Introduction to Philippians

to locate your seat, grab a bulletin. We'll get ready to go over some announcements.

Welcome to Calvary Chapel. I'm glad that you joined us this morning. I'm not going to lie, I did not expect half of this group to be here. So congratulations, you've done well. Hopefully we all make it home. If not, we'll go home, right? So a few things to take note of on the left-hand side of your bulletin. The only thing that's canceled this weekend, I'm going to

make eye contact to make sure I'm correct on this, is Monday night women's study, right? Yeah, just stay home tomorrow night. That's going to be the right thing to do. So other than that, everything else is rolling this week. Over in the middle section of your bulletin, fellas, we have a men's breakfast coming up this Saturday at 8 o'clock a.m. down at the other end

of the hall. It's a great time to gather together, fellowship, and eat some good food. And then the college group is going to be starting back up next Sunday evening. I'm going to be leading that, so it'll be 6.30 down at the other end of the hall. In the Agape room as well. So if you're a college-aged kid or you know someone who is, come join us for that. And then for our missions trip in May, we have one spot left, which is great

because we had three spots left when I announced the first service, and now there's only two spots or one spot left. So that's fun. So we're about to have that full. So what a blessing to hear from him last week. And then, of course, on the back page is our weekly reading plan. So take note of that as well. And I think that's it. So if you would make sure that your mobile device is silenced for our

responsive reading this morning, we are going to be in Psalm 14. Psalm 14. Looking at the new American standards, so we sound the same. If you need a copy, should be one in a row around you. Matter of fact, I just got a bunch of those in the mail this week, so should be plenty of them around you. And as you are turning to Psalm 14, if you are able, please stand in the honor of the

reading of God's word. I will read the odd verses. If you will follow along, I will read the odd verses. I will read the odd verses along with Pastor Allen in the even verses. Psalm 14 for the choir director, a psalm of David. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They have committed abominable deeds. There is no one who does good. The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men

to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is no one who does good. There is no one who does good. There is no one who does good. Not even one. Do all the workers of wickedness not know who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord? There they are in great dread, for God is with

the righteous generation. You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted, but the Lord is his refuge. And read verse seven with me. Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion. When the Lord restores, his captive people, Jacob will rejoice. Israel will be glad. And Father, we do thank you, Father, that the afflicted can find their refuge in you. And so, Lord, that's where we're running

to today. Father, we need to find our refuge in you. And so, Lord, lead us, teach us, guide us, and may we have hearts and ears that are open to what your Holy Spirit has to say this morning. In Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. And if you would open up in your Bibles to the book of Philippians chapter one. Philippians chapter one. Before Christmas, we finished up the book of Ephesians, and I've been praying since then about

where to go next. And I've really tossed around several different ideas. Do I just keep trucking through the New Testament the way that I have been or break off and go a different direction? And ultimately, I landed on continuing on, especially into the book of Philippians. And the reason why I landed on continuing on into the book of Philippians is because of the theme

of the letter. The theme of the letter, the book of, to the Philippian church is joy. And I think that in the world that we live in right now, we could all use a little bit of joy. According to some church history that I've read, one of the greatest draws of people to Christ is the joy that the believers had. That no matter what was going on, no matter the persecution that they faced, there was this joy that exuded from

believers in Jesus Christ. And I think it's time for those of us as Western culture, 21st century believers, that we reclaim some of that joy. And I think it's time for those of us as Western culture, that we reclaim some of that joy. A lot of people talk about wanting to be happy. The problem with happiness is happiness comes and goes. Happiness is usually based upon your circumstances. Joy

is based upon your settled belief in who you are in Christ. And so that's what we're going to look at here in the book of Philippians. And so this morning, what I want to do is just take the first couple of verses by way of introduction. And in those first two verses, give us hopefully sort of the background of the book of Philippians, the background to the church in Philippi and some introductory thoughts. So starting in Philippians chapter one, verse one, it says this,

Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and the deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And so any book introduction that you do, any commentary that you read, they're going to tell you several things about the book that you're about to study. They're going to tell you who wrote it. They're going to tell you why they wrote it. They're going to tell you when

they wrote it. Well, as I see these first two verses in the introduction, there's three things that we're told and three things that we're going to look at. We're going to look at the writer. We're going to look at the recipient and we're going to look at his greeting. And so first of all, we see the writer. Now there's two names that are mentioned in verse one, and those two names

are really important. Those names are Paul and Timothy. The first one that we want to look at is Paul. Now, when Paul is writing, this letter, much like the book of Ephesians, this is what's referred to as a prison epistle because when he wrote this, he was in prison there in Rome, which is kind of ironic considering what we just said the theme of the book is because the theme of the book is joy. Now, I'm here to tell

you right now, if I land myself in prison, I'm not going to be writing to you about how joyful I am, probably because I'm not that mature as a believer just yet, but this is what Paul writes to them about. He writes to them about the joy that he has in the Lord and the joy that believers can have while he's in prison. As a matter of fact, it's such a pervasive theme in the book that four times the word joy is used in the book of Philippians, which by the way only has four chapters. The word rejoice is used eight times and the word glad is used three times. You see

how the theme of joy comes out in this epistle. And so it's written to us by Paul. Now, a lot of you in here probably know Paul's backstory, but I never want to take for granted that maybe somebody doesn't. And so I'm going to tell you a little bit about the writer. And while you're may have heard it before, it never hurts to review, right? So Paul, whose Hebrew name was

Saul, a lot of people think that after Saul got saved, he changed his name to Paul, but that's actually not true. Saul was his Hebrew name. Paul was his Greek name or his Gentile name that he went by. Saul was an incredibly religious man. He actually would have been a contemporary with Jesus around. He would have been walking around Jerusalem at the same time Jesus was. And Saul

hated Jesus. As a matter of fact, as far as religion was concerned, Paul was perfect. He did all of the things that you are supposed to as a good Jewish man to make sure that you are perfect. As a matter of fact, when he gives his credentials in another of the books that he writes, he says that as far as the law was concerned, he was blameless. He was a Jew of the Jews, a Pharisee

of the Pharisees. He knew the law. He studied the law. He taught the law. And in his mind, he obeyed the law. But again, he had one problem. He didn't like Jesus because he felt like Jesus disrupted everything that he believed. He felt like Jesus had disrupted everything that he had been taught. He felt like Jesus disrupted all of the traditions that he had learned. So he did everything that he

could to destroy Jesus. And he especially did everything that he could to destroy the church of Jesus. If you were to go back into the book of Acts, you would find that there was one man. His name was Stephen. Stephen was the very first man to be killed by Jesus. He was the very first martyr. And when Stephen was stoned to death, there was a young man who was standing there holding the coats of everyone who was doing the stoning and consenting

to what was taking place with Stephen, and his name was Saul. That martyr, when Stephen was martyred, Saul unleashed a persecution upon the church, the likes of which had never been seen up to that point in time. As a matter of fact, most of the church of Jesus Christ was driven out of Jerusalem and into the areas of Judea. And so he wanted to continue to do that work of destroying the church. And so he went to the chief

priest and he requested letters of recommendation, or if you will, credentials, so that he could go up to a city called Damascus, where some of the Christians had fled to, so that he could arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem for trial. So that's exactly what he did. He left with a guard with some men who were mounted soldiers around him, and he took off and he took them back to Damascus. And while he was on that road, there was a great light that shined. And that light that

shined was none other than an appearance of Jesus Christ himself. And Paul, undoubtedly riding on a donkey, because that's what a good Jewish man did, was knocked off of his donkey, fell to the ground, and he said, in a voice from the sky said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And of course, Saul goes, who are you? He says, I'm Jesus. I'm the one that you're persecuting.

And later in Paul's account, he says, and so the Lord said back, it's hard for you to kick against the goads. In other words, why won't you just give up? Why are you fighting against this so hard? He said, Lord, what do you want me to do? He said, I want you to go into Damascus, and I want you to go to the street called Straight, and there's going to be a house there.

I want you to stay there, and I'm going to send someone to you. So the Lord left, the light stopped shining, but Paul was blind. There was something like great scales, on his eyes. And so the soldiers that were with him led him into Damascus to the place where the Lord had told him to go, and he waited. He waited there until a man whom the Lord had commissioned

to go and pray for Saul showed up. He prayed for Saul, and those scales fell off of his eyes, not only physically, but spiritually, and now he saw the truth. The Jesus that he had fought so hard against was actually the fulfillment of everything that he believed. And so what was a man who had unleashed the greatest persecution? He had unleashed the greatest persecution,

the church had ever seen upon them, now became a man who unleashed the greatest evangelistic effort that the world had ever seen, because that is the power of the gospel. He went from a man who hated Jesus and wanted to destroy him, to a man who considered himself a slave of Jesus, and all he wanted to do was proclaim him. That's why when Paul wrote the book of Romans, he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is the power of God unto salvation. Put it to the test. It will absolutely change your life. And so Paul was a man who had unleashed the greatest

persecution. Paul then becomes a great force for Jesus Christ and sort of departs the area of Damascus. Well, remember Paul's work had sent, his work of persecution had sent believers as far as Antioch, and so there was this church that started in Antioch. Now, the church in Antioch was kind of interesting because it was mainly Hellenistic Jews, or not very pure Jews, and Gentiles. So they

didn't have very much of a background of the Old Testament scripture. Well, there's a guy by the name of Barnabas who was a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was a disciple of the Lord Jesus and when they heard about the church in Antioch, Barnabas was sent to Antioch to kind of see what was going on, sort of be an elder over the church. And when Barnabas saw what was going on, that these were a bunch of Gentiles and Hellenistic Jews that didn't understand the old covenant or the law, he said, I know exactly who I need to go get. So he went and found Paul. He said, Paul, you got to

join me in Antioch. We're going to do a great thing there. You're going to teach a bunch of people who don't know anything exactly what God wants for them. And that's exactly what Paul did. Paul and Barnabas and some other very gifted men served there in Antioch. Well, while they were serving in Antioch, studying the word together, teaching the word, breaking bread together,

praying together, when necessary, fasting to seek the Lord's will, the Holy Spirit spoke. And he said, separate unto me Paul and Barnabas for the work which I have called them to do. And that's exactly what Paul and Barnabas did. They were sent off on the very first missionary journey. And so Paul would have three of those missionary journeys. And they were incredibly successful in spite of the fact that he faced great persecution.

Some think he actually died once and God brought him back to life. But through all of that, he continued to preach the gospel. Well, his preaching of the gospel got him arrested when he was back in Jerusalem and sent to prison in Rome. And that's where he's writing this book from. And so that's who Paul is. But Paul's not the only guy we hear from here. We also hear from

Timothy was a young companion of Paul. He was a young man. I like that they call him a young man because do you know how old they thought Timothy probably was? Forty. Still a young dude, right? He was so young, he shouldn't be in the ministry. He's way too young to be in the ministry because he was 40. I appreciate that. Anyway, so Timothy was this young companion that followed Paul.

So let me tell you a little bit of Timothy's story. Now, Paul had gone on his first missionary journey with Barnabas. But there was another young man that had come with Paul and Barnabas. His name was John Mark. John Mark was Barnabas's nephew. Now, when they were in the middle of the first missionary journey, the going was getting tough. Paul was incredibly sick and still preaching the

gospel. They were facing great persecution. And this young man, John Mark, said, it's too much for me. I'm going back home. He sort of abandoned them in the time when they would have needed him the most. Well, when they got ready to go on this second missionary journey, Paul says, Barney, here's what we should do. Let's go back and visit the other churches that we started and maybe

start a few new ones as well. And Barnabas is like, that's a great idea. Let's take John Mark. And Paul goes, no. No, I don't take traitors with me. I don't take guys that don't finish the job with me. I'm not going to take him. And it became a huge contention between Paul and Barnabas. So much so, the tension was so great between the two of them that they said,

we can't be in ministry together anymore. Barnabas, you go your way with John Mark. I'll go my way and I'll take Silas. So he took Silas with him and they go back and they start working through all the other churches and then continuing on even farther. And so they come to this city called Lystra. And while they're in Lystra giving out the gospel, we learned that there is a young man by

the name of Timothy, a young believer who had been led to the faith by his mother and his grandmother, whose names are Lois and Eunice, by the way. Are those not great names? It was led to the Lord by Lois and Eunice, his mother and his grandmother. And he was well spoken of by all of the brethren there in Lystra. And so Paul really took a liking to him and said, why don't you come

with me and I'll teach you what it's like to be a pastor and to be a missionary. And so that's what happened. So Timothy joined Paul and Silas in all of their journeys. And he became really a companion that Paul called a true friend. So much so that now that Paul's in prison, who's coming to visit him? Timothy. Timothy's coming to visit him in prison. As a matter of fact, the very last letter

that Paul will write is written to Timothy. It's simply titled Second Timothy, as he taught him what it was like to be a pastor. So Timothy was always really, really important to Paul. So these are the two guys that are writing this letter to the Philippian people, Paul and Timothy. But there's one more phrase I want to point out to you because I think it's an important phrase to pay attention to because it's how Paul

viewed himself and ultimately how we should view ourselves. He said, Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Christ Jesus. You guys take note of that word. Now, I don't actually prefer the translation bondservant here because I think it softens the word too much. I actually prefer the translation bondslaves because I think that carries the weight that that word is supposed

to carry with it. Bondslave. In the Greek, the word bondslave is doulos, D-O-U-L-O-S. The idea of a doulos or a bondslave is this. It is one who is devoted to another to the disregard of his own interests. In other words, I will follow you even if it costs me everything. That kind of makes sense to you about what a bondslave is? It's interesting. It's interesting because it's a word that's used

because when Jesus was talking with his disciples and they kept wanting to find out who was going to be the greatest, do you remember the two things that Jesus told them they needed to be if they were to be the greatest? If you want to be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, you must be the servant of all. If you want to be great in the kingdom, you must be the slave of all. And so what does Paul refer to himself as? A bondslave. Now, a bondslave could either be voluntary or

involuntary. Now, there's an Old Testament connection to this word bondslave or bondservant for us to pay attention to. You would read about it in the book of Leviticus. I didn't write the exact chapter down, but it's in Leviticus. The idea is this. You see, slavery in the Old Testament is not what you and I think of as slavery. Slavery in the Old Testament is what we would refer to as

indentured servitude. In other words, you owe someone money. You owe a debt. You can't afford to pay that debt. So you put yourself in bondage to that person so that you can pay off the debt. You're basically their slave. Until you pay off the debt. Now, the idea of the bondslave is this. And it says this in the book of Leviticus. It says, if you have paid off your debt and you love your master, you love his family

and you want to devote yourself to serving him, you can become a bondslave. You can say, I choose to serve this person for the rest of my life. And they would take you to the door of the city square and they would pierce your ear through with an awl and you would be considered a bondslave. You are now a slave by choice. It's kind of a fascinating picture, isn't it? Because we owe a

debt that we can't pay. And that's because of our sin. Jesus paid off our debt for us. And so what do we now do? We voluntarily give our entire life to him and we serve him to the detriment of ourselves, to the sacrificing of everything of me, because ultimately I love him because of what he did for me. I have a question for you. As we think about this, whose slave are you? And there may be some of you here today who say,

I'm not. You're either a slave to Jesus or you're a slave to sin. Those are really the only two choices that you have. You see, there are some people who live in sin and they think they're living in freedom. They say, well, I drink as much as I want to. So I'm living in freedom. No, you're not living in bondage to alcohol. Why watch porn as much as I want to? And I'm free. No,

you're living in bondage to that. Wesley, sleep with whoever I want to. Yeah, but you're not free. You're now in bondage to your sexual desire. I do whatever I want to. No, you're not. You do what your sin nature tells you to do, because you will serve one of two masters. You will either serve sin or you will serve Jesus. Because what did Jesus tell us? No man can serve two masters.

I always use the example of my dogs when it comes to this. And my wife has had a lot of fun with dogs. I've had a lot of fun with dogs. I've had a lot of fun with dogs. I've had a lot of fun with dogs. I've had a lot of fun with dogs. I've had a lot of fun with So we've owned several dogs throughout our lives, and none of them have ever been by my choice. Amen?

Right? How many of you dads, like you own pets, but it wasn't your choice to own pets. And yet, they're your pets, right? Well, of the dogs that we've owned, two of them have been mine. I used to always just say one. We had a dog a long time ago. His name was Beck. And yes, he did have two turntables and a microphone, for those of you that grew up in the 90s. See, almost nobody gets that

joke ever. It's a song. By Beck. Anyway, so Beck was my dog. When we first got him, my wife said, we need a dog. It was that, like, we're not ready to have kids yet, but we're ready for responsibility. So we got a dog. And so we went and we adopted Beck. And Beck was a great dog, right? We brought him home. Well, Aaron got sick the weekend that we got him. And so who took care of Beck his entire first weekend

at home? I did. Who sat with him when he was whining at night because it was a brand new place? I did. Who fed him every morning? I did. Who let him outside so that he could go to the bathroom? I did. Who made sure he had water? I think you get the idea. So whose dog was he? My dog. And he did everything I told him to do. And if anybody else tried to tell him something to do when I

was around, they were not going to listen because dogs can only have one master. This is the truth about dogs. Well, now we own two more dogs, Macy and Carl. And Carl is my dog, okay? And Carl personifies the name Carl with the underbite and everything. I was like, Carl, right? That's exactly what he looks like. Even the same color as my beard is right now. Anyway, Carl will go anywhere

that I go. Aaron can hold out a treat. And if I'm sitting on the couch, he'll look at the treat and he'll look at me and he'll look at the treat and he'll look at me and he'll come sit with me. And she's like, that is so your dog because he only does what I tell him to do. And that's the way we're supposed to be. We can only have one master. So my question for you again is this, who are you

a slave to? Because you're either going to be a slave to Jesus or you're going to be a slave to choice is yours. And so he says, Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Christ Jesus. That's the writer. The second thing that we see is the recipient, the recipient of this letter. Notice what it says, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, middle of verse one, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in

Philippi, including the overseers and the deacons. I'm going to take that verse just a little bit out of order and tell you, first of all, about the Philippians, because it's written to, the Philippians. Now in the margin of your Bible, if you're a note taker, write Acts chapter 16, or just Acts 16. I don't want you to turn there, but reference it because that's where we find out about the founding of the church in Philippi. Now, cool story. It's the second missionary journey.

He's just picked up Timothy and he comes all the way to the port city of Troas. And so he's trying to figure out where to go next. Speaking of Paul, where do I go next? Where does the Lord want me to go? So he tried to go to Asia, which is what we know of as Asia Minor, the area of Turkey. He tried to go there first. That was south. The Holy Spirit told him not to.

He thought, well, maybe I'm supposed to go north to the area of Thrace, just above, just above that same area. And the Lord told him no. And so he's going, well, I can't go north and I can't go south. There's no reason to go back. I don't know where I'm supposed to go now. And so he's just sitting there next to this body of water in the best place that sometimes we can be. And

that's the place of waiting. You ever been there? You ever been in that place where you're waiting and you're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do next. I know God wants to use me, and I know I'm supposed to be doing something for the Lord. I don't know what that is. I don't know where I'm supposed to go. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Can I tell you, don't despise

the day of waiting. So many people are like, I must be doing something wrong. All I'm doing is waiting. But can I tell you that there are things that you learn while you wait that you can't learn any other way. I always tell, especially young people, because that's who I've worked with the most over my ministerial career. I tell them, I've worked with them over my ministerial career.

I always tell young people when they're like, I don't know what to do next. I'm like, well, then you need to actively wait. And they're like, what does actively wait mean? Actively wait means be where you are, serve where you are until God opens up the door to send you somewhere else. In the meantime, serve where you are, seek God. And as you wait, you will learn something because

you know what you learn in the period of waiting? You learn to identify the voice of the Lord. Have you ever noticed sometimes God's voice sounds like yours? That's bad, right? Because you're like, I think this is what God wants me to do next. I don't know how many times people come in. I think this is what God wants me to do. I'm like, I don't think so. That seems like a really bad idea, right? That was just my saying for like two or three years.

Seems like a bad idea. And I would tell them that I'm not an overly forceful human being. And so I'd be like, it just, it doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I don't think I would do that, but I'm not forceful about the way I say it. And so people go ahead and do it. And then they come back and they're like, that wasn't what I was supposed to do at all. And I'm like, I don't know

what, but maybe it was me. Because sometimes God's voice sounds like ours, right? Until you wait. But if you decide, you know what? I'm not moving until I know for sure that this is the voice of the Lord. And you'll find that you start to understand what God's voice sounds like. And you realize that wasn't, it wasn't God that was calling me to do that. It was me.

So let's wait and see what God wants me to do. And that's exactly what Paul did. He waited. And while he waited, he had a job. He had a dream. He had a dream. He had it. Anyway, he had this dream, right? And the dream that he had one night was someone from Macedonia, a man from Macedonia who said, come over and help us. And of course, it seemed pretty clear that this was the Lord doing this. He talked to his

companions. They said, we agree. And so they set sail to go over to the region of Macedonia, which is what we know of as Greece. They sailed over there and they went to a couple of different cities and finally stopped in the city of Philippi. Now, as Paul's custom was, anytime he went to a new city, the first thing he would do is he would go to the local synagogue, if you will, the local place

of Jewish worship, so that he could hopefully reach out to, first of all, the Jews. Well, it takes 10 Jewish men in a community to form a synagogue. Well, in Philippi, there was no synagogue, so there must not have been very many Jewish guys there. But if there weren't enough people to form a synagogue, they would go down by the river and they would meet there and they would pray and worship together. So he went down to the city of Macedonia, and he said, I'm going to go to the

by the river and he found a group of ladies led by a lady named Lydia. And when Paul showed up, she said, we've been hoping that you would come. And what he realized was, is that the vision of the man in Macedonia was actually a lady who was praying that God would send a pastor. And so he ministers to these ladies, this lady that was there, her name was Lydia. She was called a seller

of purple. Purple is the dye that they would use in the royal robes. So she was a woman of great means. And she said, why don't you come home and stay with us? You and Timothy and Silas, you come stay with us. We'll take care of you. And they didn't feel right about it at first, but she kept pushing. And so they went and they stayed there and they started this church there, started serving

the Lord there in Philippi. Well, the first instance that takes place in Philippi is that there was this girl who we simply know of as a girl with a spirit of divination. In other words, she was a medium. She was a psychic, but it was because of demonic powers that she was able to do it. And she made her masters, because she was a slave girl, she made her masters a lot of money.

Well, every time Paul and Silas would go roaming around the community, she would follow them around and she would say, these are the servants of the Lord, like the entire time. And finally, after about a week of it, Paul was like, oh dear God, be gone. And he cast the demon out of her. And now she can't be a psychic anymore. She can't be a medium anymore because he cast the demon out of

her. Which by the way, if you're messing with mediums, if you're messing with psychic stuff, you need to know it's very, very important. And so she was able to do it. And she was able to do it. It's very real. It's very demonic. Okay. So if you're screwing around with that stuff right now, you just need to know it's demonic in nature. Don't mess with it. Okay. So they cast the demon

out of her and she's in her right mind, only now she can't make her masters any money. And you know how it is. People don't mind if your religion takes place, as long as it doesn't affect their money. Right. And so they say, hey, Paul and Silas are causing all kinds of havoc. I think the specific words are they're wreaking havoc. Right. And so they arrest Paul and Silas and they beat them with rods. Now that's exactly what it

sounds like. Right. They would have stripped them down to their waist and literally taken a rod and just wailed on them, beat the tar out of them with it. And then they took them and put them into prison. And when they put them into prison, they put them in stocks. Now, I don't know how you picture the stocks, but I always picture the old West thing where you're like hand, hand, head.

Right. That's not what this was. The stocks that they put them in would have been on their legs and they would have put their legs into the splits and they would have put a board in there and they would chain them to the board. You know why? Because you can't run away very well if you're in the stocks. Well, so there they are completely beaten in the stocks, the most uncomfortable

position ever, and they can't sleep. And so what do they do? They praise the Lord. Can I just tell you that's one of the most convicting statements I can ever imagine. I don't like to praise the Lord very much when I don't feel very good. I don't like to praise the Lord very much when things really hurt. I'm really good at complaining about them. I'm really good at making jokes about

them, but I'm not very good at praising the Lord. That's exactly what happened. Paul and Silas, about midnight, undoubtedly because they couldn't sleep, were praising God, singing praises to the Lord. And do you know what happened? The entire prison shook. There was this huge earthquake. When this huge earthquake happened, it not only opened up all of the doors,

knocked off all of their chains, and they could have run free. Now, before we get to this next part, I cannot run by this without drawing some spiritual application for us. Brothers and sisters, praising God shakes the foundations. Praising God sets us free. Because if I can praise God in the midst of whatever is going on, then it doesn't have a hold on me any longer. Because I

have just realized that my God is being praised. I have just realized that my God is being praised. So I don't know what you're going through. I don't know what's happening with you. But in the midst of it, you need to praise God. Because if you want to shake the foundations and sing praises to the only one who created them. Amen? And so they're free. They could run free. And the jailer sees

that all of the doors are open. And so he knows what the penalty is. And if you don't know, if you're a Roman soldier and you're guarding prisoners, prisoners escape onto your watch, you get the same punishment that those prisoners were supposed to get. And so this guard, knowing that he didn't want to have to face other Roman soldiers, decided he was just going to end it all, had his sword out, ready to fall on it. And Paul and Silas cry out,

go faster. No, they cry out, don't hurt yourself. We're all here. Now, can you imagine that? All of us, I can't have that. I can't have that. I can't have that. I can't have that. I can't have that. I can't help it. I know most of us would be like, yeah, do it. Then we can run away. You're the guard, right? But you see, they love people more than they love freedom. Because they serve God more

than they serve themselves. So the Roman jailer comes out, or the Philippian jailer comes out and says, what must I do to be saved? Isn't that great? And I tell them, they say, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. And in that moment, he did. You know why? Because I'm not ashamed because it's the power of God unto salvation. And this Roman soldier, who may very well have

been a part of the beating of these two men, is now washing their wounds. He took them to his house, washed their wounds, and his entire household gets saved. They all come to faith in Jesus Christ. And the next day, Paul and Silas, they leave. So who were these Philippian churchgoers? Who were the people in the church? Well, we know that there's a lady named Lydia,

and a group of ladies that prayed with her. We know that there's a girl who got set free from demon possession. We know that there's a Philippian jailer in his entire household that were there. And there were more than that, because there's overseers and deacons, or elders and deacons of this church. So it was a sizable church there in Philippi. And this church in Philippi was so

important to Paul. Because when he left Philippi, he went on, and one of the places he visited was called Thessalonica. And when he was in Thessalonica, he went on to Philippi, and he went on to Thessalonica, so that he could spend all of his time giving out the gospel and not making tents, which was his trade. The church in Philippi sent him funds to support him while he was there.

As a matter of fact, the entire reason he wrote the book of Philippians, the entire reason he wrote this letter is because they had searched high and low to figure out where their beloved Paul was. And when they finally realized that he was under house arrest in Rome, they gathered together a collection and some things that he might need, and they sent it by the hand of the hand of a guy named Epaphroditus, who's thought to be the pastor of the church in Philippi. They send this gift to Paul. And so Paul writes back this letter, not only to thank them for the gift that they gave, but to talk to them about the joy that he's experiencing and how God is working, even while he's in prison, but even to talk about mending some relationships in Philippi

that needed mending. And that's why he wrote the letter of Philippians. But there was another word that I think we need to pay attention to. Look at the middle of verse one again. It says, to the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi. That word saints is kind of an interesting word, isn't it? Most of us don't feel like we're qualified for that kind of a word, right?

The word saint in the Greek is the word hagios, H-A-G-I-O-S, hagios. The word literally means to be sacred, to be holy, and to be set apart. Now, typically when we hear the word saint, we think of somebody who is super righteous, right? We think of like anybody but us, unless you struggle with pride, and then it's only you. Anyway, we usually think of somebody

else, like somebody that did a miracle, or guys that lived in Bible times, or all those kinds of guys. But here's what I want you to realize. He just called all of these people in Philippi saints in Christ Jesus. Now, we need to understand something. To be a saint doesn't require you to do a work. It requires that your faith be in Jesus Christ, because you are saints

in Christ Jesus. That's who you are. If you're here this morning, and you're a born-again believer, you are a saint. As a matter of fact, J. Vernon McGee has this famous saying. He says, there's only two groups of people in the world. You're either a saint or an ain't, right? You're either in Christ or you're not in Christ. You're either a saint or you're not one. And if you're

here this morning, and you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ, bad news, man. You're an ain't. That means that heaven is not where you're heading. You need to know that. You need to put your faith in Jesus. And get your heart right with him, because judgment's coming, and he's going to deal with things swiftly. So he tells these guys, you are saints in Christ Jesus. We need to understand

something. Anyone who's put their faith in Christ is a saint. There is no such thing as progressive salvation. The moment that you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you were as saved as you could ever be. You were as sealed as you could ever be. You were as sanctified as you could ever be. Now, we're walking that out every day. We're walking out our faith and living out our faith and living out our sanctification. But you are in the position

of being saved, because that's who you are now. And you're a saint. And I fear sometimes that there are too many people that walk around hoping that today will be the day where they feel like they finally arrived, where you feel like you've finally done enough to be accepted by Jesus. I'm here to tell you right now, you can never do enough. All you can do is put your faith in him.

You know how I know that? Because what did Paul tell the Philippian jailer when he said, what must I do to be saved? He said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. As a matter of fact, in John chapter six, all of the people that had been following Jesus said, what must we do to work the works of God? And you know how Jesus responded to him? He said, the work of God is

this, believe in him whom he has sent. In other words, believe in Jesus. So he calls these guys saints in Christ Jesus. And then of course he mentions the overseers and the deacons because there was a church big enough for that. And there was some necessary things that needed done at the church and they needed to be paid attention to. And then number three, we come to the greeting.

Notice what it says in verse two. It says, grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul's typical greeting, anytime he wrote a letter, we call these the Siamese twins of the new Testament because they always go together. But let's look at these two words because they're really important words. Okay. The first word is the word grace. He says,

grace to you. The word grace in the Greek is charis. Charis. And it literally means unmerited favor or unearned favor. And that's exactly what we have because of Jesus Christ is he has given us his unearned favor. In other words, there's nothing you could have done to deserve it. And brother, brothers and sisters, I will tell you this. If you don't understand the grace of God,

then you will also never show the grace of God. You know why most people don't like going to church? Because of all those judgmental hypocrites. And you know what? Sometimes you can't totally blame them because it's true. A lot of people in the church are judgmental hypocrites. But you know why they are? Because they don't understand the grace of God. Because if I really understand God's

grace in my life, then I can't ever hold your sin against you. Because Jesus didn't hold my sin against me. All I can do is just show you the same grace that I've been shown. All I can do is show the same patience to you that Jesus has shown to me. And so when I start seeing people being hypercritical or overjudgmental, the only thing I can think is they need to learn a little bit more about God's

grace. Because the more that you know about God's grace, the more that you tend to shower other people with God's grace. So he says, grace. And then the other thing that we pay attention to about this word is that the greeting of grace was the traditional greeting. When they would see each other, they would say grace to you. Well, the second word that he uses there is the word peace. The word peace. The word

peace, I had to rifle through a lot of definitions. I'm going to read a couple of them to you here. But I simplified all of the definitions to these two words because I thought they were kind of interesting. The word peace literally means quietness and rest. Quietness and rest. It's funny because most of the definitions of peace have to do with national unity

because you're no longer at war. Therefore, your nation is at quietness and rest. Which is pretty fascinating when we think about who we were before we came to Jesus Christ, right? Because before we came to Jesus Christ, we were at war with him. But once we came to Christ, because of the grace of God, we're now at peace and we have quietness and rest. But of course, the word peace is the

traditional Jewish greeting. They would greet each other with shalom or peace to you. Now, there's some spiritual significance, two or three things I want you to pay attention to about why Paul uses this greeting. Number one, you cannot know the peace of God until you know the grace of God. You cannot know the peace of God until you know the grace of God. And I'm here

to tell you right now, there are so many people walking around all balled up inside because you have no peace in your life. There's usually two main reasons. Why people don't have peace. Ultimately, it's because they don't know the grace of God. But there's two reasons why they don't know the grace of God. Either one, because they're living in sin and they don't want to let go of it. And therefore, they are constantly in angst because the guilt is

wearing them down. Or two, you are so legalistic and you're trying so hard to earn your way in the faith. You're trying so hard to do enough and you're never at peace because you're always at angst because you never know if you've done enough. And the only cure to those two things is the grace of God. Because the grace of God sets us free from sin. The grace of God sets us free from legalism

and allows us to live in peace. And so right now, this morning, if you don't have God's peace in your life, then my prayer for you is that you will begin to understand God's grace in your life. Second thing that I'll point out to you is one of the definitions that I read and I thought it was fantastic. This is out of Olive Tree's Enhanced Bible Dictionary for the word peace. It says,

for the Christian, peace is the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation in Christ. And so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot of whatsoever sort that is. Let me read it to you one more time. That was a lot of words. For the Christian, peace is the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation. Therefore, you fear nothing from God because you know that you are

100% right with God. But what really, got me was the next part. Peace is that tranquil state of a soul of a believer because they can be content with their earthly lot, whatever that is. We have a lot of things come into our lives, right? I know that in this room, there is represented a good number of things that people are going through. Matter of fact, you may even find

yourself saying, I don't know why God would allow this to happen in my life. I don't know why this would be taking place in my life. And you have no peace. About what's happening in your life right now, because you are struggling to understand why God would allow that. And I want you to know something. You can be content with your earthly lot in life because you can know that it was filtered through the hands of a God of grace.

It is grace that saved you. It is the grace that will allow you to go through whatever it is you're going through right now. And you need to understand that because there's a lot of things that are hard in life. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of things that are hard in life. And you need to every day of life feels like a battle. Amen. Every day, right? I was telling this story the

other day. Let's just tell a funny story real quick. So New Year's Day, right? It's the start of 2024. Hey, it's a brand new year, right? So New Year's morning, we get up, we start doing a few little things around the house. We look on the Facebook machine. Oh, look, there's drama in Arc City. Not hard to find. There's drama in Arc City. Somebody tried to set a picnic shelter on

fire. And so Aaron and I looked at each other and said, let's go see, right? Because what else are you going to do? It's New Year's morning and nothing's open. So we are responsible and we start the dishwasher first. And then we leave and we go to see whatever the drama is in town, right? Like, oh, scandal. Look, that whole side of that thing's burned down. We drive

around for a little bit, drink a little coffee because that's the right thing to do. And then we go back home and we come back home and I go to put something away and Aaron goes, oh no. And I'm like, so I walk into the kitchen and our entire kitchen floor is covered with water because nothing leaked. Oh no. And then I thought to myself, oh no. It happened a lot that morning.

I go downstairs and all of the water's filtering through all over the basement floor. Something had gotten into the garbage disposal that caused it to break the seals in the garbage disposal so that out of the bottom side of the garbage disposal, which by the way, where does your dishwasher drain? Quick plumbing lesson. Through the garbage disposal. Hey. So all of the

water that had been in the garbage disposal had been in the garbage disposal. And I was like, the dishwasher was now all over my floor in my basement. And so that's me sucking up all the water by the way. So I suck all that water up and I finally realized what it is. So we go down to Lowe's and Ponca and we get a new garbage disposal and I come back and I put the garbage disposal in

and it works great. But I'm like, great. New Year's Day, 2024, plumbing problem already. I'm just going to tell you right now, you know what New Year's Day on 2020 was? I hit a deer. I don't know what 2024 holds. But you just need to know every day is a battle, right? And you learn that. And so how do you find peace? Well, you find peace in the grace of God. Knowing that whatever your earthly lot in life is,

God's still in control. So he says, grace and peace to you who are in Christ Jesus, that come from our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, I'm looking forward to getting into this book as we learn about the peace of God, as we learn about the peace of God, as we learn about the peace of God, as we learn about the grace of God, as we learn about that fruit of the Spirit, joy that comes only from the Father. Amen. Let's all stand. I was about to say, speaking of a battle, here we go. Would you bow with me?

Oh, Lord, we thank you so much for who you are. I thank you, Lord, for your word and how it speaks so clearly to our hearts. And Lord, I pray for each person that's in here this morning, that your word would do the work in their hearts, that your Holy Spirit would see fit. In Jesus name. Amen. Be blessed.