1. "You can't make much of yourself and make much of Jesus at the same time. One will always take the lead."

2. "If God had given me more reasons to be happy, I'd be more thankful. But it's the opposite. If you were more thankful, you'd see more of the reasons God has already given you to be happy."

3. "Thanksgiving is the enemy of both discontent and perfectionism."

4. "The gospel gives us group work and the gospel itself solves all the problems of group work."

5. "Grace births generosity. Communion with Christ births commitment to other Christians. Participation in Christ births partnership in proclaiming Christ."

6. "Paul's saying that the gospel is always on trial and every Christian is a witness for the defense. Your whole life is lived on the witness stand on behalf of the gospel of Christ."

7. "Your life will either adorn the gospel or deface the gospel. Everything you do is evidence one way or another in the world's trial of the gospel."

8. "Love is not a blind feeling but an informed commitment. A commitment to the other person's good. Love and knowledge are not rivals but best friends. Love without knowledge is blind and knowledge without love is dead."

9. "Be more ambitious to be godly than you are to be successful or influential. Be more ambitious to be godly than you are to be financially secure."

10. "Whatever threatens to divide you from another believer, know this: the solution will involve always one or both of you diving deeper into Christ and finding more in Christ."

Observation Questions

1. In Philippians 1:1, how does Paul identify himself and Timothy, and how does he describe the recipients of the letter in Philippi?

2. According to Philippians 1:3-5, what is the reason Paul gives for his joy and thanksgiving when he prays for the Philippians?

3. What promise does Paul express confidence in according to Philippians 1:6, and when will this promise be fulfilled?

4. In Philippians 1:7, what two things does Paul say the Philippians are partakers with him in, and what does he say about holding them in his heart?

5. According to Philippians 1:9-10, what specific qualities does Paul pray will increase in the Philippians, and what is the purpose of this increase?

6. What is the ultimate goal of being "filled with the fruit of righteousness" according to Philippians 1:11?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Paul identifies the Philippians only in terms of their identity "in Christ Jesus" rather than mentioning their status as citizens of a Roman colony? What does this teach us about Christian identity?

2. How does Paul's confidence that God "will bring it to completion" (v. 6) relate to the doctrine of perseverance of the saints? What role does human effort play alongside God's preserving work?

3. Paul says he yearns for the Philippians "with the affection of Christ Jesus" (v. 8). What does it mean to love other believers with Christ's own affection, and how is this different from ordinary human affection?

4. In verses 9-10, Paul prays that love would abound "with knowledge and all discernment." Why does Paul connect love so closely with knowledge and discernment rather than treating love as merely an emotion?

5. How does Paul's description of the Philippians' "partnership in the gospel" (v. 5) demonstrate that financial support of gospel work is itself a form of gospel ministry, not merely a secondary activity?

Application Questions

1. Paul deliberately makes less of himself to make more of Christ in how he introduces himself. When you meet new people, what credentials or accomplishments are you tempted to subtly highlight? What would it look like this week to consciously point conversations toward Christ rather than yourself?

2. The sermon emphasized that thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and perfectionism. Is there a relationship or church involvement you've been tempted to give up on because of a flaw or disagreement? How might dedicating focused prayer time to thanking God for every good thing about that person or situation change your perspective?

3. Paul says every Christian's life is evidence in the world's trial of the gospel—either adorning it or defacing it. In what specific area of your daily life (work, family, neighborhood) do you sense your conduct most visibly represents Christ to unbelievers? What one change could make your witness clearer this week?

4. The sermon challenged listeners to be "more ambitious to be godly than to be successful or influential." What specific goal, project, or pursuit in your life right now might be competing with your pursuit of godliness? What practical step could help you reorder these priorities?

5. Paul's prayer in verses 9-11 provides a model for praying for fellow believers. Who are two or three members of your church you could commit to praying for this week using Paul's specific requests—abounding love, knowledge, discernment, purity, and fruitfulness? When will you begin?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Acts 16:11-40 — This passage records the founding of the church in Philippi, showing the "first day" of the Philippians' partnership in the gospel that Paul references in verse 5.

2. 2 Corinthians 8:1-9 — Paul commends the Macedonian churches (including Philippi) for their generous financial partnership in gospel work, illustrating the same partnership theme central to Philippians 1.

3. 1 Timothy 3:1-13 — This passage provides the qualifications for overseers and deacons, the two offices Paul mentions in Philippians 1:1 as established for every local church.

4. Romans 8:28-39 — Paul develops the same confidence expressed in Philippians 1:6 that God will complete His saving work, showing how nothing can separate believers from God's preserving love.

5. Colossians 1:9-14 — Paul offers a parallel prayer for spiritual growth that emphasizes knowledge, fruitfulness, and endurance, reinforcing the same priorities found in his prayer for the Philippians.

Sermon Main Topics

I. What Brings People Together and What Drives Them Apart?

II. Identity in Christ (Philippians 1:1-2)

III. Partnership in Christ (Philippians 1:3-8)

IV. Progress in Christ (Philippians 1:9-11)

V. What Holds Christians Together

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Detailed Sermon Outline

What can bring people together? And what drives them apart?

Today it seems that one of the few things Americans can agree about is that we disagree about more and more.

It's not controversial to say that America is growing more fragmented and divided, though of course people disagree about why that is. And disagree even more about what should be done about it.

American public life is increasingly dominated by negative polarization in which both voters and politicians are more driven by loathing of their opponent and by loyalty to shared values. As one pair of political scientists put it, over the past few decades, American politics has become like a bitter sports rivalry in which the parties hang together mainly out of sheer hatred of the other team rather than a shared sense of purpose. The Atlantic's Derek Thompson has recently identified a sad further development of this negative polarization. Thompson writes, his phrase for it is reasoning from antagonism. Thompson writes, I think of reasoning from antagonism as negative polarization 2.0.

It's not just voting in opposition to a party, but orienting your theory of the world by deciding who you hate and then building a life philosophy around the opposite of their views.

Does that kind of reasoning from antagonism describe anybody you know?

It's easy to see what can drive people apart. It's sometimes harder to find what can bring them together. What kind of social glue can bind people together despite all that threatens to drive them apart? What kind of bond can hold up against disparity or disappointment? Or disagreement.

This morning we begin a series through Paul's letter to the Philippians. The letter starts on page 980 of the Pew Bibles. The apostle Paul wrote this letter in the early 60s A.D., probably about 62. And he wrote from prison in the city of Rome. Paul also wrote Ephesians, which Mark is preaching through right now, during that same imprisonment.

But Philippians is a more personal letter. The Christians in Philippi had long been financial supporters of Paul's ministry and they had recently sent him material support for his imprisonment. They did that through the hands of one of their members, Epaphroditus. So Philippians is in part a thank you letter, but it's much more than that. Our sermon this morning will consider the first 11 verses of this letter.

Please follow along as I read the passage.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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. And I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart. For you all are, excuse me, 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. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

What a happy letter. What a joyful beginning. Bit of a contrast with the old Ecclesiastes. After darkness, light.

This letter opens with a joyful, thankful celebration of Christians' shared participation in Christ and partnership in the gospel. You could say that the main question it answers is this: As Christians, what holds us all together?

The passage has three sections, and we'll find an answer in each.

Point number one, identity in Christ. Identity in Christ. We see this in the letters greeting in verses 1 and 2. Look again at those verses. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The very first word tells us Paul wrote this letter. And the inclusion of Timothy doesn't necessarily mean that Timothy was a co-author, since throughout the letter Paul refers to himself in the first person singular. It's about I, Paul, and he mentions Timothy in the third person. But what it does mean is that Timothy is there with Paul, and he's ministering both to Paul and with Paul. In Paul's imprisonment.

And Paul identifies himself and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus. A more literal rendering of this word would be slaves. Paul sees himself and he presents himself to the Philippians as totally submitted to and totally subservient to. Jesus Christ, his Lord and ours.

This is one of the few letters where Paul doesn't identify himself as an apostle. That's probably because, as one commentator put it, this is more of a progress-oriented than a problem-solving letter. In other words, Paul's main exhortation to the Philippians is not Stop it! But keep doing what you're doing. So Paul has no real reason to remind them of his authority.

We'll come back to that in a minute. Look how he identifies the Philippians to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons. He calls them all saints because to belong to Christ is to be holy. To belong to Christ is to be set apart and devoted to God. To belong to Christ is to be given a new nature that is increasingly conformed to God.

God's own holiness. It's to be a saint both by status and by experience. So Paul reminds the Philippians of who they are in Christ. Philippi, the city where these Christians lived, is in what is now northeast Greece. It was a wealthy, prominent city that lay along a major east-west trade route.

In 31 BC, the Emperor Augustus refounded the city as a Roman colony, sort of gave it a new political status. What that meant is that from that time, those who were settled there as colonists had Roman citizenship, they had extensive property and legal rights, and they were exempt from poll and land taxes. As a result, the colony of Philippi carefully cultivated and projected loyalty to the emperor.

In both politics and religion. And at that time, that would have meant offering some type of sacrifice, some type of religious worship to the emperor. That's what was involved in maintaining your loyalty to the highest earthly power. And of course, Christians' refusal to do that is going to be one of the big reasons they got in trouble with governing authorities from the very first days. Of the faith.

But as citizens, citizens of Philippi had much to be proud of in political terms. But notice how Paul simply doesn't mention any of that. He entirely ignores whatever worldly standing they might have had. Instead, he names the Philippians only in terms of who they are as belonging to Christ. Brothers and sisters, members of CHBC, can you truthfully say that belonging to Christ is the most important thing about you?

What competes with Christ in forming the foundation of what you value and how you see yourself?

When you meet someone for the first time, Do you ever try to subtly present yourself in the most impressive light possible? Nothing obvious, nothing that would be sort of gaudy or showy, but just a little subtle self-promotion. If you do, what do you reach for? Is it age and experience, degrees and credentials, your family or where you're from?

In addressing himself to his letters' recipients. Paul leaves plenty of social capital on the table, both his and theirs. So in the way he introduces himself, he deliberately makes less of himself in order to make more of Christ. He doesn't need to stand on his authority; he's just a slave of Christ. That's all they need to know about him is his master.

And in the way he addresses them, he subtly reminds the Philippians that who they are in Christ is what's most important about them. Far more important than any political standing they may have. You can't make much of yourself and make much of Jesus at the same time. One will always take the lead.

Even in this greeting, we get a glimpse of Paul's self-forgetting humility and Christ-exalting service. Even in this greeting, we get a glimpse that what unites us in Christ is far more important than anything that could divide us. You'll also notice that Paul addresses these Christians in Philippi in verse 1 together with the overseers and deacons. Overseers and deacons are the two offices that the New Testament establishes for every local church. Overseers are also called elders and they're consistently referred to in the plural multiple overseers or elders in a single local church.

We find the qualifications for both elders and deacons in 1 Timothy 3. Elders exercise spiritual oversight. Deacons facilitate practical service. That's the difference between those two offices in a nutshell. Elders exercise spiritual oversight.

Deacons facilitate practical service. So this verse is one reason why our church has both elders and deacons and why every local church should have both elders and deacons. In verse 2, Paul greets the Philippians. He's identified who the letter is from, who it's for, now he greets them. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who gives us grace? It's from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. But this is not two graces and two pieces from two sources. Instead, it's one singular saving gift of grace and peace. And it comes from a single source.

This grace comes to us from the Father and the Son together. Now, how can grace and peace come to us from the Father and Son together as a single source? Because they together with the Holy Spirit are one God. They exist in the one unique, undivided, divine nature. And everything they do in creation and salvation, they do inseparably.

Now, what is this grace and peace? Grace is God's favor given without regard to the worth of its recipients. Grace is God giving us what we've done nothing to deserve. And what we've done everything not to deserve.

And peace is grace's result. When God gives you grace, peace with Him is what comes from that grace. So in a nutshell, this is the Christian gospel. This is the Christian life in this greeting. A normal sort of secular Greek letter would simply have a health wish, like we might often start an email with, I hope you're well.

But Paul has in view something far deeper, something far more important, something far more lasting. At his hands, a stock Greek letter greeting has turned into gospel. It's like Paul has a Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to gospel. What you most need from God is this grace and peace.

And that's why God the Father sent his son into the world. All of us have rebelled against God. None of us deserve to be in a right relationship with God. What we deserve from him is wrath and condemnation, the opposite of grace and peace. But God is himself gracious and merciful.

He's rich in mercy and loving kindness to those who don't deserve it. So on the cross, God laid the punishment due to our sin on Christ. And then on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead and triumphed over death.

To bring about a victorious kingdom that all those who repent and trust in him will share in. On the cross, Christ endured what you deserve so that you could receive the peace that only he deserves. If you're not a believer in Jesus, turn to him, trust in him, and be saved. What you need far more than you need health or prosperity or success is grace from God that gives you peace with God.

So, for those of us who are Christians, what holds us together? Our identity in Christ. But not only that. Point two, partnership in Christ. Partnership in Christ.

We see this partnership in verses 3 to 8.

Here Paul begins his letter as he begins almost all of his letters with thanksgiving. So in verses 3 to 8, Paul opens his letter by thanking God for the Philippians and by reminding them of why he's thankful for them. His thanksgiving centers on the partnership that binds all of them to him. Look first verses 3 to 5.

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. Here Paul tells us that he prays frequently for the Philippians and whenever he does he's both joyful and thankful. The reason for this constant joy and thanks boils down to one word which you see in verse 5: partnership. This partnership in the gospel refers both to the Philippians sharing with Paul in the benefits of the gospel and they're joining with Paul to advance the gospel.

And verse 5, the phrase from the first day until now, means that as soon as the Philippians came to Christ, they joined with Paul in proclaiming Christ. Specifically, as soon as there was a church in Philippi, that church began to financially support Paul's missionary work. That's what Paul tells us in chapter 4 of verse 15. So as soon as the Philippians believed the gospel, they began to advance the gospel. In our weekly intern discussion this past Thursday, Kevin Kim shared that when he came to faith in college, he just started sharing the gospel with people.

He was like, I just thought, that's what you do. And that is just what you do. That's just what the Philippians did. It was natural. It's the natural reflex and outgrowth of coming to faith in Christ.

Those who have been born again, they don't need anybody to tell them to share the gospel. They just start to. We see that as the evidence, one of the evidences of new birth having taken place. And Paul never stopped thanking God for how the Philippians did this. They advanced the gospel together with Paul through both their words and their money.

We're going to think a bit about both as we go on. Verses three to five pivot on two themes. Thanksgiving and partnership. So I want to briefly meditate on each. Thanksgiving and partnership.

First, Thanksgiving. Brothers and sisters, I thank God for you. I thank God for your love for Christ and for each other. I thank God for your love of the gospel. I thank God for your sacrificial service to each other.

I thank God for deacons, and wedding coordinators, and all the people serving in children's ministry right now, and all of you who do on a regular basis, I thank God for youth volunteers. I thank God for people who help with building managing and hall monitoring and making meals for those who've just had babies and so many other practical areas of loving service. I thank God for your unity with each other. I thank God for the number of times I've heard about church members' warm friendships growing closer through disagreement rather than farther apart.

Praise God. I thank God for your joyful embrace of the Bible's countercultural teaching about what it means to be men and women. I thank God for your hunger to hear God's Word. When people ask me what it's like to be one of the pastors here, I always talk about how hungry you are all just to hear the Bible. You guys are so hungry just to hear the right thing.

You want to know what it says. You want to do it. You want to believe in it. It's so encouraging during the long hours of weekly preparation to know that you guys are listening for exactly the right things. It's a huge encouragement as I labor on the text.

I thank God for your spirit of joyful eagerness in corporate worship. I can think of a friend who recently visited a prominent church and he walked in and he just said there was a weird, uncanny, like something in the air was not right. Brothers and sisters, by God's grace, isn't there such a spirit of joyful eagerness and expectation, that's because you all are coming with hearts alive to God, wanting to meet with God and glorify God. I thank God for your creative ideas of how to extend this church's ministry. So here's one good recent example.

Darren and Amy Rogers are deacons of college and student ministry. Instead of doing a separate Bible study for college students and interns, they decided to just hitch up a once a month event to the regular after Wednesday night Bible study get-together that Patrick Houlihan and Chase Harrington host across the street.

Great idea. Get more college students coming to Bible study on Wednesday night. Help them get to know church members who are already involved. That's brilliant. I love that.

Let's have more of that.

I thank God for your generous, steadfast partnership with our supported workers. For the ways you pray for them, find ways to bless them and encourage them, deepen new relationships with them when they're visiting. I thank God for all the of that. Brothers and sisters, how often do you thank God for other members of this church? Not thanking God for this or that gift God's given them or not thanking God simply for this or that good turn they've done for you or for somebody else, but simply thanking God for them.

The person is the gift. If you don't do that much, it would be a good habit to start.

Thanksgiving is the enemy of both discontent and perfectionism. You might say, if God had given me more reasons to be happy, I'd be more thankful. But it's the opposite. If you were more thankful, you'd see more of the reasons God has already given you to be happy. Compare Two factors in your life with two factors in Paul's.

Those factors are level of thankfulness and amount of suffering. Just think for a moment. The circumstances in ancient Roman prisons were typically that a prisoner would be physically chained to a guard. So Paul was attached by some metal contraption to a person whose job it was to keep him imprisoned. And here he is, overflowing with joy, overflowing with thanks.

He can't get out of the gate without telling them like five times how thankful he is for them. Paul's just overflowing with gratitude to God in the midst of circumstances that, by any definition, are not very pleasant. By any definition would not seem very productive, by any definition would not really seem to be conducive to having these really rich, full, quiet times where you're thanking God for this church that's like 600 miles away. What about in your life? Thanksgiving versus suffering.

Thanksgiving is also the enemy of perfectionism.

Are you tempted to give up on a friend because of a single flaw? Are you tempted to give up on a church because of a single disagreement? What if instead of doing that, you simply set aside a time of prayer dedicated entirely to thanking God for every good thing you can think of in that person or that church?

How might that change your heart?

If you're not a believer in Jesus, we're glad you're here. We hope something of what you've seen here, encountered here this morning is piquing your interest in what it means to follow Christ. I'd be happy to talk to you about what that means at the door afterward. My main question for you this morning is this: what are you thankful for? And who do you have to thank?

Think of the first five or so things that come to mind in terms of what you're thankful for. Who do you have to thank for those? For some of them it might be family or friends or colleagues, someone who's invested in you generously. But what about for some of the happiest and most definitive events in your life? For some of those there might not be someone who's directly responsible.

Your friend just happened to invite their former roommate to a dinner and you just happened to sit next to them and then three years later you were married. Who do you have to thank for that?

If you don't believe in a personal God, when you are at your most thankful, can you thank anyone?

That's thankfulness. Now for partnership, the other main theme in verses 3 to 5. In verse 5 we learn that the Philippians shared the burden of Paul's ministry, they shared the work of Paul's ministry and they share the credit. The apostle Paul himself sometimes depended on other believers and churches to materially sustain him. So here he is stuck in prison and ancient prisons in the Mediterranean world did not provide for the basic needs of their inmates.

There was no daily ration of food. You were totally dependent on whatever other supporters you had in the world out there in order to survive and eat. So Paul's daily bread came from the Philippians' financial support. And Paul doesn't treat the Philippians as mere supporters. He treats them more like stakeholders in the advance of the gospel.

Their work with him made them his partners. And as we'll see, they did the same work in Philippi that Paul was doing in Rome. Who here remembers getting assigned group work in school? It never seemed to go very well. You know, most of the kids immediately tune out and slack off.

Okay, there goes like 60% of the group. Thank you very much for your contribution. You know, maybe your natural go-getter sort of takes charge, whether anybody really wants them to or not. Then you're sort of left stuck figuring out, okay, how are we going to divide all this up? How are we going to bring it all back together and make it one coherent thing?

Who's really in charge here? Kind of makes me stressed out just thinking about it.

The gospel gives us group work and the gospel itself solves all the problems of group work.

The gospel gives us a worldwide mandate to go and make disciples of all nations. So Jesus commands us to do in Matthew 28, verse 19. That great commission that Jesus gives is bigger than Paul, it's bigger than the Philippians, it's bigger than every preacher, it's bigger than every church. We all have to work together, not only within a local church but beyond with other churches in order to fulfill this mandate. But the gospel also solves the problems of group work.

How can we trust each other and commit to each other? We can do that because we first of all committed to Christ and submitted to him. How can we handle hurdles and disagreements that would threaten to break up whatever partnership we're in by loving each other as we've been loved? Grace births generosity. Communion with Christ births commitment to other Christians.

Participation in Christ births partnership in proclaiming Christ. In some ways, that's a summary of the whole letter right there. Participation in Christ births partnership. In proclaiming Christ. That's Philippians in a nutshell.

Brothers and sisters, this idea of being stakeholders and partners is a major factor that shapes our church's approach to international missions. We want to form serious, long-term, multifaceted partnerships with believers we know and trust who are working to establish churches and raise up pastors in places where Christ is little known. We value long-term faithfulness, not short-term flashiness. And we try to invest deeply in relatively few partners in relatively few places so that we can be some of the primary stakeholders for the workers that we support. That's so that we can gain a 3D high-resolution view of their work, their needs, their struggles, and their opportunity.

So this is one of the reasons why we have a missions house in our new Sixth Street housing where the Smythes are currently staying. It's why we'd love to send new workers to work alongside workers we already support so we can deepen an existing partnership. And it's why we regularly send elders and members to go visit supportive workers like Riley Barnes and Mark Feather are about to do this week, which we'll hear about in our evening service. It's also why whenever we have supported workers visit us, we interview them in our prayer meeting on Sunday night.

So Lord willing tonight at 5 p.m. I'll interview two of our church's newer supported workers, Tommy Vanderwaal of South Africa and Mike Christ who's serving in Zambia and Kenya. So come back tonight and pray for them and learn how we can partner with them. Interestingly, Tommy and Mike in different ways are both involved in training pastors in sub-Saharan Africa. So some interesting similarities in their work.

We can learn about the differences too. Come back and learn how we can partner with them in supporting their work from a distance. Just like the Philippians did with Paul. That's thankfulness and partnership, all from verses 3 to 5. In verse 6, Paul tells the Philippians why he is so confident in them.

Hint, his confidence isn't finally in them. Look at verse 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.

Here in verse 6, the good work that God began in the Philippians is not their financial partnership with Paul, it's referring to the broader, deeper work of their salvation. Their generous, steadfast support for Paul is one among many evidences of the reality of their faith. And because God is the one who began this work of salvation, God is the one who will both continue and complete the work. Salvation is God's work from first to last. If you trust in Christ, that's because God put forth the creative power that he alone has in order to make you into a new creation.

If you love God and his people, that's because God has performed spiritual heart surgery on you in order to implant his own love within you so that you would love him and his people with a love that is indestructible. If you trust in Christ, you can be confident that you will persevere because you can be confident that God is the one who will preserve you. Here is in so many places in Scripture is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. But notice who it is that perseveres: saints. Just like Paul says in verse 1.

Paul does not here promise that everyone who mouths a certain form of words will inherit heaven. Instead, he promises that God will complete what he has begun and God's work in us is known by its fruits. Fruits like love for God, love for his people, generosity in sustaining gospel work. Those are some of the fruits of God's saving work in us. Brothers and sisters, members of CHBC, if you're going through a season of spiritual darkness, or dryness, take comfort from the fact that God began this work and God will finish it.

Take comfort from God's promise to preserve His people. Take comfort from God's promise to finish His own work. Take comfort from evidence in your life that God has saved you and is saving you. And if you struggle to see that evidence, then simply trust in God's grace. As Spurgeon said, this is the true theory of perseverance.

It is to persevere in being nothing and letting Christ be everything. And notice when God will bring this work to completion in verse 6, it's at the day of Christ Jesus, excuse me, at the day of Jesus Christ, meaning when Christ returns, to raise the dead and grant us our eternal reward. God's moral work in you will be complete at death when you see Christ face to face. But God's total work in you will not be complete until you rise imperishable from the dead.

So when God's work in you seems slow and stuttering, when it seems like you might be moving backward rather than forward, Remember to fix your eyes on eternity. When nothing in this creation makes sense, fix your eyes on the coming new creation.

In verses 7 and 8, Paul returns to his main theme of why he is so joyfully thankful for the Philippians. Look down at verses 7 and 8.

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. So the reason Paul gives for why he holds the Philippians in his heart is this: you are all partakers with me of grace, meaning they share in the same salvation Paul has. And they also share in all its public outworkings.

Now, they've taken a special share in those public outworkings by supporting Paul in prison. But I think Paul means more than that. Paul is saying that he has been imprisoned because of the gospel. And he will soon stand trial to publicly defend the gospel. That's what he's looking ahead to later in chapter one when he anticipates that he will soon be released.

So it's Paul's imprisonment that gives him a particular role in defending and confirming the gospel. But Paul says the Philippians partake of or participate in that same work of confirming and defending the gospel all the way over there in Philippi. And even though they're not in prison. Paul's saying that the gospel is always on trial and every Christian is a witness for the defense.

Your whole life is lived on the witness stand on behalf of the gospel of Christ.

The biggest and best confirmation of the gospel that you can offer to a watching world is a life that adorns the gospel. A life that makes God's grace look free and powerful and transforming like it really is. Your life will either adorn the gospel or deface the gospel. Everything you do is evidence one way or another in the world's trial of the gospel. In these verses, Paul's language about his love for the Philippians is so strikingly affectionate.

Verse 7, I hold you in my heart. Verse 8, I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. Partnership in the gospel calls us to open up our hearts even more than our pocketbooks. That holds for our partnership with each other as members of this church. And it holds for our partnerships with workers that we support.

Paul tells the Philippians, I yearn for you with the affection of Christ Jesus, meaning he loves them like Christ loves them. He loves them because Christ himself is in him and Christ himself loves them. This is exactly the opposite of the kind of reasoning from antagonism that we were thinking about a moment ago. Paul's not reasoning from antagonism, he's reasoning from affection.

And that affection is not a sort of mere wish or positive thinking. That affection is Christ's own affection. That affection is Christ himself saying of that brother or sister, predestined, chosen, purchased, justified, will persevere, will be glorified. That's how Christ views that person. That's the affection of Christ for that person.

And Paul is saying that affection is in me and it overflows to you. There's probably no more convicting part of the text for me this week than right there. What does it mean to love each other with the affection of Christ? What does it mean to see each other as Christ sees us? What does it mean for me to look at you the way Christ has looked at me?

That's the test of each of our love for each other. That kind of love, that kind of free, overflowing, comes from nowhere so it can go everywhere kind of love has got to be the deepest ingredient in our partnership with each other. That kind of love is the only glue that can hold people together. Despite anything that would threaten to pull them apart.

If you're a member of CHBC, you're a stakeholder in this church's whole ministry and in all of our partnerships. What binds you to every other church member is participation in Christ that leads to partnership in proclaiming Christ. So love each other. With the affection of Christ.

Point three, progress in Christ. What holds us together? Our shared prayer for and striving for progress in conformity to the character of Christ. This is what Paul prays for in verses 9 to 11. Look again at those verses: and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

There is no truer revelation of who you are than what you pray for. As Robert Murray M'Cheyne said, what a man is on his knees before God, that he is and nothing more. What was Paul on his knees before God? He was a man constantly concerned for others and concerned above all for their conformity to Christ.

This tells us what Paul's highest priorities were. Love formed by discernment to bring about consistent, abundant, righteous fruit, all for God's glory. Love, discernment, fruit, God's glory. Let's briefly look at those one by one. First, love.

It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more. Love for who? I think the most immediate reference is love for each other. But this love flows from and is shaped by love for God. And Paul prays for our love to abound.

The love that flows through a church shouldn't be a trickle but a flood that sweeps every member into its current.

Second, discernment. Paul prays that their love may abound with knowledge and all discernment. Love is not a blind feeling but an informed commitment. A commitment to the other person's good. Love and knowledge are not rivals but best friends.

Love without knowledge is blind and knowledge without love is dead. And what's the goal of this discernment? Paul tells us in verse 10, so that you may approve what is excellent.

Wisdom involves not only telling right from wrong, but telling more valuable from less and essential from non-essential. Christian discernment involves knowing the difference between what is binding and what is not binding, between what is required and what is optional. Discernment involves submitting wholeheartedly to whatever God says is binding and refusing to force others to what isn't. Binding.

Third, Paul prays for consistent, abundant, righteous fruit. Verse 10, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. Paul is praying that you will live now as you will want to have lived when you stand before Christ. When he says pure and blameless, he means consistently holy, consistently obedient, consistently devoted to the Lord and his commands and his purposes. We do not fulfill this perfectly now, but we do fulfill it personally, however partially.

To be consistently, though not perfectly, holy is a real attainable goal of the life of faith here and now. So here Paul's praying for righteous fruit. He's praying for changed hearts that lead to changed words and actions and lives.

He's praying that your life more and more will be an abundant harvest of holiness. He's praying that your life will be as full of righteous fruit as was the pumpkin patch that I visited with my family yesterday. We said to the kids, you can each get one pumpkin. Rose comes back with a 20 pounder. Okay, we said you can have it, there you go.

Margaret just kept picking up pumpkin after pumpkin after pumpkin. How do you refuse a two-year-old? Who's getting that many pumpkins? What are we going to say? No?

That there's so many, right? How do they choose? How do they pick which one they want? That type of abundance is what Paul's praying for in terms of righteousness in your life. That type of abundance is what he's encouraging you to aim for and to pray for, for yourself and others.

Fourth, all this is for God's glory. That's the end of Paul's prayer and it's the ultimate end of all we do. Look at the very end, verse 11, to the glory and praise of God. So whatever you do, ask whether it can be done for God's glory. If it can't, don't.

Whatever you do, ask how it can be done for God's glory. Make God's glory your greatest aim and ultimate ambition. Do you want to know how to grow as a Christian? I pray that you would care far less about making yourself look good and far more about making God look good. It's crucial for many businesses to have a growth plan.

It could be necessary in order to attract donors and to secure funding. If the business doesn't meet those goals on schedule, you might find it difficult to get the next round of funding. Or you might find talented employees who start to jump ship for more lucrative gigs. Relentless competition and market pressures force business leaders to constantly develop and stress test and reinvent growth plans.

What Paul prays for in verses 9 to 11 is basically a Christian growth plan. But it is different in so many fundamental ways than anything in the business world or anything that you would compare it to apart from the grace of God and the power of the Spirit.

The power in all this is from God. That's why Paul is praying for these things and not just telling them to do it. The power is from God and he delights to answer prayers like this. And the growth happens by relying on God's power rather than on any human resources. God is the only one who can fund your growth as a Christian with his own limitless resources of spiritual power.

And he supplies the necessary means and answer to prayer. So pray for all this for yourself and others. Some people who study organizations talk about the critical line, which is the path that an organization has to walk, the path the leader has to keep an eye on, in order to arrive at the desired goal with a minimum of loss and inefficiency. There's a sort of, you know, go in the wrong direction, you don't get anywhere, and if you go in the right direction but too slow or it takes too much resources, the thing might fall apart. There's a sense in which what Paul is praying for here is the critical line.

Of Christian growth. It's critical in the sense that whatever is in your life that is out of keeping with these things, a prayer like this should help you cut it off. Whatever decision you're contemplating making that could work against these purposes, let Paul's prayer be a critical line to slice through it like a knife. Just cut it off. No business can afford taking on needless debt.

No business can afford being overleveraged beyond a certain point. Let Paul's prayer be that critical line that helps you foster discernment. What do you need to get rid of and what do you need to strive for in order for these things to be a reality in your life? One of the best and simplest ways you can apply these verses is this: Pray them. Pray them for yourself and pray them for others.

Walk through our membership directory and pray this prayer for fellow members phrase by phrase. You know you're on firm ground since God the Holy Spirit inspired this very prayer. You know you are praying for stuff God wants you to and stuff he wants for that brother and that sister. Brothers and sisters, it is easy to care too little about godliness and too much about about things that matter far less. Be more ambitious to be godly than you are to be successful or influential.

Be more ambitious to be godly than you are to be financially secure. Paul glories in relying on God and depending on God. That's godliness. Not independence but dependence. Be more ambitious to be godly than to climb the ladder at work.

As we saw in Ecclesiastes over and over again, none of those things will last.

But godliness will get you ready for the last day. Godliness will prepare you for an eternity of joy. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:7, Godliness holds promise both for the present life and also for the life to come.

What holds us together?

Our shared prayerful pursuit of progress in Christ.

What drives people apart? What can bring them together? Sometimes five months or five years pass and you look up, look around, and realize you just drifted apart from that friend. What held you together didn't last.

But what about as Christians? What keeps us tied to each other and happy about it? A common identity, a common partnership, and a common pursuit of progress all in Christ, through Christ, and for the sake of Christ. If those things don't seem like enough, What has gotten in the way?

Whatever threatens to divide you from another believer, know this: the solution will involve always one or both of you diving deeper into Christ and finding more in Christ.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for extending the good news and saving power of Jesus to us. We thank you for the joy and of being united to you and each other, and we pray that we would abound in righteous works for Christ's glory. We pray that you would sustain and renew and deepen our partnership with each other and the partnerships we have to proclaim your gospel beyond this city. Father, we pray that you would bring this work to completion in all of us for your glory and praise. In Jesus' name, amen.