Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] But friends, Philippians is a little bit less of a problem solving letter, if you will, and it's more of a kind of progress update kind of letter.
[00:00:10] So to give the Philippians a kind of missionary update, if you will, that's what this letter is. And really to encourage them to continue in their Gospel work. And one of the things we'll see is that Paul's affections, right, those affections are abundant for this congregation right out of the gate.
[00:00:29] So we pick up again Philippians 1, beginning in 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, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:00:49] I thank my God in all my remembrance of you always in every prayer of mine for you all my making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now.
[00:01:06] 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 my defense and confirmation of the Gospel.
[00:01:25] 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.
[00:01:52] Now, friends, the key word, if you will, in our text, we find right there in verse five, it's that word partnership.
[00:02:00] So after the introduction notice, Paul, he gives thanks and he prays for them in verses three to five. And he does all this because verse five he says of their partnership in the Gospel.
[00:02:14] And we read rather a little bit later verse seven, that he holds them in his heart for verse seven, you are all partakers with me of grace. And that word partaker in verse seven, it just comes from the same root word as partner up there in verse five.
[00:02:33] And so Paul's prayer that begins in verses three and four and then picks up again in verses nine is all centered around their shared partnership with one another and friends. Here, I think, is the main idea for us Christians who partner together grow together.
[00:02:53] Just simply that Christians who partner together grow together.
[00:02:58] And what I want us to do is I want Us to look at the geometry, if you will, the shape of their partnership, and then the genius of that partnership, that is its character, its nature, then the glue, right? What holds that partnership together and then the goal of that partnership. Where is it all headed? What's the point of it? So we're going to think about sort of those four movements as we walk through the text. So first, let's think about the geometry, the shape of their partnership. And I want us to see just in these opening two verses, is that the shape? Right, it's churched. It's churched like in a local church setting.
[00:03:34] So in the first two verses, we have a standard greeting.
[00:03:37] Now, in modern letters, so if you're going to go home and write a letter to a friend, you would say, dear so. And so I might write dear Aaron to my wife. And then you close the letter by saying, you know, sincerely, or write your loving husband, you know, Brad, whatever it might be. That's how we write letters. But in ancient letters, they wrote them differently. They would actually list the sender first.
[00:03:59] So we do it last. They do it first. They put it right up in front. We first the sender, then they list the recipient. And so that's. We see verse one, right? They say Paul and Timothy, they're the ones sending the letter.
[00:04:12] These two are a kind of inseparable pair.
[00:04:15] In the New Testament, I think maybe six of Paul's letters, right, come from Paul and Timothy. So Timothy was kind of the Robin to Paul's Batman. He was kind of the Watson, right, To Sherlock, if you will. You get the point. That's how these two function together.
[00:04:30] And Paul addresses them to the addresses, rather the letter to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi.
[00:04:42] Now, if you're new to church, that word saints might throw you. Because in Catholicism, saints refers to those specifically who are canonized by the church. And they're canonized because of their extraordinary holiness.
[00:04:58] And you really only get that status once you die.
[00:05:02] So saint in that sense is an appellation that one must earn.
[00:05:07] So that's how many use the word again. That's how Catholicism uses the word. But, friends, actually, in the Bible, saint doesn't refer to extraordinarily holy people. Actually, saint just refers to all of God's people.
[00:05:22] So it's not something earned in the Bible. Rather, saint is actually something conferred. Saint is a title that God gives to his people.
[00:05:32] So when God opens our hearts to the gospel, we're given a new status, right? We go from rebels to saints.
[00:05:42] Not because we've magically become holy people, but because in Christ, God declares us to be holy, sort of like a judge declaring one innocent. In the Gospel, God judges sinners and rebels holy in Jesus.
[00:06:00] So, friend, if you have come and you understand yourself to be one who needs the righteousness and the holiness that Jesus offers, you know yourself perhaps to be a sinner. You're not quite sure what to do with the guilt and the shame and the weight of it. The message of the Bible is not work extraordinarily hard to. To try to rid yourself of all those sins.
[00:06:22] The message of the Bible is believe upon Christ, trust in Christ, repent of your sins, and rest in Christ. And when you rest in Christ, all of your sins, that status as sinner and rebel. Well, as we rest and trust in Christ, God declares us to be saints, to be righteous. Why? Because Christ himself on the cross bore our sin.
[00:06:49] He bore the consequence of our suffering, rather our sin and our shame as he suffered. And then he rose again on the third day, defeating sin and death. He sits at the right hand of God so that for all of those again who trust in Christ rest in him, they can have that status conferred, right rebel and sinner to saint.
[00:07:12] And that is how Paul addresses these who are there in Philippi.
[00:07:18] And that is the city again they are in, which is remarkable. Philippi, because we've seen in Acts 16, Philippi wasn't a Jewish city.
[00:07:26] Philippi wasn't in any way even a Christian city. Right before Paul, there wasn't a single Christian convert in the entire city.
[00:07:34] Philippi was a deeply pagan city. It was a polytheistic city. It is where the cult of the emperor loomed large. The. The emperor literally in Philippi, was declared to be lord and savior, such that when emperors were born, it was called gospel, it was called good news because of the way in which the people expected the tidings of the emperor to be good news for the people. So you can imagine already as Paul is speaking of Jesus as Lord and Savior and, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that would be direct affront to all of sort of the pagan culture, really, the emperor cult there in Philippi, we're going to see exactly why the Philippians were suffering often in Philippi.
[00:08:23] And yet two things are distinctly unique about the way Paul opens up in this greeting. Verse 1. Paul calls himself what he calls himself, a servant or a slave of Christ. Often Paul calls himself an apostle Paul, when he opens his letters here, he doesn't do that. And maybe Paul doesn't do that. Because Paul already has such a warm and affectionate relationship with them, he doesn't feel he needs to sort of wave his apostolic badge. Maybe Paul doesn't feel he needs to wave his credentials as he might with the Galatian Church, for example.
[00:08:55] But friends, perhaps it's because at the end of the day, Paul just understands what we all must understand. And, and that is whether or not you're an apostle or a pastor, whomever you are, if you are in Christ, you are a servant and slave of Christ, every single one of us. That's what we are. That's going to prepare us for two, seven, right? Christ himself taking the very nature and form of a servant. And we've got one of the immediate paradoxes to Christianity, right? It's only in Christ as slaves that. That any of us truly find freedom.
[00:09:35] Well, the other distinct feature of verse one is he writes there at the end of verse one, he writes to the saints in Philippi with the overseers and deacons.
[00:09:47] So right there he's referring to the two offices of the church. The only other place he does that is in First Timothy three. So when he writes about overseers, just for clarity, the that term overseer is synonymous with pastor or elder in the New Testament.
[00:10:02] The term overseer particularly connotates authority and oversight, right? Elders, First Timothy 5, who rule, exercise authority over the congregation.
[00:10:14] And notice with overseers, as with pastors or elders, friends, those words are always in the plural. There's never just one overseer in a church, never just one pastor or one elder, not by God's design at least.
[00:10:27] And then we also have the deacons, those who are helped to bring unity to the church by serving some of the practical and administrative needs of the body. You can think back to Acts 6. So if you want to think of elders as servant leaders, you can think of deacons as the leading servants in the church. But friends, why mention these two groups at all? It's unique for Paul to do this.
[00:10:49] Well, we can't know for certain, but maybe Paul feels the need right out of the gate, or to strengthen the hands, so to speak, of the leaders within the body.
[00:10:59] Maybe the deacons and elders, maybe they felt particularly indebted, or maybe the congregation, I should say, felt particularly indebted to Paul for his planting work. Maybe they were more prone to look to Paul than to look to the own leaders God had raised up among them. You know, maybe there's something happening in the life of the body. We're going to read about some disunity later. Maybe Paul Felt the need to, to shore up the leaders. In the face of that, we can't know. But we are seeing that in all of this, the shape of their partnership is that it's churched. They're gathering together in a local church fellowship. Because, friends, that is Jesus own discipling program. It is the local church. We see it again right here in Philippians 1, where God's people are going to gather under God's word and together they'll be guided by, by godly leaders.
[00:11:51] So friends, things like college ministries, things like BSF studies, concerts, conferences, those can all be wonderful supplements to the church.
[00:12:01] They can be very helpful servants of the church.
[00:12:05] They're just never meant to be substitutes for the church.
[00:12:09] Because partnership in the gospel we're already seeing what is it, it's church shaped.
[00:12:14] But this brings us now secondly to the genius of the partnership.
[00:12:19] The genius of the partnership. And some of you right now are a little confused because they're like, Brad, the word genius, doesn't that speak to the word, like intelligence, things of that nature? It does, but there's another meaning that also speaks to something's essential character, something's particular, distinctive nature.
[00:12:37] So if I were to say improvisation is the genius of jazz, maybe that helps you out. Like that's the nature of jazz that you improvise and you're like, why would you use this word? Well, look, I had to alliterate, right? I had to get a bunch of GS. That's the best I could do, okay?
[00:12:52] But the whole point of this nature and character is it's built around this word partnership in verse five.
[00:12:59] And some of you will know that's the Greek word. Most of us don't know Greek words, but there are a few that we might hear because Christians will use them that word koinonia, which we often use the English word fellowship to describe it.
[00:13:13] So it's this word Christians often use. And when I was a new believer, we had these things called casa koinonias, like these house fellowships. I'm like, I have no idea what koinonia is, but I learned right, these fellowship groups and Christians use the term, and sometimes if we're not careful, we begin to use it in ways actually the Bible doesn't use it.
[00:13:34] So sometimes we'll speak of fellowship simply as warm friendship or times that Christians hang out. Maybe we reduce it to like coffee and conversation and that's it.
[00:13:46] But in the Bible, this word koinonia, this word for partnership or fellowship, it's about a lot more than simply Hanging out.
[00:13:53] It's not even simply gathering together over a meal.
[00:13:57] Partnership.
[00:13:59] This kind of fellowship, as Paul uses it, it's about an explicit bond in the gospel for the purpose of furthering the work of the gospel.
[00:14:11] That is what the purpose and form and shape of this partnership is to be. It's. It's communion with Christ. So it's all about Jesus and being aligned and partnered with his work.
[00:14:23] So if you were to take, for example, the. The first volume of Tolkien's trilogy, right? What do we call it? We call it the Fellowship of the Ring.
[00:14:33] Now, of course, in that title, the word fellowship, the Fellowship of the Ring doesn't simply mean that the hobbits like to gather around food.
[00:14:43] Of course they do. If you read the book, you know the hobbits love food. But that word fellowship is not really about food. No, you read the books and you go on to read the next two, and it's clear that that Fellowship of the Ring, well, that is about a far deeper bond that unites hobbits and dwarves and elves and men. And it's all built around this shared purpose and mission, right, of destroying the Ring, of saving Middle Earth. And so we need to use fellowship as Christians more in that sense. Right, Fellowship of the Ring kind of sense.
[00:15:16] So when we think of this word partnership and fellowship, we want to think about that in light of this is what Paul and these Christians in Philippi, it's what they possess together, that kind of bond in Christ and union and work with one another. And so when he speaks of their partnership in the gospel, and then when he goes on to talk about how they're partakers of grace, he's speaking of their faith in Christ, but he's speaking even beyond that to their kind of shared mission together, particularly for the way in which they share support and suffering.
[00:15:51] Two themes that are going to come up throughout Philippians, that comes up here later in chapter one, it's going to pick up again in chapter four.
[00:16:00] So how the Philippians have partnered with Paul financially in supporting him, that's a distinctive feature of their partnership. But also even how these Philippians are suffering alongside Paul, some of them perhaps in prison, as Paul is in prison, all for the sake of this gospel work.
[00:16:21] And so together, verse seven, they share in this imprisonment and in this defense and in this confirmation of the Gospel. That is what their partnership is built around.
[00:16:31] And members of ubc, these are the kinds of relationships that God intends for people within his churches, deep and abiding relationships built around gospel work.
[00:16:46] So not Simply a bunch of relationships that are kind of a mile wide and an inch deep, where you maybe show up on Sunday and you nod hello to a number of people, maybe you offer a few platitudes, you sing a few songs, and then you sort of slip out after the service. And that's the extent of it.
[00:17:05] No, the way Paul talks about partnership is very different.
[00:17:09] It's these shared bonds of gospel support and together, even gospel suffering.
[00:17:16] And we won't really be able to do that with 100 people particularly. Well, certainly not six or 700 people.
[00:17:23] But we need to have them with at least a handful of people.
[00:17:28] And what happens is, when we have them with a handful of people, well, some of those people will have them, a handful of slightly different people, and those people with a handful of another group of people. And all of a sudden, what do you have but a kind of web, a kind of bond forms between them?
[00:17:45] You know, Ecclesiastes 4 reminds us that two are better than one.
[00:17:51] And then it continues. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
[00:17:56] A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
[00:18:01] Now, I know many of us quickly apply that verse, and often do, to marriage, which isn't wrong per se, but it's actually speaking of these kinds of partnerships and these kinds of bonds between believers, the kinds of bonds that you overlay on one another, bonds that aren't easily broken.
[00:18:20] You know, friends, a single nylon fiber, right? It can't hold very much, but you take thousands, even just hundreds of those fibers, and you wind them together into strands and you braid it into a rope. And, friends, you can pull a massive truck out of the mud with that rope, right? There's tremendous strength when you overlay those bonds on one another.
[00:18:44] The strength is not in the individual fiber, but then the fact that they are bound together as one.
[00:18:51] And the next thing you know, friends, you have what the Bible calls a church built around partnerships like this.
[00:18:59] And this is what we're to have together.
[00:19:01] And, friends, this is what we're to have as well, with those whom we support and send out from us, whether or not we send them out into our local communities. These are the kind of bonds we're meant to have as we support Trey up at Ozark Baptist or Nolan over at PG first, or Ben or Terry, or particularly those we've sent out from here to do work internationally.
[00:19:22] You can think of John and Hannah. We were praying earlier for Casey and Bree, for Zach and for Madison, Jeremiah and Kellen, for Travis and Beth. Right? Not merely names and faces in a directory.
[00:19:34] Now we break them out in the directory so you can particularly pray for them and so you can in part participate in their work.
[00:19:41] Friends, it's why we give to the budget, so we can support that work. As they supported Paul and his work, it's why we've built support teams around these workers so that we can be the kind of supporting help that this congregation wants to be to Paul as he's in the midst of his work.
[00:19:57] And friends, if you want to be a part of that, you can reach out to Mike or Aaron who help with the lead on missions teams and they would love to connect you so you can be part of these support teams. So in the same way the Philippian Church cared for Paul, this way we could care for those who are sent out and do gospel work from us.
[00:20:15] Friends, if we're going to make it in the Christian life. These are the kinds of gospel partnerships that we have to cultivate with one another and with those we send out from here.
[00:20:29] That brings us thirdly to the glue of this partnership. The glue of the partnership, right? What holds this partnership together?
[00:20:38] Well, friends, there's a repeated phrase used some seven times in these 11 verses, and it's that simple phrase, Christ Jesus, verse one. Who are Paul and Timothy but servants of Christ Jesus? Verse 1. Who's Paul writing to, but saints who are in Christ Jesus Christ. Verse 2. Where does grace and peace come from but the Lord Jesus Christ?
[00:21:05] How does Paul yearn for them? Verse 8, but with the affection of Christ Jesus? Paul prays, verse 11. That they would be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Christ Jesus.
[00:21:19] All to drive home the point, friends, that the glue of the partnership is Christ Jesus, right? Without him there is no partnership. Without him there is no bond.
[00:21:32] He is what binds them in this supernatural relationship.
[00:21:36] I mean, think about it. What else could possibly unite a wealthy merchant, a young slave girl and a hardened prison guard? What else could unite those three together in a congregation? People of entirely different segments of society, society that would not normally mix with one another.
[00:21:56] And yet they gather and serve and love together.
[00:22:01] And friends, think by the time that this letter is being written, it's now been 10 years since that church was founded. And you do just wonder, like the little slave girl, I mean, did she grow up? Did she get married?
[00:22:14] You know, did the hardened prison guard, did he walk her down the aisle?
[00:22:20] Did Lydia, right, the great provider, the wealthy woman who had the purple doth and cloth and clothing and all the rest. Like, did she make the dress?
[00:22:31] It would be a beautiful picture, because then that's exactly what church is meant to look like.
[00:22:37] Genuine gospel partnerships that are not bound around shared interests or common hobbies, but rather bound around a common Christ.
[00:22:52] And it begins with him.
[00:22:56] And this glue is going to bring something out in Paul, and it's also going to give him confidence in these Philippians. Well, what does this glue bring out in Paul? Well, notice how Paul and that bond in Christ.
[00:23:11] Notice the kind of joy that exudes from Paul in these verses. Right. Verse 4, Paul speaks specifically to how he prays for the Philippians. What, with joy.
[00:23:23] Joy or rejoicing is a theme that's going to come out throughout the book. And what's remarkable is, remember Paul's writing this letter, and he says, I am praying with joy, right? Every time, all the time. I pray for all of you. What am I doing? I'm praying with joy. When. Where's Paul? Paul's in prison.
[00:23:39] That's where he is.
[00:23:41] And I don't know about you, but the last time I checked, jails aren't typically places that are filled with joyful people.
[00:23:50] And yet Paul prays as a joyful man and friends, that's because genuine Christianity and the heart of a Christian is never tied to one's circumstances.
[00:24:02] You know, I'm often reminded of the story of Jonathan Edwards.
[00:24:05] If you don't know Jonathan Edwards, he's America's greatest theologian. We can have a debate about that afterward. I think he was. He was a wonderful pastor in Massachusetts. He later became president of Princeton University. Died tragically. That's a longer story. But nonetheless, there was a time in his life which he would describe as perhaps the greatest trial in his life.
[00:24:25] And I don't know about you, but when I'm going through a trial, most people can tell my countenance falls.
[00:24:32] Right. I kind of walk around like there's a massive weight on my shoulders. It's pretty obvious, sadly, when I'm in the midst of a trial. And yet, in the midst of this season, one wrote of Jonathan Edwards and said, I never saw the least symptoms of displeasure in his countenance the whole week.
[00:24:49] But he appeared like a man of God whose happiness was out of the reach of his enemies.
[00:24:58] Friends, that's biblical joy.
[00:25:00] Happiness that is beyond the reach of one's enemies.
[00:25:07] Because biblically speaking, friends, joy is not so much an experience as joy is an attitude.
[00:25:14] Joy is not a passing feeling you chase.
[00:25:18] It's rather a settled posture that you choose.
[00:25:22] Joy is actually not what happens to you.
[00:25:26] Joy is actually what reigns within you in the Gospel.
[00:25:32] And I know it's a bit silly, but I once read joy, described this way, right acronym joy, Jesus, others, yourself.
[00:25:42] Right. I know it's a little cheesy, but it actually works, right? Joy. If you want to understand joy, you just gotta follow that order. Jesus, others, yourself.
[00:25:51] And if you tie your joy to your circumstances, friends, you will never find it.
[00:25:57] If you tie it to Christ, friends, that joy can never be taken.
[00:26:02] But being in Christ doesn't just bring internal joy in Paul. But notice the kind of affection that comes out that exudes from Paul. External affection.
[00:26:13] These verses are smothered with Paul's affection. The way he opens in verse 3. Write in all my remembrance of you always and every prayer of mine for all of you. He'll say in verse seven, how it's right of me to feel this way about you all because of the way I hold you. Paul says in my heart, verse 8. He speaks of how he yearns for them with all the affection of Christ Jesus.
[00:26:37] You read that and you might even say like, this is Paul's love letter to the Philippian Church. Some of you might think this letter reads better than letters I've written to my wife, right? Maybe we can learn from Paul.
[00:26:48] That just makes you wonder. Is just Paul just a super loving guy? Is that all we're getting? Friends, go back and read Acts.
[00:26:54] Paul was not a super loving guy. Paul was a mercenary. He was one who was killing Christians.
[00:27:01] You read his letters and you don't just assume even that Paul was a super loving guy in the sense that he exudes this kind of affectionate love. He possesses it, no doubt about it. But we're seeing it uniquely here.
[00:27:13] We're seeing it here. So what happened? Did Paul just get soft in his old age?
[00:27:18] Well, no, I don't think that's it. I mean, maybe a little bit. But what happened to Paul is the Gospel is continuing to work in Paul's life. The joy of knowing Christ and being in Christ and having these partnerships in the Gospel. The result of that is this kind of affection and, and joy for the Philippian Church.
[00:27:38] And its root is there in the Gospel.
[00:27:42] You know, friends, maybe you don't feel especially like a loving person this morning, right? What do you do if you don't feel especially like a loving person?
[00:27:50] Do you simply try to like dig deeper and just squeeze a little bit more out of your heart? Right. Is that how you sort of get more love?
[00:28:00] You know, sometimes when my wife makes guacamole, she's like, hey, will you, will you squeeze some limes for me? Right, for the guacamole? And I'm like, sure. And you know what happens? Sometimes you go to the store and you get a bag of limes and you cut the first one, you go to squeeze it and you're like, this thing's dry as a board. Like, I can't get any juice out of this.
[00:28:16] Well, friends, that is a bit like trying to just merely look inside of us in order to find love and affection. It can be like trying to squeeze that dry lemon. You can squeeze it and you can try harder, but you're probably not going to get much out of it.
[00:28:37] No. What does Paul say? Right? It's not squeezing within. That's the solution. Paul says he loves them. Verse 8. How does Paul love them? With all the affection of his heart.
[00:28:48] Is that what Paul says? Verse 8?
[00:28:52] No, that's not what he says. He says he loves them with all the affection of Christ Jesus.
[00:29:00] Paul's love comes from Christ's love.
[00:29:04] It's not that Paul is this super loving guy. It's that Christ is. And because Paul knows Christ now, Paul has become a more loving person.
[00:29:15] It's Christ's heart that is now overflowing in Paul's heart.
[00:29:21] Friends, you will never love like Christ if you don't first know the love of Christ. You just won't be able to. You can't love like him if you don't first know his love. Right? It all begins there.
[00:29:35] Which is why the single best thing any of us can do in growing in our own hearts for a love for others is to better understand the heart of Christ toward you.
[00:29:48] If you better understand the heart of Christ, the heart of Christ to sinners, you understand that heart and that love. And friends, that takes care of the love that you need to express towards others.
[00:30:03] But notice this glue. It's not just internal joy, it's not just external affection. In Paul, this is also. This glue is producing something. It's accomplishing something actually in the Philippians themselves.
[00:30:15] So look up to verse five.
[00:30:17] Paul talks about their partnership right from the first day until now.
[00:30:22] In other words, Paul's referring to the way the Philippians supported his ministry right from the very beginning, from the first day up until the present.
[00:30:32] And then notice what he says in verse six. He says, I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
[00:30:44] So notice how Paul's moving from the past to the present and now into the future, right? This is something we see. The word salvation isn't used, but Paul's referring to the souls of these in Philippi in the same way. When Nick was leading us through Romans in bti, we talked about how salvation was a past, present, and future reality. You're seeing something of it right here in Philippians 1.
[00:31:07] Paul is looking forward to the future and Paul's confidence in the Philippians future in Christ. Notice Paul's confidence is not, hey, I know you guys. You're never going to make mistakes. You're going to crush it in the Christian life.
[00:31:22] That's not what Paul says.
[00:31:25] Paul doesn't say you guys have aced this Christianity thing. That's not what he says. I mean, think about it. I mean, think about your own life.
[00:31:33] Think about all the things in your life that you've quit.
[00:31:37] Think of all the things you've begun and haven't completed.
[00:31:43] You can think about that workout routine, maybe that food fad. Maybe there's still some things in your pantry left over from that time.
[00:31:51] Maybe. Think of all those budgets in ynab.
[00:31:55] Some of you who use YNAB know what I'm talking about. How many of your budgets look like they have 40 fresh starts in them because you get started and you never finish.
[00:32:03] Think of your garage. Perhaps that garage, which might be just a graveyard to all the old projects that you never completed and have tried to hide from your spouse.
[00:32:15] Or maybe all the hobbies you once started but quickly gave up on.
[00:32:20] Friends. Sadly, we quit things all the time.
[00:32:24] Sadly, we even quit on relationships.
[00:32:28] But friends, Parker reminded us right out of the gate, right? I loved it. Friends, God's not like us.
[00:32:34] He doesn't quit on anything.
[00:32:37] He doesn't quit on anyone.
[00:32:41] He never gives up. Everything God starts, he completes 100% of the time.
[00:32:48] No incomplete projects. I mean, imagine God's to do list. Like, the whole thing just looks like checks. It would be amazing or at least soon to be checks, right? Point being, God finishes the things that he begins and it's 100% success rate.
[00:33:06] And let's just, like, compare that to, say, baseball players.
[00:33:11] In baseball, you can fail 7 out of 10 times at the plate and still become an All Star.
[00:33:20] 30% of the time, you succeed in getting on base and you're amazing friends. Imagine if God was like that. Imagine if he just succeeded 30% of the time. We would be terrified right now. Like, are we gonna make it on base, around base? Who knows? Friends, God's not like that.
[00:33:40] He brings his children home Every time, if our salvation rested upon us, friends, that would be a wretched thing. That would be a horrifying thing.
[00:33:52] Because if you know your heart like I know mine, our hearts blow warm and cold, right? There are fits and starts in the Christian life.
[00:34:03] And Paul's confidence has nothing to do, therefore, with the Christianity of these Christians, if you will.
[00:34:12] It rather has everything to do with the Godness of their God.
[00:34:17] That's where his hope is, that the one who began the work will finish the work 100% of the time. And friends, if you are in Christ, that means you.
[00:34:29] But that doesn't mean we just coast our way through the Christian life, because even as we confessed our faith and that statement of faith and the perseverance of the saints, right? What's the grand mark of one's persevering attachment to Christ? Well, it's that they persevere in the faith. They keep walking in the faith. And that's what Paul says about these Philippians.
[00:34:50] They don't just coast, right? This brings us fourthly to the goal of the partnership. The goal of this partnership, namely it is the Philippian sanctification. It's their own growth and holiness. That's really what verses 9 to 11 are all about.
[00:35:05] Paul prays that their love would abound with what? All knowledge and discernment, verse nine.
[00:35:11] So that, right? He's praying for this purpose that they be pure and blameless. Verse 10, filled with the fruit of righteousness. Verse 11.
[00:35:22] And it starts, notice with love, verse 9.
[00:35:26] Now, I know the flower power generation, as we used to call them in Santa Cruz, right? The kind of hippie generation, the flower power generation, right? They would. They loved that mantra, all you need is love. I think it's John Lennon and the Beatles maybe, right? All we need is love. Love is all we need.
[00:35:42] That was the mantra.
[00:35:44] Well, friends, the challenge is it actually couldn't tell us what love should look like.
[00:35:49] Paul, on the other hand, is praying their love would abound. But then Paul tells them, what should Christian love look like?
[00:35:57] He says it must. What verse 9. Abound with knowledge and all discernment.
[00:36:03] That word knowledge regularly refers to knowledge of God, to knowledge of the Scriptures.
[00:36:09] And then this is what enables us to be discerning in a Proverbs kind of sense, right? To be able to judge and look at situations and make wise decisions.
[00:36:19] Because, friends, knowledge without love, well, that's just cold and cruel, isn't it? Knowledge without love, and yet love without knowledge.
[00:36:34] Well, friends, that kind of love, Love without knowledge, that's just blind, maybe even dangerous.
[00:36:41] And churches tend to fall into one of those two ditches.
[00:36:44] They have knowledge without love or they have love without knowledge. One of those two. Interestingly, in Revelation 2, John warns two churches of just these very things.
[00:36:56] The apostle John, when he speaks to the Ephesian church, he warns them and he rebukes them because of their loveless knowledge.
[00:37:04] And yet when he speaks to the church at Thyatira, what does he rebuke them? He rebukes them for their ignorant love.
[00:37:12] Those are the ditches we have to avoid.
[00:37:14] Our knowledge needs the warmth of love, and our love also needs the light of truth from God's word.
[00:37:22] And yet, as important as this love is, Paul says actually love isn't the goal.
[00:37:27] Love isn't finally all you need.
[00:37:29] That's not it. That's not the goal in of itself.
[00:37:32] This love is actually a means to an end that they be able to approve what is excellent or what is best and so therefore be pure and blameless. Verse 10 righteous. Verse 11.
[00:37:43] So notice Paul basically prays that these Philippians would become what they already are.
[00:37:53] Righteous ones. He's praying that become what they already are, as God has already declared them to be. What to be saints.
[00:38:01] And recognize that's what makes Christianity so unique.
[00:38:05] Because every other religious system calls us to the costly work of trying to become what we're not.
[00:38:14] That's what religion is. It's some system, some means by which we try to become what we are not.
[00:38:21] But friends, Christianity is just the opposite.
[00:38:25] Christianity says rather become what God has already declared you to be and what one day you fully will be.
[00:38:35] That's Christianity. And Paul says that is all finally, to the praise and and to the glory of God. That is the chief end.
[00:38:47] Now, before we leave Paul's prayer for his partners, for his friends, you know, we thought a good bit about what Paul does pray for. It's just worth noting briefly and quickly, what does Paul not pray for?
[00:38:59] It's striking, really fascinating what Paul doesn't pray for.
[00:39:02] Have you noticed in Paul's prayers, even here, Paul almost never thanks God for for things, but rather he thanks God for people.
[00:39:14] He thanks God for people.
[00:39:17] People dominate Paul's prayers.
[00:39:21] And don't you find it interesting that Paul's appeals, they almost never are for a change of circumstances.
[00:39:30] In fact, Paul's prayers almost never pray that. I mean almost never right for circumstances again to change. Instead, what does Paul regularly pray, but rather that not our circumstances would change, but that we would grow in love, that we would grow in knowledge and discernment, right? That we would grow in holiness and joy. The kinds of things we see right here in Philippians 1.
[00:39:55] Which just begs the question, think about your own prayer life.
[00:39:59] Think about your own prayer life.
[00:40:01] How much of your prayer life is caught up with things that you don't have, rather than people around you that you do?
[00:40:13] How much your prayer life might be consumed by things you don't have, all the while ignoring people around you that you do?
[00:40:20] How often do we pray for changed circumstances and fail to pray for our changed heart?
[00:40:30] How often do we plead for God to again change what's around us? And yet we fail to pray that he would change what's within us.
[00:40:41] And imagine if your prayer life and ours increasingly reflected the prayers of Paul.
[00:40:51] Friends, as a culture, this is hard stuff because again, we love the individualism of our nation, right? We love, again, the Chuck Norrises of the world, the Jack Reachers, James Reese's of the world. Those who are accountable to nobody answer to no one. Those people who live and die on their own terms and according to their own moral code.
[00:41:16] For us, the individual is sovereign.
[00:41:21] Whereas in Philippians 1 we're being reminded that Christ is Lord, that he alone is sovereign. We think we may be servants to no one, but true joy and freedom is found in actually being a servant of Him.
[00:41:37] The sovereign individual only belongs to himself.
[00:41:40] No, Paul says the Christian belongs to Christ and therefore belongs to God's people.
[00:41:47] Which is why Paul will say, christians who partner together grow together.
[00:41:55] Will we have partnerships and bonds like this with one another?
[00:41:59] Let's pray that we do.
