Philippians Week 1

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Intro

This week we are starting a 4 week study on the book of Philippians.

Does anybody know who wrote the book of Phillipians? Paul

One of the things that Paul deals with regularly is unity. In the same way it took work to make sure that you had a unified group for the game that we just played we also have to work to make sure that we are unified as believers.

Theme

We can also see early on what Paul wants the theme of the book of Philippians to be, and we find it in

Philippians 1:9–10 NIV

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,

So we know from Pauls own words that He is writing this book so that we may be withstand the world trying to pull us away from Christ and that we could be found blameless.

What does it mean to be found blameless in todays culture?

So that is one of the themes of the book is to try to help us to live a blameless life, and we will look through the 4 chapters to find how Paul suggests that we do that.

Believe in God

The first way that we can see how to live a blameless life is to trust in God.

Philippians 1:6 NIV

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.

Paul is telling the Philippian church that He knows that God is going to complete the work that they are doing. The work that Paul is referring to is the life changing work of the Gospel.

Paul is telling them that the Gospel will continue to transform themselves, and others until Jesus comes back.

So the first way that we have to do to live a blameless life is to believe in God.

Trust in God

The next thing that I want to point out is that in order to live a blameless life we have to actually put our trust in God.

Philippians 1:12–14 NIV

Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.

While Paul was writing the book of Philippians he was actually imprisoned for bringing the Gospel message to them. So we have to trust that God actually has the best plans for our lives, even when it may seem like everything is going wrong.

We also have to remember that God knows what our future holds, and the Bible is full of stories of people who have been put in situations that we could not even imagine for the sake of the Gospel.

Application

So what does this mean for us?

Well first for you to live a life that is blameless it is going to require transformation of the Holy Spirit. Romans tells us that our good deeds are like filthy rags, or surgical sponges.

So the only way to actually be blameless is to fully put our hope and trust in Jesus and to take His righteousness, because we can never be blameless on our own.

now you may think Todd thats really depressing how can we meet that goal of perfection and being perfectly blameless. Heres the thing we arent expected to be perfect, we are expected to trade our imperfection for Jesus’ perfection, and his blamelessness will be given to us.

Secondly, we have to understand that no matter what we are going through that we need to trust in God’s plan. You may say but Todd you dont know what Im going through, and you may be right. But I can tell you I know that through all the things Ive been through and I know that Jesus has never left me behind, and He has always put people in my path to help me keep going.

The things you go through today God will use tomorrow.