Philippians 1 (Part 1) :1-2 • Intro and Greeting

today we start a brand new study in Philippians and I'm always kind of excited about starting a new book of the Bible and and it's just kind of fun and and for those of you that underline in your Bible if you as you kind of page through the the book of Philippians you'll notice that you probably I'm guessing you probably have a lot of things underlined in this book just because there's so many amazing statements so many amazing promises that are given in the book of Philippians and and it's just really really wonderful so we're gonna read just the first two verses and then we're gonna pray and see what the Lord will bring out of these for us so read along with me or follow along rather as I read beginning in verse 1 it says Paul and Timothy servants of Jesus or Christ Jesus to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ thank you Father for your word thank you for the blessing of giving us your word and also preserving it Lord the it is amazing to see how the Scriptures have been preserved these many years and we see Lord God your sovereign protection over it now we pray for the ministry of your Holy Spirit to move in amidst the the words that are spoken here today opening hearts opening minds and helping us father God to understand the things that we hear because we know Lord that apart from the Spirit we cannot apprehend the things of the Spirit for they are spiritually discerned Lord give us wisdom and insight open our eyes open our hearts that we would not just be hearers of the word but they would we would go on to be doers of the word as well lead us and guide us as we are to be led you are the teacher we are the students you are the counselor may we listen to your voice in Jesus precious name Amen you know as we get ready to get it to dig into Philippians we learn actually a little bit about this church and how it came to be by reading through the book of Acts we're not going to do that this morning but I'm gonna call your attention to some of the things that you probably remember reading about in Acts when you get to Acts chapter 16 you find that Paul and his companions are kind of wandering a little bit because they're not really sure what direction to go they started to move up into Asia and the Lord blocked their way and said no don't don't go that way not yet and so they turned toward both inia and they started to head that direction and once again the Lord blocked their path and so they decided well you know let's just go on down to Troas which was right on the shore and and let's just hang out and see what the Lord has for us so they made their way to Troas and while they were there Paul had a vision from the Lord of a man located in Macedonia which was across the Aegean Sea from where they were and that man was saying come to us come over here and he was pleading with them to come so Paul got up the next morning and he told the other men about this vision that he'd received and they talked and I assume they prayed about it and they determined that it was in fact from the Lord and so they made the decision to go over to Philip I which marks the very first move of the gospel into Europe now let me show you in case you're maybe a little unsure of some of these things geographically I like maps help some time let me call your attention to the lower right hand corner just to give you a sense of where we are Jerusalem is down there if you go straight north up into Syria you'll find that you're now in Antioch which was the center really of the early church in Paul's day and that was the church that sent Paul and his companions out on their missionary journeys then you move up into Asia Minor modern-day turkey you find another you find Derby Lystra Iconium another Antioch and and you can see that's the area where Paul was pushing West but he was being blocked as we said from going into those areas and so they went to Troas which is where you can see there on the edge of Asia Minor and that's where the Lord gave him the the vision to go across the Aegean Sea over to Philippi and once they arrived there they went to just to a Riverside on a particular Sabbath date so they could talk to people and no doubt pray and they met a woman you'll remember by the name of Lydia and Lydia was a woman of some means she was a merchant and she responded to the gospel and she and her whole household were told were baptized and opened their heart to the Lord and and she also invited Paul and his companions to come and stay in her home which tells us you know she probably was a woman of some means and she took care of them while they were there you may also remember that Paul got into hot water while he was in Philippi and I got into hot water everywhere he went ultimately but there was a particular situation where a young slave girl who was invested with a demonic spirit by which she told fortunes and earned money for her masters would follow Paul and his companions around day after day after day this little girl just followed Paul and she would shout whenever he'd get into a new area she just starts shouting and she'd say these men are servants of the Most High God and they're here to show you the way of salvation now there was nothing fundamentally wrong about what she was saying and since in the sense of it being an error it was actually true but God doesn't need the enemy to Herald his coming and so finally Paul was so overwhelmed with just compassion for this little girl he turned and spoke directly to the Spirit and he commanded that spirit to come out of her and it did she was free from that point on but her masters lost their ability to now earn wealth through her fortune-telling and they were quite angry about it so they hauled Paul before the magistrates and began to make all kinds of complaints about him being a troublemaker eventually the crowd got involved gathered in on this whole thing and and of course crowds don't need to know what's going on to be weird and they eventually ended up arresting Paul and throwing him in jail there in Philippi and you remember the rest of the story it wasn't long before he and Silas had to make their way out of that area but even though they may not have been in Phillip high for very long it was long enough for the Lord to start a new fellowship in that area and it began to grow and so now Paul is writing a letter to the believers in Philippi to encourage them in the Lord and even though we only read two verses of this the beginning of this letter you probably noticed in verse one alone that the Apostle Paul gives four separate titles and and and which relate to the body of Christ and all I'll put them on the screen for you here they are servants Saints overseers and deacons and I just thought it would be important for us to remind ourselves about what these mean because they are frankly titles that we hear throughout the New Testament but oftentimes don't take the time to really think about them and talk about what they mean the first title that we see is servant again if you look with me in verse 1 Paul says Paul and Timothy starting letters the way they started them back in those days with the writer of the letter and he calls themselves servants of Christ Jesus now if you have a new American Standard Bible or a New King James on your lap today you have a different word and yours is bond servant which is actually a better translation because that's what this says in the Greek it's doulos and it can be translated servant or slave but it is better translated bond servant in Roman times of bond servant or a slave could refer to anyone who was in some kind of servitude however in the in the in the Hebrew understanding of this word there was it took on a special meaning because in the Mosaic law God created a mechanism or a means if you will for a servant to become a lifelong servant of their master if they so chose because you see many people who served in positions of slavery don't think of it as slavery that like we had here in the United States slavery back then was for other reasons often not always but often and it was often because of somebody got into debt or whatever and they were encumbered to their master to pay off the debt well sometimes they get to the end of that period where the debt had been paid off but they want to continue serving this individual because he's a good master they're well taken care of and God wanted to give them an option to stay where they were now this is actually told us in the book of Exodus let me show you on the screen it goes like this if the servant declares I love my master and do not want to go free then his master must take him before the judges he shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl then he will be this is important his servant for life and so in the Hebrew understanding of this term a bond servant is a servant for life who has willingly made that decision or that choice so you see in the New Testament times this term began to take on a life of its own for the believers in Jesus Christ since they knew that they like a slave had been purchased you recall that let me show you this again on the screen from first Corinthians chapter 6 Paul writes you he's talking to all believers here you are not your own for you were bought with a price now the price by which we've been purchased is the blood of Jesus Christ so just like a slave we too have been purchased but in the understanding of what a bondservant is we give our lives freely and willingly to our master we say he's a good master our Lord is a wonderful master and we want to for our entire lives serve Him and be his lifelong devotion no here's the here's the paradox to this whole thing Jesus already owns the title deed to your life because when you came to him and you bowed the knee to him his blood purchased you from death to life from darkness to light and as we saw in that passage that we put up on the screen from Corinthians you you are not your own you've been bought with a price so he already owns you he already has that right to your life and yet interestingly enough he waits for you and for me to give our lives willingly to him in such a way as to say I am yours for life my lifelong devotion is to you what's interesting about that is that he doesn't demand that that that we live our lives every single day of our lives as if those lives belonged to him you know I if we could we could have some of you guys stand up and give all kinds of testimonies about coming to the Lord but how many times since that time have you taken your life back into your own hands then what you want it to do gone where you want it to go lived your life as if your life belonged to you we've all done it we all do it the fact of the matter is our lives do not belong to they belong to him he is the master whether we you know like it or not eventually however we come to terms in our lives with the fact that when I am master of my life when I am Lord and when I'm calling the shots things don't go very well and I usually get myself into all kinds of trouble and and and and it's just a big fat drag and so at those times when that realization hits you know we come to him and we say you know Lord I I give you my life I I see that I've been living my life as if I'm my own master in charge of my own destiny but I realize that's not the case and I offer my life to you to be you know Lord of my life and he's very gracious and he never comes to you and I and says well fact of the matter is I've owned you all along he doesn't do that he doesn't make us feel guilty or ridiculous or stupid he receives us and he says you know come to me my child I love you and he puts his arms around us and invites us to begin to walk in the reality of what it means to make him Lord so it's it's kind of crazy but you know it's it's it's a wonderful term do loss in the Greek bonds servant we are bond servants I hope that we are bond servants technically speaking if you are in Christ today as I said he already bought you paid for you but he waits for you and I to take on that name doulas I am yours for life the next title that Paul uses here also in verse 1 he says in his letter to all the Saints in Christ Jesus so he writes this letter to the Saints this is an interesting word it has so many definitions it's a football team the world considers the definition of Saint to be an exceptionally good person I don't know that they ever necessarily refer to people as Saints but often people in the world will a he ain't no saint or I ain't no saint or something like that we are very negative about pointing out who isn't a saint now if you have a Roman Catholic background you were taught that a saint is someone chosen by the church according to their qualifying criteria and if and and one of those criterias they got to be dead but which is a little bit of a bummer but anyway so the Roman Catholic Church has its own understanding of who Saints are the biblical definition of the saint is a believer it's it's a Christian it's somebody who has bowed the need of Jesus and accepted and received his work on the cross personally for them if you've done that you are a saint and the word in the greek is hag eos and it means holy one now before you object and you say well I'm a Christian but I ain't a holy one just to understand this when we talk about hag EOS or holy one we're talking about your standing in Christ it can refer to a person's life but in this case we're talking about your standing and it means that you are holy which is to say you have been set apart so this is another term that has to do with belonging just like Doulos a holy one is one who has been set apart unto God in other words set apart for God your life as a Christian has been set apart and now is his you are his you are a Hagios a holy one a saint alright again it's not speaking of the kind of life you may or may not live it's your position in Christ so your sainthood if you will is by virtue of what Jesus Christ did on the cross for you dying for your sins you know it's kind of interesting once in a while on our YouTube channel and I'll get some messages or comments or even emails that come to me from people and they will use the the name Saint when referring to some of the writers of the New Testament they'll say well I was reading in Saint Matthew you know or I was reading the letters of st. Paul you know in in in st. Paul's letter to the Galatians or something like that and it's a little bit odd for me to hear that because I don't really come from that vibe you know where we applied that word st. necessarily specifically you know to the biblical authors but I can tell you this much if those apostles and authors today heard us using the word st. as an exclusive term for them they would object to it because they knew and understood it was a term for everyone in the body of Christ it is not something that sets you out as special among Christians it's what sets you out as special among human beings all believers are Saints so if you want to call me Saint Paul you can but then I get to call you Saint whoever you are too you see so it's just kind of one of those things all right next Paul includes in his list of recipients here you'll notice the overseers so not just the Saints but he specifically lines out the overseers once again if you have a King James Bible or a New King James that you're reading from you have a different word your word isn't overseers it's bishops which is a very unfortunate translation frankly because that's not what the word means it doesn't mean Bishop Bishop was put in there for traditional reasons and the Bible should not be translated traditionally in my estimation it should be translated according to what the words mean and what the word means and the Greek word is a Pisgah pass it means overseer and it guess what it means someone who oversees this is not rocket science here okay it's very simple actually an overseer is one who oversees it is a leadership position in the body of Christ and it appears to be synonymous with an elder and a pastor and I'll show you that in just a moment in a verse but let me first of all prime you a little bit by telling you that the word that is translated pastor in the New Testament is also translated shepherd so they mean exactly the same thing and it could speak of a man who is overseeing a flock of animals in which case we would translate it Shepherd or you could it might be about a man who oversees a flock of people in which case we would translate it pastor but Shepherd is fine there too frankly but I want to show you how Peter uses these terms interchangeably let me show you this from first Peter chapter 5 and I even unlined underline and kind of highlighted the key words he writes to the elders among you I appeal as a fellow elder and so you have the first of all this term elder he says be Shepherds which means be pastors of God's flock that is under your care serving as overseers not because you must but because you are willing as God wants you to be and so on and so forth so isn't it interesting that that Peter refers to himself first of all as an elder and by the way that term was borrowed from the Old Testament when Moses was coming through the wilderness with this huge nation of Israel and trying to lead them all by himself the Lord brought people alongside him to help him carry the burden of leadership and those men were referred to as elders but the word elder doesn't tell you what they do in fact it doesn't really tell you anything much about them except that their elder elderly maybe even because the word literally means older than so we need other words to help us to understand so he says as an elder I appealed to the fellow elders you know to Shepherd or pastor God's flock that is under your care serving as overseers serving as the episkopos so you can see that these words are used interchangeably alright so here's the thing I want you remember it was just a few weeks back when we were in Ephesians chapter 4 when Paul talked about the leadership gifts given to the body of Christ and I want to show you that we'll just remember from Ephesians chapter 4 he wrote to us and said it was Jesus who gave some to be apostles to be prophets some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers or the pastor teacher which is really the same position now you say well why didn't he bring up elders and overseers in that passage well because they're the same thing as the pastor it's the same it's the same ministry gift right fundamentally it's the same thing and so we see that this is how God chose to lead the body of Christ and we see in the New Testament that many of the churches had multiple overseers in the fellowship we have kind of a modernized version of that today in the church where we still have elders and overseers who oversee the flock we we we talk about a head pastor or a senior pastor which is a position that I hold here at Calvary Chapel you know which is kind of the teaching pastor and the lead pastor if you will with others pastor slash overseers coming alongside to kind of carry the load what's interesting about leadership in the New Testament church is that there's really no single passage where God says do it just like this what he does and I think this is pretty wise of him surprise is he essentially lines out the leadership gifts in the body of Christ he defines them for us and then he kind of just leaves us to set up a structure that works and believe me in the 2,000 years of church history we've come up with just about every possible combination to try to make it work and I'll be honest with you sometimes it doesn't a lot of churches have entered into leadership structures that I think are that well they just don't work we've tried to pattern leadership structures after democracy that doesn't work we've tried to do other sorts of things and and and you know it results in sometimes just really nasty kind of stuff but essentially what God has given us is just the definition of these leadership gifts and he has given us a kind of freedom you know to work out how it works best you know for us but whatever structure we adopt it always works best when we remember there's only one head of the church and that is Jesus Christ and that is so important he has appointed elders / overseers / pastors to lead in the body of Christ but they're just men they're just men and although they may be in a position of leadership they are sinners saved by grace just like everybody else in the body of Christ and you know which is one of the reasons why God gave us guidelines for choosing those individuals those guidelines are lined out for us in the books or the letters written to Timothy and Titus 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus that's why we call those letters the pastoral epistles because they give information and understanding to us about how these individuals ought to be raised up and and and so forth so once again leaders in the church given by God but sinners saved by grace just like everyone else the last title that is given here in Paul's letter in this opening is deacons and he says to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and then this last one and deacons and the word Deacon is literally translated servant but it means to minister or to minister by serving check this out I think this is fascinating one of the variations of this word in the Greek diet kaneto literally which we translate Deacon literally means through the dirt I decided to let that sink in for a minute it's kind of an interesting literally in the Greek it means through the dirt and it just refers to an attendant or a waiter or I don't know a landscaper or something like that but somebody who is serving in some capacity and and and it is it's a person who is doing it's not a leadership gifting necessarily it is a doer it's a functional servant now I know there are some churches who refer to Deacons in in a leadership role much like an elder or an overseer or something like that and that's you know their prerogative I suppose to do that but it is not a biblically accurate description of the title Deacon which simply means one who serves I will say this there are times when even a deacon is given a responsibility that is so vitally important that they need to be entrusted with things of the church and therefore they need to be trustworthy and so there are even guidelines for deacons that are given us in the Word of God just like elders so they do need to be individuals who are mature tested and and and and filled with the spirit finally verse 2 look with me there Paul gives his character characteristic blessing he says grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and one of the significant things about this we talk about this every time we start really a new epistle because this is really the way Paul starts his letters is that grace and peace is what he says to them and he always says it in that order it's always first grace and then peace and the reason he puts them in that order is because until you understand and walk in the grace of God you don't have the peace of God and it begins when we are coming to him and coming to faith in Him and then it continues throughout our life as believers when you as an individual come to God and you want to be accepted by him you want to be saved and forgiven of your sins well there's really two ways to approach that there's the biblical way which is to trust in the finished work of Jesus on the cross or there's the unbiblical way which is to try to be a good person I'm just gonna try to be a good person as best I can I'm gonna live a good life I'm gonna I'm good I got a do you know or not do you know and if I can impress God with all the good things that I do then he'll accept me and and he'll love me there's only one problem with that well I mean there's tons of problems with that but one of the major problems with that is that you never know for sure if you've measured up you never know have I okay I've tried to be good but have I been good enough see there's no peace there's no peace along that line you're never gonna be at peace because you're never gonna know for sure now when you understand the grace of God which is favor and acceptance that God gives you apart from what you merit simply because he's good and he wants to bestow it upon you right then you begin to understand hmm God's love and acceptance in my life is not predicated upon what I do rather it is predicated upon who he is now I have peace ah I have peace with God there's peace in my heart because I know that I can get off that performance track of trying to impress God with the kind of life that I'm living now please understand I'm not suggesting that God doesn't care how we live when you and I are called holy ones he does want that to translate into the lives we live he wants us to live holy lives but that's not what's going to impress God and that is not it what is not what is going to cause him to accept you that is already done that is finished through the work of the Cross which you have accepted and embraced Jesus Christ okay so do you understand that grace brings us to a place of peace when we understand and walk in God's grace we understand and begin to embrace peace and it happens throughout our entire Christian life and you know a person can come to know that it is only through the cross that they are saved and yet down the line they can slowly begin to take on this attitude of I have to be a good Christian and if I don't this might happen or in fact you know what happened last week to me they're thinking maybe that was because I didn't live quite the way I should and those ideas and thoughts seep into our minds over time and they begin to take hold of our hearts and pretty soon we're just we're walking on this treadmill of performance-based Christian living and it just completely obliterates our peace our peace with God is lost so I want to encourage you if your peace with God is something that you've noticed is missing lately perhaps there needs to be an adjustment in your heart and mind related to understanding God's grace and knowing by faith that God has accepted you and embraced you and loves you as the apple of his eye according to His grace which is unmerited unearned it is given freely right and it's such an important thing for us to lay hold of striving to be good enough we'll never get you accepted to God it's only by God's grace you

Channel: Calvary Chapel Ontario

Views: 28,116

Rating: 4.8417583 out of 5

Keywords: Bible, Bible teaching, Thru-the-Bible, verse by verse, Calvary Chapel, Bible study, Christianity, New Testament, Old Testament

Id: t9DATJx-EuU

Length: 33min 9sec (1989 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018