To God Be the Glory
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A Psalm of David.
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Prayer
Introduction
Thanksgiving is just about upon us. I don’t know about your households, but in mine, there has been a flurry of activity. Washing linens, cleaning under and around things, making shopping lists, etc. etc. etc. This time of year can be incredibly busy, and we are often quick to forget what Thanksgiving is all about. So, what I want to do this morning is use the last few verses of Philippians as an opportunity to look back over the letter and see how much reason we have for joy and thankfulness.
Passage
Our passage this morning is . If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word. We do this to show appreciation to God for His Word and in recognition that these are among the most important words we can hope to hear today. says,
19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.
21 Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you.
22 All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.
23 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Thank you, you may be seated.
Sermon
If we take a moment to think back over the letter to the Philippians, you might remember how often Paul talks about joy. In fact, joy and rejoicing is one of the key themes throughout the letter. As soon as Paul finished his opening greeting, the first thing out of his mouth – well, the first thing off of his pen is thanksgiving and joy. Look with me at
3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,
4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,
5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
From beginning to end, Paul frames his letter in joy. Paul fully recognizes that all the good things in his life – especially his partnership with the Philippians – comes from God. So, God receives the thanks and the praise, even though there are numerous people directly and personally involved.
This is always Paul’s model, and I’ve mentioned it before, but I think it is worth mentioning again – When Paul is thankful for a person or group of people for their kindness, he almost always thanks God for them.
At first that might seem odd to us, after all, I want the appreciation for my kindness and good deed, I want to be honored, but it is really the right way to give thanks. It actually elevates the kindness and the person being kind. When we thank God for people’s kindness towards us, we rightly recognize that they are instruments of goodness in God’s hands. It elevates them and their act of kindness.
We should also remember, that for Paul, joy and thanksgiving are not conditional on having good things happen to him. Even in prison, with some people trying to afflict Paul, his response isn’t anger or malice, but joy to God. Look at with me.
17 The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.
18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice,
“The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice”
Paul rejoices in everything. “Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering, I rejoice.”, Paul says. Paul rejoices in good times and terrible times. How? How on earth can he tell the Philippians to rejoice with him while he is in prison? Is there some secret to joy and thanksgiving? Is Paul simply telling the Philippians to suck it up; put a smile on; cheer up; fake it until they make it?
Is Paul’s joy that shallow? Only skin deep? No, definitely not. Paul repeatedly calls the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord. The reason there can be joy and thanksgiving is because of who Christ is and what He has done. Look with me to It says,
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
Do you see what was central to Paul’s joy? Knowing Christ. Here Paul basically lays out the Gospel – Rejecting everything as garbage and turning to Christ. Realizing that I have no righteousness, no goodness in myself. If I am going to be acceptable to God, it can never be based on my power, or my merit, or my goodness. It must be based on Christ’s righteousness. It is through faith that we can be found in Christ, given Christ’s perfect righteousness from God. So that when we stand before God in judgment, we will be clean and pure, and we will know the power of Christ’s resurrection.
If you are trusting in Christ, then you have good reason to rejoice and be thankful. Let me go one step further, you have EVERY reason for joyful thanksgiving.
With that understanding, Paul can assuredly say that his God will supply every need of yours. Paul has had every one of his needs met, and He knows God will do the same for the Philippians. But a word of caution here. What we think our needs are, and what God knows our needs are often very different things. Sometimes people will take this passage and make it say what it does not say. God is not going to give you every want. Nor does it meant that you will not have terrible times. Paul is writing from prison, after all.
God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory. Think about that, how rich is God in glory? Short answer? Very rich! But let’s be careful here. Sometimes when we start thinking about things like riches in glory, we tend to actually get off track a little bit. We might start imagining pearly gates, and streets of gold, or mansions. We might even imagine and opulent throne room, but I think that misses the point. Not that those things aren’t really cool, but even they aren’t the most valuable thing in glory. Christ is.
Christ is God’s riches in glory. Christ is God’s beloved Son. The Father created the entire universe, including you and me – for Christ Jesus. Christ is the riches in glory. Hasn’t Paul’s primary point throughout the letter been to look to Christ? To have joy in Christ? To live and have the mind of Christ? Let’s look to really quickly so that we can see that this language of Christ being the riches is not unique or surprising. says,
27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
“To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Do you see? The riches of glory is Christ. Let’s not miss this point. We have the riches of glory – which is Christ – because we are in Christ. Paul is so confident that God will supply our every need because if we are trusting in Christ, we already have all of our needs met – because we have Christ who is more valuable than everything else combined. So, as we live our lives, and good things happen and bad things happen. If, like Paul, we are imprisoned for the sake of the Gospel, it is okay, and even a reason to rejoice. Why, because we have the riches of glory dwelling within us. Every need that comes up, is met in Christ. I want to be clear, yes, Christ has already met all of our needs, it is done and past tense because Christ has accomplished all that the Father has given Him to do, but at the same time, God is currently meeting our needs and will meet our future needs as they arise in time – based on that completed work of Christ – based on the riches of glory.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but I want to really dwell on the majesty of this truth, the riches in glory is not gold and property. Dennis reminded me of a joke the other day that I think helps us here. If you’ve heard it before, bear with me.
There was a very rich man who was also very devout. He gave huge sums of his money away, he walked in righteousness, he was a Christian through and through. As he came towards the end of his life, he was praying one day and said, “God, I know that we can’t take anything with us when we die, but just this once could you make an exception?” God agreed and told him that he would, but all of the man’s riches would have to be in the form of gold bullion. So, the man gets busy spending all of his cash on gold bars, he sells his plane and cars and his vacation home and uses all the money to buy as much gold bricks as he could. Not long after, the man passes away. He drags a huge bag full of gold bricks up to the Gates of Heaven. It takes every ounce of strength he has, inch by inch he finally gets to St. Peter who opens the gates wide. The man starts inching forward through the gates when Peter stops him and says, you’re welcomed into heaven, but I have a question. Why are you carrying all that asphalt?
It is a silly joke, I know, but I think it illustrates an important point. So often, the things that we value, in the heavenly economy, aren’t actually valuable. We need to be reminded that Jesus is the riches we need, and through whom the riches flow. And that glorifies our God and Father. The more we treasure Christ, the more we glorify God.
We come, at last to Paul’s final greeting. Everyone who is serving with Paul says hey. But notice, what unites all these people together? Some of them are in Caesar’s household, for crying out loud! The uniting factor is that they are all saints in Christ.
Let’s stop, real quickly, and ask the question, “What is a saint?” The word saint simply means a holy person. Paul is greeting and sending greetings from saints – morally pure, holy, righteous people. Does that seem odd? It should, Paul has spent some major parts of his letter correcting sinful behavior on the part of some of these saints. How can it be that there is sin in their lives and yet they are still saints? There is a two-part answer to that.
First of all, there shouldn’t be. Those who are trusting in Christ ought not be sinning, but as long as we are on this side of Heave, we will sin and need to repent and correct that. But if Christians are always fighting sin in their lives, how can they be called saints – pure, holy?
It goes back to what we talked about earlier. Where does righteousness come from? Where does purity come from? It is Christ’s righteousness – from God through faith. So, the saints greet one another, their standing with one another is based on Christ Jesus. Yet again we see that there is one main theme to Philippians – Christ is foremost! Everything else is wrapped up in that truth. Thanksgiving – in Christ. Joy- in Christ. Needs met – in Christ. Peace of God – in Christ. Saints – in Christ. All of the themes and promises that weave their way through this letter are predicated on one great truth. Christ is the most valuable thing there is. Everything finds its meaning in Christ.
Conclusion
In a moment, we are going to transition into a time of worship through response. We believe that any time a person hears the Word of God, they respond either in rebellion or worship. During the time of worship through response, I will be on the front row, worshipping with you, so if you need someone to talk or pray with, I’d be delighted to do that. The front is always opened for prayer as well. There are just a few, closing things I want you to know.
If you are here this morning and you are not a saint in Christ. I hope you to find true and lasting joy. Nothing in this world can satisfy you. Your joy will always be surface level. Your joy will be fickle and will disappear in trials and hard times. The reason is because your joy is not founded in Christ. Only Christ can satisfy and give lasting joy. You should also know that when you stand before God in judgment, if you are not covered by the righteousness of Christ, you will receive the punishment you deserve for your wickedness. I mentioned earlier, and I hope you hear me now. You must turn from your sin and trust in Christ alone – and you will be saved.
Saints in Christ, I hope you have enjoyed our study through hope that you have a renewed and increased love and awe for Christ. I also hope that as you go out this week and celebrate Thanksgiving, that you will be reminded to frame all of your joy and thanks in Christ and His perfect and completed work. One last word of encouragement: Saints, you have the riches of glory dwelling within you. Rejoice, and again I say rejoice!
Let’s pray.