Let the king of my heart be the mountain where I run.
Fountain I drink from always passion.
Let the king of my heart be the shadow where I the ransom for my life always passed.
You are good.
The mountain I drink from always my song.
Well, welcome, Redeemer Family.
Good to be with you this week on our midweek devotion Bible chat.
We're gonna be making our way through the book of Philippians from now on during these midweek devotions, just taking a few minutes in the middle of the week to open up a book of the Bible and have a little Bible chat.
So we're gonna be opening the book of Philippians.
The reason why I want to look at the book of Philippians is because this is Paul writing to a church is having a tough time.
This church of um and Philippi, and these are Paul's friends, and Paul is in jail, and yet this is the book that he writes the most about joy.
And so I think it's an interesting book for us to consider, not that we are locked up, but we are certainly locked down in a series of ways and experiencing it in different ways.
Each of us, we are being limited, and yet our joy does not have to be limited.
So he begins this letter writing to his friends, this church, and he says, Philippians 1 verses 1 and 2, he says, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons, and then he says this verse 2, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So for our first Bible chat in Philippians, I just want to stop there in those first two verses.
I think that's enough for us to enter in to look at how is it the way, what is the way by which Paul enters into this letter, into these people?
What's the way that he views these people and he communicates to them?
And what we see right away so good for us to see is that he begins with grace.
He says, He says, You guys are saints.
He says, Grace and peace to you.
And now right now it might be filled with just family members, or maybe you're in an empty house, and maybe you know your people are over the phone or on Zoom chats, but our lives are filled with people and people are imperfect, and we are imperfect, and so our approach and our regard to people has to begin with a beginning point of grace, or else there will always be a breakdown.
I've read once before where somebody said the moment imputation breaks down, a relationship is the moment the relationship is doomed.
Meaning, as soon as you stop imputing to the other person grace and righteousness and love, the relationship is doomed because the other person and even you are imperfect.
And so the beginning point has to be grace.
And this is how we see Paul beginning with this church that you know is imperfect.
He says, Grace to you.
You are saints in Jesus.
You are a saint.
And how good that is for us to hear, because certainly our lives are filled with people who need grace to be showered upon them.
If we even think about the way that Paul begins all his letters, he begins with this grace and peace, Galatians 1 3, Ephesians 1 2, Colossians 1-2, 1 Thessalonians 1-1, uh, 2 Thessalonians 1-2.
I mean it just on and on and on is Paul saying, Grace and peace, grace and peace, because it all begins with grace and peace.
It is by grace that we are saints.
We are God's children viewed holy and perfect.
We're not saints because we're saintly, we're saints because in the grace of Jesus we are righteous by his word.
What a peace that gives us.
And then these questions begin, right?
Like, what would it look like if we really handed over people in our lives to the grace of God?
What if we decided we were beginning to regard and approach and communicate to the people in our lives in grace from the beginning?
Not and not like wait until they earn something and then be gracious, but what if we began in grace?
What would it look like to shower them with grace before giving advice or waiting for them to deserve something?
And then can you imagine what it would be like to be in a relationship with people that do that for you?
Well, I would dare to say that that's the parent you love, I would dare to say that to the friend you love, that's the friend you're waiting on.
And it's certainly the God we have.
Grace to you.
That's why Paul starts this letter, Philippians, a book of joy, while he is in jail and prison writing, and he says he just knows that our joy does not have to be limited, even though our life is limited.
Grace and peace to you, you are saints, a redeemer family.
Our just short Bible chapter this week.
It begins in this book of Philippians by saying, Grace and peace to you, all you saints, have great joy this week, and we'll talk to you soon.