Grace and Peace

Hall and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints of Christ Jesus who are in the high, with the overseers and deacons.

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

We get ready to open God's word this morning.

God, thank you for who you are, God.

We praise you as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

You are worthy of our praise.

God, I pray this morning that if we open your word, that it would bring you glory and honor.

That you would continue to use this word, that we open this morning to bring us into completion, to continue to work in our lives, the good that you have for us, Lord.

I pray for hearts to be softened this morning.

That it would grow and it would mature, Lord.

Holy Spirit, I pray that you would open us, that you would prompt people to respond to the calling of your word and to your glory.

Lord, I pray for Robert, give him clarity of mind, allow him to speak clearly the words that you've given to speak to us this morning.

Lord, I pray above all else that we would bring you glory and honor in everything that is said and done on this stage, Lord, that us be less than you be more, Lord.

Your name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, brothers.

You guys can be seated.

Good morning.

Let me add my welcome to whoever has greeted you this morning.

I'm thankful that you are here and you're worshiping with us in the many ways that we have the privilege of worshiping during the gathering on a Sunday morning.

Most certainly the privilege to open and read and study God's Word.

And we are in a, as you guys have seen, we are in a fresh book, so to speak, for us.

We spent several weeks in Psalms, and now we are entering into the book of Philippians and a very short two verses this morning, but there is so much here in these two verses.

I found myself at multiple points this week as I was studying, thinking, man, I really wish I could focus on this only and on this only and on this only.

And I have condensed to fit it all into one sermon, but I would encourage you not to just overlook what we see as the greeting.

If you have your Bible, the superscript in your Bible likely says greeting, and it's as simple on the on the outset, on the appearance, greeting, but when you dig into it, there is tremendous depth and encouragement, even in this greeting that is a mere 38 words in the English language.

So I'd encourage you to lean into what we see here in the first two verses from Paul as he writes to the church at Philippi.

And I just kind of want to set some context for you with some statements as we prepare to dive in.

Believers or saints fighting for unity in the midst of both deserts, uh diversity and also difficult circumstances.

As we're going to see by the background of the people who were a part of the beginning of the church at Philippi, it's pretty easy to see that they weren't always in agreement on everything.

You have deacons faithfully serving the body through meeting physical and financial hardships and difficulties, protecting the unity of the body.

You have elders faithfully shepherding the church with truth that was in opposition to the cultural norm that would have been a Roman colony or city in the first century.

This is the picture of Christ's church throughout the centuries in many regards, but it also is the reality of Christ's church in Philippi in the first century when Paul planted the church and 10 years later writes his letter back to the church.

The book of Philippians is a letter that Paul is writing to a church that he was instrumental in planting, right?

He had spent significant time in Philippi, and he is reminding these brothers and sisters that he had poured into, that he had ministered to and with, that he is reminding them that they will most certainly face opposition, they will most certainly face hardship, they will most certainly face suffering, they will most certainly face difficulty, but do not lose heart to continue to press forward with the message of Christ.

And don't just press forward with the message of Christ, but press forward in difficulty with great joy.

And as we're going to see, it's a joy that's not found in circumstances, but it's a joy found in the very gospel that they were charged to proclaim, and that is Christ Jesus.

And for me personally, as I read through these two verses, and we're going to be in Acts 16 later on in sermon.

So if you have your Bible, you can go ahead and flip there because we're going to be bouncing back and forth.

But as I read those and I took a step back and I take into account uh the context in which this was written, and also the content that was written, the specifics of what was written, I am reminded that the book of Philippians is a practical expression of co-laboring with purpose in hardship for Christ with joy.

Right?

Co-laboring with purpose in hardship for Christ with joy.

And the message that is communicated to the Philippians by Paul throughout this letter is the same message that the Church of Jesus Christ, the gathered local congregation that is Christ Church, needs to be reminded of today.

Brothers and sisters, saints labor well for Christ.

Labor well for Christ and labor with joy because of Christ, even in the midst of difficulty and even in the midst of suffering.

With that, I want to look at some of the context of the city of Philippi.

We're not going to spend a ton of time here, but we are going to spend a few minutes here.

Philippi was a significant city in what was Macedonia.

If you're not super familiar with geography, if you look at a map of present-day Greece and you find Thessaloniki, right, and you go east-northeast, so not northeast, but more east than north, east-northeast, you will find the city of Philippi, or what was the city of Philippi.

Now it's ancient ruins.

You go directly north.

If you know where Kavala is, present-day Kabbalah Greece, you go directly north.

That is where Philippi set and where it currently sits today.

It was founded around 350 BC.

It was named after Philip II.

If you don't know who Philip II is, he he's not, he doesn't seem to be as popular as uh his son was, Alexander the Great.

I'm sure most of you have heard of his son.

And a marking point, that's what the city was named after, Philip II.

And a marking point of history for the city of Philippi was the year 42 BC, and this big battle of Philippi occurred in 42 BC.

And you have this guy, you may have heard these names too, Mark Antony and Octavian defeated the armies of Brutus and Cassius.

Brutus and Cassius were the ones who were responsible for the assassination of Julius Caesar.

So there's all these significant people that were involved in the development of this city.

And I share all that with you for you to understand because of all that history and what happened specifically in the Battle of Philippi, Philippi was a Roman provincial municipality, right?

That's the language that it was.

So it's hard to say city, but it was a Roman provincial municipality.

And the significance of that is it was ran under Roman law, right?

And that's something that we have to know and understand as we read this because it makes the things that were going on and the steps that were being taken by the believers there even more bold if we understand that.

It was ran under Roman law.

So when Paul showed up in the first century, it had tremendous Roman influence.

Not only did it have tremendous Roman influence, it was ran under Roman authority and Roman law.

The people who were there would have been Roman citizens.

Historians and archaeologists confirmed it was so Roman that even the structure, the layout, the architecture, all this stuff about the city was modeled after Rome itself.

So they acted like Romans, right?

They dressed like Romans and they spoke like Romans.

So it had heavy, heavy, heavy Roman influence.

And perhaps one of the most uh important things contextually for us to understand is it was located on something called the Ignatius Road.

And if you've never heard of the Ignatius Road, it was built in second century BC and it was critical for transportation for the Romans.

What it did is it connected the Adriatic Sea to Istanbul, Turkey.

It was this 700-mile, we're talking about BC here, 700-mile roadway that was used to get from one place to the other.

It was significant in transportation.

And Philippi was right on the Ignatius Road.

So it was a significant city for travel.

And in Acts 16, that we're going to refer to multiple times during the sermon, you read about Philippi as it relates to the development of the church in Philippi, specifically in the first century.

And Paul, one of the beautiful things about Acts 16 in the context of this is Paul was called to Philippi in a very clear redirection by the Lord.

You see, when you read Acts 16 and you open it up, it wasn't originally in the cards for Paul to go to Philippi.

That wasn't his plan.

Paul's plan was something completely different altogether.

That brother wanted to go to Asia, right?

He and Timothy were planning to go to Asia, yet God redirected him from Asia to Philippi.

And I want to stop there for a second before we move in to the test, because I think this might be something that we all need to pause and think about and be encouraged by.

Many of us, including myself, many of us have been in a place in our lives where we feel like, man, the Lord is leading me here very clearly.

And he opens that door.

He may not open it all the way, but maybe halfway or even three-quarters of the way, or even 90% of the way.

And before you can get through the door, the Lord closes that door.

He slams it shut and he redirects you.

And we can get discouraged in those moments.

Because often the redirection of the Lord is not the easiest road.

It's not the easiest path.

It's not the path that we would have preferred.

But one thing we can know for sure, it's always the best path for us.

Ashley and I story of coming to Heartland is very similar to that.

We've been here, what, five years now?

Five and a half years ago, I didn't even know what South Haven was.

Right?

I've shared this with you guys before, but the first email I got from the search team, I deleted because I didn't want to move to Mississippi.

Right?

The Lord redirected us to South Haven.

And now as I look at back at that, the Lord knew exactly what I was doing.

I could stand up here for 30 minutes and tell you with each person in our family, with our youngest Claire, with our middle Marcus, with our or our middle Eli, our oldest Marcus for my wife and for me, how I can see why the Lord wanted us here now and for a long season, Lord willing.

Right.

So I I say all that to not to make light of here.

We love being here, but when we first came here, it wasn't what we thought the Lord would be having us doing.

He redirected us.

And now by God's grace, I can see and praise God.

Thank you for redirecting us.

Thank you so much for redirecting us.

We we love it here and we see why you have us here.

But God redirects us, and sometimes that can be difficult.

I want to encourage you in the moments of confusion like that, when you're not really sure, Lord, why are you doing this?

Why are you closing this door?

Why are you opening this one?

You may not know what God's plan is.

And that's okay.

God may be redirecting you, right?

Paul planned to go to Asia, but the Lord planned for him to go to Philippi and play an absolutely critical role in the development of the church in Philippi and the launch of a local congregation in Philippi.

And in Acts 16, what we see from Paul and Timothy is they faced, it wasn't like we get to Philippi and everything's great, right?

It's fantastic, everything is so smooth, everything's going exactly the way that we want it to go.

No, they face intense persecution, they face suffering, right?

When they showed up in the winter of 49 AD, they endured immense difficulty.

But they also witnessed gospel fruit.

And then about 10 years later, here we are, Paul is writing this letter back.

And these first two verses seem small.

It's 38 words in the English language, 32 words in the Greek.

But when you dig into it and dig into the context of Acts 16, we see some very critical things for us that set the stage for this letter we're going to be studying over the next couple of months.

So three things we're going to look at this morning that we see in these first two verses and in Acts 16.

Humble servanthood, God ordained polity and unmerited grace.

Humble servanthood, God ordained polity and unmerited grace.

Let's begin with verse one and look at humble servanthood.

We see this in the first half of verse one.

Paul refers to himself and to Timothy, using this Greek word.

I don't say Greek words often, but I think it's significant here, using this Greek word dulos, right?

That's what he refers to himself, right?

It's in the ESV in your Bible in front of you.

It may say slave or it may say servant, but he uses this word twice in the book of Philippians.

Two different times he uses this word.

One here in the verse first, and the second one is in chapter two, verses five through seven.

And you know what he's referring to there?

He's referring to Christ taking the form of a servant.

Right?

Paul is using himself and setting this example.

Paul the author, he's setting this example and he's referring to Timothy, a fellow servant, to set this example for the Philippians of what it means to be a servant and who you are to be a servant of.

We'll get to that in a minute.

In the Greek, the meaning is a slave or one who gives himself to another for that other person's will.

To be devoted to another, to be in disregard of one's own interests because of the interest of the other person.

When you think about that in context, Paul was instrumental in planting this church in Philippi.

He was critical to that.

And he's writing this letter ten years later, and he doesn't write this letter to flaunt.

Hey, remember me, the guy that started this church that you get to be a part of?

He doesn't refer to himself as an apostle, which he was.

He refers to himself as a servant of Christ Jesus.

A servant, not a master.

A servant, not a boss man, an instrument to be used for God's glory.

Paul, as bold and as strong as he was in gospel ministry, as faithful as he was in carrying out the great commissions and planning churches and sharing the gospel, he was humble in his attitude.

He was humble.

He recognized and modeled for the church at Philippi and for others of what it meant to be a servant of Christ, not a servant of man.

One commentator I read connects this title, Servants of Christ Jesus, to an old Hellenistic custom of manumission.

And what manumission was is it's where this slave was given freedom using money payment.

And when they were given freedom using money payment, they therefore became a devotee to the deity that paid for their freedom.

And this is what Paul is using as an illustration.

His background is unique.

That's what we have to remember about Paul.

His background was unique, right?

He was a Jew.

He hated Christians, he persecuted Christians, and then he experienced this radical transformation on the Damascus road that's only explainable by the power of God and the work of the Spirit.

And the very message that he devoted his life to eradicating, he was transformed by and he was proclaiming.

Timothy's similar story, not quite as drastic, but similar story.

His mom was Jewish and his dad was Greek.

Right?

He spent time with Paul and Philippi and he was going back to Philippi.

We see that in multiple places.

In chapter two, we're going to read about Paul.

I think it's in verse 23.

He has this desire to send Timothy back to Philippi to encourage the brothers and sisters there.

You can also see that in Acts 19 of this desire for Timothy and to go back to Philippi.

So this pastoral epistle was warm and encouraging in nature.

It was warm and encouraging in nature.

They cared about the church at Philippi.

But we have to be careful, just because Paul refers to himself as a servant of Christ, right?

And he is showing humility in that, that doesn't mean that this letter wasn't written under the apostolic authority that he had.

So when we pause to consider the first half of verse 1 in light of Paul and Timothy's background, we are reminded not only of the bold uh faithfulness, the bold faithfulness would be the right word there, of Paul and of Timothy, but we are also reminded of the righteousness that was bestowed upon them, not because of their own merit, but because of the work of Christ.

Just for me personally, the this isn't even my notes.

I'm gonna go off here for a second.

Every week before I prepare to come up here and I'm standing there, sometimes I'm in the back, the the enemy will attack me almost every single week with the words, who do you think you are?

Who do you think you are?

Don't you remember that you did this?

Don't you remember that you said this?

Don't you remember that you thought this?

Don't you remember how wretched and filthy of a sinner you are?

If everybody knew who you were and what you have done in your history, they wouldn't want to sit under your teaching.

And that is the way the enemy attacks.

And some of you are that way too.

If people knew where I was, they wouldn't want to associate with me.

You have Paul with such an intense background, not just denying the faith, but persecuting people of the faith.

And Paul is using him.

And what I want us to understand and see is, and we see Paul use this language, I believe it's in, I think it's in the first letter of Timothy.

I can't remember, but he uses language like this I've been bought with a price.

I have been bought with a price.

I am not my own.

Therefore, glorify God with your body.

Paul and Timothy knew in the acknowledgement of themselves as being servants of Christ, they had knew they knew that their righteousness wasn't their own.

It was bought with a price.

It was bought with a price, and their response wasn't to sit and wallow in their own shame, but their response was to, I am doing everything I can to glorify God with my body, including planting this church at Philippi.

They sought to glorify the Lord.

Their justification had been paid for, not by their righteousness, not by their ability to do all the right things and check all their boxes.

Their justification had been paid for by the blood of Jesus.

Period.

Therefore, they devoted their lives to gospel ministry.

They also recognized it was his ministry, not their ministry.

You can see that even in those few words, servants of Christ Jesus.

It was his ministry, not their ministry.

It was his church in Philippi, not their church.

It was his power, not their power.

It was about what he did on the cross, not their ability to live a sinless life.

I think sometimes, actually, I know sometimes well-intended people make Christianity be about everything other than Christ.

They make Christianity about everything other than Christ.

The organization that that is the local church bases its decisions on what will please the most people or get the most people through the door, as opposed to biblical faithfulness.

Because sometimes biblical faithfulness means you're doing something that a lot of people don't like.

But biblical faithfulness is serving Christ and not that man.

The individual father of Jesus sins and then they flee from Jesus.

Flee from Him instead of running to Him.

As though the words of what we see in God's Word say He died for you after you were perfect, as opposed to He died for you even while While you were still a sinner.

And in doing so, that person makes light of the blood of Jesus that paid for your sins once and for all.

The person who is not a Christian may say something like, I have to get my life together before I can step foot through the door of a church before I can come to Jesus.

If that's you, that is the message of legalism, not the message of the gospel that I read.

Jesus says, Come to me, right?

The Christianity of the Bible that I read said Jesus Christ lived a life that you couldn't live.

That's a perfect one.

He went to the cross and paid a price for you that you should have paid.

And to be frank, it was a price that you couldn't pay and you can't pay.

It's not about being religious, it's about trusting in Christ for salvation, for justification.

And that righteousness, as Paul and Timothy recognize, is not something that you earn or it's not something that you are able to obtain by living a certain way.

It is imputed upon you through the power of the blood of Jesus.

Is that something that you understand?

That's a question I would have for you.

Do you live for doing religious things?

Do you come to church just because you live in Mississippi and that is the cultural norm thing to do?

Or do you live for Jesus?

There's a difference in living for religious things and living for Christ.

The opening statement of this letter shows that Paul and Timothy lived for Christ.

They were not servants of man.

They weren't not there to please man, they were there to serve Christ.

Do you understand that Jesus paid the price for your sins and that if you believe and confess, you will be saved?

My prayer today is even in those first few words, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, that the Spirit would use that to move the blinders away from your eyes so that you can see that you are a sinner in need of Jesus.

My prayer is that the humble servanthood of Paul and Timothy that began with the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross is what the Lord uses to open your eyes.

Let that be your response today.

Second half of verse one, we see God ordained polity.

This is a fascinating part of this section of scripture to me.

If you read the pastoral epistles, which uh are the letters that Paul wrote to the different churches, he does not usually mention in his greeting overseers, deacons, and saints, right?

But we know God's word is living and active.

We know it is the way the Lord speaks to us.

We know it's his word, it's divinely inspired.

So there must be purpose.

If he doesn't in the other ones, and he is in this one, there must be purpose in the way that it's worded.

Let me go through each of those with you quickly.

Saints refers to the congregation.

I think something we have to be really careful with.

We read that word saints and we we automatically go to like some Roman Catholic idea of what a saint is or what they would acknowledge.

That's not what we see in God's word.

That word for saints there is used 40 different times.

It's 40 different times it's used in the plural and it refers to holy ones, not through law keeping like we just talked about.

It's not some they they adhere to a certain set of laws, therefore they are saints, but through the righteousness of God, through union with Christ.

That's what a saint is.

So in context, he's talking about the congregation, the believers, the the um or not the organization, but the people of the church within Philippi.

And he's saying, Hey, they were once children of Adam, right?

Children of sin, and now they were adopted sons of the king of kings, and they are the saints of the body of Christ at Philippi.

So you have the saints, he addresses them, he addresses the overseers.

That refers to elders that had been appointed to shepherd and care for the flock in Philippi, right?

To handle the word appropriately, to protect the flock from wolves, to lead as under-shepherds, right?

Because we know that ultimately Jesus is the chief shepherd.

Elders and overseers are under-shepherds to King Jesus.

Then you have Diakonos, deacons, the servants of the body of Christ at Philippi, charged with meeting practical and physical needs within the body.

And when you stop and think about this, think about this was written in the first century.

This is written to a church in the first century who had saints, congregation, who had elders who were shepherding the flock, and who had deacons.

The policy truck structure of the church can be traced all the way back to the first century.

And in this context, we are tracing it all the way back to the first century, to a group of believers that was planted by Paul in the first.

This is the first church in European soil and had a very unique beginning.

With that, let's flip over to Acts 16 for just a second.

I'm not going to read it all, but I've I've pulled out several parts of it.

The first is let's look at Lydia's baptism in Acts 16, 14, and 15.

I think this will be on the screen.

If not, you can look at it in your copy of scripture.

Says this one who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, which was in Asia Minor, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God.

The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul, spirits working.

And after she was baptized and her house and her household as well, she urged us, saying, If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.

And she prevailed among us.

It's a woman from Asia who is a seller of purple goods.

What we know about purple goods, if she was a seller of purple goods, that woman had some money, right?

She was she was a woman of means.

She had she had plenty of money.

And from the language of the text, we can see that she was a God fearer as well.

She has some knowledge of the things of God.

It talks about she being a worshiper of God, but clearly she had not responded to the gospel until this moment.

And what happens here in this passage, and what's so dangerous about this passage and not reading it in context of all of it, is people begin to talk less about the evangelistic aspect of Lydia because they are so focused on the circumstances of her baptism.

People get so nailed down on the circumstances of Lydia's baptism.

She responds to the gospel message after the Lord opened her heart and then she was baptized.

I want to point something out quickly that we often overlook with this passage.

This was the beginning of the beginning for the church at Philippi.

Lydia's baptism was the beginning of the beginning for the church at Philippi.

The baptism of Lydia, as we're going to see as we work through Acts 16, is the beginning of a series of events of the body of Christ that leads to the body of Christ gathering in Lydia's home that we see in Acts 16, verse 40, I believe it is.

Acts 16:40

Lydia's baptism is not an example to be used to disconnect baptism from the church.

It's not an example to argue uninformed baptism as she prevailed among us.

She was not baptized to flee from the church.

She was not unaware of what she was doing.

Quite the opposite of true is true.

Her baptism was instrumental in the development of the local church in Philippi.

It was critical.

It was the beginning of the beginning.

Now look with me at the slave girl, verses 16 through 18.

As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune telling.

She followed Paul and us, crying out, These men are servants of the most high God who proclaimed to you the way of salvation.

And this she kept doing for many days, having become greatly annoyed.

Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

And it came out that very hour.

Something to note about the slave girl.

We know Lydia was Asian, which is ironic, right?

It's pretty ironic that Paul is going to Asia, and then the first one of the first people that is converted in Philippi is Asian.

Just a little side note there.

But we know Lydia's Asian.

The slave girl is not Asian, right?

She's a native Greek.

So from the very beginning, we see this diversity beginning to take place within what becomes the local church at Philippi, an Asian and a Greek.

We know that she was in spiritual turmoil.

It talks about the spirit of divination within her.

She wasn't rich like the uh well, she wasn't rich like Lydia.

She wasn't a woman of selling purple goods.

No, she was poor.

So not only was she different in her uh background and where she was from, her socioeconomics were different as well.

So those are the two.

Now we we move on to the third, the jailer, verse 25 through 33.

About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundation of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were open and everyone's bonds were unfastened.

When the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.

But Paul cried out with a loud voice, Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.

And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.

Then he brought them out and said, Sin, or sirs, what must I do to be saved?

And they said, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.

And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.

And he took them that same hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.

Here's something interesting about the jailer.

Besides that story is fascinating and mind-blowing.

Can you imagine?

Earthquake, all the doors fly open, all the shackles fall off.

Can you imagine being that Roman jailer?

Can you frightening?

But the jailer wasn't from Asia.

The jailer wasn't from Greek.

He was Roman.

See a trend here?

Some diversity taking place within the church at Philippi.

He was not a god fearer.

He also didn't have a spirit of divinity divination within him.

He wasn't in turmoil like the slave girl.

He would have been considered more of a blue-collar type of dude.

So you have an Asian, a Greek, and a Roman starting to see the beginnings of a church here.

And as the earthquake happened, and all the doors open and the shackles fall off, and the jailer wakes up and he's got the sword, he's about to drive it into his chest because he assumes that everyone that he is supposed to be watching over and keeping in the cells that just opened and keeping in the shackles that just fell off are gone.

But Paul cries out, Do not harm yourself, we are still here.

And the jailer's response is, What?

What?

How can I be?

I want this.

How can I be saved?

And he was saved and he was baptized.

And when you when you look at each of these stories individually, which we should do, I'm not discounting the fact that we should look at each of these individuals.

When we look at them individually, they are beautiful, right?

They they are mind-blowing, they are wildly encouraging.

But when you take a step back and you look at all three of them, and you look at the context of where these people came from, you look at their socioeconomic class, you look at where Asian and Greek and Roman, and you take a step back and you look at them collectively and see them in the bigger picture.

They go from pretty amazing to absolutely breathtaking.

Absolutely breathtaking.

And it highlights two things.

It highlights the work of the Spirit.

There is no explanation for the transformation of Lydia, the slave girl, or the Roman jailer without the work of the Holy Spirit.

And it also highlights the sovereignty of God the Father.

You have Paul who would plan to go to Asia shows up in Philippi, and you have these three people get converted that no one would have expected to be converted, and the church begins.

We can't miss the big picture.

We can't miss the big picture.

Unexpected converts.

And then you look in verse 40.

It says, so they went out of the prison.

This is after Paul and Silas got out of the prison and visited Lydia.

And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.

They showed up at the local church that was Philippi.

They encouraged them and then they departed.

You know, there was no recorded believers in Philippi before Paul showed up on the scene in the first century.

He shows up on the scene.

The Lord does an absolutely incredible work.

And before he leaves, there's a gathered local body of believers, much like the one we have in this room right now.

And Paul didn't plan to go to Philippi.

The Lord planned it.

The first church in Europe, so mind-blowing to me.

The first church on European soil was started by a guy who didn't even plan to be on European soil at that time.

The conversion of a rich Asian woman, the conversion of a poor slave girl who was being tormented, and the conversion of a Roman jailer who many people would have feared.

And 10 years later, Paul is writing this letter back to that same group of ragtag people that had become a fully functioning New Testament church where elders and deacons had been appointed, where the ordinances were being carried out.

Yet sometimes in 2020, whatever year we're in, 2026, almost said 2016, 10 years behind.

But sometimes in 2016, we we approach church polity flippantly, like, no, why do we care about if we have elders?

Why do we care about if we have deacons?

Why do we care about one another?

Aren't we just supposed to show up here, listen to the sermon, come sit in the sermon, then bounce?

Who cares if we get to do the Lord's Supper?

Who cares if we do this?

Who cares if we do that?

Church polity is not some afterthought of the 21st century.

It began in the first century.

It's not an accident.

It's easy to only look at the specific accounts of those three individuals in Acts 16.

And when we do, we miss this beautiful picture that God orchestrated the church to be organized in the way of elders and deacons and congregation for a reason.

It's easy to only look at the slave girl.

It's easy to only look at Lydia.

It's easy to only look at the jailer.

But when we do so, we miss so much.

God ordained the development of his church in Philippi.

There's no other way to explain its development.

There's no other way to explain each of those individual transformations.

I would also say this.

Do you really think they have this church that Paul planted that showed up in this rich woman's house, basically?

And it's made up of all these people from all these different backgrounds who bring all these different opinions into the mix.

Do you really think they agreed on everything?

Let's be real.

Do you really think they agreed on everything?

There is zero chance they agreed on everything.

You think a rich woman from Asia who sold purple goods agreed with a Roman jailer?

Had the same opinions as a Roman jailer?

You think a Roman jailer had the same opinions as this girl who had been tormented by the spirit of divination?

No, no.

Zero chance, not a snowball's chance in a really hot place.

No chance that they agree on everything.

I want to be clear.

God ordained the structure of his church, and we are charged to model that.

And it is for the glory of Christ, but we must understand it's for our good and it also helps us protect the unity of the church.

Because there is no way and chance, there's no chance that 170 people in this room are going to agree on every single thing.

If you, if that's you, you're fooling yourself if you think that's gonna happen.

I love my wife more than anyone in the world.

We don't agree on everything, right?

She usually wins those arguments, right?

We don't agree on everything.

That's okay.

But God has given us the local church for his glory most primarily, but it's also by pure grace so that we can have unity in the midst of diversity of opinions and in the midst of diversity of different ethnicities, in the midst of diversity amongst different socioeconomic classes.

It is pure grace that we have his church and that we have the structure of his church.

And it protects the unity.

So don't breeze past the second half of verse one and think it has no merit for us today.

No, 2,000 years of church history, the church polity is given to us in the first century for his glory and for our good.

Which brings us to verse 2, where we see unmerited grace.

Unmerited grace.

The fact that Paul, given his background, was the person that God used to plant this church is an expression in itself of unmerited grace.

It's an expression of unmerited grace.

Paul, at different points in his writings, he refers to himself using this language.

I am the chief sinner.

He doesn't say I sinned sometimes.

He doesn't say sometimes I'm weak.

He doesn't say I had a moment of weakness, all these things that we do to mask our sins and the significance of our sins.

No, he says, I am the chief sinner.

God saved sinners of which I am the worst, is another time he refers himself as a chief sinner.

His salvation was by pure unmerited grace.

He didn't deserve it, and neither do we.

Yet we see here and in other places the Lord is using him in many ways, in mighty ways.

So you have his salvation or justification is the fancy word for that, is pure grace.

And the fact that he is used in so many different ways to carry out the mission of Christ to plant churches is pure grace.

His justification is pure grace, and the fact that he gets to be a servant of Christ is pure grace.

And in verse two, he points out grace.

And in doing so, what he does is he points to the source of grace, which we know is the Father, Son, and the Spirit.

We talked about this earlier, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to make sure I highlighted this in the context setting.

We talked about that.

This was a Roman colony under Roman control, under Roman law.

And I made a big deal about that.

And I did that for multiple reasons.

But one reason is to make sure we understand how bold verse two would have been in the first century.

Look with verse at verse two with me again for a second.

I'm going to read it for you.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

And listen to the statement and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must understand, we can say that today, and it's it doesn't crawl come across as offensive.

It's not a big deal to people.

Sometimes we say it almost callously, like, and we don't even understand how significant it is that we have the Lord Jesus Christ.

The proclamation of Lord Jesus Christ would have been punishable by death in this Roman first century colony.

And here's why.

Not Rome and not some Roman ruler.

So this would have been a statement that could have been punishable by death.

It wasn't some flippant statement that they're using.

This would have been a serious statement.

Lord Jesus Christ, He is my King, not Rome.

The Romans wouldn't have been too pleased to read that.

Paul, Timothy, and the Philippian church had experienced the same Father, Son, and Spirit that we have experienced today.

That's what we have to understand.

They had experienced that.

And it had so captured their lives and their uh their doings and their motives that they were proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ, even if it could have cost them their life to do so.

And we have to see this.

It's the Father's plan, it's the Son's blood and the Spirit's prompting.

That's what we see over and over again.

That's what we saw in Acts 16 with all three of those situations, right?

It was the Father's plan for Paul to go to Asia to share the gospel with these people.

It was the Spirit's prompting to open the eyes of Lydia, to open the eyes of the slave girl, to open the eyes of the jailer.

And it was by the blood of Christ.

That they could be saved even in the midst of their sin.

Think about how it's played out.

God redirected Paul from Asia to Philippi, the Lord's sovereign plan.

Think about the different types of ministries, too.

This is it would be easy to miss.

The different types of ministry.

Lydia, it was a ministry of words, right?

They were sharing verbally, communicating the gospel using a words-based ministry.

And Lydia was converted.

Right?

You have the a deed-based ministry with a slave girl.

It wasn't that they weren't using words, but a lot of what they were doing was meeting the needs of this slave girl, but they were also using words.

So you have a word-based ministry, you have a deeds-based ministry, and then you have this example-based ministry that's with a jailer, right?

Do you think the spirit, well, that's I probably shouldn't phrase it that way.

The jailer sitting in his cell, sitting there watching the cells, the doors open, everybody's gone.

Do you think he would have said, hey, Paul, tell me about this Jesus you follow if Paul had bounced?

No, it's this example-based ministry of Paul having the freedom to leave but not leaving, that the Lord uses, the Spirit uses to prompt this response from the jailer.

And yet you have these different people from different backgrounds making up this church, rich and poor, Asian, Greek, Roman, to name a few.

All of this screams God's grace through God's sovereign plan.

It's the plan of the Father, the matchless blood of the Son, and the divine work of the Spirit.

I said this a minute ago.

There would have been great opportunity for disunity and dysfunction amongst this church, which also highlights God's grace.

There's no way to explain the church at Philippi.

And as we're going to see in this letter, this one is not as corrective in nature as 1 Corinthians.

This one's wildly encouraging.

There's no way that Paul is writing an encouraging letter to labor well to such an eclectic group of people outside of the grace of God being bestowed upon their lives and protecting the unity.

And further, he doesn't just say grace to you.

You know, he doesn't say grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, but he also says peace.

Grace and peace.

It's a beautiful benediction, right?

It's this bi-directional address.

It's not just pleasant words.

It's a prayer and it's addressing of the people.

It's this prayer to God and it's addressing of the people.

Grace and peace has depth of meaning, has this beautiful depth.

Those are two, that's a phrase that we can just throw around flippantly if we're not careful, not understanding what it means.

Grace and peace.

It's not just a cordial saying that we say to someone when we walk by them, right?

It's something that's available to us through the provision of God the Father, through the prompting of God the Spirit, and through the work of God the Son.

It's this beautiful picture of the Trinity at work.

It is blood-bought.

Grace and peace is blood-bought.

Going full circle to what I said at the beginning of the sermon.

The church wasn't just finding peace in their circumstances.

They weren't just finding comfort in their circumstances.

In verse 2, it's what Paul is using to tell them how to find peace in the midst of difficulty.

Grace to you and peace from who?

God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

As we close, I want to ask you a question that's a hard question for me to answer personally.

And it's the question: are you at peace?

Are you at peace?

I'm not asking if everything is okay.

Because if everything's okay and our paycheck hit when it was supposed to hit, and we didn't get fired, and our kids are healthy, and everybody's happy with us, everybody's encouraging us.

It's easy to be at peace.

I'm not asking if everything is okay.

I'm not asking if things are going the way that you expect them to go.

I'm not asking if your life is free of opposition.

I'm not asking if your life is free of suffering.

I'm asking you, are you at peace?

I'm not the guy who does well at always living in peace.

I'm not that guy.

Sometimes circumstances overwhelm me.

Sometimes emotional suffering cripples me.

And over the last few months, one of the things I've rehearsed in my mind over and over again, and it was fascinating to me when I was reading a commentary this week because I saw a guy use the exact same language that I've been using with myself for probably eight to twelve weeks.

I don't have to, I get to.

Think about that statement.

I don't have to.

I get to.

I don't have to, I get to.

If you're struggling to find peace in your circumstances, I want you to think about that statement.

I don't have to, I get to get to.

Paul and Timothy modeled this for the Philippians and subsequently for us.

Here's some ways this plays out.

You don't have to get you don't have to be a part of his church.

You get to.

You don't have to endure suffering for the sake of Christ.

You get to.

It's a privilege to count it all with joy.

You don't have to participate in communion weekly.

You get to.

You don't have to follow Jesus.

You get to follow Jesus.

There's a song that Michael turned me on to recently, and it talks about praising in all circumstances.

And one of the lines in the song, I'm not going to get it 100% right, but it talks about when death comes, I will no longer have the privilege of being able to praise the God of creation in the midst of unexplainable circumstances.

Have you thought about that?

One day you'll be before the God of creation, you'll be praying the Lamb, praising the Lamb.

And there will be no more days where you get to praise Him in the midst of circumstances you don't understand.

It is a privilege for us to be able to praise Him in the midst of difficulty and suffering because of who He is.

We don't have to, we get to.

Your endurance as a servant of Christ is a get-to.

It's not a have to.

So if you are struggling to find peace, remind yourself of that truth.

He's unchanging.

He's not changing and he's not going anywhere.

And you were chosen and called to faith, as we see in Ephesians 1, by God the Father, not because you have to, but because you get to.

It's not a chore to follow Jesus.

It's not a chore to endure suffering.

It is a blessing.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ being bestowed upon us is the source of the peace that we so long for.

But what happens is we search everywhere else to find it.

We wait for the Lord to change our circumstances.

And there's no promise of that.

What the promise is, is in the midst of your difficulties and sufferings, he will be near to you.

He will be with you in your suffering.

Brothers and sisters, if you struggle to find peace, let me just encourage you to remind yourself over and over and over again of the truth that we see interlaced all throughout his word.

And that is we have the privilege of following Jesus and suffering for the name of Christ.

And that is an absolute blessing.

Not because of the circumstances, but because it was blood bought and he invites us into that relationship and uses us for his plan, for his glory, and for our good.

Let's pray together.

Father, we are so grateful for your word.

God, we're grateful for guys like Paul who God not only proclaimed the reality of how to endure suffering, but modeled it for us.

God, he was just in prison a mere 10 years later, before writing this letter, he was in prison in the place where the church he's writing to is.

And he is writing to them about having peace, knowing the very present reality of what their suffering was.

And he is saying, hey, take heart to have peace through the grace of Christ.

So God, I pray for us as a people of God, as a congregation, as saints here, as those called to a holy calling according to Ephesians 1 and other places.

God, may we find peace in who you are.

Understanding our circumstances may or may not change, they may or may not get better, they may actually get worse.

But we have the privilege of enduring for the cause of Christ.

And that should be a privilege and a blessing to our souls.

And may that be so.

God, I pray for the person here who's not a follower of Jesus.

As I mentioned at the very beginning of the sermon, may the intro to this letter that we see in verse one of Paul and Timothy, Paul specifically taking the form of a servant, modeling that, acknowledging that his brother Timothy is doing the same.

May that be what the Lord uses to prompt a response for the person who's never uh responded to the prompting spirit.

May they too enjoy the blessing of Christ Jesus.

May they too enjoy the grace and peace that is only available through the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Whom his name we pray.

Amen.