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A letter for every church in every place
A letter for every church in every place
We are about to embark on a journey through a letter that was written aprx 2000 years ago.
Why should we read it?
This is a letter written by the Apostle Paul.
An enemy of Jesus who after encountering the risen Christ in a astonishing way, was converted and then devoted his life to the mission of God.
As we read the book of Acts we see the guy Paul traveling all over the place, taking the message of Christ’s life death and resurrection to Jews and Greeks.
We see Paul take multiple missionary journeys, and the story we’re going to glance is from his second.
36 After some time had passed, Paul said to Barnabas, “Let’s go back and visit the brothers in every town where we have preached the message of the Lord and see how they’re doing.”
9 During the night a vision appeared to Paul: A Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, “Cross over to Macedonia and help us!” 10 After he had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to evangelize them. 11 Then, setting sail from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, the next day to Neapolis, 12 and from there to Philippi, a Roman colony, which is a leading city of that district of Macedonia. We stayed in that city for a number of days. 13 On the Sabbath day we went outside the city gate by the river, where we thought there was a place of prayer. We sat down and spoke to the women gathered there. 14 A woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God, was listening. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was spoken by Paul. 15 After she and her household were baptized, she urged us, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.
Boom. A church has been planted.
Believers are gathering in the house of Lydia.
And we know from Paul’s previous missionary journey that his next step was to identify elders and establish them in their roles.
Slave girl with spirit of prediction
16 Once, as we were on our way to prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit of prediction. She made a large profit for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 As she followed Paul and us she cried out, “These men, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation, are the slaves of the Most High God.” 18 And she did this for many days. But Paul was greatly aggravated and turning to the spirit, said, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out right away.
What happens next helps us understand the people of Philippi better.
Profit lost. “When her owners saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace”
Now Philippi had an impressive marketplace.
The city had been granted the status of a Roman colony in the past, and the people there loved Rome for it.
People living in this colony were granted the ability to purchase and own land, amongst other benefits of Roman citizenship.
In addition to the traditional paganism and idol worship of the age, they engaged in what we refer to as the emperor cult.
Worshiping Caesar as a god.
Roman superiority lost.
20 Bringing them before the chief magistrates, they said, “These men are seriously disturbing our city. They are Jews 21 and are promoting customs that are not legal for us as Romans to adopt or practice.”
Why did all this happen just for casting a spirit out of a girl?
Because the power of Jesus Christ was confirmed.
The girl was literally shouting for days,
“These men are the slaves of the Most High God.”
And then Paul turns around and says,
“I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.”
Paul may have been drawing the church in Philippi’s memory to this when he starts his letter to them.
“Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus.”
Jesus Christ is directly in opposition to the authority of Caesar.
Paul and his team have been going around and preaching the gospel to people in Philippi.
And just like we talked about last week,
The Gospel includes Jesus Christ being crowned king of the world.
Not long before Jesus was born another man was born.
Consider this message written about Caesar Augustus not long before Jesus was born.
The Priene Calendar Inscription:
“Since Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance (excelled even our anticipations), surpassing all previous benefactors, and not even leaving to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done, and since the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the gospel[εὐαγγέλιον] for the world that came by reason of him,”
“this Koine Greek term εὐαγγέλιον was used at the time of the Roman Empire to herald the good news of the arrival of a kingdom - the reign of a king that brought a war to an end, so that all people of the world who surrendered and pledged allegiance to this king would be granted salvation from destruction.”
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, 3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”
Paul touched this very nerve.
Are you willing to touch that same nerve?
Some people in here like to defy authority out of principle.
Careful.
The only way we see Paul challenging Rome is by proclaiming Christ as king.
Others in here are so unwilling to be combative that we are in danger of never handing our neighbor a complete gospel for fear of rejection.
Remember, the gospel is nothing short of the cosmos altering, sin atoning, powers defeating, enthronement of our God as king.
Paul preaches this gospel
AND
Paul arrested, beaten.
Earthquake
Conversion of jailer and household
Now making twice that a whole family is baptized on the profession of the family leaders faith in this city.
Released with an escort on the basis of his and Silas’ Roman citizenship.
On a couple different occasions Paul is able to visit this little church plant of his, and we learn that these Macedonians financially supported his future ministry efforts.
13 years later...
Where is Paul?
30 Then he stayed two whole years in his own rented house. And he welcomed all who visited him, 31 proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with full boldness and without hindrance.
He’s under house arrest.
He’s just spilling over with the gospel of the kingdom.
This is when he writes this letter.
Knowing how prone this city is to fall prey to the idols of nationalism, hero worship, and financial pursuit, you would think that his letter would be full of warnings about that.
Nope.
If you were an alien picking up this letter you would notice one thing first and foremost.
Paul cannot stop talking about Christ.
And the warnings that he does have, are warnings against those who are distorting the person and work of Christ.
Distorting the gospel.
Paul is gushing the gospel at this point in his life.
And we see it form the center, the crux of this letter.
In chapter 2 we find a poem. A Christ poem.
A V shaped story
A story to enter.
A story of downward mobility.
Christ’s humility and exaltation
5 Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage. 7 Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, 8 He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross. 9 For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow — of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth — 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Paul, writing now at the end of his life, has been shaped deeply by being with Jesus and walking with him for years.
Paul’s humility and exaltation
8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ —the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
3 reasons for a church plant to sit under the instruction of the book of Philippians:
It enriches us with the gospel.
We’ve already said it, Paul can’t stop talking about Christ and his gospel in this letter. As we see Paul engaging with churches of different ages (church plants/veteran churches), we see him offer the same
It gives us a vision for the future.
Corporate Vision of a church walking together in the light of gospel for years.
Personal vision of what a life spent with Jesus looks like.
It gives words to our community now.
The way Paul prays for people in this letter is astonishing.
That’s what we’re going to look at next week.
And this letter is filled with some iconic verses.
“For me, living is Christ and dying is gain.”
“Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ”
“Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.”
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”
“I consider everything to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ.”
“Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable - if there is any moral excellence, and any praise, dwell on these things.”
Read Aloud:
Listen as if you’re the church.
For some of you, pretend you haven’t seen Nick in 5 or 6 years, and he’s writing you a letter from the place where he’s on trial.
Talk about Dean Fleming