Paul's Greeting

Philippians

"Paul's Greeting"

By Sean kelly

Last week, we did an introduction. This week, you're probably going to say this feels like another introduction because we're doing the first two verses of the chapter, which are Paul's greeting to the Philippians. And before we jump into that, let's go ahead and pray, and then we'll get started.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for his time. We thank you for Ryan's report and just how you faithfully used him over the summer and how you gave Him the opportunity to learn from some Godly men who are already doing ministry and working hard to serve you. I just pray that it'd be profitable for him in his life.

We thank you for this time that we have in Your Word. Again, we're thankful for the message this morning reminding us to depend on Your resources through times of difficulty, through times of hardship, Lord, that you are always there, you'll never leave us and forsake us, You've given us Your Word to depend upon. And as we study out Your Word this morning, give us wisdom, give us knowledge of who you are, Lord, and what you have done for us and what you want us to do, lord, we do thank you for this time.

Now, in Jesus name, amen. So, Paul's greeting Philippians, one, verses one and two. By the way, if you have Bibles, you'll want to have them handy.

I didn't put every verse in the notes today, so we'll be turning some places in Greek letters, just as an introduction, the author would compose a formal greeting which would not only include the who of the letter, the who it was to, but also who was writing the letter. And I think this isn't a bad system. A lot of times you get something from somebody, like a card or something, you flip to the end of the card to see who this was from.

Although if you have a return postage, sometimes you figure it out from that. I do this all the time, at least once a week. And when they wrote these Greek letters, they would introduce themselves in the beginning.

So right at the beginning, you don't have to page through the letter and find out who wrote this. You can see who it is from. Now, these were hand delivered also by someone who probably had a relationship with the writer.

So they probably would already said, this is a letter from that wasn't a big deal, but I like the system. So in the Epistles, except for Hebrews and First John, we see this formula for writing a letter being used where the author identifies themselves at the beginning of the letter and says, this is the person who's writing the letter. Paul especially formulates the opening of his letters this way.

Now, looking at these two verses, we might be tempted to skip over the greeting to get to the good part. And sometimes I think when we read our Bibles, we maybe unconsciously or unintentionally do. That where we blah, blah, blah, Paul, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, here we go. Now we're getting to the meat of the message here, but this section is full of good theology and truths that we can learn. So that's why we're going to take a week and learn from it.

In addition, all Scripture is profitable. Two timothy 316 17. Anybody have that memorized? It's a good passage.

Do you have it, Ryan? I saw hands go up. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, correction, for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly be quit for every good work along that line.

I don't know if that was word perfect, but that's pretty close. And even Jesus said that one Jot or tittle will not pass away from the word of God. And that's in Matthew 518.

If you don't know what a Jot or a tittle is, a Jot is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It's the yod. And the tittle is identifying mark in English.

What letter is that? Now? What is it? And that would be the tittle. That would be the distinguishing mark that changes from an O to a Q, which makes a huge difference in what the word would be if he had an or a Q in it, especially since O is a vowel in English. So if all Scripture is profitable and even the smallest parts are given by inspiration of God, then certainly a greeting to book can help us learn and grow.

There's going to be some good truth in here that we can study. So that's kind of my introduction. Why are we taking a week on this? Why not get to verse three where Paul really starts getting into things? Well, Paul really starts getting into things in verse one.

God gave us this for a reason. There's a reason why we have this introduction to the book. And it's not just to fill space.

It's to teach us something to help us to learn about Him. So number one, we're going to look at, and we kind of looked at a little bit this last week, but we're going to go a little more in depth. The author, like I said at the beginning of these passages, the author identifies himself.

Would somebody read Philippians one one for us, please? Go ahead, Nathan bond service of Jesus Christ to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and the deacons. And for the next few points, we're going to use verse one here. But the author we see first of all, we see Paul listed.

And if we turn to Philippians three, four through eleven, this is where you need your Bible because I didn't put it in here. We learn a little bit about Paul. I was reading MacArthur's commentary, and he said, this is probably the best description of who Paul is in all the New Testament and it's given by Paul himself.

So he's telling you about himself. But verses four through eleven. Who would like to read this for us? Josiah, go ahead.

Though I also might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so. Circumcise the 8th day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Ensemble, a Hebrew of the Hebrews concerning the Law, a Pharisee concerning zeal, prosecuting the Church during the righteous which is in the Law blameless. But what things were gained to me, these I accounted lost for Christ.

Yet indeed I also count all things lost 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 in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of the suffering, being conformed to his death. If by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead, Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here because hopefully in three or four months we'll be here. I don't know how long it'll take.

Whatever we get here, we'll spend more time detailing this. But you see, Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He had everything going for him.

He was a tribe of Benjamin Circumcised on the 8th day. He was a pharisee. He had zeal.

He was everything that a Hebrew man would want to be. This was Paul. This was the guy who a Jewish boy would look up to and say, that's the guy I want to be.

And he gave that all up for the sake of knowing Christ. He gave that all up so that he could understand who Christ was and what Christ wanted for him. That's who this Paul is.

That's who is writing this letter. Also, we see in here we see Paul and Timothy, which may make you think that two people were writing. We're going to see in a second that I don't think that's true.

But Timothy, if we look at first, Timothy one, two. So if you have your Bibles, just turn there really quick. Oh, wait, I have it in the page.

Yeah, just in the notes I was going to say. That's a really small verse to leave off. So first, Timothy one, two who wants to read that? Go ahead, Rachel.

Timothy a true son of the faith, grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. And from here, this phrase, a true son of the faith. Most people think that this is saying that Timothy's salvation was a result of Paul's ministry, that he's a true son of Paul in the faith that Paul was the one who led him to Christ.

So Timothy being an important friend to Paul, he's one who also Paul wrote two letters to one after this first imprisonment in between time, between this imprisonment and his final imprisonment in Rome. And then the second letter to Timothy happened probably shortly before Paul's execution. Probably one of the last things he wrote was the second letter to Timothy.

So Timothy has a very close place in Paul's heart, someone that Paul felt as a fellow worker, somebody who shared in what Paul was doing. Even when we look at second Timothy where it says, the things you've heard from me commit, thou are faithful men who may be able to train others. Also, it seems like Paul looked at Timothy as the next generation, as we talked about Moses and Joshua this morning.

Paul would be kind of the Moses figure and Joshua would be the Timothy figure. That Paul's passing on what he's doing to Timothy. So very close person to Paul himself.

Paul is the sole author, I think, of this book, though, though Timothy is mentioned alongside him in the greeting. But in verse three, Paul says, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. He starts talking as he's writing.

It's not, we thank God for we thank our God. It's, I think. My God.

So it seems like Paul is the author. That would be my opinion. And Timothy, why is he mentioned that? Well, Timothy is mentioned because I think he's in Rome with Paul at the time.

He's Ministering alongside Paul. He's helping Paul out. He's ministering to Paul even, and he's an important part of Paul's life.

And he's obviously sending a greeting to this church, which he probably knows pretty well also. So Timothy is mentioned for that reason. Paul uses an interesting description of himself in Timothy.

He calls themselves bond servants. When we look at the word bond servants, the Greek is doulos. I don't always give a lot of the original language in here, but sometimes there's good words to just know.

Doulos is one of those. Doulos has the idea of a slave or a servant. MacArthur writes, when used in the New Testament of a believer's relationship to Jesus Christ, doulos describes willing, determined, and devoted service.

This is the idea of you're willingly serving or willingly enslaving yourself to what Christ wants you to do. MacArthur also gives a reference, exodus 21 five and six. I don't think we're going to go, oh, wait in the page.

So we are going to go there. Okay. So again, I put more verses in here than I thought.

Exodus 21 five through six. Who wants to read that? Jonathan? Go ahead. But if the servant plainly says, I love my master, my wife and my children, I will not go out free, then his master shall bring him to the judgment.

He shall also bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear. And MacArthur says, this is an example of someone who willfully puts themselves in service to somebody else that they say they love where they're at. They love that their family's here, they love serving this master.

I'm going to serve Him forever. And they choose to do that. And he says, the idea of this when it comes to our relationship with Christ is that this is how we ought to be, that we love Christ so much, we want to be part of his family.

We want to do what he wants us to do so much that we enslave ourselves to Him forever. That that's our relationship to Him. We want to serve Him, and our salvation changes who or what we are enslaved to.

Romans 616 to 18. That's in there with this time. Go ahead.

Ryan says, do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey? You are that one slave whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that formed the doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

So you see, we may look at this and say, well, Paul's saying he's a slave of Christ. That seems awfully extreme. But the truth is, you're a slave to something.

You're either going to be a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. And as Christians, we have that choice. What are you going to do? Are you going to enslave yourself to the sin that you previously served before you were saved? Or are you going to commit yourself to doing what's right and enslaving yourself to righteousness, to serving Christ? And Paul's just saying that him and Timothy, they made that choice.

They're slaves of Christ. They're doing Christ's will. They're doing what Christ wants them to do.

And that's the attitude that we should take. So that's just briefly there about the author a little bit, not everything. Again, we're just going through this giving what information we can here, but this opening also tells us about the recipients.

And I'm going to take my sheet because I'm a terrible speller, and I'm going to spell it right up here. No, also because English is a confusing language that's hard to understand what the rules are, because they give you a rule and then they say, that's not the rule for this case anyway. So the recipients who is receiving this? Well, he writes this to all the who, the saints.

And we talked a little bit about that last week, that saints refers to believers. I'm going to show you a little bit more why I believe that to be true and why I think the Bible teaches that's true, because there's certain Christianish groups like Catholics that would give saints this exalted high position. These are people who are so godly that they get this special position of saints.

But I'm here to tell you, if you trusted Christ as your savior, you're a saint. That's just true of you. Now, the word saint itself is haggias, another Greek word that I think everybody should kind of be familiar with.

Haggias. It means to be set apart to or by God, to be consecrated. Also has the idea of holy, morally pure or upright.

Saints can be used. This word Hagias can be used two ways. It can be used to describe a person's conduct or actions, that they're holy in their conduct or holy in our actions.

Or it can describe the person themselves, that they are saints, that they are holy people, that they're characterized by this. And so there's a distinction. Use it as an adverb, or you can use it as a noun.

And here it's being used as a noun. Saints refer to all have put their faith in Christ. Romans one five through seven.

This is a really good verse for that. Lynn, go ahead. Through Him, we have received grace and faith among all nations, among whom you are also called Jesus Christ throughout the world.

In Rome, beloved God called to be saints. Grace to you, God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I'm going to have you trust me on this, but Paul's writing to Christians in Romans, he's writing to the Church.

And in verse six, he says, among whom you are also called of Jesus Christ. You, as Christians are called of Jesus Christ. He's called you into this relationship.

He's called you to be his people, to serve Him, to do what is right. Number 70 says that they're called to be saints. I think these are parallel here.

Those who are called of Christ, of Jesus Christ, they're also called saints. And so the saints are people who are called to Christ. Well, who are the people called the Christ? Those who are saved.

So saints are saved people, all saved people, one Corinthians, one two. Another verse. Who would like to read? Olivia, go ahead.

Here you see there the Church of God, which is in Corinth. We know the Church is the saved people, those who are sanctified in Christ. Well, who's sanctified in Christ? If we're talking positionally, it's those who put their faith in Christ, those who have trusted Christ as their savior.

And I think that's what it's talking about here, called to be saints. You notice the tubi is out there. So they're called saints with all who are every place call on the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who calls on the name of Jesus Christ, their Lord.

Well, how can they call on them unless they're saved? And how can they be saved? The people that call on them are the saved people. They call on the name of Christ, our Lord. So those saved people are saints are sanctified are the church who have Jesus Christ their Lord.

It's all the same thing here. So saints are believers. One more verse, Ephesians 219.

One other reader. Ryan, go ahead. Now here it looks like that you're separate from the saints, you're fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

But if I say that you're a fellow citizen with an American, what does that make you? A citizen of what? So it makes you an American, right? So if you're a fellow citizen with a saint, guess what that makes you? That makes you a saint. It's the same thing. There so number of passages here that kind of show that saints are all of us who have trusted Christ as our Savior.

.3 here in Christ Jesus is this phrase to all the saints in, I think, the idea of saints we understand saints are saved people in Christ Jesus is going to be kind of obvious. Yeah, well, that's how you're saved.

But it's further confirmation that saints refers to all believers. Only those who are saved can be in Christ Jesus. So if you're in Christ Jesus, you're a saint, you're saved.

They all go together here. So I think it all works together. So who is it written to? It's written first of all to the saints who are in Christ Jesus.

Then he adds this with statement here in verse one with the bishops and deacons. So I'm going to go over this very quick. We've had a lot of teaching on who these people are, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on here.

But letter B is the bishops. Bishops are it's the word Episcopos. EPI is over and scopus is scope, from which we get words like telescope and microscope. It's to see. So someone who oversees an overseer here see, I just put the one verse in there.

Bishop equals elder versus pastor. Oh, that's right, because Acts was split up. In Acts 2017, Paul is meeting with the Ephesian elders.

It says that there he met with the elders of the churches of Ephesus. And then in verse 28, he tells them to shepherd or pastor the flock and watching over them as overseers. So he uses all three terms within these 13 verses here, that are twelve verses that are in Acts here.

So we're not going to go to that, but you can look that up if you don't believe me first. Peter five one and two does the same thing. Would somebody like to read that? Go ahead, Nathan.

The elders who are among you, I exhort I, who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed, shepherd the flock of God, which is among you, serving as overseers not by compulsion, but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly. So in chapter five here, he's addressing the elders. The elders which are among you.

Verse two, he says shepherd. The word shepherd is the same word as pastor, pastor the flock. And obviously if you're saying, well, that just says shepherd.

Well, the flock of God is not sheep that are owned by the church. That's the people, it's the church, right? So if you're shepherding them, then you're pastoring them. That's the same word there.

And then it says serving as overseers. So within two verses here, you see Peter using these same three words to refer to the same people. And so biblically, the bishop equals the elder equals the pastor.

It's shown over and over in scripture here. Then he also writes to the deacons, although it doesn't use the term deacon. I think Act Six really shows us the foundation of what the deacons are.

So if you want to know more about deacons, you can go to Acts Six. One through, I think. Eleven.

Deacon is the word diaconos. Dia is through. Conos is dust.

So it's those who go through the dust, those who get their hands dirty, get to work. Diaconos means servant, helper, minister. And we basically transliterated deacon here and is basically the servants in the church.

First Timothy Three gives first the qualifications for overseer, a bishop, a pastor, and then it gives qualifications for the deacons. And you see that deacons, the same qualifications are there, except that the pastors have to be apt to teach where the deacons don't have that qualification. So these are godly men who serve the church, who meet the needs of people.

I think based on Act Six meets a lot of the physical needs or some of the other needs that go on so that the pastors can do the work of studying the word praying, ministering to people's, spiritual health, the deacons are there more to minister to the physical needs of people. So I think that's kind of the role of the deacons there. And Paul's writing to the saints, the whole church also with their pastors and deacons so that everybody's kind of included in this.

And pastors and deacons really should be saints. That would be biblical also. So that's who it's written to, the recipients.

.3 here we're going to look at the greeting itself and that's going to be in verse two. Who would like to read that? It's one verse, very short.

So if you're a shy reader, this is good. Olivia, you're a shy reader. I don't believe that.

Grace to you. So grace to you and peace from God the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ. This is how he greets them.

This is how he opens the letter. He starts with grace. What is grace? Grace appears a lot in the Bible.

It's probably good that we know what grace is, right? Okay. Getting something you don't deserve, that's a pretty good definition. Unmerited favor.

That's also very good. Very similar definitions, but kind of decided a little bit differently. Anyone else want to give a crack at it.

Okay, well, we can go with those. Last week, our preacher said he liked the acronym Grace and he kind of said it, but I don't know if you all caught it, but it's God's riches at Christ's expense. Some people use that.

I think it's a little more than that, but it definitely comes from Christ's sacrifice for us as God's able to give us his grace. Grace starts out, first of all, it's a typical Greek greeting. It's something that the Greeks would say to each other.

Grace is the word charis. It means grace, obviously, kindness, mercy or goodwill. It is that idea of that you don't have to do this for someone, but you're going to.

You're going to do something for them that's not necessary, that's not even something they deserve, but something that they may need or would benefit them. I think we see in the Bible, grace is the motivation of God provides salvation. Why does God provide salvation? Because I think love is one motivation.

I think the other one is grace. So he loves us, but he also is gracious towards us. He wants to give us what we don't deserve.

And we see this in Ephesians two, eight and nine. Some of you probably have this one memorized, but I have it on your sheet in case you don't. Isabel, go ahead.

Good. And you see there how have you been saved? You've been saved by grace. For by grace you have been saved.

It's through the working of faith. You have to believe. But it's because of God's grace.

It's all God's working. It's all God's gift to us. It's his motivation to us to provide us that which we don't deserve.

And we cannot get ourselves his grace towards us. And that's what brings about salvation. And when we talk about grace, a lot of times we focus on that.

We focus on the grace of God at salvation. Well, God's grace isn't limited to our salvation. The grace is also a means by which God sanctifies us.

Titus, 211 through 14. Another reader, Abigail, go ahead. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men teaching us that denying ungodliness worldly love we should live fervently righteously and Godly in the present age looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that he might redeem us from every father's deed and purify for himself his own special people.

I gave you the whole passage here up to the period because sometimes I like doing that. So you see everything in context. And Paul's the master of the run on sentence, as many of you Greek scholars may already know.

But you see here in verse eleven, it says, for the grace of God that brings salvation. We just talked about that, that's how salvation comes about, is through God's grace and has appeared to all men. All men are capable of receiving God's grace.

That doesn't mean that they do, but they're definitely capable, it's appeared, to all men. But what does it do? Now, remember, he's writing to Titus. Titus is definitely a saved person, a pastoral type, someone who's serving God.

He says it's teaching us, teaching who well, saved people. So grace isn't limited salvation. It's also there to teach us what we need to do.

Who we need to be in this context is teaching us that denying these two things, ungodliness and worldly lust, that it teaches us that we need to live Godly soberly and righteously. And it talks about how to do that in this passage, and I'm not going to go into this. I preached a sermon several years back about this.

If you want to see what I think about that, you can always look that up. I'm not expecting you to. But just to show you here that this grace doesn't just stop at salvation.

God's grace continues to benefit us, to grow us, to give us the resources we need in our life so that we can live for Him. The grace of God teaches us how we are to live and how we are to serve God. We don't just get grace for salvation and go, well, that's all the grace I need.

No, God gives out more and more and more. And so when Paul says grace to you as a church, I'm thinking it's the second thing, grace to you. You're trying to live for God, you're trying to do us right.

And we'll see that the flipping the church is doing a pretty good job of that. But Paul says you still need God's grace. You still need grace from God to continue to do what God wants you to do.

So there's the greeting of grace. Secondly, we see a greeting of peace. Peace here.

This is a typical Hebrew greeting. Does anybody know the Hebrew word for peace other than the professors in the room? Shalom. Yeah, it's shalom, right? I think if you go to Israel, I think it's still a greeting today.

Shalom, peace to you. It's actually used beyond even the Hebrews I found out in Daniel four. One, I don't have it there, but you can look it up.

Nebuchadnezzar starts his letter when he talks about what happened to him in chapter four, how he turned into basically an animal and ate grass for seven years and all that. He starts off by saying peace to all you in the providences of Babylon. So he uses the same terminology even in his letters, the Babylonian letters.

It's just interesting. And so it is a typical Hebrew greeting. But God is our source of peace.

And we see here grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the source of peace. Well, how is he the source of peace? I'm going to give you three.

Ways here. I think the first way applies most in this letter, but all three of these are true. So I'm just giving you all three things.

First of all, God provides peace between man and himself. Romans five. I put in Romans five, one to two.

And that's right, actually. So I just typed it wrong there. So Romans five, one to two.

Would somebody read that for us, please? Go ahead, Eric. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into his. So here, this verse talks about here.

Actually, you know what, go to Romans five. There's more there that I want to talk about. It is good.

It fits what I'm doing here. But as I'm thinking through it, I'm like there's more here to see. Drop down to verse six.

I'll just go ahead and read. Paul writes, for when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Well, who's the ungodly? That's all of us right.

For scarcely would a righteous man for scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man some would even die. But God demonstrates his own love towards us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

In verse ten here. For when we were enemies. So our natural state as we're unsaved is that we are enemies of God.

We are not on his side. We do not have peace with God. We're at war with the things of God.

Here when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. Much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And so while we were enemies, what happened is Christ died on the cross to take our sin, to remove that from us, so that now we no longer have to be enemies.

Now we can be reconciled, now we can be bought back, which is what reconciled means. And much more have been reconciled. We shall be saved.

And so now we're in this relationship with God. So we go from being enemies to being at war with God, to now having a relationship with God, being part of his family, being saved. And that's the idea of bringing peace.

There was no peace there before salvation, but through Jesus Christ we now have peace with God. Now things are right with God. Now we have a good relationship with God, at least as far as our position is, our sins taken care of, and we stand justified before God.

Now we're to live that way, mind you, and we can choose whether or not we do that. But as far as destroying that enmity, that barrier that's there, that's what Christ's death does for us. And Christ is the author of our peace with God.

And going back to verse one, you can see that having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. That's what he's talking about here. Before we were justified, we did not have any peace with God.

And Christ's death brings about that peace, that end of that conflict between us and God. So I think that's a big thing here. And as Paul's in this introduction saying grace and peace from God the Father and Lord Jesus Christ, I think this is mostly what he's talking about here.

But the Bible also talks about that we ought to have peace at different times with different people. So .4 there is.

God commands us to be at peace with other believers. Ephesians 214 and 16. Who would 14 through 16? Go ahead, Ted.

He himself is our peace and has broken down the middle of all separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity that is the law of commandment, so that he created himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby going to death. I kind of pulled this out of the context here, but the context here is the church this is talking about. Before Christ, there were Jews and there were those who weren't Jews.

And the Jews were the people of God. The people who weren't Jews were outside of the promise of God. They did not have the benefit of having a special relation with God that the Jews had.

And so when he gets to verse 14, he says, for he himself is our peace who has made both one. Well, what's both? Both is the Jews and the non Jews. The Gentiles has broken down the middle wall separation that was dividing them, that was saying, these people are of God, these people are not of God.

Now, in this new church, there's not that middle wall separation having abolished flesh, the enmity, the conflict that was between the Jewish people and the non Jewish people, that we're Jews, you're not. We can't associate with you. We can't be a part of you, even though that was never God's intention.

If you read through the Old Testament, his intention was always to bring the Gentiles to him, but he abolished that enmity, the law of commandments and so on. And if you look at the end of that verse, it says thus making peace. He's bringing this group together into this new body of the church that he might reconcile them both to God.

Both who the Jew and the non Jew. Both have the same opportunity to be saved, to be reconciled to God. And it's because of the cross of Jesus Christ, what he has done, and therefore put to death this enmity, this conflict, and brought about peace.

And while this passage is talking specifically for Jews and non Jews, it has the idea as a church we're one body here. We're one group. We're saved the same way.

We have the same problems. But God has given us the same solution to the death of Jesus Christ, his Son, and therefore has put together this body, and we ought to be at peace with each other. So the Bible wants us to have peace within the church.

There shouldn't be conflict. When conflict happens, we need to take care of that, rectify that, reconcile that, make it right, and be at peace with each other. God commands us to be at peace with other believers.

Also, God commands us to pursue peace with others. I reworded this from what I originally said, because sometimes you can't be at peace with others, and it's not any fault of your own. It's others who cause conflict.

But God wants us to pursue that. A couple of verses that we see. Hebrews 1214.

Who would like to read? Ryan? Go ahead. I think that's pretty clear. They pursue peace with all people, not just believers, not just their friends, the people you like, but all people.

So all those around you, everybody you contact with, god wants you to pursue peace again, he doesn't say be at peace because sometimes that's not dependent upon you. Unbelievers are going to be unbelievers. They're going to not like the Gospel, they're not going to like the message of Christ, and they're not going to like people who believe that.

And so there's going to be problems at times. But as far as it's up to us, we need to be pursuing peace with people. Romans 1218 another reader.

Lyn, go ahead. It is all possible, as much as depends on you, live peacefully with all men. Again, pretty clear.

And even here in Romans, Paul adds that as much as depends on you, as much as you can do, live peaceably with all men, with all people. So if it is possible to do that, so God provides peace between us and Himself through Jesus Christ. God provides peace in the church through Jesus Christ.

And as we follow Christ and live by Him, we're to pursue peace with those around us. So this greeting of peace is very significant here, too. So Paul says grace and peace, and then he tells us who the giver of all this is.

And I've already said that several times who the giver is. The giver of the peace is God the Father. First of all, I didn't give a lot on this.

We know God the Father, but significant here, he also says God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's a parallelism here of the Father. There should be an R on there.

I don't know what happened to the R and of Jesus Christ. It shows that they're equal in person, that Jesus Christ is fully deity, just as the Father is. So he's putting basically by putting these people, god the Father and God the Son, together, he's saying, yes, they're both God.

They're both equal. So anybody who would argue that Jesus Christ is a created being or someone lesser than God, as some cults do, this right here is a proof that Paul doesn't see it that way. Paul's saying no.

God the Father and Jesus Christ, they're on the same level. They're God, they're one, they're the same. And we know that they're not the same because they're different persons, but they're different persons in the Trinity, but they're all one essence.

They're all the same amount of God, I guess. So that's the giver God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where our grace comes from, that's where our peace comes.

So as we go through the book and we talk about grace, we talk about peace, we talk about these other concepts, we know that that starts with God, and that's Paul's trying to teach. Here a couple, takeaways quick. Number one, you are saints.

If you have been saved, if you trusted Christ as your Savior, you have been saved by Jesus Christ and been given his righteousness. So you are saints. There's a positional truth about you.

You are holy before God. You stand holy. If you put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you stand before God holy.

That's not going to be taken away. However, there's also responsibility to live the way a saint would live. And we didn't talk about that in the saint section.

That's why I'm covering it here a little bit. I got a little bit of longer passage there. Ephesians five, one through ten.

Nathan, you want that one? Therefore be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma, but fornication and all uncleanness. Or covetousness. Let it not even be named among you as is fitting for saints neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving.

To thanks for this, you know that no fornicator unclean person nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them, for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And honestly, I could have put half of Ephesians four, all of Ephesians five, and a lot of Ephesians six in this section.

What I wanted to pull out here is verse three. He has this phrase, as is fitting for saints. Well, what is he talking about? As is fitting for the saints? Well, previous to this, he talked about verse one, be imitators of God as dear children.

Verse two, he talks about walk in love and gives Christ as an example. Then verse three, he talks about, here's some things you shouldn't be doing because these things are not fitting to do as saints, because you are holy, you ought to live a certain way. And here's a list of an incomplete list, because we see other lists in different places that have different things.

But here's a list of things don't do as saints. That's not proper. That's not fitting.

That's not the way you should act. I'm going to bring football into this because I'd like to and I know it. I'm a Green Bay Packer fan.

Quiet. If I showed up to some event wearing Kirk Cousins Vikings jersey, people would be, what are you doing? Who are you? Yeah, I lost the bet. I would never make that kind of bet, because as a Packer fan, I don't even want to put myself in that position, because that's not fitting for a Packer fan to wear a Viking jersey.

You say that's wrong. Sean's the biggest Packer fan in the world. Why is he wearing a Viking jersey? That's not right.

Well, that's kind of the idea here. You're a saint. You're holy, you're set apart, you're pure before God.

And when you don't act like it, then you're not acting like what you are. It's wrong. It doesn't make any sense.

As a saint, you ought to be acting like a saint. If you're saved and you are a saint, there's a responsibility to live a certain way. That's what's fitting.

It goes on to give a few more things and you're filthy and foolish talking, blah, blah, blah. Then it ends up, but rather giving of thanks. And then it tells you why those who are going to be in the kingdom of God, those who are saved and are going to be with God forever, are not these kind of people.

They're not going to be there in God's kingdom because they're not saints. And that's how people who aren't saints act. Your saints act the right way.

And it goes on to talk about the wrath of God coming on. Disregard. I'm not trying to dig in here too deep here, but verse seven tells you, don't be partakers with them.

Why? Because you're saints. It's not fitting to do that. Don't be going along with them in their evil and their sin.

That's not who you are. And it tells you you were once darkness. You were once like that before.

You're saved, but now you are light in the Lord. You're different now. You're changed.

You're a new creation. Don't go back to acting like the old thing finishes up. I find out what is acceptable.

Lord know what you're supposed to be doing. You're supposed to be living the right way that God wants you to live. So, yes, you're saints.

If you're saved, if you trusted Christ as your savior, your salvation is assured. You're standing before God is assured. But you have a responsibility to now live like you are.

You're a saint. So that's my first takeaway. Nice one.

Right? Secondly, God has bestowed his grace and peace upon us. With these blessings from God, we are able to do the things God wants us to do and be people God wants us to be. So, yeah, you have to do it.

But guess what? You have God's grace. You have god's peace. We learned about in the sermon this morning that God has given us resources to be able to serve him, to do what's right, to respond correctly in difficult times.

This is kind of the same idea. You have the resources to do what God wants you to do, even when the decision is hard, even when sin's a problem, even when you're tempted. You have God's grace.

You have god's peace. That's going to help you through doing what's right now. We're going to learn a lot more in Philippians about what we need to do and how God has blessed us and all this.

So there's more to it than just, okay, I have God's grace and peace. That's great. But this is the starting point.

This is where we see that we're not alone in this. God is with us. He's never going to leave us or forsake us.

In fact, he's going to bless us. He's going to give us what we need to do what he wants us to. And that's all out of this introduction.

So those two verses that sometimes we skip over, there's a lot in there that we can learn and that we can grow by. Any thoughts or questions before I close? We're going to get done a little early, but we started a little early, so it works out. Everybody's quiet? I assume that means everybody's good? Okay, let's go ahead and close in prayer.

Ted, would you close us in prayer this morning?