Philippians 2
"1Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? 2 Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.
3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
6 Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
12 Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. 13 For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
14 Do everything without complaining and arguing, 15 so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. 16 Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless. 17 But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God. And I want all of you to share that joy. 18 Yes, you should rejoice, and I will share your joy.
19 If the Lord Jesus is willing, I hope to send Timothy to you soon for a visit. Then he can cheer me up by telling me how you are getting along. 20 I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares about your welfare. 21 All the others care only for themselves and not for what matters to Jesus Christ. 22 But you know how Timothy has proved himself. Like a son with his father, he has served with me in preaching the Good News. 23 I hope to send him to you just as soon as I find out what is going to happen to me here. 24 And I have confidence from the Lord that I myself will come to see you soon.
25 Meanwhile, I thought I should send Epaphroditus back to you. He is a true brother, co-worker, and fellow soldier. And he was your messenger to help me in my need. 26 I am sending him because he has been longing to see you, and he was very distressed that you heard he was ill. 27 And he certainly was ill; in fact, he almost died. But God had mercy on him—and also on me, so that I would not have one sorrow after another.
28 So I am all the more anxious to send him back to you, for I know you will be glad to see him, and then I will not be so worried about you. 29 Welcome him with Christian love and with great joy, and give him the honor that people like him deserve. 30 For he risked his life for the work of Christ, and he was at the point of death while doing for me what you couldn’t do from far away."When I read through this chapter, I tend to answer the questions that Paul asks as I read. So I will read like this:
"Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ?" Well, yes.
"Any comfort from his love?" Mhm, comfort, yup.
"Any fellowship together in the Spirit?" Oh yeah, fellowship, got that.
"Are your hearts tender and compassionate?" Oh...well. Um, maybe? Maybe, yeah. When God's working in me, yeah.
And now I'm having a conversation with Paul, so when he promotes lifestyle choices that would help me to have an attitude like Christ's, I feel as though Paul is actually talking to me.
"2 Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose."
I'm receiving this advice and making a note here: Paul puts major importance on loving others and working together. Christ-like attitude = loving others and working with them towards a common goal.
"3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had."
Note: Apparently I can't love others and therefore I can't have a Christ-like attitude if I'm always, everyday, in all ways acting out of a place of selfishness, pride, and looking out for myself. Christ-like attitude = selfless, humble, looking out for the interests of others.
Now, before we continue, are we creating a checklist that we are going to come back to at the end of every day and try and check off each quality we managed to pull of? No. If it were that easy to love others and to be selfless all on our own, then we could be "perfect Christians" without actually needing Christ to guide us and give us the strength.
So no, this is not a checklist that we are holding ourselves to, because if it were we would fail daily.
Having said that, Paul shows us our model, Christ:
"6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. (Selfless)
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
It's about here that I begin to disqualify myself. Selflessness? Yeah right. Obedience? Well, yeah I s'pose. But ooh, humility? Thinking of others as better than myself?
But that is in no way the point of why Paul was writing or me for that matter! Remember, Paul is writing out of right heart towards the Philippians, a full and Christ-like heart towards them. Paul is getting to the crux, the point of all that he had written up to this point:
"12 Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. 13 For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him."
Hold the phone, who is working in me, giving me the desire and the power to do what pleases him? Who?
God.
Now what does that mean? It means that by accepting God into your life and into your heart, it is now He that works in you in such a way that He gives you the desire to do what pleases Him and the power to do what pleases Him.
So it's not your job to wonder and wish and hope that one day someone will tell you what your purpose is, God does that. If you invite God to work in that way in you, He will reveal His will for you to you!
You know what I think is hard about hearing testimonies of Christians that are farther along in their faith? We hear about all that they went through and how God saved them from all that and gave them a passion for something, a desire to do something HUGE, a calling to go places that we can't imagine ever going to, from ministering in prison to traveling deep into foreign countries to work for nothing and to bring people to Christ's loving arms.
We see these people in the middle of what God has given them to do, and we walk away, having thought their story is so cool and how we would love to do something like that, but we don't know what and we can't imagine how we get to there.
How does God reveal His will to you?
Pastor Chuck Smith in talking about Philippians, chapter 2 said something like this: God reveals His will to you by the desires He places in your heart. He places in your heart His desires. It is He that works in you both to want these plans He has for you and to do these plans He has for you. You find that you have this desire, this will to do a particular work or to go to a particular place and you discover that it is actually God revealing in your heart what He wants you to do. Then He works out the means for you to do that work.
Already among the people that attend Ignition Youth Group, I have heard you mention these desires: A heart for Central America, a heart for missions, a heart to write, a heart for participating in an internship of a well-known church, and even a desire not to judge others, not to respond to drama, not to gossip, to be the positive force in your school and in your class. These are desires that God has placed in you to do His will, and the more you invite God to work these things out in your life, the more you notice that He begins to make a way in your lives and in your hearts for these things to take place.
God has placed many desires on our hearts, some we know, some we don't yet know. But if we were to commit to God working even one of those desires out in our lives NOW, we would be "shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people".
"14 Do everything without complaining and arguing, 15 so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. 16 Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless. 17 But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God. And I want all of you to share that joy. 18 Yes, you should rejoice, and I will share your joy."
I want my life to be like a liquid offering poured out to God. I want what I do to be an offering to God.
And look what at Paul says next here: "And I want all of you to share that joy." On our search through Philippians to find joy in Christ, Paul reveals a major piece to the puzzle here: in living and working and believing in what God has already placed in our hearts, there is joy to be found.
Paul proclaimed this word over his beloved friends in Philippi when he was in jail. He had this joy while he probably reeked of dungeon smells, while he was probably eating small amounts of bad food, while he was far away from the people that he loved, he had this joy.
Now, I'm giving you lifework (like homework, but it's for life) because I love you all. Your homework is this:
1. If you do not yet know the desires God has placed on your heart, your lifework this week is to pray, asking God to reveal to you what His will for you right now, where you're at in school and in life, and after praying take out a piece of paper and right out anything that comes to your heart, no matter how small or big. Repeat this process until you have something on your paper, this may require praying every day this week!
2. Look at the two people Paul mentions at the end of this chapter, Timothy and Epaphroditus. What desires has God given them? I think Paul mentions them here both to encourage the Philippians that Paul is sending his people their way, and also as examples of what he has just spoken about.
May God reveal His will for you in this time, and may your heart be ready and accepting of whatever you may hear from Him. Til next week.
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