Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: I titled tonight's message Epiteleo. Some of you know that because that's my screen name, that's my email name; I've used it for 20 or 25 years. It's actually a Greek word that comes out of Philippians 1:6. We'll see that when we get there. The purpose of Philippians—let me give you a brief history then we'll just go through some of the words in the first six verses.

The purpose is to simply thank the Philippians for the gift they had sent Paul and to strengthen these believers by showing them that true joy comes from Christ alone. Joy is the central theme of the book. Paul wrote it to the Christians at Philippi, approximately 61 AD, from Rome, from Paul's imprisonment there. Philippi was a Roman colony, one of the few cities that were back then. They had Roman government because they were a very strategic city; a lot of people traveled through it.

A lot of history in the city. Paul established a church there in his second missionary journey at Acts 16:11-40. It was the first church established on the European continent. I'm just reading what I read—you can get all this information from a good study Bible; it's just right there in a good study Bible. So, the Philippian church had sent a gift with Epaphroditus, who some think was the first pastor there or at least one of the church members, to be delivered to Paul in 4:18. And again, Paul was in prison at that time.

The concept of joy or rejoicing appears 16 times in four chapters. You see that's constantly reoccurring. Joy in suffering, Philippians chapter 1:1-30; joy in serving, Philippians 2; joy in believing, Philippians 3; and joy in giving, Philippians 4. Now, think of this with me. This will be a theme that we regularly deal with throughout as this word joy is going to show up throughout this book as we teach through this book. But think, if you would, with me, he's writing this from prison.

His main reason for writing this epistle is to thank them for a generous financial gift that came to him, but he's bringing before them this rejoicing, and in all things rejoice. "I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me." Some of the verses that we're going to see here. He was in prison. Prison back then did not have cable TV—homes didn't either. They didn't have three square meals a day. I can imagine prison back then was significantly worse than prison now. And here's Paul talking about this theme of joy.

Now, some of the other themes that you'll find in this book—I'm just going to go through them, I won't comment on them. First is humility. You'll find the theme of humility throughout this book, self-sacrifice, basically six main themes: unity—you'll find that's a constant theme in all of his epistles, he's always speaking unity into the church because every church seemed to have areas of disunity even in the first century—Christian living, very practical things, and, of course, joy. Those are the six themes. You'll be tested on that next week, just so you know.

Philippians 1:1. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and the deacons. So, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and the deacons. The first word I want to look at here, first thing I want to say about this verse—and this is a regular salutation that Paul does as he enters into a book—but he uses this word servant. This is the word doulos.

It's really servant—it's not a good translation for this word. The best English word that we can have a connotation of is slave. Sometimes it appears "slave" in your English Bibles, but more times than not it comes out "servant." I'm not quite sure why; maybe because at the time of the writing of many of our English translations, the connotation of slavery was so bad. But when you look at the word in the original language, servant just doesn't do it justice. The word slave does it justice.

There was no political correctness swirling around it. Slavery in that culture wasn't an exception; it was expected. There was cruel slavery and not-so-cruel slavery. People would be mortgaged, kids would be mortgaged to pay off debt. It doesn't mean they'd be beaten or cruelly treated; it just meant they had to serve another family for an extended period of time until the debt was paid off. That was a form of slavery. So Paul's saying here of himself and Timothy, they're slaves or servants, slaves of Jesus Christ.

Jesus never condoned nor affirmed slavery. It was really part of the culture. Jesus didn't come really to change culture as we know it. He came to change men's hearts. That's important to understand. He didn't come to fix a political system. He didn't really get involved that much with politics. He said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's." He came to deal with a much bigger issue than any political system, any political party. He came to deal with the issues of men's hearts.

He came to deal with the biggest issue that men's hearts faced, and that was the issue of sin and the ravage of sin upon men's lives. That's what he came for. That was his purpose: to seek and to save that which was lost, not to fix the next election. So, we've got to know that, and sometimes I think maybe as evangelical Christians—me included—we'll pick a candidate and we'll look at this, we look at the world, and how can we keep going on like this?

Listen, you'd be shocked how much we can keep going on. I hope it's tomorrow; it could be another thousand years. How much worse can it get? I think again, if you look at history, you'll find there were some pretty dark times in human history, and this time in human history we're in would look like a cakewalk compared to some of the other times in human history. Even though it's dark to us and we don't see a way out, especially in America, we have—this is probably in some places throughout the history of the church, this would be the most glorious time of revival and blessing and rejoicing that they could ever imagine, even though we're looking at it as a decline of our society.

John MacArthur said this about this word doulos. He says a slave's life was one of complete surrender, submission, and service to the master. And the people of Jesus' day would have immediately recognized the parallel. Christ's invitation to follow him was an invitation to the same kind of life. So when Paul said, "I'm a slave of Jesus Christ," it was marked by five things. Number one: exclusive ownership. That slave had a debt to pay or he was actually purchased by or mortgaged to a slave owner.

And that ownership—just like that, "I own my car, I drive my car, it's under my authority." If I own something, it's under my authority. And complete submission. The slave was expected to come under that ownership in complete submission. Didn't have his own will; didn't say, "I don't really want to work today. I don't feel like being so subservient today. No, sir, get your own meal. No, harvest your own crops; I've got a backache and I'm not going to do that." They didn't do that. What the owner said, they did.

Singular devotion. That's a third aspect. In other words, they didn't have a self-will. Their will was to do the will of the owner. It was never about the slave; it was about the owner. It was about the one that possessed them. Total dependence. They really laid—and this is an interesting parallel because they laid their lives before the owner, and the owner really had the responsibility of feeding them and providing for them. You can see where this is a great biblical parallel with our walks with God.

It wasn't like they served the owner then they had to go out and get their own food; no, the owner provided that. They may have to cook it, they may have to pick it, they may have to do something else, but it was the owner's responsibility to provide for the slave. And a smart owner would do that because the more he provided for the slaves, the better the slaves could serve him. Again, a tremendous parallel to our Christian life. What do we do? Do we have to worry about our possessions or Matthew chapter 6, where our daily bread is going to come from?

Or do we just really worry about serving our master, serving Jesus Christ? Matthew 6: "Take no thought. Take no thought," four times. "Take no thought. Take no thought," because your master—"if I can take care of the birds of the field, I can take care of you. If I can do this, I can take care of you, because it's my responsibility to take care of you, it's my responsibility to feed you, it's my responsibility." Some of the things I've had to give up in my life in my Christian walk, in my own walk with God, is to let God do exactly what God wants to do with me or through me.

Sometimes I'll have a deep responsibility in my home or in ministry, and I'll feel really burdened, and I pray and I carry the burden myself. And then one day in my morning hours, the Lord spoke to me and says, "You know, Tim, this isn't your problem. It's not their problem. It's my problem, and I can handle it. I can handle it." Okay, God, can you handle it now so I can forget about it? Hurry up. If you could hurry up and do that, then I can move on to the next thing to worry about in my life.

But that's what total dependence says. That's what a slave does. I have no way to take care of myself; the master needs to do that. And last of all, there's a personal accountability. The slave knew the owner knew where the slave was; he knew what the slave was doing; he knew what the slave's responsibility was. So when Paul said, "I'm a slave of Jesus Christ, me and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ," way beyond just being a servant, he talked about those five things.

There's ownership—I'm owned by God. I'm in submission to God. I'm devoted to him. I'm under his covering and protection, and I'm accountable to him. Those are the aspects of slavery. Then he says "to the saints." I love this word. I love word studies; they're fun anyway. In the adjective form, it's always "holy." The Hebrew is qadosh and means—in both the Greek and Hebrew—to carry the meaning of being separate or being apart. In this case, it points to our position in Christ.

And I'm going to talk about that in a moment. "To the saints in Christ." I'm going to separate this "saints" and talk about "in Christ" next, but really they go together. I'm just breaking them up because this word "saints" simply means to be set apart. In this case, it points to being in Christ. We are part of a new race. I love that. And it's called the church. There was a new race that was born into humanity the moment the church at Pentecost came into existence and the Holy Spirit started living in you and the Holy Spirit started living in me.

We became a new member of the human race. We became the called-out ones, the separate ones, the saints. We're set apart to God because we're the habitation of God. Where he lives, we are—you are, as the church, as Christians, you're the Ark of the Covenant. While before the presence of God would sit about the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies, that's no longer what God does. The presence of God resides in you, his people. That doesn't sound like a good plan, does it? And it's not a plan I would have written up.

I would have kept it right over the Ark then I'd know where it was; I could trust it. But no, God has more faith than I did, and he gave it to us. I wouldn't hire God to run my business because he doesn't hire the right people. He hires us to run his business. In other places, this word "holy" throughout the scriptures, and rightly so, it doesn't just talk about our position in Christ, who we are in Christ, but it talks about our separation from the world. If we're a new race, and we are, called the church, then what happened to the race that we became new from? What's the race we were called out of? The race we were called out of was the world—sinners, the lost, whatever you want to call it. So, we are aliens, pilgrims, and strangers in this world. But we live in this world with this other race, which we know as the cosmos or the world.