Gospel Gratitude - Philippians 1:3-8

INTRO

My wife Hannah’s favorite holiday is bar-none Thanksgiving.

She just loves the tradition of gathering with friends and family around a lovingly prepared meal and sharing gratitude.

We both love thanksgiving.

We have traditions as I am sure many of you have.

I do a three day brine for my turkey before I inject it with butter and baby it.

Hannah has always tried to create a motif.

One year she made some pretty creative thanksgiving party hats.

Here is a picture for your amusement.

Hannah also has us practice the tradition of going around and saying what we’re all thankful for.

Now that’s not necessarily new for many of us.

It’s a tradition of those even who don’t have faith.

One theologian talked about the idea of not having faith and being thankful as a pattern of thanksgiving without a grantor.

We’re thankful we’re just not sure to whom.

Paul as we can see in our passage doesn't have that problem.

Paul overflows with gratitude to the Lord.

Today we are going to zoom in on these 6 verses and my prayer is that you would be challenged towards gratitude.

Specifically here is what I want us to see, The gospel produces confident gratitude.

These verses constitute the beginning of a prayer.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism does a masterful job to remind us that gratitude is the essence of any prayer we offer to the Lord.

"What is prayer? Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies" (WSC 98)

This is a robust and beautiful acknowledgement of God and all his blessings.

As we consider the reality that the gospel produces gratitude we’re gonna see both lessons from Paul and and reasons for gratitude.

Lessons and reasons

We will see three lessons from Paul’s gratitude and three reasons for his gratitude.

Let’s dive in and see first three lessons from Paul’s gratitude.

I. Lessons on Gratitude

Philippians 1:3 (ESV)

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,

Perspective on Gratitude.

Paul has a very specific perspective and it should grab you.

Notice he isn't thanking the Philippians for their kindness, he is thanking God for them.

Paul has a right prospective on his life.

Consider what we hear in James1:17

James 1:17 (ESV)

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

If we’re honest many of us are so quick to notice kindness from others.

We say thank you at the grocery store checkout line almost instinctively.

We’re raised to be aware and thankful to others.

But we often lack the godward prospective of Paul.

How often do we pray prayers of gratitude for what he has done for us.

Are your prayers marked by thankfulness?

Are moments of comfort, times of provision, are those moments where you practice gratitude friend?

It is possible to measure the selfishness of our hearts and our prayers by the degree of thankfulness that we find in them.

The person who feels entitled is rarely a thankful person.

Hannah and I have been going to ollies looking at the books for kids.

One book I saw the other day had a project about metal content in sand.

It goes like this if you were to give me a dish of sand, and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them;

but let me take a magnet, and sweep through it, and it would draw to itself the most invisible particles.

The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies;

but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron, so the thankful heart will find God’s blessings.

Are you walking through your days with prospective, with a heart of gratitude?

What is your perspective?

So we see first that we should have a godward prospective looking at the fact that every good gift, every moment of joy, all of it comes from the Lord.

That is the first lesson.

the next lesson

Thankful Prayers

Thanksgiving saturates Paul’s prayer life.

Look at verses 3 and 4 together

Philippians 1:3–4 (ESV)

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,

Gratitude marks Pauls prayers

E.M. Bounds one of histories most prevalent voices on prayer said:

"Giving thanks is the very life of prayer. It is its fragrance and music, its poetry and its crown." _E.M Bounds

That is absolutely Pauline.

When we look at this prayer and other prayers throughout Paul’s epistles you don’t get the idea that gratitude is tacked on lack an afterthought.

You don’t get the idea that this prayer is some kind of grudging duty.

This is someone who sees everywhere the grace of God.

He sees it in every life that is changed, in every kindness given, every trial

IN all of it Paul never seems to come up short with thanksgiving.

But here is the most challenging part of this prayer.

Look at verse 7

Philippians 1:7 (ESV)

It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

Wow

Now context.

We will learn as we read this letter that even though this is a beloved church for Paul it is not without it’s difficulties.

Later in the letter we catch clues that these believers were reacting to external opposition not by strengthening their bonds of unity with each other but by letting their fellowship fragment into competing pockets of self-centeredness.

At the very time when they should have been giving and receiving each other’s support and encouragement,

when hostility and pressure from the surrounding society should have driven them together,

the congregation was marred by individuals’ preoccupation with their personal problems while ignoring others’ needs (2:4)

and by their grumbling against each other and their questioning of the goodness of God (2:14).

Yet here is Paul in chains.

He has really two options as we will see.

Death or Freedom.

Prison wasn't a punishment but a holding place until judgement was determined.

Yet Paul is grateful, holding his friends in his heart.

Does thanksgiving saturate your prayer?

In evaluating our own gratitude for the grace of God Coram Deo I don’t want just say, “Remember to be thankful when you pray.”

But rather is thankfulness and gratitude overflowing in every prayer of yours no matter the circumstances.

There’s a story of a pastor visiting Charles Spurgeon, Dr. Theodore Cuyler.

One day he and Mr. Spurgeon were out in the fields enjoying God’s sunshine and the beauties of nature. Dr. Cuyler told a story at which Mr. Spurgeon laughed until his sides shook.

Suddenly Mr. Spurgeon said, “Theodore, let’s get down on our knees and thank God for laughter.”

And these two happy Christian preachers knelt in the field and thanked God for His great gift of laughter.

Does thankfulness overflow in your prayers?

this brings us to the third lesson

Joyful Prayer

Joy fuels Paul’s prayer

Philippians 1:4 (ESV)

always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,

Paul has learned to see God’s masterful hand in every moment of his life.

Every circumstance, every blessing, the good and the bad all of it

Paul can always find reason for joy in the grace of God.

If you remember last week I told you that joy is one of the dominate themes of the book of Philippians.

This idea permeates the book and here is the lesson.

This kind of joy happens despite circumstances.

This kind of joy that produces grateful prayer

It isn't just for guys like Paul who write Bible it is for you.

This joy is what we chase isn't it?

It’s why we binge watch only to be sad when the series is over.

It’s why we chase after the latest and greatest.

It’s what we look at the scale for

Its why we post for the likes.

We want a deep abiding joy.

There is a story of a jovial Christian man who served as an elementary school Principal MR Rainy.

He was so joyful that a child once remarked that she believed he went to Heaven every night because he was so happy every day,

He used a helpful metaphor about a Christian’s joy.

“Joy,” he said, “is the flag which is flown from the castle of the heart when the King is in residence there.”

Christ is the heartbeat of joy.

Throughout Philippians Paul is going to be calling out to us that this Joy is available to us and it can overflow into every area of our lives!!!

So we start here with these lessons:

Perspective

Thankful Prayer

Joy

But why is Paul so thankful?

let’s look now at three reasons for gratitude

II. Reasons for Gratitude.

Past

Paul is grateful for his past partnership

Philippians 1:5 (ESV)

because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

Paul is grateful because of his past with the Philippian church

more specifically that they had partnered with him.

Now let me try to help you understand the value of this partnership.

As a pastor I have had to help my share of folks move.

It comes with the territory.

Now let’s picture there’s a heavy sofa up here.

It’s a sleeper sofa.

Imagine if I tried to lift it and move it our of here by myself.

As humorous as that may be. I am not going to get very far, not without some significant pain.

So it is in the church.

We are to partner with each other.

The word here is partner or fellowship.

This is a multifaceted word. They were partners with Paul in the message, money, mission and maturity.

The message.

When the gospel message is the bedrock of a church then the gospel not only forges a bond between us and Jesus, but but between us and one another.

We become partners in the gospel.

For the Philippians it meant they were willing to share both in Paul’s suffering and in his ministry of defending and proclaiming the gospel.

Philippians 1:7 (ESV)

It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

Gospel partnership is more than talk.

It shows itself in service and action.

If we are partners in the gospel, it is because we are partners in grace—

because the invincible Spirit of Christ has pulled us, in spite of ourselves, out of the pit of our self-centered self-reliance,

made us face the ugly reality of our guilt and helplessness, and drawn us to trust in Jesus.

God’s grace evokes our gratitude, and Christ’s love ignites our love, not only for the Lord who rescued us

but also for people who need and have received his unmerited love right along with us.

If you are honest, you must admit that it is sometimes hard to say, with Paul, to everyone in the church—

to those sitting beside us, in front of us, behind us, or over on the other side of the room—

“I always remember you all with thanks and joy, always pray for you, always yearn for you all when we are apart.”

Did she slight or ignore you?

Does he sing too loud and off-key?

Are their children too restless?

When fellow Christians’ offenses and weird habits loom large in our minds,

it is because we’ve lost sight of the marvel that all of us who belong to Jesus are partners in the gospel and fellow recipients of his abundant grace.

To love our neighbors as ourselves, and especially our Christian brothers and sisters, extensively and intensively, we need a source of love deeper than our own puny hearts.

We need “the affection of Christ Jesus,” imparted by his Holy Spirit residing in us,

constantly turning our gaze upward to the Lord who showed us compassion, and then outward to those who need to experience his compassion through us.

So they were partners in the message but also in money.

Again remember this is a thank you letter.

The Philippian church had sent Epaphroditus with a monetary gift of support for Paul and his ministry.

Paul says their generosity was a sweet-smelling aroma an acceptable sacrifice that was well pleasing to God.

In other words, real gospel-partnership puts its money where its mouth is.

It loves the church and the cause of Christ and the advance of the gospel so much that it does not shrink back from giving.

As we see generosity is important.

Partnering for gospel advance in our giving is good and right but it doesn't stop there it continues in the mission and maturity.

The Philippians had not only sent money but people.

The mission is something we all carry.

They worked with Paul to advance the cause of Christ as partners and as they did they grew in maturity

That is to say, it is a partnership that is "in it together in the long, slow process of Christian growth.

It was, as Paul puts it in verse 5, a partnership lasting "from the first day until now."

As Paul thought of the members of the Philippian church and the faces of those who first formed its core,

there is little wonder that he rejoiced so much, even as he wrote from his prison cell ten years after his first mission in Philippi.

There was the Philippian jailer and his household whom he and Silas had baptized,

there was the slave girl, once demon possessed, now clothed and in her right mind;

there was faithful, prayerful Lydia whose heart the Lord opened in response to Paul's preaching and doubtless many others.

All of them still praying, giving, and continuing in partnership with Paul.

What a delight to any pastor's heart to know that those who first began continue still in partnership with him through thick and thin over many years!

Real gospel partnership endures and perseveres and sticks with it to the end.

It is not a temporary flash of activity or excitement.

It is the stable pattern of Christian living in the fellowship of the church.

It is easy to pray and give and go, once or twice, when we are feeling benevolent and generous.

But the authentic partnership that the gospel creates keeps on praying and keeps on giving and keeps on going.

It’s the gospel work flourishing in you.

So we start seeing the first reason for Paul’s gratiude was his past partnership with the Philippian church

But we see next

_ Future

Paul is thankful not just for what they had done, but because he knows where they are headed.

Philippians 1:6 (ESV)

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.

What a incredible text this is!

Sometimes we don't know if we can keep going.

Sometimes we feel like we are reaching the end of our rope.

We are running out of steam.

We have spent all our energy and we are nowhere near the finishing line.

I am certain that you, too, know the doubts and misgivings that haunt your heart when you have again fallen short of the Christlike love that you long to express.

The last time you gossiped or complained about that fellow believer, you regretted your words almost as soon as they left your lips.

Yet now you have blurted out your frustration to another person!

The last time you blew up rather than calmly and gently dealing with the fact that your wife or son or daughter isn’t yet perfect, your heart was pierced by the look of pain on your loved one’s face.

Yet here you are again, inflicting the same wounds on the tender hearts of those closest to you.

You know the scenario, and you know the taunts of Satan the Accuser that echo in your mind after one more failure:

“You call yourself a Christian? You hypocrite! You fraud! You blight on Jesus’ good Name!”

But God’s sure Word teaches you to reply to your prosecutor,

“True; guilty as charged.

But my place in the heart of God is secured not by my poor efforts to do or be good, but by Jesus’ fulfillment of perfect love for the Father and of sacrificial love for all of us for whom he died.

Your accusations have been answered and overcome by the blood of the Lamb, shed for me.

On top of that, the almighty God who began a good work in me will take that work all the way to perfection at the day of Christ Jesus.

Neither you, Satan, nor I can thwart his irresistible grace that will, someday, make me loving as my Savior is loving.

True, my sins have pained his heart, and so they pain my heart, too.

But my sins and selfishness and rebellion are not strong enough to stand against his almighty Spirit.

So, having stumbled again, I will pick myself up, knowing that he is picking me up.

I resume running the race in the strength his Spirit gives me, in the love his Son has shown me, in the joy he holds out before me and lets me taste even now.”

Coram Deo, Paul says to us that in the end, if we are clinging to Jesus Christ, we don't keep ourselves to the end, we are kept to the end.

We don't fuel our own race.

The fuel is supplied with every new mile stretching before us.

He that began the good work will complete it.

Jesus Christ always finishes what He starts in our lives.

Becoming a Christian was not a kickstart to your best efforts.

You are not in this alone.

Your stamina and ability and giftedness and determination and strength are not the measure of whether you'll finish the race of the Christian life;

the promise and power of God is.

In Christ, by the Holy Spirit, God the Father will infallibly, inevitably, and irresistibly bring you home.

So Paul overflows with thanksgiving because his beloved Philippians have not just begun well, but also because they are in God's hands--

the God who will see to it that they also end well.

Remember Coram Deo you are in God's hands.

You don't need to worry about where you will get the stamina for tomorrow, or how you'll make it through the trials you can see looming over the horizon.

You are in God's hands.

Believe today. Obey today. Be faithful today.

And you will find what you need tomorrow when tomorrow comes.

He who began a good work in you will complete it.

- Finally Paul is full of gratitude because of the Present.

Past, Future, and now Present.

Paul is thankful because their partnership in the gospel, animated and enabled as it is by the power of the Holy Spirit,

leads them to real participation with Him in actual gospel service here and now.

Look at verses 7-8:

Philippians 1:7–8 (ESV)

It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

They are all "partakers [with him] of grace.”

The word he uses there for "partakers" has the same root as the term he used earlier to speak about their "fellowship" or "partnership in the gospel.

It means that they really shared together in grace.

Grace saturates their lives and binds them one to another.

And that grace results in solidarity with Paul in his chains.

They were ready to lay down their comforts and their reputations and their very lives for the gospel in solidarity with Paul.

They would link arms with him and they would defy the world, the flesh, and the devil for the sake of the cause of Jesus Christ.

And they were also participants with him in ministry.

Ministry, in other words, was not something they were content to let Paul get on with. They didn't say,

"He's the apostle after all. He's the professional. He is the paid provider of spiritual goods and services. We are the consumers."

Tragically that can be our default setting, all too often?

Ministry is the work of the pastor. Passive consumerism is the work of the congregation, right?

Well, no one told the Philippians that!

They busied themselves, "in the defense and confirmation of the gospel."

They were out in a hostile culture defending and confirming the gospel message that Paul preached.

They were standing up for the truth and boldly defending the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

They linked arms with Paul, not just in suffering for the faith, but in defending and promoting it.

The Philippians church was well seasoned.

They had been well equipped for works of service, and so they rolled up their sleeves and got involved in the defense and confirmation of the truth alongside Paul.

If grace has gotten a hold of you, you will be eager to find ways to serve.

Mere consumerism will never satisfy you.

Grace will propel you into ministry.

This isn’t saying we just fill our time with busyness and churchy things

This means that if grace has won our hearts, we will find ourselves looking for new faces and befriending them.

We will identify younger believers and offer to read the Bible and pray with them once a week.

It will mean we'll be praying for and sharing the gospel with our colleagues and friends.

It will mean practicing hospitality and opening our homes.

It will mean giving and going, suffering and serving in the ordinary course of our daily vocations for the cause of the gospel.

That is what has happened to the Philippians.

Paul sees the evidence of their past partnership in the gospel, he clings to the promise of their future perseverance, he notes their present participation in real ministry, and he is filled with thanksgiving to God for them.

Conclusion

We have a confident gratitude. A gratitude that produces a partnership in the gospel.

With the show Ring of Power out I’ve been thinking back to the first book in Tolkien’s trilogy Fellowship of the Ring

In it Tolkien writes a thrilling story to illustrate this idea of gospel partnership.

The fellowship is made up of radical diversity-

little, resilient, pipe-smoking hobbits with big, hairy feet from the green Shire;

a few warrior men;

a wizard;

an elf with amazing archery skills;

and an out-from-under-the-mountains dwarf with an axe.

Together they share a common mission of defeating the forces of darkness and saving Middle-earth.

They were willing to die for one another and for the mission.

Paul says that in the fellowship of the gospel, we recognize our differences, but we celebrate our unity in Jesus

and commit to give ourselves for the mission of making the gospel known.

Is your perspective godward? You heart full of thanksgiving and joy?

Are you committed out of gratitude to partner with this body to make much of Jesus?

The gospel produces confident gratitude!

Let’s pray.