Philippians 1:1-11 Love and Joy

Amen.

Thanks, Dave. I appreciate the prayer. And I'm Rob Knold. I'm an elder here at the church along with Zach and Don, and it's my privilege to get to preach to you this morning. So I hope you're excited about this like I am.

I just want to remind you we have donuts and coffee in the back. If you're getting really drowsy about mid-service, feel free to get up. Okay, it's right back there. I want to keep you awake this morning.

Don has asked me to preach, and I'm excited to dig into God's Word. And if you can back up that slide one, Tim, I'm excited to preach about Philippians this morning. But I wanted first to start by explaining why I chose Philippians.

And, again, if you could back up a couple slides there, Tim. Why I chose the book of Philippians. Philippians is a book that actually I was reading and studying on the side and was just captivated by.

And I'd like to say I want to preach on Philippians because it's such an awesome book. It's so incredible, and it is an incredible book. But the truth is I just found that the book of Philippians was very convicting.

Christ’s Humility and the Example of Philippians

It just hit me to the core. It really convicted me. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vacancy, but in humility consider others better than yourself. Each of you look not only to your own interest, but also to the interest of others.

These words that Paul wrote just really struck me to the core. And as I started to consider the example of Christ, and the book of Philippians illustrates this, God humbled himself, took on the form of a man, and came and died for us.

And then I started reflecting on my own life, and typically in almost every venue of my life, here I am trying to promote myself, trying to look good, trying to win, trying to be better. And I just saw this incredible contrast between myself and God, and I've been really convicted by that.

So the book of Philippians teaches more than humility. The book actually has a number of great themes running through it. For example, it teaches on unity within the church. It teaches on joy in the midst of suffering.

And it's an incredible book. So I decided to pick Philippians as my first sermon. So you get to be my guinea pigs this morning, and I'm excited to be preaching on Philippians. We're going to be starting at chapter 1, verses 1 -11.

But before we actually read the passage, I wanted to give you a little bit of background now on Philippians. So the background was really a couple of things I wanted to answer. One is how was this church in Philippi started?

Paul is writing the book of Philippians as a letter. He's writing a letter to a church at Philippi. How was this church in Philippi started? And then secondly, when Paul actually wrote this letter, where was he, and when did he write it, and what's going on?

So I'm just going to give you a little bit of background and context as we dig into Philippians this morning. So here's a map, and this illustrates the location of Philippi, right in the middle, where the red arrow is in the middle, you see the city of Philippi.

It's actually in Europe, and this is the first church established in the continent of Europe. Very significant. And if you remember, Don preached recently on Acts 16. That's the story of how the church in Philippi was established.

Paul and his traveling companions, including Silas, Timothy, and Luke, went to the city of Philippi, and there wasn't even a synagogue there. Normally, Paul would go to the synagogue, and he would meet there with the Jews and would share Christ.

But in this case, they didn't even have enough Jews to form a synagogue. You need ten Jewish men to establish a synagogue. So Paul went outside the city, where there was a group of women meeting for prayer, and he there shared Christ.

And Lydia responded to the message. If you remember, Lydia became a convert. God called her. And then Paul and Silas were unjustly imprisoned and singing in the midst of suffering in the Philippian jail.

And God sends an earthquake. He frees them. And amazingly, they don't leave, and they remain. And actually, the jailer is about to commit suicide. They come and assure him they're there, and he doesn't kill himself.

He instead accepts Christ, he and his whole family. And this is really the beginning, the foundation of this Philippian church that's established. So at that time, Paul then moves on and leaves the city of Philippi.

But it's interesting, the author of the book of Acts is Luke, and he changes his prepositions from we to they. He says they left. And so it's very likely that Luke stayed behind. Luke actually stayed there in Philippi to help establish the church.

And potentially some of the other companions, perhaps Timothy, stayed behind to help get this church established. And over the years, I want to start to answer the next question now, which is how long has it been now?

Paul is now writing this letter to the Philippians. How long has it been? It's been ten years since Paul established the church in Philippi. And so now ten years later, and what has happened in that ten years?

We know from other parts of the Bible that the Philippians were actually active in supporting Paul's ministry. They sent gifts to him. And in fact, just recently, they had sent a gift with Epaphroditus, a man who Paul is now sending back.

So as Paul writes this letter, he is sending Epaphroditus back, and he's really saying thank you to the Philippian church for their ongoing partnership, their ongoing ministry with him as he's been traveling all over on his missionary journey.

So this really sets the background for this letter. A lot has happened between the Philippi church being established and Paul's letter being written back to them. But one thing has not changed, and that's Paul's love for the Philippians.

And we're going to be digging into that more. So let's read the letter now, starting with chapter 1, and we're going to read verses 1 -11. I'd encourage you, if you don't have a Bible, to grab the Bible and the seat back in front of you.

Philippians 1 -11, it's on page 840. Again, Philippians 1 -11, page 840. And by the way, if you don't have a Bible, or if you don't have an English Standard Version of the Bible, we encourage you to take this with you.

We want to encourage you to read God's Word right here. Help yourself. This is good stuff. So, listen while I read. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in 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 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 this 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 Christ Jesus.

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 the defense and confirmation of the Gospel.

For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And 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 still 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.

Let's pray as we come to God's Word. Heavenly Father, I thank You for Your Word. I thank You for this passage in Philippians that we have the opportunity to study. And Lord, I just humbly submit to You right now.

I ask that You would give me the words to share as we study this together. I pray that Your Spirit would speak through me. And I pray that Your Spirit would work in all of our hearts, soften us so that we could properly understand and apply Your Word to our lives.

I pray all this in Jesus' name, Amen. Good, so we're going to dig in now to Philippians, starting off with the first couple of verses. This is Paul's introduction. And it starts off with who really explains who the letter is written by.

It's Paul and Timothy. We know Paul the Apostle, and we know Timothy actually was Paul's son in the faith. Paul had led him to Christ, and Timothy now is assisting Paul in his work. So there's a really strong relationship between Paul and Timothy.

But Paul is really the leader in writing this letter. But it's interesting that they identify themselves as servants of Jesus Christ. I don't know if you caught that. Servants of Christ Jesus. The word translated there is actually doloi, and I'm no Greek scholar, but I did look up what this word means, this Greek word for servant, and it actually means slave.

Paul is really saying, we are slaves of Christ Jesus. It's interesting to me that he chooses such a humble title as he's starting this letter off to describe himself. A slave of God is what he's really saying.

But I want you to ponder this for a moment. Think about who God is. We've done this in our singing already. He is the greatest, most awesome thing in the universe. If he created the universe, consider how powerful God must be.

He's holy. He's perfect. He's just. He's infinite. He has no limits. He's majestic, overpowering. Think about his love for you and me and what he's done, his grace, his mercy. When you start to think about who God is and how great God is, you start to realize that being a servant or a slave of that God is no humble title.

In my opinion, that is the highest calling that we can have as humans. I just want to challenge you as we consider this. What title do you go by? How do you like to be referred? Do you consider yourself a servant of God or a slave of God?

Let's move on. Who is the letter written to? We see in the text that it says all the saints in Christ Jesus and Philippi. We often think of this term saint, and I think we have this high and lofty notion of what a saint is.

We think of maybe a martyr, a hero of the faith, someone from times gone by that did great things. But the term saint actually means someone who is called out from among others who is set apart for God.

A person who is called out from among others and set apart for God. And that refers to all believers. It's a term used to describe all believers who are in Christ Jesus. And that's because we are all called by Christ.

We're all brothers and sisters in Christ. So this letter is written to all the believers in Philippi. And it also goes on to say that the letter is addressed to the overseers and deacons. We see that Paul is clearly writing this to the leadership at Philippi as well.

So therefore we know that there is leadership established. If you remember, when this church was first formed, Luke and potentially Timothy remained there in Philippi to help the church get established and get on the right track.

And leaders remained at this church ten years later. There is still good, solid leadership. And so that's encouraging to see here in the church in Philippi. Grace and peace to you. Grace and peace. This is a little introduction phrase that Paul is using.

In a lot of ancient letters that were written, typically the letter introduction would include the person sending the letter, the person the letter is to, very similar to this letter, and then the simple word greetings.

But in this case, Paul is changing that typical ancient letter format and he says specifically grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. He says those two things specifically.

And so I typically just gloss over these intros. When I'm reading the Bible, I don't know about you, sometimes I miss key things. Let's just focus in on this for a second. What is grace? What is grace?

Have you heard that word a lot, right? We say grace at mealtime. The word gets thrown around, but what does it mean? The word grace. Grace is kind of like mercy, but it's not mercy. And I want to explain it by contrasting it with the word mercy.

Mercy is not getting punishment that you do deserve. That's mercy. Grace is getting something good that you don't deserve. Ephesians 2 .8 and 9 says, For by grace you are saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.

It's the gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one can boast. Grace is a gift from God. It's as simple as that. Grace is a gift from God. Our salvation is a gift from God. That's grace. The Holy Spirit coming into our lives, that's grace.

And remember, where does grace come from? The text says it comes from God. What about peace? What about peace? I just asked my daughter this question when I was preparing the message this morning. Not this morning.

It was a while ago. Believe me. I didn't prepare this morning. I hope it doesn't feel like I did. And my youngest daughter, she's 7 years old, I said, what is peace? What is peace to you? And she wouldn't even answer my question.

She just gave me this sign.

She goes like that.

I don't know where she got that. And then my 10 year old, I asked her, and she gave it some thought, and she said, peace is not being at war. And I thought that was actually a pretty good answer. Not being at war.

Peace with God means not being at war with God. Not being in enmity with God. And there's also peace with other people, isn't there? Peace in our relationships. Peace is not being at war or in conflict with other people.

That's all very true. But there's also an inner peace, an inner sense of peace that I want to talk about for a moment. An inner peace that is an inner contentment regardless of circumstances. And I just want to point out that it's really easy to be at peace, have this sort of peaceful feeling when everything's going fine, isn't it?

But it's when things get tough, when things don't go well, that's when it's difficult to find peace. True peace. But I want to point out again, where does true peace come from? From God. It comes from God.

It's not going to come from circumstances, and it's not going to come from any other source that we might look at in life. When things go wrong and you still trust God, when life stinks and you know God is in control and you willingly accept His plan for your life, that's incredible peace.

That's peace from God. God provides both grace and peace. They're only found in God through Christ Jesus. And that's how Paul is starting this letter off. A great reminder, isn't it? So we're going to move on now to verses 3 -6.

And Paul here is thankful to God. I just want to read this again. 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 am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ.

It starts off with Paul's thankfulness. But it's interesting. Note, who is Paul thankful to? Who is he thankful to? Paul is thankful to God as he remembers the believers in Philippi. And how is he remembering the believers in Philippi?

He's remembering them in prayer. In his prayers. So the first thing we see is that Paul is thankful to God, and he recognizes, I think it's interesting that he recognizes that his thankfulness should be directed to God, not to the Philippians, but to God for the believers in Philippi.

Why? Because it was God's work to draw them to Himself. When I stop and think about the friends in my life and the people that God has brought into my life, I am thankful for them. I did some time, I spent some time thinking about this.

I thought about our small group, the way people in our small group bring meals and care for each other when someone is sick, when someone is hurting. They visit and share and help. Or I think of our worship team, or the men's study group that meets here on Saturday mornings.

The many friends that I have. I am thankful to God for all of you. So I want to ask you the same question. Are you thankful? Are you thankful to God for the believers in your life? Sometimes thankfulness takes some work, doesn't it?

It takes effort and focus and discipline. You have to work at it. And remembering to be thankful in prayer, that takes some work too, doesn't it? Some discipline. There's some effort involved. We need to be diligent in being thankful and in praying and lifting up each other in prayer.

The other thing that we notice in this passage, the second bullet point here, is that Paul is praying with joy. Why is he praying with joy? Well, if we keep reading, we see it's because of the Philippians' ongoing partnership in the Gospel.

The good news about Jesus Christ. Their ongoing partnership. Remember how I mentioned Paul is a missionary, he's an apostle, and he's traveling all over. And the Philippians are this small church. They had an ongoing partnership with him.

They actually sent people and resources and money to help him in his efforts. There was ongoing partnership. And this was something Paul was very grateful for in his work. Paul is actually joyful about this.

It brings him joy. And just a note on the word joy. It's not just happiness. Like, oh, everything's fine. I'm having a great day.

How about you?

Put on a smile. We know joy is deeper than that, don't we? We know joy is deeper. Joy is a theme in Philippians. It goes throughout the book. But what is joy exactly? It's not just being happy all the time.

The Bible says, in fact, that there's going to be times of rejoicing and there's going to be times of mourning. Doesn't it? There's going to be times of rejoicing and mourning. But then, Philippians also says, rejoice in the Lord always.

So how can we do that? And I would submit to you that joy is deeper than happiness. Joy is deeper than happiness and it does not depend on circumstances. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5, verse 22 is the fruit of the Spirit.

And Paul in his letter to the Galatian church describes what should result in our lives from the Holy Spirit. And one of those things is joy. I'll just list them for you. Joy is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

These are the things the Holy Spirit works out in our lives. And joy is one of those things. It's the Holy Spirit working out in our lives despite what circumstances are. And sometimes circumstances are tough.

So I want to continue on in the text going back to this passage. Paul is joyful, number one, because of the Philippians' ongoing partnership in the Gospel. But also, number two, because he's confident that they will continue in the Gospel.

And I want to ask a question. How can Paul be so confident about this? If you think about it, the Philippian church was started ten years before. Paul now is stuck in prison in Rome. This book is likely written from the city of Rome.

And he's about 600 miles away. In ancient times, that was a long distance to travel. And he's stuck in prison, and he wants nothing more than for the Philippians to continue in their faith, right? He wants them to grow in their faith and continue to follow God.

But he can't be there. He is not physically present. And he doesn't even know if he's going to live much longer. So I would think, in my humanness, that he would be worried, that he would be stressed, that he would be concerned, right?

But instead, he has joy and confidence because he knows it was Jesus who saved them. And it's Jesus who is going to bring their faith to completion. In the same way, you and I don't have to worry about the future.

We don't have to stress. How can we be joyful? We can rely on the same God and His faithfulness to us. God was faithful to bring us to Christ. He's faithful to keep us going in our walk with Christ, okay?

We can trust Him to continue to work out salvation. So I just want to make this clear. We can rely on Him for salvation, and that's accepting Christ and His atoning death on the cross as payment for our sins.

But we can also trust Him and rely on His faithfulness in sanctification. And sanctification simply means the ongoing work the Holy Spirit does in our lives to transform us from the inside out into godly people.

God formed this church here at Recast, and I believe and trust that God will continue His work here. We can trust and rely on Him. We don't need to worry and fret about things that aren't under our control.

So now I want to move on to verses 7 and 8. Verses 7 and 8, this is really summarizing Paul's care and his concern for the Philippians. And Paul says it is right for him to feel this way because he has the Philippians in his heart.

Paul says that they are participating with him in this ministry of grace even though he's imprisoned and even through his defense of the gospel. And Paul goes on to call God as his witness. He calls God as his witness in expressing how strongly he loves the Philippians.

And he even goes on to say that he loves them with the love of Christ. Pretty strong words. You can sense how much Paul loves the Philippians by reading those words. What I took from this as I really contemplated and pondered this is how foundational love is to ministry.

Love is so critical. I want to share a couple of experiences I've had that hopefully will add a little color to this topic. A wise Christian leader once told me if you're considering ministry, consider the people God might be calling you to minister.

Consider the people. You had better love them, basically was the message. Because it's not going to be easy. And sometimes ministry gets difficult and sometimes when you're serving and helping,.

It isn't easy.

It's not convenient. It's difficult. You have to love them. That was the message. And it has to be God's love. It has to be a radical kind of love, not this human stuff, emotional stuff that we think of sometimes.

I also want to share that when I was a boy, my parents were missionaries and as we would deputate and visit churches, it was very similar to the McGuinnesses, a visit here last week. My mom would typically sing and my whole family would sing, but my mom had that beautiful voice and she would sing a song called People, People.

And I just want to quote a couple of things from that song. The chorus said, People, people, everywhere, needing love and tender care. People, people, everywhere, each a jewel so fair and rare. And one of the verses went on to say, don't ask me to trade place with folks who have life's riches but can't love a stranger's face.

If you want to change people's lives, you have to love them first. You have to love them. One more thing. I remember in high school, many years ago, too many years ago, I was watching my sister come back from college and we had moved to a new town and she didn't know anybody.

She came to our church. She had just graduated from college and she didn't know the church people and she didn't know anyone in town and yet she just jumped right in and decided to help in the junior high ministry at our church.

And I remember watching her do this and do it well. And I asked her a question. I said, how do you know what to do? How do you connect with these junior high kids? And her answer to me was really simple and it stuck with me.

She said, it's easy, Rob. You just have to love them. And isn't that true? People respond to love, to true, genuine love. They can sense it. They can sense that it's coming from God through you. 1 Corinthians 13 is the passage on love.

It's a great passage on love in the Bible. And if you want to study this topic of love more, I'd encourage you to read that and contemplate that passage. But let me summarize for you. It says that you can do all kinds of great things in life and you can even do them for God.

But if you don't have love, it amounts to nothing. It's just blowing around a bunch of hot air. So if you want to know what real love is like, I would encourage you to study and read 1 Corinthians 13 and be challenged.

God is a God of love. He calls us to love others. The first and greatest commandment, if you remember Christ's own words, He said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.

And the second commandment like it, love your neighbor as yourself. Love God and love others, the two highest and greatest commandments. And I believe that love in this church is going to be key. Love is key to our unity.

Love is key to our families and relationships with our families. It's key to reaching out to people and helping. Loving our neighbors, loving teachers, friends, those you come in contact with. It's the key, in my opinion, to impacting Madawan for Christ.

Let's move on now to verses 9 to 11. Paul ends this section, verses 1 through 11, with a prayer for the Philippians. He prays that their love will abound more and more. He prays that their love will grow more and more.

Grow, expand, become stronger. He's praying for this love, that they would have more of it. And I want to have a word of caution here. Love among believers is not just a sentimental feeling. I mentioned this earlier, but let me emphasize the point.

It's not an anything goes attitude, just letting people do whatever they want. That's not showing love. And sometimes love has to be tough, doesn't it? I think we all know that. Sometimes we have to give a tough message.

And let me just keep reading, because I think it's all captured here in this passage. Paul goes on to say that our love should grow, how? With knowledge and discernment. With knowledge and discernment.

In other words, it should be a love that is informed and that is wise. Think of it as an informed love, a wise love, or a prudent love. Sometimes in love we must do everything we can to keep our fellow believers from stumbling off a path marked out for them by truth.

A wise love, a love with knowledge. That means you have to know the truth. So he wants their love to grow in knowledge and wisdom. But let's keep reading here. Why? Because he wants them to approve what is excellent.

To choose, in other words, the very best things. And if you keep reading, so that it would result in a pure and blameless life. So what does a pure and blameless life look like? What are we talking about here?

Maybe you have a mental image of someone in a sanctuary somewhere, keeping themselves from being impacted by the world, hiding from the world. No, that's not what we're talking about. It's not just walling ourselves off from the world, keeping ourselves from every bad influence.

It means that we will be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. When we grow in love, we act out that love with wisdom. We put that love into action. That action then results in the fruit of righteousness.

So remember the fruit of the Spirit. I already mentioned these. Great list to memorize and to ponder and to think about and to dwell on. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

That is the fruit we're talking about. We need to live that out in our lives. So what does that look like? Maybe we just start with love. That's a good place to start. Loving your neighbor, loving your wife, loving your kids, loving your friends, putting their needs above your own, looking out for their interests.

So let me ask a question. When was the last time you left a love note for your wife? Just a little thoughtful gesture, an expression of your love. Or a note for your kids to tell them how much you love them.

What about living out that love for your neighbor or your friend? How would that look for you? What could you do to show love? I just encourage you, don't just say it and think about it. But do it. Act in love.

Act out in love. And finally, what does Paul say is the result of all this in their lives? The result, the culmination, is glory and praise to God. Glory and praise to God. That's the goal. That's the objective of life itself.

Glory to God. By acting in loving ways, we not only become pure and blameless, bearing good fruit, but that results in glory to God. So I'd like to just reflect now on some application of these things that we've talked about.

What do we take away from all of this, this introductory passage in Philippians? Well primarily, I'd like to focus in on this topic of love and this prayer that Paul prayed at the end of the passage. We note here that Paul prayed for the Philippians.

Remember, he cared enough in the first place, he loved them enough to even think of them and pray for them and remember them in prayer. He was thankful for them. He prayed for them. He prayed with joy.

And he prayed some very specific things for them, didn't he? That their love would grow in wisdom so they'd choose the right things, the best things, so their lives would be pure and would result in good works for God's glory.

I think that's an incredible example of prayer. And this is Paul's prayer and this is also my prayer for Recast Church. I've been praying, honestly, over the last days and weeks that our love for each other would grow, that our love for our community would grow, that it would grow and abound.

I pray that the love we have would abound in knowledge and insight, knowledge of God's Word, knowledge of the truth and how we should act so that we can choose the best and be holy and blameless, so that the fruit of the Spirit would show in our lives, so that God would be glorified in our families, in our church, and in Madeline.

So I'm asking you, will you pray this prayer with me? Will you pray this this week? Pray this with me for our church and trust that God will complete the work that He's doing in your life and in the lives of those around you.

So why don't we close in prayer?