Heavenly Father, blessed Son, Holy Spirit, we gather this morning to worship your blessed name. We've come to hear how you are for the poor, needy sinners that we are. Show us how you have given us all we need in the Lord Jesus Christ. Convince us that our joy needs to find no other resting place but in him. He alone can hold up the weight of our worship and satisfy the desires of our hearts. Free us from the confines of living only for this life or for only the next, but instead teach us to see both life and death bring great joy in Christ. Finally, Lord, unite us together in love. Help us to see that the same life which purchased us from sin also unites us to one another. Help us to see our great joy comes tied up in your church, loving and serving them as Christ has loved and served us. Oh Lord, please put Christ on display before our eyes, that we might marvel and worship and praise you rightly this day. We ask this in your son's precious name, amen. So it's been a while since I've gotten to stand here and preach before you, and it is always a great joy of mine to do so. But I am slowly moving through the book of Philippians, and so probably don't remember a lick of what I had to say last time, which is perfectly fine. So what we'll do is we're going to spend just a moment trying to catch up to where we are in Philippians here. So the last time we visited Philippians several months ago, we looked at first how the book opens. It opens with a very important Pauline phrase. If you have your scriptures open, you can see this in verse one. It says here that the church in Philippi and everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ has the name of saint, which means anointed or holy ones, in Christ Jesus. That phrase in Christ is so important to Paul And here it helps us to see that the church is defined not by our own declarations, but by Christ himself. Christ defines who belongs to the church and everyone in him, whether you're a member or an elder or a deacon, we all equally share in the blessings of Christ Jesus, our Lord. But this unity isn't just about temporal blessings. tangible things that the Lord has given us. It is also about suffering. In verses 1 through 11, we looked and we saw that Paul tells the Philippian church that he has many reasons to give thanks to God with joy. They partnered with him in the gospel from the very beginning, from when they first heard it through him, all the way to the current sufferings that they are sharing with Paul. And he values the gospel unity they have where they support Paul, both in the defense and the confirmation of the gospel. He loves them more and more because they love the gospel that he preaches. And this love marks out the church as the supreme attribute, the thing by which the church is to be known, that all who follow Christ are those who love one another. That gospel preaching marched forward all throughout, even into Paul's imprisonment. We saw in verses 12 through 18, which was the second main section there, that God often uses suffering and hardships, really the difficult things in life, to increase the fruitfulness of the gospel message. As Paul suffered, many saw how the Lord kept and sustained Paul. He testified to the goodness of God over any life of comfort or ease apart from having Christ. And as a result, a greater bite, an experiential component really added validity to what Paul proclaimed. Because of this life of selflessness, both the church and the world were marveling at how God was dealing with Paul. Others, however, and this is the tragedy of the last time I preached, others viewed Paul's imprisonment as an opportunity, an opportunity to gain notoriety, to gain power. His imprisonment made room for an upward growth up that spiritual ladder. There is a possibility that they may even have taught that Paul's imprisonment really showed that God no longer favored Paul, that he no longer blessed Paul and want to use him, but instead as ministers also of the gospel, they were free. Clearly God was blessing them and that believers should really flock to them, seeking to honor them instead of honoring the Lord. How did Paul respond? With joy. And that's the shocking thing of the last sermon that I preached was joy, not joy because of the division caused in the body by these people. Paul regularly throughout the Bible and almost every book he wrote was adamantly against division and selfishness. So it's not for the division or the self wrangling of men, but that the gospel kept going forward. that the message was being preached, even selfishly. And that message brought deep joy and satisfaction to Paul. It really provided the meaning for his life, the purpose for his work. It was the object for which he strove in all things to obtain. And it's this deep satisfaction in the person, in the work, in the kingdom, in the message of the gospel that really is gonna inform our text today. So I have three points for the sermon. The first is rejoicing in Christ. We'll see that the end of verse 18, all the way through verse 20, rejoicing in Christ. The second is living and dying in Christ. That's verses 21 through 23, living and dying in Christ. And then finally, fellowship in Christ, verses 24 through 26, fellowship in Christ. So let's start with the first point, rejoicing in Christ. Hollywood, and liberal Christianity as well, often stereotype faithful Christians as stuffy, rigid in our worship. If we're full of anything, it's self-righteousness. They really portray orthodoxy and the life of faithfulness as boring and drab and deprived of really all pleasures and joy. But the text this morning, Paul would not allow us, not allow the faithful to hold on to that thought. For Paul, rather, Christianity is the only religion that overflows with true joy. It's joy that's inexpressible and full of glory, 1 Peter 1.8, that manifests itself quite differently from what the world is looking for and what the world would desire. You see, the world can't conjure up the type of joy that Paul is experiencing. They can't manipulate the world. They can't have it on their terms. Although this is a joy that arises in the hearts of believers separate from our circumstances. separate from sufferings and sorrow, which Paul was undergoing in his imprisonment and his possible torture. I know this is a joy that remains through brutal captivity and the constant threat of premature death. It's the joy that Paul first experienced when he was blinded on the road to Damascus, when the Lord Jesus Christ showed before him and the glory shone on him. It's a joy that arose out of and was founded on the person, the kingdom and the message of the gospel. It's a joy that Paul partook in, no matter how God chose to work out this message in Paul's life or through Paul's life. Whatever the Lord brought to him, ease or difficulty, hunger or plenty, he knew joy. The gospel was a well for Paul, a deep and cool well. I don't know if you've ever been on a hot day and found a cold spring and drunk deeply from it, how refreshing that is. The gospel is like that for Paul, a well that overflows and really brings cool, sweet waters that satisfy Paul's heart. But the gospel itself, although it is the well, there are many streams and tributaries that feed in, that really manifest the gospel in our lives, in Paul's life, that feed that joy. We're gonna see that as we look at the text at the end of verse 18. Verse 18 is a connector between what we heard last time and what we're gonna hear today. So just briefly, let's think about what we talked about last time where Paul is rejoicing in this message of the gospel that's being declared. You see, the proclamation of the gospel in any context, whether it was done from selflessness, like some ministers were, or from selfishness, trying to gain power and fame and following, all of that brought joy to Paul's heart. You see, every minister of the gospel finds this to be the absolute truth. that few things please us that please ministers more than hearing Christ preached, Christ and Christ crucified. When Christ appears and he's lifted up, when he's lifted up so the world might see him and the lost are saved or held up before believers so that they might see him and love him more, then the minister of the word finds his heart overflowing with joy. The minister, I think I would as well, would admit freely that even amidst all the toil and the hardship and the sufferings that come with administering the word of trying to bring God's word to his people to serve them, that the message itself preached is enough. It makes it all worthwhile. Paul will later say in Philippians 2 too, that he would have the people of God complete his own joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord in one mind. That same desire echoes in the hearts of your pastors here in our church. Our joy knows fullness when God's people come on the Lord's Day to know the person of joy, to know the Lord Jesus Christ. when you come with eager and expectant hearts, desiring to know your Lord, and joy overflows for all the saints, elder, deacon, and member alike. The verse looks forward now to the next section, the text we read this morning. The well of gospel water fills sweetness and soothes Paul's soul as he contemplates his own salvation. If you look there at the text, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the spirit of Jesus Christ that will turn out for my deliverance. The term there for deliverance might also be translated as salvation. Paul states plainly that he knows all of these circumstances, all that he's suffering and going through will turn out for his salvation. That's difficult for us to believe. How many of us, when we're uncomfortable, when life bumps a little bit, start to worry about the goodness and the faithfulness of God? And here is Paul, with a little sword at his neck at any moment, and he can find great joy. You see, the gospel freed Paul from hooking his heart up onto the cares of the world. And instead, he's hooked to the train of Christ. When a man comes to know Christ, a new motion begins to arise in his heart. The glory of Christ and all the good in Jesus starts to outshine anything else that might please us. This new life takes over so that more and more we know that our lot, our future, our good, all that we really need in life is found in Christ and Christ alone. And not only that, but he can keep it safe for us, safe for eternity. Perhaps a better way to think about what Paul is dealing with here is this idea of self forgetfulness. We grow to forget more and more all those things that we think will really satisfy our souls. We become more and more preoccupied with the glory of Christ, enjoying it, partaking of it, knowing it. That's what the psalmist says in Psalm 118, especially in verse six. What can man do to me? A lot of things, couldn't he? Couldn't he threaten and abuse and kill? But the reality is if our hearts are set on Christ, if our good is in him, then no one can take that from us. No one can get in the way of that. No one can rob us or steal it from us. This blessed gift of self-forgiveness means that all that's really precious to us, all that really means something to us, comes in and from and through the Lord Jesus Christ. No one can remove it. No one can threaten it. And as a result, even when Paul knew that the sword could come down on him any moment for preaching this message, or for those outside who are being faithful preaching this message. You have to remember, this is political dissidence. They're preaching a message that says there's one Lord, not Caesar. And even though Paul's in prison, the head of this movement in Rome, there are others still preaching the message. and how convenient it would be for Nero just to take his head and end this splinter group, this rabble rouser, these people who are causing so much strife in the culture. And yet, Paul knew that his safety wasn't in whether his head was attached to his body or not. His safety, his hope, his joy was in Christ. Neither life nor death could infringe on the joy of Paul. You and I want this joy, we need this joy. But how do we get it? I have friends who've sat in the pew with us for a long time who confessed to me one time and said, for a long time we kept hearing that Christ is enough and we didn't know what that meant. How do we get that? How do we come to the place where we say Jesus is all that I need? Well, Paul's confidence, does it come from some kind of mystic piety? Is it the result of some meditation or vision? Remember, Paul's the one who is caught up to the third heavens and he sees all these wonderful things. Is that where his His satisfaction, his confidence, his joy comes from, no, the text is actually quite clear. It comes from very concrete, tangible, objective means. First, the text says here in verse 19, the prayers of the saints, and secondly, the spirit of Jesus Christ. So talk about the prayers of the saints. As Reformed Baptists, we have a really strong sense of God's sovereignty, don't we? That God is in control of everything, and that whatever comes to us is from his hand. And that's true. Everything that comes to happen happens because God has willed it. No one can stay his hand. No one can fight him. These are precious truths to us. When we're struggling and everything seems to be falling apart, we want to hold on to them. But the scripture often regularly tells us of the necessity of prayer. It kind of leads to a natural question of if everything happens because God wills it, then why do we pray? The truth is God doesn't need us to inform him of what our needs are or how difficult life is or all the things going on. God has a better insight into those things than you or I do. He knows every end and purpose and what's going on and why. And he also doesn't need us to come to change his mind, to beg him. I don't know if you've prayed this way. I did for a long time. It wasn't very helpful to me. But Lord, would you give me this? Because this is what's the best. This is what's good. I'm telling you, God, what it is that I need. He doesn't need us to persuade him or conjole him or move him to do what is really the best for us, no. Calvin rightly says that God wills prayer to serve as the means by which we reach out. We reach out, we take hold of Christ and all the goods that are in him and the covenant that God has made with him and with us through him. Prayer becomes the activity God has willed for good to be done to us and for us. Calvin lists many reasons for this. I'm gonna quote him and then I'll summarize it. If Calvin's not your bag, try not to check out for just a moment. But he says this, first that, purposes of prayer. First, that our heart may always be inflamed with a serious and ardent desire of seeking, loving and serving him while we accustom ourselves to have recourse to him as a sacred anchor in every necessity. Second, that no desire, no longing, whatever of which we are ashamed to make him the witness may enter our minds while we learn to place all our wishes in his sight. and thus pour out our hearts before him. Third, that we may be prepared to receive all his benefits with true gratitude and thanksgiving, while our prayers remind us that they proceed from his hand. Moreover, having obtained what we asked, being persuaded that he has answered our prayers, we are led to long more earnestly for his favor, and at the same time, have greater pleasure in welcoming the blessings which he perceive to have been obtained by our prayers. In other words, brothers and sisters, this is what prayer does. Prayer fuels our desire for God through Christ. It teaches us to rely on him alone. It purifies our desires. It conforms them to what God wills and what he wants. It generates gratitude and drives us more and more and more to ask of God good things. as we see him provide them for us. It's not that God won't deliver. It's that it's through prayer he is ordained that he will do it so that he gets the glory and we get the joy of seeing him in action. Prayer glorifies God because it reveals of a heart abandoning all other trusts and casting itself on Christ and Christ alone. You see, the act of prayer generates joy as it takes hold of Christ and looks upon his majesty. The doors of the throne room are open when we pray fervently. They bust open with floods of mercy and wisdom and love that wash over us. In fervent prayer, fear and anxiety know no place. No lust or evil desire can intrude on us when we are focused on Christ in prayer. It's no wonder Paul could find such certainty that he would know salvation as the church prayed for him. God would not fail to answer the prayers of his people when they so long for and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Doesn't this move your heart to pray, to cry out to the Lord fervently? God has promised that all things will work out to the good of the believer to make us more like Christ. He has promised to be with us to the end of the age. He has promised that we can endure all trials and temptations. He guarantees that his love will never be separate from us. Yet how has he ordained that to happen? What is the stream by which we drink those things in? It's through prayer. through prayer, all the blessing it is to pray for ourselves and for others. We'll come back to that more briefly, but but see that much depends on prayer. How do these prayers find their answer? Is it a talisman? You pray and rub the lamp the right way and it's like the genie from Aladdin, Robin Williams, poof, what do you need? No. Prayer is answered through the Holy Spirit, who here is called the Spirit of Jesus Christ himself. See, God is for us in Christ, and even the Spirit's presence, which is for us, comes to us in Christ alone. And no salvation, no steady joy ever comes to us apart from the working of his spirit. Never. He serves as the one who goes into the treasure room of Christ as it is. and he brings out all the good treasure for us. He's the one who goes to the good physician, Christ Jesus, and brings out that anointing balm, the medicine that is needed to apply to our hearts to bring healing and wholeness. He does this by working in our hearts, faith in Christ, and by uniting us to him. This is really the fulfillment of Isaiah 41, eight through 10 that we heard this morning that God is for us in Christ. He will rescue and redeem us. You see, the Spirit indwells our inner men, and He overflows. He overflows working in us through prayer to convince us of our sin and misery. He speaks kindly to our hearts to entice us away from every false desire and every lust that would leave us bankrupt and without Christ. He enlightens our minds and the knowledge of Jesus, renewing our wills to be persuaded and enabling us to embrace Jesus Christ freely as he's offered to us in the gospel. Because of all of that, he assures us just like he did a Paul of our salvation. The spirit teaches us by encouragement an example that God will not let a hair fall from our head apart from his will. He instructs us through our suffering that Christ is the only truth, life, and way. In short, listen, this is what he does. He imparts, confirms, and sanctifies faith in our hearts so that we will arrive safely on heaven's shores. Finally, what is this joy that Paul is speaking of here in this section? What does it result in? I'll tell you what it never results in. It never results in disappointment or shame. When we're aided by prayer and the spirit of Christ, we never have to choose a sinful response. It's easy here to think when we read this portion of the text that what Paul is saying is God won't let him down, that he won't have to be ashamed of the gospel. It's actually the reverse. What Paul is saying is he won't have to shame the gospel. He won't have to be ashamed of Christ Jesus. That through prayers and the Spirit of Christ, he doesn't have to choose sin. He doesn't have to see something else that is better than Christ Jesus. See, Paul is faced with certain death. Certain death. And the only way for him to experience shame is actually not to die. It's for him to choose life over Christ. To say he'd rather have another breath of air, another taste of the flavor of this world, than to die and to know Jesus. My brothers and sisters, death, suffering, and pain, and the loss of all things do not rob us, do not rob any Christian of honor or joy. Here's the funny thing about those things. They actually work to further our experience of Christ as we know something of his love for us. Our suffering teaches us of his great suffering for us. And therefore it increases our joy. Every pain, every sorrow. We can embrace it, not because those things are good in themselves, but because they remind us, they teach us, they give us a taste for what Jesus tasted on the cross for us. Because of that, we can better appreciate our Lord and Savior. Instead of shame, instead of shaming the gospel, look what Paul says, and this is the reason why I know this is not about him being ashamed of the gospel, that the gospel will fail him. Look what he says, he says here, but that with full courage, now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. He is experiencing boldness. He is doing something. So instead of shame, instead of choosing the lesser portion, he can choose Christ, and boldness will overflow, and with that boldness comes great joy. See, this is the boldness to continue in the faith, to acknowledge the Lord in all of his ways, whether delivered from death or not. Paul could have the courage knowing that nothing could get in the way of his joy, that Christ will glorify himself in his people, that he will keep Paul to the end. And as a result, he had, and we have, the freedom to obey. to obey the Lord, which must always manifest joy. There is a link between obedience and joy. So let us learn then from the blessed apostle that our obedience flows from our joy and our joy comes from the gospel and the gospel comes to reside in our hearts more deeply through prayer and the spirit. If there is a lacking in our holiness, It's due to a true lack of joy in the gospel wrought by a spirit of prayer. The second point then is the living and dying in Christ. The early church dealt with a number of philosophies in the pagan world as it was expanding. Amongst the many, many godless ideologies were proto-Gnosticism and Epicureanism. Those are big words. you don't need to know much about them other than this, that the first taught that everything that was physical was lesser, and maybe even immoral, that our flesh in this physical life was tainted, and that what really mattered was spiritual things, higher things. They really prized death, because in dying they were set free to know nothing but the spiritual, the universe, the great cosmic being. The latter, Epicureanism, taught that the good life, the life that all of us are supposed to be pursuing, really the perfect life, is one that knows nothing but pleasure. The maximum amount of pleasure is the maximum goodness of life. In many ways, proto-Gnosticism is what we see going on when all these Eastern religion, this spirituality is kind of in the rise in our country. And Epicureanism is kind of what matches our society's endless drive to find pleasures in all the things of the world. Paul, the Lord speaking through Paul, won't let either of these philosophies rule our lives. For Paul, both life and death were to find respect in the Christian life, as both shares the same goal. In a parallel passage, In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul is talking about the goodness of when we die and we will see the Lord face to face. How we'll put off this body and we'll see him there and we'll rejoice. But there's a verse in that chapter that really prevents us from just living for death and for what's coming next. It's verse nine. He says this, whether home, that is here, I'm sorry, home with the Lord Jesus Christ, or away, being here in our flesh, we make it our aim to please him. Perhaps you've never thought about how this current life, the life that we're living, just simply continues forward after death. Once you became a believer in Christ Jesus, you're kind of actually on one track that just runs into eternity. For us, really, death is not a change of company, it's only a change of rooms. We all now live in the presence of God. Right now, you and I. The Holy Spirit dwells in us. The company of the triune God is with us now in life and in death. And our goal, our purpose of life and death is the same. It's to glorify God in him and enjoy him forever. You see, there is the reality that certain activities we won't be doing in heaven. That's true. There won't be any evangelism because there'll be no sinners apart from Christ in heaven or in the new earth with us. Repentance will fall away because we'll have glorified flesh. We'll no longer even desire to sin. But for all the external differences, the life of the believer runs the same track from the beginning to end, to glorify the Lord. And that really explains what Paul has to say here. In verse 21, when he says, for me to live is Christ. You see, he experiences the same risen Lord now, here in the flesh, by the Spirit, as he will in the afterlife. Christ gave to Paul spiritual life and sensibilities. And through Christ, Paul the man had been crucified, and his flesh was now one that no longer lived for itself, but lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave him up for Paul. Even in the flesh, he was feeding on Christ as the bread of life. Every promise was yes in Jesus, and every heavenly blessing was bestowed on the living Paul, even before he died. Paul's life had purpose and meaning because he lived it by Christ and through Christ and in Christ. Our lives are good because they are lived in Christ. We can't take that idea too lightly. Few of us are going to do really mighty or big things for God or in the world. There's not many Augustans and Luthers and Calvins. We celebrate the lives of Judson and Cary and Saint so fervently because they represent so well what the few God has called to do these great, miraculous, wonderful, big things. And when we think about those people, we tend to think lowly of our own lives. If we're not saving a people group in the middle of some rainforest or reforming the church or writing some book that changes the world, what good does our lives serve? The idea to live as Christ challenges and tears down that kind of thinking. First, because it elevates all of our works, no matter how low or meaning or plain they appear to us. When something is done, For the sake of Christ, by the spirit of Christ, it's never a little thing. Waiting on a table to feed your family, wiping little noses, vacuuming floors, they all have eternal value. The farmer, the mother, and the pastor might have different social impacts, but the works they do all have equal value when done in love through Christ. Don't think lowly of this life as meaning and purpose in Christ. But to live as Christ does something else. It flips this whole idea of the value of our life on its head. See, to live as Christ is not primarily about what we do for God, but what God has done for us. We get the idea of living in Christ wrong if we put the cart before the horse. All of our works matter, and they are elevated, like I said. They have great meaning and eternal value and purpose in Christ. But all of that is secondary. Paul tells us that much in Acts 17, 24, when he says that God, being Lord of heaven and earth, is not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind. You see, God doesn't need you and me. He doesn't need you and I to fix the world, to fix each other's lives, to change the world for some greater purpose. No, before all creation, he existed and was full of joy and contentment in himself. He did not save you, pardoning your sins, because he needed us to gather this morning to offer him praises. The ancient false deities, derived all their power from the worship of their followers. Our God does not. Then why come redeem us at all? If we add no glory to his essence, if we offer him nothing as a repayment, why? Tell you why. Because God's love is so good, brothers and sisters, that he delights to share it with his creatures. That's right, he rescued you and I You put us in Christ that we might know his love and receive from him. Paul's life and ours lives are worth living because every breath in Christ gives us unique opportunities to experience the love of God in Christ. God glorify himself by loving sinful creatures like you and me. Life has meaning because God has invested his glory in us. But what about death? How could death come in better if it's simply the changing of rooms? We don't change company. We have the same living God. We are worshiping the same holy triune God. I think to explain why death is better for here in this text for Paul would be nearly impossible for me to do. I think I can only use an analogy to give you a flavor of what Paul means. Maybe you remember, maybe it was your spouse, maybe it was someone else, but your first love when you were young. Your thoughts probably easily drifted off regularly to that person and your heart would race and your pulse would increase when you'd think about them. And a fluttering would rise in your stomach and the whole world would seem to be bliss. I don't mean to trivialize our lives now, they are often full of suffering and pain, but knowing Christ in this life is something like that. We experience the fullness of God's love now. Our hearts, knowing contentment in Christ, rise to glorious heights even when he's distant from us, separate from us, dwelling in heaven, praying for us. Really, this explains the whole book of Psalm and Solomon. I don't know if you've ever thought about that, but it's really, it's really the hearts, the heartsick church in love with their husband, love with Christ Jesus, waiting for him to come back for them. But when you saw that special someone, when they, when you were back in their presence again, you had the same pounding in your heart, the same butterflies, they all remained, but there was an inexpressible fullness that would wash over you. Death is not dissimilar to that. It's not gonna be that Christ's provision increases for us when we die. That somehow there's more now of Christ for us to joy. It won't be because there's any lack of the Spirit's giving or equipping us in this life. The same benefits are ours in life and in death in Christ. But you know what changes? We change. We change in death. Our old flesh will once and for all die. Sin will no longer plague our hearts. Temptations will fall away. The sweetness will become sweeter because our tastes will no longer know the hungering of lust. And so this is the dilemma for Paul. Unique opportunities in life to know God's love existed as he served the church. Providences set aside just for him from the foundation of the world for him to walk in so that Paul could know God's love in specific ways. But death, death would mean the end of all sin so that what was his might be fully appreciated. Thus Paul and you and I, should walk away treasuring both life and death. We must desire the here and now, knowing, knowing that we have unique opportunities given by God to us to know his love and joy. their gifts, even our sufferings. This is hard to hear. Even our sufferings are gifts that we cannot reject because they come from a good, wise, loving God. His hand is outstretched toward us in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. May Christ become so precious to us that we fully embrace the here and now as opportunities to glorify him and enjoy him forever. So let's turn to point three, the fellowship in Christ. As we turn to our last point, let us consider what Paul has to say about fellowship in Christ. American Christianity tends to describe itself and express itself in very individualistic terms. You can turn on any major Christian broadcasting, listen to primetime Christian radio, or listen to the next up and coming Christian pastor. The message will certainly appeal to the individual and not the corporate church. Ink and paper go together to produce books on how to deal with every type of individual struggle. The ways to ensure that you individually in the singular grow in your faith. Even well-meaning authors who want to connect Christians with the joy of Christ become hyper-fixated on the individual believer. This final section of our text today helps us to understand, in part, the role of the individual in the body. It details for us how every individual might have unique callings, but they are not for their own benefit. They are for the building up of the whole church. And in this we have three groups specifically in mind, ministers, members, and the universal church. We're almost done. We're almost there. First, we should note the necessity of ministers from our text. You see, Paul functioned as a traveling church planting elder. Wherever God would call him to go, he would witness to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and his people came to believe he would establish a church, rightly ordered and structured, where he would serve as the first elder. He would then give himself to the preaching of the word of God and to prayer as all the apostles and elders did. And when he needed to move on, either a fellow workman, someone that was under Paul's wing, would come along and take the church over to give them more time for God to call their own elders, or, like Ephesus, an elder body had grown up around Paul that he could leave in charge of the church. You see in our text here, Paul expresses a elder love for the Philippians, the same elder love that he had when he was with them personally. But to remain on in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you might have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus because of my coming to you again. In the book of 1 Timothy, or sorry, in our context, Paul expresses that same elder love, and his concern remained that they would mature in both knowledge and in joy in the faith. In 1 Timothy, in the very beginning section, Paul makes a similar statement. He instructs Timothy, who's functioning as an elder where he was, to have the goal of love issuing from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. The elder comes as one of God's means of providing grace to the church. Their service can never be for their own benefit, but for the church as a whole. They instruct through the preaching of the word and gently correct through the private ministry of the word. They should be first and foremost about the care of people's souls, praying for them, which results in greater joy in their salvation just as Paul experienced as the Philippians prayed for him. The members praying for the elder, the elder praying for the members, a mutual action of love. Elders are necessary, not because God is not enough, but because God has ordained that we would be about the preaching and the praying of the word. You see, our fellowship with you through Christ does not take on the form of a monarchy where we rule with absolute power. The elder and the member have fellowship through Christ. fellowship fostered as Christ goes forward, preached, and Christ's power is executed through the elders. And that's how Paul describes his eldership, to be seen that people might glory in Christ because of their presence, not in the elder, but in Christ. Their praise and affection are located not in us, not in the person who stands in the pulpit, but in Jesus. So the necessity of our presence is a blessing as Christ shines more clearly and not as a curse by shackling your consciences to anything but the word of God. But the elder is but one type of person in the local body. If you think of Paul more generally as a mature Christian, remember he calls us to follow him as he follows Christ. He shows us a truth that we need to embrace as far as is possible. that God saves no man for the good of themselves only, but for the whole church. Each of you who belongs to Sovereign Grace Baptist Church were called and gathered here in our local assembly to build each other up. We receive this affirmation of truth all over the Bible. Galatians 6.1 tells us that all who are spiritual should restore the one caught in trespasses. Who are those who are spiritual, except for the ones who have the spirit of Christ indwelling in them, who belong to his church? Each of us has an obligation, and this is in our covenant, by the way, not to fix each other's lives, you can't do that, I can't do that as an elder, but to serve one another in love, to direct towards Christ, to encourage away from sin, Paul returns to the church for their good, that they might have a greater joy in Christ. We all, elder, deacon, and member alike, must do this for one another. And the proof of this is this, it comes at great cost. Look at what Paul does. Paul had two options set before him. He had a private good, a good for himself only, the good of leaving this world to be at Jesus' side, to have that fullness wash over him. or a public good, a love of the church and taking care of them, delaying his death. Now, we don't understand how Paul could have had a choice there. I don't think that's a mystery we need to pry ourselves into. For whatever reason, it was before him that he could choose. But Paul set his heart back on loving the church over any personal gain. The same requirement of faithfulness will come to us from time to time. At the expense of our downtime or our hobbies or any number of good things that we could be doing, we're gonna have to lean into each other's lives and love each other well. It's not an easy thing to share each other's burdens and sufferings. Don't we have enough for our own lives? I've never heard anyone say that involving themselves in other people's lives came naturally or without great difficulty. But we must do this for our own joy and for the joy of others in the body of Christ. You see, as Christ gave his life a ransom for many, we too must give our lives to love one another. We're called to this because we're members of Christ. We belong to one another. Finally, the whole local body receives great encouragement from Paul's words. You see, the arrival of the apostle back to the churches in Asia Minor would serve the good of God's people and put Christ's glory on display, just as he says here. His presence was a gift from God who delayed Paul's death, that he might remain useful to the Philippians and to the other young churches. For our part, we should take that as a sign that God truly cares for his church, that whatever we need, he will truly supply. See, there's no reason for us to suspect that Paul would return to the Philippians from the Roman jail. Any number of things could have hampered him or kept him from returning back to them. Paul's imprisonment at this time was probably under Nero. If you know anything about Nero, he was crazy and he hated Christians. And he loved to blame them for everything that was going wrong in Rome. It would make as much if not more sense for Paul to be put to death in Rome as the leader and founder of the church there than to return to the Philippians. And yet, somehow, like Christ, it was not Paul's time to die. And the Lord provided Paul back to the churches just when they needed him the most, when persecution was on the rise. Brothers and sisters, it's been a long year for us. Last year was long. We've known lots of ups and downs. We've seen people come and go. Difficulties, hard decisions that we had to make together. At times, we were heartbroken. Other times, joyous. And all the while, God gave us exactly what we needed, when we needed it. God provides for me and you through this local body. When we assemble here, God gives us grace, grace upon grace. And this is all the more reason for us to love the church and especially our Lord Jesus Christ. See, Paul ends this section here with the same way he started it, that we might have joy through the glory of Christ Jesus. We gather here for that same purpose. that we might stir one another up in love to joy as we behold the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray.