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with you. Thank you, Sharon, for sharing that with us. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. Rejoice in the Lord. And I'll say it again. Rejoice. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, surpasses all understanding, I should say, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus. I think you all know those passages and you know where they come from. They come from the New Testament book of Philippians, which we're going to study and learn from over the next several months. Last week, Pastor Cook, Reverend Cook, what do you like to be called? Pastor Steve, Scott Cook, not Steve, but Scott. I want to make sure you're listening. Very good. He got the study going as he preached from Acts 16, which gives a historical sketch of how God, through the ministry of Paul and Silas and Timothy, brought about his church in the Roman colony of Philippi. He opened the heart of Lydia, that wealthy woman, And she believed. And then she was baptized along with her household. And then Paul cast out the demon out of the slave girl, that poor slave girl, and she more than likely was matriculated into the church and baptized, though he didn't tell us. And then you have the Philippian jailer, who after a big earthquake in the middle of the night got to his knees and said to Paul, or asked Paul and Silas, what do I do to be saved? What do I need to do? And he said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. And then Luke tells us that the jailer and his family were baptized, became members of the church. And then, before Paul and company left town to go plant another church in Thessalonica, they gathered everybody together at Lydia's house, and he spent some time encouraging these new brothers and sisters in Christ. What an exciting, exciting beginning for this young church. Well, 10 or 12 years pass. Where do you think Paul is? He's in jail for the gospel in Rome. And one day, a man by the name of Epaphroditus shows up. And Epaphroditus was from Philippi. And we're going to talk about him later on in chapter 2. But he shows up with a gift of money for Paul from the church. And this wasn't the first time. This church had been very faithful and in one way or another provided for Paul in and out of prison over the course of this period of time. And here was another time where The church was helping because the prison system provided some, but if you had other needs and so on beyond what they provided, other people had to come in and help out and provide. And that's what was being done here. And along with the gift, Epaphroditus gave a report saying, hey Paul, there's some problems in Philippi. I know you care a lot about the church. You're an apostle, but there's some problems. There's division in the church. And not only that, but the group is experiencing a measure of persecution, and a Judaizing threat was beginning to make inroads. And probably because of all these things, worry and anxiety was starting to take hold of many in the congregation. A lot concerning them. And Paul, as a man of God, as an apostle, as a representative of the Lord, as someone who was close to this congregation, you'll learn more of that as we go along, they had a very warm relationship So he obviously would be concerned, and God moved in Paul, carried along by the Holy Spirit, and Paul wrote a book. He wrote the book of Philippians. And he wrote the book, first of all, to say thank you for the generosity that they had shown. To commend Epaphroditus to them for his sacrificial service, to give them a missionary report of how things were going while he was in jail. And he had a good report. And we'll learn what that was. And then to call the church to unity. That was sort of the major thrust of the book. And he calls the church to unity through humility. Now over the next three weeks, we're going to look at the introduction to the letter. It starts off with a greeting, which I'm going to look at with you today in verses 1 and 2. And then there are a couple of prayers that fill out the introduction. There's a prayer of thanksgiving in verses 3 through 8, followed by a prayer of intercession in verses 9 through 11. Today, verses 1 and 2, the greeting. And if you were to pick up a letter written back then and look at the letter written by so-and-so to so-and-so, it would look very similar to the letter that Paul wrote here with some changes. He Christianized it. And as we go through it, you'll see what I mean. He starts his greeting by informing them that the letter was from him and from Timothy. Both were obviously well-known in the Philippian community. And if you notice, instead of starting off with saying, I am an apostle of Christ Jesus, as Paul would do, like he did in Romans and 1 Corinthians, he refers to both he and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus. More precisely, he calls himself and Timothy slaves, slaves of Christ Jesus. It is the word duos in the original. And that term, when it's used commonly, it refers to a slave in the sense of becoming the property of another person, of an owner. And that's how Paul and Timothy viewed themselves in relationship to the Lord Jesus. Now, prior to their conversions, Paul and Timothy were slaves to sin and to self. Paul, for example, was an arrogant guy, very self-righteous. He was a persecutor of the church. He gave the church of Jesus Christ a hard time, threw a number of them in jail, put some of them to death. He was a murderer. And then God invaded his life, changed his heart. He placed his faith in Christ and became a different person. He became a slave, a servant, of the Lord Jesus Christ bound now to do his will instead of his own. Part of which meant being an apostle and doing, as you know, many extraordinary things throughout his life. And Timothy experienced the same miracle of grace through the ministry of his mother and grandmother. They ministered the sacred writings of the Old Testament to Timothy while he was young. He learned of the Messiah and his mission and was made wise to salvation, became a believer, and like Paul, became a slave, a servant of Christ Jesus. Now, it was intentional on their part to place an emphasis on the whole issue of being a slave, a doulos, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the major themes in the letter is humility. Humility was a characteristic that was lacking in many of those in the Philippian church. at least some of them. We all obviously struggle with humility. We are inherently proud in one way or the other. Life can very easily be all about us and what we want, no matter what God says or what he wants or what other people think or what other people want. It's all about us. And the Philippian church had that issue. They were full of selfish ambition, self-centeredness, pride, and that's why the church was experiencing disunity. And as we'll see later in Chapter 2, Paul addressing it in a very big way. So he begins to prepare them by highlighting the fact that he and Timothy our servants of God, who by the grace of God have learned the importance and the necessity of humility and being submissive to God and what He wants. Of course, when we get to Chapter 2, you're going to be introduced to the ultimate slave par excellence. That's the slave Christ Jesus. It's hard to put that idea of slavery and connect it with Jesus, but God does that. Paul talks about him. He says, he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death on a cross. The whole point of bringing Christ in to the discussion on humility is to so motivate the believer toward a life of humility for the sake of the unity of the body of Christ. You're a slave of Christ Jesus. That's part of your identity. Something that is a privilege to be able to be yoked to Christ and to be considered a slave of his, a servant of his. To have the privilege and the wherewithal and the desire to do God's will. I know we all struggle. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is street level theology. If you struggle with humility, if pride has a big part of your life, you're going to struggle with your obedience to God. You're going to struggle with loving Him. You're going to struggle with loving other people. If other people don't conform to your desires and to what you want, you'll struggle with But if you really fill out your role as a slave of Christ Jesus, and we'll talk more about this, I'm not gonna get into it in much depth this morning, but if you fill out that role by the grace of God, loving God and others naturally flows. You wanna love God. You wanna do whatever he tells you to do because he is the most important person in your life. And because he's loved you, then you want to love others, even those who are difficult to love. Now, after indicating that he and Timothy wrote the letter as slaves of Christ, he makes it clear to whom he is writing his letter. Notice what he says. He says, I'm writing this letter To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi. With the overseers and deacons. Everybody's cover. No one's left out to all the Saints. All the Saints there in Philippi, whoever was part of that congregation to whom this letter was read, it was to all of them. And the same thing is true here. The letter is for all the saints here at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. I don't know how often you think about the fact that you're a saint. I know we sort of joke about that, but, you know, that is exactly what you are. You are a saint if you're in Christ. A saint is a person who has come to faith in Christ and as a result has been set apart from the world unto God. The saint belongs to God now, and amazingly, is considered holy from God's vantage point. As he looks down on you, as he looks over to you, now that you belong to him, he sees you as holy, as set apart unto him, and righteous in light of his son. This was true of the believers in Philippi, and it's the case with you who are here today. You are a saint, not because you have a lot going on in and of yourself, but because of your union with Jesus Christ. Perhaps a way to understand this more clearly is to take a step back and think about the relationship that you were born into in relationship to Adam. All of us, because Adam was our representative in the garden, and when he chose to sin and go his own way, the ramifications of that involved all of Adam's posterity. Every single person after Adam would be soiled with the negative effects of Adam's sin. You all were born because of Adam and your relationship to him. You were born as a sinner. You were born guilty. You were born with corrupt natures. You were born spiritually dead. The Jesus Christ then came on the scene, and according to the book of Romans, he's the second Adam. And Jesus as a second Adam lived a perfect life for his people, died on the cross to pay the penalty for their sins, and then rose again in order to grant his people victory over death and over Satan so that his people, people like you who are saints, might be able to walk in obedience to God. So that's what Christ accomplished. When you were converted, by a repentant faith in Christ, the effects and the blessings that Christ himself earned came into your life and became a reality. You were regenerated at some point, brought to spiritual life, born again to a living hope. You were declared righteous by faith in Christ, which means you were justified, you were declared righteous, and you were declared forgiven on account of the life and death of Christ. And you gained the ability to walk in newness of life, in obedience to God. God gave you a new heart with new desires and capacities so that you could actually hear God in his word, believe what he says, and put it into practice in your everyday life. Being in that position, being a saint through union with Christ means that you are able To be someone who can receive the word of God over the next several months, you're going to hear the word of God from Philippians preached and applied to your life because you're a saint. You can receive that you can believe what God is saying through his word and your life can be shaped and molded according to what God is teaching you in his word. you can become more and more holy and thus more and more pleasing to God. So it's a great privilege to be a saint, to be someone who's been set apart unto God. So all the saving benefits that Christ earned comes your way, including being able to be a person who can hear God's word, believe it, accept it, and obey it. And this is true for every single saint here, including, as Paul says, the overseers and deacons. The overseers, of course, are the elders who have the responsibility to provide spiritual oversight over your lives so that you are encouraged to walk faithfully with God. The deacons serve under the elders to assist them in the work of the church by showing mercy to their fellow saints who have true and genuine physical needs. Now this is the only letter where the church officers are actually mentioned in the opening. Not sure why, but as you think about it, it's certainly safe to say, fair to say, that the officers of the church aren't exempt from what the rank and file have to believe and obey. In fact, if anything, the officers of the church have to lead the way. They have to set the example. They've got to take this teaching, for example, about humility and make sure that by God's grace they are walking in humility themselves so that the church can look at their lives and imitate, by God's grace, what they see being fleshed out in the life of their leadership. And, you know, you think about the church at Philippi. You know, and so there they are sitting in some kind of assembly and, you know, the leaders are reading this letter and making application to the lives of the people. And when you think about the whole issue of the disunity, uh... the leadership both the you know the uh... elders and deacons in one way or another would have to not only just talk about it or or read it but actually dive in and say all right uh... yodi and sintiki and the others of you who are not getting along we're gonna have to sit down and take what Paul says and make it come alive in these relationships. So the elders and with the deacons assisting in whatever way that was appropriate would be involved in trying to help the congregation apply the word to the lives to all the members of the church. Now Paul concludes his opening greeting with a blessing. It's something that he wishes or desires for God to give the believer. It's a prayer of sorts. Hendrickson says it's a wish prayer. So Paul says, grace to you. and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It's almost a benediction type thing. Paul here modifies the elements of Greek and Jewish letter writing with the use of the words grace and peace. And so he says, may God bless you with grace. Paul is wanting God to help bring about in the lives of the saints what they cannot do on their own. That's what grace does. That was true at becoming a saint, right? You couldn't become a saint all on your own. They couldn't. You couldn't. It took the grace of God. It took God coming in by His Spirit and changing their lives, granting them the gifts of faith and repentance so that they could be Converted and saved and justified so that they could become saints. Well, on the other side of becoming a saint, to live the life of a saint, you need his help too. They needed his help and so do you. God will be calling you and I to do many things in this letter. And we need his help. Not only the help that he actually provides us through the word, The direction, the clarity of thinking and all that comes with it, but also the help to actually take it and say, Lord, help me to live this. Help me to live this tomorrow and the next day may become a part of my life. Paul, so wanted to see that in Philippi. And God wants to see it here and I, as your pastor. want to see God's grace abound in your life and in mine. And not just grace, but peace, God's peace, his shalom, his spiritual prosperity and well-being. You know, coming into the faith, I mean, obviously it's a wonderful fountain of love and grace and mercy that we're shown. But when you when you come into the faith, that's wonderful and great, but there's so much more. So much more spiritual prosperity and that God has for us that comes once again. By his grace, through his word, as it is read and ministered, believed and taken in and believed. What a privilege to have God's abundant grace and peace available for us, not just to get us into the kingdom, but to help us live faithfully for him in our lives here until we meet him someday. Saints of God, I would urge you, and I mean this, I urge you to pray For and prepare to receive God's grace and peace throughout this study in the book of Philippians. If we prayerfully pursue all that God offers here in the letter. You won't put all of it in the practice. But if you pursue some of it, at least. You won't be the same person. And nor should you be. God's expectation of you and me is that we will be growing and changing people. Which is why he offers his grace, resulting in his peace and his spiritual prosperity and growth and change and likeness to Christ. So I urge you to be prayerful and to be ready to pursue along with me and the others who will be ministering the word from Philippians so that together will become more like Christ, your humble and joyful Savior. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you. We so thank you for loving us in the way that you have. Being gracious and merciful to us in Christ, allowing us to be reconciled to you and upon that reconciliation to be those who are able to receive more and more of your spiritual bounty that you have for us in Christ. Oh God, may you help us as leaders and as a congregation together to pursue Christ. to pursue what you have made available here in the words of the book of Philippians. May they not just be words that we read and talk about and assent to, but may the truth here do a real work in our hearts and thus in our lives. May you make us different people, people who resemble your son and our savior more and more. Lord, we depend upon you to produce such growth in us. This we pray in your son's name. Amen.
Servants and Saints
讲道编号 | 25189205810 |
期间 | 28:53 |
日期 | |
类别 | 周日 - 上午 |
圣经文本 | 使徒保羅與腓利比輩書 1:1-2 |
语言 | 英语 |