Philippians 1:1-11 - Christ Centered Pursuit

20-09-13 – Phil 1:1-11 – Christ Centered Pursuit

HBI: Through working together in unity our goal in Faith is to be found blameless in Christ, and to live this life for Him.

Þ Last Week

- Last week I mentioned something that a few people had questions about. I thought I would expand on this a little bit to let you guys know where I am coming from.

- If you ever have any questions about some of the things that I might say, let me know, come talk to me I am always open to having a conversation.

- I mentioned last week about how it is not enough to just “pray the prayer”. What I meant by this and we will get more into it next week as well is that it is all about where your heart is at.

- There is a great passage that deals with this in Hebrews. Hebrews 6:4-6 4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

- The bible talks about those who have seen, tasted, and heard of the word of God. Those who have experienced a glimpse into what this means and even looks like the have responded to it but then they turn away.

- They have never had a true relationship with the Lord as the bible is clear that once we are a child of God nothing can take us away.

- The bible does tell us that what we need to do to become children of God is to repent of our sin, confess them to Jesus and confess Him as Lord of all. We need to give up control of our lives and follow Jesus, even unto death.

- How do we know then if we are a child of God? It is not enough to just go through the motions, this is what I meant. Is there fruit of the HS coming out of your life? Is there conviction over sin? If so, then you are on the right path.

- Do you use God’s grace as an excuse to sin, or think that just because you said the right words you can live however you want because you got your get out of jail free card? If this is the case, then I warn you to repent and turn your life to Jesus.

- Where is your heart at? Have you given your life to Jesus? That is a mini sermon continued from last week. We will get more into it next week, what the gospel looks like and how it should affect our lives. Now to our currently scheduled program already in progress.

Þ Intro

- A group of tourists visiting a picturesque village walked by an old man sitting beside a fence. In a rather patronizing way, one tourist asked him, “Were any great men born in this village?” The old man replied, “Nope, only babies.”

- Every person who is a born-again believer starts life as a baby in Christ. Whether the new convert is six or sixty, that person is still a new Christian and needs to grow in the Lord. A baby Christian who has been saved for forty years is a tragedy. God intends for us to grow and mature so that we can be a positive influence in the lives of others. Until we learn to dig into the meat of the Word for ourselves, we will never grow.

- It is a shame when we see Followers of Jesus that are not growing or that refuse to grow for some reason.

- But what we are learning is that to live is Christ to die is gain so then the question is How do we go about living A Christ centered life. On our journeys of becoming more and more like Christ our goal in the end is to be pure and blameless in the day of Christ.

- We are to do this together, praying together as one body of Christ. This is not always easy; in fact, it rarely is as we work together with other followers of Christ. We do not always get along we sometimes even argue, but we learn that all this happens working together in unity.

Þ Vs 3-5 Thank God for you

- Christ centered pursuit. But what is it that we are supposed to be pursuing? As we live in Christ, we need to realize that in this life our pursuit is to be above reproach, to be found blameless when we go to see Jesus again.

- We will get more into this later, but we get a glimpse in to what this looks like. What we have here is a prayer by Paul, which is quite common in His letters.

- The prayer includes 2 things that show us part of what it means to live a Christ centered life, a Thanksgiving prayer for their join him (unity) and a thankful prayer that together they will be found perfected.

- They both work together in harmony to form a life that is centered on Christ, unity, and the pursuit of holiness. But there is another aspect that is involved in this as well.

- That is prayer. Paul was praying, thanking God for their unity with Him and praying that they would continue.

- This should give us a but of a hint as to what Should give us a hand in what comes first when living a Christ centred life even before thinking of being found in Christ, and that is prayer.

- Every letter that Paul wrote to different churches started with a prayer for them. In the Christian life before we start anything we need to pray.

What Paul prayed for them was Philippians 1:3-5 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.

- We have a prayer for something they have done in the past, A prayer of thanksgiving for their joining with him in his ministry.

- He thanked God for them, prayed with joy. Yet he was in prison, had gone through so much hardships but through it all he had people that were there with him.

- They were not there physically but they were there for him financially and through prayer. Paul never asked anyone to support him with money, but they did out of the goodness of their hearts.

- What this shows us is different ways in which we can be unified as the body of Christ, when we cannot sometimes be together physically.

- We still have a job to do, even if God has not called us away to a different culture or country. We can still join in the work of God by being unified in prayer.

- Living a Christ centred life and being unified under the same gospel, the same word of God go hand in hand one does not really work without the other.

- We are called to pursue Christ; we are called to pursue holiness and we can do it with joy, but we are not to be doing it on our own.

- we have been having church apart in our living rooms or wherever we have been watching TV, and that works temporarily. but we are called to live the Christian life together even despite our differences.

- So what we have is it all sorts of prayer. through prayerfully living a Christ centred life we are to work together as the body of Christ with joy.

Þ Vs 6-11 – Christ centered perfection

- The book of Philippians along with many books in the Bible are filled with references to the gospel and Salvation and we have that here as well as we continue along the theme of Christ centred pursuit of Jesus together.

- And we see that in verse 6 Philippians 1:6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

- This tells us that the work That was began in US when we became children of God is not done yet and will not be done until the day that we see Jesus.

- But this tells us a few other things as well. For one the work that Jesus does for us is Salvation. The work that God does in us is continuing to make us holy (Sanctification), The work that God does through us is Serving Him and serving others.

- Jesus is the one that does the good work in us. It is not by anything that we have done or can do but it is His work in us after our faith in Him.

- This work that God does in us through the work of the HS happens no matter what we go through. Just look at Verse 7.

- Paul reminds us that all this has been happening through His imprisonment and through His defense of the gospel.

- Our holiness, our pursuit of becoming more and more like Jesus will continue through the hard times and the good times.

- Remember Paul was saying this while in prison, after all that He had gone through. And he expected them to continue to do this together.

- We go on to see what more we can learn about what it means to pursue Christ in Unity. It tells us in Vs 9 that we are to let one another with what knowledge we have been learning about in the bible.

- This is not mainly just affection towards one another. You know you are to love others so sometimes we tolerate them.

- Like sometimes with family, we love them because they are family but sometimes, we do not like them very much. I am just kidding.

- Some people are hard to love, and we do not even try for whatever reasons we might have.

- But the type of love that leads to Godly unity is the type of love that we learn about from the character of God. It is a love that places a high value on the other person.

- This type of love actively seeks the benefit of the other person instead of what we can gain from the experience.

- Without seeking the welfare and placing high value on someone as better then ourselves then Christian unity is not going to be possible. All that we are going to have is fighting and arguing.

- Pursue Christ in unity and Joy so that we may know Vs 10 what is excellent, be tested and found as sincere (pure) and be found Living for Jesus whenever we go to see Him again.

Þ So, What

- Why is this so important that we learn what it means to Pursue Christ with unity. To pursue Jesus and be found in Him together.

- We where never meant to live this Christian life on our own, that is why it is called the body of Christ.

- There is so much in the bible about working together because we need to seek God together. Though sometimes we have a bad experience at a church, or maybe with just some person from that church.

- Does this mean that we are to forsake churches altogether because we have been wronged or offended by someone? Do we forsake all restaurants when we have a bad experience at just one restaurant?

- That seems kind of silly does not it. Well it is the same with the church we are to consider each other, other people as better then ourselves.

- If we try to pursue Christ and holiness on our own, then we will likely fail. The goal, that we are going to learn more about later, is to be found more and more like Jesus. To work towards being set apart for Jesus.

- What happens when we try to do it on our own is that when we do fail, there is no one there to help us up or remind us when we need to change.

- Sometimes there are circumstances that try to rob us of joy in our lives. People get sick, plans do not go as we hoped, bad things happen.

- But in the pursuit of holiness in our lives, if we partake of this together as one, despite the differences that we may have, we can together use them to glorify Christ.

- So then who can you help lift up as you seek to become more like Jesus.