We are today beginning a series of sermons that will take us through Paul's epistle to the Philippians. This is one of Paul's four prison epistles. At the end of the book of Acts, we find Paul imprisoned in the city of Rome for two years. During that imprisonment in Rome, Paul wrote four letters; these are the New Testament books we call Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. When Paul wrote these letters, his life was at stake. He was waiting the verdict of the Roman Emperor Nero as to whether he would be set free or executed, whether he would live or die. When Paul wrote these letters, he did know which it would be. As it turns out, Paul was set free, and he continued his missionary efforts and ministry to the churches for a few more years. A few years after Paul's release from his first imprisonment in Rome, Nero began his terrible persecution of the Christian Church. A few years after that, Paul was again arrested, and this time he was executed as a martyr for the faith.
Paul wrote the prison epistles around A.D. 62. Nero began his persecution of the church in A.D. 64, Paul was martyred around A.D. 68.
It was during Paul's first Roman imprisonment that he wrote his letter to the church at Philippi, which we call the book of Philippians. What is amazing about this book written from prison in the face of possible execution is the emphasis that Paul puts on contentment and inner peace and joy. This is the letter in which Paul said:
To fully appreciate these words we need to remember that Paul wrote them in the midst of a trying and difficult situation.
4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 4:7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. 11 ... I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: 12 I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. ... The words which occurs repeatedly in Paul's letter to the Philippians are the noun "joy" and the verb "rejoice." To understand how Paul could concentrate so much on joy when writing from a prison, we need to remember that joy is not the same as having fun. Having fun is dependent on outer circumstances. We can have fun only when our situation is pleasurable. Inner joy is not dependent on outer circumstances, and yet joy satisfies in a way that having fun does not. There are many people today who are desperately seeking pleasure, and yet they are never able to find any lasting satisfaction. And we also see people with few material pleasures who have a deep inner contentment because they have inner joy. J.I. Packer says, "Joy isn't strictly a feeling. It's a state of mind in which you're content with what you've got and you wouldn't exchange it for the world."
The apostle Paul was a man of joy, even in the face of adversity. We read in our passage for today that Paul was joyful whenever he prayed for the Christians at Philippi, and he was always praying for them. Paul's prayers consisted of both thanksgiving and supplication. Paul's prayers of thanksgiving were joyous as the apostle remembered the blessings God had already given the Christians at Philippi. Paul's prayers of supplication were joyous as the apostle requested and anticipated even more blessings from God upon the Christians at Philippi. This week we are going to look at the joy found in Paul's prayers of thanksgiving, and next week we will look at the joy found in Paul's prayers of supplication.
This morning I am going to examine the joy found in Paul's prayers of thanksgiving under three points. These are thanksgiving's cause, thanksgiving's confirmation, and thanksgiving's confidence.
Let's begin by looking at thanksgiving's cause. In verse 3, Paul says that he thanks God upon every remembrance of the Christians at Philippi. In verse 5, Paul tells us specifically what he is thankful for. It is the Philippians' fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. This is the source of Paul's joy in his prayers of thanksgiving for the Philippian Christians. Paul is joyful that they share in the fellowship of the gospel.
The Greek word translated "fellowship" in this verse is koinonia. It means to have something in common, to participate in something, to share something. When Paul expressed his thankfulness for the Philippian's "fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now," he was thinking primarily about their fellowship in the furtherance of the gospel through their practical assistance over the years. In chapter 4, verse 15, Paul goes on to say,
The Greek word here translated "shared" is in the koinonia word family. It here refers to the fellowship of a common commitment to a common cause and to the fellowship of a joint effort to promote that cause. Yet behind this charitable fellowship of practical assistance in spreading the gospel was their common salvific fellowship of grace. Paul refers to this more foundational fellowship in verse 7 when he says, "you are all partakers with me of grace." The word in verse 7 translated "partakers" is also in the koinonia word family. Paul was grateful not only for the charitable fellowship of assistance but also for the salvific fellowship of grace that lay at its roots.
15 Now you Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me concerning giving and receiving but you only. I want to take some time to examine this foundational fellowship of grace. We can view our salvation from many perspectives, and one of them is our salvific fellowship with Christ and His grace. As necessary background, we need to consider first the loss of fellowship that occurred when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden.
God created Adam and Eve in His own image so they could fellowship with Him, even though Adam and Eve were finite creatures and God is the infinite Creator. When Adam and Eve sinned, they disrupted their fellowship with God, and God threw them out of the garden. God in His holiness is too pure to look upon iniquity. Their iniquities had separated them from their God, and their sin had hidden God's face from them so that God would no longer hear. In this state of separation from God, humanity is like a branch cut off from a vine. Separated from God, the soul of man withers. Isolated from fellowship with their Creator, people can have no true inner joy, no real inner peace, no contentment with life regardless of what material pleasures they possess.
The good news of the gospel is that Jesus came to reconcile His people with God, to restore their fellowship with their Creator. This work of reconciliation involves first the fraternal fellowship of the incarnation. God the Son partook of flesh and blood when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He shared our complete human nature. As it says in Hebrews 2:14:
14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, The work of reconciliation involves secondly the legal fellowship of the covenant. Jesus identified with us legally as our covenant Head. As our covenant Head, He accepted responsibility for the guilt of our sins. He voluntarily went to the place of judgment and curse in our place. He went to the cross and there in His humanity experienced the wrath of God against our sin. Through His humanity, Jesus was able to suffer as a human payment for our human sins. And His divinity gave that suffering an infinite worth so that Jesus' suffering on the cross is sufficient to pay the penalty for the sins of all who believe in Him. In this ordeal of suffering, Jesus died and was buried. On the third day, He rose from the dead, and He is alive even today. He rose from the dead because through His suffering He had paid totally and completely for all the sin He had accepted responsibility for. Because He had paid the full penalty for this sin, death could not hold Him. Where there is no sin, death has no claim. The resurrection is our historical, objective verification that Jesus truly and actually and successfully paid for our sins through His suffering upon the cross.
As our covenant Head, Jesus paid for our sins, but He did more. He also imputed to us His own righteous standing before God. Jesus lived a perfect life in full obedience to all the laws of God, obeying God's every law not only in His outer actions but in every word and thought and attitude and desire. He lived an absolutely holy life and never did anything to deserve God's judgment or to come under God's curse. The record of this life lived in perfect conformity to God's law is the righteousness which Jesus as our covenant Head credits to our account before God. We are cleansed by His blood and then clothed with His righteousness.
First, there is the fraternal fellowship of the incarnation. Second, there is the legal fellowship of the covenant. And third, there is the spiritual fellowship of faith. Jesus applied to our hearts and lives the salvation He long ago accomplished for us. Jesus sent to us both the gospel message and His Holy Spirit to work faith in us as a means of uniting us to Himself in our personal experience. Through this fellowship of faith, we entered into a saving fellowship with Jesus and His saving work. We experienced the forgiveness and deliverance that can be found only in the saving work of Jesus Christ.
Finally there is the organic fellowship of spiritual fruit. In Romans chapter 11, Paul talks about a branch that is broken off the wild olive tree of paganism and then grafted into the good olive tree of Israel. In verse 17, Paul says that the engrafted branch "becomes a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree." The word there translated "partaker" is a word in the koinonia word family. The branch that is securely grafted into the tree partakes of and shares in the life-giving sap which comes up from the tree's roots. Jesus teaches the same truth in John chapter 15 when He says:
We are grafted into the Vine, who is Jesus, and we experience the life giving sap of fellowship with God. This gives us spiritual life, and we bear the spiritual fruit of a new and transformed life of holiness and obedience to God's law. A part of this transformed life is a desire to do what we can to enable others to hear this gospel message with the prayer that they too will trust in Jesus.
5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." This brings us back to where we started, to the fellowship in the furtherance of the gospel. This also brings us to our second point in our sermon, which is the confirmation of thanksgiving. How do we know that a person is experiencing the fellowship of grace in the depths of his heart? We know this because we see the fruit of this fellowship in his life. If a person is abiding in Christ like a branch in a vine, He will bear spiritual fruit. His life will be transformed. Paul's hope that the Philippians have indeed experienced the fellowship of grace is confirmed by their persevering commitment to Paul's gospel ministry.
Paul had seen such confirming evidence in his first visit to Philippi some eleven years before He wrote his letter to the Philippians from prison. The first person whom Paul told about Jesus at Philippi was a woman named Lydia. We read in Acts 16 that "the Lord opened Lydia's heart to heed the things spoken by Paul." Paul spoke the message for Lydia to hear with her ears, and God opened her heart so that she could respond to the message of Jesus with faith. As a result of the fellowship of grace, Lydia's life was changed. God opened her heart to the gospel, and as a result Lydia opened her home to the church. She said to Paul, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay." This was the beginning of Lydia's life of service to the kingdom of God. And such commitment to the gospel because characteristic of the whole church at Philippi. The fellowship of grace is the beginning of the fellowship of the gospel in the sense of supporting its spread.
Time and time again through the years, the church at Philippi sent help to Paul in support of the preaching of the message of Jesus. They had done this again when Paul was in jail at Rome. Philippi was about 800 miles from Rome, but the church there had sent one of their members, Epaphroditus, to bring Paul things to help him in his time of need in prison. When Paul was in prison, many abandoned him, but not the Philippians. They maintained their fellowship with Paul, their public association with Paul, even when Paul experienced the humiliation of prison. By remaining faithful to Paul and Paul's ministry of defending and confirming the gospel message, the Philippians proved to Paul that they really did share with Paul a participation in the saving grace of Jesus.
It is easy to say that one believes in Jesus. It is easy to say that one has the fellowship of faith with Christ. The proof is in the transformed life. We can't have a faith relationship with Jesus without experiencing the power of Jesus not only to free us from sin but also to enable us to obey. If we are abiding in Christ as a branch abides in a vine, we will experience Jesus' life giving grace and we will bear the fruit of a changed life. I can't see your faith, but I can see the fruit which always results from a fellowship of faith with the Savior.
We have looked at the fellowship in the gospel as the cause of Paul's thanksgiving. We have looked at the persevering loyalty of the Philippians as the confirmation of Paul's thanksgiving. Our last point is the confidence of Paul's thanksgiving. Over the previous ten years, Paul had seen enough in the lives of the Philippian Christians to convince him that these Philippians did indeed have a genuine faith relationship with Jesus. This means that God had begun this inner work of grace in their hearts. As it says in Acts 16, God opened Lydia's heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. God is the one who started their fellowship of faith. God is the one who opened their hearts, who worked faith in their hearts, who engrafted them into Christ through faith. And what God has started, God will finish. This is Paul's confidence.
You say, "But I have heard of people who were Christians but they later abandoned the church and denied the faith." Beloved, those people only said they were Christians. They really weren't in the depths of their hearts. God doesn't start any works which He doesn't finish. God is not like the king who meant to build a tower to his glory, but then had to stop work before the tower was completed because he didn't have the resources to finish what he had started. The tower which was meant to be a monument to the king's glory became a monument to the king's foolishness and incompetence. God is not like that. God always finishes what He starts.
The falling star may say that it was once a star shining in the firmament of the sky, but it isn't true. A falling star never was a real star. It is just a cold meteor that has fallen to earth. Real stars never fall. Real Christians also never fall. They may stumble for a time, but they never fall completely to earth because God completes the good work He has started in their lives. As it says in 1 John 2:19:
The root cause of Paul's thanksgiving was that the Philippians had partaken of the fellowship of the grace of the gospel of Christ. The confirmation of his thanksgiving was that the Philippians had been true to the fellowship of the furtherance of the gospel for over ten years. Therefore their fellowship of grace must have been a genuine work of God in their lives. The confidence of Paul's thanksgiving was that whatever God has started, God will finish to the glorious end. That confidence in God's grace is a key to the joy which reaches the depths of our being and is not dependent upon the circumstances of life.
19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.