Philippians chapter one. Lord, bless our gathering this
morning. Bless your words to our hearts.
May it be a living word within us. May it elevate us from worldly
thinking to spiritual thinking. In the name of Christ, we pray
it. Amen. Now, verse 9 says, and this is
my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge
and depth of insight. Now, we're in Philippians 1.
I think I said open to the book of Philippians, but I didn't
mention it's chapter 1. Chapter 1, verse 9, now verse 10, so
that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure
and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit
of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and
praise of God. Now this shows us the kind of
things that we should be praying for that should be most on our
hearts. This prayer of Paul concerning
the church in Philippi is a prayer concerning spiritual things.
So often our prayers are filled with requests that pertain to
this life. Now, there's nothing wrong with
praying about matters that pertain to this life. In fact, we pray
about all kinds of things, but we must never forget that the
most important things are the spiritual things. But before
we look at this prayer, let's take
a moment to see why it is that Paul prayed the prayer he did. He prayed it because there was
a particular problem that arose within the church of Philippi.
And it's a problem that actually all churches experience to one
degree or another. And his prayer was designed specifically
to address that problem. And the problem was simply this,
that there was in the church conflict and division. Now, you would think that that
wouldn't be a problem among the people of God. After all, we
are at peace and in complete unity regarding the most important
thing of all. Yet we're still flesh, and we
have differences within our flesh, different attitudes, different
perspectives, different experiences, all of which inform the way we
think We don't all think alike. And we are prone to exaggerate
those differences or think that those differences somehow indicate
that this side's doing things right, this side's doing things
wrong, so this side shouldn't have anything to do with that
side and that sort of thing. But Paul's answer to this And
I'm paraphrasing all the things that he says in the following
verses. Paul's answer to this is simply that all of God's people
are saved by the grace of God, and God's grace is such that
he uses even these, I don't know if unfortunate is the right word,
but undesirable aspects of our experience in this life, even
as believers, all of them are being used by God to bring about
the salvation of His elect for the glory of His name. In other
words, he's going to point out that even though these divisions
shouldn't happen, even though we should be somewhat ashamed
that they do happen, none of them is going to overthrow the
purpose of God. And in fact, they are part and
parcel of the purpose of God, part and parcel of the method
by which he will gather his sheep, purify his church, and preserve
it until the day of Christ. Remember he says over here in
verse six, being confident of this, that he who began a good
work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of
Christ. Well, that gives us some hope
when we see troubles arise that these troubles are not going
to overthrow the purpose of God, but it's even more than this.
These troubles, as difficult as they can be, are part and
parcel of the purpose of God. And even though we regret to
see them happen, on the other hand, we rejoice that our God's
power and purpose are such that these things not only do not
bring about evil or ill to the people of God, they actually
produce good for them. Verse 12, he says, now I want
you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really
served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear
throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am
in change for Christ. Now Paul begins by using his
own experience as an example of how things that appear to
be detrimental to the accomplishment of God's gracious purpose are
actually turned to the fulfillment of his purpose. He says, I want
you to know, brothers, what has happened to me. Now what had
happened to Paul? He was in prison. Now, we know that he was in prison
in Rome on a couple of occasions. We don't know which one this
was from. That is, we don't know it for
certain. But we know that as he wrote this, he was in chains. Now, with the apostle in chains,
that would seem like, oh, what's going to happen now? How's the
gospel going to get out? How's it going to be that God's
sheep are reached when the most prominent spokesman among the
Gentiles is now locked away in a Roman prison? Now, that's a
perfectly natural way to think. After all, if the messenger is
chained up, how can the message get out? But notice this. He says, what has happened to
me really served to advance the gospel. Well, how's that, Paul? As a result, it's become clear
throughout the whole palace guard and everyone else that I'm in
chains for Christ. The chains did not limit Paul's
ministry as ordained by God. It merely changed his audience.
It's not like Paul sat silently. It's not as though He didn't
speak to the guards and tell them the gospel. Moreover, there
was much scandal upon the church in that day. You know the devil, as Peter
said, goes out as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And we learned, you know, a few
months ago in a message that word normally translated devil
means slanderer. And so the devil's work early
on in the church, and it continues to this day, but he slanders
the people of God, and he causes slanders to arise in the world
concerning them. For example, the early Christians,
it was spread abroad that they were cannibals. After all, the
Lord had said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood,
you have no part in me. And when they would participate
in the Lord's table, and not many outside the church had seen
what actually went on, Christians would describe that to one another
as eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the world didn't understand they only meant that symbolically,
and it was easy to spread that slander around. Therefore, many,
when they would see someone like Paul in prison, say, well, that
Christian's getting what he deserves. Paul says, the very fact that
I am in prison now has proven to those within the palace guard,
in fact, all through the court of the emperor, I'm not here
because I'm a murderer or a cannibal or a rabble rouser. I'm in chains
for nothing more or less than Christ. And so what you and I never would
have purposed if we had been setting up the agenda of Paul's
ministry, we would never say, okay, during this year, year
and a half, let's put him in prison. We'd have never said
that. But God's wiser than we are. And he put Paul there to
be a testimony of the truth of Christ in that awful place. He says, now that he goes on
in verse 14, he says, because of my chains, most of the brothers
in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more
courageously and fearlessly. He said, now it may look to you
as though my imprisonment is going to somehow or another restrict
or diminish the spread of the gospel?" He said, no, it's actually
done the opposite. Because I'm in prison, there
are others who have become more bold. They have become more plain and
spoken out more openly concerning the gospel. You see, it's very
easy for us, is it not, to see those who have been called
to preach And we think, okay, they're doing their job, and
so we don't have to do anything. Well, then, if God sort of silences
those people, we suddenly realize, well, who else is going to if
I don't? And so we, people are kind of stirred up to go ahead
and themselves spread the gospel when they see the major spokesman
of that day silenced. And so he says, because of my
chains, what looks to the natural flesh to be a restriction on
the gospel has instead been used by God to make others preach
with more boldness, a boldness they would never have had if
I hadn't been put in chains. Now, verse 15, and here's where
he gets to the division part of it. It is true that some preach
Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The
latter do so in love, knowing that I'm put here for the defense
of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition,
not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for
me while I am in chains. Here, Paul speaks of two kinds
of preachers. Now, we don't know exactly how
the church was set up in the first century. You know, I remember
when I was in Bible school, we had to go through a class on
Baptist history, and part of it was of course a defense of
what they call a congregational form of church government which
is pretty much been characteristic of Baptists. But every denomination has its
own idea of how a church is to be set up. The so-called authority
structure and all of that. The interesting thing is is the
scriptures do not really give us any definitive description.
And over the years that I've been looking at the scriptures,
and always kind of having that in the back of my mind, it seems
to me the rule by which a church is to be organized is simply
this, whatever's needed. We don't have to bow to a, you
know, some people say, oh, no, there's only one pastor in each
congregation. No, no, there's a multiplicity
of pastors. They'll say, well, you got a
pastor and then elders that work under him. And some churches
say, yes, but then there's bishops who rule over the pastors. None
of that is taught in scriptures explicitly. Remember, he says
here in chapter, or in verse one of chapter one, He says,
to all the saints in Christ Jesus of Philippi, together with the
overseers and deacons. Now, the word translated overseers
traditionally translated bishops. But Peter, I believe it was in
Peter, at one point, he tells the pastors, or the
elders, excuse me, the elders, to pastor the church over whom
the Lord has given them the oversight. And so all three of these words
that you find used to describe the leaders, the spiritual leaders
of congregations, is found in that one verse. And he's talking
to the same people in describing them. They are pastors, they
are elders, they are overseers. So the scriptures do not have
this hierarchy. And they certainly do not have
any kind of hierarchy that sets the so-called common member as
somehow below others and really only to be a spectator as to
what's going on. But it would seem, he talks about
all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi. Probably by Philippi, he means
Philippi and the surrounding regions, because not everybody
would be living right in the city. And it's possible that
he was saying that there were multiple assemblies that sort
of made up this single church at Philippi. In other words,
these household groups. Now, in our day, we can travel
fairly far in just a little bit. And so a single assembly might
go, you know, 50 miles out. Well, people couldn't go 50 miles
in a day back then to go to church. In fact, it had been difficult
probably to go any more than five miles, because they had
to walk, and then they had to walk back. And so likely, maybe even within
the very city of Philippi itself, there were little places here
and there that met. And in each of these little places
would be someone who did the preaching, who did the teaching.
It could also be that there were congregations large enough or
assemblies large enough that there was more than one person
who had the gifts of preaching and teaching. But whether it
be that each of these little groups had a single pastor, elder,
bishop, or that there were multiple ones, here's the thing that came
up. Preachers are like everybody
else. They have their own way of looking at things, they have
their own personalities, they have their own life experiences,
they have their own perspective on things, and they have their
own ideas about how things ought to be done. And when a congregation
becomes accustomed to the way their pastor does something,
the way he preaches, the way he oversees the congregation, and
then they come in contact with another congregation or assembly,
and they do things differently over there. And their preacher
has a different way of laying out the truth, not a different
truth, just his personality shows up differently, his way of approaching
truth, the way he outlines it or whatever is different, and
maybe the way they do things at that church. One's formal,
the other's less formal. And they look and they say, oh,
that's not right. Well, no, that's not true. Not true. You see, none of those differences
have any significance at all. It doesn't matter whether a man
is an analytical type of thinker, an abstract type of thinker that
describes things in what we might call theological terms, or if
the man is one of these more, I call it gut-level type of preachers.
You know, they just open a Bible, tell you what's in it, and move
on. I grew up in a church where the pastor, every time he preached,
they were going through a book in the Bible. He never preached
topically. It was always just verse by verse,
going through scriptures. And there are those who always
preach in a topical manner. I do some of both. One is not
superior to the other, so long as the truth is being told. But
here's the thing, there's also such differences in legitimate
preachers that their motives may differ. In verse 15 it says, it's true
that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others
out of goodwill. Now what's Paul saying? Is he
making a distinction between true preachers and false preachers? No. Because both of these categories
of people are preaching the truth. The thing is, as I said, preachers
are just people. And their motivations are not
always good. There are some who preach Christ,
and notice I said preach Christ. He didn't say preach a false
Christ or invent a false God. They're preaching Christ. And
yet, at least part of their motivation is envy and rivalry. Now, I try to avoid those motivations,
but I also know that they are within me. And if I do not strive
to keep them down, they would take over. Envy. Envy and jealousy are not the
same thing. Jealousy is to cautiously guard what is already yours.
Envy is to desire what someone else has. And there are otherwise
faithful men who are nonetheless motivated by envy and what energizes
them in much of their labors in preaching the gospel is they're
trying to have the biggest church, get the biggest name. You say,
believers will do that? Believers will do anything. And
we might say, well that's awful, they shouldn't do that. You're
right, that's awful, they shouldn't do that. Doesn't mean they don't
do it. They become envious if they see
someone has more Following? You know, we're on Sermon Audio,
and you get a report each month. How many people, you know, went
to your page or listened to one of the messages or downloaded
it and all that. And I'll admit, I always look. And I try real
hard not to compare it to the numbers of our other brethren.
But I know the desire is there. I wish instead of seeing numbers
like 35 I'd seen 350 people listen to me preach. It's there. And it shows up in greater measure
and it says now others do this out of goodwill. Now they're
preaching the same thing but their motivations are more obviously
from their desire to do good for others. Now These two groups,
the Envy group and the Goodwill group, both of them are part
of that group which has become more bold, more courageous, more
fearless in preaching the gospel. And Paul does not say we've just
got to cut off one and embrace only the other. He says, the
latter do so in love, knowing that I'm put here for the defense
of the gospel. He says, they have become emboldened to preach
the gospel because they love me, and seeing that now I have
been, as to my person, restricted as to where I can go, they have
taken up some of the labors that I might otherwise have done.
They love me and they want me to be assured that the ministry
is going on faithfully. Out of love for Christ, they
have said, okay, one voice has been silenced, or at least limited
in his outreach, and so I will increase my voice. He says, verse 17, the former
preached Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing
that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. We would hesitate to give that
description to any gospel preacher, wouldn't we? And that's exactly
what Paul does. I don't know, if it were not
for Brother Tim James, I don't know that I would have looked
at this scripture this way. When I decided that we would
go through the book of Philippians, I called Larry Brown. You don't
know who he is, but he's the one who always works to get these
books published and stuff. And I said, look, I'm going to
be going through Philippians. If you want to send me Tim's
notes on Philippians that need edited for publication, send
them to me. I'll edit them as I'm going through. pointed these things out and
I got to look and I said, you know, Tim's right. Paul's not, he's
not dividing between true and false preachers. They are all telling the truth.
Some obviously motivated more by love, others motivated more
obviously by selfish ambition. And they're taking this opportunity
to say, hey, The big guy's in jail. Maybe I can make a name
for myself now that he's out of the way. And the thing is, I've seen this
happen. And it's always an unfortunate
thing, but it happens because we're human. As soon as the obvious
leader is taken out of the way, either by, like with Paul, put
in prison, or by death or whatever, as soon as that leader, God providentially
moves out of the way, others start to rise up because they
want that spot. Now, that's shameful, that's sinful, and yet God uses it to spread
the gospel. Now, The selfish ambition, the
envy and rivalry that motivate these men make up the wood, hay,
and stubble that Paul speaks of in one of the Corinthian letters,
which shall be burned up upon judgment. And, you know, all
of us got some of it. And it's rightfully burned up.
And thank God that he burns it up, because who wants that to
be around forever? Everything that pertains to the fleshly
motivations and fleshly energies that men exert in an attempt
to promote their ministries and stuff like this, oh, that's just
going to be burned up. But here's what's going to be left. the
gold, silver, and precious jewels that God created and gathered, even as
these men, by their selfish ambition, went out and preached the gospel.
And it says, of these men, it says, Much of what they accomplished
through their selfish ambition shall be burned up as so much
worthless flesh, yet they themselves shall be saved. And in all reality,
all of us got some of the wood, hay, and stubble, and all of
us got some of the gold, silver, and precious jewels. All that's
going to be left is that which God did by His grace through
them in spite of what they were naturally. You see, Not only is our salvation
by grace, but so is the ministry of every man by grace, which
means nothing that he does under his own energy ever amounts to
anything. It will not last, but everything
that was done by the grace and power of God will last forever. And we may look at these men
and we see the differences in their flesh and we may rightly
judge someone and say, well, he's motivated more by envy than
love. But brethren, is he preaching Christ? Don't put him down. Don't
discount him. Don't say, I'm not going to listen
to him. Verse 18, but what does it matter? Can
you imagine Paul saying that? He's the one chained up, and
he knows that there have been some made bold to preach the
gospel more fearlessly, and that some are doing it out of love
to him and out of love to Christ, and there's some out there doing
it because they're hoping to take his position as leader among
churches. He said, what does it matter?
What does it matter? All that we would learn that
what happens to us doesn't matter. that we would learn that people's
attitudes about us doesn't matter. He said the important thing is
that in every way, this is verse 18, whether from false motives
or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I will rejoice. As I studied for this, I thought,
boy, I don't know just how long it'll be. But, you know, I do
notice the passing of the years. The time will come when I'm not
the pastor here. Gonna be another man standing up here. And he's
gonna do things differently. I certainly hope he does. But then he'll bring his own
problems with him. I've got mine, he'll have his. I've got my gifts,
he'll have his. is going to be a different kind
of person, carrying on a different kind of ministry, but it will
be Christ. By grace, it will be a ministry
of Christ. And it will fall to some within
this congregation to simply bear with a different set of problems
that they've not become accustomed to. and to learn to listen to someone
preach in a different way, but recognize it as from the Lord,
because in the end, it's the same message. You know, I've never had to do
that. I went right from listening to Brother Mahan preach to doing
my own preaching, and I've been listening to me ever since. Oh, it would be difficult. And
I've seen, you know, that is one of the most, for lack of
a better word, most dangerous times for a church when there
is a change in the primary leadership. But Paul says, is Christ preach? Then it doesn't matter. Now we're
going to have to quit there. So we'll look at his actual prayer
in verses nine through 11 next week. You are dismissed.