, none of which seems to be biblically credible, but I'm having a hard time finding some convincing resources.

Thank you, Erin, for your email. No, we haven't done any videos on the Isaiah 910 judgment. I almost didn't do a video on the four blood moons, because here's the thing, eventually the dates for these predicted events are going to pass, having not delivered the thing these false prophets say is going to happen, and then our what video on the four blood moons is going to be out of date.

That's going to happen at the end of this month. If you want a prediction, okay, here's a prediction. After September 28th, and the last lunar eclipse of the tetrad comes and goes, the earth will still be here, and so will the nation of Israel, and no Christians will have been raptured in some secret rapture.

Yet Jonathan Cahn, John Hagee, and others will not admit their fault and repent of their false predictions. They will simply point to something that happened during that tetrad period, or for Jonathan Cahn during the Shemitah, they'll point to something like the stock market scare a couple of weeks ago, or the Iran deal, and they will say that was the major thing that they prophesied, and people will eat it up, and their false ministries will remain.

End of prediction, okay? When my prediction comes true, you can mail your checks to First Southern Baptist Church, 1220 West 8th Street, Junction City, Kansas, 66441. Now, as of the airing of this episode, the Shemitah is already over.

The Shemitah is basically an invention of Rabbi Jonathan Cahn. There is such a thing as the Shemitah, which is the Sabbath year. It's every seventh year in the Jewish calendar. One of the things we commonly misunderstand about the Sabbath is that there was more than one Sabbath.

It wasn't just Saturday. There were Sabbath years every seventh year, and there's also the year of Jubilee, which is every 49th year, basically after seven Shemitahs. So there is a Shemitah, but Jonathan Cahn is the one that turned the Shemitah into this thing where every seven years, some great shaking happens.

That's what he calls it, a great shaking. The silly thing about this is that you can make anything into a great shaking. As I already said, look, there's always going to be something weird and catastrophic happening in the world.

Some economy in some nation gets messed up somehow. Every year, it is not prophetic to say that next week, the U .S. economy is going to take a dive, and that's a very specific prediction. Cahn's predictions aren't even that specific.

It's just, hey, we're in this seven-year period where at the end, something crazy is going to happen, and for Cahn, that crazy thing was the tower collapse at the Grand Mosque in Mecca and an appearing of a rainbow in New York City.

Okay, that's the crazy thing that Jonathan Cahn said that he was going to happen. All he's doing is hedging his bets. He says, something weird is going to happen. That's what he says. Then that day comes and goes, and he says, see, something weird happened, and he points to something weird.

None of this means anything. The same goes for what he's called the Isaiah 910 judgment. He claims that hidden in the meaning of Isaiah 910 are these nine signs, these nine harbingers of what is going to happen after 9 -11.

Isaiah 910 says, the bricks have fallen, but we will rebuild with dressed stones. The sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place. And that's it, that's all it says. Yet in those 25 words are nine signs of things that are to come for America, and yet those things are nonspecific and dates are not given.

It's just Jonathan Cahn selling books and then pointing at stuff and saying, see, that's what I'm talking about. Now, sorry, now I do believe that we can learn something from Israel's arrogance. When we're looking at Isaiah 910 and in their arrogance, they're saying that, well, we have been conquered, but we will build back stronger.

And then God's judgment just comes upon them again. I believe that the United States in their arrogance, we have claimed to be able to do things just fine without God, no matter what is said in the Pledge of Allegiance or on our currency, a nation that has laws in place permitted to murder over a thousand children per day through the practice of abortion is not following God, period.

We are not receiving the blessings of God. The grace of God that we have right now is his common grace that he's not wiped us out, which is what we deserve. As horrible as 9 -11 was and as many people lost their lives, God's decision to finally destroy this nation will be much worse.

But frankly, that's not really what you should be worried about. Does this nation need to repent? Absolutely it does. And Godly men to call it to repentance. But what your first concern right now in this moment is to be is your sin.

Where are you? Where do you stand with God? Do you remain unrepentant clinging to your idols and your altars of worship, refusing to seek forgiveness and obey Christ? Do you think that you can do it on your own just fine without God, just like the Israelites did?

It doesn't matter what God's judgment on this nation is, whether that's with blessings or with curses. When the day of judgment comes and you stand before his throne, will you stand before him innocent or guilty?

If you're not a follower of Christ, you're guilty. You're among the goats, which God will send to eternal judgment as it says in Matthew 25. But if you do follow Christ, if you know that he has forgiven you of your sin, you have renounced ungodliness and worldly passions, living a self-controlled, upright, and godly life in the present age, you stand before God justified.

You are among his sheep. You are among the saints. That is not my prediction. It is the prophetic word of the Bible. It is assurance that we have in Christ Jesus, our Lord. There is always gonna be a disaster of some kind, always.

This world has been subjected to futility as we read in Romans chapter eight. But be sure that when your life ends and you're standing before God, you are covered by the blood of the lamb. Your debt is paid in full by the sacrifice of Christ.

Father, thank you for the assurance of your word. Keep us faithful in Christ Jesus. Amen.

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. Pastor Gabe wrote a book for a Bible study at our church that has since been taught on two continents. It's a study through the book of 1 Corinthians entitled To the Core.

Great for a group study or for personal use. It is available only in paperback and you can find it on our website, wwutt .com. Be sure to let someone else know about our program. We'll resume our study of Philippians tomorrow, rejoicing to hear God's truth.

When we understand the text.