Philippians 4:1-9
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[Intro]
Last time we went through Chapter 3:12-21. In that passage we discussed pressing on towards Christ. Paul was encouraging those in Philippi to conform to the likeness of Christ.
Paul mentioned some of his motivations to knowing Christ more. Which were the gift of salvation given to him by faith in Christ because of the work Christ did on the cross and that God chose him. That’s special. As a believer, you were selected by God to be in a relationship with Him. And that motivated Paul. There’s also the promise of eternal life in heaven with God. We can’t fully comprehend what God has done for us, everything he’s going to do for us, and everything we will receive and experience in heaven. Not even close. Whatever little bit we can comprehend though, should motivate us.
Paul continued on to talk about spiritual maturity, good role models (from those who work to imitate Christ), and bad role models (those who claim Christ but show no fruit).
In the end Paul mentioned that we are citizens of heaven, right now, so we should act like citizens of heaven. We belong to God as his own children. We should act like one of his own. We should work to imitate Christ. And it’s important to remember, even Paul, an apostle, said I have not attained this. We will never fully attain it on this side of eternity, but we should strive towards it. And we can only progress towards the likeness of Christ, by the power of God. Not by our own will.
I wanted to make sure we had a refresher from last time, because this next passage starts with therefore, which implies a statement based on what was previously said. I once heard a pastor say, “if you ever see a therefore in the Bible, always look back to see what the therefore is there for.” Catchy little phrase to remember that.
[Prayer]
[Body]
1 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stay true to the Lord. I love you and long to see you, dear friends, for you are my joy and the crown I receive for my work.
2 Now I appeal to Euodia and Syntyche. Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement. 3 And I ask you, my true partner, to help these two women, for they worked hard with me in telling others the Good News. They worked along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are written in the Book of Life.
4 Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! 5 Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon.
6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.
So therefore, and remember the preceding verses were about pressing on towards Christ, to act as citizens of heaven, then he says stay true to the lord. He’s just continuing to encourage them to remain steadfast for the Lord. Now we obviously know Paul loves those in Philippi, as he has said many times in this letter. But in the Greek language, there are many different words used for the different types of love we have for someone. Agape is the strongest form, in Christianity this is what we’d say is the love of God for man. Now the word Paul uses here is built on a form of the word agape, so he used a very strong word here. This shows how close they were. And Paul longed to see them, he had a strong desire to be with them. Right after that he says “you are my joy and crown I receive for my work”. The word Crown here isn’t the crown that we think of someone receiving for being in authority, this is a reward type of crown. It’s the type of crown someone would have received for competing in some athletic games in this time. So in this case, the crown, it’s the reward from God.
He said a similar thing to the Thessalonians.
19 After all, what gives us hope and joy, and what will be our proud reward and crown as we stand before our Lord Jesus when he returns? It is you!
Paul’s life work was to serve God and when other people trusted in the Gospel, accepting Christ as their savior, that was Paul’s reward.
Think of all the things we strive for in this world, so many of them will wither away. God won’t say wow look at how much of x, y, z you acquired while on earth. We can enjoy certain things on earth and acquire certain rewards by good and pure actions. Such as receiving a promotion for hard work. But our rewards in heaven will be from our service for God. So it’s good to keep in mind our motivations, what rewards are we trying to receive and why?
Now verses 2 and 3 are very interesting. We’re introduced to four different people and we don’t get a lot of context.
The first two people are have Eudia and Syntyche, who apparently have some sort of dispute going on. We’re not given any other details. We just know they are in disagreement. The next person isn’t called by name, but rather “my true companion”. And then finally we have Clement. All we know is all of these people are believers and a part of the church of Philippi. Now there was a church leader in Rome named clement who we know much more about, and some think maybe they are the same person. But there’s no clear cut answer, and whether they are or aren’t doesn’t really matter for the point Paul is making in this passage.
What we know is these two women have a disagreement, and after being called out, Paul also commends them, saying they have worked hard in spreading the Gospel with Him, Clement, and others. But he wants the “true companion” help them settle this disagreement. If there’s anything we can really pull out from this scripture, it’s the fact that even when dealing with two believers working in the same ministry, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows and getting along, stuff happens. It was important enough for Paul to address here, but we can assume it’s not a doctrinal issue or something over sin because Paul would have likely addressed it head on and gave an exact course of action like he did in other letters. Our brokenness will get in the way sometimes, and here Paul basically just says “figure it out”. Just resolve the situation, you are united in Christ, try to find some sort of resolution. There’s not always a perfect answer, but we have to find a way to move forward in Christ whenever we face challenges like this.
Look at what this disagreement got them? Being called out isn’t fun in the first place, because this letter was probably read in front of the Church. But even more-so, if they would have known that this letter would be a part of a collection of God breathed historical documents that we now have as the Bible where Christians would read about it for the rest of time, they would probably would have tried to resolve their disagreement sooner. The one time they’re mentioned we’re basically told about what not to do. Don’t have disunity. Now they did receive acknowledgement from Paul about their committed work for God. So it’s not all bad. But they probably would have preferred to just be left out.
Earlier in this letter we did go over a passage that was all about unity, so some think part of the reason Paul spoke so much about unity was because of this very situation going on, that he mentions now at the end of the letter.
Now verses 4-5.
This is something Paul has been consistently saying through this whole letter. Rejoice in the Lord. And here he says it twice, he’s emphasizing it. Now when does he say to rejoice? Always. Now how can that be? Life is just tough sometimes. But you know, God’s not saying you have to be happy about every situation going on around you. Our happiness is pretty conditional to our situations. Rejoicing in the Lord is not conditional. And the reason is because we always have something to rejoice about what God has done for us, what he’s going to do for us, and the promises he has for us.
You know when you have something or someone that always seems to cheer you up a little and bring you some happiness? And then there’s the time where for whatever reason they fail you, and you’re like c’mon you’re the one thing or person I’ve always relied on! The truth is nothing and nobody is 100% reliable in this word, especially when it comes to bringing some joy to your life. The only joy that is always available is in the Lord. Because the Lord has never and will never fail you or go back on any of his promises.
We can count on our joy in the Lord. We can always rejoice in the Lord. God doesn’t change. We can read two scriptures about that:
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
At the beginning of Malachi 3:6
6 “I am the Lord, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed.
Rejoice in the Lord Always.
And then Paul starts talking about gentleness that we should have and how it should be evident in our lives.
Gentleness can be misunderstood for timidness, but it’s definitely not what Paul is saying here. He’s not saying be timid. They are completely different things. You can think of it more as a humble attitude and not out of control.
When talking about Christian leaders, Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 3:3
3 He must not be a heavy drinker or be violent. He must be gentle, not quarrelsome, and not love money.
And then in Titus 3:2
2 They must not slander anyone and must avoid quarreling. Instead, they should be gentle and show true humility to everyone.
And to finish off verse 5, Paul tries to motivate them by reminding them that the Lord is coming. It’s a good way to get a Christian’s attention sometimes. Not only do you not know how long you’re going to live, but also the Lord could show up anytime and you don’t want to look like one of the slackers do you? You can be bold for Christ and be gentle and humble.
Verse 6 is a simple instruction. Well simple to think about, but often hard to execute.
In every situation we ever face, don’t worry about it, but instead pray. That’s all it is. He says don’t do that, but do this instead. Don’t worry, but pray. There could be a whole sermon about the topic of how to pray, but Paul makes it really simple here. He says when you pray, tell him your requests and give him thanks for what he’s done. Make your requests and give thanks. There’s plenty of things we can be thankful for and God for sure knows we have plenty of requests on our mind. He knows before you ask him. Prayer is very important, but we don’t have to make it complicated. As soon as you encounter or hear about a situation, you can send up a prayer. Requests and thanksgiving. Pray continually. Remain in communion with God.
Similar passage is found in 1 Peter 5:7
7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.
Trust in God’s care for you.
If you can do that, if you can hand over all your worries to God, then in verse 7 Paul says “You will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.“
This peace is a little tough to talk about, because it’s beyond what we can comprehend. This is something we experience. And this is interesting because there are different ways peace is mentioned in the Bible, it could be peace with God, peace in God or peace of God. Here Paul is saying it’s peace of God, God’s own peace. Which really is mind boggling. I think sometimes it’s easy to get frustrated when things aren’t going as planned and just think must be nice to be God and be in control of everything, nothing to ever worry about. Now we’ll never be able to control everything, but He does say we can have His peace. So we can’t say this isn’t fair that I have to go through so much tragedy and have so many unknowns about the future of life, I don’t get to have any peace. He offers His peace. And when you do experience it, you’ll know. You’d probably notice it the most when things are not going well for whatever situation you’re in, but for some reason, beyond understanding, you’ll be at peace. It’s one of those things where there really isn’t logic. You’ve cast your worries on God through prayer, and you have His Peace.
And then what’s great is this peace will guard your hearts and mind. That’s a military term used here. God’s peace will protect you from falling into more anxiety. Really amazing.
Now verse 8, Paul continues to talk about our thoughts, but in a different way.
So worrying was one thing, but here Paul talks about filtering out the evil thoughts that come through your mind. Because, no matter who you are, I’m sure you’ve had negative/evil thoughts go through your head at sometime. There’s some weird stuff that can come to mind sometimes and it’s like where did this come from, and sometimes it’s tempting to think about. But we have to think about what we’re thinking about sometimes. Paul gives us a list to filter it through. Is it true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. That’s the criteria we should have for something to reside in our mind. Those are all And conditionals, not Or, the devil will try and twist your mind in weird ways to think oh yeah I could some positive in this one way. There’s a rigorous process for things to reside in your mind. And it’s important to remember what Paul says about these thoughts, it’s not that if a random thought comes into your mind you should think oh I’ve sinned so terribly, he says it’s what you fixate your mind on. In other translations it may read, what you dwell on or meditate on. That’s the important thing. Something comes in, check if hits all the boxes of purity, then you can dwell or meditate on it. Paul sums it up by saying “think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise”. As I was going through this I was thinking man if all my thoughts for just one day were put on a screen for everyone here to see, what would they think. That thought scares me. I know there’d certainly be stuff that did not check those boxes.
But in reality, every single thought you’ve ever had, God has seen it. God knows all your thoughts from your first to now.
Even when we’re doing things that look good, God knows what’s going in our heart and mind.
2 People may be pure in their own eyes,
but the Lord examines their motives.
Thankfully God helps us with renewing our mind.
2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
We’ve all faced challenges with sin. But it’s important to continue moving forward, just like mentioned last time, don’t backwards with your spiritual maturity. We can close with this reminder that Paul gave those in Philippi in verse 9
9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.
We must continue to learn through the scriptures, strive to live it out, which can only be done through God working in us. God will be with us every step of the way. And along the way, we can have His peace in all situations.
