Gospel Friendship

Phil. 1:1-11 - Gospel Friendship

Welcome:

Good morning and welcome to Liberti Northwest! A new church plant where we seek to live, speak, and serve as the very presence of Jesus for the northwest neighborhoods of Philadelphia. If we have not met yet, my name is Pastor Ryan. We are so happy that you’ve joined us this morning!

Well, it’s a big day in the life of our church. A new worship space, a new time, a new name, and significantly a new Gospel partner in the Reformed

Episcopal Church of the Atonement. I want to say thank you to Pastor Jason, whose here this morning, for opening your space and your congregations hearts to us. We feel so welcomed and grateful to be here with you this morning!

With everything that is new going on this Sunday, we thought it only appropriate to start a new Sermon Series as well! We will be spending September, October, and most of November in the book of Philippians.

Allow me to set the stage a little bit before we jump into our first passage this morning. The book of Philippians is a letter written from the Apostle Paul to the church in Philippi. Now, the church in Philippi isn’t just any old church to Paul. About 10 years before the letter was written Paul along with Silas, Timothy, and Luke planted the church in Philippi. The story of the beginnings of this church is told in Acts chapters 15 and 16.

Paul considered the people in the church at Philippi his dear friends. He himself had even led some of the people in the congregation to Christ. Even after Paul moved on from Philippi to continue is ministry in other places, he still returned at least two other times to visit his friends in Philippi.

Now, Paul finds himself under house arrest in Rome. His friends from Philippi sent a man named Epaphrodites with gifts and to visit Paul who was under arrest. Paul pens the thank you letter we now call Philippians and sends it back to his old friends along with Epaphrodites as he returns home.

Ok, so let’s go ahead and listen in to what Paul wrote to his good friends in the beginning of his letter.

Read along with me Phil. 1:1-11. It is on page 980 in your back pew Bibles.

(read Phil. 1:1-11)

This is the Word of the Lord:

Thanks be to God.

Introduction:

There is a long history of Christians writing letters from Prison. Here are a couple fairly recent examples.

The german Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who became an outspoken anti-nazi dissident, was arrested and wrote many many letters from prison. One of his most famous was to a friend recently married who wanted pastoral advice. Bonhoeffer wrote,

“In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…”

Brilliant pastoral advice to a newly married couple. Another example is the famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. He wrote trying to rally fellow clergy and particularly moderate white churches that were remaining silent on civil rights issues. Go read the whole letter again. Seriously, it’s brilliant. In one famous passage he wrote, with the Philippian Church in mind,

“Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.'

They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.” 

This tradition, of brilliant Christians writing powerful letters from Prison goes all the way back, of course, to the New Testament and the Apostle Paul. Paul sat down, under house arrest by the Roman Government, and as verse 1 says, wrote, along with Timothy, to all the Saints in Philippi, and especially to the overseers (or leaders) and the deacons.

Notice that when he says “all the saints” that he is writing to people who are both “in Christ” and “in Philippi” - They know the tension of being citizens of the Kingdom of God and citizens of the Kingdom of Rome. What is important to Paul is their Christian identity rather than their earthly identity. Political appeasement, status, or power are entirely ignored in favor of the Christian’s identity as Christ’s people in Philippi.

In what follows, Paul is first thankful for their friendship, he then turns to his to describing his deep affection for them, and then offers a short prayer for more love. So, that is how we’ll outline the rest of our time this morning. 1) Thanksgiving for Friendship, 2) deep affection, and 3) prayer for more love.

Body:

1. Thanksgiving For Friendship (3-6)

Ok, so let’s first look at verses 3-6 and see Pauls thanksgiving for their friendship. These verse are a clear evidence of his close friendship with church at Philippi. He has gratitude to God every time he thinks of his old friends. He knows this church. He knows the individuals there and how they love him and he loves them back.

I mentioned earlier that Paul planted this church and that he was the one who led many of the believers there to Christ. Acts tells us about a woman named Lydia. Paul told her about Jesus and the Lord opened her heart and she became a Christian and her and her whole household was baptized. She could very well still be at this church.

Acts also tells about another man known only as the Philippian Jailor. Paul and Silas were in jail on trumped up charges, but God caused there to be an earthquake and all the prisoners were set free. The jailor was about to kill himself in disgrace, but Paul cried out to him and told him about Jesus. And the Lord opened his heart and he became a Christian and he and his whole household were baptized. He could very well still be in this church.

Paul, throughout the rest of the this letter, will name individual members of this church by name. My point is that Paul knew these people. He didn’t love them generally. He loved them specifically, as individuals, because he knew them.

It reminds me of the book The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky puts these words in the mouth of a doctor.

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet, I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”

Dostoyevsky is in full ironic mode here. He is calling our BS. We can have all the ambitions to save the world, love all of humanity, but we struggle with loving flesh and blood people who are in the same room with us.

And yet, here is Paul telling his friends in verse 3, that he never forgets them in his regular times of prayer. Here’s the challenge of Gospel Friendship. Are you praying for your closest friends?

Are you praying that closest friends who know Jesus would love him more? Are you praying for your closest friend who don’t know Jesus to have faith in him?

Paul could say with with confidence that he was always praying for his friends and every time he did, it gave him joy. He was thankful for their friendship. He was thankful for who they were and what Christ was doing in and through them.

He says he is thankful because of their partnership in the Gospel. They have had a partnership in the Gospel in the widest possible sense. From first receiving the Gospel, then to sharing the Gospel, and to supporting Paul’s Gospel ministry financially. They have been his true partners in the Gospel.

He is also thankful because God is faithful and will complete the work of new Creation in their lives through Christ Jesus. This is in verse 6. The work of God’s grace will be completed in them. It is based in God’s creative and sustaining activity.

Those who God has saved are firmly in his grasp. Paul believes this about his friends. That they have truly been gripped by the Grace of God and that Grip will last until the day of Jesus return.

Paul is thankful for their friendship. He now turns to his own deep affection for them in verses 7 and 8.

2. Deep Affection (7-8)

Here, in 7 and 8, Paul speaks directly to the church, assuring them of the warm affection he has for them. It is only right that he cares for them so much because they are partakers with him in God’s Grace and are committed to his ministry.

The way he loves these folks is just oozing out of these verse. Look at verse 8 for a second. “For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.”

That word there affection is really interesting. They went with a very safe translation. But it literally means intestines. The bowels, the entrails, heart, gut of Christ. One New Testament scholar put this way, “It is not Paul who lives within Paul, but Jesus Christ, which why Paul is not moved by the bowels of Paul but by the bowels of Jesus Christ.”

Have you ever thought about your friendship with another believer and the affection that you feel towards them as coming from the innards of Jesus? It’s as if everything in his being, and that everything is Jesus, wants to be with his friends. That is some deep gospel friendship.

Frankly, this is the Gospel Friendship that should be common among people in the church. Dave Marshall and I were talking the other day at the block party/house show and he said it well, “Community takes a lot of time and a lot of commitment.” That’s the simple truth of the matter Gospel Friendship, deep community takes time and commitment. Time to be together, to serve with one another, and love one another.

Finally, Paul turns to a short pray for more love for his friends in verses 9 and 10.

3. A Prayer for More Love (9-11)

This is an intercessory prayer describing Paul’s hope for this 10 year old community of Jesus. He wants the love of God and their love for each other to increase and penetrate into fuller knowledge and discernment for all types of situations and practical living. He wants them to experience even more love.

He prays that the love might lead to discernment and knowledge. This kind of Knowledge shows up 15 times in Paul’s letters and it is always tied to religious or moral things….like an awareness of sin, or of a deeper knowledge of God in Christ.

When he prays for knowledge, he doesn’t hope that they just get smarter, he is praying that they become fuller, more holy, more conformed to Christ. He wants them to have Christian knowledge and a corresponding manner of life. A rich life in Christ that encompasses the mind, the will, the heart, the body, the affections.

In verse 10 Paul returns to the idea of being pure and blameless on the day of Christ’s return. The preparation of his churches for the judgement day of Christ was a normal theme for the Apostle Paul. They need to be fully prepared for the day of Christ’s return and judgement.

BY ALL APPEARANCES, Bob Valenti is your average upwardly mobile suburbanite. The 40-something father of two has a couple of degrees, a house, and a plan for retirement. As of last year, he also has a plan for surviving the end of the world as we know it.

A few years ago, Valenti and his wife live in a suburb of Chicago and in their basement they have a year's stockpile of food and emergency supplies. Valenti recently ordered a box of 50 lighters and is squirreling away batteries, which he believes could someday be highly valuable for trading. He has 25 pounds of meat in his freezer and another 50 at an undisclosed location out of town that he refers to as “Plan B.” Should he and his family need Plan B, he has a couple of 30-pound packets of "survival seeds" there for jump-starting their own farm.

Valenti, who otherwise seems like a perfectly reasonable man, is preparing for society's collapse, which he believes could come any day now in the form of a global pandemic or the implosion of our highly leveraged financial system. "All of a sudden, you have hyperinflation, and you'll need a wagon of cash for a loaf of bread, society could crumble in three days. That's all it would take. Then it's going to get primal.”

They are called doomsday preppers. They have their own online journal, their own national organization, and their own political action committee. Paul wants his friends to be ready for the end of the world, if it should come in their lifetime, but not by storing food and weapons and batteries, but by growing in the love of God and personal holiness.

His prayer is that his friends would both reach that great day AND be pleasing to God when it comes. He wants the church to be filled with the fruit of godly deeds and actions, the results of a right relationship with God. Real fruit comes, real preparation comes from being in Christ. And this is what he prays for his friends.

Conclusion:

Paul’s letter, under house arrest, is going to teach us many things but he begins by being thankful for his friends, whom he had deep affection for, and he prayed that they might have more love for Christ. He treasured their Gospel friendship.

Let me close with this challenge to us this morning. There are three kinds of churches. There are churches that don’t love. You can visit and feel it right away. Everyone is cranky, and alone, and divided.

Then there are churches that love each other. You can tell that they genuinely love being around each other. As a visitor you see people laughing and talking, but they don’t seem to see you.

Then there are churches that both love each other and love you. You can tell they love being with each other, but they also want to invite you into their lives. They WANT you to experience what they are experiencing. This is the kind of church I want us to be. I want us to have such deep Gospel friendships, that we can’t help but want others to experience the same depth of community and love.

You see the Gospel unites us in friendship to display the Glory of God. God unites us as a spiritual family, but not an ingrown, isolated family. Rather, a family that is meant to reproduce. That is meant to invite others to feast on the riches of Christ. This is what I want for us at Liberti Church Northwest.

Let’s pray as we prepare to come to the Lord’s Table.

Final Prayer

Help us, O Lord, to have deep Gospel Friendships in this church. To experience community but a community that is built on Jesus. Help us to be united and spend the time and to have the commitment to love one another well. Help us be people, empowered by your Spirit, who live, speak, and serve as your presence in our Mt. Airy and Germantown and the neighborhoods where we live. Help us believe that you have the power and authority to take us and others out of the kingdom of darkness and into the Kingdom of Light. Lord Jesus, thank you for dying in our place, living the life we could not live and dying in sacrifice that we couldn’t provide for ourselves. We worship you and bless your name, the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the author and finisher of our faith, you who deserve all praise, glory and majesty forever and ever. Amen.