Introduction to Philippians

Welcome to our Bible study on the book of Philippians tonight, which is subtitled, Finding Joy in a Disjointed World. So you might wonder, where are we going with that? What does disjointed mean? So I want to point out, first of all, the little word play in use there, joy and disjointed. It's important that you understand that word play. I want to share with you a little story that might help you understand what disjointed means. When our oldest was 16, we had a birthday party for her, large party. There might have been some of you here in this room at that birthday party, boy-girl party. It became actually a routine in our family then to have a big 16th birthday party. It was January, and so there wasn't a whole lot of space to go, a lot of room, and the teenagers, I don't know really what they were doing at that point, but there was a mob on the floor, and so this massive humanity began unraveling, and there was our little three-year-old Timmy at the bottom of the pile, kind of going, holding his arm, and he became a little inconsolable, and we realized something is wrong, and so we made a visit to the emergency room, and his elbow was out of joint, and so they fixed it. We learned later that's something that we probably could have done. It was the first time we faced it, and so, but nonetheless, it was great because he came home with a little ID bracelet and was convinced it was a watch, and said, for days, I went to the hospital and got a watch. But the point of this story is that dislocated elbow, that elbow that was out of joint. When something is disjointed, it is not in order, it is apart, it is separated, it is out of order, and the world that we live in as it relates to its relationship with its creator, God, is separated, it is apart, it is out of order in many ways, and even as born-again Christians, Bible-believing Christians, sometimes our life can be disjointed. It can be out of order, it can be separated, it can be apart from, we can feel that estrangement from our God. But our culture in general certainly is estranged from God, and it's driving us crazy. As a culture, it's driving us crazy emotionally, and spiritually, and mentally through its disjointedness. Well, a jointed relationship in English anyway has joy at the root of it, joy at the center, and Nehemiah said, the joy of the Lord is my strength. An elbow that is jointed is a strong one. It can serve its purpose. A joint that is out of joint is not only weak, but painful. So, a jointed relationship with the Lord for us positively affects our thinking, our planning, and our contentment. Well, the Book of Philippians sits squarely on the theme of joy and rejoicing. You're going to run into those words 13 times in the four chapters, 104 verses in this book. So, what we want to do tonight is get to the purpose of this book. Knowing that rejoicing is the theme, we want to uncover the purpose so that we're better equipped to begin our study each week. So, I want you to open up your Bibles to the Book of Philippians, Chapter 1. We're going to read verses 1 and 2 to pinpoint the author and the audience. So, Philippians 1 verses 1 and 2 simply says this,

So, this clarifies for us who wrote the book. Paul, the Apostle Paul along with Timothy wrote the book, who it was written to, it says the saints at Philippi or the believers, the people that are there along with the overseers, the deacons, those who are in leadership. But it's not easy in those verses for us to identify when it was written or again, the purpose of the book and that's what we want to get to before we're done tonight. So, the Apostle Paul shared the message of Christ in many locations throughout Asia and Europe over the course of a couple of decades. So, when did he actually write this letter? When is an important question for us and if you want to take a look in your study guide, and I'm going to put the slide up too, I made a little chart because I needed to pull my thoughts together and figure out, like how does this all piece together? So, I made this little chart that I got from some different sources, and dates in the Bible times are somewhat debatable, but I think that this gives us a good general picture. So, I want you to notice there, it says note the years 51-54, and it says that's Paul's second missionary journey. It's the second time he launched from Antioch to go out into the country and tell people about Jesus Christ, their Savior. I want you to look at those years then, it says 60-67, and these are the approximate dates of Paul's imprisonment in Rome. Scholars believe that this letter was written about AD 62. Now, what I'm working up to is the importance of connecting the dots in that. So, if he went to Philippi during his second missionary journey in around maybe 50-51, and if he wrote this letter in about 62, let's connect those dots. It's a decade that went by between the time when he first went there, and when he wrote this. Now, 10 years doesn't seem as long to me as it once did. It seems like a short time anymore, but I want you to hold on to that idea while I make just some generalizations about this book of the Bible that we're going to read. This book isn't necessarily filled with doctrine, although we're going to find some doctrine in it. It is not necessarily in essay form like say maybe the book to the Romans is. It is not very corrective like Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia, or to the church at Corinth. Rather, this is a personal thank you note. This is a warm, friendly, thank you note that he wrote to people that he cared deeply about. So, we're still headed to the purpose of this letter, but let's talk about the background of the church. The backstory of this church. Fortunately, we have more information about this particular church than any other in the New Testament. I don't know why, but the Holy Spirit and Dr. Luke saw fit to give us a lot of information and kind of character sketch about some of the people that believed in Christ in the earliest days in Philippi. How you meet somebody doesn't really tell the whole story of your ongoing relationship with them, but it can give us some puzzle pieces and it can give us context. Context means a lot, and so we're spending time today getting some context to help us launch into our study in the next few weeks. So, I want you to turn in your Bibles to Acts Chapter 16. We're going to spend some time looking at the context of how this church got started in the first place so that we can kind of glean together why the book was written 10 years later to this church. So, Acts Chapter 16, we're going to start reading in verse six. It says,

I want you to note the narrative changes right there in those verses from they to we because Dr. Luke joined them apparently at that point. So, now also in your study guide, there's a map and we'll put the slide up as well. The point of this, the main point is that Paul was being divinely guided away from Asia, which was his intention to go further into the continent of Asia, and he was being guided northward and westward more toward Greece and Rome. This was God's idea. This was God's plan. Some of you are really spatially oriented and to look at a map means a lot to be able to place things on a map. I didn't insert all the towns that we read about, but Troas is just north of Ephesus in Galatia, and Philippi is in Macedonia, which is Europe. So, this is the first time the gospel is headed to Europe. Back to Acts, it says in verse 11, we have the narrative here

Now, we're still kind of talking about context here, and we learned that Philippi was named after its conqueror, about 400 years before Philip of Macedon had conquered it, named it after himself. And so, it was called Philippi. His son is Alexander the Great, so that gives you some context in history there. But this town of Philippi was really a Rome away from Rome. It was Roman to the core in how it did life and all of that, so there's our context. Now, we're going to get to some good stuff here.

Now, we've got to pause just one last time here and talk about what kind of people lived in Philippi. So, let's talk about Jews. Were there Jews that lived in Philippi? It doesn't sound like there was, because if there had been ten Jewish men, they would have had a synagogue. And Paul's M.O. when he went into a town was to go to the synagogue and share there. He went out to find a place of prayer by the river. So, apparently, there's not much, if any, of a Jewish population in this town. What about Christians? Well, you've got to remember that the message of Jesus Christ is about 17 years old at this point. And Paul's the one bringing it. There couldn't have been much that had traveled that direction yet. So, there's not much in the way of Christians, either. No Jews, no Christians in general. So, now we're going to start these character sketches of three people that are going to form the very beginning of this church in Philippi. Verse 12...14, I'm sorry. It says,

Alright, let's take a look at Lydia. And I left some space in your notes, if you want to take some notes on anything that, like, the Lord resonates in your heart. We find out a couple things about this woman. It says she was a worshiper of God. And it says that the Lord opened up her heart to pay attention to what Paul said. Let's talk about those things, because they're both really, really fascinating. Some of you were with us in our study of Acts. By the time we got to Acts chapter 10, do you remember that Cornelius was a Roman centurion who worshiped God? Okay? So we've seen this before in Scripture. And you might say, well, how, what was the deal? How is she a God worshiper? Well, some people just have this capacity to look at life around them and look at the world around them and say, there is a creator to whom I owe allegiance. I am going to worship that person. Here's how Paul expressed it when he wrote to the Romans. And I'll put it on the screen for you. Paul wrote in Romans 1, 19 and 20. And this is out of the New Living Translation. He said, people know the truth about God because he's made it obvious to them. Ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. So Paul sheds some light for us on how we find a God worshiper who doesn't know a thing about Jesus. And, but Paul's about to tell her the things that she doesn't know. She doesn't know things like that God sent his son incarnate in flesh to lead a sinless life and yet to bear the penalty of our sins. So that if we believe in that substitutionary transaction, we can be in right standing with God. She doesn't know that yet. She's worshiping God. Well, the second phrase that says, the Lord opened up her heart to pay attention. It intrigues me a lot because in the same way that the Holy Spirit guided Paul, he had to pay attention to what the Spirit was saying to get there in the first place. The Holy Spirit is working in this woman's life to pay attention to the message. It is a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, in every person's life, to pay attention to the message of the gospel. Some of you, probably every one of you, cares about or is praying for somebody in your life that has not yet paid attention. And you say of them, I just don't understand how they don't get it. You're waiting for them to get it. You're praying for them to get it. Sometimes when I go through scriptures, I'm looking for a new, fresh prayer vocabulary. This is a good prayer vocabulary for someone that you're praying for to pay attention to the message of the Lord. And so whoever it is you're praying for, just say, Lord, I just pray that you would come upon them to pay attention to the message of the gospel, that they would understand because it's your work in their life. So that's just kind of something that I pulled out of that section. And then we learned that she and her household were baptized. So Lydia must have been an influencer because her whole family, her household, got baptized immediately. Okay, so there's our first character sketch in this church at Philippi. We're going to get ready for the second one. Verse 15, 16, I'm sorry.

But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas, dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. So let's talk about this girl, this slave girl. She was owned by this group of men. She was a victim of human trafficking. Maybe not the way we use the term today, but certainly she was a victim of human trafficking. They were using her for what she had to offer to them, which was a spirit of divination. And so contrast her now with Lydia, a businesswoman, a dealer of purple goods, and a slave girl who doesn't even have a proper name that's used in this passage. It seems to be so much property. And so we see in the early church here this broad spectrum of human existence. Now, let me be clear. It doesn't tell us in Scripture that this slave girl got saved and became a follower of Jesus Christ. It's just not in the passage. I just think she probably did because if somebody casts a demon out of you and you are free from all that, I'd probably serve that one, but it doesn't necessarily tell us. So I am kind of surmising there that she became part of this church. These men that owned her, there was a certain kind of unreasonableness in them. First of all, they were human traffickers. They owned her. They had an irrational entitlement that when their lifestyle was disturbed, they demanded the suppression of those, Paul and Silas, who came and disturbed, and they dragged them into the marketplace. To make a long story short, Paul and Silas, where they were attacked by both the marketplace crowd, the magistrates, they were stripped, beaten with rods, thrown in the inner prison, and their feet were put in stalks, meaning that they were physically attached to the building itself. So we find out then what happens that night in verse 25.

Can you imagine the fear that would well up in your heart if you were physically attached to a building, to a wall, you couldn't even shift from one part of the room to another, and you began to feel the rumbling? And it turned into a great earthquake. You're helpless. There's not a thing that you can do. You can't run. You are attached. You've been tied to that building. Can you imagine their emotions? We read that story, we teach that story in Sunday school, and from our side of the story, we're like, oh, you don't have a thing to worry about, God's behind this, God has a plan in this. It's going to be good, you're going to love it. But from their side of the story, they didn't know. They hadn't read this chapter yet. They didn't know. And, you know, don't we have things in our life? We're still on this side of it. And the rumbling, and the fears. And we're just like, how? We're going down. This isn't going to be good. But if we could go about 5 or 10 years on this side and look back, we're very well going to be able to say, God had a plan. And what looked so fearful at the moment, God was using to free us, to break those chains, so that we could be freed. Well, anyway, that's exactly what happened. And the last person, in the character sketch that we're given in Acts, is this jailer, verse 27.

Okay, so this jailer, this third person of interest, or maybe we should say third person interested in Jesus, he immediately asked Paul and Silas, what do I need to do to be saved? I think that's an interesting thing for him to ask, because remember his context. He's a Roman. It's Greek-Roman culture. A lot of the other towns that they went to, they thought Paul and Silas or Paul and Barnabas were Hermes and Zeus. Wouldn't you think he would think of them as a god? But he looks at them and says, what do I need to do to be saved? What made him even think of that? I think about the slave girl that was running around town following Paul and Silas for many days, saying, these men can teach you the way to be saved. It annoyed Paul, and he cast the demon out of her because you can't have a demon preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, do you think maybe there was an influence that that girl may have caused this jailer to think about, I wonder if they can teach me. I wonder if they do know something that is going to... At any rate, he just went right to him and said, what do I need to do to be saved? So, I want to note some things about these people. They all found joy in having their relationship with their creator God fitted into order during what we read about in this chapter. Their spiritual ligaments were now whole together, no longer separated and disjointed. They did it through believing the message of Jesus, and then they were baptized, all of them. They were baptized, or Lydia and the jailer were baptized at once to demonstrate on the outside the change that had happened on the inside. And that's the great thing about water baptism is it gives us something to show on the outside. You know, we can't show that change on the inside except through the fruits of the Holy Spirit. But that takes a little time, maybe, for someone to see the fruit of the Spirit in us. So, it's great that we have this thing of water baptism to show on the outside what just happened in here. Well, they were immediately baptized. Another thing that is consistent with them is that they brought their family along into the kingdom. They were influencers. Lydia and the jailer were influencers. And I would hope that we could be influencers. I hope to be an influencer for you through this study with the elements that Paul has written to this church in Philippi. And the last thing is that we see, I want to point out that they immediately began to use spiritual gifts. Lydia offered hospitality, and she tended to the needs of Paul and Silas. It says she told them, Come to my house and stay. Right away. Right away, she started operating in the gift of hospitality. And the jailer, as well, with compassion, it says he washed and tended their wounds. And then it says that he brought them up into his house and set food before them. So, right away, these new converts are walking in a movement of the Holy Spirit and gifts of the Spirit. What I want to focus on now and for the remainder of our time is what we see in verse 34. Take a look at verse 34, what it says about the jailer. It says, And he rejoiced, along with his entire household, that he had believed in God. He rejoiced that he had believed in God. Now, nothing else really changed in his life. The only thing that changed in his life was that he believed in God. And he rejoiced simply because he believed in God. When is the last time that you and me rejoiced simply because we have believed in God? Did you rejoice today? Did you rejoice this week? This month? There's a lesson here for me. Nothing else has to change in my life, but there's that one thing. And I got to thinking about, you know, in our context, the way we do church in this country, in this time period, we usually, almost across the board in all Christian churches, come together, we have musical worship, and then there's some kind of exhortation, teaching, preaching, whatever you have. I got to thinking about the importance of worship because it takes people that have at least a natural gift, maybe a spiritual gift, of music, worship. They've already figured out the melody and the lyrics, and we get to step into that experience and rejoice that we have believed in God. See, it's kind of laid out for us as we come together. This is another importance of us coming together is that we have this opportunity when we come together to do just what this Jilly did, to rejoice because we have believed in God. And sometimes, I don't know about you, but I come into a church meeting and I just need someone else's preparation for me to just walk in and sing the words, say the words. You prepared it for me. I'm going to just come in and rejoice greatly that I have believed in God along with you. It's a really important thing, and it's a neat thing to think about in terms of how we do worship. But we've made clear that the book of Philippians is centered on the theme of rejoicing. We see that that theme started 10 years before the book was written. It started with this jailer rejoicing that he believed in God. Well, it started before that because Paul and Silas were rejoicing in the midnight hour. They were singing hymns and praising God at midnight. But we all know how things can change in 10 years, don't we? That new car that you bought 10 years ago, and it was so snappy and so shiny. Now it's got coffee stains all over it, door dings. It's 10 years later. And that deck that you built 10 years ago that was just awesome had 66 inches of snow come off the roof, and the joists are broken. It needs to be tore down and rebuilt. In some of those first, the honeymoon, the first anniversaries, that were awesome, you get down the road a few years. And it can turn into a taco truck in Home Depot if you're not careful, right? Like 10 years makes a difference, and I'm feeling that as we look at the book of Philippians. I'm looking at what happened, especially to Lydia and the jailer. And then I'm looking at what Paul is writing to them. Presumably they're still in the church. We don't know, but this is a common human experience. It's a common experience for us that things change over time. Our relationship with the Lord that we were once over the moon rejoicing about can very easily cool and become routine, maybe boring. So the purpose of the letter to the Philippians, first of all, for Paul to say, hey, thanks so much for being part of my life and the gifts that you send. But the purpose is to remind them to rejoice and to make progress. This book is to remind them, move forward. You're making progress. Don't lose ground. What I want to do is close by savoring two of our upcoming scriptures. I just want to whet your appetite for your study, so I've chosen a scripture from chapter one and a scripture from chapter three. And the first one, I'll have Tim put it up on the screen, it's Philippians 1, 6, that says, I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. Now Paul's writing to believers, okay? And what he's saying is, I'm sure that God who began the work in you, God who justified you, brought you into the kingdom, he's going to keep working in you. He's going to carry it to completion. He's going to take care of the sanctification part, which is just a churchy word for us to look more like Jesus, for Christ to be formed in us. He's going to keep doing that. And as his kids, do you know what our life looks like? He keeps driving us to those areas of surrender. He keeps driving us to those areas of releasing sin in our lives, those areas of getting rid of the pride, those areas of control, where we want control. That is the sanctification process. God is driving us so that we see that, and that's how we make progress in our spiritual life. And do you know what? He's using the circumstances in our life to accomplish that. He's using the people in our life to accomplish that. He's refining our notions of our own image, our accomplishments, our achievements. And he's calling out worry in our life and calling us to contentment. And that's what this book is about. Those things represent the four lessons that we're going to have coming up in the four chapters that make up the book of Philippians. From chapter 3, the last verse we'll put on the screen, 3, 13 and 14, Paul says, One thing I do, one thing I do, he says, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal. For the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus. So we said this book is about rejoicing that we belong to God, but it's also about making progress like we belong to God as well. Do you ever feel frustrated that you are not, you haven't made as much progress, so I should say you're not as mature of a Christian as you would like to be, like five years in, or 15 years in, or 40 years in, whatever you are in, however long you've been in the kingdom. Have you ever felt a frustration like, I thought I'd get it better by now. I thought I would be more mature by now. Areas maybe that we haven't surrendered, areas of control that we just hold on to so tightly. Well, I want to point out something to you. The Apostle Paul was about 20 years in when he wrote this letter. He had been saved, he'd been converted, he'd been running around doing what we call the three missionary journeys, and so he was in, and what does he say? He says, well, one thing I do, forgetting what's behind, I keep pressing on to the goal. Sometimes maybe we don't forget and we don't press. Sometimes maybe not only are we not forgetting what's behind, but we're, as they say, living in the past, and maybe we're not pressing on to the goal, but just walking forward with blinders and not knowing where we're going. So I think that this is such a great exhortation, of course we'll get to it when we get to chapter three, that Paul had a handle on the fact that God was using the exact circumstances in his life to fulfill this forgetting what's behind, pressing forward. God was using the exact people in his life so that he could forget what's behind and press forward, and he was using any lack that Paul had to teach him contentment, and we know that Paul was telling the Philippians, I have learned, I have learned the secret of being content. So God himself is pointing us down the track, isn't he? He's pointing us to the goal for the prize, and we want to cooperate. We want to rejoice that we've believed, we want to rejoice that we belong to him, and we want to grow like we belong to him, so I'm going to pray. Father, I thank you for this night, I thank you for helping us, for giving us so much information about how these people even came to you. The very first people on the continent of Europe probably that received the gospel and that formed this early church, Lord, you've given us so many insights, and we thank you, we absorb that gratefully, Lord, from you, and Lord, I pray as we just launch into our study of this book, I pray you would give us insights. Lord, help us to just put the boundaries around our minds when it comes time to study, time to read, time to process your word, and I just pray that your Holy Spirit would be active in each of our lives and hearts to not only help us understand what the Apostle Paul wrote to be included in the word, but in what your Holy Spirit's speaking right now today in our lives. Lord, thank you. Be with us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.