Preached March 4, 2012
from
Philippians 1:1-6
Theme: The basis for prevailing joy is the confidence that the salvation God began in us in Christ will also be fully completed by Him.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
This morning, we begin a study of one of the most joyful books of the Bible. In fact, I would suggest to you that one of the main reasons the Holy Spirit has inspired and preserved it for us is to show us what genuine, abiding, victorious Christian joy looks like in action—and how such joy can be ours in daily experience.
Please join me in opening your Bible to the little New Testament letter of Paul to the Philippians. And let’s get right into it by reading the first eleven verses. As I read, just listen to the confident joy that the apostle Paul expresses in it.
He begins;
Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace. For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.
And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:1-11).
* * * * * * * * * *
Now; I said that this was a letter written by Paul. But did you notice that we’re to understand it to be from two men—Paul and his ministry partner Timothy? Obviously, the great apostle Paul was the one—humanly speaking—who was behind this letter. And as an apostle, we would naturally consider to be the most outstanding of the two. But Paul didn’t present himself as superior to Timothy. Instead, he presented himself and Timothy, both together, in the same humble standing—as “bondservants” or “slaves” of Jesus Christ.
And did you also notice that it was a letter written to a church? You can tell that it was a well-organized and established church because Paul addressed it not just to “all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi”, but also to “the bishops and deacons” who were associated with them. They all together were recipients first of God’s grace; and then, because of God’s grace, they were also recipients of “peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 2). They were believers who were growing in spiritual maturity, because Paul said that he prayed they would grow “more”. And they were committed with him to getting the message of salvation out to others, because Paul thanked God for their fellowship with him in the gospel “from the first day until now”. This was a truly wonderful community of believers!
What’s more, this letter was written to a church in a very important city. It was in the ancient city of Philippi—which was named after its founder, the father of Alexander the Great, Philip of Macedon. Sometime before Paul’s day, this ancient city had received the great honor of being declared ‘a Roman colony’. Everyone who lived in Philippi walked its streets with a sense of pride; because even though they lived in far-away Macedonia, they were considered by the Roman Empire to be just as much citizens of Rome as if they had actually walked the streets of Rome itself.
But personally, I think the greatest honor that this city ever had was that the apostle Paul came one day and preached the gospel in it. The story of how that happened is told to us in Acts 16. Paul and his missionary partner Silas had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to go into the regions of Asia. They tried to go this way or that in their missionary journeys; but the Spirit seemed to prohibit them. Then one night, in a dream, Paul saw a vision of a man in Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ““Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Paul concluded that God wasn’t calling them to go to the East after all, but to the West instead! So; they immediately got in a boat and sailed across the sea to Macedonia. And the first city that they went to in order to begin ministering the gospel in the regions of Macedonia was Philippi.
A lot of things began to happen once they arrived. First, they met up with a group of women who had gathered by a riverside on the Sabbath for prayer. It was then that Paul and Silas shared the gospel with a woman named Lydia; whose heart the Lord opened to heed the things that were spoken to her. She was a very successful business woman; and she opened up her home to Paul and Silas as a base of operations, and became a great support to their ministry.
They also met up with some trouble, though. Luke—who wrote the book of Acts—was with them at the time; and in verses 16-19, he wrote,
Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days (vv. 16-18a).
This greatly annoyed Paul. It wasn’t appropriate that a demon-possessed woman should advertise preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ like this. They didn’t want the message they preached to be—in any way—associated with the devils’ work, nor did they want the people of Philippi to think that the gospel they preached was somehow the babblings of a fortune-teller. So Paul turned and said to the spirit that was in her, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” The spirit immediately came out; and we can safely assume that this slave-girl felt herself delivered from demonic influences, and believed on the Lord Jesus.
But her masters saw that the profits they made from her were gone; so they threw Paul and Silas in jail. And it’s then that something happened that I suspect a lot of the believers in Philippi would have remembered—and that would have also had an important influence on how they received his letter. After having been treated very roughly, beaten with rods, and locked securely in a prison cell with their feet in painful bonds—not knowing what may await them the next day—Paul and Silas did something at midnight that caught the attention of every other prisoner in the jail. They were, of all things, joyfully singing hymns! Even in one of the most trying circumstances we could imagine, they worshiped their Lord with joy. The man in charge of the prison, no doubt, would have been used to hearing every kind of moaning and weeping and cursing come from his prison cells. But after hearing hymns of praise being sung at midnight, even he would have been amazed at these two very strange prisoners!
Then the Bible tells us;
Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul called with a loud voice, saying, “Do yourself no harm, for we are all here.”
Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized. Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them; and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household (Acts 17:26-34).
* * * * * * * * * *
Now; I feel pretty sure that all the believers in Philippi would have been very familiar with these events—and would have remembered fondly the adventure of how Paul first brought the gospel to them. And by the time he had written the letter to them that we’re reading from this morning, he was in prison for preaching the gospel once again—this time somewhere in Rome. He eludes to this in the introduction of his letter. In verse 7, he told them, “I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace.” And in 4:22, he wrote, “All the saints greet you, but especially those who are of Caesar’s household.”
Paul’s imprisonment in Rome must have been a very trying circumstance. He wasn’t certain whether he would be set free to leave the prison, or be called forth out of his cell at any moment to be executed. He hoped he might be set free—and even seems to have thought it very likely that he would be. But he wrote in 1:20 that he trusted that Christ would be magnified in his body “whether by life of by death”. His earthly future was very uncertain.
What’s more, there was also his deep concern for his brothers and sisters in Philippi to whom he was unable to minister personally. While he was absent from them, he wanted them to carefully seek out and follow the right examples of godly Christian living, and not be deceived by anyone; “For”, he wrote in 3:18, “many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ . . .” Think of that! As he wrote this letter, he wept—being burdened for those who were his genuine brothers and sisters in Christ, and saddened by those who were only pretending to be!
And even in Rome itself where he was imprisoned—as if to add insult to injury, and to make his time in prison an even greater trial to him—there were those who were preaching the gospel out of envy and strife toward him; preaching Christ, as he wrote in 1:16, “not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my chains . . .”
But in spite of all these hardships, this is a letter that is filled with joy. Did you know that, if you count out the number of times the noun “joy” or the verb “rejoice” appear, you’ll find it totals to sixteen times in just four chapters? I believe the key word of instruction to us in this little book is found in 4:4; “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” And the secret to Paul’s ability to do so—even in a dark prison cell during very trying times—is found in 4:13; “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Now, dear brothers and sisters in Christ; this little New Testament book offers something wonderful to us that we desperately need—joy! I agree with what a great preacher from the past once suggested; that a joyless Christian is a contradiction in terms . . . as well as a very bad advertisement for the gospel.1 That’s not to say that the trials in life that we face aren’t really hard, or that we should pretend that we didn’t feel the pain of them. Rather, it’s to say that we have a constant, perpetual, supernatural resource of joy through Jesus Christ that—if we will avail ourselves to it—will sustain us in the midst of those trials. And when we believe as we should and are supported by this joy from the Lord, it shows the rest of the world that Jesus Christ is real—and that He really is at work in the lives of those who love Him and trust in Him.
Paul was a great example of this joy to us. I like to refer to what he had as ‘jail-house joy’—a prevailing joy in Jesus Christ that could overcomes even the dreadful circumstance of a dark, cold prison cell. I believe that that’s the very joy that is being exemplified to us in the beginning of this letter—and that it’s the main theme in every page of it.
But I ask this morning that we narrow our focus specifically to verse six; because it’s there that I believe Paul helps us to see what we might call ‘the theological basis’ of his ‘jail-house joy’.
If you’ll look carefully, you’ll see that Paul was able to have such a victorious joy while in prison—and to pray joyfully for the dear brothers and sisters that he was separated from, and to expect fully that they will grow and progress in the faith; and to even invite them to participate with him in this joy through the ministry of the very gospel that has put him in prison—because of his confidence in something. He says, “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing . . .” (vv. 3-6a; emph. added).
That word “confident”, in the original language, is in what is called ‘the perfect tense’ of the verb—meaning that it refers to a completed action. Paul wasn’t simply saying that he merely had a strong feeling that something might be true, and that he was growing to be more confident about it as he went along. Rather, he was saying that he had already become perfectly, completely, unshakably persuaded that it was absolutely so. There was, for him, no doubt whatsoever about the matter. And what was it that he was so perfectly and completely confident about? What was he so unshakably persuaded was true? It was this: “that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (v. 6b).
And that, dear brothers and sisters, is what I propose to you is the great secret to Paul’s ‘jail-house joy’—his victorious, prevailing joy in the midst of even one of the most trying circumstances we could imagine. He didn’t have his eyes fixed on the ever-changing circumstances of this world as the source and support of his joy. That, of course, is what a lot of the people of this world look to for their joy—the circumstances of life. Even some of us who are professing Christians have the bad habit of doing that. Rather, Paul kept his eyes fixed on the unchanging fact that the salvation that God had begun for him and for his brothers and sisters would—with absolute certainly—be brought by God Himself to a full and glorious completion; and that no circumstance in this world would ever be able to prevent it.
I believe it’s that very “confidence” that God intends for this letter to build up in you and me, dear brothers and sisters in Christ—and along with it, the unshakable joy that Paul himself experienced and exemplified even in a prison cell.
* * * * * * * * * *
Let’s look at verse six a little more closely. Paul, first, affirms that God had begun a good work in his brothers and sisters in Christ. What was this “good work”? It was the work of their salvation—brought about by the preaching of the gospel.
I’m sure that, when Paul wrote those words to the Philippian Christians, he was thinking back to the time when he first brought the gospel to them. That gospel had come to them in the midst of the turmoil and conflict that they had seen Paul experience. But they heard about the wonderful Lord Jesus that Paul preached, and they believed on Him. This was a work of God’s grace on their behalf. Of that dear woman Lydia—the very first one in their midst to have believed—it was said, “The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul” (Acts 16:14). And what was said of Lydia could also have been said of every one of the saints in the church in Philippi. It was a work that God Himself had begun in them.
And having been begun by Him, it was a work that God was progressing along. Paul himself had been a recipient of God’s grace; and it was progressing along in him. He told his Philippian brethren in 3:3:7-14;
But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (3:7-14).
The absolute certainty of the prospect of this ‘prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus’ was Paul’s prevailing source of joy. He wanted his brethren to make progress in it too—and to experience prevailing joy while doing so. He told them;
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me (2:12-18).
So, you see; a good work had already been begun in them. They were to make progress in it; but even though they were involved in the work, it was ultimately a work of God—who Himself began it in them.
And the glorious thing is that He who began this work in them would Himself also complete it. As Paul wrote, “. . . He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” There would be very little joy to be found in a work that God began but that we must complete. If that were the case, it would be a work that would be sure to fail. But in spite of our weaknesses and failings, it will be completed! God Himself will make sure of it!
Now; the completion date for this work is, as Paul says, “the day of Jesus Christ”? What is that “day”? In verse 10, Paul speaks of it as the day that all of our progress in the Christian life is moving toward; because he says that he prays for his fellow believers that they may be “sincere and without offense till the day of Christ . . .” In 2:16, he speaks of it as the day to which all of his labors for his brothers and sisters in Christ point; because he urges them to hold fast to the word of life, “so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.” It’s the day that the Lord Jesus Himself is looking forward to with great eagerness and joy—the day when He returns to this earth in power and great glory with all the spirits of His redeemed saints, raises our bodies in glory like His own, and unites us to Himself forever. It’s the day on which God Himself will fully complete the good work He began in us.
And dear brothers and sisters; it’s that day—and our certainty of it—that is to be the theological basis of our day-to-day experience of prevailing joy right now. And when it is, then we have a joy that absolutely transcends even the most difficult circumstances of life. In Romans 8:18-25, Paul put it this way;
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance (Romans 8:18-25).
* * * * * * * * * *
So; the basis for prevailing joy is our the confidence that the salvation God began in us in Christ will be fully completed by Him. But dear brothers and sisters; this confidence—and the joy that it produces—doesn’t come easy. It’s something that we have to work at developing. It’s something that requires that we constantly repent of our unbiblical ways of thinking. It’s something that requires that we continually release control of our lives over to God and allow Him to make of it what He wishes. It’s a confidence that will only grow sure and certain in us as we fight hard to hold on to the things that God has promised in His word—especially during times of deep trial.
But praise God!—we have a whole book of the New Testament that shows us how to do just that! And we have a great example to follow in our dear elder brother Paul who keeps telling us, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” And most of all, we have the promise of the constant help of a wonderful Savior; by whom we too can say, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
1D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Cause and Its Cure (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), p. 11.