The Joy of the Gospel | Series Introduction

Thanks for checking out this podcast from Carterville Christian Church.

We're so glad you're here.

Our hope is that through these messages you'll grow deeper in your faith and experience the life-changing hope of Jesus.

Now let's jump into this week's teaching.

We're starting a new sermon series today.

Don't worry, I'm not preaching.

It's called The Joy of the Gospel, and it's through the book of Philippians.

And at some point or another throughout the series, we're going to read every word of the book of Philippians.

And we're going to start, we're going to start out fast.

We're going to read the whole the whole first chapter of the book of Philippians.

So if you would follow along, it's going to be on the screen.

You guys have phones or Bibles, the scripture journals, however you want to follow along.

We're going to read the whole first chapter.

Paul and Timothy, the 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.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

And I am sure of this, that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole Imperial Guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.

And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill.

The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.

The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

But what then?

Only that in every way, whether in the pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance.

As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage, now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

For I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, but yet which I shall choose, I cannot tell.

I am hard-pressed between the two.

My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.

But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus because of my coming to you again.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or I am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.

This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that is from God.

For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

So all these all these letters are written to real churches, real disciples with real issues and with real questions, trying to figure out how to live their lives and live in community now that Jesus really is alive.

Um, and so we're we're excited to dive into this letter, excited to see what the Lord does through this study.

Want to encourage you, uh, these Philippians scripture journals are still for sale down in the atrium.

You can pick one up for a four bucks.

It'll be great, uh, great resource for you to be able to take notes, write things down, all that kind of stuff.

And I'm assuming uh that most of us in the room are at least a little bit familiar with the book of Philippians, and maybe you don't understand that you are or don't realize that you are, but my guess is that you are.

Um, and the reason why I would say that is because Philippians has a lot of quotable, like one-liners in it, you know.

Like I would say most people know Philippians um in bits and pieces if they've been around church at all.

They know Philippians in bits and pieces.

Uh one author said that we tend to know Philippians by the coffee cup verses, you know what I'm talking about?

Like the verses that get printed on coffee cups or on Christian t-shirts or you know, put in front of a uh mountainscape, you know, that you hang up in your office or whatever, you know, like that kind of stuff, or that your grandma hangs up in her bathroom, you know, whatever it might be, right?

Like this is what we see, right?

And and here's the here's the deal.

Like you might have heard some of these.

We just heard one of them read in Philippians chapter one, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Or maybe you've heard like have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had, you know, and then the whole the whole Jesus prayer in Philippians chapter two, or maybe your mom always told you, do everything without arguing and complaining, you know, from Philippians chapter two, or or maybe you've heard rejoice, I say it again, rejoice in Philippians chapter four, or don't be anxious about anything, but at everything by prayer and petition, present your request to God.

Or undoubtedly, I would assume most of us know Philippians 4.13.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, you know, one of the verses that's taken the most out of context in all of your Bibles, right?

Like, and here's the deal, while all of this is scripture and valuable to know, sometimes we can just know the coffee cup verses of Philippians and we can miss the depth of what he's trying to communicate to us, of what Paul's trying to really, really get to, the letter as a whole.

And our prayer throughout this study is that we would collectively come to a deeper understanding of this letter as as a whole, and as a result, it would build in us the kind of life that just looks like Christ, that looks more like him, that becomes more transformed into his image.

Um, and actually, there's a couple things we're gonna do.

I don't know if you if you picked up a bulletin, you'll see on the bottom of that notes page, we really want to just dive headfirst into this into this book.

So I'm gonna ask, there's a reading challenge that's gonna stay the same every week of this series.

Uh, as the Philippians would have received this letter, they would have had it read over them, like audibly read over them in a in a gathering, in a worship gathering.

Um, and in one sitting from start to finish, they would have read the entire letter.

So I'm gonna ask you to do that every week.

That's the reading challenge every week, is to gather up with some other people.

Maybe that's with some people in your dorm room, or maybe that's uh your life group, or maybe that's your family around the dinner table, whatever it might be.

Uh take a take 15 and 20 minutes and read over the book of Philippians from start to finish, once a week, every week, throughout this series.

I think the Lord's got something for you and got something for us.

We'll come to a better understanding, a deeper appreciation of what Paul's trying to say.

And then also there's gonna be a different verse that we're gonna add um every week to as a memory challenge for you.

We've started with Philippians chapter 1, verse 21, to live as Christ and to for to me, to live as Christ and to die as gain.

Philippians 1:21

Uh, they're gonna progressively get a little bit more challenging throughout the series, but we'd love for us to just write the words of God on our hearts um throughout this throughout this time.

Now, Dave already read all of Philippians chapter 1 for us, and like you said, we're gonna be reading over every single word that's that's found in Philippians throughout this series, but I think it's important for me to give uh quite a bit of background for us to understand as we begin this this eight-week study together.

Philippians 1 · chapter mention

Um, we need to understand, right, this is a letter written by Paul to the church in Philippi.

It's dated around 60, the year 60 A.D., right?

And we know Paul visited and planted this church in Philippi in his second missionary journey.

It's in Acts chapter 16, that we see this.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

And Paul actually, what's interesting in Acts chapter 16, if you go back and read it, you should write Acts 16 in your scripture journal right there, so you can go back and read it later.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

But what's interesting is that in that in that second missionary journey, Paul is is traveling and wants to go north.

He wants to go north into the region of Bithynia, and that and the text says that the spirit prevented him from going that way.

And that's a really interesting thing.

I'm not sure what to do with that, right?

But I know for sure that Paul was one who walked with the spirit, who kept in step with the spirit.

So he's he's prevented from going north and then turns, has this vision of his Macedonian man who's calling for help and who needs the gospel, and he instead heads more uh west and heads into uh Philippi, is where he ends up being.

So Paul was very strategic.

So I want you to see this map here of the second missionary journey.

You can see, you can't really read any of those words, and that's okay, okay?

But you'll you'll know that this starts in Antioch, in Syrian Antioch, on the far right side of the screen.

You can see the star.

That's my best effort at clip art, okay?

Um, and uh, as he's going through uh the regions of Galatia and Pamphylia, what you need to know is that Paul's already been there to all those churches.

Like the first missionary journey, he he planted all those churches that he's traveling through, and he's going through and encouraging the brothers and sisters in those different congregations that he has planted and established.

So he's doing all of that, and then he wants to go north again, the spirit prevents him, and he heads instead to Troaz up to Neapolis and then to Philippi, and that's where that's where we find ourselves.

Now, Philippi is a very important strategic city in the Roman Empire.

Actually, the Ignatian way ran from east to west through the city of Philippi.

It went right alongside the city of Philippi.

This is the main road from east to west in all of the Roman Empire.

So it's a very, very prominent city, and this is a Roman colony, Roman city, which means a lot of different things, but really what for the sake of our of our purpose, it it means there's a lot of idolatry, it means there's a lot of persecution, it means there's a lot of temptation all around, right?

And these believers are no doubt in the minority when it comes to those represented in this city.

Now, Damien mentioned it to me this week that it's important for us to realize this is written in in 80 60.

That's the typical dating of this letter.

And as it's written in AD 60, um, a lot of the New Testament hasn't even been written yet, or maybe not even circulated to all the churches quite yet, right?

So as Paul writes this letter back to the Philippian church to encourage them and to teach them and to admonish them, what he's actually like, think about how precious these words would have been to this church.

Who they might have a few letters there, they might have heard of, you know, they might have the gospel written out, the gospel of Mark written out for them, but like there's still John isn't going to be written for another 30 years, right?

Like, this is this is crazy what's happening here and how how important, how valuable those words would have been.

Now, Philippians is grouped together with three other epistles, with Ephesians and Colossians and Philemon, and they're known as the prison epistles.

Because Paul is writing this from house arrest in Rome.

And now, even despite those circumstances, Paul is able to have like tremendous joy.

Actually, Philippians is known as the happy letter of Paul.

And it's known as the happy letter because he uses the word joy or rejoice somewhere between 14 and 16 times in these four short chapters.

14 to 16 times in these four short chapters.

Now, that might not seem like a ton, but when you compare it to like the book of Romans, another letter of Paul's, Romans is four times the size of Philippians, literally 16 chapters, and it has less than half those those uses of joy or rejoice in it.

Right?

Paul is definitely overjoyed in this whole thing.

There's a deep joy that's rooted in Paul as he's writing this letter.

I heard one preacher say, so many of us settle for happy, and happy is better than sad, but happy doesn't come anywhere near joy.

Because joy is rooted in something that's bigger than all of us.

It's rooted in something that's way deeper than ourselves.

And this is the joy that Paul's writing about in Philippians, a joy that comes from the gospel.

And I think it's important for us, we're calling the series the joy of the gospel.

I think it's important that we define joy.

It's kind of a hard word to define, but we're gonna try our best.

Okay, so this is the working definition for joy for our series for these next eight weeks.

Joy is this, the lasting emotion of gladness that grows from delighting in God and resting in his promises.

I'm gonna say that one more time.

The lasting emotion of gladness that grows from delighting in God and resting in his promises.

Now I'm gonna we're gonna leave that up there for just a second because I wanna, there's some nuances here that we need to make sure we understand with that we need to understand.

This joy that we're talking about, obviously, it's it comes from delighting in God and resting in his promises, which means it's not dependent upon your circumstance.

Right?

That this is what Paul's talking about.

This is the joy that comes from the gospel.

It's it's delighting in the presence of God, not in whatever might be surrounding us right now, not what whatever.