Technicolor Joy
A Study in Philippians 1:3-8
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
4-30-2-23
The Fellowship of the Ring
Four little hobbits with large, hairy feet - Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin.
Two human men - Boromir and Aragorn, who happens to be the son of the King.
One wizard named Gandalf.
One elf - Legolas
One dwarf - Gimli.
They had little in common. In fact, elves and dwarves hated each other.
What brought these nine together? One common purpose and mission - to save middle earth from impending evil and darkness.
They united to protect a little hobbit who was tasked with carrying the One Ring to it’s destruction in the fires of Mount Doom in Modor.
Who am I talking about? Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring.”
What comes to mind when you think of the word fellowship? Coffee? Euchre? The time before church service?
All of those events can be fellowship. But not the kind of fellowship that Paul shares with his dear friends at the church in Philippi.
They were closer than friends. They were a band of brothers and sisters.
Last Week
I would encourage you to go back and watch the sermon from last week that set up the context for this letter.
We began with the greeting, where Paul describes himself and Timothy as “slaves of Christ.”
Paul wants the Phiippians to follow his example of submitting his life to Christ and finding his joy in that submission.
The letter is addressed to the Christians at the church in Philippi.
He calls them “saints in Christ.” The word “saint” is confusing to many in our culture. Biblically, a saint is not a super elite special Christian like Mother Teresa or Augustine.
Who are the saints in the Bible? They are simply the ones that believe and have put their full faith and trust in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.
Then Paul uses a customary greeting to show that salvation is because of Christ.
Paul often begins his letters with "grace and peace.” Grace is the normal way a Gentile would begin a letter. Paul changes the normal word for “greetings” by a few letters and it becomes grace, Peace (Irene/Shalom) is the way a Jew would begin a letter.
Grace is God’s unmerited favor to sinners who deserve hell. There is nothing we can do to earn it or deserve it.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph 2:9)
Grace leads to peace with God, the peace of God, and peace with others.
Jesus said:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27)
I ended last week’s sermon by saying that we will
Fight for joy
Find our joy
Face the future with joy
That brings us to our section today.
Read Philippians 1:1-8.
Prayer.
This week, we will study Paul’s idea of Gospel Driven Fellowship. Next week, we will look at his Gospel Centered Prayer.
The church was made up of people from different backgrounds, different ethnic groups, different socio-ecomic statuses, different sexes, slaves and free. On the surface, they had little in common.
Much like the fellowship of the ring, their fellowship was a deep connection forged in a common love for Jesus and shared suffering for their faith.
A. Joyful Thanksgiving
“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now…”
Paul was under house arrest in Rome, chained to a Roman soldier, awaiting Nero to decide whether he lives or dies.
When he remembers the Philippian believers he smiles and his heart is filled with thankfulness.
Wait. Do you remember what happened to him in Philippi? He was arrested, falsely accused, stripped, beaten and put into prison in stocks.
I’m not sure that I would look back on my time in Philippi with thanksgiving, would you?
But it is common for Paul to begin his letters with thanksgiving and this letter overflows with gratitude.
He probably closed his eyes and remembered Lydia responding to the Gospel, or the look of utter amazement on the slave girl’s face when he cast the demon out of her. Or the joy in the the Philippian jailer’s eyes when he and his family were baptized.
And not just them, but the dozens if not hundreds who had been added to their church over the past ten years.
He’s thankful for all of them. Every…single…one. Even the ones who were in conflict? Yes. Even the ones who might be giving in to the false teachers? Yep.
The memories prompt him to pray for them. It makes him happy to pray for them.
How does he pray? With joy! From house arrest chained to a Roman guard!
Walter Hanson wrote:
“Like a mighty river surging through solid rock, joy flows from this letter to the suffering community of believers giving them love for one another and the presence of God.”
Paul uses the word joy, rejoice, or glad sixteen times. We need to distinguish joy from happiness.
Happiness is dependent on circumstances. When everything is going well, we are happy. When they are not, we are unhappy.
The kind of joy that Paul is talking about here is very different from happiness. This is contentedness, a deep-seated joy in believing the Gospel.
Philip Ryken writes:
“Joy is the exhilaration of the heart that comes from being right with God.”
In other words, this joy comes from Paul’s relationship with Jesus Christ:
“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (I Peter 1:8-9)
Billy Sunday, the early 20th-century baseball star turned evangelist, said,
“The trouble with most men is that they have just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is no joy in your Christianity, you might have a leak!”
Paul doesn’t suggest that we be joyful:
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4)
Easy right? Hmmm…
It’s not easy to be joyful when the diagnosis comes back and it’s not good, when the bank account is running dry, when your marriage goes south, or your kids go wild.
This is not a natural joy.
I heard a story this week of a man that was in the hospital with cancer and his nurse actually wrote on his chart that he was being “inappropriately joyful.”
This is a joy that only Jesus can give to you. It’s a supernatural joy:
Nehemiah 8:10 tells us: “the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
If we find ourselves losing our joy, we need to remember that God rejoices over us:
“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zeph 3:17)
We need to fix our eyes on Jesus and remember that at the cross, He chose joy:
“For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)
Cow girls
I think that sometimes we have a picture of Jesus as a dour, super serious guy that rarely smiled. I don’t think that is true. This is why this picture is one of my favorites.
We are forgiven and free. We are no longer slaves to sin, no longer fear hell, and are set free to love.
C.S. Lewis wrote:
“Joy is the enjoyment of God and the good things that come from the hand of God. If our new freedom in Christ is a piece of angel food cake, joy is the frosting. If the Bible gives us the wonderful words of life, joy supplies the music. If the way to heaven turns out to be an arduous steep climb, joy sets up the chair lift.”
?Thinking and praying for his Philippian friends brought him great joy.
James Montgomery Boice wrote, “90% of divisions in the church would disappear if believers would specifically and confidently pray for each other.”
When the king or queen is in residence at Buckingham palace, there is a special standard (flag) that flies above the castle signifying that the Sovereign is at home.
Joy is the flag that flies over the castle of your heart when Jesus is at home in you.
When you pray for people in this church, do you do so with great joy?
What is so joyfully thankful for?
“…because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
When God opened Lydia’s heart to receive the Gospel, she opened her home to start the new little church.
Paul and Silas were asked to leave the city and moved on to Thessalonica to share the Gospel.
They had been supporting Paul financially and with their prayers since that first visit, over a ten year period.
The word partnership is the same word as fellowship. They supported him through thick and thin. They gave financially when they didn’t have much to give. They worried about Paul and even sent Epaphroditus the 40 mile trip to Rome with a gift so he could personally check on him.
We have our friends the Ds here and we have the honor of partnering with them to help with the spread of the Gospel.
This kind of fellowship is, as one pastor put it, “forged in the fire of common affection suffered in advance of advancing the Gospel.”
For over a decade, I led the student ministry team at Pontiac Bible Church. Many people lauded me for how many students we had but I always told them that it wasn’t me - it was the team of volunteers that loved and shepherded the students.
Through those ten years, we laughed as students did ridiculous things, we beamed with pride when they lived out our mission statement LGLO. We wept together when we buried teenagers. We prayed together when we saw a student headed toward trouble. We supported each other through deaths and marriages, babies and miscarriages. We celebrated birthdays, parents and grandparents dying, and watching students come to faith and get baptized.
We became more than just friends. There was a bond that built between us. We were a fellowship of the class ring!
Have you experienced anything like this? It happens on mission trips, when you serve in ministry together, when live life together in a small group.
The writer of Hebrews encourages us:
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)
We are praying that over the next year that God would forge us into a fellowship that would sacrifice and suffer for the advancing the Gospel in this community.
Confident Thanksgiving
Not only does Paul thank God for their partnership but he also thanks God for what He is doing in them and through them.
This is one of the best known verses in the Bible and it is a tremendous promise for those of us who struggle with moving forward with our faith.
“…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
This is one of the main verses from Scripture that assure that once we are born again we cannot lose our salvation.
Why?
Paul says because it God’s work from the beginning.
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace…” (Eph 1:4-6)
We don’t “accept Christ,” He saves us. We didn’t seek Him. He sought us. We couldn’t save ourselves. He saved us.
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” (Eph 2:5)
We didn’t do anything to deserve or earn it.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph 2:8-9)
He began the good work. What is the good work?
It’s our sanctification. That’s just a big theology word that means that once you are born again, God will do whatever it takes to make you more and more like Jesus.
Charles Spurgeon said, “The work of grace has it’s root in the divine goodness of the Father, it’s planted in the self-denying goodness of the Son, and it is daily watered by the goodness of the Holy Spirit…”.
He makes us guilty and aware of our sin. He stirs in us a hunger for God’s word. He works in us to desire what He desires which brings us great joy.
Steinway pianos are taken to the pounding room before they are allowed to leave the factory. Each key is pounded 10,000 times!
Some of you might feel like you are God’s pounding room right now. You have prayed for God to help you with your pride, lust, addiction, gossip, pain from the past and He is answering those prayers by putting you in situations that will grow your faith.
It’s gradual. Sometimes it might feel like three steps forward and two steps back. But that still means that you progressed one step.
He rejoices that they are growing. He is sure that God saved them in the past, is sanctifying them in the present, and will glorify them on the day of Christ Jesus.
We need signs around our necks that say, “Be patient with me. I’m a work in progress.” [Or “progmess” as Ted Lasso puts it.]
?I have ADHD. One of the tell tell signs of ADHD is that we great at starting projects. We just have a really time finishing them.
God is not like that. They process that he started collectively in the church of Philippi, he will finish! The process he started in you, He will finish. He finishes what He starts.
John Newton, the slave trader turn pastor who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace,” once wrote,
“I am not what I ought to be
I am not what I wish to be
I am not what I hope to be
But I am not what I once was.”
Affectionate Thanksgiving
“It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” (Phil 1:7-8)
Paul could be hard if he needed to be. He scolded the Galatians for their gullibility in falling for false teachers. You can hear the anger in his words to the church at Corinth, a church that had all kinds of crazy, sinful things going on.
But to the Philippians, he comes across as tender. It is right for him to feel this way because he writes, “I have you in my heart.”
In that culture, the word he uses means “bowels.” He is saying that he loves them with all his guts, the very inner being of his soul.
He has experienced their care and their Gospel-centered partnership for over a decade. They have proven time and time again that they love Paul and the work that Jesus is doing through him.
They have supported Paul as he stood up for the Gospel in other cities and the finally at Rome. They have been doing the same thing, which connected them together.
Paul has been sharing the gospel, even with his Roman guard. And, obviously evidenced by their growth over the past ten years, they have been sharing the Gospel as well.
He uses the word partakers. This is the same root word as fellowship.
They are bound by the Gospel and the fellowship of grace.
I loved watching Ken Burn’s Civil War documentary. A lot of the dialogue came from love letters written from a Union soldier to his girl back home in Pittsburgh or Confederate soldier to his girl back in Memphis.
He told the story through their love letters that we get to listen in on.
This is the same thing that is happening here. We are getting to eavesdrop on a love letter from Paul to his band of brothers and sisters in Philippi.
He longs for them with the affection of Christ Jesus. Paul knows that he probably will never see them again in this life. He wants them to know how much he loves them and thanks God for them.
That is the kind of love and affection that we are praying becomes commonplace here at CBC as we do ministry and life together.
“We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other.” (I John 3:14)
Ending Video: Together by King and Country
