I smile, as you probably do too, whenever you see that science confirms something we already know in the Bible. Right? Or archaeology comes up with this discovery that this historical place actually was there, which the Bible talks about. Or when it comes to mental health, we know that the Bible just confirms a lot of the things we know in science about mental health. So that's why I smiled when I saw this article from Christianity Today from October 19th last month. It's comparing public health issues or mental health with church attendance, both asking questions about people who go to church frequently and those who go to church every week. And this is what they came up with.
So what are the public health benefits of church attendance? Consider how it appears to affect health care professionals. Some of my (Tyler's) research examined their behaviors over the course of more than a decade and a half, using the data from the Nurses’ Health Study, which followed more than 70,000 participants. Here's some results. Medical workers who said that they attended religious services frequently (now given America's religious composition, these were largely in Christian churches of one stripe or another), they were 29% less likely to become depressed, about 50% less likely to divorce, and five times (that's 500%) less likely to commit suicide than those who never attended church. In perhaps the most striking finding of all, healthcare professionals who attended services weekly (not just frequently, but weekly) were 33% less likely to die during a 16-year follow up period than people who never attended. These effects are of a big enough magnitude to make a practical difference and not just a statistical difference.
Of course, we know that I'm preaching to the choir. That's why you're here. You know that there's a kind of structural thing that happens inside of us. Because we gather together. We really appreciate that.
It's the same message, I think, Paul is communicating in Philippians 2:2 which we're going to look at today. In fact, I would suggest that the passage from Philippians 1:27 all the way to Philippians 2:5 is probably the most significant mental health passage in the Bible. We've already looked at the first two sermons in this regard. I'm taking it kind of slow because just so much is there. But if we review the verses 27-31, what we see that Paul is saying there is this. I plant my feet. Because that's what the verse says. Kind of get your standing. And he says engage in the conflict with me in the purpose of moving forward in the mission that is given to us. So God has given us a mission in our world today. And so Paul is saying to them join into the mission, plant your feet, have purpose in life, have meaning. When we do that, something happens inside of us. Because now we're joining the winning team. We already know the last chapter of the book where Christ is the winner. We may go through some stuff. In the meantime we know that we're on the winning team. So when we join into the mission that God has called us to do, big things happen.
You see, I think that the greatest mental health exercise that anyone could do, the choice that they would make, would be to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Because when they do that, they join the mission. But I need to explain this because I don't think everyone really understands this idea of salvation and being born again and so on. I think some people believe that really it's taking a spoonful of God and putting it on your plate. So now you have God along with all the other things you're devouring in the course of your week. But it's bigger than that. The Christian life is more like He's the whole plate or He’s the whole kitchen that we're in. Everything is about Jesus. My whole life is about Jesus, not just taking a little bit of Jesus and adding it to my life. It's total commitment. If you don't realize it, if you look in the passage six verses earlier, in Philippians 1:21, he says – For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. It is the whole kitchen. It is the whole plate. It's not just a little bit. It is the most important decision that we ever make in our lives, is to trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. So he's saying plant your feet, engage in the conflict, and then he comes to the first verse that we looked at in our last examination of this passage, which talks about emotional resources that God provides.
If you look at the verse in verse 1, it says there that there are five words that provide emotional resources for us. It’s like we need every day, every hour, not just on Sundays, but all the time we're coming to God in like a spiritual gas station, we're offloading our emotional baggage and we're taking on the emotional resources that God offers to us and He provides. That's what we need. And that's what we want in our lives. So those are those five words about encouragement and fellowship in Christ and the comfort from love of that participation of the spirit, affection, sympathy. All those words represent the emotional nurture that God wants to provide for us. So our emotional baggage that we have in our life is taken care of in Christ if we come to Him as that resource for us. We need that.
But today we're going to look at this next verse there. And the next verse is where the key verb is in the sentence. So the first word in verse 1 is see the word so or therefore. He's saying in chapter 1 take a firm stand, engage in the conflict, be part of the mission, and that's (so I'm telling you this) to complete my joy. He's saying here's what I want you to do. Complete my joy by doing these four things. And all four of these things talk about deep, meaningful relationships. I would suggest these are four components of deep, meaningful relationships that we all need in our lives.
Paul is basically saying this. He's saying you need the deep, meaningful relationships in order to fight the battle, in order to deal with life every day. That's what we need. We're going to deal with life. We're going to meet the challenges of our day. We're going to accomplish the mission that God has and we don't do it alone. We do it in the midst of these deep, meaningful relationships. He's going to give these four things. I'm going to talk about these four things today because these are the components that we need. I'm hoping that through our discussion today, you're going to go away saying, “Yeah, you know what, I need a little bit more of that.” Because that's what Paul is encouraging the people. Therefore, he's saying, you need to make your relationships more deep and more meaningful.
So this is going to prompt us to examine our own relationships. I want to apply this in two ways today, as we're going through because I can't help but remember, look at this, and be reminded that these are the same four deep, meaningful relationships that young people need if they're finding a mate. If you're looking for someone to have a relationship with for the rest of your life, you want to have these four components. So if you're thinking about getting married (or you young people are maybe not there yet, you will be at some point), you need these four things. They will guide you. So I want to apply it to that stage of life. But then I want to take it and apply it the way Paul is applying it in this passage to us as looking for meaningful relationships within our church environment.
Now I'm going to identify these four things. But as I do, I'm going to take words to describe them that come from actually the Greek words and the meaning from the text. So let me just point out a few things here so that you can write them in your notebooks here to be taking notes. Do you see the word same mind? The word mind is the word phroneo. You can jot that down. You're going to need that word, because you're going to see it also at the end of the verse. He repeats himself. And then do you see in verse 5 – Have the same mind among… It's repeated three times in the course of these verses. The word phroneo is not just a word that describes thinking, but it’s emotions and beliefs brought together. That's what we're going to talk about in a minute. That's our first one.
The second one, notice it says have the same love. And that's the word agapé. Love. The third one is being in full accord. That means kind of walking together in unity. And then of one mind. He repeats the same phroneo word again. It's very important that we have this same mind. So what I've tried to do here is take those four words and show them to you this way.
I'm going to go back and forth between my circle here that I just understand this myself, and the passage to grasp the ideas necessary that Paul is saying that will make deep, meaningful relationships in our lives. The first one is the word mindset. Now he says – Be of the same mind. But the word mind is not just thinking. It has to do with tying belief and emotions together. In English we often use the word mindset or we use the word attitude. Now I'm going to talk more about attitudes next week when we look at verse 5 and we see the same attitude or mindset that Christ had. When we see that then we're going to grab on to that a little bit more. But for today's purposes, I want to talk about this kind of core beliefs that we have that must be the same. That’s the word used here. Have the same mindset, the same core beliefs as you're pursuing this mission that God has called you to be a part of. Mindset.
In fact I would suggest that when I'm working with couples who are thinking about getting married then we evaluate their mindset toward marriage. For example, there's a resolute mindset which could be described in this way. That I am committed to this relationship forever. I'm resolute. I'm committed. I’m in, 100% in. I realize this is the second most important decision of my life and I have this resolute commitment to marriage. That's a mindset that a person develops or has or might have toward marriage, I hope. That's what we're looking for.
There are some people who have a romantic view of marriage. This is the view that says I'm in as long as it makes me happy. I'm in as long as it makes me feel good. I'm in as long as it pleases me. Because it's romantic. I feel good about this. But if I lose that feeling or if it isn't working for me, if things aren't the best, then I'm out. That's how some people approach marriage. There's a mindset that isn't resolute. It's more this romantic idea. Now I'm all for romance and marriage. My wife and I've been married 43 years. We love romance in our relationship. But that's not the same as the deep commitment that we have when one of us is sick and throwing up in the toilet and the other one's trying to help them. There's something very different about love in its various contexts here.
The third kind of mindset that some people find themselves in is a reluctant mindset. What do you mean? Well some people who find out they're pregnant and they're kind of drawn into marriage before they really wanted to do that or they feel pressured by parents or family or by friends, “get married, get married.” And so there's some people who enter marriage in a reluctant manner. They're reluctantly engaging in marriage. And there's obviously some significant dangers in that. And those relationships often experience a tremendous amount of struggle if something changes in the process.
But just imagine our relationships within the church because I believe there are some people who have a reluctant approach to attending church. Why do people go to church? Why do people attend church? Well I saw this week that there are five top reasons that Christians do not go to church. I thought this was interesting. Why do Christians not go to church? Well here's the top one. My schedule is full. I think there's some perception about life that people have that if my schedule is full, I'm experiencing a full life. But remember, Christ is the one who says, I'm going to bring you life, and that's abundant life or a full life. A full life and full schedule are not necessarily the same thing. But some people believe that if I fill my schedule up, I have a full life. And that's a mistake. Because fullness really comes in something different that Christ provides. He says I will give you fullness of joy. That's what He wants us to experience. My schedule is full, so I don't go to church sometimes.
The second one. I do church digitally. That's all I need. But the reality is, you can't do meaningful, deep relationships digitally. Now there's plenty of reasons why people might do digital church. I mean, some people can't go to church. They may be sick or something else is going on. And so they’re participating digitally and that's like the next best thing. But there's nothing that that can compare to actually being here, hanging around and spending time together and enjoying those relationships.
Here's the third one. Christians are always on a campaign – fighting abortion, divorce, addiction, fighting evil. And I got to admit, yes, we are. We are on a mission. See, when you view life the way we do then you recognize there's an urgency about getting on board, taking on the challenges of life.
Here's a fourth one. The church wants me to get involved. Well that's true. You can't just come and be a consumer Christian. In the way God designed it, you're going to expect that people are going to continually invite you into more. So you're involved because we're not just taking a spoonful of God on our plate. We're actually embracing this God-filled life and some of the things that church offers require more in order for development.
But here's the one that made me smile. Some Christians don't go to church because it's not comfortable sitting in church. The pews are too hard. The temperature isn't right. The lighting is off. I got news for you here. If your pew isn't comfortable, it's your fault because you brought it. So bring a different one. I mean I don't know most other churches. What they do is they stand at the door and hand out bulletins. We hand out blankets because it's never the right temperature in here. It's always too hot or too cold. And so it's important for us to be able to address all of that in our lives.
So we need this resolute kind of response when we come to this idea of church. If you want to have deep, meaningful relationships, you're going to have this resolute statement that I'm in this because I'm committed. And that's one of the keys to deep, significant relationships is a commitment that yes, this is it. You know, there's never a perfect church. So if you find it, don't go there. Right? Because you'll mess it up. That's what we say. So what you do is you find a church that you can commit to, and then you commit to it, and you make it a better place. It's a place where you can serve and grow and work and so on. So this first idea of having deep, meaningful relationships is to focus on the essentials that have that that common bond internally.
You know I want to say this is important, because it says have the same mind. You have to understand this is not just thinking. I don't want you to think that he's saying here everybody agree on everything. Because we know that Paul doesn't just talk about unity. He talks about diversity, how all of us have different spiritual gifts. You know what that means? That means that if you have a different spiritual gift than I do, you process life differently, you solve problems differently. The person who has the gift of comfort is going to come to a problem differently than the person who has the gift of giving or the other person has a gift of leadership. We all approach the problem in different ways. And when we do, then we end up with diversity. But what Paul is saying is have the same mindset, the same attitude of moving forward. So we're emphasizing what we have in common in the purpose of the mission as we go forward. So that's the first one is mindset.
Let's go to the second one. You see that in the passage. It says – having the same love. Now this is the word agapé love. You wouldn't know that unless I tell you because in English we have one word – love. But it translates several Greek kind of words. There are several Greek words for love because the Greeks have this kind of multifaceted approach to love and understanding its different parts. But in English, when I say “I love my wife” and I say “I love spaghetti,” I use the same words. You would not do that in Greek. Okay. So there's this deeper sense here. This is the commitment kind of love, the sacrificial kind of love. That's why I put the word sacrifice here. We need to have this kind of love that's a deeper love. This is God's love. This is why in John 3:16 he says – For God so loved (or agapé). For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. So God uses this picture of a Father and Son, and giving His Son whom He loves so much. He's using this description of giving His Son as a demonstration of the love, the sacrificial love.
This is what takes place in a marriage. You find yourself in a place where you're giving. If you go into a marriage 50/50, I’ll give half and the other person will give half and we'll be fine, it'll never work. Because you'll always think your half is bigger than it is. And your mate’s saying that's not half, you're only giving 10%. I'm not giving just 10%, I’m giving 50%. No, you're not, you're only… So there's argument about it. We have to give totally to the relationship in order for the deep, significant relationship to take place. And that's why he’s saying is the idea of sacrifice.
The same thing is true in our relationships together. We come together. We sacrifice. We listen to each other. We spend time with each other. We enjoy the dynamics together. And this idea of sacrifice permeates our relationship to the necessary ingredient for deep, significant relationships. So Paul is describing that in verse two as one of the components of deep meaningful relationships is sacrifice.
Well, let's go to the third one, because the third one is this one. It says being in full accord. Being in full accord has this idea of walking along together in a way that we're both focusing. You know, we're in agreement kind of is the idea that we're focusing forward. I use the word to describe purpose here.
It's interesting in the Bible, they use an agricultural term that we're not very familiar with. It’s this idea of being yoked to an oxen. So this was a piece of wood that was a harness – one piece of wood that went over two oxen in order to pull the plow or pull a tree from one place to another. And so the oxygen would work together in order to accomplish that task.
So Paul picks up on this idea in 1 Corinthians 6 and he says these words – Do not be unequally yoked to a nonbeliever. Well here's the picture involved here. Let's say that you have this new kind of wild ox that's grown up and you want to harness. You want to start using him as a working ox, but he's kind of wild. I think some young men and young women are attracted to a wild person in the opposite sex. “Ooh I really like that person.” There's this idea, I think, in our world today that opposites attract. And they do. You look at somebody say, “Boy, that person's not like me. I really like them.” But you see, when you get to know them, if they're going to have a deep, meaningful relationship, you have to have some depth. And that's where we share common values, a common mindset, as the first point makes clear. There's this commonness that we share in our core values.
So you have this wild ox. Now here's how they train the wild ox. They take the wild ox and they yoke him with a solid ox, one that's trained and strong, and can move forward. But rarely can they take this pair of oxen and actually do any work at first, because what's happening is the wild ox is trying to be wild and pulling back and forth, and the strong ox is pulling back. So they can't even plow something straight. So at first, they have to work this wild ox in to be able to harness together.
Now Paul takes that idea and he says don't be unequally yoked. Because if you're stuck in a relationship with someone else who isn't serving God, his commitment isn't to God, he has just a spoonful of God on his plate but it isn't his whole life or her whole life, you're going to have a problem. Because there's going to be this pulling back and forth. You're not going to be able to accomplish the mission. You're not going to have the depth that you need. And so this walking in full accord is very, very important. You'll know that this other person shares the same passion you do because you're the strong ox, right? You want to serve the Lord, you want to love the Lord with all your heart. You're going somewhere in your spiritual life, you'll know the other person is with you when the other person says, “Let's pray together. Let me share a scripture that I've been reading that God taught me something about. What do you think about serving at the church together or going on a mission trip or something like that?” You see, when you see that in the other person you'll know that God is doing the work in their lives that causes you to be more equally yoked. Sometimes people think, well, you know what, I'll be the strong ox and I'll bring this wild ox on and I'll train him. That's not God's design. In fact, here's God's design.
He describes it in Matthew 11 when He says – Come to me, all you who are weak and weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Come and learn from me. Now what Jesus is saying is in Matthew 11 is here's the yoke. Jesus is saying I'm here in the yoke and I will take you as someone who needs to learn how to follow me, and you can be under the other side. He says I will guide you. He says I'm humble in that passage. I'm going to teach you is the idea here, I'm going to bring you under the yoke. You can't be Jesus in someone else's life. If you try to be Jesus in someone else's life, you're just going to cause problems. Rather, you want God to be Jesus to be that one who's taking and training that person. And when they do, then you have this walking in full accord idea that Paul is talking about here. So as we're involved in our church relationships, we have a purpose. We're moving in a direction.
We have a purpose at Calvary Chapel Living Hope. Do you know what it is? You better know what it is. Because I talk about this all the time. Someone says what's the purpose of your church? You need to know it's two words – discipleship and evangelism. That's what we are committed to at Calvary Chapel Living Hope. Discipleship means we're trying to grow spiritually. We're interacting together. We value God's word on Sunday morning and during the week in small groups. But it's also the interacting together that we do when we hear our stories and enjoy our time. So yesterday there was no preaching of the word, but there was about thirty people (that's about half of our church) that came out yesterday to decorate the Barn. We're having these great conversations. I go to bed last night and I'm thinking, “This was so cool. Oh no. Andrew had a story he was going to tell to me and I didn't get a chance to listen.” So Andrew, I want to hear that story that I missed yesterday because you started telling the story and then we got working on something in the Barn and I missed the story. Because Andrew and I are growing in our Christian lives together. And when he tells me a story of what God is doing in his life, it equips me and helps me to grow spiritually. Discipleship and evangelism.
I hope you're seeing the outreach that we do. Whether it's the outreach that takes place by the shoe box things we sent out. We must have done about fifty of those. Do you have any idea how many we did? Sixty-four boxes that our little church did that we sent out. That is so great. Or we got people going down to Baltimore this week. Or when you come to the women's event on the 11th, they're doing special shower gifts for Choice One, the pregnancy center. You're going to see the mark of evangelism and outreach on our church. You're going to see discipleship. That's who we are. We have a purpose. God has called us to a purpose together because we're like the full accord. We want to be in this full accord. So we're uniting together, even with all of our differences, around this common purpose. And Paul is saying to have deep, significant relationships you want to focus on that full accord, walking together in that kind of unity.
Well let's look at the fourth and the last one there. It says – being in full accord and of one mind. Now we're back to our word phroneo again, one mind. And I use the word to describe your focus. That our focus is all going in the same direction. That doesn't mean that we don't have differences because we all have differences. But there's a sense of depth, of relationship because we have the same focal point. It's a focal point that's provided by God Himself, that He provides for so that we know where we're going. The interesting thing is here Paul doesn't say to the people, “Go find a church that is of the same love, go find a church that is of the same mindset or one mind, don’t go find a church that you can be in full accord.” He says, “You guys are the church. Just do it.” See, I don't think it’s so much that we are finding the right churches. We are being the right church together. Paul is telling them, you have something that's very important.
And notice right in the center of the diagram are the first words he says – Make my joy complete. There's something lacking in Paul's joy. Now we're going to see later in the book that there's some disunity in this church. So Paul is saying, guys, would you just really focus on the most important things. Focus on these this sense of unity, because it's that that's going to provide you with the ability to take a stand in our world today. It's that that's going to help you to be able to engage in the mission that God has called you to be a part of. Very important.
I learned something this week about an orchestra. An orchestra has all these different instruments, of course, in it. You know when they all get on stage and you hear them all kind of making all this noise, and then all of a sudden it gets quiet. And then one instrument rings out the note A, 440 Hz is the word. Do you know what instrument that is? No, it's not the violin. Do you know? Well, let's ask the chair. Are you the chair? Can we call you that? The chair of the music department at Temple University in Philadelphia. He plays the trumpet all over the world. He's a magnificent jazz musician. And that instrument is the oboe. The oboe is chosen to play this instrument because it's the hardest to tune and the hardest to go off beat. So it's the one that's tuned. Then the first violin will pick up that sound and play it, and then everybody will attune themselves to that. All of the wind instruments will tune themselves to that. All of the brass will tune themselves to that sound. And so then they're able to all get together. But what you don't have is all the violins over here tuning themselves to each other, and all the brass tuning themselves to each other, and all the wind instruments tuning themselves. They don't do that. Everybody tunes to the one instrument and then they're all in one accord. Do you see that?
That's the same thing is true in our lives. The closer we get to the Lord, the easier it is to love all the different people around us. God wants us to be able to move forward with unity, even though we have diversity. Those deep, meaningful relationships take place when we ourselves are tuning ourselves to the oboe, to Christ Himself. So that God as the conductor creates this beautiful music, melody, and harmony and all these things that are in this symphony that the orchestra produces is just fascinating and beautiful. That's the picture of who we are as church. That's the picture of what God wants to do in our lives. He wants us to have these deep, meaningful relationships.
But I don't want you to think He wants us to do that just so we can feel good. No, He doesn't do that. It's not just so we can all walk away…it's not even so we can have good mental health. That's just a byproduct. You see if we go back to our verse, we see that there's the word so that takes us back to the real essence of the passion of the heart, which says, getting on board on the mission. Take on a mission-oriented view of life. Serve the Lord 100% in your life. And the way you're going to do that, in part, is to have deep, significant meaningful relationships. You're going to need them because it's going to be tough. There's going to be suffering. There's going to be discouragement. There's going to be darkness, there's going to be a new COVID variant. We're going to run out of Greek letters eventually, but there's going to be more and more. You know what that does to people? It makes them feel dark. But we have a light that we can shine into people's lives because it's not about the circumstances that are going on. It's about something inside of us that we offer to others, because God has done something in our lives. Amen? Amen.
Stand with me. We're going to sing a Christmas song. This is I think one of my favorite ones that we sing. This Christmas song is one that I want to sing now because I wanted you to draw attention to this idea of Christmas in your own heart. Because as you do, you will have a message. There are people all around you that need the message of Christmas this season. And hopefully I'm praying that God's going to provide for you some very significant and powerful opportunities to share the message of Jesus Christ with others, a powerful message. Let's sing this.
