Midweek Bible School- Philippians- Tim Dobson & Dan Viner

Autumn 2025 

Session 1 of 4 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yeah, welcome to Bible School. Um how many of you have been to one of the the uh summer, spring or autumn Bible schools before? Oh great. So if you haven't been here before, um uh we're gonna take four evenings looking at uh the book of um uh Philippines uh this time. Um it's a chance just to hear a little bit of input, have some discussion, uh we've got to do a little meditation and a little kind of a chance to do a little Bible memory, kind of see if we can memorize some of the Bible together as well. Um and the aim is to try and help help all of us to navigate the the Bible. Actually, we um I don't know if you get to read the Bible very often, but I tried, don't we succeed, but I try to read a bit of the Bible every every morning. And and um uh this morning I read I read uh Psalm 19. And also I'll imagine I'm going to Bible school tonight, and Psalms 19 says this uh the law of the Lord, that's what they kind of King David book of Psalm, and that's what he called the Bible. The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wisely simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The free of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious to gold than much pure gold. They're sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. By them your servant is warned, and you keep with them, there's great reward. And I just thought, actually, isn't that an interesting reflection? That's kind of why do we do Bible school? Well, we want you to get hold of this book, understand this book, with all its complexity, with all the bits sometimes we struggle with, because if you get to groups with this, if you kind of read it, actually it's it refreshes your soul. Who doesn't need their soul refreshing? I mean, there's all kinds of bad news in the world, all kinds of stuff that doesn't go kind of according to plan. Um, quite often we can feel our soul is a little bit kind of weary. Well, reading God's word refreshes our soul, it makes wiser simple. We just think that's really hopeful, isn't it, for those of us that don't think we're super, super clever or super wise. Actually, when we read this, even the most simple person can become wise. Um, it gives joy to the heart. Um, sometimes joy or happiness is linked with activities or events. Uh, some just say today pass their driving tests, kind of, and again, you're like half my driving test, and you feel a sense of joy and happiness. But actually, reading the Bible gives you a joy that is kind of I think it's a bit deeper and a bit more profound than just something that goes well, like passing a driving test. It gives light to the eyes. We can how do you have insight? Um, in a world where we've got the internet, there's kind of so much knowledge out there, so much stuff. Kind of how how do you see the right things? How do you have insight? How do you have light to your eyes? And again, God's word is happening. And it says at the end that um by these things we're warned how to live, but actually in keeping them, there's a great reward. Actually, living according to the Bible is the best way to live. Um, but as you would say, sometimes it's hard and complicated to read. It was written over 2,000 years ago. It records events that started off maybe back in the Bronze Age and through to the Roman Empire. And again, in a culture that wasn't an English culture, it wasn't, it didn't happen in England or the West, it happened in the Middle East, and and so there's lots of cultural things to try and get a hold of and grasp, and and sometimes we can read it with 21st century eyes, and and we think, oh, that doesn't really make sense. But Bible School is here to help us uh navigate uh some of the questions we might have about the Bible, uh, some of the kind of the keys that we have, the toolkit to read it well, and and how to allow God to really speak into our hearts, to speak into our lives to do that. So uh that's kind of partly why we uh do Bible school. Um and there's four there's four things that we're gonna try and do. Um the the first is um Paul says to Timothy, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to preaching and to teaching. So uh one Dan's done a little introduction. We will read out loud, public reading of scripture. We're gonna read uh chapter one of Copians this evening. Um so uh as Bible saw, we're gonna read some of the Bible out loud together. Um, we're going to study. Again, Paul says to Timothy, who's a young leader, uh, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed, who correctly handles the word of truth. Okay, how do you correctly handle God's word? Actually, people can pick verses out of the Bible, and you could probably justify most things, and there'll be a verse in the Bible to justify your actions, whether they're good and kind actions or whether they're rotten and mean actions. But you need to be able to handle it correctly, not just cherry-pick stuff out to prove a point, but um, how do we study the Bible so that we handle it correctly? Um the psalmist in Psalm 1 says, Blessed is the man that goes on to say, who delights in the law of the Lord, who meditates on your law day and night. Uh, there's something about meditating, reflecting, thinking, uh, spending a bit of time with something. Um, he describes it like um like a tree that's planted by a stream of water that you're never gonna go thirsty, your leaves are always gonna be green, there's always gonna be fruit. Um, and do we spend enough time meditating on God's word? So we're gonna take a chance to do that this evening as well. Um, and again, in Psalm 119, it's this I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. There's something about how do we hide God's word in our hearts? Um, and I think it is by committing some of it to memory. Um it was a discipline that I had uh in my late teens, early twenties. I just tried to memorize uh as many Bible verses as I could. And do you know what? Kind of it it's slightly hard now in my early 60s um to remember stuff. But actually, those verses are still with me. I actually lived my life, and they're just kind of I can just call them to mind because I spent a little bit of time, a little bit of effort memorising them. So we've got to think a bit about at the end of the evening about how do we take some of the Bible. And and Philippines is jam-packed with great pearls uh of truth. Um, and there's lots of verses from the Philippines that I've had a chance to memorize. Uh so um we're we we're gonna do do that soon as well. So that's kind of where we're heading. Uh, there'll be some chance for questions, there'll be some chance for some group discussions with people who have sat near you. Uh, so uh that's where we're gonna head. So if you're happy with that, I'll just say a prayer for us and then I'll hand over to Dan. So let's pray. Lord, thank you for this evening, or we thank you for the opportunity to be here together. Uh, for people who are kind of brand new to church and people who uh have been part of the church for a long time. Thank you that we have the chance to gather around together and look at um your word to try and uh find um yeah, the historical context and the background of the books. But to find then how it speaks life uh to us. It builds us up, it encourages us, it gives light to our path, it refreshes our soul, it's sweeter than honey, and it's more precious than gold. And I pray that tonight you'll be here with us and you'll be helping us as we uh talk and discuss and learn together in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Um to Dan. Dan helps read Bible school uh on both on Sundays and on Tuesdays, and Dan's gonna take us with the introduction to the book of Philippians. All right.

SPEAKER_08 7:38

Hello everyone. Um, if you've not met me before, as Tim said, my name is Dan. Um I help to run Bible school, and um the Bible is something that I'm uh a bit like Tim, just really passionate about. And um, as a history student um formerly, one of the things I I am really fascinated by is the world in which the Bible was written, where it comes from, and what we can learn from that. So um before we do go into to read the book itself, as Tim said, we're gonna take a little bit of time just to think about what was actually happening for the Philippians in Philippi with Paul at the same time, and that's gonna give us a context in which we're gonna read the book because as Tim said, sometimes we we come to the Bible with our perspective, our 21st century perspective, our our Western British, you know, Bristol perspective, and that is not how the book was written. The book was written in a time and a place, and that really informs the message of the book and what Paul is trying to say when he's writing this letter. So we're gonna um go through these these things here on the screen. You're gonna look at the world of Philippians, the city, the culture, what was going on. We're gonna look at the Acts narrative, um, what we know about Philippi from outside, uh, the letter itself, uh, at the church itself, we'll look at what's happening with Paul, a bit of an overview of the letter, and a few tools that um we can bear in mind as we read uh the four chapters over the next four weeks. Something that's really helpful sometimes as we come to a letter cold is just to have in mind a few little key little pieces of information that can help us to unlock some extra meaning or to to link the different pieces together week by week. So you you know the answer to this might be no, but I don't I wonder if you've ever read anyone else's post, read a letter intended for someone else by accident, you know, you've opened it, and it just doesn't make much sense. You can understand it's probably written in English, you can you know get the meaning that's been intended, but there's a lot of context that's missed there if you read that letter and you're not the intended recipient. You're getting one half of a conversation, you're getting one little piece of a larger narrative that you don't have the rest of. You'd miss some stuff that would be there. There might be in-jokes, there might be references to things that have happened that you don't understand. And that's a little bit like what happens when we come to a book like Philippians or Romans, Galatians, any of those letters in the Old Testament, we're just getting one piece of it. You know, he's written to them, Paul, they've probably written back to him. You know, in the context of something like Corinthians, we're getting maybe two out of a series of letters, and we've we've got ones that are missed in between. So we need to understand what's going on at the time in order that we don't get the wrong end of the stick. So to begin with, Philippi, the city that Paul's writing to, the place where the Philippians live, where is it? Well, this is a little map of the Roman Empire. It's it's this is from about 100 AD, so it's slightly bigger, they didn't have this bit at the time. But basically, the Mediterranean here, as you can see, this is the Roman world that Paul was writing into. Um, Greece, as you can see here, the Greece wasn't really a thing, but you know, people who lived in that that peninsula, Philippi is right here. So as you can see, it's pretty near Asia, as this was called, Turkey, we call it today. Um, but it's also kind of in the middle of Rome, is obviously about here in Italy, it's the center, the centre of the world for them. And Philippi is kind of in you can you can imagine it like right on this route from from the east, from from Judea, from Asia, you go right across here. You go you go past Philippi. There's a really key road that goes all the way along as the sea routes as well. It's a really key kind of crossing point between the east and Rome and the centre of the world. So it's a really, really like influential location. It's actually quite a small place. There's about 10,000 people lived there at the time in eastern Macedonia, as it was called at the time. And actually, Thessalonica, um, where the Thessalonians lived, we uh have letters to the Thessalonians in the New Testament, that's about 100,000 people, much, much bigger, and it's quite nearby. So this isn't it's not like Ephesus, you know, which is basically like the second, third largest city in the empire. It's not like Rome, it's quite a small place, but it is quite influential because of its location. It's the site uh of a very important battlefield victory, uh, not that far in the past. Um, you may have heard of um Cleopatra, Mark Antony, um, Augustus, this kind of person. You know, a few decades before there was a big succession crisis um between a few different people who were trying to rule the empire. One of them basically won a very key battle to decide that he was going to be the emperor, and it happened quite near there. So, what happened then was that there were loads of soldiers left over, they had these big armies, and a load of soldiers were just left over there because the the war, the battle had been won right there, and they were all just they were kind of left because there was no fighting it could do anymore. And rather than you know, travel back to their homes, you know, all across the empire, a lot of them settled in the region. So there's a very, very strong kind of military-ish presence there, people who aren't necessarily soldiers, but have retired but still retain very strong loyalty to the empire and to the emperor, particularly. It's quite a newly Romanized town. So um the town of Philippi was Greek before, but is now Roman, so Latin, they speak a different language, they have a slightly different culture, but there's some similarities there. It's full of these retired soldiers, and because of their kind of passionate, I guess, love for the empire and for the emperor, there's a growing cult of emperor worship at the time. So that's actually referenced quite a lot, sort of sub, you know, subterraneanly in the letter. Paul makes a lot of references to Jesus, which kind of use the same kind of language as they would talk about the emperor. But that's kind of going on at the time. Initially that was Augustus, who was basically Caesar, Julius Caesar's adopted son, um, and that just kind of continues on up to this point. So there's a lot of kind of strong religious sentiment which would which would clash with the the Jesus movement of the time. And Jesus is presented in this letter as a kind of a polar opposite ruler to the emperor himself. Jesus is king, but not a king as they would understand. He looks very different. So the the city itself, here's some of the info. Um we've also got um a lot of other Greco-Roman deities. You know, just kind of you might have heard of some of them, you know, Mars, Jupiter, Zeus, Athena. Some of them are Greek, some of them are Roman. The Romans basically borrowed a lot of the Greek gods and just gave them new names, but they're they're essentially the same people, and that's all kind of going on at the same time as well. And the the kind of the perspective was, you know, it's okay, worship your own gods, but you've got to worship Caesar as well. That's that's the vibe that's going on. And there's lots of gods, and they all kind of matter, and none of them matter. That's the that's the flavour, but you can't claim that you have the one god. That is that's a big no-no at the time. So obviously, that's a challenge for the people in the in the Philippian church. So um we have this kind of blend of cultures. There's there's these Latin Romans who are at the top of society, there's there's Greeks, uh, and then there's anyone else at the bottom. And because it's a Roman colony, they're they're essentially they're not just living in Greece, doing Greek things, they're trying to replicate Rome on a micro scale. That's the way that the Roman Empire worked. They would take soldiers, they would plant them in an area, they'd say, You've got some land now, but you've got to you've got to defend it because you're kind of on the frontier. So they're making Rome in a small scale, and that includes all of the kind of Roman Roman stuff as well. It's slavery, emperor worship, and all the power structures that go with it. Uh and um that needed to be to be resisted, really, by churchgoers, the Jesus people, um, because they need to be citizens worthy of the gospel, not citizens worthy of Rome. And that's a really key differential between them and the people in the city around them. So, what do we actually know about Philippi from the Bible itself? Well, if you've got a Bible, you might want to have a quick flick to Acts 16. Um, I'm gonna read um just a little bit of it now. But um Acts 16, 11 to 40 gives us the story um from Paul's missionary journey, where him and Silas they're on their mission trip all around uh the eastern Mediterranean, and essentially what happens is they land in Philippi, they land in Greece. Uh, and it's it's an interesting story to even get them there because essentially they're trying to go further into Turkey, but the Holy Spirit says no. And the Holy Spirit points them towards Macedonia. Paul has a dream, and a guide says, Come to Macedonia, help us. And the first place they land is Philippi. Uh, and we have you know um a few narratives. They meet someone called Lydia, she's the first European Christian, she's a wealthy, a wealthy woman, she sells purple cloth, she's a business owner, she's got a large household, she welcomes them there. Um and essentially what happens is they they they go about their business, they do they do preaching, and they come across um a slave girl who um has uh what's called a spirit by which she predicts the future. She makes lots of money for her owners. Uh and Paul essentially he gets annoyed by her because she keeps following him around and going, These guys serve the most high God, which you know obviously is quite good evangelistically, but he just gets a bit bugged by her, and she's he just goes, Oh, Jesus' name, just come out of her almost flippantly, and the spirit leaves her instantly. And her masters have lost their source of income. So they're angry, they stir up a riot, and this is what happens. The crowd joined in the attack. Uh this is from verse 22, sorry. The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown in prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in stocks. So this is the kind of environment in which this new Christian church is existing. The rest of the story, you might know it, Paul and Silas they're singing, they sing hymns, and basically there's an earthquake. Everyone in the prison, you know, all their chains fly off, it's a miracle. The jailer is about to kill himself because of the shame and he feels he's let you know everyone down. Paul and Silas say, no, it's okay, we're still here. He becomes a Christian, they all stay there, it's all you know, it's very nice, and they get released the next day. That's kind of that's the end of the narrative, basically. But what we can see from it is that it's a pretty combustible location and it's quite aggressive, it's you know, anti-believer in lots of ways, not necessarily explicitly just anti-Christian, but anything that is disrupting the status quo, anything that is that is challenging the belief systems of the time, the the money-making systems, all that stuff, and Christianity, the Jesus movement of the time, falls right into that, into that sort of that little place there. And so when we're reading Philippians, we've got to keep in mind that these people are in a pretty tricky scenario. They are they're in occupied territory, effectively. It's quite a new church. It's, you know, maybe it's a couple of decades later that Paul's writing, if that, he's he's writing to a church he's established and has built up, but it's still quite new, and they're in a tricky place, and they are not in the majority, and they're not in power. And so that's what we've got to keep in mind as Paul is writing to them. So, what is the church like? This place that Paul's writing to? Well, as I said, this is it's the first church in Europe. It's a really significant, significant location. Paul has a vision from the spirit, and he says, Come to Macedonia, please help us. And so the spirit has effectively planted this church, just as much as Paul, you know, through through Paul the Spirit wants to do something here. That's really significant. Um like I said, it's probably very heavily persecuted. The city itself has strong opposition to Christian beliefs, strong opposition to their ideals. And Paul's previous visit has demonstrated that there is aggressive sort of counter-pressure to the work that the spirit's doing there. But we do know that they are faithful and they're consistent. Paul in the letter talks about their partnership with him. He talks about how they have um supported him and encouraged him. And one of the things that prompts him to send this letter is that Paul is in prison. He's having he's physically in quite a tough time, uh, and they've basically sent him money and this guy called Apaphroditus, um, who is a church member, to support him. Now, the reason that they've done that is because in Roman prison there's no food, there's no provision uh for your material needs, so people on the outside have to provide for you. So you can imagine Paul is in a pretty tricky position, but the uh the Philippian church have sent this guy Apaphroditus to him with food and with money to help him and to keep him to keep him safe. We know that um, as well as Apaphroditus, there are a few other people that we can sort of put a name to. Lydia, for example, like I mentioned, she is the first Christian, she's certainly a part of that church. Um there are two women who are named later on in the letter. They're called Eodia and Syntuke. They are they're kind of again female leaders. It's interesting, we've got a lot of female leadership in this church. You know, right there at the start in the European church, there's some female leadership. Um they're actually, they're not doing a great example because they're arguing, and Paul wants them to stop doing that. But you know, we've got a load of um leaders named, and all of them are women. We've then got Paphroditis, uh, and then there's um various households as well, the jailer who gets converted when uh they have their prison break or not, his household, Lydia's household. So we we know there's a range of people there. It's probably not a huge church, but it's going to be a collection of families and key individuals, probably meeting in someone's house, maybe someone like Lydia. So that that's where he's writing, that's where he's writing to, the letters being received by them. But what's happening with Paul? Because I think this, as much as anything, gives us a real insight into the key messages of this letter, and actually underlines some of them in a significant way as well. Because we know that Paul is in prison. He writes that, and that imagine you're receiving a letter from someone and they are imprisoned unjustifiably. You might have seen in in the news recently there was a couple called um Peter and Barbie who've been um imprisoned in Afghanistan for uh nearly a year. You know, they're kind of in the late 70s, 80s, they've been working in Afghanistan, you know, sort of sort of missionaries, charity for decades. They're imprisoned by the Taliban, and they've recently just been released. You know, imagine their family gets a letter from them, but it's full of joy and rejoicing. And praise for God and excitement, and that has a great deal more significance than you know your friend who's just had a he's had a good day at work or something and says, 'I've had a great day.' It doesn't mean quite so much. But when Paul, in his letter, as we'll go on to see, talks about joy so much and excitement and thanks and praise, it has a great deal more emphasis because of the situation that he's in. Now there is some debate about exactly where Paul is when he's writing this, what what time it's happening. Tradition sort of suggests that it might be in Rome when he's in prison, sort of at the end of his life. Um, there's a scholar called N. T. Wright, who's one of the he's basically like the Paul guy. He's like one of the foremost theologians and scholars on on Paul. He he thinks it's probably actually in Ephesus a little bit earlier. Um there's no like explicit imprisonment in in the narrative of Acts when Paul is in Ephesus, but he kind of alludes to it elsewhere, and that would put the um the writing about 55 AD, so 20, 25 years after Jesus um ascended back to heaven. This might make sense because um Timothy is a co-writer of this letter. Um, Timothy comes from the region. Um we see that um in the Acts narrative, he comes from nearby. Um there Paul's got plans to visit other places in the region as well, so you know, carrying the letter on to there might make sense. Um but as we said, tradition suggests that because Paul mentions imprisonment, we know that Paul gets imprisoned in Rome at the end of his life, and he writes a lot of work called the Prison Letters at that time. Towards the end of his life, he's got he's got a lot of wisdom, he's got a lot of perspective and insight, and maybe that's where that all that kind of joyful perspective comes from. He looks back on his life and his mission and is sort of grateful to God and has that kind of perspective of time that comes with that. And that will put it, I don't know, five, ten years later in the early 80s, 60s. But whatever's happening, wherever he is, he's not having a great time physically. Like I said, he's in prison, he's not being fed properly, he's be he's in chained, he's he's beaten, you know, he's beaten down physically and spiritually, but he's supported by his faith in the face of that. This letter is remarkable for Paul's perspective in the face of suffering. He goes on and on about it, you know. The the wisdom that comes out of this letter that Tim's gonna draw some out of later, some of the things that we've already mentioned, is in the face of someone who is, you know, potentially on death's door. He's an older guy, he's in prison, he's not eating well, but he's saying, you know, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. I, you know, I kind of I want to go and be with Jesus, but I'll stay here just because you know I think it'll be better for you guys. It's a it's a really incredible perspective, and and that's something that we're gonna dig into over the next over the next few weeks. But that's just you know a bit for for us to begin with. So, what actually happens in the letter? Where where do we go um as we read through the letter what's happening? So, his goal, as I said in writing the letter, is to say thank you. Basically, that's a primary motivator to say thanks for sending me apaphroditis, for sending me the money and the food. That's really awesome, thank you. Um, he wants to encourage the church in the face of the hardship that um we can um imply that they are suffering. Um he uses his example, he says, Look, I'm suffering, but it's it's kind of okay because my perspective is greater than my physical, um, my physical situation right now. He uses his example as a teaching point to encourage them and showcases um examples in general of how best to live uh in the light of the gospel. He has a few moments where he says, Oh, Timothy's like this, they're like, Oh, what Timothy does, isn't he great? Epaphroditus is like this, look at what he does, isn't he great? There's these little key moments of him saying, Well, this is what it looks like to live in the light of the gospel. Look at me, look at him, look at them. It's it's a teaching document as well. He really wants to hammer home the reality of what Jesus has done for them. He just wants to say, guys, this is it. This is who Jesus is, this is what his sacrifice, his ministry means. It's not just words, it's not just theory. Look, I'm living it right now. This is what it means for us. Uh and he wants to get them to kind of to to dig a foundation deep into that, to help to sustain them when it's tricky, which we can assume it is a lot of the time for them. And this is in some ways uh the key thing is just to to incite joy in them, to just get them excited. It's it's kind of weird how joyful this letter is, in spite of the circumstances that he's writing. We'll we'll dig into that a bit over the next few weeks, but what I wonder can we learn about what joy is, what prompts it, what motivates it from a letter like this? A guy in a situation like this who's having such a tough time, who from the outside is is in the worst possible place. There's no you know, Instagram guru writing a LinkedIn bio just all about you know how he's how he's doing, how Paul's used these circumstances to supercharge his growth, and that's not the case. He's having a terrible time, but internally, he's light, he's joyful. It's really exciting for him. So the letter itself is kind of weird actually. He Paul's letters often have a kind of like a central theme. Uh he has points that he kind of builds and swells and develops all throughout the letter. And this one's a bit different because essentially there's a there's like a middle bit, um, this bit here, um, the poem in chapter two, verses six to eleven, and everything else kind of sort of spirals around that, and they're all kind of spokes coming off like the central hub of a wheel. And that um that section, um, which if you flick to chapter two, you can have a glance at it, it's set out a little bit differently. It's set up like a poem rather than the sort of the paragraph structure of the rest of the letter, and it's sometimes called the Christ hymn. It's this um amazing poem which basically sums up the gospel. It's a really early summation of the gospel from Paul. Essentially, this is um we can we can touch on it later. This is what's called a chiasm. It's a a Greek um poetic technique which basically is like symmetrical. So first line and last line, they kind of they rhyme the theme, you know, Jesus was exalted and he's exalted. And then it goes sort of A, B, C, D, C, B, A. Again. And the middle bit, that's sort of the bit that doesn't sort of rhyme uh a thought with any other passage, is is like the central key theme. Um we'll touch on that in a minute, but it's this really incredible poem that talks all about who Jesus is, and that is the core of the letter. It's this gospel picture of Jesus' life, it's his sacrifice, his glorification, uh, and it's it's kind of symmetrical, uh, and it's it's really it's quite beautiful actually. We'll talk about that a bit later on, but throughout the rest of the letter, there are references to Jesus' example, there's echoes of this letter and its themes throughout. Uh, and and across the rest of the letter, there's kind of, instead of developing themes, there's there's just these little chunks of thought. You know, like I said, there's a bit where he says, Oh, Timothy's great, isn't he? Look, look what it's like to live in the light of the gospel. Epaphroditus is great, isn't it great? Look, this is what it's like to live in the light of the gospel. And he says at the end, oh, and you know, this is oh, by the way, there's these two ladies and they're having a tough time. And can you just live in the light of the gospel and you sort things out? And it's all kind of tied back into that central poem, which is you know the heart of the gospel, as Paul sees it at the time. So that's that's quite a lot of information just sort of thrown at you. We we are going to dig into this um in more depth as we go through the next few weeks. But before we start, I want to give you a couple of little tools. Because I think one of the things that we're trying to do with Bible School is to give you uh the keys to unlock some of this, some of the meaning, some of the significance in the books that we're we're diving into that maybe you haven't um had before, and it enables you to just go away, and when you read the book on your own, you can think, even if you haven't got a concordance or a commentary open in front of you, you can just think, oh, but oh, that's just like oh that's interesting. And you can sort of pick up some of these themes throughout. You know, as we've been doing um across you know the last sort of year or so that we've been doing this kind of this kind of um extended theme study, there's a few of them that will resonate with you, but these are just a few from from this book. So, as I said, one of the key themes of this is joy. Um the word joy comes up a lot throughout this letter. One of the um techniques Tim often talks about is if you want to know what a book or a chapter or a letter is about, just see which words appear more often. You know, just you know, put it on a word document and highlight the words that appear a lot. The word joy comes up 13 times in just basically four pages. It's a very, very prevalent word in this book. And Paul, you know, goes on about it again and again and again. He rejoices in Christ. He rejoices in the Philippians, he rejoices in their concern for him. He wants to use joy as a teaching point for them, and that's a key theme of the letter. The gospel appears almost as often, ten times across, again, four pages. This is about the gospel itself. We're gonna pick up some key gospel doctrines throughout in that central poem, in some of his little teaching nuggets. And Paul's hardships, he wants to make sure that they understand that his hardships are advancing the gospel. The gospel's not being hindered by what's happening to him. He says, No, no, no. Everyone in the guards' households knows about me. Everyone, you know, all my guards, they're rotating through, and I'm just I'm preaching at them. They can't get away from me because they're in the room with me for their shift, and I just preach to them. And they go away, and everyone in all their households knows the gospel now because of my chains. It's great. The gospel's being advanced because of it, and it's a really great example to sort of to follow. We're gonna get a lot of practical wisdom as well. Some of those really kind of juicy little nuggets of teaching, maybe some of the verses that you might have already picked up, or one of the verses will remember, are just really solid, good practical wisdom for the believer, for us now as much as for those people, you know, a couple of thousand years ago. So there are a few key areas that Paul is going to touch on, but oh, you can see that I did this originally at Woodlands East. But um, fellowship is a key thing that we're gonna um we're gonna pick up on. What does Christian fellowship look like? In our context now, in this room, uh in our small groups, in our different church contexts, if you're here from central or from another church uh in the Woodlands family or just somewhere else, you you've come just to check it out. What does fellowship look like? And how can we apply that to our situation? What does citizenship look like? In the context that they're in, citizenship is you know, is belonging. To be a Roman citizen means instant privileges. In the Acts story, um, which uh we read a bit of, Paul and Silas, they say, no, we're Roman citizens, you've treated us badly, and all the authorities are suddenly terrified because they have, they've broken the law by treating them roughly, they haven't given them a trial, they've thrown them in prison, and suddenly they're afraid of the consequences because they know that as citizens they have privilege and they need to respect that. But what does citizenship look like for this church, for here, and for a church in Philippi? Well, our church, our citizenship is in heaven. We're all citizens of somewhere temporally, physically in this world, but we all share a citizenship in heaven. And what does that look like? It doesn't really matter what our earthly origins are, where we've come from, what our age, our gender, our nationality, our racial background is. None of those things are bad, but they aren't what ultimately unites us together. What unites us together is our identity in Christ. And that's a theme that is going to be unpacked throughout. So as we read through, just bear that in mind. And a final theme that we're gonna get some teaching on it is just humility is the example of Jesus' humility to inspire us. And Paul's humility, kind of off the back of that. Again, he's in prison and he's having a really tough time. You're good, mate. It's alright. He's in prison, uh, but he's kind of humbling himself, he's not trying to get out, he's not trying to better his situation, he's just he's humble, and he's trusting in God that God will do the right thing. So that's kind of where we're where we're going across the course of this, you know, this few weeks. I have I've given you a lot of a lot of info there. Before Tim comes back up to teach to us, and before we read chapter one, does anyone have any any questions or any points they'd like to raise just off the back of that? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Yeah. I'm assuming most of the soldiers were in Roman?

SPEAKER_08 35:06

Well, not necessarily, no. I mean, I mean, and also what is Roman? Roman doesn't necessarily mean someone from the Italian peninsula who's come from the city of Rome. Actually, what the Roman Empire did very effectively was they they pulled in what are called auxiliaries, they'd just pull in men of fighting age from the region. Not necessarily slaves, they'd be they'd be paid, they'd be um soldiers for a certain length of time, you know, it's 15 or 20 years, something like that, and then once they've served, they get a pension and they get a farm somewhere. And those people who've then served the Roman Empire, they've given their time, their energy, uh their lives in some ways, they get provided for. So they're very indebted to the Roman Empire, and they have their land, so especially if they're a retired soldier, they have their land that is given to them by the emperor, by the empire. And so they have every incentive to defend the empire in order to protect what they've been given. And what the emperor, or the Roman Empire would do quite a lot was take, would take soldiers from one area that's just been conquered and send them to the other side of the empire. So, for example, if you capture Spain, yeah, they'd take a load of people from Spain, you recruit them into the army, and then they'd end up fighting in Israel or somewhere like that, because then they're not going to be, you know, vibing with the people who were there, potentially fomenting rebellion. But yeah, they're not necessarily Italians, they're just people who are Roman citizens.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Okay, but and you said the war the war is over, but it's almost like a garrison town basically.

SPEAKER_08 36:31

In some ways, yeah, and it's got that kind of hangover from the the war that's been there. So you've got elite fighting troops who've been there, and they're all now, you know, a lot of them are retired, but they retain that intense loyalty and particularly the almost religious devotion to the emperor, and that kind of that cult of emperor worship is quite strong. Yeah. So that's something that's just context. Yes, mate.

SPEAKER_04 36:52

Sorry, can you just explain the difference then in the Roman Empire of what a slave would have been compared to what we understand as like travel slavery? Southern soldiers would have been slaves, but not as in tied and bonds and their freedom.

SPEAKER_08 37:04

In some ways, so there wouldn't have been soldiers who would have been enslaved. All the soldiers were free, but some of them might have been kind of compelled to fight, but then actually the slavery was a different institution in the empire as to what we might understand, you know, the transatlantic slave trade in the 1700, 1800s, or or people in modern-day slavery. So slavery in the Roman Empire was it was slightly different. Like sometimes people would sell themselves into slavery if they had a debt, and then they'd work for a certain length of time and they'd pay off their debt, and then they would just be freed. You know, slaves would have families that you know would be free often, you know. They didn't they didn't own themselves, of course. Their master could do whatever they wanted with them, but it wasn't an aggressive policy of you know racial belittlement, you know, or enslaving just this nation. It wasn't like that as a general rule. That that happens sometimes, but when we think slave in the Roman Empire, in the Roman Empire, we need to differentiate that from a load of people being you know chained by the neck, taken on a ship to the new world, kind of that it's it's a very different um sort of you know mechanism, yeah. Uh but slaves had agency, they could be important, they could have money, they could you know have a life of their own in lots of ways. In some ways, yeah. And it's not a no one kind of wants to be a slave, um, but it's it's a different institution than we might imagine slavery kind of in our modern sensibility.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

Where you didn't have social services, if you got if you got yourself into trouble, how are you gonna live? There was no kind of dull, there's no universal credit. Kind of the the only option was to say sell yourself to be a slave. That's how and that's how society kind of coped with people who got fell in hard times, they become slaves. And again, most slave masters were probably decent folk. Obviously, in some of the films we watch, they're violent and aggressive and hostile. But actually, there was social services almost of the day, and of how they got cared for if you fell in hard times.

SPEAKER_08 38:59

It's certainly not the ideal, but it's also not maybe as bad as we as we watched. Something like that would, I'm sure, certainly happen. But if we're talking about like the Roman army, for example, it would be like the oarsmen who would be captured slaves, but the soldiers themselves would be would be free people. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

I think you told us the the date that was written at the beginning. Yeah. But what's sort of the the timeline with some of the other letters Paul wrote? When was Philippians written in context to sort of the other the other letters he wrote? It's a good question.

SPEAKER_08 39:35

So it makes sense. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

When was the date? Was it four to five?

SPEAKER_08 39:38

So this again, I said there's a there's a little bit of um of debate about when. So between probably about 55 AD and about, I mean, we we don't know exactly when he died, it's probably mid-60s-ish, but that kind of 10-year period, 55 to 65. So the what were normally called the prison letters where Paul talks about his imprisonment, those are kind of generally assumed to be sort of towards the end of his life when he's in Rome before he dies, he's a bit older, he's a bit sicker, you know. In some of them, he talks about, you know, please bring my cloak because I'm a bit cold and make sure you've got my documents, it's something like a will or something, maybe. And so we we can assume he's towards the end of his life. This one, there's there's maybe a bit more debate, as I said. Tradition would say it's it's one of those later-on letters. Some scholars like NT Wright would say it's maybe a bit earlier, but it's kind of he's well into his ministry, you know, he's he's been doing this for a while, and this is probably written, you know, a few years after he's planted this church. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 40:32

Um when you said there was the first church planted in Europe, yeah. Was that in Philippi?

SPEAKER_08 40:38

Yes, that's right, in Philippi.

SPEAKER_06 40:39

Was during that time when it was a Paris and town in everyone, yeah. Was it there was still kind of in opposition towards Jesus Christ? So in that planting of that, was it kind of like conflict in that planting? Who planted that?

SPEAKER_08 40:51

Yeah, I suppose it's true, it's tricky because so we have the narrative in Acts. In Acts 16, Paul comes to Philippi, it's basically the first time he's come to what we might call Europe, you know, he from Turkey over to Greece, to northern Greece. And planting a church then is not like you know, building a big building like this. It's just he meets someone called Lydia who's a believer in God, we're told, so probably a Jew, and they speak to her, and you know, essentially she becomes converted to the Jesus movement, kind of from Judaism to Christianity, and they start just basically just meeting in her house. So it's a bit different than you know, opposition is is maybe more subtle. It's not like people would prevent them from building a building, they didn't they didn't have buildings, they'd meet in someone's house. But it would be then as they start to go out living their life. I wonder if it maybe less secret and just the way that they go about living their lives would rub up against the way that the rest of the culture was trying to do things. So maybe they, you know, there would be a big party to celebrate the emperor and there would be like food sacrificed to an idol or something, and they might not want to do that, or they might treat their slaves differently, they might you know venerate their women. You know, we've seen that they they have women leading in their church. That's probably not how the prevailing culture would be, and it would be that kind of sort of opposition culturally, rather than people you know uh explicitly kind of trying to beat them up and stuff, but it would be strong cultural pressure, probably. And we saw in the acts narrative when that gets too significant, you know, Paul and Silas were thrown in prison, they were beaten, they were flogged in front of a whole crowd. So it could get violent, and and that's something we bear in mind as we read the letter.

SPEAKER_06 42:25

So it was on Lydia, you say that transit Dutch or kind of starting Dutch?

SPEAKER_08 42:29

Yeah, she's the first named Christian um in Europe. Yeah, they come to Philippi, they meet they go to the to the river to find a place to pray, and they meet Lydia, and we're told she's a seller of purple cloth. That's a very expensive product, so she's probably quite quite a wealthy woman. She has a household and she says, Come stay with me. And that's where the story begins in Philippi. Uh any other questions?

SPEAKER_05 42:50

She would be closer to the first Gentile Christian, then was she?

SPEAKER_08 42:53

Uh that's a good question. Probably Probably First Gentile Christian. It's uh a Roman uh in uh in in Israel.

SPEAKER_05 43:05

Maybe the second or something.

SPEAKER_08 43:06

Uh she's the first kind of in in Europe that that we have named, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Uh that's that's a that is a Roman centurion. Um but he was uh he lived kind of uh about 56 miles north of Jerusalem. Um and uh Peter had a vision for Peter Peter because we should get to all through.

SPEAKER_08 43:34

And that's where Peter has his vision of uh um everyone eating everything and the kosher not being important for for that movement anymore. Um any more any more questions? We will have time for for chat and questions at the end. We'll have some discussion time. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 43:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 43:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:56

Sorry, do you want to expand on you mentioned it slightly a lot?

SPEAKER_08 43:59

Sorry, yeah. So in the church itself, we have the example of here. So when we I was talking about who do we know who was actually in that church? And named individuals that we actually have, we have four people that are named who we know are part of this church, and three of them are women. And we we can assume that Lydia is involved in leadership. We we see she's the first Christian. They probably meet in her house. And then we have these other two ladies, Yuodio and Sintuke, who Paul describes in really positive terms. He says they've been like fellow soldiers for me in the gospel. They're kind of helping him to evangelize and to lead. They're having an argument, but they're both good people, they're just disagreeing with each other. And then we have this guy, Aphroditis, who is probably some kind of church leader as well, who's been sent to Paul wherever he is to support him. But it's just something, yeah, we see there are there are women involved in the leadership of this church. Paul doesn't go into kind of you know uh leadership theology in this letter particularly, but we can see that there are women who are significant uh in this community uh and they have some some authority and responsibility in it. Um I'm aware we're probably we're getting on a little bit. Um I'll invite uh Tim up now um and we're gonna go into the next section.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

So we're going to take a chance to um to read. So if you've got your Bibles there on your either paper or on your phone, um uh we'll read uh chapter one. So I don't know if uh if anybody would like to read uh if you've got a nice loud voice. Uh chapter one, verse one to nine, and then someone else read from from twelve through to thirty. Anybody happy to read for us? Right, could you do one to nine? Yeah, sure. Sorry, one to eleven, sorry, one to eleven. And then twelve to the end. Do you want to do that? Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ. To all God's holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers to all of you, I always pray with joy and your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Being confident of this that He began the good work in you will carry it on to occupation until the day of Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you since I have in my heart, and whether I am chained or defended and affirming the gospel, all of you sharing God's grace with me. God can testify how I love all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and death of this life, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blessed in the day of Christ. Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes to you.

SPEAKER_03 47:50

So I rejoice.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

Yeah, you have to write the end of chapter one. Is that that's okay? Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 48:07

Well, I really expect everyone that I will never do this, but I will continue to be all the twice, as I have been in the past. And I trust that I like to do all of the twice. Whether I do that. But to me, living is literally Christ. I can do more frequently. So I really don't know, which is better. I'm told it's been a good one. I don't think I'm not. I will know that you are standing together with monster and all that. Which is a good news. Don't be intimidated in any way by your kids. This will be a sign to them that you are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved even by God Himself. We are in a struggle together. You have seen my struggle in the past, and you know that I am still in the midst of it.

SPEAKER_00 49:31

Wonderful. Thanks very much. I appreciate that. Um so what we're gonna do is we're gonna, because um uh we've done the introduction, we're gonna just do the first half of chapter one, and then over the next few weeks we'll do the rest of uh chapter one next week, and a bit of chapter two, and then a bit of chapter two, and chapter three, and chapter four right at the end. So uh when it was originally written, it wasn't written with chapters, it was just one letter. Um, and it wasn't written with verses. That was to help the monks as they were writing things out kind of by hand as they copied the Bible. Uh so the the verses and chapters weren't there in the original letter, it was just literally a letter that was written from beginning to end. Uh so it's fairly arbitrary where we stop and where we start and where the chapters are. So we're going to look at um uh four sections in at the beginning of the chapter. And the first is is the greeting uh and the introduction. Um and and the way a letter starts, kind of um when maybe you write a letter, if um before emails and texts and WhatsApp messages, people used to write on pieces of paper and put them in the envelopes with a stamp. Uh I know it sounds strange, doesn't it? But it used to happen. Um and uh kind of the the the tradition for us is that you write your letter dear son and so at the beginning and uh uh love and kisses Tim at the end, because and and and you say your name at the end. Actually, in the uh first century they put their name at the beginning. So to kind of just rather than waiting for the end to see if it's wrong, they say at the beginning, hi, it's me, kind of um and here it says just Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ. Um and uh in some ways that's that's quite that's quite an interesting um actually introductive because normally for his other letters he would say uh hi, I'm Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. And and quite often uses that word apostle, someone who's been sent out to to plant churches and to do things. Actually, it's interesting here that he starts by saying, actually, we're just servants of Jesus Christ. And I think that refers back to kind of what Dan was saying. Uh, in a culture where people were definitely servants, uh servants of Caesar, but their loyalty was to serve the empire, was to serve uh uh the kind of uh the emperor. Uh he just starts off by saying, Do you know what, guys? Um it's boring to be here. We've got a different king that we're serving, actually. We're servants of Jesus Christ. Um uh and uh yes, so it's an unusual, so for all his other letters, that's quite an unusual start. But again, it's just setting the scene. Actually, we're here and and I understand that as I write this letter that that you're in a place where um you're told you should have Caesar's king, but we're coming to a place where Jesus is our king. Actually, Jesus is the person that we we want to serve. And so he says, and and who are we writing to? We're writing to God's holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, uh, together with overseers and deacons. Uh again, the way that the church would work, they wouldn't have church buildings. As Dan said, they would meet in households. So, first of all, they would have met in Lydia's household, and when uh that house was full full up, they would start another household, and when that was full up, they would start another household. Um, and each household would have somebody who was kind of a convener of the little house church, and they would be called overseers, and and there were people that kind of that looked after those little kind of groups of Christians, and and um to make the the church happen there would be people who who served as well. There would be the deacons, uh, there would be people maybe that kind of um did a little bit of pastoral care, maybe kind of helped with uh some of the worship, and uh and they would be people that that actually served. Maybe there was a shared meal and they're responsible for for cooking or helping with the washing up, and and and and they were uh deacons, they were people who who served. So it's to the church, they've obviously got now multiple little kind of house groups because there's overseers plural and deacons, so there seemed to be uh kind of a a group uh of little churches in Philippi that had different leaders. And again, he says the kind of this again, traditional Greek, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. We just want to bless you guys. We love you, kind of so he starts off rather than with love and kisses at the end, it's grace and peace at the beginning. Kind of okay. Now we've got that out of the way. Here's what I really want to say to you. Um, and so um the next little bit is um is is a prayer of thanksgiving. Actually, he he prays this prayer uh saying thank you to God for them. Um it's interesting, isn't it, that um rather than just saying thanks so much, guys, he says thank you to God for them. Uh and again I wonder um yeah, I thought every time I remember you, my instinctive reaction is to thank God for you. Um he says, in all my prayers, I always pray with joy because we're partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Well, when was the first day? Well, the first day probably when we turned up by the river, and the first day was was when Lydia, who had been trying to search for God and hadn't really encountered him, but here comes Paul talking about Jesus, and and she responds to Jesus and she finds that brand new life for herself. And and from the first day, she said, Well, if it's okay, guys, you why don't you come and continue your kind of mission activity around my house? And and from that first day, there was this kind of partnership with the gospel, and and he he wasn't there kind of very long compared to some of the other places he visited, like Ephesus and currently. Actually, he he wasn't there very long, but something happened in that little time that really he had a little uh kind of quite a heart connection with people, and so he said I look back on that time and um uh and I from the from that first day onwards, I I thank you that you you're you're partnered in in the gospel, preaching the gospel. That's my mission, that's my I'm dedicated to let everyone know about Jesus, and I'm so pleased that kind of when I was imprisoned and I was kicked out and hired to move on, actually you you carried on the job. You carried on telling people about Jesus. Now there's multiple overseers and deacons, not just one little, and I'm just so actually I'm here in a prison, but hearing about you, ah, it just fills me with joy. Uh and there's this prayer of Thanksgiving. And then he says this, which I think is just an interesting thing, which we'll just put down into small groups in a moment and just say what we think this means. But he says, this being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Paul started off something. He started off something preaching the gospel. He started off something that saw some people start to follow Jesus for the first time in a place where there's persecution. But then he he had to move on. And maybe in his mind he thought, oh, I wonder what's gonna happen to those guys. I wonder if they're gonna stay faithful to Jesus. I wonder if they're gonna, in the light of the persecution and the the emperor worship and um and all these other these other gods that kind of, when they have the sacrifices to idols and they're tempted to join in, I wonder if they're gonna stay true to Jesus. I wonder if they kind of, and in some ways, he could have thought, well, had I stayed there, I don't know, maybe I could have done a good job. I could have kept them on track, I could have encouraged them, I could have been, but he says, I'm confident though, when I moved on, because God started something in you, God always finishes what he starts. I mean, God's not a kind of he's not one of the, I don't know if if you're the personality, if you're a complete finisher, as they say, of whether you start something and you'll carry on doing it until it's jolly done, or whether you kind of get a slightly distracted and and kind of um you've got all the good intentions, but somehow it just doesn't quite get done. Well, Paul says, I know God, he's a complete finisher. I know what is started in you, somehow he's going to complete it. Uh what is started in you and the life that you live until the day of Christ Jesus. What's the day of Christ Jesus? Well, the day of Christ Jesus is when we we get to meet Jesus face to face ourselves. And that might be the day that we die believing in Jesus, or it might be the day when Jesus returns. But either day is a day when we all, it will be the day when we see Jesus, it's the day of Christ Jesus. And he says that I'm convinced that what God started in you through through me and through my preaching and the way you responded to the gospel, actually I'm convinced, even though I had to move away, that God is faithful. And what he's started in you, he will carry on. Actually, he will complete. And and for me, I mean, this is the verse we're going to try and memorize this week, because for me that that gives me real confidence. It gives me real confidence that I can look back in my life and I think, actually, there's definitely times when I know that God's been at work in my life. There's definitely times when I've felt his presence, there's definitely been times where I've known his peace, there's definitely been times when I've found his physical healing kind of happening. And and and and and when I come to times where I think, oh, God seems a bit distant at the moment, God seems a bit remote, I kind of I wonder, has God forgotten about me? Has he kind of passed on from me and and there's somebody else now who's getting blessed? And and I look at this verse and think, actually, no, like Paul, I'm confident. I'm confident, irrespective of my emotions, irrespective of my highs and lows, I'm confident that God who started a good work in me, actually, He will carry on. Actually, even if I don't carry on, he's committed to carrying on. Actually, people that I have the chance to to help and support and minister to, or people who I've had the privilege to help lead to Jesus and pray for them. And again, I I'm not quite sure where they are now. I just think I have do I have the confidence that God who in that moment I kind of feel He He did do something in their life? I felt that He did answer a prayer, that they did find forgiveness, that they did start a relationship with Jesus, and and and I kind of saw the that first kind of joy that they had when they found him. Kind of, do I have the confidence that the people I've shared with and prayed for and ministered to that actually I I've been part of a journey and God's committed to them? So that's what Paul thought, but kind of um so in verse six, Paul is confident that God is who started doing a kingdom work in the Philippine Christians, he will complete it. Do you have a similar so we're gonna go into groups of three or four? Uh the question I want you to ask is actually, do you have a similar confidence? If not, how do you think you could have this confidence about your own life? Okay, I can't I look back and I think God has started something, but sometimes I just feel where is he now? How do I have that confidence in my own life? And actually, how do you have that confidence for people that you you love and you pray for and that God's going to carry that work? Does that make sense? Those two questions? So just five minutes or so? Uh yeah, so so if if that if that first bit was that was um God's all in. God's all in for us. He he's he's committed to to you. Um the the second bit is uh is Paul says that that he's all in. Actually, Paul is all actually he's all in a ministry. He's not just it's not just a job or a function for him. It's not just something that kind of he gets up and he has a nine to five job of of being a church minister. Actually, he he expresses something about his his feelings, his his emotions. Actually, Paul is all in. Kind of, I'm right to feel this way about you. I kind of there's sometimes we think we read Paul and we think he's a bit starchy and a bit kind of hard-line and a bit hardcore, and kind of, but actually he says here, actually, I'm right to feel this way about you since I've since you are in my heart. And whether I'm chains, defending confirming the gospel, um, all of you sharing God's grace. I can testify, I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. Actually, Paul sets an example that actually, are you all in? Are you all in with people? Or or do you treat people as projects? Actually, sometimes sometimes we can kind of um you can be a project person or a person person. Actually, when a project you're looking for outcomes and deliverables and goals and objectives, but actually, and sometimes we think, well, Paul was like that. He was a church planter, he had a strategy of where he's going to go around and plant churches everywhere, and he's going to be two years here and 18 months here, and um, and uh, but he wasn't clinical, it wasn't kind of just a a task that he was actually he felt uh passion and concern for people, and and so here maybe he's imprisoned and well say he is in prison, and and and maybe he just has a chance to reflect back and as he remembers there's a kind of a warm affection that that that he he has for them. Um and I don't know whether you feel that for people do you feel that for people in your home group, in your in your church? Do you kind of or people that maybe you were at school with or you kind of were at college with or at your first job and and there were people there and you look back and you're actually doing what I've I've got a warm affection for them. Um I grew up in uh uh in um in Norfolk on the Norfolk Broads, a little village, just 600 people, and uh amazingly uh 30 of them became Christians, and that's kind of five percent. It felt like a little revival going on. Um and even now I I look back to those times and think, do you know what God just did some amazing things there? Amazing things that people became Christians. There are people who have been set free from evil spirits super dramatically. Uh my mum was in a very serious car accident and was uh confined to a wheelchair because her leg was so badly damaged, and um we prayed and she got out of the wheelchair and she's been walking ever since. And and I look back with great affection, with and and I could name the people there that kind of at that moment where God was at work, and and and although it's kind of 35 years later, it's with great affection. I remember, oh God, you were at work there, you did such amazing things, and and those people that kind of that that we were with, and and I wonder whether at some point with in your small group or with people or someone that you're mentoring, actually, if you don't feel that sense of affection, um uh feelings, and it's just oh, I've got to witness for Jesus, Jesus, I've got to witness, I've got to pass the care, I've got to, and we can do the task without that sense of and Paul was all in, he wasn't just half-hearted, he was all in for these guys, and actually not just these guys, the church in Ephesus, the church in Corinth, the church in Rome. He was seemed to be passionate, a passionate kind of person. And God is all in to see you becoming like Jesus. Actually, Paul was all in, uh emotion to see them, and and actually I wonder whether, I suppose so the the last little bit of this, he he he prays that actually could the Philippians be all in? Could could they, in the same way that God's all in towards us and that that he seems to be all in for mission, actually, could you Philippians, could you be all in for Jesus? All in and so it there's this little kind of prayer he prays. He prays that kind of this is my prayer. I would I'm praying that you'd be all in, guys. That wouldn't you, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you'd be able to discern what is best. You might be pure and blameless. Again, for the day of Jesus Christ. Again, that phrase appears twice in this in these first few verses. This this day of Jesus Christ, kind of the day when you're going to be with him or when he returns, will you be found pure and blameless? Will there be something about your lifestyle choices that um that you'll be filled with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ? Um and it's almost those are the kind of five things are kind of marks of those are the kind of people that I think are going to be all in for Jesus. They're the ones who are gonna be all in. Actually, Philippine Christians, if I'm praying this for you because those will be the marks of people who God's all in for you, I'm all in for you. Actually, are you all in as well? And here's the five things that he prays. I pray that your love may abound more and more. Actually, there's something God is love. Jesus the command, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul mind, and strength. Love your Neighbours yourself. Actually, so his first prayer is actually I I pray that you you be loving people. Love isn't an emotion, kind of actually love is is a is a is a direction, love is a choice, love is an action. And he's praying that actually I I want that that your love, not just you have some days where you're loving, but your love is gonna abound more and more and more, that there'll be something contagious about you and your life and the way you you treat people who you work alongside, who are along your street, in Philippi where you're an oppressed. Actually, could you just love and love and love and love people? Because people need to know that that's the character nature of God. Are you all in? Is your love growing more and more? Actually, do you understand? Do you know what that love is? Do you have a knowledge of what love is? Love isn't a kind of um uh a feeling of um an emotional response. I I feel in love, I love baked beans, kind of uh kind of you need to know that love is patient, love is kind, love doesn't keep a record of wrongs. Actually, love uh a choice is love's actions. So you need to have a knowledge of what love is. Actually, you need to have an insight that you can be motivated by all kinds of things, but uh, do you have the insight that in your reactions and your kind of interactions with people that is the motivation love? Are you open to receive the love of God so you can share the love of God? Actually, do you have a depth of insight in in how love works? Are you able to discern what is what what is best? What's best for your life? What's best what's the best use of your skills and your gifts? What's the best use of any money you've got or any possession? Actually, what's what's kind of what's the best you can be for Jesus? Actually, my prayer is that you'll be able to discern what's best. What's the best choices in life? The best relationships to invest in, what's the best kind of use of your kind of your skills and gifts and resources that have been entrusted uniquely to you? And my prayer is that if you can be an all-in person that can um discern what is what is best. I want the lifestyle that you've got to somehow reflect the divine life of Jesus. In a world that is depraved and corrupt and self-centered and shallow. My prayer is that you'll be people who are who are pure and blameless. I mean it's interesting, isn't it, that kind of um there's some adverts that come on the telly that that kind of um uh my wife Bev she'll be watching this program, she'll really enjoy the programme, and there'll be the advert break, and then there'll be one of these kind of charity things that comes on, and it'll show children drinking kind of water from a river, and kind of, and she's thinking, no, kind of don't don't show me that. I'm just enjoying a nice film, and you'll but again there's this thing about actually people should have access to to pure water, and they're drinking this mucky soil stuff, and and actually, Christians, your life should be pure water, but yet some of us are mucky. We we don't take Jesus seriously, we don't take our choices seriously. Actually, we compromise and we we give in and and and and Paul says actually, but no, I I don't want you to be mucky river water. I want you to be pure spring water. I want there to be something about your choices and your vocabulary and your words and your actions, something that demonstrates to a dark and corrupt world that you're shining like children in the light, that there's something about you that's that's pure and that's blameless for the day of Jesus Christ. I'm praying that you'll be filled with with fruit, that your life will be a fruitful life. It will be it'll be fruit that's not just kind of you earn enough money and you get a nice house and kind of the fruits of your labours kind of uh materialist things. Actually, I want to pray that the fruits of your labours will be eternal, be righteous things. Actually, Paul goes out to explain what the fruit of the Spirit is. It's it's you're the kind of person where patience and joy and kindness and love and self-control and gentle faithfulness kind of they're they're just part of who you are. I'm praying that you'll be filled with the Holy Spirit in such a way that it changes your character, become more and more like Jesus. Righteousness that comes through Christ Jesus. Why? Because then our lives will bring praise and glory to God. And so as Paul starts off this letter, he's saying thank you, and thank you, God, that you're all in. And he says, and that do you know what? My heart is for you, and and and I'm all in to minister to you. But actually, I'm praying for you that you'll be all in too. Um does that does that kind of make sense? And it's kind of challenging, isn't it? And and and in some ways he's quite clever. He's not saying to them, you should be this, you shouldn't be this, you should be this. He says, 'God, you know, I pray to God, I pray to God that you'll be like this.' And it's kind of it's kind of subtle, but it's kind of true. That's what we should be. Actually, that we should we should be praying that for one another. If there's people that you love, actually that's a great prayer, prayer to pray for them. To pray for someone who's close to you, a family member. I pray that their love would have been moral life. I pray they'd have knowledge and depth in this. I pray that they'd be able to discern what's the best in life. I want to pray that they'll somehow they make the choices in life which are pure and blameless choices rather than wrong, harsh, selfish choices. I want to pray that their their life will be filled of fruit that's that's right and righteous and just. And it's a great prayer to pray for other people. And if you're ever stuck, if ever you think, oh, my prayer life's, I'm not quite sure what to pray, pray that. Turn to your Bible. That's a great prayer to pray for people that you love. So we're just gonna have five minutes for a couple of questions. Is that okay? Um uh yeah, how so kind of how do you think Paul's prayer was answered in the life of the Philippines? And how can our love grow in love and depth? Uh, sorry, in knowledge, depth of insight. So Paul praised this, but how do you think it was answered in the Philippines? Uh it could be answered in the Philippines life and and in our lives. Um, and how do you think love can grow again in knowledge and depth of insight? Just a couple of minutes and then we'll we'll finish with a little meditation. Okay, with the people that you're with. So uh just before we finish, there is something about studying, discussing, talking. Actually, there's something about meditating. Um so I wonder whether we should take a little before we we, unless you have to dash off quick right now, just take a couple of minutes. Um, and just to quietly read through those two verses, um, yeah, three or four times. Um meditating is um taking time to reflect on something. Um I think meditating is the opposite to anxiety. You know, anxiety and the way anxiety and worry works is that you you take something and you obsess about it and you imagine the worst case scenario, and actually you then live today as if the worst is gonna happen. Now, meditating is the exact opposite. What if this is true? And we think about the positive God's word and we live as if it's true. So we live in anxiety and fear as if the worst is gonna happen, and we live in faith if the best is gonna happen. And that's what meditate is saying, taking these words and think, God, this is what I I do want to I want to pray that your love will abandon me more and more. I pray that they're kind of I might be able to say what's best. I might be pure and blameless in the day of Christ. Um so if we just have a quiet moment, maybe you read through it two or three times, four or five times, and just say, God, are you saying, is there one particular phrase that strikes you? One little thing that you think I'm gonna take home with me today? One little thing God's challenging you with, encouraging you with. Is that okay? So just a couple of minutes of quiet and um take a chance to reflect. Thank you as we meditate in a word. It's it revives our soul. It makes wise the simple. It gives joy to the heart. It gives light to the eyes. Thank you to you and committed to us. And all we say we live in a way that is committed to you. All in for you, in our love, in our discernment, in our purity, in our lifestyle, and all we say all in for you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Just a little last challenge. Is that is that uh uh okay. We're gonna see if by next week, if you come back next week, you can memorize that verse. Is that okay? So I wondered if we could say it out loud together before just as we finish, is that okay? Um being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.