Joy Interrupted | 30 Days of Joy - Philippians 4:1-3 | Travis Jones (4/11/2026)

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Transcript

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Glad you're here. Um, if you're joining us online or an app, thank the app, thank you for being here. And at this time, church, I want to invite you to grab your Bibles, get out your worship guides where you can take notes. But I want you to go to the book of Philippians, chapter four. We're back. We're back in the book of Philippians, man. We have spent, you know, much of the year going from Philippians chapter 1, 2, and 3. And today we're come to the final chapter in the book of Philippians, chapter 4. And for the next four weeks, we're going to be going through chapter 4 in a series that we've entitled 30 Days of Joy. And so, just a little backtrack, not much, but for the first chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, Paul's really been instructing us, instructing us, I began this way, on the theology of joy, and that's what we've been walking through. And so now we come to chapter 4. As he's closing out, there's kind of a shift. And what he's going to do is he's going to teach us, teach them, teach us practically what does it look like? What does this theology look like in your life? How do you work it out? Because we know this, but this is the deal. We can all know biblical truths, right? We can have this theology, man. But then when reality hits our theology, our day-to-day life, man, you know, it can just smack you and it gets all kind of interrupted. Your joy gets interrupted. Life can do that. Like I can know what I'm supposed to know, but then something hits me. Um, lots of examples I could give you, but here's one example that you might could relate to on one level or another. But maybe you go to church and you hear a message, and the message, the message is on love. The message on love. And you know, love is patient, love is kind, and you hear that, and you're like, yeah, amen to that, Pastor. You know, that's good stuff, that's right. Preach that. I believe that. I'm all on board on love. I got the theology. And you get to your car, you know, after church service, and you're driving, and maybe someone cuts you off in traffic, and suddenly that love is no longer patient, and that love is no longer kind, right? It's not like you don't know it, but life kind of interrupts it. That is exactly what happens. You can know things and you can believe things and you can want things, but then life, uh, life, life, life has a way of just smacking you, man. You know, life is like, boom, you know, you know, and they're like, what you gonna do? What you gonna do, man? That's life, man. And so it he it hits you when you least expect it, right? And so Paul, after instructing us on three chapters, he comes to chapter four and he's going to get really practical. How are we to accomplish having joy in the Lord when life keeps on interrupting us with all, man, all sorts of things? And so today, he begins really in an interesting kind of way. He's going to tackle, he begins this way, tackling one of the biggest places our joy can be interrupted. How your joy can be stolen. And you're like, okay, what might be? What might be the single biggest thing in life that might get me off course, make me lose some joy? What can test, what tests, what tests my theology like nothing else? People. It's people, it's absolutely people, man. And conflict with people. People, conflict with people, you don't expect it. It comes, and I don't know, it can drain your joy. Now we're looking at the the church in Philippi, and that is evidently what's happening to them in the text that we're going to look at today. Three verses. It seems that there are two women in the church, and both of these women love Jesus, but they don't get along, right? And Paul says, he's coming along, and he's saying, we've got to address this. And how he addresses this conflict between these two women is the exact same way that you and I are instructed to intercede, how we are instructed to navigate conflict in our relationships. This is extremely practical. And I will I believe this because it's true. If you take the steps that Paul teaches here and implement them in your life, it will help you out infinitely when it comes to relationships and conflict in relations. So let's see. What does Paul tell them? What does he instruct them? And how can we then apply it to ourselves? There's really four steps. Let's just walk through it. Chapter 4, verse 1. The first thing he's going to tell us is stand firm together. And here's the deal. I don't want anyone here acting like they ain't got no conflict with somebody. All right? We've all walked through it. You may not have it now. We walk through it. So this is so practical to you and I. Here's what he says. Verse 1. Therefore, he says, My brothers, that's Adel Fos, it's its brothers, sisters, church members, fellow believers, Silverdale, therefore, Silverdale, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown. Here's the command, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. Let's break this down, all right? He begins with this great transitional word. It's the word, therefore, that lets us know that everything he's about to tell us is based in the principles that preceded it. All three chapters. He's saying, therefore, because you've learned this theology, right? And all of this is true. Therefore, because that is true, this is how you're to live it out. Okay? Now notice, and this is this is so helpful, man. He begins not first by addressing the conflict. He doesn't begin by just going in and correcting the conflict. He begins by affirming them. That's how he begins. We could learn a lot from that. I could learn a lot from that. He says, whom I love, whom I long for, my joy, my crown, my beloved. Don't miss it. He's not addressing the conflict first, he's reminding them of their connection together. Because if you're going to fix what's broken in a relationship, you have to remember the value of that relationship. You've got to remember that. Church, I'm going to say this. You know it, I'm going to say it when you hear it. We're not enemies. We're not enemies. We're on the same team. We have the same Lord, and we need to remember that in any situation, specifically in conflict, and we need to be reminded of it. Now think about this, and I want to make this clear, and I hope I do, man. You bring me joy. This church brings me joy. You matter to me. And I've talked about this before, but I think we need to be reminded of it. I believe, this is my belief, I think it's true. Each of you has been handpicked by God to be in my life. I believe that. I really do, right? In other words, the Lord God Almighty, in his infinite wisdom, has placed you in my life because each and every one of you got something to teach me, to build me, right? You matter to me. I need you. We need to remember this in any situation, but specifically when it comes to conflict. And I I know this, I know this, I I teach all of you patience. Like, like, like someone in this church been praying for patience, and God says, I'm going to answer you by giving you Travis. All right? You guys can thank me later, man. I don't know, man. But we need one another, right? We are not enemies. Every person saved by grace through faith, every born-again believer, man, we're not enemies. We got the same Lord, we got the same end goal, right? Now you could build that truth out. It would mean maybe the next time somebody in church rubs you the wrong way, you could just, instead of getting offended, you could just say, Thank you, Jesus. I needed that. I mean, I didn't know I needed that, but I do need that, man. We are not enemies. All right? We gotta remember, we got these these relationships matter. They matter. He goes, he begins that way. You matter to me. You know, we matter to each other. God's building us, building this church. And then he gives the command. Here's the command. Stand firm thus in the Lord. We can break that command down too. Once again, this is so practical, right? Stand firm. It means to hold your position. It means don't move. It means to dig in. You dig in. Now I was thinking about that. Um, I don't think that's something we need to be instructed on, right? Like we don't we don't generally have a problem with standing firm. That's not the problem. I mean, we b we born, we born knowing how to stand firm. You ever you ever met a toddler? Toddlers will teach you a master class on standing firm, right? But that's not the type of standing firm he's talking about. It's a specific type of standing firm that you and I are to do. He says, stand firm. You got this in the the Greek hutos, it means thus, like, like this, you do it in the Lord. So you don't stand firm in your opinion, you're not gonna stand firm in your feelings, you don't stand firm in your preferences, we're to stand firm in the Lord, God Almighty. Because here's what happens in conflict. We stop standing in Christ. And we start standing in ourselves. I stand on my opinions, I stand on my preferences, I stand on my feelings, and then the other person, they're gonna dig into their opinions and their preferences and their feelings, right? And then, you know, it's on like Donkey Kong, man. You just go, man. And I get it, man. I get that. Because I know this, man. If you offend my flesh, if you offend my opinion, if you offend my preference, if you offend my feelings, if I believe you have slighted me, my flesh, the flesh, naturally lashes out. It's gonna lash out. That that's that that's that's that's that's the that's that's the knee-jerk reaction. Hurt people, hurt people, you know. You offend my flesh, I want to hurt your. That's what a toddler does, man. That's what a toddler does. But Paul says that's not to be you and I. We stand firm in the Lord. The way you stand matters. You don't stand firm by digging into your opinions, you know. You stand firm by rooting yourself in Jesus Christ. Because if you're standing on your feelings, and I'm standing on my feelings, we will clash. Because we are not going to have the same feelings about everything. It is inevitable if you're both standing on your own opinions. We will divide. But if you're standing on Christ, Jesus, we've got a common ground, right? I've seen people like this. You have too, but some people, some people use Jesus kind of like a defense attorney, you know? Jesus build my case, Jesus win my argument. Jesus, Jesus, I want you to prove that I am correct. But Jesus didn't come for that. Jesus didn't come to defend your rights, he came to be glorified. So we need to be rooted in him. Okay, this isn't any conflict. You matter to me. Let's get rooted in Jesus Christ. Second thing he's going to say, get into verse 2. Agree in the Lord. All right. This is good stuff, man. This is this let me just read this to you. I entreat Uodia and I entreat Sentachee to agree in the Lord. Stop there. Full that's just you gotta stop there. That is my worst nightmare. My worst nightmare is to have my name called from the pole pit. You know, and that's what's happening right here. The apostle Paul just called out two women from the pole pit, man. Like the whole church would have been gathered, and they would have been in there. They would have been there. And that's a one of them's named Uodia. Like, so you could, he calls out Yodia, and you could, you could maybe pass it off. It's the other Uodea. She can't do that. You know she's the only person named that. She can't, I mean, it's her. It's you, it's you, man. He just called out from the pulpit. I don't know how seeker-sensitive Paul was, but he's calling out, man. There's several things that we can pull out of this, right? You can go to this command here, right in the center. He calls him out by name, and then he gives them the command. He says, agree once again in the Lord. So you got two commands here. All of us stand firm in the Lord, and the two of you who have this dispute agree in the Lord, right? Now notice this, and I'm gonna pick this up in a minute. He doesn't even tell us what they are, I don't know, feuding about. We don't know what the conflict was. All we know, apparently, you got two women in the church, and and they're not agreeing. There's something in their relationship that is causing division in the church. Evidently, some people on one woman's side and other people on the other woman's side. I don't know, but this is division in the church. We do also know this, we'll get to this, this is gonna be in verse 3. But we know that both of these women are Christians. He will say this about them. Their names are in the book of life, so they're Christians. Not only that, from the text, we'll see in a minute, they're mature Christians. He's going to say that these two women have labored side by side with Paul together in the gospel. This informs me, this informs us, right? These two women who have this conflict, they are known leaders in the church. Not only are they known leaders in the church, they have had a very fruitful ministry. They've been used by God. So you can understand these here are mature Christians. So that means that means that means mature Christians can have ungodly conflict. They can. There is sometimes a, I don't know, you think maybe an immature Christian can have ungodly conflict. But no, mature Christian, man, I've seen it. I don't want you to raise your hand if you've seen it, but it happens. Godly men, godly women who love the Lord, who have very fruitful ministries, can have conflict with one another. And that conflict with one another can lead to great division in the church. So nobody is immune from this. That's why I gotta pay specific attention to it. We must be on guard. All right. So let's go back to this thing I was thinking about. What is the conflict? What is the conflict, man? Paul doesn't tell us. Paul doesn't tell us. So my next question is this. Why does Paul not tell us what the conflict is? Well, I believe the reason why Paul doesn't tell us what the conflict is, is that in this case, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If it did matter, the Bible would tell us what it was. But the fact that the Bible doesn't tell us what it is, it must not matter. What does matter, what has come to Paul's attention, is that there's division in the church. So the conflict isn't the problem. The problem is the division in the church. And sometimes conflict, the division, will rise above the actual conflict itself, right? It's greater than that. And Paul says, we've got to deal with this. This must be dealt with. And I'll look, I'll I'll share this with you. I'll share this with you, man. This is a hard truth that I have learned. I've learned it in my ministry, man. This is true for the church universal. This is true for our church specific. Most people, when they leave the church, they don't leave because the preaching is poor. They don't leave because the church is unlovely. Most people, when they leave the church, they leave because they have conflict with someone else in the church. That's heartbreaking. I've had throughout my as a pastor, I've had church members whom I love very deeply. And they will call me and they will say, Travis, Pastor Travis, we're leaving the church. But we want you to know we love you, and we love your preaching, and we love the church. And I will ask them, why then are you leaving the church? And they will tell me specifically, or they sometimes beat around the bush, but there's someone in the church that they just cannot get along with. And I will say, we can fix that. By the grace of God, we can meet together and we can work this out. But in their mind, it is far easier to go to another church, and I hope they do eventually go to the church. I don't know. I don't haven't followed up on all those different scenarios, than to reconcile. Reconciliation is hard. You know, someone's slighted you, someone's offended you. I say let's reconcile, but some people won't. It's heartbreaking. And Paul says, no, we don't do that. If we can, everything we in us, let's not do that. Notice Paul is calling both women to seek reconciliation. That's what he's doing, right? He wants peace. And he calls them out by name. That's how bad Paul wants this reconciliation. He says, I am going to name them. Oh, I get it. We all like privacy. We love the privacy. We love the privacy, right? Mind your own business. Don't get in my business, right? But I want you to know the gospel will meddle with your life. It meddles in my life all the time, man. You know, it will meddle. It will the gospel will call you out by name. So just real quick, what might agreeing in the Lord look like? Well, broadly, I think it means in conflict, you ask, what honors Jesus Christ in this, in this situation, what can I do to honor Jesus? What can I do that reflects his character? What can I do that aligns with his word? Not what makes me feel better, not what makes my flesh get what it wants, not what proves me right. Agree in the Lord. So you're gonna get all rooted up in Jesus, because these relationships matter. Get rooted in Jesus. And then, well, get rooted in Jesus, and you're gonna agree in the Lord. We're gonna keep moving. There's a third thing he says. Seek godly counsel. Alright, I thought about this one. I'm gonna say this correctly. When there is conflict, it is very helpful to get help. But it needs to be from the right people. What we need to understand is not everyone is qualified to stop, to step in and help you in a conflict, right? We all have friends that don't help. We got friends that heat things up, you know, and we're prone to talk to them, man. Because I've seen this happen. You got your crew, you're gonna get help from your crew, and your crew says, They said what to you? You're like, yeah, they shouldn't talk to me like that, right? Well, you should have said this, you know, right? I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't let anybody talk to me like that. That is not help. That's escalation, man. And this is lighting, this is lighting the fire, man. You see, if we bring people into the conflict, the wrong people, they just they just gonna fire the whole thing up. They're gonna give you reinforcements. And by in the way, when your flesh is offended, it likes reinforcements, right? It's not hard to get people to reinforce your side. It's not hard to find someone to reinforce your feelings or your frustrations, right? But that's not going to bring you closer to Jesus. That's not going to reconcile the relationship. Paul says, he's going to say, you need to get the totality, the biblical counsel, the church. Look what he says. First part of verse 3. Yes, I ask you also, here's a great word, true companion. Help these women. Help these two women. Now we could break down true companion. There's different camps about what it might mean. Most commentators believe we're talking about the church, right? Paul says here, the church itself, we are called to initiate and help reconciliation. When there are two people in our church and they're, yeah, conflict. Paul says, step into that. Step into that. Well, he says, he says that help these women, help them. Come alongside them. Assist them. Support them. In other words, you're not to, you know, just go on the sidelines and watch. And I get it. I get it. I love observing a good scrap from the sidelines. I get it. I get it. Paul says that's not biblical. That's not what we do. You help. You just don't point out. You get in there, and you help. Two broad principles I see here. And I already said this, I'll say it again. Christians, we need the church. You bring me joy. You're in my life for a reason. And probably because I need a lot of help. I do. And you need help. We need to help each other. We need one another. If I am going to have healthy, growing relationships, I need the accountability and the presence of you in my life. Man, I'm sorry, I'm about to waste some of your time. Just listen, this happened about 10 years ago. I was in a meeting with some men, and I was counseling some guy. Whether or not it was good counselor or not, who knows? Point is, the next day, a man comes knocking on my door, someone from our church. He was in the thing. And he goes, Travis, I talked to you. I go, all right, let's talk, dude. And he sat me down and he told me, look, Travis, some of the ways that you had phrased something, something, something, I don't know if it was helpful in that situation. I was blind to it. Now here's what I want to tell you. When he was telling me that, it offended my flesh. It did. I wanted to puff up. I wanted to puff up. But he loved me. And we talked about it. And he was correct. I probably could have said things differently, and I was able to go back and the relationship wasn't, there was no sin. The relationship wasn't broken. But the whole fact that a brother would see something and say, I need to make sure Travis sees this, because I don't think Travis sees it, that he would come to my house and he would knock on my door, and that'd be uncomfortable. But I needed him. And I also speak into his life. But we need each other, man. You absolutely need one another. Second, the church is to take truth I see here, reconciliation seriously. This is real stuff, man. It demands it, man. It demands, according to Paul, that the local church take reconciliation between two believers who are at conflict. We take that seriously, man. We want a love. We want to restore these, man. Step in, help. You don't ignore it. Don't avoid it. Don't pretend it's not true. I've done that. That's one of my favorite ones. Nah, nah. Paul says, no. If it's there, we step in and we help. The fourth step he's going to say is this. Remember who you are. Remember who you are. Here's the deal. Reconciliation among believers is grounded in the proclamation of the person and works of Jesus Christ, the gospel. So here's the question. Is Paul simply calling these two women out in front of the church because he loves these women and wants the best for them? I think in part, to be sure. But there's certainly something bigger, something more important, something's undergirding this for him to call this out in front of the church. It's the gospel. It's the gospel. Paul is passionate about peace between these two women because Paul is passionate about the gospel. Look at the last part of verse 3. I've already alluded to it, but he says this about them. These two women who have labored side by side with me in the what? Gospel. Look at that. Together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life, right? It's not simply about personal happiness. That's not what's at stake here. The proclamation, the person and works of Christ Jesus is at stake here. Division, disunity, proclaims a false gospel. It is an anti-gospel. You get division, you get distrust, you get disagreements, and that undermines the very message that you and I are proclaiming. Jesus said it, John 13, by this all people, everybody will know that you're my disciples if you have what? Love for one another. That's how we, that's our mark. That's how we're known. We love each other, right? In other words, in other words, if there's this unity in the church, it's not proclaiming, it's not pushing, it's not magnifying the love that we're to have for one another. The gospel itself compels us to be reconciled to one another. For the glory of God and for our joy. All right. All right. Four practical steps for reconciliation among believers. I'm not saying they're easy, but they're necessary. We matter. We're not enemies. We are not enemies. We are not enemies. So the final question I had was this. How did these two women respond? Did they go through these four steps and did they reconcile? It's interesting. The Bible doesn't tell us, but there is some historical evidence that perhaps they did. I just want to walk you through this, alright? Paul wrote this epistle in 60 AD. About 60 years later, the Philippian church writes a letter to a church leader named Polycarp. They were asking a question about another pastor who had been taken to Rome. We do not have that letter. We do have the letter, though, that Polycarp wrote back to them. It's not hard to find. You can Google it. Polycarp's letter to the Philippian church. You can read it yourself. But from that letter, there is some indirect evidence that these women did reconcile. And what's so amazing about that letter, you can read it. It's not the word of God, but you can read it. Polycarp begins and he says the word joy, rejoice, four times, just in the opening. Let me show this to you real quick. Not all of it, but he goes, he writes to the church in Philippi. He says that they have followed the example of true love and have helped others on their way as opportunity afforded them, those who are bound in chains. And then he says this. Here's what he says to them. You are famous since the early days because your work produces fruit for the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this is a picture of a healthy, thriving, growing church. And I believe these words could not be said to a church who did not take reconciliation seriously. Because they had a problem. They had a deep, deep problem. The church was dividing. Paul addressed it 60 years later. They are just a famous church. They're famous for their love. They're famous for their gospel proclamation. Can I conclude that these two women reconciled? I can't. I cannot. But I think the answer may be in that letter. That church got it. That church took it very seriously, what the apostle Paul said. And so here's what I would say to us today. Here's what I want to say. We'll wrap it up here. If you're a believer and you're here today, and you've got some relationships with other believers and you're not reconciled, you know, I would encourage you. Reconcile today. Stand firm in Christ. What would honor Jesus? How can I reconcile this relationship and move in that direction for his glory, for your joy? Second, if you're here today and you're not a believer, I would say, before you can be reconciled to anyone else, your greatest need is reconciliation to the living God. And I would call on you to repent, believe, and be reconciled. Church, I love you. And I do believe if we follow these principles, we will have greater joy and our church will be stronger. Let's pray. Our Father, God in heaven, thank you for these three verses. I pray for any relationships here that are maybe sideways, that you would reconcile believers. And in it, our love for one another would just, man, proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Father, I pray if there's any individual here today that does not know you, I pray that you would save them and use them for your glory and their generation. And we ask this all in Christ's name, our Savior. Amen.