STUDY THEME: BEING A PEACEMAKER. 5-06-07.
“HONOR GOD.” PHILIPPIANS 2: 1-8; 4: 2-9.
PHIL. 2 1-4, 5-8; 4: 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9.
When Paul and Silas began Paul’s second missionary journey from Antioch in Syria to visit the churches in Asia Minor planted during the first journey of Paul and Barnabas they had no intention of attempting to evangelize Europe.
They had added young Timothy at Lystra and proceeded to Troas to await direction from the Holy Spirit. Paul’s desire was to go to Bithynia but the Holy Spirit would not permit them to enter Asia at this time.
In the night a vision appeared to Paul: a Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, “Cross over to Macedonia and help us.” Paul, Silas, Timothy and Doctor Luke immediately set out for Macedonia, concluding that God had called them to evangelize the people in that Roman City of Philippi.
During their brief visit there, God did mighty works and a church was established. Several years passed and in about A.D. 61 we find Paul writing to the church in Philippi from his prison cell in Rome. The church in Philippi had faithfully supported Paul’s ministry and were a source of encouragement for him
Paul had learned that the church was being disturbed by disunity. In today’s lesson he is pleading with the Philippians to live in unity and in harmony; to lay aside their disharmonies and their discords, to shed their personal ambitions and their pride, and their desire for prominence prestige, and to have in their hearts that humble, selfless desire to serve, which was the very essence of the life of Christ. His final and unanswerable appeal for unity is to point at the example of Jesus Christ.
PLEASE READ PHILIPPIANS 2: 1-4.
The poetic quality of these verses makes Paul’s words especially forceful. The fourfold appeal of vs. 1 is the basis for the exhortations of vv. 1-4.
Even though he was in jail, Paul’s letter resounds with the theme of joy. Forms of the word ‘joy’ occur 16 times in the letter. Paul’s joy is grounded in the peace of God, the antidote to all anxieties. Paul asks the Philippians to make his joy complete.
In vs. 2 believers are encouraged because Christ loves them, and because they love Christ and one another.
The phrase “fellowship of the Spirit” may also be rendered “fellowship produced by the Sprit.”
One cause of discord is selfish ambition. Pride is competitive by nature and tries to lift a person above others, so promoting conflicts rather than harmony. By contrast, humility accepts a place of service, with concerns for the need and interests of others. Love is essential for humility.
What these Philippians needed right here was not consolation but exhortation, in view of the lack of unity among them.
Christ’s wonderful life should be an admonition and exhortation and encouragement to the Philippians to live in a state of harmony among them selves. Paul uses this as a basis for his exhortation to them.
The second cause for discord and disunity is the desire for personal prestige, the desire for empty glory. It is in many ways true to say that prestige is for many people an even greater temptation than wealth.
To be admired, to be respected, to have a platform seat, to have one’s opinion sought, to be known by name and appearance, to be listened to, to have a certain degree of fame, and even to be flattered are for many people most desirable things.
But the aim of the Christian is not self-display. When he does good deeds, he does them, not that men may glorify him but that they may glorify his Father who is in heaven. The Christian desires, not to focus men’s eyes upon him self, but to focus them on God.
And lastly, there is concentration on self. If a man is over concerned first and foremost with his own interests, then he is bound to collide with others.
Concentration on self inevitably means elimination of others; and the object of life becomes not to help others up, but to push them down.
Where there is selfish ambition, where there is the desire for personal prestige, where every man concentrates on his own interests, there cannot be anything else but disunity.
In the face of this danger of disunity Paul sets down five considerations or appeals, which ought to prevent all discord and disharmony.
The fact that we are all in Christ must keep us in unity one with another. No man can walk in disunity with his fellowmen and in unity with Christ.
The power of Christian love will keep us in unity one with another.
The fact that they share in the Holy Spirit must keep Christians in unity.
The very existence of human pity and compassion should keep men from disunity.
Paul’s last appeal is the personal one. There can be no happiness from him so long as he knows that there is disunity in the church that is dear to him. If they would complete his joy, let them complete their own fellowship.
PLEASE READ PHILIPPIANS 2: 5-8.
It would be true to say that in many ways this is the greatest and the most moving passage that Paul ever wrote about Jesus. With Paul this passage states a favorite thought. The essence of it is in the simple statement that Paul made to the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 8: 9 that, although Jesus was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor.
But here that simple idea is stated with fullness and a richness that is without parallel.
Paul is pleading with the Philippians to live in unity and in harmony, to lay aside their disharmonies and their discords, to shed their personal ambitions and their pride and their desire for prominence and prestige, and to have in their hearts that humble, selfless desire to serve, which was the very essence of the life of Christ. His final and unanswerable appeal for unity is to point at the example of Jesus Christ.
So Paul begins by saying that Jesus was essentially, unalterably, and unchangeable God.
Now the word Paul uses for Jesus being in the form of God is morphe: that is to say that Jesus is unalterably in the form of God; His essence, His unchangeable being is divine. However His outward form might alter, He remained in essence and in being divine.
In John 1:1 John say, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
Paul goes on to say that Jesus did not think it robbery to be equal with God: He did not regard existence in equality with God as something to be snatched at.
This phrase can mean one of two things, both of which are at the heart of them the same. (a) It can mean that Jesus did not need to snatch at equality with God, because He had it as a right. It was His, and there was no need for Him to try to snatch at it.
Rather He regarded it as something to be readily relinquished for the higher gain and the greater glory that would become His through obedience to the death-like principle of the cross.
It can mean that Jesus did not clutch at equality with God, as if to hug it jealously to Himself, and to refuse to let it go. He laid it willingly down, for the sake of men. However we take this, and both meanings are perfectly possible, it once again stresses the essential unchangeable godhead of Jesus Christ.
Vs. 6-8 form a very short passage: but there is no passage in the whole N.T. which so movingly sets out the utter reality of the godhead and the manhood of Jesus Christ, and which makes so vivid the inconceivable sacrifice that Christ made when He laid aside His godhead and took manhood upon Him.
How it happened, we cannot tell. The end is mystery, but it is the mystery of a love so great that we can never fully understand it, although we can blessedly experience it and adore it.
PLEASE TURN TO PHILIPPIANS 4.
PLEASE READ PHILIPPIANS 4: 2-3.
Earlier Paul had hinted at problems of disunity it the church. In 4:2 he mentioned a specific example. He addressed two women by name. Euodias and Syntyche he urged to be of the same mind in the Lord.
When Paul first arrived in Philippi, he preached to a group of women on a riverbank. Perhaps these two women had been in that group. At any rate, they had become Christians and worked side-by-side with Paul in the gospel.
Word had come to Paul, probably from Epaphroditus, that these women were in a conflict situation. We are not told what caused them to fall out with one another. It might have grown out of a spirit of disunity in the church.
It might even have been the source of the fellowship problem in the congregation. Often a falling out of two key church members can infect the entire church. Like an infectious plague, conflict spreads in a church. People begin to take sides, and the conflict intensifies. Whatever the cause of the conflict between these two women, Paul considered it serious enough put it in a letter that was read to the whole church. The repetition of “I beseech” for each woman shows Paul’s deep concern.
Paul’s plea to these women was to be of the same mind or agree in the Lord. He was calling them to take the initiative in resolving their conflict. They needed to do what he wrote about in 2:3-4. Each one should look not so much at herself as at the other person. And they should realize how their conflict was impacting the church and displeasing God. When you are a party in a conflict situation, you must see your own faults and seek reconciliation.
In vs. 3 Paul addressed someone else in the church. He called this person true yokefellow. There has been much speculation about who this person was. Some commentators believe that the Greek word translated “true yokefellow” was a proper name. The truth is that we won’t know. Anyway, more important than his identity was what Paul called him to do.
Whoever he was, Paul gave him an important task. He was to help those women. Help translates a word meaning, “take hold with.” In other words, this person was to work with these women to resolve their conflict and to be reconciled to each other. Thus vs. 2-3 contain two basic insights about conflicts One is to resolve personal conflicts; the other is to be a peacemaker between others.
Jesus said in Matt. 5: 9 “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” God is the great peacemaker and He calls us to do the same thing. Peacemaking is risky and dangerous. Peacemakers risk failure because they are not always successful. Sometimes they get caught between fire from both sides. On the other hand, it is clearly what God wants us to be. Peacemaking honors God.
PLEASE READ PHILIPPIANS 4: 4-5.
Here Paul sets before the Philippians two great qualities of the Christian life. The first great quality of the Christians life is the quality of joy. “Rejoice” says Paul. “I will say it again---Rejoice!” This is the prevailing mood of Paul’s life.
Paul had learned that one may have perfect peace in a troubled world if one will do these 6 things: (1) Worry about nothing. (2) Pray about all things. (3) Be thankful for everything. (4) Think on the best things. (5) Do the right things. (6) Rejoice always.
It is as if he said “Rejoice!” And suddenly there flashed into his mind a picture all that was to come. He himself was lying in prison with almost certain death awaiting Him: the Philippians were setting out on the Christian way, and dark days, and dangers, and persecutions inevitably lay ahead. So Paul says, “I know what I am saying. I’ve thought of every thing that can possibly happen. And still I say it---“Rejoice.”
Any command of Scripture, even if it is only stated once, should certainly be obeyed, simply because it is a command from God. When it is commanded twice in immediate succession, though, it should really catch our attention.
The Christian joy is independent of all things on earth, because the Christian joy had its source in the continual presence of Christ.
Two lovers are always happy when they are together, no matter where they are. That is why the Christian can never lose his joy, because he can never lose Jesus Christ.
Paul goes on, as the King James version has it: “Let your moderation be know to all men.” The word “moderation” has been translated “let all the world know that you will meet a man halfway.”
The Greeks themselves explained this word “moderation” as “justice and something better than justice.” They said that moderation ought to come in, in those cases when strict justice becomes unjust because of its generality. A law or a regulation or a condition may be in itself perfectly just; but there may be cases in individual instances, where a perfectly just law becomes unjust, or where, to use modern terms, justice is not the same thing as equity.
Moderation is the opposite of selfishly demanding one’s rights. We can be generous to others in our difficult circumstances only out of a relationship with Jesus Christ.
A man has the quality of moderation if he knows when not to apply the strict letter of the law, if he knows when to relax justice to introduce mercy.
When the woman taken in adultery was brought before Him, Jesus could have applied the letter of the Law, and she should, according to it, have been stoned: but He went beyond justice.
As far as Justice goes, thee is not one of us who deserves anything but the condemnation of God, but God goes far beyond justice. Paul lays it down that the mark of a Christian is that his personal relationships with his fellow-men must be that he knows when, and when not, to insist on justice, and that he always remembers that there is something which is beyond justice, and which makes a man like God.
PLEASE READ PHILIPPIANS.
For the Philippians life was bound to be a worrying thing and in the early Church, to the normal worry of the human situation, there was added the worry of being a Christian, in a situation that the man who was a Christian took his life in his hands.
Paul’s solution for worry is prayer. As M.R. Vincent puts it: “Peace is the fruit of believing prayer.” In this passage there is in brief compass a whole philosophy of prayer.
Paul stresses that we can take everything to God in prayer. As it has been beautifully put: “There is nothing too great for God’s power; and nothing too small for His fatherly care.” A child can take anything great or small, to a parent: so we can take anything to God.
We can bring our prayers, our supplications, and our requests to God. We can pray for ourselves. We can pray for forgiveness for the past, for the things we need in the present, and for help and guidance for the future. We can take our own past and present and future, with all our shame, with all our needs, with all our fears, into the presence of God. We can pray for others. We can commend to God’s care those near and far who are forever within our memories and within our hearts.
Paul lays it down that “thanksgiving must be the universal accompaniment of prayer.” It was his conviction that every prayer must include thanksgiving.
Every prayer must surely include thanks for the great privilege of prayer. Surely we can never forget to be grateful for this privilege of being able to take everything to God in prayer. Paul insists that we must give thanks in everything, in laughter and in tears, in sorrows and in joys alike. That implies two things. It implies gratitude, but it also implies perfect submission to the will of God. It is only when we are fully convinced that God is working all things together for good that we can really feel to Him the perfect gratitude which believing prayer demands.
When we pray, we must always remember three things. We must remember the love of God, which ever seeks and desires only what is best for us. We must remember the wisdom of God, which alone knows what is best for u. We must remember the power of God, which alone can bring to pass that which is best for us. He who prays with a perfect belief and trust in the love, the wisdom and the power of God will find God’s peace.
The result of believing prayer is that the peace of God will stand like a sentinel on guard upon our hearts. That peace of God, says Paul, as the Authorized Version has it, passes understanding.
That does not mean that the peace of God is such a mystery that man’s mind cannot understand it, although that also is true. It means that the peace of God is so precious that man’s mind, with all its skill and all its knowledge and all its understanding, can never contrive it or find it or produce it. It is utterly and entirely beyond man’s ability to obtain by himself.
This peace can never be man’s contriving: it is only of God’s giving. The way to peace is to take ourselves and all whom we hold dear, to take all life, and to place them and ourselves and it trustingly in prayer in the hands of God.
PLEASE READ PHILIPPIANS 4: 8-9.
In addition to prayer, there is one other thing we can do. We can fill our minds with the right things, the things of God. God guards our minds, but we are responsible for what we put in our minds. The human mind will always set itself on something, and Paul wished to be quite sure that the Philippians would set their minds on the right thing.
Paul outlined several qualities, all of which should describe the things about which we think. No, more than just thinking about these things, we are to dwell on these things. Dwelling carries the idea of the place where we reside. It’s the place we consider our permanent home. I may stay in a motel room, but I dwell at my home.
The qualities Paul outlined are to be present in all our thoughts. If a person thinks about something often enough, he will come to the point where he thinks of nothing else. Our thoughts easily dwell—take up residence on certain issues or ideals, and Paul was directing us to make sure the things our minds dwell on are the right things. We are to give these types of things careful reflection.
The verb dwell is in the middle voice, meaning that it is something we do to ourselves. No one can make us think these thoughts, nor do we think these thoughts for others. We are each responsible for our own thoughts.
The first trait of right thinking is that the things we think about be true. This is not a prohibition against reading fiction, but there needs to be the element of truthfulness and dependability in the types of things about which we think. Paul meant true in the ethical sense. There are many things in this world that are deceptive and illusory: they promise that which they can never perform.
We are to think about whatever is honorable. These are things that are noble and worthy of our respect. The things we think about should have dignity of holiness about it. In addition, these things are to be just. The word used here for just captures both justice and righteousness in an overall, comprehensive sense. The things we think on should be right. The Christian’s thoughts are on duty to man and duty to God.
We are also to dwell on whatever is pure. This surely includes being morally undefiled, but it also includes purity in all things. The word pure means that these thing are to be pure, even holy in relation to God. Fit to be brought into the presence of God, and used in the services of God.
Further, we are to think of whatever is lovely or worthy. Those things that are attractive and call forth love. A person who dwells on unlovely things, such as vengeance or punishment, becomes full of bitterness and can even cause fear in others. The person who dwells on lovely things, such as kindness or sympathy, is seen as a loveable person.
Paul then called us to focus our thoughts on what ever is commendable or of good report—things which are fit for God to hear. These words are attractive to the hearer.
Paul concluded that the things we dwell on should include moral excellence and praise. These two qualities help us better define and understand the other excellent qualities. For instance, the world describes things that are lovely in a variety of ways, but we are to think on those lovely things that are morally excellent. These are also the things for which we can praise God.
Paul may have discovered a list of virtues which was acceptable to him, but the motivations and resources to develop these qualities in a Christian manner come only from the Holy Spirit who produces such fruit within.
In vs. 9 Paul showed how Christian morality went beyond these six virtues. Paul called the believers to live according to those things that they had both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in him. The Philippians knew Paul, and they were to act upon what they had personally seen and learned from him.
We need to remember that Paul was writing to the church, not just to individuals. The church can never think and live beyond what its individual members do, but we should also consider what this exhortation says about the church. If the church were to disregard this approach to thinking, it would threaten the harmony of the church.
As the church unites under these characteristics and conducts in all its affairs by only dwelling on what is true, honorable, just and so forth, it presents an incredible testimony to the world, and the peace of God will be there. This is one of Paul’s favorite titles for God, and we see that God not only gives us His peace to guard us but the Author of this peace Himself will be with us.
THE BIBLICAL TRUTH IN NEXT SUNDAY’S LESSON FROM MATT. 7 AND JAMES 4 IS THAT IN A CONFLICT SITUATION, BELIEVERS ARE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONFLICT. A.V. DAUGHERTY <altav@swbell.net>