Paul's Final Greeting

Paul's Final Greetings

Philippians 4:20-23

By Sean Kelly

In the actual book, we'll do a review lesson next week just to kind of wrap up everything. But we're doing the final four verses this morning, and then not next week, but the following week. It will start in one john.

So that's where we're headed here. Is that funny? I guess so. Let's go ahead and open in prayer.

Lemuel, will you open us up in prayer? Amen. Okay, let's look at Philippians chapter four, verses 20 through 23. Who would like to read that for us? Nathan? Now to our God, his father be glory forever and ever.

Amen. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. Brethren are with me.

Greet you all. The saints greet you, but especially those who are of Caesar's household. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

Amen. Okay, so Paul finishes his letter to the Philippians by acknowledging the glory of God, then by commanding and exchanging greetings. And Paul's final word, it should be, is to have the church reflect on God's grace to us.

These are Paul's final thoughts to the church. And while we sometimes read quickly over them, Paul's giving the church important truth that he wants them to be reflecting on as they finish reading his letter. So a lot of times we get to these ends, it's like, okay, there's just a bunch of jumbled things here.

I'm just going to read it quick and be done with it. But Paul had an intention in what he wrote here. There's a purpose for what he's saying at the end of the book and being the last thing he says.

There's some importance there that this is the last thing they're going to read. This is what they're going to remember. And so he's giving us some good truths that we need to remember here.

So first we're going to look at Philippians 420. Now to our God and father be glory forever and ever. Amen.

So Paul's desire for God's praise, he starts out with the object of the praise. Here he gives two things, two names for God. He says, our God and our father.

So our God, God, of course, is a general term for God. In fact, it's even in the Bible. It's the same word God is used of false gods.

It's just a general term for a deity. But here he prefaces it with the word our God. So he's talking about a specific God here.

He's talking about our God, the God of the universe, the God of creation, the God of our salvation. It's our God. It's a personal God to us.

It's not some abstract God. It's not just any God. Remember, the Philippians were living in Greek culture here, so they had temples in their city.

They had different places of worship to different roman gods, and all this was going on. So Paul very specifically here is saying, our God. He's focusing on the one true God.

A couple verses I want to reflect on. These are from the apostle John, both in his gospel and his first epistle. You know, our God is the real God.

He's the true God. He's the only God. So John reflects on that.

John 17 three is the first one who would like to read. Josiah, go ahead. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

So Jesus is praying to God the father, and he calls him the only true God. This is the God we're talking about. There's one true God, and this is our God.

This is the God that we identify with. This is the God that we belong to, is the true God. First.

John 519 20. Who wants to read? Go ahead, Jonathan. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

And we know that the son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know him through. And we are in him who is true in his son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

Here you see, over and over he talks about knowing him who is true, that we are in him who is true. This is the true God. There is one true God, and that's the God that we worship.

And here at the end of Philippians, Paul is saying now to our God, the true God, the one we worship, he's the God we identify with. But he also gives him another titled not only just is he God, but he's also our father. And this is a neat fact that when you look at other religions, other gods, they don't worship these gods as fathers.

They worship these gods as powerful deities that they need to fear, they need to appease, and they need to do the right things or they're gonna get in trouble. Our God is a personal God. He knows us.

He brings us into his family. We're adopted into his family. Galatians, four, four six.

Who wants to read that? Matthew, go ahead. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent for his son, born of a woman, born under the law, through those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you were sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your host.

So here in verse five, it says that we might receive adoption. As sons. We're brought into God's family, that we can call God our father, and it makes us all children of God.

And because we are sons that we're able to cry out Abba or daddy, Father, we have this relationship with God that is unique in any other form of religion. There is that we actually know God as a father. We have a personal relationship with him.

So not only is he God, not only is he the one ruling over the universe, not only is he just as powerful God, but he's also our father. He's someone who's close and personal. And Paul is bringing that out.

So he says now to our God and our father. And then he talks about the form of the praise, which is glory. The word glory is doxa.

We get the word doxology, which is this word dox, and it's now I forgot how to make my l's. So Doxa and Logos together, Doxa being glory and Logos being a word or a message, so it's a word or a message of glory. So that's where we get doxology from.

If you ever wondered what doxology means when we sing the doxology in our hymnbook and here he's talking about God having the glory and God alone is worthy of glory. And so as he's praying to God, to our God and to our father be glory, he deserves that glory from us, and he deserves to be held in honor and respect and reverence, as we talked about in the sermon this morning. That's the form of the praise.

And the duration of the praise is to praise him forever and ever, that he deserves a praise, but he deserves it continually for always, for all time. We see this happening in revelation 21 22 through 26. So I could have another reader please go ahead, Eric.

But I saw no temple in for the Lord God Almighty and the lamb are temple. The city hath no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in for the glory of God illuminated us. The lamb is, and the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its life, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.

Its gates shall not be shut at all by day. There shall be no night there, and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nation into it. So we see in the beginning of this part of the passage here, it starts off saying that there's no temple in heaven because the Lord God Almighty and the lamb are the temple.

They're the object of worship. They're the place of worship. Its all about them.

It goes on to say that there's no need for light because the glory of God, his majesty, his glory, his worshipfulness lights the city. And that talks about the kings bringing in the glory to God and giving him glory. And it talks about the nations coming and bringing the glory of the nations to God forever and ever.

He's going to receive glory from us. He deserves it. And Paul is acknowledging that here as he closes to the Philippians, saying, we have a God who's worthy of our worship, worthy of us, giving him the glory, worthy of us, giving him the due place that he has and his desires that may to our God the Father may be glory forever and ever.

And then lastly, he says the truth of this praise. Now he uses the word amen here. We use amen a lot.

We close our prayers with amen. Sometimes it's kind of habit and excuse me, mouth is getting a little dry sometimes maybe we don't think about what it means, but the word amen literally means truly. It means that there's truth in what we're saying.

So when we're praying, we're praying to God. And when we close in amen, we're saying truly, we believe this truly, we want this truly. We're praying this before you.

We're not praying in pretense. We're not just making up words. We're really serious about what we're saying.

And Paul here is saying amen here because he's saying God deserves that glory. This is true. This is right, this is good.

This is what we ought to be doing. He's highlighting the truthfulness of this desire for God to have praise and glory. So first of all, we see Paul's desire for God's praise.

That's one of the first things he leaves the Philippians in these last four verses. Then we go to verses 21 22 where it says, greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren who are with me greet you.

All the saints greet you, but especially those who are of Caesar's household. So we see that there's the greeting of the saints. It's interesting because Paul focuses on God in this first verse.

Then he transitions over to the church and talking about them. So he brings about this idea of greeting, greeting every saint. So there's acknowledgement of these individual relationships in Christ.

Not only do we have a relationship to God the Father, who deserves our glory and praise, but we have a relationship with each other. And again, this fits in really good with what we talked about in the morning service here, about the unity we have in Christ and how we are to be working together and fellowshipping together and serving the Lord together. This reading has that kind of same idea, that we're together in this.

We're not alone. We're not loners. We're not just doing our own thing, but we're working together as a body.

And he gives one command here. And that's right at the beginning. The command is to greet the saints.

Now, who are the saints? I think I'm not enlightening any of you on this, but just reminding you that some religions, such as Catholics, the saints are these extra holy people who get this elevated status almost close to being able to worship them because they've done such good things, they lived such good life. Well, that's not what the Bible teaches. What saints are the saints literally as holy or set apart ones? And so who the saints are is you and me.

If we trusted Christ, we're a saint. It's every person who has trusted Christ as their savior. Let's look at a couple of verses that talk about this.

First, Philippians one, one out of this book that we studied right at the beginning. Would somebody like to read that, please? Philippians one, one. Nathan? Go ahead.

Paul and Timothy Bond, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons. I always wonder what the Catholics do with this kind of verse here. You know, all the saints that are in Philippi.

Well, you know which saints were in Philippi. You know, they have a list of saints. Were there any that were even there? Well, you know, understanding, these are the holy ones.

These are the saved people in Philippi. And it says with all. With all the bishops, the pastors, and the deacons.

So it's saying all the saints, everybody that believes, including the pastors and deacons. So the pastors and deacons are a subset of the saints, saints, everybody, the whole church there. So he's greeting the church in Philippi, and that's who the saints are.

Let's look at one Corinthians one, two, because this makes it pretty clear here. Lisabell, go ahead. Okay, so, here in Corinthians, Paul's writing of the church in Corinthians, it says to the Church of God, which is at Corinthians.

Now, we know church is the assembly of God. It's all the believers. And so then he describes who they are to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus.

So anybody who is sanctified by Christ, which is anybody who's saved, it's all of you. Also, those who are called to be saints. So not only are they the church assembly, not only are they sanctified ones, but they're also called.

Called saints here. And just to be clear, with all those who call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. So as everybody who calls upon the name of the Lord is a saint, is sanctified, is the church as believers.

Saints and believers are the same thing. You're all saints if you have trusted Christ as your savior. So here when Paul says, greet every saint in Christ, he's saying, greet everybody in the church.

Greet everybody who's saved, everybody who's part of the body of Christ. And he's commanding the church to spend time greeting each other, not just even probably in the church in Philippi, but as they interact with other churches, and we know that they were doing this, as we talked about them, giving to the needs of Paul and other churches that have been doing that, there's great interaction between different churches at this time. And so there's a greeting.

There's a commonality even not only around the church in Philippi, but the church in Thessalonica, the church in Ephesus, they were all working together. They're on the same team here. So they're commanded to greet the saints.

And then Paul gives greetings from the people that he's with. So he gives greetings from his associates. He talks about giving a greeting from the brethren.

So these are the ones who are with Paul, including those who minister with Paul. And I said, such as Timothy. If you look back at Philippians, one, one here, it says, Paul and Timothy are writing to the Philippians.

So we know that one of the brethren that's with Paul is Timothy. There were others that were serving with him. He goes on to say, the brethren who are with me greet you all.

The saints greet you all. What saints? Well, these would be the saints in Rome, right? So this would be the church in Rome. They all probably heard from Paul what's going on in Philippi and how he's concerned about them and how he's praying for them.

They probably hear all about this from Paul. And so when Paul says, I'm going to send a letter, the saints are saying, greet them for us. Let them know we're praying for them, too.

We care about them. We're with them. So the church in Rome also was greeting the church in Philippi.

And then he brings out a subgroup here where he talks about all, especially those who are Caesar's household. Now, why would he be bringing up Caesar's household? Okay, the people got saved in Caesar's household, but why them? Why not the household of Darius or the household of Glenn or the household of Kurt or whoever? You know, he was in power. Okay, Caesar was in power.

That's one reason. Where was Paul at this time? He was Rome in prison. What kind of prison was he in prison? He was under house arrest at this time.

So he was interacting with the prison guards, who were probably there because Caesar was there in Rome. Right. So they're probably from Caesar's own personal group of guards.

Now, when it says Caesar's household doesn't mean that Caesar was saved, necessarily. We have no evidence that he was. But these are probably his slaves, his servants, other government officials that had heard the gospel from Paul.

Even some of these guards here that heard the gospel from Paul and were saved, these people from Caesar's household, who Paul's interacting with daily because he's under roman house arrest, he says, especially them. They greet you, these people that are living, so to speak, in the lion's dead, but have trusted Christ as their savior. They're also giving greetings.

So they also see the importance of sharing and encouraging the brethren at Philippi. And so you see this great interaction even between these two churches, the roman church and the Philippians Church. One of the things that I was really thankful for was when Altoona came for the installation service and participated in that, not only because they were there and it filled up our auditorium, but we've had people from Altoona help minister for us over several years here.

Ken Rathbun's from Altoona trying to think. There's several guys that came to preach besides Jordan himself, before he even was called to be pastor here. Altoona has been very supportive of us, and I had several people come up and say, we've been praying for you guys.

We've been praying for you to find a pastor. We're so thankful that God provided pastor Jordan for us. They really showed a sincere care for the needs of our church.

And that's how the churches should work. We should be. And this idea of greeting has that idea of a commonality, of working together, not just within the church, but among other churches that have the same goals, have the same theology, are trying to do the same things.

So very appreciative of that, and that's how it should be working. That's what Paul I think is trying to get at with the greeting of the saints here is that there's this commonality that the saints care about each other. They share in each other's burdens.

They're praying for each other. They're helping each other out, and that's what we should be doing. So part two, I know we've gone through these two very fast.

I want to take a lot of point on this third one. A lot of time on this third point. So.

Philippians 423, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. And so Paul gives us a reminder of God's grace.

So as he's rapid firing through these last things, the very last thing he touches on is that the grace of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. So grace. My favorite definition is God's unmerited favor towards us.

It's a little bit wordier, but I think it speaks a lot. It's giving us what we don't deserve. God is given us grace and is giving us grace.

I want to think about this concept for a second, because a lot of times we think of grace in terms of being saved by grace, even saved. And we're going to talk about that in just a second. I think it's a lot more than that in the Bible.

So we're going to read two verses here. I'll have somebody read Titus 211 14. And then someone read Ephesians two, eight and nine back to back.

So Titus 211 14. Who wants to read? Ted? Go ahead. And then Ephesians two, eight and nine.

Olivia. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us of denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. We should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works.

Ephesians two eight. For by grace you have been saved and not. And that not of yourself.

It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Okay, so I want to look at, especially Titus, chapter two here. I put this up on the board because I'm going to mark stuff up.

So that's why, Nathan, I put it on the board. So it starts out this passage for the grace of God. It starts out talking about God's grace, right? This is what he wants to talk about.

In these verses here, the grace of God. And he defines the grace. It's the grace that brings salvation.

Right? This is what we think of as grace most of the time. By grace you've been saved. And that's why I put this up here is for by grace you have been saved.

This is what it's talking about. This passage here is talking about that little phrase right there. This whole for by grace you have been saved through faith is not of yourself as a gift of God, not a work, so that no one should boast.

That's the kind of grace he's talking about, the grace that saved you, the grace that gave you salvation, the grace that you didn't earn, you didn't work for, you didn't do anything to get it. It's by God's grace. It's his free gift to you.

That kind of grace that brings about salvation he talks about has appeared to all men. The opportunity is out there for all men to be saved. And this grace, and here's the action that grace is teaching us.

But who's the US? Yeah, we'll use the term we use in the lesson here, the saints, the believers. It's teaching us so grace doesn't stop at salvation. The grace of God is teaching us believers that this is a, I'm going to come back to this in just a second, but it's teaching us that we should live soberly.

Anybody know what soberly means? Yeah, kind of, kind of clear. It's dedicated, it's in a reasonable way and reasonable by, you know, well thought out righteously. What does righteously mean? The right way? Yeah.

Let's just say the right way. Right. Living the truth so righteously is living the right way.

Living according to the way God wants us to live. Godly. So what would godly be then? Like God in God's character.

Right. So the grace of God teaches us saints. It does something here.

It's teaching us how to live soberly, righteously and godly when we get to heaven in the present age right now. So grace isn't just for salvation. It's important for salvation.

It's essential for salvation. It's for by grace you have been saved. But it doesn't stop there.

We ought to be living every moment of our life under God's grace. What does that mean? And I'm a very big proponent of telling you that you need to put effort into living the christian life. Right.

You can't just coast. You have to be studying your Bible. You have to be putting God's word in your heart.

You have to be making the right decisions. You have to be committed to doing what's right. But even if you do all that, you cannot do it without God's grace, because God's grace is what teaches us to live soberly, righteously, and godly.

In fact, he gives us a couple of things that just kind of to say what it's not. It's denying ungodliness, which is. Yeah, the opposite of this.

And worldly lust. What's another word for lust? Desires. Worldly desires.

So it's not just, you know, a lot of times we use the word lust to be something like sexual like that. But it's really any worldly desire. Greedy, a desire for fame, a desire for recognition, anything that's worldly, that goes against what God wants.

Paul here is saying that that's not part of what grace is teaching you. Grace is teaching you to be sober, to be righteous, and to be godly right now in this present age. And so when Paul talks about here that the grace of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, be with you all, he's not just making an end statement to close a letter.

He's giving them a truth that as a church, they need God's grace. They need to be living by God's grace. Now, if grace is God's unmerited favor, how do we see the grace of God in our christian life? If grace is God giving us something we don't deserve, what do we see in our christian life that shows his grace? Okay.

Yeah. We have forgiveness of sins, right? One John one nine. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, right? So I don't know where I'm going to put this, so just add a line here.

We have God's forgiveness. Do we deserve that? Even after we're saved, we're still sinners and we still sin against God. We don't deserve the forgiveness, but God gives that to us.

What else? Okay, let's talk about how God showed grace to us, not by showing grace to others. As I agree with that, we can show God's grace to others, but I'm looking for more. How has God shown his grace to us in our christian life, Olivia? Okay, we have access to God through prayer, right? We can go to the throne of grace and receive grace and mercy in the time of need.

So we have that privilege. Do we have the right to talk to God? I mean, God has given us that right. So that's not a right question.

Is that something we deserve that we can come to God and talk to him anytime. In the Old Testament, even the Hebrews couldn't do it. They had to go through the priests to have access to God.

You know, one of the things in, like, if you read through Samuel, I don't remember which chapter it is, but Israel has sinned, and Samuel confronted them. And Israel goes to Samuel, pray to God that he would forgive us. Why didn't the Israelites just pray to God? Because they didn't have that kind of access.

We have that as a church. We have access as priests of God that we can access his throne anytime. What else has God given us? Love.

Good. Do we deserve God's love? No. In fact, it says while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and that the love of God is shown to us.

I think that's the verse. I'm getting it backwards here, but God demonstrates his love towards us so that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. I knew it was the right verse.

I was just getting the wording wrong. So God shows his love through the death of Christ. God shows his love.

Love continually through these other things, through forgiveness, through access to God. Through other things. We have.

What else? What else has God given us? Olivia? Bible? Thank you. Yeah, we have the Bible, the truth. We have everything that we need that pertains to life and godliness.

Everything. Every single thing. We don't need anything else beside God's word to know how to please God, how to live for him.

In fact, we wouldn't know anything about God if we didn't have his word. Pastor Jordan? Yeah. Thank you.

I was waiting for that one. In fact, in Corinthians, it talks about that. Without the Holy Spirit, we can't understand God.

But because we have the Holy Spirit, we have the mind of God, we can understand his word. Without that, we wouldn't even be able to comprehend what God was saying in his word. What else? Can you guys think of anything else? This is a good list.

There we go. Yeah. We have fellow believers.

How should I put this? I'll just put the church you said. That's probably right. The church assembly.

God has given us each other to help us grow. How many times have you been in need and someone has come alongside you and said, here, let me help you. Let me help you walk the way you should walk.

Let me show you what God's word says. We have each other for that. What else has God given us? Okay.

Wisdom. I think these two probably go together, but I'll put it there, too, because where we get our wisdom is ultimately from the word of God. Olivia, your hands up.

Okay. We have freedom from sin. Romans six.

Romans six is all about how you were one's slaves to sin. You were under sin's bondage, but through Christ, you now have freedom to that. Now we often put ourselves back under that bondage, but God has given us freedom that we can do what's right, that we can choose to please him.

Good. Lemuel, your hand was up. Do you have something? I was going to say that.

You were going to say that too. Great minds think like. Yes, Dori, Jim used to say that grace is the power to be righteously.

Yeah. Those say we have the power of God. Anything else you want to add to the list? I'm ready to move on if you want to.

I'm not looking for anything in particular, but I don't want to. Somebody says, oh, I have something really good. I'm going to tie something in with that because I think it makes a.

I think it makes. Yeah, we kind of covered that with the church, the fellowship. I'm going to tie something with eternal life here because I think it has a big deal with how we live.

Prayer, access to God. Yep. That's.

Yep, we'll put that together here. That's good. In fact, in this verse in Titus 214, verse 13 says, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and savior Jesus Christ.

What's the motivation for doing all this? It's because Christ is coming back. We're looking forward to that. There's hope.

There's hope of eternal life. Pastor Jordan was kind enough to message me the other day that say, hey, we're going to do some flowers for Mother's Day for the mothers. We just want to let you know so you're prepared.

We know that Mother's Day might be a very difficult time for your family. Well, you know what? We have hope. Because I know where sue is at.

She's not in the Berwick cemetery. Her body is still there, but she's not there. She's with the Lord Jesus Christ.

She's having a great mother's Day. She's having a great everyday and there's hope in that. Now.

Am I sad at times? Yeah. Am I lonely at times? Yeah. But there's hope because of what Christ has done.

So that's a great thing, that eternal life. That's a really good point. Anyone else? Again, I don't want to cut anybody off.

You have something good. So letter a here. I'm having all kinds of typos in this.

I don't know. I finished this up yesterday. For those of you who don't know, Abigail was supposed to be at the airport at 03:00 so I was up at 230.

Now, they have six people going. Five of them were coming from faith in a faith van, and one of them showed up a half hour late. So I could have had a half hour more sleep time, which I'm not bitter about, but I think about that.

So I'm going to blame it on that, that I'm a little sleep deprived yesterday. And I got back because I was up a half hour longer. I had to drive to the airport, had to drive back.

So it was about an hour and a half. I was up, went back to bed, and stayed awake for about an hour and a half. I was like, I cannot get back to sleep.

So anyway, so it should be the gift of grace or the giver. It should be the giver. There should be an r on there.

The giver of grace. Thank you. So the giver of grace here, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, again, we see this, the Lord Jesus Christ. We read over this and go, okay, that's great. I think there's a point why he says our Lord Jesus Christ.

He uses four terms here, and I think they're significant, each one of them. So I want to go through each of them are, number one, there's an identification of a relationship. Again, this goes back to what it was in verse 20.

It's our God. It's our Lord Jesus Christ. We're identified with him.

He's identified with us. Join heirs with Christ. We belong with him.

I think it's significant that he says our. And he's saying this to the church at Philippi. It's not just Paul's Lord Jesus Christ.

It's not just the roman church's Lord Jesus Christ. It's all who believe all the saints. So there's a personal relationship there.

Now, the next three things I want you to think in terms of being a Jewish person. So turn your mind. So you're a Jewish mind.

The next thing he says is Lord to us. We see Lord. We say, okay, that's great.

That's a title we see all the time. But in the Jewish mind, I think Lord and may Paul's thinking this way is Yahweh. That he's thinking, and he's thinking in terms of Christ's deity, that he is the I am.

He is the Lord. You know, the Lord of the Old Testament. This is Jesus Christ.

He's one with God. So I think he's pointing out his deity here. It's our Lord, our God, he's the eternal one.

And so when he brings it up, I think that's what he's talking about here. And then he uses another term, Jesus, which we think, okay, that's his name. But when did Jesus get that name? We don't see Jesus name in the Old Testament.

Right? This is a New Testament thing. So I think this is dealing with humanity. He's God and he's man.

Right? In fact, Hebrew, it's basically Yeshua. And it means God's salvation, or God saves salvation. I can't spell or God saves.

That's what Jesus name meant. He was told to be given that name by the angels. It obviously has significant meaning.

And names have meaning in the Bible. And my favorite example to prove that names have meaning is remember this guy, Jacob Israel? He had twelve kids, right? The last one he had was named what? Benjamin. What did his mom name him? I don't remember what it is, but it meant child of my affliction.

Son of my affliction, right? Because she died in the child bearing. Well, Jacob didn't like that name. He gave him a better name.

He gave him Benjamin. You know what that means? Hmm? Child of my right hand. Yeah.

Son of my right hand. Right. And why is that? Because this is like this.

This is from his best wife. This is from Rachel. And this is the last son, this last one he was going to have.

And so this is this guy special at this point. Remember, Joseph was sold off into slavery. So this is his only son he has left from Rachel.

This is the child, his right hand. This is a special child. This is the one that he's honoring above the other eleven or the other ten that were there at the time.

His names have significance. If you go through and you study the names of God. God has so many names in the Bible that he uses.

It's not just God, but it's like God, our protector, God our provider, God, the Lord of hosts. You know, all these different names and they have meaning in the Bible, names have meaning and Jesus name is God's salvation, or God saves, but it's a name that he was given when he was born into his human form. So I think Paul is saying here, it's our Jesus Christ, it's our Lord, he's God, it's Jesus, he's human, he's man.

Which is significant because a man has to die for a man. A man has to take our place. And he did.

And then Christ. And what does the word Christ mean? Or what does it relate to an Old Testament word that you all kind of know? Yeah. Thank you.

Messiah, the chosen one. And so he's the one who's fulfilled the prophecy. So it's God.

It's a God man. It's a God man who has prophesied from, in Genesis three, basically, who has come to be the savior of his people. And so I think Paul is using these words significantly.

He's not just throwing out this term because it's used all the time and it's always in the right. He's thinking about what he's calling Jesus here by saying, our Lord Jesus Christ, it has meaning, and that's a giver of the grace. The object of the grace is, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

So all who are in Christ, all who Christ are in Philippi. He's writing to the church here. The grace is there for the whole church, for every saint.

So what we talked about this passage where the saint that teaches us to live the right way, that grace is there for every single one of us because God gives out that grace freely. And then again, we talked about the amen already. Paul sees this and says, truly this is true.

This is right. This is what God desires for us. So Paul's reminder of God's grace, and I think that's a huge point.

Again, this is the last thing he says. And so I think he's trying to bring this to their mind right at the end here, that you have God's grace. You're living under God's grace.

Continue to trust in that grace, continue to walk in that grace, because it's there for you. And he's giving them that encouragement at the end. So my takeaways, one going along with each point here, first one, God deserves all the glory and praise.

This should not only come from the things we say, but also the things we do. Our lives should be lived out to the praise of God's glory. One more verse to read.

Ephesians 111 twelve. Who wants to be the last reader? Joseph. Go ahead.

In him also, we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we who are first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory. So it talks about that we who first trusted Christ. But I think this is true of everyone who trusts in Christ, that we're to be, to the prayer praise of his glory.

Our lives ought to reflect his grace. Our lives ought to bring glory to God. Our lives ought to show who Christ is and how magnificent, how wonderful, how above everything else he is, by the way we live, by the things we do, by the attitudes we have.

That's what God wants for us. So we need to give God the glory and praise, not by just saying it, but by doing it, by acting the right way. Takeaway number two, we have a common family in Christ, starting with being children of our heavenly Father and resulting on us being brothers and sisters in Christ.

We should be developing and growing in our relationship with one another as we grow in Christ. And that's true. We see that over and over in scripture, how we're there to build up one another.

We're there to admonish one another. We're there to edify one another. We're to love one another.

We're supposed to serve one another. We're supposed to walk alongside one another. All these things that comfort one another.

God has given us this relationship for a purpose. We're not just here at church to have a fun club, to get together once a week and hang out. We're here because God has put us here to serve each other and to be there for each other.

And so we ought to develop that relationship. Finally. God's grace is poured out on us, not only for our salvation, but for our sanctification, our growth in Christ, where our growth does not happen without effort.

We certainly cannot grow in Christ without trusting and depending on his grace. I think that's a big point he's making here. So, any thoughts or questions this morning? Nothing? Okay, great.

That covered everything. Well, thank you. We'll let you close in prayer, Nathan.

Dear Heavenly Father, we're just thankful that dad took the time to study and present the word to us as pray that you allow us to dwell on it, apply it to our lives. We're thankful for pastoring your message this morning, as long as we remember it, fresh our mind and learn from his study as well. God, be with us as we go about our days, and we just be honoring and obeying you in everything we say.