Sermon Tone Analysis

Last year I concluded the letter to Galatians and now I want to spend some considerable time looking at another of Paul’s letters, the one to the Philippians for there are many things we can learn about Jesus and the Christian life.

We will probably spend most of the year in the evenings looking at it.

Though we are looking at Philippians we are already heard a reading from Acts 16 which introduces us to the place and church that got established there.

I want to give us a bit of the background to Philippi, the place where these believers are.

It has an interesting history let alone it being a place that God especially led Paul to.

Philippi is in modern-day Greece though it was part of Macedonia originally which was a separate Country which included modern Macedonia as well as the province of Macedonia in North Greece.

It is about 10 miles from the sea and was on the main highway between East and West known as the Egnatian Way[SLIDE].

You could not miss Philippi if passing to or from Turkey which was known as Asia Minor in Paul’s day.

It existed before it became Philippi as a small town known as Krenides (which means ‘Spring’ probably from the fact the river is fed by it there) but Philip the 2nd of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, enlarged the town into a city and fortified it with walls.

It had all the usual mod-cons of the day such as an open-air theatre, two large temples[SLIDE], a library and baths.

Gold was found in the mountains that surrounded the city and gave enough to supply his army.

The city grew to about 50,000 people though some say that by the time Paul turned up there was 200,000 though this seems unsubstantiated.

In 42BC a major battle took place where Mark Anthony and Augustus Caesar defeated another army and Philippi became a Roman Colony and gave the people living there the right of being Roman despite not being in Italy.

Later when Mark Anthony and Cleopatra were defeated in another battle the supporters of Mark in Italy were exiled to Philippi as a punishment and the victorious members of the army took over the cities that the banished had come from.

Then in around 49AD came Paul on his 2nd missionary journey which is what we read in Acts 16:5-15.

Paul was in Philippi because of the Macedonian call: a man in Macedonia saying come over and help us.

God had forbidden him to go elsewhere and, instead, led him to Philippi.

We can see his whole journey from this slide.

Paul went to speak to the women at the riverside.

A man calls but what is interesting is that it is women who are preached to!

What we can take from this is that there was no Synagogue there.

Paul was not found in the Synagogue probably because they did not have the required number of ten men to meet.

So the number of Jews there were few.

I love it when there is archaeology done because no archaeology has ever proven Scripture to be wrong but instead it has only confirmed it.

For instance, until 1884 Scripture was derided over its belief in the Hittite Kingdom which had never been heard of until their Capital was discovered by an Irish missionary!

Then and since they were all surprised by just how big the Hittite Empire actually was!

Guess what the French discovered when they started digging in Philippi?

They discovered that one of the main trades of Philippi was purple cloth.

Not proven conclusively until 1914.

So, even in the smallest detail Scripture has been proven again for we find that Lydia was a seller of this cloth as we read in verse 14.

And Lydia is probably the first convert in Europe.

Certainly the first of Paul’s.

But for Paul the experience was not at all pleasant.

As we carry on reading in Acts 16 we find that the Philippians were proud of Romans and there was inherent antisemitism present.

So, whilst this experience of Paul where he was beaten and imprisoned was extremely painful, and note that it was God-led, the outcome of his visit to Philippi was that Lydia became a convert and it seems a Church was then set up in her home and also the jailer and his family became Christians too after seeing the way the prison doors opened.

The gospel is not chained.

We do not know how many of the other prisoners were saved in the process but all-in-all it was a fruitful few days that they were.

There is another interesting aspect to this story which would be easy to miss.

In verse 10 we find a mysterious word: ‘we.’

Who is the ‘we’ for up to then it was ‘them’ and ‘they’.

This is none other than Luke who is writing the account.

We find that Luke must have joined the entourage at Troas to go to Philippi.

Then in verse 40 the ‘we’ is replaced with the ‘they’ and ‘them’.

Luke must have stayed behind in Philippi.

It is not until Paul returns to Philippi in Acts 20.6 which was about 5 years later that we find that Luke leaves Philippi to be with Paul again on his journeys.

I reckon that Luke in his trade as a Doctor also gave strength to the fledgling Church whilst he was there – notice in Acts 16.10 he says that it was concluded that the Lord had called ‘us’ to preach the gospel there so including himself in that number.

The Church must have grown somewhat in the intervening period and when Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians which was written about 10 years after his first visit.

As you know the passage we read in Acts 16 is very special to me for it was this passage of Scripture and the events in my life that led me to go to Macedonia.

I was called to go and help them in the ministry God gave.

Let us be as clear as Paul was about his mission.

His mission was simply to come and preach the gospel of Jesus.

As a Church we are not to forget that the main purpose for our existence is to share Jesus with others and to be Jesus’ disciples.

We are to be outward looking rather than inward looking.

What if Paul had simply gone to Philippi to look around the City and do a bit of sight-seeing?

What a lovely holiday!

However, Paul was single-minded in making Jesus known and in knowing Jesus.

This is how we are to be.

In meeting the people in this community or anywhere we go we should be those who make Jesus known as the Lord gives us opportunity.

Was there a revival in Philippi?

Well, we do know that two families especially were affected: Lydia and her family and the jailer and her family.

Beyond that is pure guesswork.

Note also that Paul had to go to prison for the jailer to be saved.

Paul suffered and could have complained about the situation he was in but he was praising God instead.

If Paul had simply complained then what would have been the likelihood that the jailer and his family getting saved?

God has a plan for our lives but sometimes the things that happen to us both good and bad may open the door to someone else getting saved: God doesn’t have to tell us either.

All things work to the good of those who love Him.

Though it certainly may not feel like it at the time.

It might be pushing it to say there was revival though.

The theme of Philippians is joy.

It would not be surprising if this was established most certainly in Paul’s heart on his first visit to Philippi.

Here he was writing his letter from another prison no doubt reminding him of his stay there too and perhaps Paul himself took comfort from it.

This visit left its mark on Paul for he writes to the Thessalonians in

Despite all that had happened in Philippi when they arrived at the next city, being Thessalonica, they were not shy about sharing the gospel there too and suffered even more consequences in that place.

The Church in Philippi kept going until the 4th Century when Philippi had all but ceased being a city which then became completely uninhabited in the 14th Century and as you can see from the picture [SLIDE] not so many people live in the area today – in fact the population is only 896.

Because of the jailer and his family, Lydia and her family, and Luke who stayed behind the Church gradually grew.

No one really knows how big they grew but I suspect that it was not very large.

It was enough for Paul to write his letter to ‘all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the overseers and deacons’.

So, the Church was big enough to have elders and deacons but just how large is that after all we have seven elders and deacons here plus me.

It didn’t take much for the Church to start.

Simply sharing the good news of Jesus turned a whole family to God.

The next family was harder as they came to faith through trial and tribulation and suffering.

Sometimes it is easy work.

Sometimes it is hard.

And persecution often comes with the territory.

The work of God starts small and gradually most of the time.

We should never be disheartened about the way things are going.

We are light in this world bringing the good news.

Paul went to where the people were to share the good news of Jesus with them.

What God has started and will finish in us is what God can start and finish in others.

Maybe there will be no revival, though we should still pray to that end, but individuals that come to faith are precious in God’s sight and worth it all.

We sometimes think that every work of Paul’s brought thousands to faith – but here in Philippi we know of just two families.

Let us seek God for opportunities and his leading and go where He leads us to and let us deliberately set our hearts and minds to share Jesus with at least one person this week, before next Sunday, so that they have had an opportunity to come to faith in our Saviour.

Let that be our aim and ambition this week.

Communion

When Jesus came to earth He deliberately set out, first from Heaven to come here, but to finish a mission, He deliberately set about getting to the cross.

His heart and mind were set, as the King James versions says, as flint.

Just as we read about Paul and his mindset in making sure he was not just sightseeing at Philippi we see Jesus and His mindset was making sure that His stay on earth was as effective as it could be knowing the purpose that He had come was to go to the cross to save us from our sins and free us from the bounds of the enemy.

We shall come, in due course to that famous passage about Jesus in Philippians about the mindset of Jesus who came with humility and subjected Himself to the death of the cross when He is, in fact, the King of kings and God over all.

He did it to seek and save us.

This is love.