out of the gate and I messed
up. Philippians chapter four. I think
there's three or four more lessons before we'll be finished with
this book. Philippians chapter four. Our Father, we've met together
to worship in the name of your Son, and this is impossible for
us, but with you all things are possible. We pray that everything
that might hinder our worship, that you would take it out of
the way, forgive our sins, push out our natural cares from our
thoughts, and may we learn of Christ, and may we be changed
by the sight of him. In the name of Christ, we pray
it, amen. Now, as is usual with the Apostle
Paul, when he comes to the end of one of his letters, having
given general exhortations, he begins to mention people by name,
maybe with some instructions specific to them, or just greeting
them specifically. But if we could put a theme on
this last chapter, It would be contentment based upon a single-mindedness
concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. In truth, when it comes to our
conduct and our attitude, that really should be a concept that
is in everything we do. I know in one place Paul says,
whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel. And contentedness is one of those
things that is worthy or consistent with the gospel of Christ. And this single-mindedness, which
brings contentment, is addressed again in the context of settling
differences between believers and in standing fast against
those who oppose the faith or who cause division. He says,
therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and
crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear
friends. Now, the general exhortation,
you know, if you take this sentence and do as we were taught in grammar
class and diagram it, find out what is the main phrase or whatever,
it's this, stand firm in the Lord. I guess strictly the subject
and the verb is, that is. But the concept is, that is how
you should stand firm in the Lord. And you stand firm in the
Lord by everything that Paul has said up to that point. Now, what does it mean to stand
firm in the Lord. Well, it implies the fact that
there is a tendency for us to slip, a tendency for us to not
press on towards Christ, a tendency for us to compromise where we
shouldn't. And so we are to stand firm against
all opposition to our pressing forward to Christ, to our rejoicing
in Him, to our having no confidence in the flesh, we're to stand
firm in worshiping God in the Spirit, and we're supposed to
stand firm as those who are dearly loved of the Lord, and as those
whom we dearly love in the Lord. Now, Notice this, he says, my
brothers whom I love. Now in a few minutes he's gonna
speak of a couple in the church, a couple of women in the church,
who had fallen out with one another. Now notice Paul does not take
sides with one of them. He addresses the entire church,
and even back in the days of when the scriptures were written,
The term brothers was used to include everyone within a group,
whether they were male or female. This is not, as some progressives
of today would say, some patriarchal aspect of the Bible. It was the
language of the day, and when they said brothers, when Paul
wrote brothers, he included in that the men and the women. He
said, therefore, my brothers, you whom I love. So that's the
whole crowd there at the church, those who were getting along
and those who were not getting along. And he says, I love you
and I long for you. He desired to be among them.
Now, there's many different kinds of love, many different ways
it's expressed, but the Philippian church held a special place in
Paul's heart. They took care of him when other
churches failed to do so. And evidently, he had a very
pleasant time whenever he was among them. Well, you always
long to be around people like that, so he longed to be with
them. And notice this, he says, you're my joy. When I think of you, says Paul,
it brings joy to my heart. Some of the other churches, when
he would think of them, it brought care. It would, uh, imagine the
Galatian church when it was going through that struggle with those
who wanted to bring Jewish law into the scheme of salvation. He'd hear the word Galatia and
it would, it would hurt. But he says, you're my joy. When
I hear about you, my spirits are raised. And then he says,
my crown. Once again, this is not a Royal crown. This is an
athletic crown. The kind of award we would call
it in our Olympic traditions, you know, you get gold, silver,
or bronze medal or something like that. Back then they would
give a little circlet. Sometimes it was actually made
out of laurel part of a laurel vine or something, but I guess
depending on how important the race was, they would make some
out of gold or something gold-plated. But it was the trophy that you
won as a result of your efforts. And he says, you are my crown. Now, for gospel preachers, their
crown in this world is those whom God
has blessed through their ministry. They certainly have nothing that
the world would crown them for. And I'm sure that that's why
many who claim to be gospel ministers really don't minister much, if
at all, in the gospel, because the world will give them no credit
for that. The world does not bestow honors
upon gospel preachers. So what is it that the gospel
preacher sees as the proof of his ministry and is that in which he rejoices? And that's simply
those whom God has called and kept through his ministry. So he has set forth to these
Philippians how important they are to him, and given them this
exhortation to stand firm in the Lord. And then note this
distinctive about this sentence. He says, therefore, my brothers,
he calls them by an affectionate term. Then he says, whom I love. And then he ends with, Our translation
says, dear friends, but once again, it is whom I love. So in one verse, he has addressed
them with words specifically designed to show them that his
heart was for them. He loved them. He loved them
as parents love children. Now in the second verse, he says,
I plead with Euodia, and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each
other in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, loyal yoke
fellow, help these women who have contended at my side in
the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of
my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. Now
we have presented in these two verses the reality of the life
of a church in this world. Paul describes or mentions several
people. Two women, one named Euodia and
the other Syntyche. He mentions someone he addresses
as Loyal Yokefellow. Now that word Yokefellow Some
think that that's actually a name, Syzygous. And I tend to believe
that our translations handled it properly. And it's probably
a reference to Epaphroditus. You remember him? He was one
that Paul was sending back to the Philippians. He came from
Philippi, but he traveled with Paul. And when he was with Paul,
he got sick and Paul returned him because the people of Philippi
were very concerned about him. But this Epaphroditus, he had
been a helper to Paul. And so he called him. the loyal
yoke fellow. I found it interesting as I looked
this up in the original languages, the word loyal actually, it sometimes just means
genuine, but it comes from meaning legitimately born. It's a word
that its original reference was to one who was born of two people
who were married at the time that they were conceived and
born. The opposite of what we today, and I think it's an unfortunate
word, but we talk about illegitimate children. Well, this was the
opposite of that, legitimate children. And so it meant, you
know, came to mean genuine. And Epaphroditus was indeed a
genuine yoke fellow with Paul. Now notice that Paul uses a word
here. that if you understand anything
by the law, you see that he is, as it were, elevating Epaphroditus
to the same status as him, as of being of the same kind. Because
remember, the law says you cannot yoke two unlike animals together. Now, Paul was an apostle. So
far as a position within the church, That's as high as you
could get apart from Christ himself. And there were only 12 apostles
of Christ and there never have been any since then. And these
12 apostles were charged with spreading the gospel and setting
up the church. And Paul in particular was sent
to the Gentile nations. And yet he doesn't look at this
loyal yoke fellow or genuine yoke fellow and think of him
as a lesser worker. He says, you were my yoke fellow.
And then he mentions a man named Clement and then many other fellow
workers. Now, in this group, of people that
he mentions. There were two who had fallen
out with one another, Euodia and Syntyche. Now I looked up
the meaning of their names. Euodia means good way or prosperous. And then Syntyche, it means to come together. to
meet, to cross paths. And I think it's interesting
that that's the name of these women, that they had, they were
on the good way. There's only one good way, and
that's Christ. And they had crossed paths with
one another on that good way. However, despite that reality,
something had divided them. Now, we don't know what the trouble
was. We don't know what divided these
two sisters. I think that a lot of these details
are left out of the scriptures so that we're able to apply them
to any kind of problem, similar problem that may come up in the
church. Just like when Paul talked about his thorn in the flesh,
he never did tell us what that thorn was. Why? Well, because
all of us have different thorns. And if he'd have mentioned his
thorn, we wouldn't have thought it applied maybe whatever our
thorn in the flesh is. So it's kind of left blank. So
we don't know what the dispute was, but it was enough of a dispute
between these two ladies that Paul knew about it and he addressed
it under the inspiration of the Spirit. Now, it might have been
a disagreement between these two women concerning the different
preachers. Remember how when we began looking
at this letter from Paul, he addressed how the different preachers
did things different ways, and not all of them had good motives
in what they were doing? And maybe there was a dispute
between these women over these different preachers. Or maybe
there were some kind of dispute about how to handle those he
mentions In chapter 3, the ones he calls the dogs, the concision,
those who were trying to bring legalism within the church, maybe
one of them took a much harsher stand against these people or
whatever, that could have been the problem. The important thing to note about
this disagreement is Heaven took note of it. And heaven took enough
note of it to inspire the Apostle Paul to write about it. So that we, 2,000 years later,
would know about it and know how to handle such disputes as
they may arise within our own congregations. Now the fact that
this dispute is between two women is of no significance. He's not
acting as though women are more likely to have disputes with
one another than men are. Now it's true, at least in my
experience, that women handle disputes differently than men
and men handle them differently than women, but that's just,
that's an irrelevant point. The scriptures have been twisted
by many to give women a second class position in the church.
The scriptures never do that, not even to hint at it. In fact,
it's very plain in the scriptures that in Christ there is no difference
between male and female. So when Paul mentions these two
women, he's not saying, no brother, women causing trouble. No, it's
just two people. And two sincere believers, two
very committed believers, two very active believers, because
he says to them, these women have contended at my side." There
was a time when these two women evidently either while he was
in Philippi or they went with him on some of his missionary
journeys but they were there fighting the fight right with
him. Now some translations refer to them as fellow laborers and
then again You see down at the end, it mentions fellow workers,
but it's interesting that it's two different Greek words. And
the words applied to these two women, well, it's the word for
together, coupled with the word for athlete. And so it's saying
these two women, they've been out there in the fight. They've
been out there in the contest, as it were, with me, contending
with me against the enemy. And he pleads with these two
women to agree with each other in the Lord. Now, he's not pleading
with them to agree about the Lord. They already do that. If they didn't agree about the
Lord, they would not have been considered in the Lord. At least
one of them would have had to have been outside. Everybody
in Christ agrees about Christ. So the issue between these two
women was not any issue regarding Christ, who he is, what he's
done. It was not an issue, what we would call a gospel issue. Again, we don't know what it
was, but it wasn't an issue over the gospel. And what he's telling
them is, in as much as both of you are in the Lord, whatever
it is that's causing a dispute between you is not worth the
trouble. the dispute is causing. That
being agreed about the Lord and being in the Lord together is
something of much greater value than anything which might divide
you. Now, we understand this principle,
don't we? I mean, we use it in life. We
have families. We have our immediate family.
And we love them. Husbands, wives, children, and
we have our extended family, parents, brothers, sisters, and
their families and all. Okay, disputes arise, don't they? And most of the time, we let
these disputes go. Why? Because we count them and
the relationship we have with them as family to be more important
than whatever disputes may tend to divide us. How much more true this is in
the family of God. Being united in Christ, what
is there in the world that could divide us? It just shows that the best of
men are men at best, The best of women are women at best, they're
humans. We foolishly allow lesser things
to divide us over the more important things. Now, the fact that this issue
has reached heaven tells us a couple of things. First, it tells us
that any dispute or disagreement among the brethren is noteworthy
and affects the testimony of the gospel. It does, you know, when, if there
is a dispute, a division within the church and people begin to
take sides and people become suspicious of one another and
they talk behind one another's back and put one another, this
doesn't just affect our natural earthly relationship with one
another, it is, for lack of a better way to put it, it is a spiritual
disturbance within the fellowship of the church. It hinders. If that's the right way to use
it, it hinders the ministry of the gospel among us. Whoever wrote Hebrews said, let
no root of bitterness spring up among you and defile many. So these matters of disputes
and differences over non-gospel matters they have an effect on
the entire church. Secondly, even though this issue
was not gender-based, that is, the fact that it was two women
is of no significance so far as the fact that there was a
dispute, but it does show us something about the gospel and
about the Christian religion. It's very simply this, that women
were held in high esteem in the Church of the Lord Jesus, and
they still are. You know, most Eastern cultures
do set women in second-class position. And I've been involved in some
of Christianity that, when I say involved, I'm aware of them and
I know people that were involved in them, that they do the same
thing. In Muslim religion, if a woman
is raped, she can be stoned because they will assume that somehow
or another she tempted the man to do it. Now it's just a way
to transfer guilt. And I know of a church, they
did the same thing. You know, that if any man had
lust in his heart, he blamed the woman for it. He didn't blame
the fact that he's got a wicked, lustful heart. But within the context of the
gospel, first of all, we're all considered sinners. None of us
escapes that. But in Christ, we are all righteous
and highly esteemed and should be highly esteemed by one another. Now, these women were esteemed
in the church, they were well known in the church, and they
were ministering within the church in the ways that God uses women
to minister. For example, the church in Philippi. Well, Paul, when he goes to Philippi,
who's the first convert in Philippi? Lydia. Where is the first church
of Philippi located? Lydia's house. And here we have two women mentioned
who were fellow contenders with Paul, maybe right when he was
there in Philippi, because Paul, remember Paul was put in jail.
And maybe they were working together to help get him out or whatever,
I don't know. But these women were highly esteemed and used
of God for the benefit of the church. And we who live in Western
culture, we are indebted to women like Lydia and Euodia and Syntyche
because it was people like that where the gospel first took root
in what is our cultural heritage. Now he says he treats these women
to be of one mind. And I like it, he says here, I plead is the way our translation
uses it, but it's that same word that is used to describe the
Holy Spirit, the Father, And the Lord Jesus Christ, as our
advocate, is talking about someone who comes alongside or is called
alongside. And so he's saying, I'm called
alongside with you. I'm one with you. I'm one with
both of you. You all need to get along. And then in verse four, and I'll
just touch on this, he says, rejoice in the Lord always. I
will say it again, rejoice. Why does he put this exhortation
right here? It's always good advice to rejoice
in the Lord. There's never a time when it's
not appropriate to rejoice in the Lord because believers always
have cause for such rejoicing. Why did he put that right here?
Because it's very difficult, very difficult to be in contention
with one another when you're rejoicing in the Lord. While he doesn't say it plainly,
it seems rather obvious to me, he says, Euodia, Syntyche, agree
with each other. And here's how. Both of you begin
to rejoice in the Lord and all these minor things that are coming
between the two of you will disappear. A hymn, and we haven't sang it
that often. We should probably sing it more
often. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. And the last line says, and the
things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory
and grace. The things that divide us seem
worthy of division only when we're not looking at Christ. All right, we'll stop there for
today.