God Finishes What He Starts
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Intro
Intro
Good morning! I’ve enjoyed getting to worship together last week and now this week. So, thank you EM, for welcoming us into your space over the last couple of weeks. Pastor Sam and the team will be back late tonight, so let’s keep them in our prayers today as they travel back home.
I have a confession to make. If you were to into my dorm room on campus, the first think you would see is my clean laundry piled up in a suitcase. I hate laundry. I hate doing it so much, and so typically, I’ll wait a few weeks until I have absolutely nothin left to wear, then I’ll do one giant load of laundry, and then I’ll bring it back into my room, and I’ll start putting it away, but I can’t finish it. It usually takes me a week until it’s fully put away. Or, if you were to look on my book shelf, you’d see 30-40 books that have been started, and there are book marks or folded pages placed either halfway or 1/4 way through the book, but none of them have been finished. I struggle to finish things that I’ve started. And honestly, I think I got this from my parents. When I went home last summer, my bathroom that I used for most of my life, was gutted. Everything was torn out of it. I went back home for Christmas, and I thought, surely by now, the bathroom has been remodeled. Nope. I went home in May, almost a year after I first saw the gutted bathroom, adn I thought okay, this time, it will be finished. It’s been a year. Nope. still gutted. The only difference is they close the door so no one will go in there. And I’ve thought about this in my life, I’ve always struggled to fully complete things. But, I’ve also noticed that when it comes to God, when he starts something, he always finishes it. Let’s open to Philippians chapter 1.
EXPLANATION
1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanksgiving and Prayer
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.
Last week we looked at how the Church in Philippi was started. We looked specifically at three People: Lydia, a wealthy business woman who was in the fashion industry, Through Paul and Silas’ teaching, God opend her heart to the Gospel, and she became a believer, a slave girl, who through Paul, God brought to salvation, and a Prison Guard, who after seeing the way God rescued Paul and Silas from their imprisonment, and after seeing through Paul and Silas how believers behave, came to salvation. In this we see how the Gospel brought three complete strangers, from totally different backgrounds, together for the sake of the Gospel. The Gospel is for everyone, the gospel breaks through the walls that separate people, and because of the Gospel, God is able to unite people from all different backgrounds for his glory. This is the background of the letter. When Paul is writing this letter, he is thinking of these people and the church that has flourished since.
So, let’s look at verse 1: Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
So, let’s look at verse 1: Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons.
The word servant in the original language is doulos, and it means slave. Paul is referring to himself and Timothy as slaves of Christ Jesus. Now, this interesting. Often, when Paul begins a letter, he refers to himself as an Apostle of Christ Jesus. When he does that, he is appealing to his authority, but here, however, he opts to designate himself as a slave. Let’s not miss this. This isn’t the main point of what we’ll be looking at this morning, but it is important nonetheless. When the receivers of this letter read the word doulos, or slave, they would have immediately known that the word referred to someone owned by, and obedient to, the master of a household. Gordon Fee, a scholar and pastor known for his work with the book of Philippians notes that this word, servant or slave, also refers to the old testament term “servant of Yahweh, or Servant of the Lord, and this would have been well known to the Philippians. This phrase, Servant of the Lord, or Slave of Yahweh, was a kind of honorific title for those in special service to God. So, when Paul uses the phrase here, he means it in two ways: He and Timothy are slave of Christ Jesus, and they are bound to him as slaves to a master, and they are also servants of Christ Jesus, and their bond in this regard is expressed in loving service on behalf of Christ for the Philippians. This title becomes even more important later in the letter where Paul says that Christ himself has taken the “very nature of a servant.”
Here’s what we need to take away from this. We are all servants of something. The gentleman I mentioned earlier was a slave to his addictions. If we aren’t servants of Jesus, then We’re servants of academics, of music, of friendships, of our parent’s expectations, of societies expectations, of our fears, of our anxiety, basically, we’re servants of the idols in our lives that we’ve placed before God. We think these things will satisfy us, give us meaning, or give us a purpose, but they don’t. Most wealthy people aren’t happy. They want more. In fact, I could argue that most people in general aren’t happy, because we’re slaves to things that can never satisfy us. But, Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, to those who are in Christ 5:1, For Freedom Christ has set you free, stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. If we are in Christ, we have been freed from the bondage of sin, from the bondage of our idols, from the bondage of all the things I just mentioned. We have been freed from them. But, with this freedom, we are able to choose to serve Jesus Christ, or we can continue to serve the other things. Now, a true follower of Christ will choose to serve Christ. Those who are free in Christ should use that freedom to submit to his authority and serve him. Now, the bible is full of these types of scenarios or paradoxes. We’re free so that we can be slaves, but by being slaves to Jesus, we are truly free. So, we have a choice: Be slaves of Christ Jesus, or be slaves of the world.
Let’s continue: What Paul does is verses 3-11 is he sets up the rest of the letter. He gives a preview of all of the things he is getting ready to talk about. This section is called the exordium, or introduction, and Paul uses emotional, heartfelt language that speaks more to emotions rather than logic. He appeals to the Philippians emotions, and he sets up the themes of what he is going to hit on throughout the rest of the letter.
Let’s go on to verses 3-5: 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.
Here we need to zoom in on the word “joy.” This word appears 16 times throughout this short letter. Now, as we talked about last week, Paul is writing this letter from prison. Paul has been beaten, and Paul has suffered for the sake of the Gospel, and now he is in prison. We have to ask, how is Paul joyful? How is Paul, who is in one of the worst circumstances imaginable, able to say that he is making his prayer with Joy? So often, we confuse Joy with happiness. Joy is not happiness. Happiness often depends on our circumstances, our mood, our situations, our achievements. Joy is different. One commentator writes this: For Paul, joy is more than a mood, or an emotion. Joy is an understanding of existence that encompasses both great happiness and depression, that can accept with creative submission events which bring delight or dismay because joy allows one to see beyond any particular event to the sovereign Lord who stands above all events and ultimately has control over them.[1]
Paul list Joy as one of the fruits of the spirit in Galations 5, placing it right after love. This means that joy is the fruit of the inward working of the Holy Spirit within the believer. And, since this is the case, joy is not something the world can give us, and it is not something the world can take away from us. Joy does not depend on our circumstances. Our source of Joy is Christ, and our ability to be joyful comes from the work of the holy spirit. The world cannot take away our joy, or give us joy, because joy is created by the living presence of Jesus Christ in our lives.
So, because of the work of Jesus in our lives, we are able to have joy, and from here we go on to verse 5 where Paul tells us the basis of his Joy: verse 5: because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Paul is joyful because of the inward work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and this Joy is sparked by the Philippian church’s partnership with him in the Gospel. Now, the term partnership here is important. Paul has three things in mind in regard to the Philippians when he uses this word:
1. They believed in the Gospel. This one might be obvious, but you cannot partner with someone in something if you don’t believe in the same thing or share the same purpose.
2. Paul had in mind their support. The Philippian church supported Paul financially, and they supported him prayerfully in his mission to spread the Gospel.
3. Paul knew that the Philippians embodied the Gospel. The Philippians were transformed by the work of the Gospel.
Now, it’s evident through reading this letter and anything written by Paul that the Gospel is the only passion in his life. The word Gospel in this letter refers to Christ, it refes to both his person and his work. For Paul, to preach the Gospel is to preach Christ and it is to proclaim God’s good news of Salvation that he has brought about through Christ. So, when Paul offers up his joyful prayer, he is joyful because of the Philippian’s partnership in the furtherance of the gospel.
Those of us who are in Christ, who are believers, we share in this same partnership. We are united by the gospel that has changed us. We are able to have fellowship because of the salvific, lifechanging work that the gospel has done in our lives. The Gospel has made us new creations. We are partners in the Gospel, and we are united in the Gospel, because we share in the benefits of the Gospell. But, to be partners means that we have been given the responsibility to share this gospel with others. A lot of us, my self included struggle with trying to figure out what it is God wants us to do. As believers we have been commissioned to be representatives of Christ wherever we are. We have been tasked with sharing the Gospel, with loving each other and everyone we come in contact with. And it is because of the Gospel that we are commanded to do this, but it is because of the Gospel that we are able to do this. The challenge for us as a church and as partners in the Gospel is living this out, which leads into 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.
God began a good work in the Philippians. They are supporting Paul, they are partnering with him in the spread of the Gospel, they are unified, they have faith, etc. Because God has started this in them, the will continue to take part in these things. But, what I think this verse is really referring to is God’s good work of salvation.
Here’s the thing, being a Christian is super easy, and, at the same time, its impossible. Having faith is really easy, and it’s impossible. Following Jesus is extremely easy, but its impossible. All of these things are easy, and all of them are impossible. But John, what are you saying?? This is all impossible without Jesus. Without his work in our lives, it is impossible. We cannot save ourselves, we cannot work towards salvation, there is nothing we can do to be redeemed. Only by the blood of Jesus Christ, poured out for us on the cross, only by this are we able to be justified before God the Father. By grace we are saved through faith. By placing your faith in Jesus Christ, and in the work he did on the Cross so that we may be justified before God, you can be saved. And here’s the thing. It’s a process. Verse 6 explains that salvation, which means that we are saved form the penalty of sin and we are saved from the bondage of sin, salvation leads to sanctification. And Sanctificaion is what Paul is talking about in verse 6. Sanctification is the process of being made holy. It is the process of our sinful, human nature being stripped away, and being replaced with divine or Christlike nature. Now, whats cool about this verse is that it explains that this process is started by God, continued by God, and brought to completion by God. What God starts in us, he finishes. If our faith is in God, God never leaves us as we are, rather he works continuously, purifying us, and making us holy and blameless before him. The work that he has begun in us will be brought to completion. So, those days you don’t feel holy, or those days that you question your salvation or you question your faith, remember, it’s a process. Ask yourself, have you seen a steady progression of maturity in your faith? Have you seen yourself steadily places your trust in the Lord? We aren’t perfect, we’re being made perfect, but we aren’t their yet, but it’s promised. Because of this, we still fail, we still fall short, but there is still grace. The reassurance is this, God will bring our salvation and our sanctification to completion. God will not leave us or forsake us. There is nothing we can do, once we have placed our faith in him, that can separate us from him.
Takeaways
1. Are we slaves to the world or are we slaves to Jesus Christ? Only by submitting to the authority of Jesus can we truly find our purpose and be joyful.
2. Joy is not the same as happiness. Comes from God and the work of the holy spirit. Joy is an understanding of existence that encompasses both great happiness and depression, that can accept with creative submission events which bring delight or dismay because joy allows one to see beyond any particular event to the sovereign Lord who stands above all events and ultimately has control over them.[2] Joy is recognizing that God is in control, and God has supreme authority.
3. We are partners in the Gospel. A lot of this letter is about unity within the body of Christ, and the primary unifying factor is the Gospel. Its both the work of the Gospel and the work of sharing the gospel that unites believers.
4. Finally, what God has started in us as believers he will finish.
[1] Witherington, B., III. (2011). Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (p. 58). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Company.
[2] Witherington, B., III. (2011). Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (p. 58). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Company.