James 2:1-8

Good morning church. If you have your Bible with you this morning, I invite you to join me in Philippians chapter 1.

As I announced to you last Sunday morning, today we are beginning a new series of lessons on the book of Philippians. We are going to spend around eight weeks looking at this book together, and I am excited about this because this is my second time to preach through the book of Philippians. The first time I did so was down in Slaton, about 10 years ago now, although I promise, all of these lessons will be new and fresh, and I will not simply be recycling sermons from a decade ago. I have found that sermons are a lot like left over food. It is really good when the food is freshly cooked, and it might be ok to serve some of the leftover to a guest, but nobody really wants leftover whenever you can have something freshly prepared. So I will not be recycling sermons from my first time preaching through this book. My hope is that as we dive into this book together, we will find something that is fresh and relevant to our particular moment.

As I mentioned to those of you who were here last week, Philippians is a book that is often associated with the idea of joy. That is because the word “joy” or “rejoice” is used multiple different times throughout the book. However, even though joy is a recurrent theme throughout the letter, that does not mean that this church was just a little oasis of happiness. As a matter of fact, it is because there were things that were troubling the church that Paul felt the need to write about the joy of their life in Christ.

B. Four Things Troubling the Church at Philippi

What was it that was troubling the church in Philippi? There are four things that the letter makes apparent. The first is their concerns for Paul who is locked up in a Roman prison. Paul was the founder of their church and he had nurtured it into life. The thought of losing Paul was a devastating thought to them, and they were not sure how to carry on in his absence.

Secondly, the same thing that was happening in other of Paul’s churches was also happening in Philippi. There were Jewish people who were trying to convince the church that in order to be genuine children of God, they not only had to obey Christ, but they had to obey the old law. This was a problem almost everywhere Paul went, and even in a little place like Philippi it becomes a problem again.

Third, the church was suffering because of its witness to Christ. Everywhere the gospel went, it faced opposition of all different kinds. It was no different in Philippi, and these new believers in Christ were finding that the environment of the Roman world around them was not friendly to their faith.

And last, but not least, there is inner strife in the church. In chapter 4 and verse 2, Paul speaks of two sisters who were both close to the apostle Paul and had been very helpful to him, but for whatever reason have come to be at odds with one another. This happens sometimes in church; it can happen to either men or women…sometimes we just get crosswise with each other. That is the reality of life in a fallen world and a church that is filled with sinful people.

So, when you put all these things together, you see that while joy is a prominent theme in the letter, it is not all peace and good times in the church at Philippi. There are real challenges, as there are in every church that has ever existed. So Paul, as he sits in his prison in Rome, writes to the Philippians to try to address the issues that have been brought to his attention by his friend Epaphroditus.

C. Today’s Subject: Thanksgiving and Prayer

This morning, as we open up our study in Philippians, we are going to look briefly at Paul’s opening thanksgiving and prayer. This is a customary aspect of letter writing in the ancient world, and it is certainly customary for most of Paul’s letters. Despite the troubles facing the Philippians church, Paul has great love and affection for them as he remembers them in his prayers. But what is it that Paul prays for them? That is what we will discover here this morning.

So, if you Bible is open now to Philippians let’s begin by reading the opening section of the letter. We’ll begin at verse one and read down through verse 11. Join me if you will.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,

To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons[a]:

2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Let’s sing together:

All my heart to Him I give,

Ever to Him I’ll cling,

In his blessed presence live,

Every His praises sing.

Love so mighty and so true

Merits my soul’s best songs;

Faithful, loving service, too

To Him belongs.

Love lifted me! Love lifted me!

When nothing else could help,

Love lifted me. Love lifted me! Love lifted me!

When nothing else could help,

Love lifted me.

II. Losing Mentors

Here in a couple of weeks, Sunset will be holding its annual Bible conference and lectureship. I think C. J. and Alaina are planning on going down there for that. I usually go, but this year I decided not to go. There are a couple of reasons I decided against it. Number one, the friends that I usually go with and meet up with while I am down there are not going this year. But secondly, and this is a little bit strange to say, but since this May I will celebrate 20 years since graduating from Sunset, a lot has changed there. C. J. and Alaina will be able to reunite with many of the men and women who were their professors and mentors while they were there, but now that 20 years have passed for me, there is only one teacher left from those that I studied under whenever I went to school there. The one teacher that is left is the man who I considered as my greatest mentor while I was there, but unfortunately he has a kind of cancer that does not seem curable, so it may very well be that even his time is limited.

It is a little bit strange because I am looking at the prospect of facing the rest of my life and the rest of my ministry without the men who were my most influential mentors. I had two while I was in school that I was especially close to, one at Sunset and one at LCU. The one who was at LCU, who was also an elder in the church I served at in Slaton, died just before I moved here. I remember at the time thinking how much he had been a part of my life for the previous ten years and how strange it would be to live without the ability to call him up or email him anytime I had a question or needed something.

But now that Charles is sick, and his days may be limited at Sunset and indeed in this world, I am looking at the prospect of being without my mentors going forward.

I realize, of course, that this is the way that it has to be. Our mentors are older than us and if the world works in the right order, they will pass before us. But nonetheless, whenever you grow used to their presence and having their guidance ready at hand, it is hard to imagine life without it.

III. Paul’s Thanksgiving and Prayer

While it would not be true to say that this is an exact parallel, the church in Philippi is experiencing something similar to what I have just spoken about. The apostle Paul was the founder of the church; he was the one that brought it into life and nurtured it, but now the church in Philippi is looking at the possibility that they are going to have to go forward without their founder and mentor in the faith. As we noted earlier, Paul is in prison in Rome, and it is not all together clear to him or to them that he is going to survive the experience. Nero is the emperor at the time of this writing, and he is the one who is going to ultimately decided Paul’s fate since Paul had appealed to Caesar for his verdict. So the Philippian church is facing the possibility of their future without the man who means so much to them and has brought them up in the faith. Paul wasn’t there, all the time, of course. But he had been there at their beginning; he had come back through on his journeys; and I have no doubt that he kept a correspondence going with them through his letters. Paul was their teacher and mentor.

A. Paul is Thankful as He Remembers Them

As Paul opens the letter, he is mindful of all of this, and he speaks to them with tender love and affection. He opens this warm letter with both a thanksgiving and a prayer for them. The thanksgiving comes in 3:

3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

Paul thanks God every time he remembers them.

As we open up this letter together, it is worth pausing to remind ourselves of what it is that Paul thinks of when he remembers the Philippians, especially as it pertains to going back to their first days. The story of the birth of the church in Philippi is told in Acts 16 and there are three events that detail how this church began.

You may recall that Paul had no plans to go into Europe at that time; he was busy preaching the gospel in what we would today call Turkey. But Paul had a vision one night of a man from Macedonia (what we would today call Greece), who was beckoning him to come and preach the Gospel in Europe. Paul was obedient to that call and Philippi is the first place where he stopped to preach.

We’ll learn more about Philippi as we study our way through this book, but Philippi was a small place, full of mostly retired Roman soldiers, and there was not a strong enough Jewish presence in Philippi to have a synagogue. There was a group of women who met down by the river to pray, and it was there that Paul converted the first woman in Europe. Her named was Lydia…a Gentile who believed in the Jewish God. Her and her whole family were baptized based on Paul’s teaching of the Gospel.

But the story doesn’t end there. Paul and Silas end up being thrown into prison because they cast a demon out of a slave girl who told fortunes for her master, and a whole riot was stirred up over the event. Paul and Silas were put in jail, but that night a huge earthquake shook the prison, and Paul and Silas’s door was opened up. When the prison guard came in and saw what had happened, he was read to kill himself because he thought his prisoners had escaped. Better to die of suicide than to face the punishment that his Roman overlords would give him. But when Paul shouted out to him that they were still there, even though they could have escaped, the man was humbled and was in awe, and he begged Paul and Silas to tell him what he must do to be saved. That very night, he had his family were baptized.

So when you take the family of this God-fearing Gentile woman; and you take the family of this Roman jailor; and possibly, you take this young girl whom Paul had cast the demon out of; you have the foundation of the church in Philippi. No doubt there are others who have been added, but these people are the foundation. So when Paul says that thanks God when he remembers those who were partners in the gospel from the very beginning, this is who he thinks of. This is who he thanks God for.

B. A Prayer for Love to Abound in Knowledge and Depth of Insight

But not only does Paul give thanks here in the opening of his letter to the Philippians, he also has a prayer for them. His prayer in verse 9 is that their “love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.”

Now, this is a very interesting way of putting things. It would be one thing to say that he desires their love to grow more and more, but why does he qualify it by asking that their love abound in knowledge and depth of insight?

I think what Paul is getting at here is something that is very relevant to our own time period. Love is spoken of very freely today and sometimes even flippantly. Even among those who are not Christians, love, along with its offshoots of kindness, gentleness and mercy is very much advocated for by most people. But in most cases, it is not a love that demands truth to go along with it. It is simply a love that wishes the other well, in whatever way they may think they may find wellness. It makes no judgments; asks no commitments; demands no hard decisions. It is a love that is full of sentimentality, but not truth.

This is the difference between the kind of love that the world values and the kind of love that the Christian obeys. Like the love of the world, the love of the Christian does seek the good of the other person. But unlike the world, the Christian understands that there is more to love than mere sentiment and kindness. Love is founded upon truth and all truth roots back to God.

In the Christian conception, love is costly. In the Christian conception, love is sacrificial. In the Christian conception, love cannot be separated from truth. And so if any Christian wants to deepen and excel in love, not only must they have good sentiment and a general kindness, they must also have an ever deepening knowledge of the truth, and insight into what it means, for God, for them, and for their neighbor.

What Paul prayers here is very similar to what he prays for the Ephesians, and perhaps by reading that it will give us a little better understanding of what he wants for his churches.

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

That is the prayer. We are rooted in love. But this love is to give us the power to grasp the height, width and depth of Christ and his love so that we can be filled with fullness of God himself. It is love that is enriched by knowledge and insight into the truth.

IV. Conclusion: Letting Paul Form Our Prayer

So as we draw this first lesson to a close, perhaps we can take a lesson from the apostle Paul and his opening prayer in this letter and learn a thing or two in regard to our prayer. I realize that when we come together, and maybe this is true in your personal prayers as well, that we are often dominated by our physical realities and especially in regard to our health. This is important, because our health means something to us, and if you have ever lost it for a period of time you know how much you value those prayers during such a time.

So without taking away at all from the urgency of those prayers, lets also be instructed by Paul by his thanksgiving and prayer in the opening of this letter. Paul was in a very difficult circumstance. He did not know whether he would live or die, and neither did they. But his letter is not dominated by this reality. He doesn’t ignore it, but it is not his focus. His focus is on thanking God for the work he had already done in their life and praying that God would give further insight and knowledge so that they could love God and love one another better.

As we enter into this New Year together, if your own prayers do not reflect this reality, let’s make a conscious effort to move in that direction. Without letting down at all our prayers for those among us who are sick, lets also thank God for the way he has worked in this church and its members in the past, but also pray that God would deepen our lives in knowledge of depth of insight.

There is nothing worse than shallow Christians…nothing more damaging to the Christian witness than shallow Christians. Let us pray that God would do whatever it takes to enrich our love with depth and insight.

Let’s pray for that right now.