Philippians 1:1-11

Amen.

Good morning, everyone.

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We have extra copies.

If you didn't bring one with you and you'd like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high.

We'll get one to you and uh just pass them down the rows.

If you'll do that eagerly and quickly, that'd be awesome.

And special thanks to our folks that are passing those around.

While that's happening, I'm so excited to tell you this is the very first Sunday that over at TVC East, there's a service that starts at 1015.

It's the second service we've been talking about a little bit, but this is the very first Sunday that we actually are sending a signal over there from this service to that service.

So they're actually watching us all right now.

So would you stand up, turn around, look at the cameras right under the right under the balcony there are the cameras.

Will you wave to all of the folks at TVC East right now?

Say we love you.

Yeah, awesome.

Yeah, bless you.

It's so good to see you and to be together and to be able to study together.

Uh we're looking at a new book today.

The book is Philippians, and we're gonna call our study here The Hope of Joy.

Uh I think the world could use a little bit more joy.

I know my world could use a little bit more joy.

My world could use a little bit more hope.

Um, I'm constantly pummeled by messages that go the other direction through my own personal experiences as well as the experiences that are going on around the world in which we live.

And so the idea that there might be the hope of joy on offer for me is at least intriguing or interesting.

I want to hear about that.

This book mentions joy or rejoicing 16 times in four chapters.

Uh, it talks about being in Christ.

We just sang that.

It talks about being in Christ 10 times in four chapters.

Jesus and Jesus Christ or Christ, those terms, uh the his title and his name, 40 times in four chapters.

Seventeen times in this chapter, chapter one alone.

We'll study verses one through eleven today as we sort of begin our study of Philippians.

Joy.

Is that what you think of when you think of religious folks?

I don't know.

When I grew up it wasn't quite that way.

Uh maybe it wasn't that way for you as well.

I used to think, you know, uh, I think I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, as like the last thing I thought of when I went to church, it seemed sour and dour.

It seemed check your emotions at the door, come in, and the frozen chosen folded their hands and just harumped and curmudgeoned their way through one hour of almost intolerable singing and music and sometimes intolerable preaching.

Although I grew up, I was very privileged.

I grew up uh underneath the preaching of A.W.

Jackson, who really where I got my love for verse-by-verse teaching.

And so I'm very privileged in that regard.

But I gotta be honest, little Jimmy Thomas was like, you know, I was coloring in the bulletin most of the time.

Because he he talked, he used big, you know, three and four syllable words, and I just kind of, you know, I didn't quite get all that stuff.

Uh but it was the training in studying the Bible that became so important to me, uh, just as a method.

But he would often talk about joy, as Jesus talked about joy when he said, These things I've spoken to you, that my joy may be in you.

He's talking to his disciples, us by extension, that your joy may be made full.

Again, uh, not something that we all have experienced if we've grown up going to church, that sort of thing.

But what Jesus was saying, what the Apostle Paul was saying when he said, For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

That's what the kingdom of God is.

If you're in the kingdom of God, it's not just about practices and rituals, but it's about this righteousness and peace and joy.

It's not just on our own, it's not that we drum it up, it's in the Holy Spirit.

His work is moving among us, um, doing something that we can't explain.

Why?

But because we're suffering.

Some of us are mad, some of us are fearful, some of us are going through some really tough stuff or getting ready to and don't even know it.

But there has been this foundation laid because we continue to put our hope in Christ Jesus, as we just sang.

And it is that kind of thing that gives us an unassailable joy.

It's not, it's not a veneer happiness.

By the way, I love how many of you love happiness?

I love happiness.

Everybody love happiness?

Happiness depends on happenings, and I love my happenings to be good.

Uh, you probably love your happenings to be good as well.

But we need joy where that's what really, that's what we were longing for.

C.S.

Lewis knew that so well.

He he borrowed this German term, seinzucht.

He talked about this longing, this chronic longing that we have for the joy that we can find in God and in God alone.

And it's a byproduct of our faith in Christ.

It's if you if you just look for joy by itself, it's gonna be like trying to grab a greased watermelon in a swimming pool.

You're never gonna be able to do it.

You have to get your eyes focused on Jesus, then joy, this deep thing, not the mere veneer of happiness.

Again, a good thing in and of itself, but I need more.

I need the abiding joy that, and you're gonna see this because this is one of the prison epistles.

The guy that's writing this letter is chained to a wall.

He's got a dark, damp, non-air condition, no cable, no direct TV existence.

He doesn't have internet.

He can't blog out his pain to everyone.

He can't express himself in that way and demand that the entire world pay attention to his story.

He doesn't have that, right?

Yeah.

What he's got is a uh somebody that visits him once in a while and is able to write down some of his thoughts, or he's writing some of them down, but to carry a handwritten snail mail, and I mean really snail mail, slug mail, you know, slug mail nail, you know, and it's it's gonna he's gonna carry this letter to a group of people in a church that he founded in 52, round around 52 AD.

And it's about 10 years later.

So it's a 10-year-old church.

That makes it a younger church than the village chapel.

The village chapel is about 18 years old.

We have no excuse for our immaturity right now, okay?

So we're supposed to let's grow.

That keeps shocking me when I think about good grief, we're 18.

I gotta act like an adult now.

Um 10-year-old church, right?

And it's fascinating because this is this is one of the letters where he's not writing to correct a lot of really you know strange doctrine and weird teaching that's going on.

This is one of the warmest of all of his writings.

He uses the personal singular pronoun, I, me, my, whatever.

He uses that over and over.

I stopped counting.

I was gonna count them for you, but I stopped.

There was just too many of them.

But he loves these people.

He founded this church, it's an awesome church.

And he just wants to encourage them, and it's a really beautiful thing.

He wants to talk to them about the joy that they can know in Christ.

It's a joy that comes through faith in Christ.

It's the kind of thing that happens to you.

You don't go in pursuit of it.

And it's that kind of thing that happened to C.S.

Lewis, you'll remember some of you, in Surprised by Joy.

He's in the Trinity term.

That's the springtime term of 1929.

I gave in and admitted that God was God.

I knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

The most dejected and reluctant convert in all England went on to become probably the most prominent Christian apologist for the faith in the last you know century or two, right?

I mean, he's quoted by everybody, especially by even by Christian pastors that don't agree with some of the things he says.

It's just so funny.

Yeah, but I gotta quote Lewis once in a while, you know.

Um, and I I love to quote him.

I I encourage you to read Mere Christianity and Screw Tape Letters, our 50s plus class, just finished a study of screw tape letters.

Awesome, awesome book.

Lewis was brilliant and had a great way of summarizing the Christian faith.

And so here we are with this ancient letter written to this church uh that was around so long ago.

The city was uh established in 356 BC, the city Philippi, named after the father of Alexander the Great.

Um and uh so here it is as Paul's writing in 52, or yeah, as he visits and establishes the church in 52 and writes in 62.

So here he is, you know, it's like in this really ancient city, and and he's like 50, 60, 70 years later that since the city was founded and established, and he's writing to this 10-year-old church, which is fascinating to me.

It's part of his second missionary journey.

Uh you can read about it in Acts chapter 16, uh, verses 9 through 40.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Letter to the Philippians uh in 62, as I say, from prison Rome.

Nero was the emperor, and this is about the time when he really starts to turn against the Christians.

Uh, the latter part of his reign as emperor, he was from uh 54 A.D.

to 68 A.D., and the latter part of his reign, he just was horrible toward Christians.

The city has ruins uh today.

You can you could go there and visit if you wanted to.

Um, you would see these kinds of ruins.

So we know this happened in space-time history in a real geographic place, and that's what it looked like.

The um ancient journey of the Apostle Paul first took him there uh to uh visit there.

Uh he started down here.

Uh Israel's actually off this map, but here's Tyre.

And he traveled over land.

Uh he stopped uh up in along the way in these different places.

The spirit of Jesus prevented him from going to a couple of places, which is an interesting read uh in Acts chapter 15, 16, 17, when he finally gets there.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And here in Troaz, uh he has a vision in the night, and a man from Macedonia says, Come over here, we need to hear from you.

And so it's a fascinating read.

And then so he and uh he picked up, he had a friend named Silas with him.

They picked up a man named, a young man named Timothy, and they're all traveling together, and they go by ship over here, and they end up in Philippi, and that's where they establish this church in uh in 52 AD, which is fascinating.

Because here's the core group of the church.

Listen, let me describe to you the core group of the church, right?

So we started, Village Chapel started with about 15, 12 or 15 people uh in the lobby of a record company here in town.

And um, and and the core group of the church at Philippi was this.

He pulls into Philippi with Timothy and with Silas, and they meet there uh a successful businesswoman who uh is actually from over in Asia Minor, which we Asia Minor is uh oops, so sorry I turned it off.

Shouldn't have done that, should I?

Um Asia Minor is what we call turkey today over in this area right here.

And so she's from there, but she's over there with her business, and she sells purple fabric and lots of makes tons of money.

I'm sure she's a wealthy, successful businesswoman named Lydia.

Awesome lady.

Uh awesome.

She's got this prayer meeting down by the river.

She's not really sure about her theology isn't quite formed.

She hasn't come to believe the gospel just yet.

Um, but what's fascinating is that she's longing for God.

There's maybe somebody in this room, maybe somebody watching.

You're not really sure, but you you know, you you know there's more than just us.

And you're not really sure, but you know who it is or what God is or what the force is or whatever it might be you you believe in.

But that's where Lydia was, and she was over there praying, God, if there is a God, and if you if we call you God or whatever, help us with this, this, this, this, this.

Well, that's kind of a hopeless prayer, but nonetheless, they're praying.

Um, and we're told there that God opened her, God opened her ears to believe, the ears of her heart to believe the gospel.

So God took initiative in this successful businesswoman's life.

And then the next the next person we read about is this young teenage girl that is, as Paul, Silas, and Timothy are walking around Philippi, they're preaching the gospel, and it's causing a little bit of disturbance because there's this one teenage girl that's kind of following them around, and she's demon-possessed, and some businessmen actually own her, she's like a slave, and they're actually making money off of her.

They're exploiting this teenage kid, abusing her and exploiting her to tell fortunes and things like that.

Well, Paul, Paul gets upset, he's a little annoyed by this whole thing because she's literally following him around, going in her demonic voice, these men are servants of the most high God.

You know, and she's telling everybody, and she's quite orthodox in her teaching.

Because they are servants of the most high God.

And they are preaching the gospel and bringing God's salvation, you know, message of God's salvation.

So it's it's so strange to me that the Lord uses demon-possessed little teenagers like that once in a while.

But the, and even in the gospel records, we read a lot about the folks who are demon-possessed.

Jesus goes to one and and and he recognizes and says, What are we, what have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of God?

You know, they recognize stuff the religious leaders don't recognize, which is fascinating to me.

You find some acknowledgement of the truth where you don't think you're going to, and you don't find it where you thought you should.

Whoa.

So anyway, Paul gets annoyed at her, and because he gets annoyed, he doesn't have any patience.

He turns around and casts the demon out of her.

So now she's like, you know, and it's just thinking, you know, that you're the lights come on, your personality comes back to the fore, and you and all of a sudden you're a human person again and not some kind of in the dark in the clouds in the midst of all this oppression and all this stuff.

But what happens is the businessmen that own her get angry because she's no longer exploitable to them, and they throw Paul, Silas, Timothy in jail.

Now they're in prison.

Now it's like you could be chained to a wall, rats nibbling at your toes, like I said, in a dark, damp dungeon.

But the funny thing that happens is that Paul the Apostle, Timothy and Silas, they're what are you gonna do now?

Well, I don't know, let's sing.

So Paul goes, rejoice in the Lord always.

And again I say, read Timothy, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, read Silas, rejoice, rejoice.

And he comes up with Philippians, you know, rejoice, joice, joy.

And what happens is, God brings this earthquake, they're turning their suffering into worship and praise.

God brings this earthquake, and it not only shakes the place, the house, which you would expect, I mean, if there's an earthquake, but beyond that, somehow or another the shackles on their hand on their wrists fall open.

That's not what happens in earthquakes.

And then the prisoner, this is the jailer, this is even, again, I'm describing the core group that founded this church, okay?

The jailer is a probably a Roman retired military guy who's kind of just, you know, I'm just kind of hoping to cruise on out the rest of my life here.

I just want to kind of, you know, I've made some money, I got my little house, I got my everything's tidy, I got it all together, and all I gotta do is sit here and make sure the prisoners don't escape, you know?

All of a sudden, rumble rumble, rejoice in the Lord in the background and all that stuff.

And then he knows that if the prisoners escape on his watch, he will receive their punishment.

He will be put to death.

So he decides because this is happening, they're gonna escape.

I'm gonna follow my sword.

I don't want to die at the hands of my own people because they'll treat me brutally because I failed.

And he's about to fall on his own sword, and Paul the Apostle said, Don't do that, we're all still here, buddy.

And long story short, guy becomes a Christian, he and his household, and we have that very famous verse in Acts chapter 17 where he says, What do I what do I do to be saved?

Acts 17 · chapter mention

He says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

Or 16 or 17, whatever it is.

It's an awesome story.

And so the core group that starts the church in Philippi, successful businesswoman who's probably from Asia Minor, formerly demon-possessed teenager, nameless, but now redeemed, restored, renewed, by God, initiating love.

Okay.

And a Roman, older guy, Roman retired guy, thought he was uh seeing the end of his life right before his eyes.

Instead, he turns his heart over to Christ, and he and his household are saved.

And that's the core group that starts the church, Philippi.

Three people, that's awesome.

You know, we start, like I said, we started the village chapel with like four times that many people to begin with, which is awesome.

And now we're like five services, and and the and the I love the folks over there at 10, 15, it's awesome to be together and to see them, even a small nucleus of them together, worshiping the Lord.

What can God do?

He can do a lot.

Um God often chooses those no one else would choose.

God often uses those no one else would use.

And so when you think all the odds are against it happening, remember, God's never impressed by the odds.

He created everything out of nothing.

Anyone that can do that can handle my life or your life, including the suffering that I'm gonna go through and that you're gonna go through, the loss, the frustrations, the failure, the fears, and even my anger, my inconsistent faith.

So there's the Apostle Paul's journey, and then they go over there and then they come around here and they're following all the way down there back to Israel.

Okay?

That's good.

We want to finish that up and get on with what we read here, which is the first little bit of the 11 verses that we're gonna take today.

Um, this greeting.

And his, these these Pauline uh epistles often start with the same kind of pattern: a greeting, a thanksgiving, and a prayer.

So if you're a note taker, this is a great way to sort of outline the first 11 verses.

I'm not gonna do like three, four sermon points today, but I'm just gonna try and do a little bit of an introduction as we have to the letter itself, and we'll look at these first uh 11 verses.

Paul and Timothy, bonservants.

Uh, the word is doolos in the Greek, it means really slaves.

That would be a better way to say this.

These are not bond servants, these are not just merely servants that might be able to earn their freedom and then walk away at some point.

These are slaves that belong forever to their master.

And that's how Paul and Timothy describe themselves.

We are slaves, not of Rome as they're in that Roman prison, not of the smelly guy that they're chained to who might be a Roman soldier.

That might be chained right to a soldier, you know.

But rather slaves of Christ Jesus.

And so we have in the greeting, we always have the, you know, or we generally will have an idea, the identify identification of the writer, and then the identification of the recipients or the readers.

And that's what he's doing here.

Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus.

Two, all the saints in Christ Jesus, who are in Philippi, including the overseers, might say elders in your Bible, and deacons, might say uh bishops.

It could say any number of different things there, but the leadership of the church as well.

There's so much here, just in verse one.

The ones that you think would say, you know, I mean, we think of Saint Paul, right?

You might think he would say, I, Saint Paul, write to you, servants at Philippi.

No, it's the other way around.

He writes this way I, Paul, the slave of Jesus, write to you, the saints.

And then they have two addresses: in Christ Jesus and in Philippi.

All right, you are sitting within arm reach of someone who trusts and believes and hopes in Christ.

One that Christ has redeemed, one that God has set apart.

Hagias means a saint, or the one who is set apart.

You're sitting, if you if you've trusted Christ, number one, you are a saint as well.

It's not about your performance, it's about your condition, what Christ has done for you.

And so you're sitting in arm's distance of a saint, believe it or not.

This place is filled with saints.

Sometimes I'll come in and go start the Bible study with, uh, heard an old guy uh another preacher one time say he starts his message of um, you know, good morning sinners, you know, good morning saints, good morning sinners, that kind of thing.

And whenever he says good morning saints, nobody says hello.

When he says good morning sinners, everybody says hello.

Because we just don't think of ourselves as saints, right?

But we are saints in Christ Jesus.

We're simulustus at peccator.

We are at one and the same time sinners, and we are redeemed.

We are justified by faith in Christ.

And so he writes to them.

And there is a contrast, you think that he would call himself the saint, but no, he's calling himself the slave in Christ Jesus to the saints in Philippi, including the leaders as well.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

When grace precedes, peace follows.

Okay, that's why we spend time in the gospel.

That's why we spend time seeing the gospel throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.

That God, by His grace, to sinners undeserving and guilty, that's us, has made a move.

He's taken the initiative.

He's the one that started this.

He opened Lydia's eyes.

The demon-possessed little girl, she was deep in darkness and her humanity was pushed all the way back.

And yet, God, speaking through Paul, brought her redemption.

Okay?

That's what the gospel does for us.

Grace precedes it, then peace follows.

And it's from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's not just from positive thinking, although positive thinking is great.

I'm fine with positive thinking.

However, I anchor my thinking in this real God who really exists, who really has lavished us with grace and wants us to know his peace.

Verse 3, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.

Look how endearing and warm and pastoral.

This is always offering prayer with joy.

There's the first of 16.

Always offering my prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all.

So he's praying for them all the time.

In view of your participation, some of your translations will say your fellowship, some of your translations will say your, and I like this word better, partnership.

I think that better describes the way we would think of what this intent, the intent was here.

In view of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, I'm confident of this very thing, and many of you know this verse, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

There is a day.

There is a day.

And that's the hope of this of the gospel and all of the scripture, that there is a God who's in charge.

He's sovereign, and he's not partially sovereign.

There's no such thing as partial sovereignty.

He is sovereign and he's in charge.

And he hasn't misplaced one little molecule of his creation.

He knows where everything is, he's taking it all right where he wants it to go, and we trust and hope in him, and that's why we can have peace in him.

You know?

I'm confident of this very thing.

He began a good work and you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Now, some of you are thinking, I know somebody that says they're a Christian, that God began a good work in them.

I'm not sure God is perfecting it.

I'm not sure God is doing a very good job in that.

You might even be thinking that about yourself right now.

But the initiative here is God.

He's the one that began the good work, so let's continue to trust him.

If you're on the wrong road, progress is not a good idea.

If you're on the wrong road and you're following Jesus and you're not really following him, you've veered off.

The right road would be for you to go back, that is turn around.

That's what repentance is.

You turn away from your sin and back toward Christ.

So you go back to the right road, which is Christ.

It's not a set of rules to follow, it's Christ Himself.

And you trust Him, you hope in Him.

And there is a day of Christ Jesus that is coming.

I love verse 7.

It's only right for me to feel this way about you because I have you in my heart.

Again, so pastoral, so endearing.

Since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

In other words, while I'm here in this jail cell and while I've been out and preaching and all that sort of thing, you guys, we're all partakers of grace together with me, he says.

We've all been partakers of this grace of God.

Yeah.

For God is my witness.

And remember, he's chained to the wall right now while he's thinking these thoughts.

His life isn't cush right now.

His life is horrible on a creature comfort level right now.

And add to that, Nero is the emperor.

It's gotta have crossed his mind once or twice that he is gonna be one of the ones whose life comes to an end in this dungeon.

Because they didn't hesitate to kill Christians back then.

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

Verse 8, again, very pastoral of him, very much loving and tender and kind to this group of people in Philippi.

This I pray, and by the way, the the I love the prayers of uh the Apostle Paul uh and be watching in the future.

I think there are a couple folks that are thinking about maybe even having a class where we study, a Sunday school class where we we study through the prayers of the Apostle Paul.

But here's one of them.

This is a beautiful one.

This I pray, and you'll note here the priority of his prayer, the character of his prayer, the result of his prayer, and the goal of his prayer, okay?

The priority of his prayer is this.

I pray that your love may abound still more and more, the character of what he longs for them.

That it would your love would abound in real knowledge and all discernment.

He doesn't just pray for the supernatural feels or the warm fuzzies love or the veneer love, but the kind of love that's coupled with the kind of knowledge about God, that God has revealed himself to them, the gospel has been open to them, they've come to believe in the gospel, and that God, the real God who really exists, has actually revealed himself to them so that they can actually know God.

It's love coupled with knowledge and with discernment, so it's got character like that, you know?

So that you may approve, this is the result, so that you may approve the things that are excellent.

I think we live in a time and a culture that approves of the things that are not excellent.

We like excellence in some of the things we do, the the way we represent pornography, for instance.

We like the images to be vivid, or the way we try to impress people that their life is meaningless unless they drive this car or have this much money.

You know, we we we're really great at packaging.

We're really great at sort of making things chisel.

We're not very good at substance.

And it's as if somebody went into a really high-end department store and took all the price tags off the expensive items and put them on the cheap items.

And then put all the cheap price tags on the expensive.

In other words, everything is inverted, everything is upside down.

If you're not aware of what's going on in your culture, how you're being formed every day by thoughts and ideas in songs, in media, in in you know, Twitter, whatever it is, anything.

Those things themselves are not evil, but the thoughts, you've got to think about how you're being formed.

It's really important that we remain awake and understand that.

That we might learn how to approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless in the day of Christ.

There it is again, the day of Christ.

Verse 11, and we'll stop reading text-wise with this verse.

Having been filled, and this is the goal, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Christ Jesus, to, here's the goal: the glory and praise of God.

So there's so much there.

Um, it's really, really rich as we uh consider this opening uh study in the epistle that we call uh the the the we call Philippians.

Um highlights, I got a few quotes for you.

I want to focus our attention on these these things, as I said, that have been that are going to be repeated over the next uh eight weeks following.

Um we'll have a variety of teachers up here, by the way.

I'm just gonna say that in advance, and you guys over at East as well.

We'll have a variety of teachers next week.

Tommy's gonna, Tommy Bailey's gonna come, and uh he'll be looking at this middle section of chapter one.

Um I'll probably be back the week after that.

Uh Kim and I are actually gonna take a little break, go on a little vacation.

It's our 41st wedding anniversary, yes.

Let us rejoice.

Let us rejoice and be glad.

Yes, that's right, we will.

Um, and um and then I'll be back, and then we'll have we'll have Matt Pearson.

Uh uh Kim's very favorite passage is the entire Bible.

It's in chapter 4 of Philippians, and so I'm really excited and uh looking forward to hearing her thoughts on that as well.

So, Philippians, the summer will roll that way.

And uh so I hope that you'll come.

Just know that when you come to the village chapel, whether it's at East at 8:30 or 10:15, or whether it's here at 8:30, 10 or 11:30, here's the thing: you're always gonna get verse by verse Bible teaching.

That's what we do here.

We're not creating a cult of personality.

We're creating a group of people, we're hoping to stir up and nurture a group of people that love God's word.

And that's why you come, because you want to study the word.

You want to be reminded that the hope of joy is actually found in Christ Jesus.

Not just, yeah, not just in following rules or any of that sort of thing, but actually found in Christ Jesus.

David Brooks, some of you are familiar with his writings.

Uh, I've quoted before from his book, uh, The Road to Character.

Now, this is a guy that's really on the road, I think, to belief.

He does not profess to be a Christian, but I think he's got some interesting things to say.

And his recent book is called The Second Mountain, The Quest for the Moral Life.

We're pleased by happiness, he says, but we're transformed by joy.

He's right about that.

When we experience joy, we often feel we've glimpsed into a deeper, truer layer of reality.

Do you know someone that has suffered well?

I do.

Two weeks ago, one of our guys was standing right here handing out bulletins, and he nearly passed out and fell to the floor.

A couple of our guys grabbed him, he ended up going to the hospital and had a heart event.

And ever since then, he can't shut up about Jesus.

It's awesome.

So here's the, he's just like the Apostle Paul chained to the wall.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Hey, you know, and if you're faced with your mortality or you're faced with some chronic thing that's going on, whatever.

Trust, hope, all of that is so hard sometimes.

Tears are real.

We're not rejecting the idea of suffering at all.

We're just saying don't waste it.

We're just saying that verse 11, this is for God's glory somehow.

And I I don't always know how.

I I gotta be honest with you.

I don't I don't I don't know why babies die.

I don't I don't know why that happens.

I don't know why the Lord allows natural disasters like the floods up in the Midwest, right?

And I don't know why the darkness overtook this one individual in Virginia and and did this heinous thing.

I don't understand those things.

I'm not I'm I'm no nobody here is claiming to have that all figured out.

Here's what we know we have a God we can run to in our darkest of moments.

Uh and in our in our in our deepest trials, we will find in him a refuge, a rock, a redeemer, one that can transform uh uh us in some way for his glory and for his highest good.

D.

Martin Lloyd Jones, uh great preacher at Westminster, uh over there in London, said, The whole uh art of life I sometimes think is the art of knowing what to leave out, what to ignore, what to put on one side, how prone we are to dissipate our energies and to waste our time by forgetting what is vital and giving ourselves to second and third rate issues.

Now, says Paul, here you are in the Christian life.

You are concerned about difficulties, about oppositions, and about the contradictions of life.

What you need is just this the power to concentrate on that which is vital, to leave out everything else, to keep steadily to the one thing that matters.

And so Paul would write to the Philippian church.

The guy in prison, the guy in chains would write to the people in Philippi that live in a high-traffic commerce city, ten miles off the Aegean Sea, uh, on the on the Via Ignatia, this road, this superhighway of commerce and traffic, and a city rich with gold and silver mines.

And he writes to them, to Lydia, the former, the successful businesswoman who's at the core, to the young, unnamed teenage girl, formerly demon-possessed, to the jailer who's found a new reason to be alive even in his latter years.

You know, a new meaning and purpose in his life.

And he writes to those three and all of the others as well.

He says, Your hope of joy is going to be found in Jesus Christ.

The one thing that really matters.

See, when we keep our when we keep our eyes on Christ, everything else takes its proper perspective.

Kim gets a better husband when Jim loves Jesus more than he loves Kim.

You understand that?

Jim gets a better wife when Kim loves Jesus more than Kim loves Jim.

It's about first things.

C.S.

Lewis talked about first things by talking about second things.

He says, we don't get second things by putting them first.

We get second things by keeping them second.

And that's how we get first things too.

We put second things second and first things.

I love the way he did that.

He plays with my mind a lot, you know.

Messes with me, makes me think it through a little bit, but the most important things that matter are the most important things that matter.

It's really true.

Campbell Morgan, uh, it's glorious revelation.

Another Westminster guy.

Um, it's a glorious revelation of how life and fellowship with Christ triumphs over all adverse circumstances.

The triumph, moreover, is not that of stoical indifference.

Yeah.

It is rather the recognition of the fact that all apparently adverse conditions are made allies of the soul, ministers of victory under the dominion of the Lord.

In other words, the Apostle Paul riding from prison to the church at Philippi.

His adverse circumstances, in his view, and you can read that right there in chapter one, worked together for the good of the gospel.

He didn't waste his suffering.

He didn't waste, and in the middle of his suffering, he probably was thinking, this is it.

I'm gonna die.

This is probably gonna be over at some point.

But even if it's not, whether God saves me and I'm rescued or whether or not, Christ is my all-in-all, you know?

So for the glory of God, for the thing that really matters.

Francis Folks, and he'll be my last quote of the day.

A great deal can be learned from Paul's prayers.

From the things he asked for, the Philippine Christians, and we no less could learn the greatest gifts to ask for themselves.

Here, those gifts are, and here they are.

Love, this is you look at his prayer right there in verses 9 through 9, 10, and 11.

Love, a love that is abounding more and more, discernment, purity of life, and righteousness.

That's right living, living according to God's view of what is right.

You see, folks, disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus, saints that belong to him, the ones he's set apart for himself.

And if you've trusted Christ as your Savior, you're a saint, okay?

You belong to him, lock, stock, and barrel.

Like the Apostle Paul, you're slave of Jesus now.

You're not a slave of the culture.

And so you're everything is found in Christ, everything you are and need.

Disciples of Jesus move in the direction of Christ's choosing.

We're following him, he's not following us.

Disciples of Jesus move in the direction of Christ's choosing at the pace of Christ's wisdom, within the purview of Christ's will, by the power of Christ's grace, with the comfort of Christ's presence.

We find our life united by faith to Christ.

We find our identity in union with Christ, and we simply cannot live as we should apart from Christ.

We should trust and hope in Christ.

And you need to look no further.

He really is the one.

He got up from the grave.

We just sang it.

He got up from the grave.

He's the one we should follow.

He's the one we should trust and put our hope in for joy.

Amen?

Let's pray.

Lord, take this passage, the good seed of your word.

Cause it to find fertile soil in our hearts.

Cause it, Lord, to take root and to bear fruit in our lives.

May the Holy Spirit use our study of the scriptures to transform our minds and our hearts and to make us more like Jesus.

That we might go out into the world in which we live to live for your glory and for your praise.

That that would be our goal.

That our that your love might abound in us, that the watching world might look at a church like the village chapel or the village chapel east and be drawn in because of the warmth of the campfire of the love of God in our midst.

We pray all of this in the name of Jesus.

Amen and amen.