Philippians 1:1-11: A Promise and a Prayer
Notes
Transcript
SLIDE 1 - As I walk up
We began a new series last week in the book of Philippians, and as I read the book, did some research, tried to steal artwork from other churches… I learned almost EVERYONE named their series in Philippians something like: An invitation to Joy, Contagious Joy, JoyFull, Transcendent Joy and Joy is a key theme in this book. In these four chapters the word joy and rejoice appear 19 times; that once every five and a half verses! The Joy per minute is of the charts in this book! A few other pastors titled it something to do with knowledge or learning; as words related to the mind, such as mind, think, remember, appear 16+ times in the book, again; that’s a high volume of knowledge related verses. But we’re titling our series ‘Adopt the same attitude’. I took the line form chapter 2; which we will see in a few weeks; but as I prayed, studied, and re-read God kept showing me how Joy is both the result of the attitude we bring into a situation; but also at times an attitude itself. Even greater, however, out title is drawn from what I consider a key element of this book in which Paul calls us to have the same attitude in ourselves that we see in Christ Jesus… but (pause) I’m getting ahead of my self - that’s a couple weeks down the line, today we will be in SLIDE 2 Philippians 1 verses one through eleven and we’re going to be focusing on a promise and a prayer.
Last week we saw the church in Philippi planted by Paul, Timothy, Silas, and Luke. Scholars best estimate that happened around the years 51-52 while the letter of Philippians was written later during one of his Roman imprisonments, most likely the first, in the year 62. So this letter was written after ten years of Paul’s continued missionary work and the church in Philippi’s continued growth and partnership which we will see mentioned in just a moment. So if you have your Bibles with you feel free to open to Philippians 1, if you don’t have your Bible you can use the one in the seat in front of you, if you don’t own a Bible you can take that one in the seat in front of you home.
As you are turning to Philippians 1 let’s fill in the timeline from Paul’s last ten years. We saw Paul use one of his travel hacks last week, getting arrested for preaching the Gospel to save on hotel costs… getting beaten, shackled and left in prison - only to host one of the first ever prison worship service slash revivals - the next day revealing to the magistrates he is a Roman citizen to their shame and embarrassment, having illegally arrested, beaten, and imprisoned him. Sometime between then and the year 57 Paul learned he can tell people he is Roman before he is beaten, as in Acts 22, Paul is again arrested and bound, but before the flogging he brings up his citizenship to literally save his skin… (pause) cause when you’re flogged they rip off your skin with a whip… But this sets Paul on a 2 year journey of prison, trial, prison, trial and after 2 years of waiting Paul appeals his case to Caesar - as a Roman he can have the emperor hear his case so made that request and it was honored. En route to Rome, however, he is ship wrecked, and stays on the Island of Malta for a time, actually starting a church there too, before finally making it to Rome, where he is on house arrest for two years and uses the time to preach the Gospel and write letters like this one we’re about to read - so as we read this remember, this is written by Paul, while in Rome awaiting trial, on house arrest. So Chapter one. SLIDE 3
1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus: To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons. 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, 4 always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
We see a fairly typical introduction to a letter here - that said I am a bit jealous. We send emails now days and they start like ‘hey man’ or simply ‘Brian’… well I hope the email’s you get don’t start with Brian… but whatever your name is… But even back when hand written letters were the norm we were like, “Dear so and so”, or “to whom it may concern”, or “current resident....” I need to start writing my pastor friends letters like this...
Brian and Caitlin, servants of Christ Jesus: To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in First Wesleyan of Southwest Iowa, including the Local Board of Administration and Trustees. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ… like man… that just sounds so much cooler!
Even in his intros, Paul smuggles in great theology! There is a pastor I enjoy listening to named Skip Hetzig - and Skip did a series in Philippians 5 years ago… and he did an entire 50 minute sermon on just this first verse! Then he did a forty minute sermon on verses one and two! That’s an hour and a half of teaching on two verses - 90 minutes on 37 words! Now granted his series on Philippians was 26 weeks long! Ours will only be seven - and that’s including last week in Acts!
But some of the truth Paul smuggles into these verses include the concepts that they, Paul and Timothy, are servants of Christ - Jesus is their master, they are his servants. That’s an attitude they embraced. Paul smuggles in the concept that the people in the church of Philippi are saints - not parishioners, not laity, but saints! Parishioners and laity are fancy words church people use to say church goers… because again we like fancy words - but Paul is telling them NO you’re not just a church goer YOU ARE A SAINT live like it! adopt the mentality, the lifestyle, adopt the attitude of a saint - because that is what you are! Paul also smuggles in the truth that grace and peace come from where? (pause) From God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Not from wise financial planning, not from living a healthy lifestyle, not from strict discipline - yes those things help - but they help us by aligning our attitude with that of God and Jesus and seeing the grace and peace He is offering us…
You can start to see how Skip managed to preach 90 minutes on this can’t you… don’t worry - I won’t keep you that long, we have a business meeting to get to so lets keep reading. SLIDE 4
6 I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 7 Indeed, it is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I have you in my heart, and you are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how deeply I miss all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
I said at the beginning that today we will be focusing on a promise and prayer and we see here the SLIDE 5 promise Paul is making the church. A work has been started and that work will be completed. I don’t know if any of you have ever been in the middle of a project and something came up and it got delayed, and it just sat in a state of half-completion for an extended time, it happens to the best of us. Or perhaps you started a project to only learn how large a task it was, and it simply took you FOREVER to complete… some people are thinking - yup - I’m going on year ten of that weekend home renovation right now.... But it can be frustrating and at times we can doubt and wonder will the job ever be done? And the same can be true of our spiritual life can’t it. At some point many of use turned our life over to Jesus, we asked Him to become Lord of our lives - we declared we want to live in a way to glorify, to honor Him, rather than satisfy ourselves. At some point we decided - I want my life to look more like Jesus and less like me. More like Jesus and less like Brian. More like Jesus and less like… your name here.... But over time life got hard, sin got in our face, we start to wonder - will I ever make it? will I ever look like Jesus? Paul lets us know - he is confident - he is sure that He who began a good work will carry it on to completion! We will cross the finish line!
And I want to look at this work for a moment, Paul tells us that He who began the work, God, will be the one who completes it, but what we can learn by looking at other parts of the Bible, other writings of Paul, even in the next chapter - we have a role to play. I’ll step on future Brian’s toes here SLIDE 6 but Philippians 2:12-13 says
12 Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose.
Did you catch that? I hope so I made it blue just to help (pause) Paul tells us to work out our salvation - we have a part to play! But then he is super careful to in the same breath to remind us it is GOD who is working in you. To help us understand this I thought of an illustration… now you may never guess this by looking at me - but I’m not the most athletic person on earth… I can’t run far… or fast… but if you put me on a four person relay with the three fastest runners on earth, say you took the top three Olympic 400 meter dash runners… and me… and placed us against the local high schools at their next meet - we could maybe win a relay or two… in-spite of me not because of me… we have actually track athletes and a track coach in this room right now going… I dunno Brian… even then… you’re quite the anchor holding them down.... (pause) SLIDE 7
He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion
With our spiritual life - with this good work God began in us, this good work God will complete in us, we GET to play a role! And we can work with God or against him - we can run over that finish line towards God having played our part, we can limp across the line resting on Him, or we can turn tail and run the other way wanting nothing to do with Him. We play a role - but He does the work.
And we will look at this more in a few weeks when we cover that section of Philippians, so lets keep moving on, that is the promise, now lets turn our eyes toward’s Paul’s prayer. SLIDE 8
9 And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, 10 so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
(pause) In the summer of 1998 my family moved from Cedar Falls Iowa to a town called Ryazan. Now unless you are my wife - most of the people here have never heard of the town of Ryzazan, because it is not in Northeast Iowa, it’s not even in Iowa - its not even in the United States! Ryazan is a city of about 500,000 people in Western Russia. My dad took a year off work, as an engineer at John Deere, to help a Wesleyan church in Ryazan transition from American missionary leadership to Russian pastoral leadership - and 6th grade me, and the rest of my family, got to tag along for the year - and it was amazing! One of the things I bought as a memento, a souvenir was this SLIDE 9 Now, when most people think about Russia dolls, like these, Matryosha Dolls, or nesting dolls, as many call them, are a common image that comes to mind; only most people would think of the traditional design, not the 1996 Kansas City Chiefs… But these dolls are known for each containing a smaller doll on the inside, in this set’s case - the smallest doll being a player I don’t recall hearing about - but did confirm was on the 1996 Chiefs roster - Tamarick Vanover.
Now.... did I bring this simply for a game of show and tell, or to prove I liked the chiefs before they were good… maybe.... (pause) NO - that would be a terrible use of an illustration - but as we dive into this prayer Paul makes for the church at Philippi we’re going to see it also has a bit of a nesting structure.
Paul’s prayer for the church begins with SLIDE 10
I pray that your love will keep growing.
And this seems like a natural thing for Paul to pray. Through their love for Paul and for one another they have greatly supported his ministry and the fellow members of the church. Love is how Jesus declared the world will recognize us as His disciples in John 13 SLIDE 11 when he said
34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
So naturally Paul would pray that their love should keep growing - I pray that for you all, I pray that for me, I hope you pray that for eachother, I hope you pray that for me - I hope that in Fayette County when people think of our church they think, ‘oh yeah, Fayette Community - those people really love God, and those people really love one another, and those people really love us.”
BUT Paul’s prayer doesn’t end there - that’s the first doll. That’s just the outermost shell. After all love without truth is dangerous, love without truth is harmful, love without God is self seeking - and so Paul keeps praying and his prayer is that this love will SLIDE 12
growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment.
We have the next doll in the prayer, the next nest. Our love is to have a purpose - our love is to drive us towards and to grow in knowledge and discernment. Now lets back up one second (pause) we are just coming off of the promise that God will complete the good work begun within us, we will be made more like God, more Christlike. Connecting those dots here - as we love God, love Jesus, we will want to know more about Him. We will want our knowledge of God to grow - we will want to know why did God do what he did. We will want to know why does God do what he does. We will want to know why will God do what He says He will do. Or for some of us it could be the opposite - we want to know why God won’t do what He says He wont do. We will want to know why sometimes God says no.
In the western world we often think of love with an emotional center not a knowledge or discernment based core. Since I love you I must do what you like, give you want you want, accept you as you feel you are. But when we have love rooted in knowledge and discernment, love looks different. People don’t question us when our child says - I want another slice of cake and we say, no. You’ve had four already - I should have stopped you three slices ago - no you can’t have another one. Or when your pet dog barks out the window at the cars driving down the highway wanting to chase them you say no - you can’t go run in the middle of the road. We love our kids, we love our pets - we understand love needs boundaries - but for some reason when it comes to loving others we through out the knowledge and discernment and look only at the emotion. Paul is calling this out as wrong - we can’t neglect that knowledge and discernment those are key, those should be central. But even this isn’t the smallest doll - even this isn’t the key of Paul’s prayer. SLIDE 13
9 And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, 10 so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ,
There is a subtext going on here that I love - Paul is saying as our love grows in knowledge and discernment we’ll be able to approved of what is superior, tell the superior from the inferior, the good from the bad. That’s what the so that is for - So that is a type of communication called a purpose clause. It is a part of communication that gives meaning, that gives purpose, to the surrounding text. In this case - the prayer,
that your love will keep growing in knowledge and discernment
Happens SO THAT a purpose will be fulfilled - the purpose of our love growing being
SO THAT we may approve of supperior things
and SO THAT
we may be pure and blameless....
Now, are you seeing the subtext.... if we need that growth to approve of these things… if we need that growth to be pure to be blameless.... that means without that growth we can not do these things! By saying that only after have this growth will we be able to do this Paul is saying that until we expereince that growth we CAN NOT do this!
Now does this mean that we are all blissfully ignorant of morality and no nothing about right and wrong? NO. But apparently there are superior things, which also means there are inferior things. It could be said there are very important things, important things, normal things, unimportant things. Huge truth, big truth, little truth, no truth. I would argue and I think Paul would agree we can discern the smaller levels of purity, the smaller truths simply enough, but it is the larger truths - the big truths, the superior truths that Paul says we need this growth for.
For example, 99% of the population would agree theft is wrong… but then as we get into the weeds… what is theft we find disagreement… if you take my car that’s theft, no one questions it… but what if you take something cheaper… my TV… yeah still wrong… cheaper yet… one of my games.... I’d say yeah still wrong.... cheaper yet, a card or a piece from a game… I mean you only stole one card - but that can make some games completely unplayable! You take a pen from my office, some paper from my printer, a paper clip… you download a movie… you can see where people will begin to disagree - and these are some silly examples - I hope no one goes too crazy over a missing paper clip.... But these are the weeds that culture is covered in.
Maybe a harder example for us to consider… again 99% of the population would agree murder is wrong… I really wish I could say 100%… but I can’t.... but then we get the question of what is or is not murder… what about self defence - can I kill then? What about capital punishment? What about medically assisted suicide? What about abortion… Again you can see where the augments arise - When we get into the details - unless we have a God given love centered in knowledge and discernment, we can’ trust our own ability to approve, to know, the superior things, to be pure and blameless. The subtext Paul is saying, apart from a love rooted and filled with the knowledge and discernment of God - we can’t even trust ourselves on issues of moral standards. Only God knows the right, superior, pure, blameless truth - not only does God know that truth, but God defines that truth, so unless our definition is rooted and found in here (Bible) we’re looking in the wrong places. Is our love filled with that knowledge and discernment so we can approve of those things? (pause)
But lets open this final doll - lets see the final elements of Paul’s prayer. SLIDE 14
9 And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, 10 so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
Do you see how this prayer is imitating a nesting doll? Paul is praying that
• our love will grow
• in knowledge and discernment
• so we can approve of what is superior, what is right, and be found pure and blameless
• FILLED with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus
• For the glory and praise of God!
This prayer has two final focal points; one for us and one for God.
For us: that we will be filled with the fruit of righteousness.
And for God, that he will receive glory and praise, from our righteousness.
Lets start with us, because we’re utterly selfish people… I mean… because that’s where Paul started!
So all of this prayer, as it relates to us, boils down to our righteousness. Paul could have simply stated: And I pray this, that you may be filled with the fruit of righteousness… but rather than that Paul takes them on this journey - he paints this beautiful picture of how we are to be filled with that fruit - that it comes through our love growing in knowledge and discernment. It comes through our new ability to approve of what is right, what is superior. And through that approval, through that knowledge the ability to live a pure, blameless life! And as we live that life - we are filled with this righteousness, but then Paul adds,
righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ
And I’ll save you another of Skips Hietzig’s 40 minutes sermons on a single verse - it’s actually a great sermon, you can find it on youtube, but a big problem in that day - and still in our day - is the idea, the lie, that we can be filled with a righteousness of our own design, a righteousness found in our own effort - Paul wants to cut off that idea, that lie, before it can spread - our righteousness needs to be found in Christ.
Now we will look at righteousness and holiness more in a few weeks, but for the sake of today and explaining this concept; what Paul is saying is that we should be filled with right living - right choices - right thoughts - right wants - we need to have the right attitude. We need to adopt an attitude of righteousness.
And as we do this; as we are filled with a righteousness coming from Christ God is praised - God gets glory! As we live a right life, as we pursue living like Jesus - that is an act of worship towards God! How great is that!
And you know what… we can be confident - we can be sure - that God can answer this prayer - because this prayer aligns with the promise we started the morning off with. This prayer is part of the good work God began in us. SLIDE 15
We have this promise that
he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion
And we have this Prayer that
Our love will grow in knowledge and discernment so that we may approve of what is superior and may be pure and blames, filled with Christ’s righteousness, to God’s glory and praise
So let me leave you with a question today. How are you going to live out of this promise? How are you going to partner with God towards the goal of completing this work which began in you, filling you with the righteousness of Jesus? And how are you going to embrace this prayer - and who can you be praying this for as others are praying it for you?