Joy Under Pressure
Written by Ed Allen
Sunday, 19 June 2005 09:19
Sermon Outline
Introduction
I had tremendous joy at hearing that Diane was pregnant. It was amazing that something as little as a baby could produce that much happiness. Our children have brought much joy, but mixed with frustrations and heart hurts as well. I've found that, even as great as they are, they don?t touch deepest parts of who I am. When I am depressed or discouraged, Jordan is powerless to help.
British theologian C.S. Lewis described happiness 50 years ago in terms that make even more sense today:
A car is made to run on petrol [gasoline], and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on himself. He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
PRAYER
Father?s Day is a perfect day for us to begin looking at Paul?s letter to the Philippians. Paul was very much aware of the fact that he was the spiritual father of the Philippian Christians; and they were aware of that fact as well. So as we work our way through this letter let?s think of a father writing a very personal note a beloved child ? a child whose life gives him great joy.
Philippians 1:1-6
1Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: 2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.Thanksgiving and Prayer
3I thank my God every time I remember you. 4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
When I write a letter, I start it with something like: ?Dear John.? In Paul?s time, letters typically started with the name of the sender. That was followed by the name of the recipient and then a brief greeting. For example, in A. D. 40 the Egyptian Ammonios began each of four surviving letters to his friend and business associate Aphrodisios with the phrase, ?Ammonios to his dearest Aphrodisios: Greetings.? And, we read an example in Acts 23 from the military commander in Jerusalem who was in charge of Paul. He began his letter to the governor of Judea with ?Claudius Lysias, To His Excellency, Governor Felix: Greetings.?
It?s fascinating how Paul takes this usual greeting form and bends it to his own higher purposes. For Paul, even a casual greeting was more than just a casual greeting.
He begins with his own name and the name of his companion Timothy ? nothing unusual here. Then he attaches a descriptive phrase. This was certainly not unheard of. Acts 15 records a letter from the apostles to Gentile Christians which begins: ?The Apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: Greetings.? Notice, they attach the descriptive phrase, ?your brothers.? Egyptian Pharoahs were known to attach descriptive phrases to their names in letter openings; phrases like, ?the son of the sun God,? ?the great ruler over all the earth,? etc.
But the descriptive phrase Paul chooses is striking and unique. ?Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus ?? The word servant here is not the word for indebted employee, a concept well known in the Ancient world. It is also not the word for house servant. This is the Greek word doulos which means slave. It is as if Paul is greeting them as Paul and Timothy, who occupy the bottom rung of society, despicable to many, under absolute service to their master Jesus Christ. This would have been very shocking except that I suspect the Philippians were used to Paul?s humility and his understanding of his place before God. However, we will find out as we work our way through this letter that this very much relates to part of Paul?s reason for sending the letter.
Next he addresses the Philippians and again here there are slight differences that indicate purpose. Paul addresses ?all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi together with the overseers and deacons.? Only three of his other letters address ?all the saints? in a given area and in none of those does he also address the leadership formally. Paul is clearly signaling to them that this letter is to be about the building of church unity.
The acknowledgement of recipients is then followed by a greeting. The typical casual Jewish greeting in Paul?s day was ?shalom? meaning peace. This was short for ?peace of God be upon you.? The typical letter, as we said, began with the general word ?charein? which means ?greeting.? But Paul exchanges ?charein? for ?charis? which means ?grace? and he added the Jewish greeting ?peace.? ?Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.?
This would be something like if you or I changed a typical greeting of our day like ?how?s it going?? to something like ?how?s God?s work in your life going?? In the same way, Paul took a casual ?hello? and loaded it with significance. It was familiar enough to be recognized but distinct enough to be powerful and meaningful.
After the opening, then, Paul launches into the body of his letter with a brief introduction to prayer and then in verses 9-11 a formal written prayer. Today, we?re just going to deal with verses 3 through 6.
?I thank my God every time I remember you.? The word thank here is the Greek word eucharisto from which we get our word eucharist. ?In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy ??
Let?s pause here and remind ourselves of the conditions under which Paul met the Philippians and under which the church in Philippi was started. Paul had not initially even planned on going to Greece. He had planned to conduct a campaign in Turkey, but he felt powerfully constrained by God to go to Greece and preach in Philippi. Upon arriving he finds a non-existent Jewish community ? and the Jewish community was always the launching point of his mission effort. So here he finds himself on completely foreign territory seemingly with no starting point. His initial efforts, however, meet with success through the conversion of a wealthy Gentile woman named Lydia. After this, things slow down a bit. Until, he accidentally creates a disturbance in town and ends up being beaten with rods and thrown in prison.
If it were me, the Philippian letter might have begun something like this: ?In all my prayers for you I am reminded of why I have so much back trouble, and I am reminded of the source of these fierce troublesome scars on my back and sides. I am reminded also of why I sometimes have trouble breathing, especially in humid weather.? My letter almost certainly would not have begun ?In all my prayers for you I always pray with joy.?
Let?s also remind ourselves of the conditions under which Paul writes this letter. He is once again in prison ? this time in Rome. The conditions are probably not as deplorable as they had been in Philippi. Paul is probably under house arrest in Rome. This means that he was free to entertain visitors and that he had some freedoms in what he ate; he certainly would have had exposure to the outside, like an occasional walk in the garden. But he would have been constantly accompanied by a Roman guard and his ability to move around town would have been eliminated. Worst of all, the specter of a trial and an uncertain future were hanging over his head. Would the upcoming trial mean freedom or death or something in between? He simply did not know.
Suffice to say, that Paul?s circumstances would have inspired something considerably south of joy in most of us. I think I would have been hard pressed to even pray at all, much less for the Philippians, and certainly not to pray with joy. I?d be begging God constantly about my own future. I?d be reminding him that he was the one that got me into this mess. So what is it about these Philippians that inspires such joy in Paul?
Well, he remembers, first of all, their participation in the gospel from the first day onward. This word ?participation? is the Greek word koinonia, which can mean partnership, sharing, association, fellowship or community. In this case, I believe Paul has in mind both their connection to Christ and to Paul himself, meaning their involvement with the Christian community of faith and he has specifically in mind their gifts to him over the months since he seen him which were given in support of his ministry. In fact, he uses this same word in 4:14-15 where he commends them for their generous gifts. He says they shared with him or koinoniaed with him in the matter of giving and receiving toward the advancement of his mission.
In short, when Paul thinks of the Philippians, he is reminded of God?s work among them arousing them to faith and inspiring them to give generously and consistently toward the advancement of that faith. He remembers Lydia?s gentle conversion on his very first Sabbath in Philippi and he remembers the Roman jailor?s dramatic conversion after he and Silas had been wrongly beaten and imprisoned. Paul remembers the generous gifts that kept flowing from these young Christians consistently throughout the rest of his missionary journeys ? these gifts came as proof of God sustaining their faith even in Paul?s absence. And those memories flood him with joy!
After noting their participation in the gospel effort, Paul adds a mind-bending truth that gives him further reason for joy: ?being confident of this that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.? Let?s pick this sentence apart. The word confident here also means ?persuaded, convinced.? After this Paul adds an emphatic form of the word this, so that we could legitimately translate this phrase ?precisely this.?
The phrase ?he who began? is a one word construction in the Greek. It is a participal, which Greek uses with great frequency and is sometimes hard to translate in English. We don?t have exactly this form of speech, at least not in the same way that it appears in Greek. It is literally a verbal noun. It could be translated, ?the initiator? or ?The beginner.? Even though this is not as common an English construction, it carries more of the weight of the Greek, than the way these participals are usually translated.
See how striking it is that the great initiator will also bring to completion; he will finish fully what he started. And he will do it leading up to and at the day of Christ Jesus. With his use of the phrase ?the day of Christ Jesus,? Paul is taping into an OT idea, which the old prophets called ?the Day of the Lord.? By this they meant that God would have his day; a day of reckoning, a day of assessment, a day of justice, a day of redemption, a day when history will come to an end finally and fully and all will be satisfied. A day when history will finally and fully become His Story. Christians believe that history does not run in an elaborate circle, nor does it amble aimlessly along. Christians believe that history runs in a straight line toward an appointed end point. One day all will be consummated and a completely new kind of reality will emerge. Paul here suggests that this great day will be the day of Christ Jesus. He suggests that the Jesus of history, the crucified Jewish Messiah, will be the centerpiece of the new epoch. The new reality will be his reality and everything that he started here, he will continue and he will complete. And this inspires Paul to joy.
Regardless of his circumstances, regardless of what he sees before him or what he feels at the present moment, Paul is able to tap into a deeper spring, a wellspring of joy. Because he knows that all that is happening now will be brought to its final and right conclusion regardless of how bad it seems at the moment. In summary: Paul is confident, he is persuaded of precisely this: the great initiator will bring to completion everything he started, throughout history and finally and fully on his great Day, the day of Christ Jesus.
So now let me end with some summary application points. I want to give you four points of application that I see from this text. You may see others, but this is what God brings to my mind.
First of all, Paul teaches us to relate to one another with humility. He will have more to say about this directly later in the letter, but here he says it by example. When I speak to people I haven?t seen in a long time I usually want to impress them with my resume of accomplishments. I don?t usually refer to myself as an unaccomplished go-fer for the cause of Jesus Christ. Paul sees himself, first and foremost, as Christ?s instrument. This sense of identity may be the singlemost important factor in why Paul was able to change the course of history and firmly plant the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the Southern and Eastern part of the continent of Europe. This sense of identity was also related to his abiding joy, but that?s for another Sunday.
Secondly, Paul?s encouragement teaches us something of the value of giving to the cause of Christ. Young people, when you go off to college or get out on your own, do not forget to give to the cause of Christ. By doing this, you will multiply God?s blessings.
The third and fourth points of application relate directly to joy. We could even call these two keys to joy. First of all, we build joy in our lives by recognizing what God has done, in us, around us, through us, and in others, around others and through others. This is a little like recognizing that the glass is half full. Now, for those of you who are pessimists, I?m not telling you to ignore the fact that the glass is half empty, but simply to recognize that even when it is half empty, it?s still half full. God is at work. He is on the move. Regardless of our circumstances, God is working. And recognizing that is a deep, constant and unshakable source of joy.
Lastly, and our second key to joy, build on the certainty that Christ will finish what he started.
Summary
What Inspires Paul's Joy?
1. His remembrance of their participation in the gospel.
2. His confidence that God will finish what He started.
Application Points
1. Relate to one another with humility.
2. Give to the cause of Christ.
3. Recognize what God has done and is doing. (Key to Joy #1)
4. Build on the certainty that Christ will finish what He started. (Key to Joy #2)