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Introduction:
Good morning and let me welcome you once again to this meeting of Hope Bible Fellowship.
As every week, it’s a joy and privilege to be here with you opening the Word of God.
Go ahead and open your Bible to Philippians 2 and find verses 1-4.
If you would like to follow along with our interactive sermon guide, you can just scan this QR code with your phone’s camera and it will give you a link to our outline where you can follow along and take notes.
It will also give you the option to get a copy for you to keep.
We will cover these four verses today and then take a break from Philippians till the beginning of the new year so that we can begin our Christmas series.
This year’s Christmas series is called Christmas Playlist.
I love preaching in the Advent season and this series has me really excited.
I hope you will join us and I hope you will invite someone to come along with you.
Our Christmas Eve service will be themed around What Child is This and is looking to be a really joyous time.
It will be Christmas Eve at 5:30.
With that said, let’s turn our attention back to the letter of the Apostle Paul to the church in Philippi.
Let me ask you this question to get our minds and hearts moving a little bit.
What is it that gets in the way of you serving others?
What is it that at the very root gets in the way of serving Christ and others in the way that scripture speaks of?
The answer of course is sin but specifically, self centeredness.
Our devotion to our own interests over and above anyone else’s including the Lord’s keeps us from serving.
That is what the scripture talks about today.
Follow along as I read from the Word of the Lord.
READ
Let’s pray.
Pray
These four verses are going to lead directly into the hymn we find in verses 5-11 which shows Jesus as the ultimate example of selfless love.
So when we revisit this letter at the start of the year we will be rolling into talking about Christ’s ultimate example of humility.
But first in this passage we notice Paul encouraging them in the certainty of the blessings they have in Christ.
I. Certainty of the blessings we have in Christ
Now, in your translation the word “if” probably appears before this list of things that are theirs in Christ.
Paul’s not questioning if the Philippians have these things.
He’s using a type of tool of speech to point out that because they actually do have these things, they should complete his joy by demonstrating this unity that he goes on to talk about.
If Christians can not live unified, sharing the same attitude or mindset, then the power of the gospel to transform comes into question.
When this happens, our message, the glorious gospel can lose credibility with unbelievers.
Whereas, when we are unified, God is glorified and the gospel is more credible to them.
It’s like, when we do things in accordance with what we say… people are more likely to believe it.
I fear that sometimes we are hypocrites in that we do the other things of scripture but we don’t champion unity with one another.
encouragement in Christ - the blessing of knowing Christ and being found in Him.
The gift of faith.
There is nothing to lift our spirits more than knowing that we are found in Christ!
Even though we go through pain, suffering, and trials of many kinds, we find great encouragement in our relationship with Jesus.
comfort from love - the love of Christ that comforts us.
We know God’s love and that love, His love makes us love others.
The more deeply we become keenly aware of the love of Christ for us, we will more abundantly love others.
participation in the Spirit - the greek word that is sometimes translated as fellowship is the same that we found in verse 5 of chapter 1.
The Holy Spirit unites us.
He unites us as brothers and sisters in the family of God.
He makes us partners in the gospel and helps our weaknesses.
We worship God by the Spirit.
Why would Paul just write these things in this letter to these people?
In fact, he knew that that the Philippian church was facing possible disunity.
The threat was real.
Here he reminds them that the fellowship they have, the partnership they have, the koinania, they share is Spirit-produced and not from their own working.
affection and sympathy
The affection and mercy or sympathy that has been shown to us, comes for the infinite source of these.
He’s the God of all compassion.
We get to share, as Merida writes, being “the objects of God’s compassion.”
The tender care that He shows to us should cause us to be on the lookout for the best interest of other people, especially those who are members of the body of Christ.
For a picture of this, we need look no further than Epaphroditus.
of the source of unity
The reason that we get to experience these incredible blessings is because they are believers.
We get to share in them too if we have trusted in Jesus Christ.
If you have heard and believed the gospel message:
God
Man
Sin
Christ
If you have believed this good news and repented of your sin then you too get to share in these incredible blessings and can rejoice in them.
Paul’s communication style here is a sign of how he feels about this group of Christians.
He is warm and speaks pastorally to them and relishes their blessings before he gets to the part where he’s exhorting them.
Tony Merida says, “If all you ever do is tell people what they’re supposed to be doing, then they will get burned out.
Remind people of the blessings while giving them the imperatives.
Do this for your own soul, and do this for other Christians.”
Some churches that you go to, you get a bunch of things “to do.”
People don’t need an endless list of religious things to do.
Yes, there are definite commands in scripture but we need to constantly be reminded of the blessings we have in Christ because out of that will flow our spirit produced activity.
When we talk about unity, we are not speaking of uniformity.
However, we should be consistently unified in Christ.
Let’s talk about the consistency in our unity.
II.
Consistency in our Unity
Externally
Internally
The Same mind - In order to be united the church should have the same mentality.
They should put away their rivalries and small disagreements and preference fights and set their sights on their common mission and remember their identity in Christ.
Christ like humility - In chapter one, Paul had mentioned the preachers who were movitvated wrongly by rivalry.
Here, Paul tells the church as a whole to avoid this kind of attitude.
If you have rivalry in a church, it will tear the congregation apart.
It divides people.
As such, each member of the church should be aware of rivalry when it’s present and doing it’s thing and kill it.
We as followers of Jesus are to be about his glory and not our own.
We should rejoice when God uses someone else to advance His kingdom and proclaim the Lord Jesus.
Conceit - Greek word for conceit is translated - vain glory, vain conceit in some translations.
This is empty glory.
Fake glory.
It’s glory that doesn’t exist.
One scholar wrote that “people are literally conceited over nothing!”
The total opposite of this is Jesus Christ.
He had all glory.
Real glory.
And for your sake and my sake, He humbled Himself, even to death on a cross.
Our culuture tells you to chase the approval of men and the “likes” of people you don’t even know.
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