Well, for the first time as your pastor. I'm preaching through a book other than Mark. We've had one-off sermons along the way, but really, it feels weird. It feels like we just got back from a journey, and now we're starting a new trip, and that new trip is gonna be into the book of Philippians. Now, Mark was 16 chapters. Philippians is only four, so we won't be there as long, but I think the fruits of it will be just as rich. Today, we're gonna be looking at Philippians 1, verse 1, which I've entitled The Beloved church. You'll find it on page 980 of the church Bible. Before we get there, I want you to get this picture in your head. One of the ways that God shaped me in growing up was that he gave me role models and some of them were in my family or some of them were in my community. But there was one of them in particular that had a tremendous influence on me, even though I've never met him before. He's a baseball player by the name of Cal Ripken Jr. Some of you'll know Cal Ripken Jr. Cal wasn't the greatest player to play the game. He wasn't flashy. He probably never had a clothing line named after him. Kids didn't line up at the mall to buy shoes with his image on them. There were a lot of painful seasons watching the Baltimore Orioles lose season after season. So what made Cal Ripken such a great role model for me? I think it was the fact that he showed up day in, day out. He showed up to do his job. good seasons and bad seasons. He was there to be a leader in the team and in the community. In fact, he played 16 straight seasons, 2,632 straight games. Can you imagine that? Showing up to work that much, not missing a day. There's so many things about how he played and how he lived that shaped who I wanted to become. I think role models are a great thing. Children need role models. Hopefully they have two wonderful ones in the home. We need role models. And I think the church needs role models as well, in the sense that there is someone or something out there that we can look to and say, that's who I want to be. That's what I want to be as a church. And of all the New Testament churches, the Philippian church is the one that I would like most for us to emulate. They were a healthy church, one that had a zeal for the gospel going forth, for encouraging and supporting world missions, and a zeal for personal faithfulness. And I hope that as we study together in the coming months this letter, that it will establish for us a vision of who we want to be as a church. So Philippians 1, verse 1, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons. The Apostle Paul was a very busy man. If he wasn't planting churches, he was traveling to and attempting to strengthen the churches that were already established. And if he wasn't doing one of those two things, he was probably in jail. We know Paul was in jail at least four different times in different cities. But even while he was in jail, he constantly had his churches on his mind. And some of them were very difficult. The Corinthians come to mind, one problem after another with those Corinthians. And I would assume that they caused Paul great anxiety and great burden, wondering and praying for them, writing to them and correcting them and challenging them and restoring them. But there was this one church that Paul called his crown and joy. It was one church that brought such encouragement to Paul and blessing to him. And it was that church in Greece known as Philippi. The Philippians were a role model church in so many ways. They gave generously to send missionaries out all over the world. They labored diligently to reach the lost in their own community. They exerted great energy and expense to encourage Paul, even during his time in prison. They risked their life and their reputation for the sake of the gospel. Now, of course, they had problems, and we'll see that as we go through. But even their problems were small compared to the issues some of the other churches faced. That's why Paul could say that you are my joy and crown. You're the crown of what I've accomplished in my life. It seems by this point, Paul is writing from jail, probably in Rome. He was jailed at Philippi and Caesarea and other places, but probably it was Rome around 62 AD. And a man by the name of Epaphroditus, a man from Philippi, has come and he's brought him a gift and he's come to encourage him. Now, if this church was sending a gift, I would assume there would be some baked goods and notes and things like that. But also what we would want to do is help meet his financial needs because Paul, He had to have lawyers. He was on trial, and so he would have had lawyers. So they probably sent a financial gift to help with the cost of lawyers. So they've sent him this gift, and Epaphroditus came and delivered it to him personally. Epaphroditus was a godly man from Philippi, a good friend of Paul's. And he's probably been there with him about two months. Right after he got there, he got very, very sick. And so he's been with Paul and he's been recovering and the people are worried about him. How is he doing? Well, now it's time for him to go back. And so Paul is sending them back with this letter and with news that Paul is doing well. And also he's exhorting them to continue to be faithful in their walks with the Lord. So it's around 62 AD, which means Paul would have known them for about 10 years. He probably planted the church at Philippi 51 or 52 AD. He had gone, if you remember the story, Acts chapter 16. The disciples had hoped to go to Asia, but they were hindered for whatever reason. God shut the door. And then they decided they were going to go to Bithynia. But again, it says the spirit of Jesus would not let them go. And finally they go into Philippi. Philippi was a unique town. It was technically in Greece. But it had been grafted into Roman life. Here's a little bit of the history. It was originally founded in 356 BC by Philip of Macedon. Now, he's famous because of his son, Alexander the Great. And Alexander the Great's dad, Philip, had founded this city. He had made it a fortified stronghold, but it had a lot of gold and silver, and he mined it basically to death, so that there was very little left. By the time he was done with it, there was nothing that the town had to offer and it drifted into oblivion for several years. And then in 42 BC, something very important happened in Rome with some names that you'll recognize. There was a battle on the one side between Mark Antony, if you're familiar with the life of Julius Caesar, all of these names will be familiar, Mark Antony. and Octavian on one side. And then if you remember the phrase et tu Brute and you Brutus, Brutus and Cassius were on the other. So a battle took place there between Mark Antony and Octavian on the one side, Brutus and Cassius on the other. 42 AD, Mark Antony and Octavian won. The city became a Roman city, even though it was not in Rome, it was in Greece. And so it, It became a Roman colony, and the people had all the rights of Roman citizens. They were very, very proud of that. Paul's going to pick up on this theme of dual citizenship throughout Philippians, because we as Christians also have dual citizenship, both here and we have all the rights and privileges of heaven. Philippi is specifically in an area known as Macedon. In Greece, it's about the size of Vermont. It's parallel about with New York City. People would have known Greek but spoken Latin. The official religion would have been emperor worship. By all counts, this was a thriving city by the time Paul was there. in the early 50s, and the people were part of a culture that was largely affluent. It had the best in poetry, philosophy, and medicine of just about anywhere in the world. They had the Greek heritage and the Roman privileges. You know, in a sense, this is a very unlikely place for the gospel to go forth. Why would these people need anything else? They have everything that they could ever want. They're in one of the most affluent places in the world. You know, that might be why Paul loved them so much. because he saw in them how powerfully the gospel could work. How even among the rich and affluent people, even among idol worshipers, what the gospel offers is better than anything the world has to offer. And these were a changed people. So we're gonna spend the balance of our time together looking at who this church was. The first thing about them is this, this is gonna seem obvious, but they were a Christian church. Now that seems obvious, but they were a Christian church. We need to realize not all churches consist of true believers. Many churches which gather together Sunday after Sunday have so forsaken the gospel that anybody who is a true believer has had to leave, has had to go elsewhere so that they could hear the preaching of the Word. You know, many churches act like there's three categories. There's these all-out radical Christians, there's non-Christians, but then they try to make this third category of the, eh, whatever. Like you can be indifferent. Like you can be a Christian on Sunday, but the rest of the week, it doesn't matter a bit. The Philippians will tell you there's no such category. Jesus will tell you, he who is not for me is against me. This was a real Christian church. Look how Paul addresses them in verse one. He says, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi. He doesn't say to all the Philippians or to the church at Philippi. He specifically says to all the saints. Now, what is a saint? I hear this all the time. Well, I'm not a saint. Or you look at somebody who's just a wonderful person and you say, that man is a saint. But we need probably a more biblical understanding It's not necessarily somebody who's been canonized by the church. It's not somebody who is particularly righteous. When Paul talks about a saint, he talks about Christians. Anyone who is in Christ Jesus. Listen back to the hymn we just sang by John Newton. How do you say it? Savior, if of Zion's city, I through grace a member am. Let the world deride and pity. I will glory in thy name. What does it mean to be a saint? It means that you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. It means you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. It can be intimidating to think of. You in heaven, if you're a believer, you are called a saint. You say, I don't feel like a saint. Look at how I've lived. Look at the mistakes I've made. But think about it like this. There's two way people can become saints. You can become a saint by perfection or you can become a saint by imputation. A saint by perfection means that you have perfectly kept God's law without even one little sin. You haven't missed one little jot or tittle of God's law. I don't know about you, but that's not me. I've broken God's law in ways you wouldn't believe. I am creative the ways I figure out to sin. There's only been one person in history that has kept God's law by perfection, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. He perfectly earned the title saint. the title Holy One or Righteous One. But there's a second way. And the second way is through imputation. Now that's not a word we commonly use today, but imputation means it's credited to them. They didn't necessarily earn it, but it's credited to them. And when Paul is talking to people and he calls them saints, he's talking to people, he says, Christ's righteousness has been credited to you. So yes, you're a sinner, but you know what your standing is before God? You know what your legal status is in God's kingdom? You are a saint. It has been gifted to you. By belief in Christ, we receive the highest honor that you can receive, which is that God would call us saints. In fact, in the earliest days of the church, the word Christian didn't exist. You have to get into the book of Acts, and even there, it's only used three times. You know what you called Christians back then? You didn't call them Christians, you called them saints. The Greek word was hagioi, holy ones or set apart ones. And the ways we are set apart are through Christ. Not only does Christ give us a new title when he calls us saints, but he gives us the ability to live out that title. with whom much is entrusted, much is expected. And he gives us that title, but he calls us to live it out as well. It's interesting, you know, it's funny to spend a whole sermon looking at one part of an introduction. But think about this, Paul could have written the letter this way. Paul, or Saint Paul, to the servants at Philippi. How did he say it though? Paul, a servant to the saints at Philippi. Paul understood that as a saint, he was also a servant. He was also a servant to the people. He wasn't there to look down on them and command anything of them. He was there to be their servant. And that's why he identifies himself as a servant of Christ, because his sole purpose in life as a saint is service to God, to render his life in service to God. Not because he's an apostle that he does that, it's because he's a saint. That's the duty of every saint, to offer ourselves to the Lord. The Philippians were undoubtedly a true church, true believers. They weren't there because it was socially acceptable. You know why? Because it wasn't. They risked a lot to be there. We're going to see that in a few minutes. but these were a people who were completely transformed by the gospel. They were what I would call a vibrant church. And that's the second thing we wanna emulate, a vibrant church. Now, if you look at church websites often, you're gonna see that word, vibrant. When I was doing our website back a few months ago, and I was looking at a hundred different websites, about 50 of them said, we're a vibrant church. Well, nobody wants to say, we're a dead church. Nobody's gonna advertise that, but you know what vibrant looks like on a website? It looks like children on a bouncy castle. Every time it'd say vibrant, there were children smiling and jumping and playing and all that stuff. And there was candy and all sorts of other things to make people want to come. I'm afraid by that standard, the Philippians may not have been a very vibrant church. Now those things aren't bad by any means, but that's not the definition of spiritual vibrancy. Spiritual vibrancy is a people who love to hear God's word and they love to see it go forth around the world. The Philippians were a people who could not be kept back. You know, they could have been killed for associating with Paul. So what? gospel needs to go forth. They were a vibrant people. You see what happens when the gospel takes root in a church is the people become zealous for God. He's no longer on the back burner. He is the highest priority. He is the one thing that truly matters. A vibrant church will pay attention to what we call the means of grace, the means of grace, the ways in which God blesses and transforms his church. We recognize those as the word, the preaching of the word, sacraments, and prayer. That's how God graces his church. It's the word, sacraments, and prayer. And a vibrant church will make those things the highest priority. You know, even if a church has a million activities during a week, and they have all sorts of other fun stuff, if they don't emphasize those three things, they're not vibrant. They're a dead church. All those other things are peripheral. You know, bounce castles and midweek meals and candy have never saved anybody's soul, have they? They're fun things if the church has them. They're attractive things, but they don't save anybody. And therefore, they're not the church's chief duties. C.H. Spurgeon said, I believe that we slander Christ when we think we're to draw people by something else other than the preaching of Christ crucified. The duty of the church is to preach Christ. A vibrant church preaches and lives and loves Jesus Christ. The main thing is the main thing, and the main thing is that we proclaim God's word. You know what happens when a church really is vibrant? They actually enjoy doing those things. They enjoy sitting through the sermon. A friend of mine went to a church that had not heard the word preached in many years. You know what would happen at 12 o'clock? lady would hold her watch up. It's time. You're done, buddy. And she got converted and she stopped doing that. And the same woman might say later, why'd you stop so early today? A mark of vibrancy is that people love the means of grace. There's a Scottish pastor who tells the story of two young men who came to him and they wanted to join the church. They'd grown up in the church but they never actually joined. So they came to him, they wanted to join. And so the pastor and his elders were interviewing him, these two men. And the pastor said to him, when did things change? You know, this wasn't you. They said six months ago, your sermon started getting interesting. Pastor said, it wasn't me. The Holy Spirit came into your heart. He transformed you and what was once boring to you is now enjoyable to you. That's what happens when the Holy Spirit comes to us. That's what happens when a church is vibrant. They long for the Lord's day. We've got a young lady in this church. She's told me time and time again, this is my favorite day of the week. She's got a million other things she could be doing today, but this is her favorite day of the week. Why? Because she gets to feast on the word. It's not about children's activities and busyness and numbers. Hopefully those things will come. But the priority is the spiritual health of the people. And sometimes we get that cart way ahead of the horse. A big church seems vibrant. It has so much going on, but is there spiritual life in the people? Are the people constantly growing and repenting of sin, speaking to others about the gospel? Are they feasting on his word? That's the sign of a vibrant church. I've heard it said, I don't know if you've thought of this, I've thought this way, that it would have been easier to be a Christian in those days. You know what happens every time I sit down and do a quiet time? I get a text message or a phone call. It's just, I mean, it's just almost every time I could sit down at two in the morning and do a quiet time, I'd get a text. Cause Satan hates when we study God's word. That's just a fact. But we've said it would be easier to be a Christian back then, because they didn't have all the distractions. They weren't getting text messages and phone calls in the middle of the night. And they didn't have the science and the history and the philosophy folks that are out there doing everything they can to undermine the concept of God in our culture like we do today. But you know, I think that's wrong. Of course, they didn't have iPads and text messages. They didn't have people calling them at all hours of the night, but they were part of a culture that was antagonistic to Christianity. They were antagonistic to the gospel. The Philippians were a counter-cultural church. That's the third thing we need to learn from them. They were a counter-cultural church. When Paul would arrive in a town, it was his custom to go and find the synagogue there. He would go to the synagogue and he would worship, and then he would start communicating with the Jews about the gospel, and he would explain how Jesus was the fulfillment of all those things that they had studied for so long. But at Philippi, something strange was going on. There was no synagogue. There was not a presence there of Judaism. To start a synagogue, you needed 10 Jewish men. They didn't have that. In fact, it doesn't look like they had any Jewish men. And so what does Paul do? He finds that there are a group of God-fearing women who worship just outside of the city gates, down by the river, and he goes and he worships with those ladies. Roman culture was very antagonistic to Judaism. Just before this, the Emperor Claudius drove all the Jews out of Rome in 50 AD. That carried over right into Paul's day. If you remember the story from Acts 16, Paul and Silas were there, and the slave girls following them around in Philippi. And she's got a demonic spirit where she's able to tell fortunes. And her owner would make money off of people coming to her to know their fortune. But she follows them around and she keeps declaring, these men are servants of the most high God who proclaim to you the way of salvation. And she did it for days. You know, you hear somebody like that who sounds crazy. She's running people off, not drawing people to Paul. So Paul looks at her and finally he casts out the demon. Of course, her owner's mad at that point. Her master is angry because there goes my money. Don't worry about the girl. There goes my money. And so he goes to the courts and Paul and Silas were thrown in jail. That's another story, a great story about the earthquake where they were set free. All this is to say, they were in a culture that was not sympathetic with Judaism or Christianity, in ways that most of us have never ever experienced before. Paul and Silas risked their lives. All of the Philippians risked their lives by even communicating with Paul, by even being Christians. The official religion was worship of the emperor and you could be beaten or killed for not doing that. This was a very difficult culture. So for those of us who think, well, it would have been easier back in those days without all the distractions and stuff that we have today, let me ask you, when was the last time you got sent to jail for your belief in the gospel? When was the last time you were beaten because of your belief in Jesus Christ? When was the last time you risked your life because you wouldn't worship the gods of this world? They went through that every single day as a counter-cultural church. The true church will always stand against the culture. And it's not just on one issue, but it's the Bible. Do we believe the whole Bible over and against the culture? Countercultural churches are willing to risk their reputations, their freedom, their very lives to further the work of God's kingdom. You know, if you're a Christian, get used to swimming against the culture. And if you're swimming with the culture, there's only one reason. It's because you're already dead. The Philippians were a counter-cultural church. Think of Lydia. She was the first convert at Philippi. She was wealthy. She had a company that produced dyed fabrics, and they were very, very expensive. And so she had a lucrative career there. She had a mansion at Philippi. She risked all of it because she followed Christ. She had much to lose, and yet they willingly sent him gifts. They sought to encourage him even while he was in jail. It could have been traced right back to them. They could have been in jail as well. Brings us to the fourth way the Philippian church was worth emulating. They were an investing church. They were an investing church. Why did they go out of their way to encourage Paul like they did? Well, of course, they had a decade-long friendship with him, but it was more than that. They cared about the gospel going forth all over the world. And Paul was God's vehicle at that time for establishing the church along with the rest of the disciples. They loved supporting Paul because it's built the kingdom. If you want to be a kingdom minded church, we've got to think a lot less about our own kingdoms and a lot more about God's kingdom. You know, we're going to have decisions to make in the next few years. We want to grow as a church. We really do. We want to grow as a church. We want to have a building so that we can do more to equip the saints. We want to have more folks here so that we can reach more. We want to have a bigger budget so that we can send more. But everything must relate back to the work of God's kingdom, that we must be an investing church. If I can be candid with you for a minute, that's probably the most frustrating part of planting a church, is folks who will show up one time And they look around and they say, you know what? This church didn't have such and such, didn't have this, it didn't have that. And they may never come back. So they'll leave and they'll go find another church to be discontent in. Now, if the church isn't preaching the word, then that's absolutely right, they should leave. But if the church is doing those things and people are still leaving because the church doesn't offer this or that entertainment, this amenity, then the priorities are wrong. The question isn't just how can this church make my life better, but how can I use my life to make this church better? That's what it means to be an investor. That's what it means to be an investing church. Investors so that others may reap, so that future generations may reap. That's an investing church. A few days ago, I was thinking about folks here. I was connecting the dots. How did these people get here? That's fun to do. How did these people get here? How did these people get here? And I started tracing it back. And it, And in this particular case, now there's several cases like this, but in this particular case, I traced it back to one couple who invited another couple, and then they invited this person, and that person invited two other people, and those people invited two other people, and those people invited two more. I counted 24 people that were here because that initial couple invited one person. That's an investing church. And it's a spiritual investment that's reaping major dividends for eternity. We don't only invest for short term, but for long term. You know, there's times as a church and there's times as a church plant where we've had to deny ourselves certain things and setting certain precedents that would be very difficult for future generations to overcome. Our goal in everything we do is how will this not only affect First Scots in the short term, but in the long term? How will this decision affect whether the saints at First Scots in 50 or 100 years will be able to worship in a biblical setting? How can we set this church up to stand strong for generations? We must invest that way, and sometimes that means we sacrifice certain things, but we want to be a church that establishes future generations. And that's something that the Philippians did. That's the fifth thing. They were an enduring church. They were an enduring church. The Philippians were a church that were building a foundation for the future. We don't see that here as much as we see it in history. We know from history that 50 and 100 years later, the Philippians were still out missionaries. They were still supporting the work of the church. That's pretty rare today. A lot of churches don't make it faithfully a hundred years. A lot of churches don't make it faithfully five years. Our job is to set a foundation so that my children and your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren can worship here and hear the preaching of the word. We want to be an enduring church. We live in a context in which nearly everyone thinks about how does this affect me? If you look at some of the decisions that are made on the political level, They answer the question, how does this benefit me? Very rarely does anybody think, how is this gonna affect future generations? How can we leave our country a better place? And the question for the church is, how can we leave the church a better place than we found it? Finally, lest we think too highly of the Philippians, we need to see they were still a flawed church. They were still a flawed church. Now, we don't wanna follow them in this, but we need to realize these folks were a lot like us. They were flawed. You know, these were not super spiritual people. These were just folks that took hold of the gospel and the Holy Spirit came into them and filled them and made them alive and they wanted to follow Christ. These were normal people like you and I. I guess I'm normal. I don't know. They were like us. They were flawed people. They had silly arguments and selfish arguments, and people got their feelings hurt. The issue going on, Philippi was these two women, Euodia and Syntyche, are fighting over something. We'll see that when we get there. But their arguing is threatening the unity of the church. And so Paul challenges them on this, and he encourages the elders to handle it as well. But the way he challenges them is tells them, well, consider Jesus. Philippians 2, there's this beautiful hymn about Jesus, who Jesus was, how he didn't count equality with God something to be grasped. It's beautiful. What's he telling them? He's telling them, even when you mess up, turn your eyes to Jesus. Even in their failures, we learn from them. We learn that when we take our eyes off of Jesus, the church is gonna go astray. Small compromises in the church lead to big compromises. and big errors. You know, if we have people gossiping, if we have people speaking badly of others, if we have people destroying the unity of the church, if we have people living ungodly lives, it undoes everything that could be done, all of the good that could be done. We must fix our eyes on Jesus. You know, in some sort of strange as it may sound, in some ways I'm glad the Philippians had this problem. And we'll study it more as we get there. But it shows us that we better be careful, that if we take our eyes off of Jesus, things pop up. I've told you all before about the church that split because they couldn't decide what carpet color to use. Were their eyes on Jesus? No. They took their eyes off of Jesus. We've got to be careful, because we will get our feelings hurt, and we will get bent out of shape at times. But the key is that we do what Paul said, put our eyes on Jesus. And here's the good news. God used them anyhow. God used them despite their flaws. These were a people who wanted to make Christ known as imperfect as they were. They wanted to make Christ known and he used them for that. We don't know how many churches were planted because of their generosity, how much more Paul was able to accomplish because of their support. But what we see in Philippi is that when a people have a real faith and devote themselves to preaching and prayer and the sacraments, God will use them. So here's what I want to say. Church, let's follow their model. First, let's ensure that we're truly believers in Christ, that we're trusting in Christ. We are saints. I've heard the story of a pastor. He'd been a pastor for many years and he proclaimed the gospel one day. Suddenly the Holy Spirit opened his heart and he realized, I need that. He'd been preaching for many years. And suddenly he realized, I'm not converted. We need to be sure that we're a church of true saints, of true believers. Second, we need to be sure that our faith is vibrant, that we feast on God's word. We need to be sure that we're counter-cultural, that we're not being shaped by the culture, but that we are shaping the culture. We need to be sure that we're an investing church. We need to be sure that we're setting up future generations for faithfulness. We need to be sure that even when we mess up, and despite all our flaws, we return to Jesus again and again, because He's faithful, and He'll forgive us every time. So beloved, fix your eyes on Jesus, and let's follow the model of the Philippians.