Philippians 1:3-11
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1 Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.
2 I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me.
3 He will send from heaven and save me; he will put to shame him who tramples on me. Selah God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness!
Prayer
Psalm 57:
Prayer
Introduction
When you write a letter to a friend, there are a few sections of the letter that are fairly universal. You are going to start with, “Dear Friend,” Then you are going to go down a line and indent and start writing your letter. Once you get to the end of the letter, you’re going to write something like, “Sincerely” or “Your Friend” “With warmest affections” and under that you will sign your name.
Writing letters in that way helps the reader to read it well. You can tell much about the letter from the opening greeting and the final greeting. You are going to read a letter that starts with “To Whom it May Concern” far differently than a letter that begins with, “My Dearest…” Likewise the closing tells you not only who it is from – which is important for understanding the letter, but also sort of sums up the letter. You’ll read a letter that ends with a generic “Sincerely, Geoff Box” differently than one that says, “Longing to see you, Geoff Box”.
In the ancient world that Paul lived and ministered in, they also had normal ways to write letters. We call them letter forms. If we want to better understand the letters Paul wrote, it helps to be aware of the letter forms of his day. Common in letters of Paul’s day was a section of thanksgiving immediately following the opening greeting. That is what we will be looking at today.
Scripture
Our passage this morning will be If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word. We do this to show appreciation to God for His Word and in recognition that these are among the most important words we can hear today. says,
3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,
4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,
5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
7 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.
8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
“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 Jesus Christ. 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 so 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.”
Thank you, you may be seated.
Imagine you are transported into the prayer closet of your mom or dad, or maybe one of your grandparents or a pastor – someone who significantly impacted your walk with Christ – maybe even led you to Christ. Imagine you could hear them praying - for you. That would encourage you. It would make you feel like you were on top of the world. Even if some of the things they prayed were for you to conquer certain, specific sins in your life. You would be over the moon encouraged. That is exactly what Paul does here. He gives the Philippians an inside look into his prayers for them.
While this is the “Thank you section” of the letter, Paul is not directly saying “thank you” to the Philippians. Instead he is expressing his thanks to God for the Philippians. This is how Paul regularly shows his thanks. And it is important that we notice this. When Paul thanks God for them, Paul is putting thanks in the right place and it makes the role of the Philippians far greater.
Let’s put this in contemporary language. When you thank someone for bringing you a casserole, you are simply thanking them for that specific act of kindness. Now we should appreciate and be thankful for every single act of kindness, but what lies behind that “thank you for the casserole” should be a deeper thankfulness to God that actually fuels the smaller “thanks”. Thank you, God for blessing me by putting this person in my life who loves me and cares about me enough to take time to cook a casserole for me.
You see how that changes things? Now the person didn’t just do a kind deed. Now that person who cared for you is an instrument of God. An instrument that God is using to bless you and glorify Himself. And that is model that we see in this letter.
I joyfully thank God for you every time I think of you. Paul says this, - joyfully thank God for you - knowing that there is dissention in Philippi. And there is a recognition of that problem even in this opening prayer of thanksgiving. It must have been encouraging for the Philippians to hear that Paul was thanking God joyfully for them. That God was using them to bless Paul.
As the saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work. Paul uses the word “all” six times in this short section; 4 of those times are specifically talking about “all of you”. This is the recognition of disunity I mentioned, but it is also a recognition that all of the Philippians had become partners with Paul.
Their partnership is multi-layered. They had supported Paul financially more than once. They were a generous church and had as deep a love for Paul as Paul did for them. But the foundation of their partnership was the Gospel.
So, what does it mean for the Philippians to partner in the Gospel? Is it believing the Gospel? Is it sanctification and growing in Christlikeness? Is it partnering in missions and funding Paul’s work? The short answer is yes. It is all those things and more. The Philippians had taken the Gospel to heart. The Lord had opened their hearts to pay attention to the Gospel and by His Spirit they were changed. They were new creatures in Christ Jesus. As new creatures, they had new priorities and desires. They began to look more and more like Jesus.
Their partnership in the Gospel was their belief in the Gospel, their sanctification and growth in Christlikeness and the various good works that flowed from it. They were united to Paul, not because Paul, but because Jesus. So when Paul is imprisoned and defending and confirming the Gospel, they are still there connected to Paul – Partakers of the same grace.
Paul is confident in saying these things because the partnership is not an earthly partnership. Look with me again at verse 6. “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Sometimes we take this verse and use it to prove that a person cannot lose their salvation, and it does apply to that to some degree, but if we look at this passage and only see that one narrow point – that we can’t lose our salvation, we are missing out on so much more!
He who opened Lydia’s heart to receive the Gospel, He who shook Paul free of his chains in the Philippian jail, He who caused the Holy Spirit to fall on the jailer and his household showing that they were grafted into the people of God, He who had caused the Philippians to immediately open their homes, He who had caused them to be generous with their lives and their finances, He who began that good work in you isn’t going to get tired, give up, or fail. He will bring it to completion. God started it, and He is going to finish it.
From start to finish, this is ultimately a work of God in the Philippians lives. Even in the trials of living in an adversarial place, even with the temptations to go back and become like the Roman culture, even with dissention in their ranks, God is making all things right and complete in Christ. This must have been such an encouragement for the Philippians to keep pressing on, to not give up or give in.
Notice with me the Paul’s focus in all of this. It is Jesus. Always before Paul’s eyes is the return of Christ. Paul wants the Philippians to be complete, pure and blameless at the judgment. When Christ returns and judges everything by the one Holy and Perfect Standard – Himself – when Christ does that, he wants the Philippians stand on the right side of that judgment. Paul is sure that they will be on the right side, because God began that good work in them, and Paul is also praying for them that they will be pure and blameless on that day. Paul is helping the Philippians to keep the main thing, the main thing. Feeling kinda sluggish in your spiritual walk? Don’t pick yourself up by your bootstraps – look to Jesus. Feel like everything in the world is going against you? Look to Jesus. Have you sinned spectacularly? Look to Jesus! There is no where else to look.
Earlier I asked you to imagine listening in to the prayers of a spiritual mentor. How awesome that would be. Paul continues telling the Philippians what he’s praying for. He thanks God for them and expresses the reason for his joy in them, then he says, in verses ,
9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
“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 so 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.”
His prayer is that they grow more and more in love. This is not some type of sappy sentimentalism. This is love with knowledge and discernment. This is love that sees what is pure and right and holy. This is love that fills with good works and fruits of righteousness.
So who or what should they be loving that can bring all this about? Is Paul talking about their love for him? Love for each other? Love for their community? All of those things are great, but if they are not fueled by Jesus. If they do not come through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God, then it is just filthy rags.
True love of Christ changes things. That’s exactly what Jesus says in .
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
There are many in our day and age who would claim to have a love of Christ but do not obey Him. If we can talk about loving Christ, but walk in unrepentant sin, then there is a problem. True love of Christ comes with knowledge and discernment. And to be clear, I’m not talking about our ability to discern sin in other people. That’s easy to do.
True love of Christ requires that we dig out the speck in our eye first and foremost. True love of Christ requires that we ask ourselves difficult questions and we answer them honestly and humbly. How else could we be pure and blameless?
Let me put an even finer point on this. If your love of Christ does not cause you to regularly see sin in your life and repent of it and conquer it, then it isn’t true love of Christ you have. It may be love of the idea of Jesus. Love of the idea of Heaven. Love of the idea of standing on the right side of judgment.
People ask all the time, “Can I do this and still go to Heaven?” “Will this thing or that thing cause me to go to Hell?” Those types of questions do not come from a love of Jesus. They come from a love of self. Self-preservation. Love of Jesus asks a different question. “Does this bring glory and honor to Christ? Is this an act of obedience to the commands of Christ?” If the answer is no to those questions, then the person who is loving Christ, flees from those things.
If you love your spouse, you don’t ask them what types of things you can get away with before you are “technically cheating”. If you love them, you avoid anything that would bring them dishonor.
True love of Christ causes us pursue purity and blamelessness, to be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory of God.
I want to take just a minute and give some encouragement, and then one final warning. If you’re thinking, “Well, I’m not pure and blameless. I thought I was loving Christ well, but I’ve also messed up and sinned – like really messed up and seriously sinned. I must not be saved!” If that is what you are thinking, I want to offer some encouragement to you. When does Paul say that we will be pure and blameless? For the day of Christ. Remember, he is writing to a church who has real sin in their midst. Disunity in the body of Christ is serious sin, yet Paul is praying that their love will abound more and more.
What I mean by saying all that is this: Sanctification is a process. We become more Christlike – more pure and Holy over time – progressively. Yes, some sins drop off the moment we trust in Christ, but others cling on to us and have to be defeated over time through discipline and hard work. Repeatedly looking to Christ and having our love for Him abound more and more. Listen, if there is sin in your life, by all means fix it. If your love for Christ has grown cold, fix it! If your love of self has grown, fix it. Absolutely, by all means make sure your love of Christ is abounding more and more, but do not despair because He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ where you will be pure and blameless and filled with the fruit of righteousness.
That was my encouragement, and I mean it, but one final warning. If you are thinking to yourself, “Well, my sin isn’t that big of a deal. Jesus will forgive me because He’s supposed to.” If your love of Christ is not growing. If you are satisfied with just getting to Heaven, but not honoring Christ with your life, then it is likely that you are not Christ’s. That you are not actually a believer. The encouragement I just gave is only for those who have a true love of Christ. Don’t rest in encouragement that doesn’t apply to you.
One of the most difficult things about preaching is knowing that there are some people who have soft hearts who need encouragement, but instead they will hear the words of warning and despair, and there are others who have hard hearts who need to hear the words of warning but will falsely comfort themselves in the words of encouragement that aren’t for them.
Only the Holy Spirit can rightly apply rebuke where it is needed and encouragement as a balm to the soul where it is needed. We as a people, and I as a pastor am so dependent on the work of God’s Spirit.
Conclusion
If you are here this morning, and you have no love for Christ, you should know that you will not enjoy the day of Christ. Loving yourself and trying to preserve yourself and avoid Hell is not loving Christ, and He knows it. Loving the reward and not the Reward Giver is just plain selfishness and hedonism, and you will receive neither. Not Christ or the blessings that come from knowing Him. Unless you repent of your sin. Cast of your love of everything else and flee to Christ. Trusting in Him alone to make you pure and blameless. Do not comfort yourself with words of encouragement that do not apply to you. Hear the warning from God.
If you are here and you are a believer, you do love Christ and want to honor Him and bring God glory and praise, I want you to be encouraged. Yes, there may be sin in your life, and you should deal with that right now, but even the fact that you can flee to Christ and find forgiveness and reconciliation with God should bring great joy to you. Again believers, if there is sin in your life, that is the result of love that has been mis placed. Reorder your affections. Look to Christ and see how glorious and wonderful He is. And take heart, for He has begun a good work in you.
We are about to transition to a time of worship through response. We believe that any time a person hears the Word of God they respond to it. There is no neutrality. Either we respond in worship or in rebellion. God knows sees your heart and knows how you are responding regardless of how you look on the outside. Do not pretend to be worshipping when you are really rebelling. Worship Christ by loving Him more and more and let that true love fuel your repentance, your singing, and your prayers.
I will be on the front row worshipping with you. If you need to talk to someone or need someone to pray with, I would be happy to do that. Just come on up and talk to me. You’re also welcomed to pray up front if you would like. Finally, I will be available after the service if you would like to talk then.
Let’s pray.