Philippians

You're listening to a message preached at Front Range Baptist Church by Pastor Dean Miller.

It is our prayer that this message will be a help and an encouragement to you in your spiritual walk.

Now, here's Pastor Miller.

I'm so glad that Brother Bryce had a quartet up here tonight.

There were four singing tonight up here.

Might have been five.

I don't know.

Do we have any twins?

No, no twins.

All right.

I think we have we have so many babies coming due here soon.

And uh it's a blessing to see a growing.

We're gonna grow one way or the other.

We've already set that out.

Let's pray.

Lord, you are faithful, and we are so grateful for your faithfulness.

Lord, it's every morning your mercies are new.

And Lord, I I need new mercies every day.

And so we ask that you would meet with us tonight.

We love to open the word of God together as a church.

We love to sing and to praise you and then open your word and to hear from you.

And so, Lord, just teach us tonight.

Let the Holy Spirit guide us and teach us through your word as we go through this book of Philippians.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Thank you for being here on Wednesday night.

It's been a fall day today.

Uh all day.

It's fall, y'all.

And so guess what?

There's pumpkin spice everything.

So just get used to it.

So tonight we're going to be in pumpkin spice Philippians.

Um and uh there's pumpkin spice, everything.

I saw a pumpkin spice beef jerky the other day, and I thought, what a way to ruin beef jerky.

That is terrible.

But uh so great to see everyone.

I had some friends here uh from the wilds I met at the Wilds Christian camp.

Uh, those of you that know uh where the wilds is, they're in beautiful North Carolina up in the mountains, and uh I've had the privilege of being part of that ministry a few times and preaching out there.

I met some good friends.

Let's introduce yourself and and your wife there.

I don't want to put you on the spot, but where you're from.

I've never done this before.

Okay.

My wife and Joe.

We're uh we live in uh suburbs of Minneapolis in the West Sunday.

Yeah.

Well, we're so glad that you guys are down here in beautiful sunshiny, Colorado.

And um uh sometimes I'm gone on a on a Wednesday night ever so often, and I'm somewhere ministering and preaching, and sometimes I think the church just thinks I'm taking vacation.

But uh but I really am ministering and preaching, and and the things that I preach here, I preach everywhere else, so I don't sugarcoat the message, right?

Uh so uh Philippians chapter one tonight.

We're gonna get into the book of Philippians.

This is a powerful book.

I want you to think about this for a minute because we're gonna talk about the founding of this church, but imagine that the church was around, this church was around for 10 or 15 years, and people had uh come to the church and grown in the church, but the founding pastor had only been there for just a short while.

And uh then he writes a letter some 10 years later, and the church is filled with people who had never met him.

All they'd ever heard about is that this guy got arrested and is in prison.

And we get a letter from prison telling us all how we should be living.

I wonder how that would go over.

Well, that's the book of Philippians.

Paul had founded this church somewhere between 49 A.D., 49 to 51, somewhere there on his second missionary journey.

And he's writing this from prison in Rome sometime around 60 to 62 A.D.

And he's writing back to this church uh almost 10, 12 years later from its founding, and his whole purpose in writing this is that the Christian's joy is not determined by your circumstances, but by a life centered on Jesus Christ.

And can I tell you that one of the things that you're gonna see in Scripture is that churches can get, have a tendency to become uncentered on Christ.

And we can get centered on all kinds of things.

Our Christian life can become focused on all kinds of things, and we can lose our sight of Christ.

I want to tell you, when a wheel becomes uncentered, it becomes wobbly, and it's a rough ride.

And so we want to be a church that doesn't get wobbly.

We don't want to have a rough ride and have strife and contention and all kinds of problems.

Joy is the answer to all of that.

And and the answer to joy is a center-focused life on Christ.

And Paul is gonna is gonna give this.

He's gonna teach this church that when Christ is your purpose, and humility is your attitude, and heaven is your perspective, then you can experience joy in every circumstance.

Well, let me say that one more time.

When Christ is your purpose, and humility is your attitude, and heaven is your perspective, you can experience joy in any circumstance.

So Paul is writing this from a prison cell.

So he's writing, he's a man who is falsely accused, he's been separated from his friends, he's uncertain whether he's gonna live or die.

He has appealed to Caesar, Nero, and he's waiting to hear from Caesar.

And here's the problem he's he's in a house under house arrest because when Caesar says, I want to see that guy, you better be there to go see him.

And uh so he's staying close, he's having to maintain his own place of lodging.

He's basically chained to a Roman guard every day.

Uh and so uh Paul is uh making, he has to get his own food, he has to take care of his own necessities, and don't think prison modern day America, where you get three squares and uh colored television and all the rest of an internet.

You would expect when a man is like this, in that situation, you would expect a letter filled with discouragement.

Complaining about his conditions, requesting sympathy, but instead it's one of the most joyful books ever written.

And that's the book of Philippians.

So when we get into it, the Apostle Paul is writing here, and this whole thing overflows with joy, with gratitude, with confidence, with encouragement.

You're gonna see the words joy and rejoice repeatedly throughout the letter.

And it is the theme of the book.

And so one of the greatest paradoxes of Philippians is that a prisoner is teaching free people how to live joyfully.

I will tell you, I've experienced that in my own life.

I remember going into Leakesville prison every year in Mississippi and preaching a week-long revival meeting in that prison.

And we would come in during the day and we would get to go back in the cell blocks and sit down with prisoners and share the gospel one-on-one with them.

And then at night they would bring cell blocks down, and we would preach in this service to 300 men.

Then they would take them back and they would bring the next cell block down, and we would preach to 300 men, and we would do that through the night, and we did that all week long.

And I remember one year we had a tremendous move of the Holy Spirit in those meetings, and we had a number of men saved.

Over 200 men trusted Christ.

And those 200 men appealed to the warden and asked if they could be baptized.

And so he scheduled that baptism for late January outside.

And I went down to the prison, and so uh they we we brought a horse tank and we went down there.

They let us fill it up with a garden hose.

And I stood in the outer court of that prison, it was 31 degrees, Mississippi 31, humid.

It was cold.

It was like a movie.

We were standing out there, there were 200 men in their white jumpsuits.

All the prisoners around in the rooms banging on the windows and yelling obscenities, and it was just a cacophony in there.

And those men began to sing Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

And I baptized those men, every one of them.

And I have, and they waited, it was freezing.

And here's the thing many of them only had one change of clothes.

So they would take those clothes off.

Many of those men would get baptized completely undressed, and I would baptize them, and they would come out and they would wait until the air would somewhat dry them off, and they would get dressed, and they waited until every man was baptized.

I've never seen more joy in a prison.

This is Paul.

Your joy is not dependent on your circumstances.

Joy is an inside job.

Joy comes from Jesus.

And so Paul's gonna demonstrate that.

Uh so let me give you a little bit of a quick historical background.

City of Philippi.

We pronounce it, I've always pronounced it Philippi.

How many of you pronounce it Philippi?

How many of you pronounce it Philippi?

Okay, Brother Hoff, you're right.

Good job.

Way to go.

It's Philippi, is actually the way to say it, but I'm gonna say Philippi because that's just the way I say it, and I'm gonna do what I want.

But anyway, whatever it was called, it was an important city in the Roman Empire, and it was in the province of Macedonia.

It was located in northern Greece.

If we, one of these days I'm working with a group right now, I want to do a journeys of Paul, and I want to take us over, and I had a opportunity a few months ago to fly with one of my dear friends over to Turkey and to travel through the churches in Asia Minor, and I just turned it down.

It was all expense-paid trip from the government of uh Turkey, the Department of Tourism, and they want us to come and take us through all of the ruins, and I turned it down, but I've been working on one of these days leading the journeys of Paul.

And we're gonna go over and go through Greece and go through all of these different places and see these places.

I I had pictures to show tonight, but I don't have time because I get the plane in the air and I can't get it on the ground, so we're just gonna fly.

But beautiful place.

It is a gorgeous place.

It was a Roman colony, it was became a Roman colony in the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC.

Many Roman veterans through the years would settle in that place.

It was a it was a place of retired soldiers.

It had a lot of privileges of being in that place.

It had a strong Roman identity.

It was strategically located, it was right along the Via Ignatia, which was a major Roman uh highway connecting the integral parts of the empire.

It was a proud Roman city, it was it was uh it valued Roman law, it valued Roman culture, and it valued Roman citizenship.

And Paul was uh perfectly fitted to go there and preach the gospel.

And one of the great things about Philippi, it was a gateway to Europe.

Paul had been ministering much in Turkey and in that part of the of the east.

And remember, he was going places, and the Holy Spirit was forbidding him, and he finally came to Troaz.

And in that place at Troaz, Paul had this vision, the Macedonian vision of a man in Macedonia saying, Come help us.

And he got up the next day and he says to his team, we're going to Macedonia.

And they caught a ship and they went across and they landed in Philippi.

And much to Paul's surprise, when he gets there, instead of finding a man of Macedonia, he finds a woman.

Her name was Lydia.

And she was a tremendous blessing.

One of the things that is going to ring in this letter, and I think Paul had Roman citizenship in mind when he said in chapter 3, verse 20, for our conversation, our citizenship.

King James says, our conversation, it's our citizenship is in heaven.

That's the place when we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our citizenship is not in Rome.

We're not looking at Nero, we're looking for Jesus.

Paul is reminding these believers who live in this proud Roman city that they need to be looking for the King of Kings who's coming from the great city of heaven.

And that's really where our hearts should be tonight.

You can be anywhere in this world, but yet we are citizens of heaven.

So when Paul gets there, come over and help us, is the Macedonia call.

There's still a Macedonia call today.

There are nations around the world that are saying, come and help us and send missionaries.

And America has always been a gospel-sending country.

And I pray that we will always be.

But Paul gets there and he finds Lydia.

And Lydia is a businesswoman.

She's a seller of purple, which has a lot of things we could talk about.

We talked about it in our study in the book of Acts some time ago.

And she was originally from a place called Thyrotira.

She worshipped God, but she didn't know him.

And the Bible says that the Lord opened her heart.

I love this.

The Lord opened her heart.

So when Paul came to preach, she was somebody, it was kind of like, she was very much like Cornelius.

Remember the Roman centurion?

Who was a good man?

He was a godly man, he feared God, but he didn't know God.

And when Peter came, right in the middle of the message, the Holy Spirit opened Cornelius' heart.

And he had to interrupt the preacher to get saved.

And Lydia was the same way.

She's down by the riverside.

Paul begins to preach, and it was like she saw, this is what I've been looking for.

I get it.

And she trusted Christ.

And I love this.

The Lord opened her heart and she got saved.

And then she opened her house and housed the believers and housed Paul and became a wonderful, hospitable place for the ministry.

It's probably most likely that this is where the church at Philippi started, was in her house.

Then the second person to get converted was a demon-possessed girl.

So you have a businesswoman, and then you have a demon-possessed slave girl who was held by her handlers and she would tell people's fortunes, and they were making a profit off of her.

She began to walk behind Paul, proclaiming all these things.

And Paul delivered her from the demon.

And then the people were angry because it hindered their business.

You know, it's amazing to me that the world loves the devil when they make money off of him.

And you can preach on anything, but but preacher, don't preach on that.

My livelihood is tied to that.

And so it disrupted their business, and so the owner stirred up a persecution against Paul and Silas.

The scripture records this woman's deliverance, this girl's deliverance from demons.

But it doesn't really say that she became a member of the church, but I happen to believe that she did.

Why wouldn't she?

I think Lydia probably opened her heart to her.

But then Paul gets thrown in jail.

He's beaten and he goes to prison.

And then in prison, God shakes the doors.

Acts chapter 16, you can read all about this.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

God shakes the walls open and they don't run out.

And the prisoner, uh, the keeper of the prison comes in, the Philippian jailer, and he gets a light and he springs in.

He said, and Paul said, Don't do yourself any harm.

We're all here.

Don't kill yourself.

And the guy said, What must I do to be saved?

And Paul said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.

And so then he got saved.

Then they took him to his house that night.

Whole household responded to the gospel and got baptized.

And the Philippian church began in the context of prayer, persecution, praise, and salvation.

This is how a church should start prayer.

There's going to be some persecution.

Endure that hardness.

Why?

Because God's doing a work.

We're going to praise the Lord through all this, and we're going to see people saved.

So Paul is not doing what he did in Galatians, where he's fixing doctrinal error.

He's not doing what he did in the book of Corinthians, where he's dealing with sin in the church and he's confronting church problems.

Philippians is really centered on personal things and very affectionate things.

Paul has a deep love for this church.

They had supported him financially in his missionary endeavors.

A man by the name of Apaphroditus had been going back and forth from this church to Paul, ministering to Paul's needs, and then coming and ministering there.

And Aphyroditus had brought a gift to the Apostle Paul from them.

And in fact, he was very, very ill because of that.

He had worked himself to death.

He almost died.

And Paul gave good report that he was okay.

Really, essentially, Philippians is a missionary prayer letter and thank you letter.

And it's a pastoral challenge to them to live a Christ-centered life.

If you were to fly over all four chapters, let me give you one statement to summarize all of them.

Chapter one, Christ is my life.

Chapter two, Christ is my example.

Chapter three, Christ is my goal.

And chapter four, Christ is my strength.

And Paul's going to talk about the joy in chapter one of living for Christ.

He's going to talk about in chapter two, the joy of living like Christ.

In chapter three, he's going to talk about the joy of pursuing Christ and to intimately knowing him.

And then in chapter four, he's going to talk about the joy of depending on Christ.

So let's look at chapter one.

Christ is my life.

Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi with the bishops and the deacons.

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

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.

Who bewitched you people?

No, he's writing to the Philippians and he's like, Man, I love you guys.

He said, I am I make request with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

Being confident of this very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

So here's what Paul's going to talk about.

In chapter one, he's going to say, Christ is my life.

He's going to begin by thanking these believers for their confidence in God and for their expression of joy and God's work that's being done in them.

In fact, Paul talks about the confidence of God's work.

That Paul understood that salvation is a work of God in our life.

That's how we get saved.

God works in your life, He has to convict you of your sin.

The Holy Spirit opens your eyes and opens your heart like he did with Lydia.

God began this work in you.

But the God who began this work in you will perform the work in you and through you.

And he's going to do it until the day of Jesus Christ.

The Lord's going to work in you until you're like Jesus.

So salvation was never your work, it was his work.

Christ finished that work at the cross.

And then when you got saved, that work really began in you to make you more like Christ.

Listen, if there's not a work of God going in your life, you need to examine yourself.

Are you saved?

Am I backslidden?

What is God doing in my life?

How is God working in me?

Salvation is a continuing work in the believer.

God does not just merely save us from the penalty of our sin, He is saving us and transforming us to become more like Christ.

So a spiritual work is a lifelong work.

You're a growing Christian.

And so Paul talks about his confidence in Christ.

God is going to complete what he started.

Hey, listen, do you know that I'm going to be just like Jesus one day?

You're looking at somebody who's going to be just like Jesus.

And I'm looking at people tonight who are going to be just like Jesus.

You say, what are we going to be like?

I don't know.

But we know this that when we shall see him, we shall be like him.

Amen.

That's all I know.

So the second thing in chapter one that we see is the advancement of the gospel.

I love this.

Look down in verse number, look down in verse number 12 very quickly.

He said, But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which have happened unto me have fallen out rather under the furtherance of the gospel.

Now listen, this was a big concern.

Paul had traveled to this point some 10,000 miles in missionary journeys.

No airplanes, no cars, no Uber.

Paul has traveled 10,000 miles in his journeys.

He is a master church planter.

And what does God do with this guy?

He sits him in the worst place that a church planner can be: in a jail cell.

Chained.

Paul, you can no longer go.

And I'm sure there was a lot of people wondering, why would God do that to Paul?

And Paul said, guys, I don't want you to be ignorant of this.

I want you to understand that what's happened to me is actually good for the gospel.

And they said, Paul, how can that be good for the gospel?

Well, look at verse number 13.

That my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in other places.

He said, Look, I'm chained to the Imperial Guard, man.

When I win these guys to Christ, they're telling people in Caesar's house.

Paul's going to even write one of these days, and he said, Then all the people in Caesar's house greet you too.

People in Nero's family got saved by Paul being in ground zero of Rome.

Not only that, but he says in verse 14, that many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

He said, Look, when they saw what happened to me, it emboldened other people.

They said, We're going to preach the gospel like Paul did.

What do we got to lose?

And so he said, Not only is the gospel making headway in Rome and in other places, some of these guys that I've been chained to got promoted.

And they've been sent to other provinces in Rome.

And you know what they carried with them?

They carried the gospel with them.

I had captive audiences every day.

And they were saved under the rattle of my chain.

And then other preachers became more bold to preach the gospel.

And then he said, and then other preachers began to preach against me.

That there was something wrong with me, that I was in prison, and that the gospel of Christ shouldn't really lead to that kind of thing.

It should lead to more prosperity and more wealth, and something's wrong with Paul because the gospel of Jesus Christ should lead us into a more prosperous life.

And you know what happened?

Paul said, I'm not mad about that.

I'm really thankful because I'm just glad that Christ is being preached.

And so Paul said, even those who are opposing and had impure motives were still proclaiming Christ.

This is why I'm very careful not to get up and just preach against other churches and other ministries.

There may be things I disagree with and things that probably aren't not doctrinally sound, but let me tell you something.

Look, we ought to rejoice anywhere that Christ is preached.

There are some false places, and Paul's going to tell us to beware of dogs in this pastor of scripture, so don't read into what I just said.

But we've got to be very careful to not have a critical attitude that because somebody else cuts their cake different than we cut our cake, that they're wrong and we're right.

Or that they have a preference that we don't have, that they're listening let's be very careful with our attitude and just praise God that Christ is preached.

So in chapter 1, verse 12, he says, these things have fallen out to the furtherance of the gospel.

Can I tell you that some of the greatest things in the gospel's work have come through times of difficulties in the lives of believers?

I was talking to I was talking to Lori Fender today, and Rusty had to go back in for another procedure, and while he was down there, she was talking to a nurse, and she shared the gospel with that nurse.

And that nurse made indication that she was receiving Christ.

And I just thought, you know, these things have happened to the furtherance of the gospel.

That Christ is being preached.

He talks about the priority in the Christian life.

In verse 21, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

You know what this verse teaches that Paul had settled life's most important question.

What am I living for?

What am I living for?

In verse 21, he said, For to me, to live is Christ.

And to die is gain.

What are you living for?

May I tell you that you will never truly understand the fullness of life until you are no longer afraid to die.

Paul was saying, look, whether I live, it's all about Christ.

And if I die, I'm going to be with Christ.

Everything in life and death is Christ.

He knew the purpose for his life.

Joy was secure because his life was centered on someone that could not be taken from me.

Let me free and I'm going to preach Christ.

Take my head, I'm going to go be with Christ.

So I win either way.

And then he said in verses 27 through 30 that the responsibility of the believers is to live a life worthy of the gospel.

Look at verse number 27.

Only let your conversation, your behavior, your lifestyle be as it becometh the gospel of Christ.

That whether I come to you and see you or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.

And in nothing be terrified.

I'm telling you, this is the message that needs to be preached today.

So many believers are scared to death about what's happening in the world.

Look, I'm against the Muslim invasion.

I was against all the things that were happening in the COVID era.

But people were terrified about all of these things.

He said, Don't be terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you, of salvation and that of God.

Listen, Christians do not need to live in this thing of like, oh, what's going to happen?

We know what's going to happen.

We're going to live for Christ, then we're going to die and go be with him.

But I mean, what's going to happen with what's going to happen in Iran?

I don't know.

I'm going to live for Christ, and if I get nuked, I'm going to go live with him.

And I'm going to get a new body.

The other one's going to be laced potato chips.

But what if there's a new virus or a pandemic?

I'm going to die and go be with Jesus.

Now, I mean, we say that right now kind of glooby, but Paul said, don't be terrified.

Listen, do not let Satan terrorize you.

We're going to get to this when we get to 2 Timothy.

But Timothy is involved in the writing of this book.

Paul's saying, I'm.

And Timothy had a spirit of fear.

I think Paul was letting Timothy read some of this.

And you know what Timothy did in that spirit of fear?

You're going to see this in 2 Timothy chapter 1.

2 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

But he would not preach the gospel boldly.

And Paul had to remind Timothy, hey, the Lord didn't give you that spirit of fear, man.

You go out there and preach the gospel.

I'm not ashamed of him.

And so Christians are like, they're likely to become terrorized and to stop advancing the gospel.

Paul emphasizes a believer's responsibility in these ways.

You need to be living a life worthy of the gospel.

And you do that by living in unity and in courage and in faithfulness and suffering.

Strive together with other believers to advance the gospel.

That's what we do as a church here.

We're striving together with each other to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And sometimes our personal preferences get in the way, and Christians get caddywampus and they start fighting with each other.

And Satan loves that because if he can get you striving with each other, he will get you keep you from striving with one another for the gospel.

We're striving against people.

By the way, be very careful about people who always are stirring up strife and drama.

If there's always a little dust cloud around their life, and there's always some kind of issue, and they're mad at this person and they're striving with that person and they're upset about that person and they're suspicious of that person.

Look, just, okay, Pig Pen, go sit over there.

You know how Pig Pen always had that little cloud around him, okay?

You need a bath, but I'm not going to get dirty with you.

I'm going to go find somebody I can yoke up with and go live for Christ.

It doesn't mean that we don't bear each other's burdens.

We just don't get involved in everybody's drama.

Save your drama for your mama.

This church, if it had a Bible group, it would have been called the mama llamas.

Mama lamas of dramas, because he's going to tell in chapter 4, tell Udicus and Sentiki to be of one mind.

Stop fighting.

Stop it.

Unity.

Satan wants to create disharmony in the church.

He is a separator of brethren.

We must not let the devil do that.

We've got to love each other and bear each other's burdens and put up with one another and be long-suffering and patient and gentle and kind.

But you don't have to get neck deep in everybody's business.

Right?

Everybody with me on that?

That's an old southern word, business.

So the takeaway from chapter one is joy as possible when advancing Christ's cause.

Because that matters more than protecting my personal comfort.

Chapter two, he talks about Christ being my example.

He's going to talk about the joy of serving like Christ.

I'm going to tell you something.

It's one thing to be in Christ, it's another thing to follow Christ in service.

Because he's going to talk about the joy that comes with serving Christ.

And the two things he's going to emphasize is unity and humility.

You know why people don't serve?

Because there's disunity and there's pride.

And only by pride comes contention, and people don't want to serve, and I want to serve with them, and I don't want to be in that ministry.

I'm not going to go to that class.

They might be there.

Look, we got to get over that.

And we have to, we we have, we don't have much of a problem in our church.

Don't we have a pretty good spirit in this church?

We got a unified church.

I hear from people all the time, this is the friendliest church I've ever been in, and it's not just plastic.

People mean it.

And that's a testament to you.

Maintain, endeavor to protect that unity.

In the spirit of Christ, in the bond of peace.

Don't let anybody get in here and wiggle room in and start dividing people.

He says, I want you to stay humble and serve.

He addresses these two things.

In verses 1 through 4, he talks about Christian unity.

He says, if there be any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship with the Spirit, if any bowels of mercies, fulfill you my joy, that you be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind.

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in loneliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves.

Paul's like, look, do not elbow your way up so that you can get credit.

That's vainglory.

We have one love, and the love is Christ.

One of the greatest threats to church unity is selfish ambition.

When we put ourselves above others, Paul calls us to maintain unity.

How do we do that?

Be like-minded.

What does that mean?

Have Christ's mind.

When Christ is most important in your life and Christ is most important in my life, we're going to have the same mind.

And then he said, have the same love.

What kind of love?

We love Christ.

And we love each other.

When I love you more than I love myself and I love him above all, we're going to have unity.

When I esteem you better than myself, and I see that I don't have to have it my way.

I don't have to have it my way.

There was a church in Denver many years ago.

They had a church split.

I call them the belly button church.

They had a church split, a major church split.

I remember when I was a kid, I could not believe it.

I was appalled.

My dad said, that was such a great church.

They had a lady come in and took over the nursery direct.

She became the nursery director and she painted biblical murals on the wall.

She had a biblical mural of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

You know the one behind the bushes?

And she gave Adam a belly button.

And people in the church said, wait a minute, he can't have a belly button.

He wasn't born.

There's no umbilical cord.

As though God couldn't have formed that bell, that whole body out of dust, and then just went boop.

You know?

So they had this big meeting, and people were like, he should not have a belly button.

And other people were like, he should have a belly button.

It's just a picture.

And then in the middle of the night, some group from the belly button, no, no belly button group, snuck into the church and painted over it.

And then people from the belly button side were like, you're not getting by with that, pal.

And they came in and put a dot on the wall again.

And this church was fighting over a belly button.

Strife and vainglory.

Esteem others better than yourself.

Consider the interest of others.

One of the greatest threats to a church's unity is pride, self-ambition, self-interest.

Unity is strengthened when believers stop insisting on their own importance and begin looking at how they can serve one another.

We see in chapter 2, verse 5 through 11, the example of Christ's humility.

This is one of the most significant Christological passages in the New Testament.

Let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus.

Look what Paul does.

He presents the whole doctrine of Christ.

He talks about his eternal deity in verse 6, that he was in the form of God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Jesus was in the form of God.

He thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

He did not rob one iota from God's glory to say, I am God.

So we see him in his eternal deity, but then we see him in verse number seven, his incarnation.

He takes upon the form of a servant.

He becomes flesh.

Jesus became a servant.

What do you mean?

He took on a body.

He became a servant to hunger.

To rest.

He had to sleep.

He fell asleep in the back of the boat.

Really, one of the first times I ever wept in Israel.

We had been kind of in the whirlwind of Jerusalem, and we'd been up to Calvary, and we went out into the garden tomb, and my heart was moved at the Temple Mount and all that.

I was just in awe.

Went out to Gethsemane and we prayed under the trees and we talked about surrender to the Lord.

And then, but when we got later in that trip on a boat on the Sea of Galilee, and we went out on that water, it caught me by surprise.

I wept.

My wife came up to the front of that boat and she said, Are you okay?

And I said, You know how lonely he was.

He got on this boat.

All these cities around him.

He was healing and preaching and and his own disciples said, What manner of a man is that?

They didn't know fully who he was.

He was so weary, he just fell asleep on the back of that boat in a storm.

And man, I I just felt that loneliness.

Not even to a degree of what the Lord felt.

He was humbled in verse 8.

Became obedient to unto death.

Humbled to die on the cross, naked before the world, in shame.

So we see his eternal deity, his incarnation, becoming a servant, and then his humiliation on the cross.

But then look at verse number 9, his exaltation.

But God hath highly exalted him, given him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord of the glory of the Father.

He was exalted by the Father.

That phrase made himself of no reputation doesn't mean that Christ surrendered his deity.

Don't read into that.

Many people teach that, and that's not true.

He was always God, all God.

But rather, what the eternal son was doing was he was willingly taking the form of a servant and he entered into the humiliation of human life.

Jesus had to learn to walk.

He went home and was subject to his father, Joseph, and his mother Mary.

He toddled.

He was human.

I mean, he's the only baby that can look up and say, I made my mother.

But said it was good about either.

Think about that.

He was so humbled, and yet God exalted him.

And here's the lesson.

The pathway to exaltation is through the doorway of humility and obedience.

The Lord Jesus willingly humbled himself to serve us.

And if he can do that, then no Christian should ever deem himself so important that he cannot serve.

Then he said, I want you to shine.

Verses 12 through 18.

He teaches the believer that we're to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

Why?

God is doing this work in us, and if God is doing a holy work in us, we should work that out of us with fear and trembling.

I want the work that God is doing in me to be seen in me, and that's going to take fear and trembling.

I don't want to mess up the work of God.

I want to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ through my life.

We're not saved by works, but we are saved by the work that God has already done, and it's a holy work.

How many of you believe that the work that God is doing in you is a holy work?

Then we should let that work out of us with fear and trembling, lest we diminish the work that He's doing.

That we demote his work into our work, that God is here just working so I can have a comfortable life.

No, Paul said, I want you to work this out.

And he said, I want you to do it.

Look at verse number 13.

I want you to do it with God working in you to will.

I want God to give you the will of what to do and then the ability to do it.

You know what I want?

I don't want to do God's work my way.

I want to do God's work his way.

So, God, you give me the will, and then give me the ability to do it.

And then he says in verse 14, do all things without murmuring and disputing.

This is a very important lesson.

Because many believers murmur about the work that God is doing in us because God is telling us, put that down.

And we don't want to put that down.

What's wrong with that?

And we murmur, I don't know why I have to have, why should I have to do that?

Because God's doing a work in you.

And a holy work shouldn't be done in an unholy way.

And we complain because God tells us to pick this up.

I don't want to do that.

And Christian, you know, let me tell you, God, if you want to read what God thinks about murmuring and complaining, just read the book of Numbers.

He'll send some snakes your way.

The Christian life is not about demanding anything, it is about yielding humbly to God.

Alright?

Chapter 3, Christ is my God.

This is a great chapter.

We're going to fly through this quickly.

The joy of pursuing Christ.

In verses 1 through 6, he talks about rejecting the confidence of the flesh.

We've got to be very careful not to subjugate the Christian life to things that I can accomplish myself.

I mean, I can accomplish certain things.

And I'm going to tell you, many Christians walk around very proud of the Christian that they are, but the Christian that they are is all things that they can do.

I can be circumcised, I can keep this law, I can keep this rule, I believe we should do it this way.

And this is the genius of the Pharisee.

See, the Pharisee creates these standards that he can measure up to, and then he walks around and measures everybody else up to that.

And he's like, Well, you don't meet my measuring stick, therefore.

I'm a better Christian than you.

And Paul said, No, no, no, no confidence in the flesh.

Paul said, if you want to see what outward qualifications really mean, let me tell you about mine.

I was circumcised on the eighth day.

I was a stock of Israel.

I'm born of the tribe of Benjamin.

I'm a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

I'm a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

I was zealous in persecuting the church.

In fact, I was blameless in keeping all the outward righteousness of the law.

Like if you want to see what can be done through self-will and discipline, I did it.

And what did it merit me?

Look at verse 7 of chapter 3.

But what things were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ.

They gave me all the gain in my religious circles.

Man, all the teachers, and I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, man.

I was promoted.

They were all gained to me, but you know what I thought?

I counted them at lost for Christ.

Yea, doubtless I count all things but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.

What is Paul saying here?

He understood that religious achievement could never be produced through righteousness of my flesh.

It had to be produced through the work of Christ in me.

I have to think about this all the time.

I, man, I we have to be careful as Christians because who's doing this work?

Me or him?

And it does take both, because I'm in I have to be yielded to him.

So it's me working.

I mean, Paul was even confused.

Remember back in Galatians?

Nevertheless, I, but Christ in me, but the life that I now live.

Wait a minute, is it me or is it him?

Is it I am it's a cooperation, but it is all of Christ and Me cooperating with Christ.

And Paul's great desire was in verses 10 through 14 that he would know Christ deeper, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.

Listen, if you're going to know Christ, you're going to suffer.

It's going to create suffering in your own life.

Because if you're going to know Christ, you've got to start cutting out things that are standing between you and him.

It's going to require some things in your life that are painful for you to give up and for you to pick up.

There is going to be pain in that process of knowing Christ deeper.

See, we want our cake and eat it too.

I want to know Christ, but I want to know my desires too.

Well, it's either yours or his.

It cannot be both.

Verses 13 and 14, Paul says, I'm forgetting those things which are behind.

He's talking about the Christian life here.

He's pursuing Christ like a runner is pursuing the finish line.

I'm forgetting the things that are behind, and I'm reaching forth into those things which are before.

I press toward the mark.

This is talking about those cleats on the bottom of that shoe, and you're pushing forward, you're putting your grip down, that you press toward that so that you can have the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul said, if I'm going to know him, I've got to strive for him.

So here's what I got, I got to forget everything behind me the good and the bad.

The mile that I ran in record time, forget that.

The mile that I really slowed down, forget that.

The failures, the successes, the sins, all those things.

What happened yesterday, forget that.

Confess it, get it out of the way, and then press toward the goal of Christ.

Don't allow past failures or past accomplishments to stop you from being presently grinding for Jesus Christ.

Then he says in verse number 13, 17 through 21, that our heavenly citizenship should consume our mind.

Christians that are consumed with earthly things will have a worldly mindset.

Christians who are all consumed with the things of this earth are fearful about all the things of the world, and they're consumed with all that.

And he says, No, you are a believer.

So in chapter three, the takeaway is the Christian life is not merely about where we have been, but about where we are going and who we're pursuing.

Everybody with me so far?

That's joy, and we'll finish it right here.

Let's take our landing in chapter four.

Christ is my strength.

Paul says in verse number four, Therefore, my beloved brethren, dearly beloved, and long for my joy and my crown.

Stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.

I beseech Yodius and I beseech Centiki that they be of the same mind in the Lord.

So there's these two ladies striving in the church.

And Paul's like, Look, drama.

Stop it.

I'm asking you guys, get your head in the game.

And then he said, and then I want to talk about my fellow yoke fellows, those women which labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow laborers whose names are in the book of life.

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

So Paul turns to the ladies in the church and he's like, hey, listen, I want to talk to those of you that are striving with each other.

Hey, stop bickering and get your head straight.

And those of you who have been my fellow yoke bearers and you've served with me, keep the spirit of the church.

Can I tell you what Paul's saying here?

He's saying, look, Christ is the head of the church.

And all of us in the church are striving together.

And there is a heart, like the home, the women in the church create an atmosphere that is the heart and the spirit of the church.

There's a warmth and a beauty.

There is a you know what, men, ladies in the church are so quick to serve.

Every Sunday I try to go over by the nurseries and I kind of poke my head in, and I just look in there and I just say, God bless them today.

Bless these babies, bless the ladies who are taking care of them.

I just see ladies serving.

So many ladies are serving everywhere.

It's wonderful, and men too, but there's a spirit in that.

And Paul was saying, I want you to, but choose to rejoice.

Don't let emotions take over.

Take over your emotion.

Rejoice evermore.

He points Eudicus and Centiki towards unity.

He commands the church to rejoice in the Lord always.

Rejoice in every circumstance.

And here's what he's going to say.

He's going to, you know how you do that?

You replace anxiety with prayer.

You get, we get so wound up in this world of anxiousness.

Let me tell you the cure for anxiety.

It's prayer.

Be careful for nothing, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication.

With thanksgiving.

Can I tell you something?

There is a secret to peace, and it's prayer.

A church that starts to have strife in that church needs to start having multiple prayer meetings.

Because a church that prays will be a church at peace.

A believer who prays is a believer at peace.

If you see a believer who's always in strife, there's one thing you know about that believer.

They're not praying.

Paul gives them a practical pattern for handling anxiety.

Bring every concern to God in prayer.

Present those prayers and specific requests, and then thank God.

Build a list of gratitude.

And then trust God to guard your heart and mind with his peace.

Take everything that's bothering you and go pray about it and be specific.

And after you pray about it, thank God for taking care of it.

And thank God for everything else he's done.

Sometimes we get so focused on the problem, we forget all the blessings.

So get a gratitude attitude and praise God through that.

And then trust that God's peace will guard your heart and your mind.

It's protecting, it's guidance.

Verses 8 through 9, he talks about disciplining your thinking.

And man, this is so important in a church.

If you want to protect our joy, we have to protect our mind.

We have to turn our mind towards things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, good report.

Listen, so much of the Christian life is connected to Christian thinking.

Christian joy comes from Christian thinking.

What you continually allow your mind to go toward will eventually become your attitude, your response, and your focus.

So get your mind on what is true.

Ask yourself, is this true?

Is this honest?

Is this righteous and just?

Is this pure?

Should I be talking about this?

Should I be thinking about this?

And is there a good report in this?

Do I really want to hear that?

Hey, did you hear what is there a good report in that?

Because if it's not a good report, I don't want to hear it.

Well, it's true, yeah, but if it's true and not a good report, strike one.

Everybody with me?

Verses 10 through 13, he talks about the secret to contentment.

All of this is joy.

Choose to rejoice.

How do you do that?

Pray about everything with a grateful heart.

And then, and then live in the peace of God.

Discipline your mind, and then choose to be content.

Paul said, I've learned whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.

Paul had experienced abundance and he experienced poverty.

He'd experienced hunger, he'd experienced fullness.

He had comfort and he had suffering.

Listen, there are some times you got tons of money and savings.

Then there are going to be times in life where you got more bills than you have stamps.

Right?

There are times where I'm like, man, I am, I don't have enough.

I don't have enough Peter to pay Paul.

I got to borrow from Judas over here.

Paul said, I learned to be content.

Where did his contentment come from?

His contentment did not at all hinge on what he had or didn't have.

His contentment came on one thing: Christ.

I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.

This verse is oftentimes applied to personal accomplishments.

Listen, I mean, I hear football coaches.

I can do all things through Christ.

Get out there and win.

Well, that's a total misrepresentation of the text.

The immediate context of this verse concerns Christ strengthening Paul to remain content and faithful in changing circumstances.

I'm going to build with this and I'm going to finish with this.

Paul is sitting in prison.

He can't go work a job.

He is dependent on God supplying his needs.

There was times when Paul could go make tents and he made extra money.

There were times that Paul could buy other people a steak dinner.

Now Paul has nothing.

He's chained in a prison.

I can't do anything.

And the gift from the church of Philippi was late.

And Paul was hungry.

You know what Paul said?

I can get through this by Christ's strength.

I can be a joyful Christian when my stomach is growling.

As much as I was a joyful Christian when my bank was overflowing.

And that's what strengthens me.

Christ does not promise that we can accomplish everything we set our mind to, but he does supply the strength necessary to remain faithful in every circumstance that he permits.

Are you with me on that?

And then Paul could have gotten on to the church.

Watch this and we're done.

Because verse 14, notwithstanding, ye have well done that ye did communicate with my affliction.

Now ye Philippians also know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.

This was the only church that was giving to Paul.

Nobody else was giving to him.

He'd given his life for all these people, he'd hazarded his life for all these people.

And they were the only church sending him a love offering.

And they were doing it out of their poverty, and it was late.

And instead of Paul scolding them, because you didn't get it here on time, Paul was grateful that they gave.

And you know what he said to them?

He said, Look, what you did give is going to be fruit to your account.

Listen, all those things that we give to our tithes in this church, and the things that we give to above our tithes and our faith promise to missions around the world, everybody that gets saved.

If you're a tither in this church and people walk down the aisle and get saved, people trust Christ on a weekly basis, and the money that we send across the seas, all those people that are trusting Christ, that's fruit to your account.

God's keeping score of that.

And can I tell you something?

I know what I give, and I know what God does with what I give.

I get a lot of bang for my buck.

I cannot outgive God.

Amen.

So the takeaway of chapter 4 is my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus.

This promise comes in context of sacrificial giving and faithful partnership in ministry.

When we are giving to the gospel and we are giving in faithful stewardship and ministry, God supplies the need.

You cannot outgive God.

Now look, if you go give all your money to yourself, don't count on God supplying every need.

I hear people say all the time, I just don't tithe.

Yes, you do.

You just tithe to the RV company.

You tithe to the boat, you tithe to whatever that hobby is.

You tithe into the liquor store.

You tithe in somewhere.

They get in theirs, but you're getting no return on that investment.

But those of us that are given to the Lord first, God will supply all your needs according to his glory in Christ Jesus.

My wife and I had something happen the other day, and I knelt down and I just prayed.

I said, Lord, your house needs something.

Your house needs a new water heater.

It's leaking all over the floor.

And guess what?

The Lord supplied a water heater.

Circumstances don't determine your joy.

Unity requires humility.

Spiritual maturity requires continuous pursuit of Christ.

Peace only comes through prayer and disciplined thinking.

A disciplined mind.

And gospel ministry is a partnership of all the believers.

That's the secret to a joyful Christian life.