Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

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Greeting

Thank Dan for last week

Welcome new people

It has often been said you can learn as much from a bad leader as you can from a good one.

Two examples from my career

BMCS Bobby Mercer

BMCS Jim Bailey

Tonight we’re going to look at a passage that has been interpreted in many different ways throughout church history

There are those who have said that this passage really doesn’t fit in the book and was a later addition

along with the rest of

There are commentators who speculate that verses 20-21 are an early Christological hymn that Paul uses to close out the chapter

much like the hymn in

But what I think we’re going to find is that Paul is wrapping up several sections of the letter into a solid conclusion before moving on to the next part of the letter

We’re going to see him close up his argument from the entirety of chapter 3 where he has been comparing and contrasting different views of the faith

We’re also going to see him wrap up the whole portion of the letter from until now as he will return to the theme of our citizenship in the heavenly places

We’re going to see good examples and bad and then understand what the difference is

We’ll see good examples in

We’ll see bad examples in

And finally we’ll understand what the difference is in

Read

Pray

Good Examples

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Example is the most powerful rhetoric; the highest and noblest example should be very quickening and provoking.

Thomas Brooks

Paul addresses the Philippians affectionately - calling them brothers (αδελπηοι) .

This is a common address for Paul to believers he is writing to

76 times in his letters he refers to the church this way

He uses it three times in Philippians - every time to impart a deep point on his readers

He is again about to tell the Philippians something important

It’s almost as if he’s calling them to attention - my brother’s listen up....

Join in following my example - is a curious way of telling this to them

1 cori

But these are exhortations to individual imitation of Paul

Here his exhortation to the Philippians is for a corporate effort to imitate him

He tells them to join in following his example

The word for join here (συμμιμητης) carries with it the sense of “one who joins others as an imitator”

Paul is urging the Philippian believers to work together - to uphold one another, to encourage one another in their imitation of him.

Thomas Brooks

And not just of him but of others who walk according to the pattern...

Three possibilities for these people

Other itinerant preachers (i.e.

Apollos) who were preaching the true Gospel

Epaphroditus - who Paul was sending back to the Philippians with this letter

Other people in the church who were setting the correct example

Good examples have a powerful influence upon us, for we are led more by pattern than by precept,

Bad Examples

especially the examples of those we love, for such we are prone to imitate; but more especially of those who are in nearest relation to us, for there nature sides with grace.

Thomas Manton

What example are you setting?

Someone is always watching (Rodney Atkins song “Watching You”)

Who are you watching?

Who is watching you?

Paul sets an example that we should seek to emulate - but he is not the source of that example

This is the example that we should strive to follow - the example of Christ lived out through the Gospel

Not all examples in the church are good examples - Paul is going to give the Philippians some examples of those they should not be following

Bad Examples

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There has been much debate regarding who exactly Paul is referring to in these verses

It would seem that the context of the chapter would suggest that these are still the same people he warned the Philippians against in verse 2

Paul betrays the emotion that all of us should have toward those who teach false Gospels or are unsaved

Surely we should mark them out - he calls them dogs, evil workers - and we should use equally harsh language

But it should also break our hearts that they are so lost

Charles Spurgeon - in his typical gruff manner - said

710If you can, without emotion, think of a soul being damned, I fear that it will be your own lot.

If you can look on the ignorant and the perverse and the rebellious, and think of their destruction with complacency, you are no child of God.

Your Savior wept over Jerusalem.

Have you no tears?

Then you are not a member of the family of which he is the head.

710If you can, without emotion, think of a soul being damned, I fear that it will be your own lot.

If you can look on the ignorant and the perverse and the rebellious, and think of their destruction with complacency, you are no child of God.

Your Savior wept over Jerusalem.

Have you no tears?

Then you are not a member of the family of which he is the head

It should break our hearts that anyone is lost - even false teachers - but we should also never shirk from calling them what they are

Paul calls them wolves

those who oppose truth

Acts 20:

Here he calls them enemies of the cross.

Those who would teach a different Gospel from what he had taught

Those who tried to include works intermixed with grace to provide salvation.

These people may have been, and probably were, very religious, honest, sincere Christians.

But if their “goodness” and the religious acts that they faithfully performed in any way tended to keep them from casting themselves wholly upon God and asking for the righteousness that he supplies only through Jesus Christ, if their beliefs and practices set them in opposition to the gospel of salvation by Christ alone and its outworking in a life of obedience and earnest moral endeavor, if their doing the law threatened the exclusiveness of the forgiveness of sins by faith in Christ, then, for Paul, their conduct was indeed “evil” because it brought ultimate harm both to themselves and to others

These people may have been, and probably were, very religious, honest, sincere Christians.

But they had something off

as a result of that their end is their destruction

Now as then it is faithfulness to the Gospel that spells life for the believers and anyone who opposes that is bound for destruction

Paul gives us three characteristics of the false teachers that mark them as such

Whose god is their appetite

Paul starts off with an interesting statement - that their god is their appetite

This is most likely a reference to the dietary laws kept as a part of the Law of Moses which would have been important to the Judaizers

The word used to translate appetite here refers to the desire for gratification in the body, physical desires of the body.

While this may apply to the food restrictions under the Old Covenant it can also apply to the unrestrained, instant gratification status of our culture today.

2 Timothy 3:

Whose glory is their shame

The Judaizers relied on their circumcision as a sign of their submission to the Old Covenant and tried to add Christ to that as evidence of their salvation

They gloried in their heritage, their knowledge and their physical obedience

They gloried in their most abase, libertine practices

They took grace to an extreme that said they could sin and still be saved - that they could be carnal in their lifestyle and yet remain in the body of Christ

As God can send a nation or people no greater blessing than to give them faithful, sincere, and upright ministers, so the greatest curse that God can possibly send upon a people in this world is to give them over to blind, unregenerate, carnal, lukewarm, and unskilled guides.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD