Joy in Spite of Cirumstances

Well, tonight we're gonna study chapter one of Philippians in our Bible study, which is called Finding Joy. I hope you found time to read and to write out your passages. I got to write out the whole chapter and to study in the study guide. If you have been around our Women of the Word Bible studies before, you know that sometimes we like to ask three relevant questions when we study a passage. And the first question is, what does it say? The next question is, what does it mean? And then the next question is, what does it mean to me? And we're gonna do a little bit of that tonight to get in the practice of doing that. Last week in our intro, we pointed out that the purpose of this letter beyond the Apostle Paul just saying, hey, thanks you guys for caring about me and for sending a gift while I was in prison. The purpose of the letter was to remind them to rejoice because they belong to God and to remind them to make progress in their lives like they belong to God. And in fact, we're gonna find that phrase packaged in our first chapter tonight. I'm gonna put it up on the screen in verse 25. We're gonna see Paul actually use those two words when he says, I will remain and continue with you all, look at this, for your progress and joy in the faith. We identified that as the point of this book. I'm gonna flip them around, joy and progress. Joy because we know the Lord, progress in our faith. That's what we're looking at in this book. So what I'm gonna do is read verses 3 through 11. You can follow along in your Bible and then we're gonna pray and jump right in. Verse 3 starts with,

And so Lord, we pray and really ask your presence to be with us, Lord. We ask that you would just work in our hearts, help us to set aside the distractions of our day, the distractions of our life, Lord, and to peer inside of the holy scriptures that you've given us, Lord, to get insights into our life in you, our life in the kingdom. Be with us, Lord. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. So this first section that we look at is so relational. Look at those relational phrases. Did you notice them? It sets a tone for the whole letter. He says, how I yearn for you. He says, I hold you in my heart. I thank my God in my remembrance of you. You are all partakers with me of grace. These are super relational phrases that he uses. And it doesn't much resemble the unhealthy, independent Christianity that we can trick ourselves into thinking is normal. When we read something like this, we see, oh, this independence that I have begun to think is normal isn't healthy at all. What's healthy in the body of Christ is what we see here, to form partnerships together with the gospel at its core, to hold each other in our hearts, not at arm's length, to realize that we've been thrown together as partakers of his grace. I want you to think now of two of those people that we studied in our intro in Acts 16, Lydia, the businesswoman, seller of purple cloth, and the jailer. As we read again in verse 5 what Paul says, he says, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, we are given insight into what the first day looked like. Remember how they cared for him, how they formed an immediate partnership. Lydia invited Paul and Silas to come into her home. The jailer tended the wounds and fed them and brought them into his home. They formed a partnership immediately. And here, a decade later, Paul is reminding them of the partnership they formed from the first day until now. That partnership continued. I think that's really sweet. So for us, we may think of salvation, our salvation, as sort of an exclusive experience and existence that affects us only. But this passage should jolt us back into the reality of what God intends for our salvation to be, and that is what we see here. We're not intended to be isolated, even though sometimes we isolate ourselves. That is not the intention. We are to form partnerships like we see here. So we can ask some questions of ourselves. Have I isolated myself? Does isolation come so naturally to me that I don't even realize how unhealthy it is? Do I need to make some changes in how I view people that I've been thrown together in Christian living with? So this is how Paul began his letter, with gratitude for their participation with him in the gospel. As he says in verse 7, he was defending and confirming the gospel. And now he prays for them to grow. He's grateful for them and he prays to grow so that they would become even more useful than they were at first. He says that your love would abound more and more with knowledge and discernment. I have so much NIV in me that I can hardly read that without saying knowledge and depth of insight, which I love. I like discernment too, that's a great word, but it just comes out in my brain, with knowledge and depth of insight, which is also really good, that deep insight that we would have. So to what end is the purpose of growth in their lives? Well the purpose was, he said, so that they could approve what is excellent. So that they could be pure and blameless. So that they would be filled with the fruit of righteousness for their good and for God's glory. These points are obviously relevant to us too. Who among us does not want these things? Who doesn't want to approve what is excellent? Who doesn't want to be pure and blameless? We need to be filled with the knowledge of righteousness for our good and for God's glory. We're going to repeat that a few times tonight. And so Paul is praying for them for this spiritual growth, and it's a great model for us. It's a great model for us to think about praying for those around us. Our husband, our children, people that we are in circles with, ourselves. Paul and I pray this for you guys. This type of spiritual growth, that the Lord would do this in you. In fact, every Thursday morning, our staff is praying these things over you guys. But I want to move on to the next section in verse 12, which kind of represents day three in your study guide. And verse 12 says,

Now, you noticed in your study guide that we themed this chapter, finding joy in spite of our circumstances. Maybe finding joy because of our circumstances, okay? And so this section that we're going into is now going to highlight the Apostle Paul's chains and how God used them in his life. So let's start asking those three questions. What does the text say? Well, it says that Paul was imprisoned because of the gospel. And his imprisonment right now doesn't look like it did in Philippi a decade ago. There he was in chains, remember, bolted to the building. This is a house arrest. It's different, still in prison. He can't leave, okay? And the text tells us that it was for Christ, in verse 13. What does it mean? Well, for Paul, it meant inconvenience. It meant discomfort. It meant humility. It meant limitations, unhealthy conditions. It meant the end of his freedom to go about from town to town preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ as has been his rhythm of life for the last couple of decades. It had come to an end. In other words, Paul's entire rhythm of life changed because of this. one wants to be in a prison of any kind. But Paul, in this letter, wanted the people to know, he says, well, what's happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. His difficult circumstances were achieving a greater good. We learn he speaks of the Imperial Guard. And we know from history that there was usually four soldiers that would rotate through every day. Four new soldiers would come in to be with the Apostle Paul. They would listen to him praying. They would maybe listen to him preaching to them, telling him about God's Son who came for forgiveness of sins. So four new people every day come to him. Pretty neat. And we read on to and find out the other things that are happening. In verse 14, he says,

All right, let's stay on this topic of difficult circumstances and ask our third question. What does it mean to me? Because there's really few things more relevant in our life than a question like this. Do we not all ask it either out of our mouth or just in our hearts? We ask questions like, wait a minute. If I've been born again, if I'm a child of God, and now I belong to God Almighty, the creator of the universe, who can do whatever he wants, why is it that I have difficulties in my life that he's not doing anything about? Have we all not asked this question? Why is there not movement in my life on this one particular issue or 17 issues? Why does God allow this? And I don't pretend tonight to speak for God. But we here at Women of the Word have marched through the word of God, spring and fall and now summer. And what do we see over and over in the word of God? We see that it boils down to God allowing things to press in on our life for our good and for his glory. And I want to elaborate a little bit on that. It's not simple. No, it's simple. It's not easy. It is very simple. It's not easy to get the perspective that Paul got and some other people get. And I want to digress just a little bit and share some more modern day people who got the perspective. First one I want to talk about is Amy Carmichael, who was a missionary in India and spent a large chunk of her life moving freely about caring for those children that she brought into her compound and created a family, until one day she broke her hip. And for the remainder of her life was in prison, in bed. Her chains became her bed. But yet, she would say, what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, because her ministry changed from that point on to doing for a handful of children, now to writing, which illuminated the problem of the temple prostitution with children and changed the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands of children in India. I want to draw your attention to Fanny Crosby, who is a hymn writer from the last century, who was blinded at six weeks of age and wrote hundreds, thousands of hymns that we sang over the course of that time period. Even still today, some of them. And here's her insight. Toward the end of her life, this is what she says. It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life. And I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow, I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I'd been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me. She found a way to gain the eternal perspective. I love how she writes that. I think of Johnny Erickson Tada, whom had been allowed to be paralyzed for the bulk of her life from a teenager on. And because of that, it really served to advance the gospel, because millions of people heard her teaching, her singing, her encouragement, because the Lord gave her a platform. And God uses chains in many forms in our life. He uses financial hardships to teach us patience, trust, compassion, dependence on the Lord. He uses chains like caring for small children. Mamas, have you ever felt like that was a chain? It is not easy. And he uses that to teach us self-control, to teach us dying to self, to teach us compassion and patience, marriage complexities to teach us humility, perseverance in prayer, long suffering, physical infirmities. And we know down deep as Christians, we know down deep that without some of these chains in our lives, we would go our merry way, like Fanny Crosby says, distracted by all the beautiful and interesting things that there are around us. And we would forget our creator. We would forget to thank him. We would begin to trick ourselves into thinking that we created this beautiful little life that we live in without problems, wouldn't we? We would do that. And so some of what God has done in our lives are for our good. We yearn for that perspective, to look at the chains that we have about us as God's toolbox, working in and through us, to bring to completion through sanctification the process that he began, that's what Paul said, through our justification. And it may not have been easy for Paul either, but here's a couple of things. As we continue on in our text, in verse 19, he says,

Now, those are two incredible things for us to just linger on for a minute. He says, because of your prayers and the help of the Holy Spirit, this is going to turn out for my deliverance. And the same thing is true for us. Those are two incredible pieces to our puzzle as we're facing difficulties in our circumstances. So let's talk about the prayers of the saints, because this reminds us of that beautiful ministry we have to one another in marriage, in friendship, in the body of Christ. It's kind of a similar reality that we started with in this chapter, the partnership of the gospel, not to be isolated. So how do we pray for someone who is walking through a very difficult circumstance? We're the pray-er. They're the pray-ee. They're getting prayed for. How do we pray effectively for them? I want you to think about this situation that we're studying. I want you to think about how the apostle Paul would have felt. He'd already said to them, what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. So I want you to think about how he would have felt if he knew they were having prayer meetings, and all they were saying is, Lord, spring him. Lord, would you release Paul from prison? Would you get him out of prison? Would you release him? And they wanted to eliminate his difficulty. How would he have felt? He said, no, no, no, no, this is advancing the gospel. I'm where I'm supposed to be right now. But isn't that almost what we always want to do with somebody? We just want to see them happy. We want to see them released. We want to see the chains gone. We want to see the circumstance change. So how do we pray? We don't want to save them from the chains, but we want to strengthen them in the chains. When you are praying for someone in a difficult circumstance, you don't want to fix it or save them from their chains. You want to see them strengthened in their chains. Paul talked about the help of the Spirit of Jesus. And certainly, when we are going through difficult circumstances, we perceive the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life in a much more vivid, colorful way than we did before. Paul knew that if he had those two elements in play, the prayer of the saints and the help of the Spirit of Jesus, that everything was going to turn out. He knew he wasn't going to deny his circumstances, like it doesn't exist, like it wasn't a big deal. But he had a different perspective. Let's read on. Keep reading. Verse 20. Paul says,

So what a perspective the Apostle Paul had. Win-win. He says, if I live on, more fruitful ministry. That's a good thing. If I die, I go to be with the Lord. That's a good thing. This was his perspective, is win-win. It's a simplistic view of life, and few of us can gain the assurance of such a simplistic view. In fact, fear of death, it's a big issue. It is a big thing for us. I don't mean to make it sound like it isn't or it shouldn't be. Some women fear death because they're truly not ready to meet their maker. They're not ready for the judgment that comes along with that. Some women fear death because of a sense of responsibility. Like I have these responsibilities. I have people to take care of. They can't do it without me. Some women fear death just because it's unknown. Never done it before. The fear of the unknown is a tangible thing for us. But honestly, fear of death is a different Bible study that we're not doing right now. So I want to just end with some levity in that. And this comes from Dr. J. Vernon McGee, who you might know as a Bible teacher from a few decades ago. And he tells a few cute stories. One is he said he got a letter from a woman during his first cancer surgery, and she wrote this to him. She wrote, Dr. McGee, I know that everyone has been praying that you will get well, but I'm praying that the Lord will take you home, because to be with Christ is far better. And he wrote back, and he says, dear lady, thank you for your letter. Would you please mind letting the Lord decide about this? And then he tells about an evening church service one time, and the preacher was getting very passionate about being with the Lord and about heaven. And he asked the congregation, he says, how many of you want to go to heaven? Raise your hand right now if you want to go to heaven. And the whole room had been worked up with him and raised their hand that they wanted to go to heaven except for one little boy. And he finally looked at that little boy, and he said, Johnny, do you not want to go to heaven? And he said, well, I sure do, but it sounded like you were getting up a load for tonight. But truly the difficult circumstances in our life, they do grow us to be more open-handed with our life. Over time, we become more open-handed like Paul. We gain this perspective. This is why we want spiritual growth, to get to the point where we say, hey, Lord, whatever you have for me, as long as I'm here, I'll keep doing it. When you take me home, I'll do that, and then I'll be done with this labor, and that'll be good too. So let's talk about the living part, because that's what Paul does, verse 27. He says,

Now, I just want to point out, because I found it so interesting that as he's talking about your manner of life being worthy of the gospel, he does not talk about independent personal virtues like the fruits of the spirit, love, and long-suffering, and patience, and things like that. He doesn't talk about that. Look what he talks about. He uses all community words in here, standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. That is what he talks about in context of your manner of life being worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. These are some new elements to me. I've taught Philippians three times, and I've never really gotten this vibe out of it before of how community-oriented God intends for us to be, and I think it's really beautiful. And spoiler alert, when you start chapter two and we get to verse seven, it's going to be the high point on this one-mindedness sort of thing. So I'm going to leave this concept for next week as well, and we're just going to finish up the last two verses. It says,

Two important crucial elements, again, that we have in this closing. He says, it has been granted to you to believe in Jesus Christ and to suffer for his sake. I always say that as a refrigerator magnet that no one ever has. And now I'll probably get a few emails this week, and you'll say, I put it on my refrigerator. But those two elements, to believe in Jesus Christ and to suffer for his sake, pull together the gospel message that we see. Isn't it what we've been saying, that we're supposed to rejoice because we belong to God and grow like we belong to God? How do we grow? How does a baby's bones grow? How do young bones grow? They grow through pressure and resistance. They stand, you bounce babies on their lap, and you put that pressure and resistance, and that is how the bones grow stronger and stronger. And the same way we grow spiritually, through pressure and resistance. We don't grow any other way. And that is why it has been granted to us to believe in Jesus Christ and to suffer for his sake, because spiritual growth for our good and for God's glory. And if we don't believe this truth, we're really embracing a different gospel. It's not the gospel that the New Testament eyewitness men that the Holy Spirit had write letters and it's in our New Testament. If we don't believe this, it's not in agreement with what they've written. So I want to tie this all up. Our study is titled Finding Joy, and this chapter is Joy in Spite of Circumstances. I want to put a proverb on the screen for you. It's Proverb 1028, which says, the hope of the righteous brings joy. And I feel like this is a proverb way of saying what Paul is saying in Philippians. The hope of the righteous brings joy, because God has placed eternity in our hearts. He's put it in our hearts. And then Paul wrote to a different church in a different town, the town of Corinth. And I want to put 2 Corinthians 4, 7 on the screen. And to them, he said, we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. And there it is again. It's for our good and God's glory. Now if that verse sounds familiar to you, it's for one of two reasons or both. One is because you got all the way to day five in your study guide, and it was there. The other reason may have been because that's what Paul taught on Sunday. And I wrote the study guide weeks and weeks ago. And no idea he was teaching 2 Corinthians, no idea it would dovetail, and he would teach that passage three days before. But the Lord always knows those things. And I feel like it's a good companion to see the apostle write to two different churches and use different words to say the same thing. I want to highlight what I wrote in my own journal from Sunday from verses 8 and 9. We do suffer for the sake of Christ, but there's a huge difference between the appearance of our suffering and the reality of our suffering. So look at this on the screen. The appearance, my appearance as I have difficult circumstances is that we're afflicted. But the reality is we're not crushed. The appearance is that we're perplexed, but the reality is, but we're not in despair. It looks like we're persecuted, but we're not forsaken, and we're struck down, but we're not destroyed. See, it's all about perspective. Perspective changes everything because these things have been granted to us as his kids. So I want to take us now to verse 17 for perspective. Second Corinthians 4.17, and this is out of NIV again, just I love it. Paul says, for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. When I say that verse, I know that there's a certain percentage of you in this room that say, yeah, my troubles are not light and momentary. They're with me. They're hanging on. I'm under the cloud. They're not going away. And for that, I really am sorry. I'm always sorry when I have a friend or someone who is truly suffering under something that is difficult, but the answer for us is always to change our perspective, not to change our circumstances. It's not in the study guide there, Elizabeth Elliott, a quote by her, Christ in me, not me. in a different set of circumstances. Getting there is sometimes tough. And I'll admit it. It's tough for me when I'm in a difficult circumstance. I just want out of it. But perspective, perspective, perspective. And I hope that that's what you got out of this lesson. So Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you that you remind us that you are always with us. We are not forsaken. You have the capacity, Lord, to work everything that comes into our lives for your good, for your glory. And I just pray that we would learn and grow in your perspective, in Jesus' name, amen.