TEN YEARS LATER

Bob Bonner
December 16, 2007

Earlier this week, I was reading the news on the internet, via the Drudge Report. I came across an article highlighting a speech by Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister and the former Governor of the state of Arkansas from 1997-2007. In this article, Huckabee was addressing his contemporary pastors at a two-day Pastors' Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. The major theme of his speech was that the evils we see today in our country have come to us as a direct result of we Christians taking our eyes off of Christ and stopping doing what He has called us to do, and replacing His commission for our lives with seeking after our own personal interests. As a result of our selfish pursuits as Christians, Huckabee told his audience that we have allowed many negative changes to take place in our country. As one example of how our irresponsibility as Christians has contributed to some of the core problems facing our country, Huckabee sites the following. He states, "I'm often asked why taxes are so high and government is so big. It's because the faith we have in local churches has become so small. If we'd been doing what we should have -- giving a dime from every dollar to help the widows, the orphans and the poor -- we now wouldn't be giving nearly 50 cents of every dollar to a government that's doing ... what we should have been doing all along."

As a former pastor Huckabee added these insights of his early misconceptions of his duties as a pastor. He said, "In one of the first churches I was assigned to, I thought I was supposed to be the captain of a warship leading the congregation into a battle against spiritual darkness....But they [his congregation] wanted the captain of the Love Boat. They just wanted everybody to be happy. It was not about how many people were won to Christ or how many teens were pulled away from drugs or how many marriages were saved. Instead, it was about the seniors having a great trip going to watch the Fall leaves change, the teen-agers going to a better summer camp than the church across town."

Another well known pastor, Dr. John MacArthur, evaluating the state of many Christians who make up our churches today writes, “These days, Christians are consumed by the pursuit of happiness. Everywhere we look, people want to offer us the key that unlocks this door, but it remains unlocked for most. Unable to control their circumstances, they find themselves instead controlled by their circumstances. When their job, or a significant relationship, or a house or church fails to make them happy, they dump it and look for a new one. But on the merry-go-round of life, they can never quite seem to reach the brass ring of happiness.” 

As you can see, this observation of Christians in the USA mistakenly believing that God has instructed or given us a mandate to pursue or seek after our personal happiness as a life’s goal is not just my observation of a significant ill in the church today, it is the observation of many veterans of the faith. These veterans of the faith are absolutely committed to the premise that life begins when we submit ourselves totally to Jesus Christ as the Master and King over our lives, and being committed to following after what His Word dictates is our purpose for living here on earth, of which one is not the selfish pursuit of what makes us happy.

As we study the book of Philippians we will note what originally made this little church a healthy church and a spiritual force to be reckoned with. In addition, we will also see what changed in its first 10 years of existence that lead it to being less salty and less of a bright light amidst their spiritually dark community. One of those things happened to be some people’s pursuit of personal happiness over God’s will.

This morning, we continue to set the ground work for our in depth study of Paul’s letter to these Philippians. In doing so, we want to focus on what happened in those intervening 10 years between the birth of this church and Paul’s writing of this letter. We want to get a grip as to what caused the Apostle to write this letter. 

By way of review, you remember that on Paul’s second missionary journey, which was the first missionary journey in which he was in charge from beginning to end, the first church he planted on this journey, was also the first church to be planted in Europe. That church was the church at Philippi, established in 51 A.D.. When this church was birthed within a few weeks of Paul’s arrival at Philippi, it had the following converts: a wealthy, gentile, businesswomen and her household, a gentile slave-girl, and a Roman jailer and his household. A conservative estimate of converts would be somewhere around a dozen new believers.

From what we know from Acts and Philippians, all of the early believers were gentiles. There is not one Jewish convert mentioned in Philippi. Again, this probably had a lot to do with there being so few Jews living in Philippi. Further, we know that the socio-economic range of this church from the outset was similar to most churches today in urban cities.  You had the wealthy and the poor all in one church. Lydia was a wealthy upper class business woman, and the jailer was of the middle or poorer class, and then the slave-girl she was of the lowest economic class of all.

Within a few weeks of Paul’s ministry in Philippi, shortly after half of those original twelve people were saved, we learned from Acts 16, that Paul was arrested, beaten and thrown in prison as a result of false charges made against him by the slave-girl’s masters, from whom he had cast out a demon. This exorcism made her previous lucrative skills as fortune teller null and void, and thus she was useless to her masters. Hence, angry at their financial loss, they falsely accused Paul which lead to his wrongful arrest, beating and imprisonment. Paul’s imprisonment was rather a shocking experience not only for Paul, but also for this handful of brand new believers in Philippi as well. They were shocked and anxious as to what would happen to them because of their relationships with Christ and their desire to share Jesus with their friends.

However, what at first appeared to be a negative turned out to be quite a positive for this new church. As a result of Paul’s subsequent miraculous release from prison, these few new believers were encouraged by Paul’s example and God’s power to protect and to provide for those who seek to honor Him. Hence, out of a grateful heart, they reached out to Paul, financially supporting his ministry for years to come. In addition, following Paul’s example, they became very bold in sharing their faith and leading others to Christ in Philippi. 

Today, we want to focus more on what took during those intervening years between Paul’s departure from Philippi and the birth of this new church, and 10 years later when he wrote this letter. First we will see what was going on in Paul’s life and then place over the top of that what was happening in Philippi.

After Paul left Philippi, for approximately the next 7 to 8 years he finished his second and third missionary journeys, establishing new churches and encouraging older churches throughout Europe and Asia. Upon returning to Jerusalem, he was accused by the Jews of violating Jewish laws in the temple, and the Romans were forced to arrest him, more for his own protection from the angry Jewish mob than for believing he had violated any Roman law. You can read about the details of his initial arrest in Acts 21-23. Upon gaining news that the Jews had set a trap to ambush Paul while under the Roman guards’ protection, Paul was secretly transported to Caesarea, a major city on the Mediterranean coast, 66 miles west of Jerusalem.  In the entire Roman empire, Caesarea was only second in grandeur to the city of Rome. It was not a natural seaport on the Mediterranean coast, but due to an outstanding feat of engineering, Herod, the father of Herod the Great, made it into the most secure seaport on the eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea, and in honor of Caesar, he named it Caesarea. It became a beautiful and wealthy seaport community, the Roman capital of Judea. In Acts 24-26, we are told that Paul was under house arrest in one of Herod’s ocean side palaces for over two years. I guess if you had to be under house arrest, that was a pretty sweet setting in which to be “incarcerated.”

At the end of that period, upon his right as a Roman citizen, Paul appealed to Caesar to judge his case. This immediately changed the course of action. Within a year, Paul found himself shipped off to Rome and placed in a Roman prison, handcuffed to a Roman soldier 24/7 until his release several years later.

Most scholars believe that it was while Paul was in that prison in Rome that he wrote his letter to the Philippians. If you are interested, there are three other possible sites from which Paul could have written this letter. The second most possible one was while he was at Caesarea. In the end, the only serious implication that the actual origin of this letter has on the book of Philippians is that it slightly changes the date of its writing by 2 years. Hence, it was written sometime after 59 B.C. and before 62 B.C., 8-10 years after Paul planted the church in Philippi.

Now, let’s turn our attention to what was happening in Philippi during the ten years following the birth of the church. What we know of Philippi during this period, we gather mostly from Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

One of the first observations one can draw from this letter is that Paul and these Philippian Christians had a very unique and close relationship, different than any other church Paul had ever visited. Paul’s mutual love for the Philippians is first made obvious in THE TONE of this letter. There is no other letter from Paul to other churches that compares with the compassion and warmth found in this letter. Although Paul speaks candidly to these, his strongest supporters, he is never harsh. In contrast, to this letter stands Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, which was a strong disciplinary or corrective letter. Neither is this letter to the Philippians like those to the churches at Rome or Galatia, which were basically theologically apologetic. This letter carries the tone of a loving father to his children of whom he is very fond and proud. Even when exhorting them, Paul never pushed his authority or claimed to be “an apostle of Christ.” His apostleship is not even mentioned in this letter, as it is in his other letters. His exhortations to the Philippians were based upon their mutual love for Christ, for the lost, and for each other.

As one reads this letter, several outstanding characteristics of this church family stand out.

Through the first chapter, its content and unique use of terms, we are struck with Paul’s assessment of these Christians as being strongly evangelistically minded. They had partnered with him in ministry, in both local evangelism and missions. In this chapter, Paul stresses that both of them were of “one mind” on Christ’s commission to preach the gospel. Both were in love with Jesus. This love for Jesus and their love for the lost was the glue that held their friendship together. We will see that Paul even invents a unique use for the word “fellowship” in chapter 1 that points to their partnership in sharing the “gospel” with others.

In fact, the term “gospel” is used more in this epistle than in any other of Paul’s letters. It is used nine times in the book in various constructions. It is used six times in the first 27 verses of chapter one alone. Further proof of their mutual love and fellowship being founded upon the gospel is revealed in the Philippians commitment to sacrificially give to Paul and his efforts to reach the lost for Christ. Although their generosity is referred to throughout the book, none speaks more clearly of their efforts to support Paul as does Paul’s reference to their giving at the end of the letter, 4:15-16.

Another characteristic of these Philippian Christians was not only their generosity, but their caring and concern for one another. An example of this caring and concern can be seen in Paul’s words about how, when they had heard that he was ill and in prison in Rome, they sent one of their own, Epaphroditus, 800 miles away to Rome to care for Paul and to brings gifts to him to make sure that he had all he needed. While there, Epaphroditus himself takes ill, and reports get back to Philippi that their brother may be close to death, and they became anxious for any word as to how Epaphroditus was doing. You can read about this in 2:25-28.

Because the Apostle Paul was so emotionally connected to this church in a way that he had not been connected to any other church, he was disturbed by their response to some of the opposition they were facing from without, and how some of these pressures had caused them to change their focus and direction as a church. To put it bluntly, Paul was broken hearted to see his friends begin to shrink back from their calling to share Christ and build each other up, and to focus upon their own selfish interests. 

Hence, he wrote this love letter to those whom he had loved with all of his heart, not just to keep them informed of his situation, but with the hope that they would respond to his gentle and loving exhortations to return to their first love, Jesus Christ, the “Lord and Savior” and serving His purposes.

Let’s take a moment to look at what sort of opposition and disruption to their lives was coming from without. The Christian church in the early years in Philippi was not yet distinguished from Judaism by outsiders, so the hostile feelings against the Jews were readily transferred to Christians. But with time, they became recognized as not Jews, not an authorized acceptable religion by Rome, and hence they began to experience their own unique persecution as Christians.

Behind the persecution by the faithful Roman citizenry of Philippi was their faithful loyalty and worship of Caesar. The expression of someone being called “savior and lord” was not originally coined by the church in reference to Jesus, but rather by Rome in reference to Caesar. Hence, in the letter, there are several references to Jesus as being their “savior and lord” and twice they are reminded, by way of a unique expression, of their “dual citizenship” to remind these believers that they are citizens in two realms: the earthly temporal one and heavenly eternal one, the priority of which will always be the eternal heavenly one, in which Jesus Christ is the ultimate “savior and lord.” Loyal Romans didn’t like anyone to point to any other person than Caesar as being “savior and lord.” To do so was treasonous, or in our terms “un-American”! And they would stand fiercely in opposition to such people. 

Not only did they suffer political opposition, but there was a looming religious opposition on the horizon, if it had not already started to make some inroads into Philippi. Here, I’m referring to the “false teachers” or the Judiazers, those Jews who lived in Thessalonica, just a hundred miles away, and who were disturbed that other Jews were preaching Jesus and turning people away from the Jewish Law that had governed their lives for centuries.

Although there still were not many Jews in the area, Paul wanted to warn these Philippians about the Judiazers so that what the Philippians would not experience what the Christians at Thessalonica had experienced, and those in Galatia had experienced at the hands of these Jewish misinformed zealots. This false teachers were trying to get these believers at Philippi to submit to Old Testament Jewish laws, such as the law of circumcision.

Opposition and pressures of everyday life often cause us to lose our focus as to what our mission is and what is most important. When the pressure is on, most of us become impatient with others, critical, and self centered. All of this outside political and religious opposition lead to mounting struggles within the church. The following are some of the acute pressures that were being felt by the Philippians:

First, the news of Paul’s arrest and imprisonment in Rome sent a shock wave of fear through the Philippian church. Within the church, the Christians struggled with their fears that Paul’s ministry might be over and that he might even be martyred by the Roman government officials. In turn, Paul’s situation caused within their own assembly an increasing fear for their own potential persecution and martyrdom.

Closer to home, Paul writes in chapter 1 about some local Christian leaders, whether due to jealousy or envy, had begun to criticize and oppose Paul and any who would support Paul. These were probably well meaning people within the church who didn’t agree with the church leadership and wanted to start their own church or Christian movement in Philippi. One of the obvious goals of these self-glorifying critics of Paul was to upset Paul while he was in prison, and to take over his ministry. We will study Paul’s amazing response to his critics and their personal attacks as we work our way through chapter 1. 

But probably the greatest of the Philippians struggles, the one that had deeply concerned Paul and had brought heavy sorrow to his heart was the news that because of the troubles and fears surrounding their lives, these Christians began to think not about Christ and His call upon their lives, but rather they were making their own selfish interests the priority of their lives. As a result, a sense of dissatisfaction with the way things were going lead to a divisive spirit and disunity in the church. Hence, Paul had to assure them that God was in control. Adverse circumstances had to be viewed as opportunities to proclaim the gospel (1:12). Selfishness had to be replaced by selflessness (2:4). 

Dr. Gordon Fee points out that, probably the key verse of this letter that ties both the sense of Paul’s “friendship” and his need to spiritually exhort or challenge them is Philippans 2:3, “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” You see, the real issue behind Paul’s writing this letter (besides some other less major reasons) is this church was dangerously walking a line of disunity that could totally split the church. People were more interested in their own goals for ministry, what they thought were priorities than allowing God’s leadership to point the way. Sadly, the Philippian leadership was allowing the internal “posturing” of others to take over leadership; they were allowing bickering to go on, without confronting it. That’s why Paul exhorts the leadership to take charge by demanding those who were bickering to stop it and to get back to what they all agreed was the reason for their existence, to love and imitate Christ as they attempted to reach the lost.

Paul believed that once these Philippians read his words, they would turn back to that which is most important, for he gives no instruction to the leadership as to what they should do if the critics keep on stirring up dissatisfaction among the saints. Elsewhere, in Paul’s letter to Titus, he tells Titus, in 3:9, to warn those who are stirring up dissatisfaction and if they continue, kick them out. But Paul doesn’t see that happening in Philippi.

Besides the ones already mentioned, such as “gospel”, “fellowship” “same mindedness or one mindedness” there are other significant and telling terms used throughout this book that are worth mentioning.

The first is the name of Jesus. This letter contains 104 verses, and 61 times some form of “Jesus” or Jesus Christ is mentioned. Seventeen times Jesus is mentioned in the first chapter alone. Obviously, this signals that the key to the friendship between Paul and these Philippians is Jesus.

The another key word, “joy” or some form of the word joy occurs 16 times in these four short chapters. What’s interesting to note about this term is that it is not ever used as a feeling, but rather as an activity. In other words, joy and happiness is not the same thing. 

A third term that is used a total of eleven times by itself, is the word “mind.” These eleven uses do not count the other calls to be “one-minded” or unified.

Hence, when you study the uses of these terms, “Jesus,” “joy” and “mind” along with the two other significant terms we mentioned earlier, that of “the gospel” and the idea of being “one minded”, it is not hard to see how these terms relate to one another, and how the truths associated with these terms were at the root of Paul’s mutual love relationship with these Philippians.

Here are some conclusions one can draw from Paul’s use of these terms in relationship to one another, and what the secret was to the early success and closeness of the church at Philippi. First, remember what we said previously about joy not being a feeling, it is an activity. With that in mind, joy is how believers who know Christ and whose futures are guaranteed by Christ respond in the context of present difficulties, not because they like to suffer, but because their joy is “in the Lord.”  That’s why in the midst of their struggles, Paul urges them to “rejoice in the Lord.” 

How is one suppose to do that? In Acts 16, Paul and Silas modeled how to rejoice while they were in prison, through singing and praise to God. In chapter 4 of this letter, Paul instructs them to focus on the good of others, not their shortcomings or mistakes or the lack of abilities. Focusing on others’ strengths rather than their weaknesses leads to unity, not polarity.

Secondly, the relationship of these terms used in this letter reminds us that Joy has nothing to do with one’s circumstances but with one’s relationship with the Lord.  Regardless of the challenges we face as individuals or as a church, if we keep our focus on Christ and not the circumstances or our fears stemming from those circumstances, we will rejoice. Paul and Silas did not base their theology on their circumstances. Instead, they evaluated those circumstances in light of what they knew to be true about God and what God’s word said. Rather than whine about their circumstances in jail, they chose to rejoice and thank God.

Thirdly, when we consider these terms in concert, we arrive at this truth: Christian joy comes through having a Christ-centered gospel driven mind. Neither Paul nor the early Philippians were driven by their desires for personal happiness or their fears of the future. Those very drives of personal desire for happiness and fear of what others will think has corrupted the church today and was at work in the Philippian church ten years after its birth. Paul and the early Philippians did not seek after happiness. They sought to live for the Lord and to serve His purposes to reach the lost and to encourage one another, and they found happiness as a result. 

Fourth, we learn from Paul’s use of these terms together that happiness is a by-product that comes to us as we occupy ourselves with seeking the Lord and what’s most important to Him. 

Finally, we can conclude from a general study of Philippians that truly joy-filled Christ-centered gospel-driven people do not become divisive. Divisiveness and self-interest-seeking people are what leads to unhappiness in our homes, church, work, sports teams and culture.

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