Introduction / Background to Philippians

Would you guys uh turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 1? Philippians chapter 1. We're going to read the first two verses. If you don't mind, would you stand as we read Philippians chapter 1, starting in verse one, Paul and Timothus, the servant of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons. Grace be unto you and peace from God our father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Our father Lord, as we here now start to take off on a new study in your book um the of Philippians, Lord, may we um be moved by the teachings here by this letter that is written that we may uh grow in our faith, Lord.

that we may grow in our love for your son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, may every aspect of our thinking and actions be be modified because of what this study does. I pray, Father, this in your heavenly name. Amen. You can be seated. As pastor said, tonight we do start our new study into the book of uh Philippians. And what I'm going to do today is just kind of or tonight is just kind of an introductory um lesson. And what I want to do is I want to give you some background information about this book in hopes that as we go through the study in the coming weeks that it provides some uh just helpful information that allows you to get greater meaning um out of the lessons that get taught.

You see, God's word was not developed by men sitting in rooms thinking of what to write. God's word is actually developed through historical events and through people and through issues that are going on. And he used those to drive the writing of his word. God's revelation is or God's revelation to humanity is based in history. And so it's good for us to have some understanding of the history that it comes to us in so that when we're thinking through what God desires to teach us in this passage, we can understand better. And so I want to do uh most of that tonight and then spend a little bit of time looking at these first two verses as we get ready to close.

But Philippians is a actually a letter. It's an ancient letter and it's written between friends. It's written between people who have a great love for each other. Now, do you write letters? And when I say letters, I don't mean email or text. I mean, do you sit down with a blank piece of paper and pen and write it out and fold it and put it in the envelope and put the stamp on and walk it to the mailbox and dump it in? It's kind of an oldfashioned thing now, isn't it? I still do, and maybe you do, too. And maybe you do it for the same reason I do it, and that's because those things are still special.

When I was a young man in the BC days, before children days, uh I got a I got a good lesson on this. I had uh a good friend of mine. We were friends prior to coming to Christ and I came to Christ first and really relatively quickly after that he came to Christ. And so we grew in our faith in our first couple years uh together and we had that great friendship. But he got married. He got married first and then I got married later and we wound up moving away from uh each other and really didn't really weren't able to stay in contact anymore. And one day I was thinking of him. I was reminded of him and for some reason at the time I thought it was a good idea to write him a letter.

It wasn't something that I would would usually have done at that period of time in my life, but I thought I'll write him a letter. And I didn't go buy a card or anything. I just got plain white paper and I I sat there and I wrote him a letter and told him about the things that I was growing in in the faith and I sent that to him. Fast forward in a couple years, I I see him again and I've forgotten that I've written the letter and and we're catching up and one of the one of the things he tells me pretty quick as we're catching up is that he remembers the letter. And it's not just the things that I had written to him in the letter that that caught his attention.

It was the fact that he had actually received it. And he told me, he goes, "You know, if you had emailed or even if you had called me, it wouldn't have had the impact had that letter as that letter did." And I realized letters are special, which is actually why I still periodically do them. I don't do them a lot, but periodically I do. But but in Paul's day, letters were were like that, but even so much so. But even so much more because they were so rare. You didn't get letters like you did today. They were they were rare events. And so for them, for the uh people in Philippi, for the church in Philippi to receive a letter would have been a super exciting special thing, especially from coming from Paul, an apostle.

But Paul's letters were actually quite unique. Paul writes very long letters. Did you know that in the ancient times that that that uh Paul's writing most personal letters are only one to two lines long? Maybe they're a paragraph. They have a couple documented instances that get down to a page, but nothing compares to what Paul does. You know, we look at the book of Philippians, it's four chapters long, and we don't think it's that long, but but for a letter in Paul's day, this is a very very long letter. And how exciting that must have been for the church there in Philippi to receive this indepth letter uh containing much teaching about the faith and from the apostle Paul.

Just the receiving of this letter would have been exciting. But what drove Paul to do this? What what would drive Paul to write such an unconventional long letter for the day? Oh, he did it out of love. He's motivated out of love. He's motiv motivated out of his love for Christ. And he's motivated out of his love for the Philippians. And we can pick up his motivation of his love right from the first statement that he makes in verse one. He says there at the beginning of verse one, he says, "Paul and Timothas, Timothy, the servants of Jesus Christ." You know, our English version uses the word servants, but that's not actually what Paul's saying.

Paul's calling himself a slave. Translators use the word servant for a reason. They use servant instead of slave because in um western thinking and in America as well, we think of slavery as a racial idea. Uh those of dark skin are slaves. Those of white skin or lighter skin are free. That's how we think of it because that's what we have in our history. But but that's not at all what Paul was thinking. In fact, Paul would not have understood slave as that that as at at all. But one problem comes up when the translators use servant instead of slave though is that often times we think of servant as somebody who is willingly giving up themselves to be under the authority of somebody else.

Well, this Paul would this wouldn't make sense to Paul either because while there's a great variety or a great range in how slaves were treated at this period of time of history, the one thing that remained consistent across all forms of slavery all or all uses of slavery was that the the slaves will was was under the master's. In fact, at times it would feel like the slave had no will of his own. It was completely completely overseen or completely overruled by the masters. And then we have Paul here who who sees this and he gladly identifies himself and Timothy then as slaves to Jesus Christ. You know, Paul could have been known by a by a bunch of different manners, but the way he wants to be known, the way he introduces himself is as a slave.

as one who has his will under somebody else, as one who has his desires ruled by somebody else. But salvation is so great to Paul. What he has in Christ is so great that he's willing to be a slave. He's willing to have that designation and and and celebrate in that designation of being a slave because of his love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of what he has received in salvation, he's happy for the position that the Lord has put him in to be a slave. Because for Paul, that is all that matters. Everything else just kind of drops away. To be a slave of Christ is the greatest calling. And so this great love for our Lord Jesus Christ that drives Paul to consider himself a slave cause also causes him to write long letters in hopes that others would grow in their love for Jesus Christ as well and that they would also joyfully come to identify themselves as slaves.

slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. And realize this too as we read this. This isn't just Paul writing. This is the Holy Spirit working within Paul to bring us the word of God. As we go through this book, as we study through this book, God will use the writings of Paul. But it's God's calling on us to grow in our love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so as we go through our study, at the core of every message in this series, realize that it is God's desire that you grow in Christ, that your love for Christ would deepen. Paul wrote because he loved Christ. But Paul also wrote this letter because he loved the Philippians.

And it was a love not started by Paul. It was a love that Paul didn't even really see on the horizon happening. It was a love that God actually brought about. In fact, Paul had originally no plans to go to Philippi. Paul actually wanted to go to Asia, which is which is in Turkey. Paul's on his missionary journey. He wants to go down to Turkey, but but winds up over in Philippi. And you get the story in Acts chapter 16. I'm going to spend a couple minutes here just kind of summing summarizing that. You don't have to turn there. I'll I'll just summarize. But but Acts 16 gives us the story and and what it tells us is that the Holy Spirit stopped Paul from going to Asia.

But then when Paul was in Trrowaz, Paul has a vision and within this vision, there's a man from Macedonia and he's he's calling on Paul, come help us. Paul recognizes this is a from this is of God and basically then makes a beline directly to uh Philippi because Philippi is the leading colony or leading city of Macedonia until Paul goes directly where he's been called. According to Acts 16, when he gets there, he doesn't waste much time. And since it is his habit to go to Jews first on the Sabbath, he goes to some location where he's hoping to find Jews praying. Acts 16, Acts 16, sorry. He says that that he does find Jews there and he witnesses to them.

And one of them, a wealthy businesswoman by the name of Lydia, comes to Christ with her family. And she then asked Paul to stay, Paul and his company to stay with her. And she she asked to provide for them. And we get the start of the church in Philippi at this wealthy business woman's home. Acts 16 continues to give us the development of the church there. And and what we see is as Paul continues to witness in the city that things started to get a little weird. The demonpossessed servant girl in the city starts to follow him around. This demon-possessed girl had made her masters a lot of money by fortunetelling.

And for some reason, the demons within her drive her to follow Paul around. And and she's crying out saying that these men are servants of the most high God which show us would show unto us the way of salvation. Acts 16:17. And as she's doing this, it's it's grieving Paul. She's not the witness that the gospel needs. And Paul likely feels for this young woman because uh she is a slave to wicked masters. She is a slave to demonic powers. And Paul knows a better master. And so Paul then in the power of the Holy Spirit commands the spirit to come out in the name of his master Jesus Christ. And it does.

This young lady is freed of this demonic influence. And Acts doesn't give us much more about this young lady, but I suspect that after this, she comes to Christ and she she starts going to the church there at Lydia's house. And I kind of wonder, was she there when this letter showed up? How has her life progressed uh during this time and from the from the time where she's she's been rescued to the time of this letter? And we don't know. We can only kind of wonder. But one thing this tells us about the church is that within the church there's a wealthy makeup of the people that are connected to Lydia and there's also going to be slaves.

And so the church is made up of of wealthy and slaves. Acts 16 continues on and tells us that that after this healing it leads to conflict with or for Paul and his companions. This young girl's masters were upset at losing their source of revenue. And so they brought Paul and Silas before the magistrates. And they make this charge to the magistrates. And they tell the magistrates that Paul and Silas are Jews who are troubling the city and teaching things that are unlawful. Now think about this. Why does that charge matter? Why does being a Jew and speaking about the gospel matter? Why is that bad in this city?

Well, as we look at the story, it clearly was a serious crime because the magistrate just upon hearing this, he takes Paul and Silas and strips them, beats them, and puts them in prison. And yet, why? Why is this serious? Well, to understand why this was serious in the city of Philippi, we got to look at what the makeup of the city is a little bit. And when we understand that, we're going to understand why there's such an offense on this. You see, Philippi is not located in Italy, but yet it has the privilege of being a Roman colony. That means uh that the citizens of the city or the people of the city could be Roman citizens, and they would have the privileges that would come with being a Roman citizen.

Now, this was probably more impactful for them than had they been in a city in Italy because being out of Italy, they're surrounded by Greeks. Greeks who do not have the status that they have. And so, they're kind of this privileged group among the unprivileged. And you can just imagine the the source of pride that would be within the city. We are Romans. We are of the empire. But that civic pride is is even greater when you continue to look at the history of the city because twice in this city's history within the past 90 years uh emperors after having won major battles uh took their veterans and retired them into the city.

This happened twice with the emperor Octavian. He he won great battles and then after the battles retires his men into the city. And this is only going to add to that that civic sense of pride of being a Roman within the city. And and and there's this just this great pride. But but to be to be Roman also meant that you had to confess your allegiance. And to confess your allegiance, you would state that Caesar is Lord. And so we have this city that's got this great civic pride. And everybody there is happy to say that Caesar is our Lord. We are part of the Roman Empire. We are dedicated. Now, in Rome, you could worship other gods.

They didn't have a problem with that. Well, not all gods, but a lot of different kinds of gods you were okay to worship just as long as you also confess that Caesar was Lord. But the Jews got an exception. You know, for the Romans, the Jews were a difficult group of people that would not submit to this requirement. But positively for the Romans, the Jews didn't evangelize or seek new followers. And so the Romans, they saw the Jews and this refusal to accept Caesar as Lord is really an ethnic issue. And since the Jews didn't really grow outside of their group and they just stayed as the Jews and they weren't a very big group to start with, they wrote them off as an exception.

You don't have to say that, but you're not really going to affect the morale of the of the of the empire anyway because you're kind of small and you don't evangelize and reach outside of your group. And so, they're okay with the Jews doing that. But think of how that would have gone over in in the city of Philippi, this city with a with a with a with a great civic pride. You know, they got a Jew within this city, a non-Roman citizen who refuses to confess their allegiance to Rome, and they're surrounded by patriotic war veterans and the children of Roman war veterans. Things aren't going to go smooth for Jews, is it?

In fact, the city of Philippi we know has a very small Jewish populations. And that's probably because the locals would have been disgusted by Jews, non-Jews who aren't going to confess their allegiance. But when Paul comes to town, not only is he a Jew, he's doing very unJewish things. He's calling on people now to call Jesus Christ Lord. A huge offense within that city. I try to put this in maybe modern times. if we had a smaller city that was known for uh retiring veterans and um there's a good VA there and the veterans really loved it and they just they just piled into this city and July 4th came along and the veterans decide to celebrate and they put on their most patriotic garb and

they they raise the flag and they pull the barbecue out and they start to start to celebrate the fourth and then imagine within this group there's one house and this house doesn't have an American flag on it and the owner of that comes up and he pulls up a different flag and he flies that up and then he starts doing traditions of a different culture out there in front on the 4th of July. Well, I don't think the vets are going to go over there and beat this guy up or anything, but at the same time, they're going to start talking. They're going to be offended. There's going to be problems. They're going to be talking about this guy.

This guy's going to be having problems as he does business within that community. And it's the same idea here in Philippi. Once the Christians come in, they're that kind of offense. Except in Philippi, they're going to take a little more active stance on this because for Paul and Silas to be Jews coming in speaking of Christ, they wind up getting stripped, beaten, and put into prison. This civic pride is good to keep in mind as we go through our study because it becomes an issue for the people in Philippi as they come to Christ. They go from having great civic pride to now coming to Christ and being shunned by the people that they used to socialize with.

That's going to be hard. They're going to suffer. And we pick that up within the book. But then we also pick up the encouragement as Paul encourages the ones that he loves in um chapter 3 of Philippians where he tells them, you know what, you have a better citizenship. You have something better than what you had when you were had that civic pride. You have a citizenship in heaven. far greater because of what you have in Jesus Christ than what you have here. And so they're a proud city. Back to our story in Acts chapter 16 of the development of the church. Paul and Silas are then put in prison and Paul and Silas are doing a Paul and Silas thing in prison and that's they're singing and praying.

And then at midnight, God causes an earthquake so great that the doors are shaken open and the bands that bind the men are loosened and they're free and they have the ability to leave. You guys probably know the story. They choose not to leave. They remain in the jail. And the jailer when he wakes up and sees what has happened just assume that everybody that everybody has escaped. I mean who would not escape, right? And so he figures his life is over and he realizes that he's probably going to be put to a very horrific death and so he decides to commit suicide instead. Paul sees this and Paul calls out to them telling him that they haven't escaped.

And this shocks the jailer. He can't believe that they would not have used this chance to get away. But yet, the act of submission by Paul and Silas is the way that it brings the gospel to this jailer. And the jailer believes with all his family and another family is joined to the church. And so the church has the wealthy, the church has the slaves, the church has the middle class workers. All parts of Philippi's social spectrum are now part of the church. But then God brings another special blessing to this church to help solidify it within the city. The magistrates, they've beaten Paul and Silas and put them in prison, but but they didn't ask them if they were Roman citizens.

They just assumed they were not. And so when they go to the jail or they send servants to the jail to tell Paul and Silas to to come out, Paul refuses to go. And I love this. He tells the servants to go back and inform the magistrates that that we are Roman citizens, me and Silas. You have beaten us in public. Roman citizens in a patriotic Roman town. You come get us out of jail yourself. And of course, the magistrates are fearful. They're terrified. They can't believe what they've done. Um they're going to get in trouble. And so they come down and have Paul get out of jail. But in doing this, it it shows the power of God to the people in the city as well as to those who are in the church.

Not only is God powerful enough to rescue this girl who's been possessed by the demon, but he's also powerful enough to humble the magistrates of this prideful city and elevate the church. And I suspect that God used this to help build the church and and to solidify the church there in Philippi. You know, not every city had a positive ending for Paul when he was evangelizing, but the church at Philippi was a special one. One that had direct and indirect action from God for its development. And because of everything that went down, Paul and this and the people there would have had a wonderful special bond.

And you can see that Paul appreciated these these people because he visits the church there in Philippi several more times during his missionary journeys. Paul loved them and they were special to him. Turn over to Philippians chapter 4. I think of all the verses that are within the book of Philippians. His love for them comes out the strongest in chapter 4 verse one. He's getting ready to wrap up the book and or wrap up the letter and he and he says this. He says, "Therefore," and just listen just listen to the love here. He says, "Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for my joy and crown, so standfast in the Lord, my dearly beloved, this letter that we're going to study is a letter based in love.

Paul's love for Christ and Paul's love for the church in Philippian in Philippi. But it doesn't stop there because the Philippians also loved Paul. What caused Paul to write this letter came about from what the Philippians had done for Paul. You see, the Philippians had sent Paul a helper, a man by the name of Aphroditis. And Aphroditis had served with his whole heart for Christ by helping Paul. He served with a complete disregard for his own life. And uh then when he got sick because of his sacrificial service, he almost dies. Paul, grateful for his service and his example, but also worried about how the Philippians would grieve over this, sends Apapraditis back to them with this letter, grateful that the Philippians had supported him.

But in this, what we find out is this is this is not the first time that they have supported him. In fact, we find in Philippians 4 that that the Philippians have have supported Paul when no one else would. Their support was continual. They didn't forget about him and he was their spiritual father and they remained lovingly committed to him. You know, when Pastor Wayne suggested that we study this book, we had just finished second Timothy. And to be honest, I was somewhat hoping we would go to Titus. Just in the logical flow of thought, I thought Titus would be would be fun to go to next. But he said, "Let's do Philippians."

And I was curious. And I asked him why, which which I it was good. Philippians is a good choice, but why? What's your reasoning? I was just curious. And he told me this. He said that his he wanted or he believed that it would be good for us to see a good example to see a good example of a church. And I was thinking about this with pastor's teaching about love in the morning because he's been spending much time speaking about love in the morning, encouraging us to live out love. But what we have now in the evening is a good example of that love lived out with the church in Philippi. And what and what drives both conditions is the same.

What drives the love aspect of 1 Corinthians 15 and the expression of love in the Philippians is the same. It is what it is what is founded in the gospel or it is founded by the gospel. You know, as we go through this study in Philippians, what we're going to find is that at every corner of thought, Paul is influenced in his thinking by the good news of Jesus Christ. As we study this, we will note that everything he has revolves in some manner amount around what we have in Christ. And I want to spin just a little bit with his greetings here to kind of show you this because even in Paul's simple greetings, we pick up the fact that he's been greatly infected with the gospel and the truths of the gospel.

Look at chapter 1 verse two. There Paul writes and he says, "Grace be unto you and peace from God our father and from the Lord Jesus Christ." You know in Paul's time in the Greek when you greeted someone, you greeted them by saying ket car k I'm sorry car I'm going to car kete car kerete kete. Oh man, I butchered that. But that literally means to rejoice. And it was the common way of of just saying hello to somebody. It's just exactly like our hello. But Paul in his letters doesn't say ker kete. He says caris. And they tried to do it in the coin Greek. I'm not a great coin Greek speaker to be honest.

I tried to do it in the Greek for you so you could hear the similarities. They're very very similar. They're spelled similar. And so Paul uses a very similar spelled, very similar sounding word to greet them. And that word is grace. He takes the common Greek greeting and changes it so that it's grace. Grace to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi. Grace to all the saints are literally the holy ones at Philippi. How are they holy? How can he call them that? Because of grace. Grace that came from the father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace that brought them forgiveness of sin. Grace that that allowed them salvation.

No work of their own. All of God's. And now because of grace they can be holy. And he can refer to them as holy. Paul continues in his greetings and he says and peace. Nothing fancy with the Greek here. He's using the Greek word for peace. But as a Jew, what he's doing is he's using the typical Jewish greeting of shalom. Shalom. Peace. That peace with God and that peace from God. And this is astounding when you think about where Paul's at at the moment. Paul's not home. He's not sitting on the lai writing this letter. Paul's in jail. Paul is writing this letter from a Roman jail. And he's at in jail right now, not sure if he's going to live or if he's going to be executed, but he is at peace.

And because he is at peace in this great trial, uh this letter to the Philippians, once he loved, is one of the most joy, if not the most joyfilled letters that Paul writes. In the midst of what should be a great trial and probably would, Paul writes his friends a letter filled with joy. Why can he do that? How can he do that? It's because he has received grace which has resulted in peace with the God of creation. It is the story of the gospel. Have you received grace and peace? If you have, then Jesus Christ is your Lord. And as we go through this study, this study will increase your joy as you read what the Holy Spirit has for you within it as it builds on your understanding of life in Christ.

Do you lack joy? I was thinking a fair amount of this. For some reason, uh, Christians can have a tendency to look at trials and get focused on the trials and the difficulties of life and lose their joy. There's a a local pastor here. Um, I don't know if you listen to him speak or not. Sometimes you can hear him on the radio, but but he'll speak of Christians like this and he calls them Eors. Uh, the Winnie the Pooh donkey guy that that walks around kind of woe is me, right? And he's like, "Don't be Eeyore. You're saved. You have the God of creation looking down on you." Yeah, this struggles, but you're saved.

And this letter between friends based in love, if we focus on it, will help us to or help those who lack joy to refocus their hearts back onto that truth, back onto the one who brings the joy even in the worst circumstances. Like Paul's in jail, unsure if he's going to be executed. And lastly, if you're simply coming to this study looking for commands to follow or some command or way of life to bring you peace within it, I want to tell you that that's not within this letter. You're looking for moralism then which is not Christianity. But yet within this letter are examples of people who have set their hearts on Christ.

And because they have done that, they love more and they have more joy than any form of moralism can ever bring. And in that sense, there's also freedom to be found in the letter where people are motivated to obedience by their love of Christ. When we break after I finish here, you're going to break into groups and we'll have discussion leaders after I pray, but we'll stand up after I pray. But the question, I only have one for you guys to ponder and that's what would you like to get out of this study? What's your hope to get out of this study of Philippians? I pray that it may be or God may use this study to turn all of us to Christ so that we like Paul would have everything in our life modified by our love for the Lord Jesus Rest.