Pursuing Joy: Philippians

How would you go about beginning a new church?

Paul and Silas had a plan. They had travelled through Galatia and Phrygia - regions now occupied by the country of Turkey. According to Luke’s account in Acts 16 Paul and Silas wanted to head into the interior of Turkey, then called ‘Asia.’

They were unable to travel south. As Luke records in Acts 16 Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia, today the region known as Greece. They left and traveled to Greece. They landed in a city called Philippi where instead of meeting a man, they encountered a group of Jewish women gathering for prayer on a riverbank.

From that moment people began to come to Jesus, professing faith in Him. Paul and Silas landed themselves in prison. The prison guard and his family came to faith in Christ and a church was born.

Some years later, in another prison, Paul is med to write to those believers.

Nearly 40 % of the time the word ‘joy’ is found in the NT, it is in one of Paul’s letters. The word ‘joy’ occurs some 16 times in this brief letter.

One dictionary offers this definition

1 a : the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires : delight

b : the expression or exhibition of such emotion : gaiety

2 : a state of happiness or felicity : bliss

3 : a source or cause of delight

Inc Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1996).

Since this letter was written from a prison cell it is remarkable that the idea of ‘joy’ figures so prominently.

As we read this letter lets try and understand why joy is such a prominent theme.

READ PHILIPPIANS 1:1-11

Paul almost always opens his letters with a promise of God’s grace and peace from God.

As in most of his letters Paul immediately offers a prayer for the believers living in Philippi.

In his prayer we can discover the roots of genuine joy:

God always finishes what He begins

Later in the letter Paul will express thanksgiving for a gift given to him by those believers (see Phil 4).

Paul’s prayer of thanks begins with a reminder that God always finishes what He begins.

Paul reminds his friends in Philippi that the relationship between them is rooted in their common relationship with God in Christ.

The ‘partnership’ in the gospel began when they confessed Jesus as Lord.

Then, as now, business partnerships were common. Individuals interested in pursuing profit would become partners in various types of enterprises in order to make money.

The partnership Paul celebrates has nothing to do with profit, and everything to do with the advancement of the gospel.

Whenever one expresses faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord they are not only committing their lives to Him, they are joining a vast partnership of people - past, present, and future, who share a similar aim.

Jesus taught His earliest followers to pray for God’s will to be done, for God’s kingdom to come.

Many have come to faith in Christ after realizing the depth of their lostness.

Yes, confessing Christ as Savior and Lord erases the guilt and shame of sin.

Yes, confessing Jesus as Savior and Lord unites believers together with a common aim, a common goal - to make Jesus known, to proclaim His name to every person living on earth.

Paul prayed with joy for these believers because with him they shared a conviction that God was at work, and that God would finish His work.

From the moment God pronounced His decision to expel Adam and Eve from the Garden, He revealed He had a plan to reconcile, to redeem.

Though Paul and the Philippians lived 2,000 years ago, we are encouraged and we are given a basis for joy because God will accomplish His task.

God’s work creates unbreakable bonds between believers

Twice in this section Paul writes of his continued connection with the believers in Philippi.

First, as we have already examined is in vs 4.

Next, in vs 7, he develops this prayer like this:

Philippians 1:7 HCSB

It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I have you in my heart, and you are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and establishment of the gospel.

The word translated ‘partner’ in vs 7 is different from the word in vs 4.

Here the word refers to sharing a common purpose, a common goal, a singular way of thinking.

The ‘partnership’ of Paul and the believers in Philippi is grounded in their confidence that God will accomplish His task.

But it goes even deeper.

Paul calls them ‘partners in both my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.’

Yes, the believers shared with him in physical terms (again, see Phil 4).

Yet they also contributed to Paul as he gave a defense of the gospel to various Jewish and Roman authorities.

They also contributed to the confirmation of the gospel.

Their very lives were a living testimony of the power of God’s grace.

Remember the Philippian jailer? He was prepared to take his own life, fearing that the prisoners had escaped.

Yet every prisoner was accounted for after the earthquake. The jailer and his family were vibrant evidence of God’s grace and mercy.

Others among the believers at Philippi may not have been converted in such a dramatic way, but the fact of their new lives was confirmation of God’s power and presence.

Joy is rooted in the assurance of the ‘day of Christ’

Philippians 1:9–11 HCSB

And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you can approve the things that are superior and can be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

Here Paul gets to the heart of the reason for his unbounded joy and the specific request on behalf of these partners in the gospel.

“that your love will keep on growing in all knowledge and every kind of discernment”

The NT rarely uses the word ‘love’ as an emotion. In almost every case ‘love’ is an act, a decision to do or be.

The love these believers had for God, for one another, and for Paul, was not merely sentimentality.

love is to grow in knowledge and every kind of discernment

Genuine love prompts us to discover all we can about the one whom we love.

When you and your spouse first met you asked all sorts of questions, getting to ‘know’ them.

When we confessed our trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord we entered a relationship with God - the God who created all things, the God who is beyond all knowledge.

Genuine love, prompts us to uncover all we can about Him.

Through reading His Word, through reading about how He works in and through others, spending time in His presence - all of these are strategies we use to grow in our knowledge because we love Him and He loves us.

We don’t want to hide anything from Him, and we seek to know as much as we can about Him

‘every kind of discernment’

Our love will be tested. As we learn more of His nature and character we will be challenged to evaluate the patterns and habits of our lives.

The more we know, the more we will want to reflect Him accurately, we will long with Paul to defend and confirm the gospel by our words and deeds.

“filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Christ”

Paul never shies away from reminding his readers that there is coming a day of judgment, a day when God will put an end to our foolishness and folly.

Here he calls it ‘the day of Christ’ (vs 10).

On that day what will God find in you and in me?

Will he find words and deeds that point directly to the glory and praise of God?

REFLECT AND RESPOND

What brings you delight?

Is it food? Is it the weather? Is it someone’s presence?

While all those may certainly be delightful, they all share one thing in common: they are transient, temporary.

If we are creating lives on temporary and transient things, is it any wonder joy often seems to be absent?

There have been times in all our lives when joy seemed absent - perhaps we thought God had abandoned us; perhaps we let other priorities come in between the relationships we have with one another in Christ; perhaps we grew weary of learning and applying God’s truths in our lives…

Today, we can leave here with an unalterable joy:

God will finish what He has begun!

God has placed you in an unbreakable fellowship of believers who share a common purpose and heart

God promises that He is coming again…and we can live in confidence of His return.