Philippians 4:2-3 | Heavenly Minds, Earthly Conflicts

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning.

Have a little bit of a quiz for you this morning.

Don't worry, it's not difficult.

I think the answer to every question is yes.

How many of you have had a conflict?

Yes.

How many of you have had a conflict with a spouse or a sibling or a parent?

A boss, a coworker?

We've all had conflicts and disagreements.

In one shape, form, fashion, they come to all of us.

Did you know the Bible is full of conflict?

It's full of conflict, but reconciliation is less common in the Bible.

Conflict happens when people disagree or think differently, and that division then shows in sinful attitudes and actions in ourselves.

Reconciliation occurs when those parties work through their issues to reunite together.

Sometimes, as it apparently was with Jacob and Esau, time appears to be a healing factor.

Over time, Jacob was humbled, and then when they came back together, Jacob sought forgiveness.

Time seemed to lessen the intensity of those relationships.

Sometimes the ability to forgive an offense is healing, as it appears to be with Joseph and his brothers.

Joseph matured to be able to trust God's sovereign purpose in his troubled life so that he could forgive his brothers to the point of saying, You meant it for evil.

But God meant it for good.

Christ's forgiveness and restoration of Peter after his denials of the Lord Jesus demonstrate how transformative forgiveness can be in relationships.

One of the most challenging situations for us to understand is the disagreement between Paul and Barnabas in Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Two men who were critical to the beginning of the Church of Jesus Christ.

One somewhat recruited by the other.

They became partners in ministry, they planted churches together, they led people to Christ together.

But along the way, they took along an apprentice named John Mark.

After a while, for some reason, John Mark decided to leave them and go home.

Later, Barnabas wanted to bring John Mark back and take them on a new missionary journey.

And Paul stood firm saying, no, absolutely not.

He's not going to take somebody who abandoned them once.

And so they split up.

Barnabas going one way, Paul going another way.

We don't know what happened with the relationship between Paul and Barnabas.

Something changed.

Paul later told Timothy to bring John Mark with him because he was useful in Paul's ministry.

So there was at least some reconciliation, some coming together between John Mark and the Apostle Paul.

But we don't have enough evidence to say whether or not Paul and Barnabas were ever reconciled.

All of these are enough evidence to tell us that disagreements and ruined relationships even occur in the Lord's church.

And those conflicts occur for two main reasons.

The first reason is that disagreements and damaged relationships happen because we don't see things from God's perspective.

We can't see the whole picture.

We only see a limited view.

And so sometimes those limited perspectives lead to damaged relationships and disagreements.

We are human.

We're not divine.

We don't know everything.

Not even your pastors and elders know everything.

Nor can we see everything there is to see in any given situation.

That's the first reason that conflicts and disagreements happen, damaged relationships result.

Our perspectives in life are too limited.

We don't think God's way.

The second reason why relationships and disagreements occur is that we are sinful people.

As sinners, our hearts and our minds are misaligned.

We don't naturally think and feel the way God does.

So our focus shifts away from God and in his word toward earthly things.

So combine those two reasons now.

Perfect relationships require seeing things as God sees them.

But because we are not God and our hearts and minds are twisted and self-centered, we are unlikely to want to see things God's way.

That reality reveals that conflict displays what our focus really is.

Our conflicts reveal our thinking.

They reveal where we devote our attention, and to some extent, what or who has influenced us.

We should recognize, though, before we go on, that sometimes disagreements are not sinful.

Sometimes relationships can become strained when one person makes a righteous decision while the other chooses a different yet also righteous path.

I think that's what happened with Paul and Barnabas.

Can't be sure, but that's what seems to be.

But many disagreements and damaged relationships arise from not seeing things God's way and in some form or another not choosing God's path.

We've encountered this theme several times in the New Testament book of Philippians.

You have your Bible, turn there with me.

The Apostle Paul at the very beginning faced a conflict with some Christians in Rome.

You remember he was in prison, and there were Christians in the city of Rome wanting to make his imprisonment worse.

That's a conflict.

It appears they didn't share the same understanding or application of the gospel, which led to disagreements and the working out of difficult situations.

There seems to have been conflict in the city of Philippi as well.

There's emphasis on this in chapters one and two, where they have opponents.

The church has opponents in the city.

This morning we find ourselves in chapter 4, verses 2 and 3, where we see conflict between two women in the church.

That's our focus for this morning.

So if you have your Bible or device, follow along as I read those two verses for us this morning.

Philippians chapter 4, beginning in verse 2.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

I entreat or I urge Yodia and I entreat Syntichi to agree in the Lord.

Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the Book of Life.

Two simple yet very complex verses.

These two verses depict real conflict in a specific church at a certain place in time in history.

Yet they're recorded forever.

How would you like to have your names in the Bible saying that you disagreed with somebody else and have everybody throughout the rest of church history know it?

But these two verses don't stand alone.

The Apostle Paul could have placed this segment almost anywhere in his letter, but he chose to put it right here.

And that placement influences how we should see it.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, it means that the conflict between these two individuals is likely an application of what we've already looked at in chapter 3, verses 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and into chapter 4, verse 1.

That is, Yodia and Syntache were not imitating Paul.

Nor were they imitating those who were imitating Paul.

They weren't imitating Timothy, they weren't imitating Epaphroditus, who was from their own church.

Their minds, as verse 19 of chapter 3 says, were set on earthly things.

They were not living as citizens of heaven, looking for the glorious return of their king, as we've just sung.

They're living as citizens of earth.

They're not standing firm in the Lord, as chapter 4, verse 1 says, but they're standing firm in their own way of thinking.

When you look at verse 2, it says to agree in the Lord, the end of the verse.

It literally means think in the Lord.

That detail is very important because the idea of thinking or of a mindset of having this way of processing information in your mind is rampant in Philippians.

Thinking-related words appear ten times in four chapters.

That's quite a bit for a short letter.

They occur once in chapter one, three times in chapter two, three times in chapter three, and three times in chapter four.

Do you think thinking is important?

I hope you think thinking is important.

Because Paul thinks thinking is important, especially in the church.

The ESV often translates these words, have the same mind or think this way, always pointing to how we process information.

So, in a way, Yodia and Syntichis' conflict was a thinking issue.

They were not united in mind.

They did not have the same thinking.

They did not have the mind of Christ in their disagreement.

On a relational level, we can say with chapter 2 that they were not considering others more significant than themselves.

So as a result, they're not acting like Christ.

They're not acting like Paul.

They're not thinking like Christ.

They're not living out their lives in light of eternity.

They're not influenced by the right examples.

Instead, their minds are set on earthly things.

Friends, conflict often exposes your influences and your focus.

Here in Philippians, we find the Apostle Paul's approach to the issue, specifically the issue between Yodia and Syntheci.

And that it serves as a way to improve our relationships and resolve conflicts today.

The Apostle's approach is to allow the hope of heaven to realign our thoughts and our minds and influence our relationships.

Pretty simple.

But very hard.

Before we go any further, we need to make sure that we understand that Yodia and Syntichi are Christians.

They are Christians.

They have heard the good news of eternal life and the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus, in his life, death, burial, and resurrection.

They have believed in him.

Their names are written in the book of life, verse 3 says.

They have their citizenship in heaven, and they didn't stop there.

They're called co-laborers in verse 3.

And to cap it off, Paul states listen, you don't belong here.

You belong in heaven because you are residents, citizens of heaven, and your names are written down there.

They're inscribed forever there.

We know nothing else about these two women except for what we find in these two verses.

They're not mentioned anywhere else in Scripture, nor in any other early church documents.

This is all we have of these two women and their situation.

The question, then, is what the Apostle Paul intended to communicate in these two verses, not just for Yodia and Syntachy, or for the church in ancient Philippi, but for us.

Twenty one hundred years later, when we can't get along, we can highlight four truths of Christians of every generation.

Four truths that every generation of Christians needs to hear in light of this situation.

Let's walk through them briefly.

First, conflict is normal.

So having the same mindset is essential.

Now that statement needs some clarification.

God didn't intend for his world to be in conflict.

He didn't create it to be in conflict, nor did he intend for his people to be in disagreement and at odds for one another.

So when I say conflict is normal, I mean it's normal in a fallen, sin-cursed world.

It's part of what we deal with because of sin.

We aren't given any details about this conflict in Philippi.

There's no juicy gossip.

We don't know any background of these two ladies.

We don't even know if they're married.

We don't know if they have children.

It's simply the acknowledgement that two women who served Christ in the church were at odds with each other.

And the apostle doesn't pick sides.

Did you notice that?

He addresses them exactly the same way.

Exactly the same words.

I entreat Yodia, I entreat Syntachi.

Think like Christ.

That's it.

He doesn't distinguish them in any way.

He doesn't elevate one and demean the other.

We don't even know if Yodia was in the right and Syntichi was in the wrong, or if Syntichi was in the right and Yodia was in the wrong.

I know I'm going to say those names wrong sometime today, by the way.

Forgive me in advance, please.

Maybe both of them had acceptable perspectives, but their disagreement put them at odds and tension with each other.

We don't know.

One side is not elevated over the other, but neither is conflict minimized.

Friends, conflict in the church is never trivial because it always reveals some kind of deeper issue.

Yodia and Syntiche were singled out by name and are remembered forever in the Word of God, so they needed to understand the significance of their conflict.

At the same time, imagine the Apostle Paul sending us a letter and naming two of us by name, and we're sitting around looking at each other thinking, so glad my name wasn't in there.

But what are you guys, what are you guys doing?

It would be awkward, wouldn't it?

It would be stressful.

So the whole church needs to feel the impact of this interpersonal conflict.

And that's something that we need to emphasize.

Just because two women are highlighted here in verse 4 doesn't mean that this is a particularly female problem.

It's merely the way that the apostle's emphasis on proper focus and thinking is applied in the church in Philippi.

In reality, this is an us problem.

We are all Yodia and Syntichi at some point.

You all said yes to my questions at the beginning.

This is an us problem.

We all have conflicts because we are all sinful human beings.

So the Apostle Paul doesn't tell us who was right or wrong, but he does highlight their main issue.

They weren't thinking like Christ.

Literally, think in the Lord.

Now that doesn't just mean thinking about Jesus, it refers to adopting the humble mindset of Christ, lived out in a fallen world in the context of being with others.

Yodia and Syntechae lacked the right mindset and the right focus to be together in Christ.

They were not imitating Paul from chapter 3, verse 17.

They weren't imitating Timothy and Epaphrodiaeus from chapter 2, verses 19 through 30.

Instead, they imitated those whose minds are fixed on earthly things.

They thought and lived like people whose end is destruction rather than those whose citizenship is in heaven.

Let me put it more bluntly than that.

Yodia and Sintiki were acting like ambassadors of heaven who needed to be recalled.

Conflict is normal in a fallen world.

It's going to happen because we're not yet perfect people.

We don't always think clearly.

We don't always have the right focus.

But what we learn here is that right thinking and a Christ-like mindset are essential for managing conflict, especially conflict in the church.

So if conflict persists, it shows that the same thinking under Christ is not present.

And if the mind of Christ isn't there during conflict, it may be that earthly thinking has replaced Christ-like thinking, and we're no longer thinking with heaven's view, but our view.

That's why having the right mindset is essential for us as believers.

The right mindset begins with understanding that your citizenship is in heaven and your names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

That eternal focus helps you reorient your thinking to think like Christ.

The second eternal truth we find in the example of Paul, Yodia, and Syntechi is that conflict is incompatible with being children of God.

Incompatible means it doesn't fit with who you are.

You know, that the proverbial square peg doesn't fit in the round hole.

Peaches and tomatoes are both fruits, but don't put peach sauce in my spaghetti.

That didn't give as much of a laugh as I thought it would.

You guys have peach sauce in your spaghetti?

What's wrong with you people?

Diesel fuel doesn't go in gasoline engines.

It's incompatible.

These things don't go together.

Being earthly minded and driven by the desires and the lusts of the flesh is incompatible with a citizen of heaven whose name is written in the book of life.

Friends, this entire section is written towards Christians.

We can go all the way back to chapter 3 and verse 15, where he says, Let us, let us, he's including himself in this context, we who belong to Christ.

That's repeated in verse 16, let us hold true.

In verse 17, he addresses these people as brethren.

Brothers and sisters.

He emphasizes that in verse 20 with the pronoun our citizenship is in heaven.

And the we await a Savior.

This is all framed within gospel identity.

It's speaking to those who have exchanged their earthly life for faith in Christ and eternal life in Him.

In chapter 3, verses 17, 18, and 19, there's clear contrast between those who follow the apostolic example and those who follow the appetites and lusts with minds set on earthly things.

So the implication to saints in conflict is that conflict doesn't fit who you are.

You have been remade to be the image of Christ, like in the Garden of Eden.

So conflict doesn't mesh with you anymore.

If conflict has its source in our humanness or our sin or our earthliness, then we are not living as citizens of heaven.

So the implication here is that Yodi and Sintiki are behaving, at least, like earthly people and are not thinking like Christ or treating one another as Christ would.

They're not considering each other more significant than themselves.

Now it sounds like we might be getting to be a bit harsh on Yodi and Syntachi.

So let's pause a moment and make sure that we remember that we shouldn't judge these two ladies.

Because we feel the pull of earthly mindedness ourselves, don't we?

We're in the same place.

That pull is strong because it taps into our desires, our earthly human desires, like our desire to be right and our desire to be in control.

Giving into human-mindedness seems right to us.

That makes sense.

And our complaints feel justified because we feed our fleshly desires as part of being human.

But that simply doesn't work for citizens of heaven.

Citizens of heaven must recognize that a right mindset, living out the humility of Christ, is our standard.

So we must engage any conflict by first confessing sin, squashing selfishness, and eliminating the desire to be right and righteous and to seek the mind of Christ.

We're to be people who seek peace through like-minded thinking grounded in imitating Christ.

Now, we can't force that on others, can we?

You ever tried to force somebody else to be kind?

It doesn't work real well.

You can't change the heart of somebody else.

We can encourage them, we can direct them and point them, but the only people whose mindset that we can change is our own.

So with that in mind, let's go back to chapter 2.

Let's go back to chapter 2 and read a few verses here with all of this in mind.

Chapter 2.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, which there is, if there is any comfort in love, which there is, if there is any participation in the Spirit, which there is, if there is any affection and sympathy, which there is, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

What do we think of Yodi and Syntiche?

Certainly seems like in the context of Philippians, they're not doing so well about imitating Christ in his thinking and his consideration of others.

Let's move to our third truth from this early church conflict.

Conflict resolution sometimes requires a like-minded community.

Paul asks in verse 3 his true companion to help them in this conflict.

We don't know who that is.

We have no idea.

Just speculation.

There is someone, apparently, who is close to Paul, who is close to Church and Philippi, who's close to Yodi and Syntechi, who can come along and help them.

Maybe this is the place where those mentioned in chapter 3, verse 17, those who are imitating Paul, maybe they're stepping back into the conversation here because they're like-minded in Christ.

They are to encourage these two women to be like-minded.

But we don't know exactly how this is all working out.

What we do know is that others are being encouraged to step into this fray to help everyone think like Christ.

Every true son or daughter of God, everyone whose citizenship is in heaven and whose names are written in the heavens in the Lamb's Book of Life, everyone will spend eternity with other brothers and sisters they struggle with.

You're going to be in heaven with Yodi and Synthy, whether you like them or not.

So the encouragement here is to act like citizens of heaven now before we actually get there.

Because we're going to be spending eternity together.

If you're a citizen of heaven and your name's in the Lamb's Book of Life, you're going to be there together forever.

And it would be shameful, wouldn't it, if we were found in conflict because of our earthly mindedness when the Lord returns?

We saw that in chapter 3, verses 20 and 21, where we await a Savior.

It's like we're looking, we're anticipating, we're waiting for his return.

And when he returns, we're bickering with each other.

So those who follow the apostolic example should help those who are caught in the web of earthly mindedness to have the same thinking.

That's challenging, though, isn't it?

The person with the wrong thinking needs to submit herself to Christ and humble herself like Christ to be able to receive redirection.

But if they're not willing to humble themselves, redirection doesn't happen.

We need humility to accept that our way of thinking may not align with Christ.

That's where we need outside help.

Sometimes that humility isn't present, and we just dig in in our heels and we get hard-hearted.

Those who follow Paul's example need patience, compassion, and gentleness as they try to step into corrective situations to try to mold and shift and redirect others' thoughts and hearts from earthly things to Christ-like things.

And because we're still in the flesh, those who follow Paul may still struggle with sin themselves and may not always provide help perfectly.

It's just a big old messed-up mess that we live in.

Which is why the only true source of help in conflict is the mind of Christ.

Right thinking, grounded and centered in Christ Himself and in the things of Christ, is the only true hope.

We have to recognize, friends, that conflict is normal, it happens.

So having the right mindset is essential.

It's why we need to humbly submit to God's intent that his children be different from the world.

That's why we need to recognize that God brought us together for our good.

Because sometimes we need someone else's help to think like Christ.

And so those whose place it is to help others in conflict need to understand your role is not to take sides, but to help everyone redirect their orientation to their heavenly, eternal standing and how that works itself out in whatever issue is at hand.

Now there's a fourth truth we need to hear.

You've been hearing it all morning, but we need to hear it one more time.

Earthly temptations require the right focus for reconciliation.

It seems that Yodia and Syntachi were stuck.

So communication was not instant.

Something had to have been happening in Corinth between these two women.

It gets either written down or verbally communicated to Paul through Epaphras, but Epaphoras has to travel from Philippi to Rome, find Paul in prison in Rome, communicate it.

Paul has to write it down and send it back to them.

There's a lot of time that's going on here.

So this seems to be an extended kind of disagreement.

One or both of them had flawed thinking so that they could not agree.

Now, in Philippians, we've seen an emphasis on the future for quite a while.

We've been redirected to think about our lives in terms of being resurrected with Christ, not just in our initial faith, but truly resurrected with Jesus to eternal life.

In chapter 3, verse 11, the Apostle Paul points that is something that's coming.

So there's an encouragement to join Paul in forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead of us.

And what lies ahead is the glorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven, our home, for he will return to gather us so that we might be with him forever.

That same Lord is already at work in us.

He's begun a good work that he has promised to complete.

But along the way, we're going to have conflicts of many kinds.

Some of them, as chapter 1 taught us, with enemies outside the church.

Some who are enemies of the Lord and of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

And we're going to have conflicts inside with brothers and sisters in the faith.

So it's critical that those who belong to Christ follow the apostolic example in life, being transformed by the mind of Christ to live as aliens on earth.

That focus, that mindset, that reorientation is required for resolution to be possible.

So when we encounter conflict, which we will, right?

We should not ask, who's right?

Instead, we should ask, where's my focus?

Am I focusing on Christ and the things that bring glory and honor and praise to him?

Or is my mind on earthly things?

Like being wounded or offended, or thinking about how our lives are going to be affected or our desires to be vindicated.

But it's amazing what happens that if you lift your eyes to the horizon of eternity, to our home in heaven and to the return of Christ, the things of earth begin to grow strangely dim.

And the light of his glory and grace.

Because the certainty of our citizenship and the inscribing of our names and the annals of heaven and the reality of Christ's coming reshape how we think and how we act now.

It doesn't mean we're always going to think identically, but it does mean we can think like Christ.

And the things of earth begin to take on a different shade, a different strength.

If our eyes are focused in the right place.

Those are genuine components of disagreements and conflicts.

But what we find here by the Apostle Paul placing these two verses in this place, in this context, with the focus on what is coming, where our real true identity is found, tells us that a heavenly mindset gives us the only ground on which resolution and reconciliation are ultimately possible.

That's the foundation on which Yodhya and Syntichy and each one of us can finally agree in the Lord.

We can finally have the mind of Christ, consider others more significant than ourselves, and exalt Christ instead of me.

Let's aim for that.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, we have so often failed.

So we confess our sins to you, knowing that you are a faithful and righteous forgiver.

That when we elevate our earthliness and our sinfulness and our desires and all this fleshly in us.

So that there is there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So why would we condemn one another?

Lord, enable us to have your mind, give us your spirit in fresh and powerful ways to think alike in you.

Lift our eyes to heaven, make the things of earth grow strangely dim so that you might be praised and we might show what eternity will be like because we think like you.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.