Being Confident, Philippians, 1:6

And so for starters here, one of the things we'd like to let you know, of course, we're trying to fill people's heads with Greek here. And so in order to do that, We had a last call because this next Saturday, is that right? Have I got the timing right? We have this Greek class that Hal will be teaching. And he'll be teaching it for a year, that is, unless the Lord comes first. And that'll proceed... Have I got the times right there? 9.30, 11.15? Is that what you're looking at? Okay.

And then... He's going to be going through New Testament Greek to the point of diagramming. The idea is not just to fill our heads full of all this academia, but that we have a better understanding of God's Word, that we draw the richness that's there, and also we'll be able to be precise about understanding what God's Word is saying. So that's the purpose.

Hal, any other comments? OK, all right. Just kind of one last call. See how if you are interested and are somehow unaware of that or just thinking now that now might be the time. The other thing we want to, oh, I might just point out here, this is a chance to learn your alpha, beta, gammas. OK, so anyway, just so you know that.

The other thing to cover here is we will be in a few weeks switching Electives now for a couple electives. That's just kind of continuing on in the series. So If you've been taking it, I recommend you, you know continue taking that and that's true with the major Bible themes and who you are in Christ the Gospel of John elective has been going through that for now two quarters. I'll be switching to first Peter So that's the change what will happen then at the end of the spring quarter is all three morning electives will be kind of hitting a time when they will switch over into something new. And we're still working on what those will be. So just so you know what's happening there.

And then we'll be moving in the elective that takes place after church where we have the potluck into God's design for the family. We've been going through God's design for marriage and we'll be finishing that up this next week. So the next quarter will be God's design for the family, children and extended family. Okay, another thing to talk about here. Last week we recognized six new deacons. And so we actually have other things going on as well. And so one of the things that we want to bring up here is that, let's go for it, come on, there we go.

Scripture also provides a biblical role for elders, as we brought up before, and that role is spelled out in several New Testament passages. And as we go through that, the key thing here is shepherding. That is kind of the umbrella description of the role of an elder, is shepherding. Now obviously we haven't got sheep here literally, but the idea of there's guiding and leading and protecting and caring for the flock. All that in the form of analogy applies in the role of an elder in a church. And then the next thing, this key point here, is that while elders are acting as shepherds, the true role pointed out in 1 Peter 5, verse 4 verses, is that in fact Elders are acting as under-shepherds. It's the Lord Jesus Christ who is the chief shepherd.

So it's a subsidiary role. Now, as we go through these here, there are also qualifications for elders. We've covered this previously, but we don't just simply say, gee, that would be a nice fellow to have as an elder. There are biblical qualifications, and we consider those carefully. We have here outlined those out of 1st Timothy 3, 1-7, but there are other passages as well that we have listed up there. Now here at Holly Hills, we have for some years had Hal Malloy as an elder. Hal, do you know how many years? No, he's lost count. But anyway, Hal's been an elder at Holly Hills for some time.

Myself, I'm the new kid on the block, so to speak. I've been here for a little over a year and a half, I think is about the best count that I figure here. And I told Hal, I said, I don't know what the Lord has in mind. I said, I hope this is my last job. That's what I have in mind. So anyway, maybe I'll forget how long I've been an elder here.

But we want to take time this morning, because it's important to do so, to recognize an addition of a third elder. And so I'd like, with that, I would like to ask Hal to come up and Mike to come up. And Hal, you had asked some gentlemen as well to join with us in praying for Mike. As we've gone through this, this has not been a process that we've taken casually. As a matter of fact, it's been a great number of months that we have been going through this process. You want me to say something? Yes, please do. My voice cannot be heard in that last row.

Isn't it wonderful how gracious the Lord is in terms of giving each and every one of us a spiritual gift? And we're here to recognize the spiritual gift that the Lord has given to Mike. And not that his spiritual gift is more important than any one of yours, but the reason why we're recognizing his spiritual gift publicly is that for you to know that here's the person that you can come to with any spiritual need. Any questions you have? of any counseling requirements you might need, Mike is one that you can come to. And he is in agreement what we think is scriptural. And so we've checked out his doctrine and we're just so confident that you can go to Mike and that what you receive will be accurate.

I want to personally thank the Lord for Mike's ministry to me in terms of my education here at Holly Hills Bible Church, and he has been an inspiration to me. And his emphasis in terms of the person of Christ and having an intimacy with the person of Christ. has been very important. The other thing I want to thank the Lord for personally is that when I had to step back in my responsibilities here, both Mike and Roy Smith stepped forward in fulfilling the ministries here at Holly Hills Bible Church and I really am thankful to the Lord for both of them. Vern has taught us last week in the first chapter of Philippians that we are to be thankful to the Lord for those who minister with us and those who minister to us. So there are a few gentlemen that would like to give thanks to the Lord for Mike and his ministry. Roy, would you like to start? You can come up here, Roy. I too don't have a very loud voice, so I better use this. Let's pray together, okay?

Our Heavenly Father, what a privilege to be a part of the work that you in eternity past appointed out that not only would we be a part of it, but that in the process you would be glorified. Today, Lord, as we think of your glory and the gift that you've given through Mike, of yourself, the emphasis of through him being able to look at you and rest in you and who you are and your glory, we give you thanks for that. We pray, Heavenly Father, your blessing on Mike, your protection on him, we pray Heavenly Father that thy spirit would continue to move us to look at you through the ministry you have through him we're thankful Lord for Hal and for Vern and for these men Lord that you have appointed and raised to minister in this way together Lord we lay them before you for your care for your direction and also Lord that we in turn may be seeing Christ through them. This we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Father, we truly rejoice today at this occasion.

We're mindful at this time of all the years of preparation that have gone into Mike's life for this time. To serve here that your love for this assembly may flow through him to each of us and we just trust you to glorify yourself in and through us. him this day. We just thank you for him and for his deep concern for each one here that they be edified and that they would grow in the knowledge and the love of your son. This day we do again thank you for this person who truly represents a living sacrifice and that he may be counted worthy of this great calling that you have called him to. We thank you and we pray in your son's name. Amen.

Father, it's just such a great thing that Carol and I personally want to thank you for Mike and Donna and how they've been such a blessing to us through all these years. And to have a scheme recognized like this is very well done. Father, we just appreciate so much the people you've placed in our lives.

And I want to ask you especially for those Lindy, and Nancy, and Donna, you thought the support of these wonderful young men would not be doing quite the job that you had. For that, I'm very, very grateful, and I thank all of you. Father, as you continue to grow wealth, In your son, you have to be ever mindful of who he is, and you're still grateful for the fact that we share life in him, and in your son. Well, I feel like a new kid in the block here.

I've known Mike for a short time, but it's been a wonderful time, and let's just pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you, Lord. We thank you for your work, Father. And our brother Mike, Lord, we thank you that we can recognize you working in him, Father. We thank you for, Lord, his excitement about your word, his persistence, Lord, in presenting it, Lord, and being accurate. And we thank you for his questions. We thank you for the questions that he asks many times as we study your word, Father. We thank you that you've given insight and an appetite for your word, Lord, and a tirelessness that is from you and not from himself, Father.

We pray just for encouragement for Mike, Lord. We pray for your will to be accomplished in Mike's life here at Holly Hills, Lord. We thank you again in Christ's name. Amen. Ben has so aptly said in his prayer, Donna, where are you? We thank you Donna, also for the ministry. And Mike, don't stop those trick questions. I take great joy in what the Lord is doing here at Holly Hills. It's neat to see the Lord clearly working and building up the body here. A marvelous thing.

One of the things, too, to see here is, as we mentioned last week, we're not doing something special here. All we're really doing is acknowledging what the Lord has already done. That's what we're doing. And I think that comes out as Paul speaks to the elders at Ephesus, Acts 20, 28. He says there, the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. So we're not doing some special magic.

All we're doing is recognizing what the Lord has already accomplished. And I think, as we looked at last week, we thank the Lord for what He is doing through those who have come forward as we recognized last week and with Mike here this morning. And we just praise the Lord for that. And of course, one of the things that happens since, you know, we use this analogy of the shepherd all the time, but it's not something people are familiar with. I do want people to be able to recognize a shepherd when they see one.

So, anyway, let's turn to Philippians. In Philippians 1, we're now at verse 6. I know that that's lightning speed compared to some of our early progress here. Paul makes really a fairly simple statement, and it's really just a continuation of what he had said prior to that.

We've noted in the first, you know, for several verses before, verses 3 through 5. He says, I thank the Lord for what He's doing in your partnership in the ministry. And now he says, For I am confident of this very thing, that you began a good work, and you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Now, you might be saying, Vern, don't tell me we're going to spend seven weeks on one verse again. Alright, no problem. Just relax. We will get through verse 6 this morning, unless the Lord comes for us all in the middle of it. That would be my only excuse.

Now, back to 1 Philippians 1.6.

As we look at this verse, one of the things that we have to recognize is that this verse has been recognized by commentators as having two different interpretations or understandings. And when we come to that, the first one, Some have seen it as a promise of progressive sanctification. That is, the Lord's going to continue to take you to a place where you're going to continue to grow, and He'll complete that progressively. Alright, that's been one view. The other view is this is a statement of confidence in the Lord's ability to energize the work of partnership in Paul's ministry that has been started at Philippi all the way to the time of the Lord's coming. Now, we've got two general interpretations.

Which one is correct? One of the things that we've noted, and we went through this in some detail when we were going through the book of Revelation, but I think we need to revisit it. Though a passage may have many applications, hundreds, thousands, many applications, a passage has but one correct interpretation. Now, what does that mean? It means that both interpretations can't be right.

One of the things we have to recognize is just because there's a bunch of interpretations, we don't just present them all and just sort of throw them out and say, you choose. Instead, we want to zero in and say, what is God saying? That is our purpose in reading scriptures. We want to say, what is God saying to us? So as we look at this, we want to kind of follow Paul's guidance to Timothy. It says, "...be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth."

Now, this translated, accurately handling, is a word that had different applications. They would use it for a farmer who was plowing. Plow straight. Or even cutting a road straight. Or, interestingly enough, even in Paul's own craft, work that he did on the side was tent making, right? And when they would cut the parts to the tent, cutting the parts properly was that Greek word. So he says, cut the parts right so that when you put the tent together, it fits. The parts fit. So that's what he's saying here. When you look at God's Word, you're looking at it correctly. You've got it right so that all the parts and pieces fit.

So when we come to this, I want to say, I believe the second interpretation is correct, and here's why. The context of the verse has to do with the partnership of the Philippians with Paul, and their support for and their involvement with this ministry. And we'll take a look at that in a bit.

The phrase, good works or good deeds, and by the way, the Greek behind that is the same, even though it's translated slightly differently in the English, elsewhere in Paul's writing. And he actually uses that word pair quite a bit, as we'll see. Always refers to the expression of good works by believers, not the work of the Lord in the believer. Now I'm not saying that the Lord doesn't work in the believer, but his use of that word pair is always the expression of good works in the life of the believer.

The other is the content is very similar to 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, which is also about financial participation in ministry. A lot of the words, as we'll see there, and as you have in your handout, show that. So let's take a look at those things. First, we have the context. This is the first chapter of Philippians, about verses 2 through 7. A lot of those same themes show up. And here's what I mean.

These words that you see in red here, he says in verse 5, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. That precedes this verse. Then, immediately thereafter, he goes back to the theme of you are all partakers of grace with me. This partnership, this fellowship that they have together, this participation that they have together is both before and after this verse.

That gives it the context. The next thing, I mentioned that word pair, good works or good deeds. In the Greek it's the same, it's just translated differently in different passages. Now, you have a similar kind of thing in your handout, and there's reason for it. The first thing to look at is, it's either good work or good deeds, and here's all the passages where that good work or good deeds shows up.

And this Philippians 1.6 is one of those places. Now, why have I got all these funny colors up here? There is a reason for that. And that is, it's real interesting that every other place except right here, every other place he uses that good word or good deed in a singular form, he puts every in front of it. Every good work. Every good deed. Isn't that interesting? Fascinating.

He uses that pattern everywhere else he uses it in the singular. Next, when we come to these passages here, they're all in the plural. Good works, good deeds. But this phrase he uses again and again and again and again. It's not one that just touches on... And as we look at all those other contexts, that context points to the good works in the life of the believer. Now, there's more that is revealed here.

And one of the things you'll notice is that about two-thirds, even better than two-thirds of these passages, these references, are in the letters to Timothy and to Titus, which are called the pastoral epistles. Actually, Titus and Timothy were really apostolic delegates. They were people that Paul would leave or send to particular churches to help them out, to teach them, to help kind of establish things. in that particular ministry. And so it's really interesting, the emphasis comes out so strongly with letters to Timothy and to Titus.

There's more. Now, if we look at just these here that are in black, and these here that are in red, there's a pattern there. In those that are in black, these are all to Timothy except for the one to Ephesus, and Timothy was in Ephesus while all these were written to him. So essentially, all these were applied to Ephesus. Look how many were applied to Ephesus.

Isn't that interesting? Fascinating. Okay, there's more. In Titus, which is a short book, only three chapters, a great number are brought up. As a matter of fact, the same as the number of times directly to Timothy, a great number are brought up directly to Titus. Now why would there be so much emphasis to Timothy and to Titus, those two guys, about good works and good deeds? Let's look. Paul is especially emphasizing good works and good deeds in Ephesus and Crete.

Ephesus, as we visited some time back, so I'll hit this by reminder, Ephesus was home to the Temple of Artemis, It was a legal refuge for those who had committed a crime. If you had committed a crime in that part of the Roman Empire, and you could get to the Temple of Artemis before they nailed you, you were free. How about that? What a weird deal.

But what that did was it drew all kinds of criminal types and hucksters into Ephesus. So that's why the emphasis to Timothy on good works and good deeds, these believers who were of a criminal background, or a trickster or a huckster background, now would come into Ephesus and become believers.

And Paul would say, by the life of Christ, these believers need to understand that what they have been living like before is not to continue on. Now, then we go to Crete. Crete was famous, I mean famous, for cunning traders. They even made heroes who got a hold of financial gain by devious and deceptive means. How about that?

So again, here is good purpose for focusing on good deeds. Now, let's get back to the Philippians passage. This phrase, good works and good deeds, is not incidental. So here Paul comes back to the Philippians and he's saying, I'm confident in this very thing that you began a good work and you will perfect it. until the day of Christ Jesus. Critical point. You notice in this verse, it's the same focus that he's been making before. We saw last week.

Good works have their origin in the Lord and not from our own self-effort. It isn't, boy, I'm sure going to try to do a good job this week. I'm going to work real hard at being a better person. No. The focus here, it is the Lord who is going to do the good works through the believer and not somebody beating on you to say, do good works, you're better. And Paul keeps coming back with that theme, doesn't he? The Lord is the source.

Now let's look at the content here. And by the way, what I've done here is just abbreviate this because you have more on the bottom part of your handout than I can possibly put up here. And so this is something, if you wanted to, you could study it on your own.

But the point being is that repeated phrases and words keep showing up between these two passages. And 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 is very clearly about the financial participation. And Paul seems to draw from a lot of the same phrases and words in both of these places. And again, I won't go into all the detail because your handout has much more.

But coming back to it, the context, this phrase, good works or good deeds, and now the content, all three of these things point to this passage as being a reference to the Lord's having begun a work with the Philippians' participation with Paul in ministry. And Paul is confident that the Lord is able to take that and carry it through in the lives of the Philippian believers.

Let's take a look at the timeline. This is on the top of the back side of your handout. By the way, on your handout, you're not having a deja vu experience. The front of it has last week's date and number, and the back of it has this week's. This week's is correct. The other one, if you want to correct it, if that helps you, please do so. All right, the timeline.

Notice, as we looked at before, Paul's first mention is back to the first day until now. It was a kind of a looking back up to the present. That's Paul's first mention. And then, up till now, is the time when he is writing the book of Philippians. And then he points forward, he says, until the day of Christ Jesus. Basically, as we'll see here in a minute, he's looking forward to the rapture. And so we've got little pictures here to help us get the picture. This is the river, which is in Philippi, and that was the first day, because remember, that was where Lydia was along the river and became a believer. That was the first day. And now, here we are, he's writing this letter to the church at Philippi, and then the rapture pointing ahead here. So anyway, that's the reason for the pictures.

This first part that he had talked about in verses 3 through 5 was looking back, wasn't it? That was a backward-looking statement, where he says, here I am writing this letter and looking back I remember the Lord's working through you. That's what he's spelling out to them. And now as he turns to verse 6, what is he doing? He's talking about the same subject, but now he's looking forward. And notice when he looks forward, he uses a different word. Previously, he said, every remembrance. He says, I thank the Lord in every remembrance. And now as I look forward, I have confidence. Where is my confidence?

He didn't say, come on Philippians, you can do it. I know you can do it. You can do it. You can hang in there. He says, I have confidence in the Lord that He will carry it through. Isn't that an important perspective? His confidence is in the Lord's ability and the Lord's character of faithfulness. The Lord will carry it out. Now, something else to look at here.

Paul's use of the phrase, the day of Christ Jesus. One of the things to think about is kind of Paul's perspective. As he writes, and you look at these passages here, as Paul writes, he frequently uses personal pronouns that include himself when he talks about the Lord's coming. And these passages we see here, and we'll look at another one of them in Philippians 3, he does exactly that. So when he talks about the day of the Lord, he isn't talking about, hey, somewhere out there, you know, distant, almost not applicable to me. Paul writes with the first person, he has that anticipation that it may very well be within his own lifetime, and very well may be within the lifetime of the people that he's writing to.

So he'll use words like I and we and us when he talks about the Lord coming to gather his church. And he does that in this very passage, the day of Christ Jesus. Now, as we look at that, the day of Christ Jesus is used here. And by the way, this is the only place in the whole New Testament where that phrase is used. So it's unique.

In Philippians 1.10 and 2.16, because Paul doesn't leave this theme, he doesn't just say, okay, that's it, let's go on to the next thing. He comes back to it two more times. He just uses it in shorter terminology, the day of Christ. He spells it out that way.

And the day of the Lord Jesus in 1 Corinthians 5.5.

And you'll also find Paul uses the Day of Christ to refer to the Rapture or the Bema Judgment, if you look at the context. So it's not just entirely everything, including the Millennium and the Tribulation period and all those things. He zeroes in on this time of the Rapture and the time of the Bema Judgment. And just by way of reminder, the Bema Judgment is a judgment for believers. It's not a judgment of condemnation. It's a judgment of evaluation for reward. That's what it's all about.

And so that's how he uses this phrase here. Now, there are also phrases that he uses such as that day or the day of the Lord, and those get involved. And so I'll let you, you know, pursue that a little further. But so when he talks about the day of Christ Jesus, he's talking about this time when he says the Lord will take his church And then the church will be judged, again, not for condemnation, but for evaluation for reward. As we looked at, remember the last part of Revelation, the very last chapter?

He says, My reward is with me. He is not looking to come to the church and say, Aha! Boy, you've done it. You're going to get pride. Okay? That's not his point. He's saying, I am coming with my reward. And so Paul's looking forward to the day of Christ Jesus, not trembling, not shaking in fear, not worried and anxious. Something to take a look at is this little phrase here is kind of prophetic, isn't it? He's looking ahead.

Philippians is somewhat of a flip-flop contrast to the book of Revelation. Remember when we were going through that, we said that Revelation is 95% prophecy. Philippians is almost the other direction. only about 10% of the content is prophetic. So we will be touching on short portions that are prophetic, but the whole book has largely a focus elsewhere.

One of the key things to look at here, Paul repeatedly used the phrase Day of Christ, or Day of Christ Jesus, as a new equivalent to the phrase the Day of the Lord. And this will be one confirmation that he viewed Jesus Christ as deity. And we will continue to come back to this point as we go through the book of Philippians, because the book of Philippians is about Christ. The book of Philippians, from start to finish, points about the person and character of Jesus Christ, including focusing on the very deity of the Lord. So we'll revisit that as we continue to go through the book of Philippians.

One other thing to point out here, in Philippians 1.6, there are some key verbs that kind of jump out at us, and so I want to touch on those.

He says, For I am confident, and that word, confident, patho, is a perfect active participle. Remember, perfect is something that is completed. It's a completed past action, but it has ongoing results into the future. So that's why he used this. His confidence was established in the past completely. How about that? His confidence is not something that's developing or it's getting there, but instead he had confidence that was established in the past completely and continues on into the future to have results and consequences.

And that's why the rest of this verse is looking until. It's forward-looking because of that perfect tense. Anarchomai, now before you look at that and just say, oh my, that's just the end of it. Anarchomai, that's an aorist middle participle, and that's also referring, this is a past action.

And then epiteleo is a future active indicative, so let's step our way through this. For I am confident, and that's actually something that was established in the past, a past established, completely past established confidence, of this very thing that he who in the past began, and the Lord Himself began the work, will perfect it, that work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. It's an ongoing action into the future. The Lord began it in the past, and the Lord will continue it into the future.

And that's indicative, it's right here, That's telling us this is a statement of fact. Isn't that interesting? His confidence is to the point that he says, the Lord will. It is a statement of fact. The Lord is capable and faithful. Now, let's take a look at this. Let's kind of expand on this verse and make sure we understand what it means.

For I, Paul, have already been persuaded to the point of confidence, and I would even add utter confidence. of this very thing, that he, the Lord, who in the past started a good work in you, as you participated in the sharing of the gospel, will bring that work to completion, that's what that word is saying, to completion until the day of Christ Jesus when he comes for his church. That's what he's telling them.

Well, there's a lot in that, isn't there? That's really something. Everything in the beginning of this letter, points to the Lord as the source. Do you notice that? Even His way of saying thanks. Let's take a look at those item by item. We were saints in Christ Jesus, made so by His doing. It's His doing that makes us saints in Christ Jesus. Remember that? Haggios, the holy ones, made so because we're in Christ and it is His doing. Beyond that, Grace and peace, as you recall, comes from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not the source. We don't work it up. If we try to work up peace, it doesn't work very well. The Lord is the source.

He's underscoring that. But He doesn't stop there. Paul continues to give thanks to God for the Philippians' participation in the Gospel in the past. Who is he giving the credit to? The Lord. up until that very point. Then he goes on here, the Lord began the work, and Paul is confident the Lord will finish it. So if you look at this in terms of the source, who is the source? It's the Lord. Who is the one who in the past carried this out? It's the Lord. Who is the one who in the future will carry this out? It's the Lord.

There's no ambiguity there, is there? He makes it very clear as he starts into this letter, and he kind of includes elements of common letters of the time, but goes far beyond that, because instead of just saying, Hi, my name is Paul and Timothy is with me, and good to see you folks, he begins with those standard greetings. He starts off writing things that are teaching them truths, deep and eternal truths. practical truth that they're going to need. And even as we've gone through verse 6 here, it becomes very clear that Paul is wanting them, even as he begins expressing really kind of positive statements about what's going on, he wants to direct them to the Lord with every single thing that he says. Every statement. He's pointing to the Lord as the source. He's pointing to the Lord as the one doing the working. He's pointing to the Lord as the one who is faithful and able to carry it out to the end. The Lord is the source from start to finish. Let's pray. Lord, as Paul has laid this out, we don't want to fall short and miss this point.

Lord, in everything that we carry about in each part of every day, we want to ask that you would teach us that you are indeed the source. And Lord, if there is anything of value, of credit, of worth, it is because you have done it. And as we step into today and tomorrow and the next week, if there is anything of value and eternal worth, you are the source of it.

And Lord, we thank you for the truths of the word here. We thank you for directing us through the inspired words of Paul the Apostle here. Directing us to you as the very life, Lord, and the very energizer of these things. And we give you thanks, Lord, that we can depend upon you to carry these out.

And Lord, even more, we thank you for, it's a relief, You are not putting a huge demand upon us and then saying, okay, you'd better do it. But instead, you have at every point told us that we can depend upon you to be the life that we need, to be the adequacy that we need. And as we look into the future, we have many questions. And yet, we can look to your character and what you have done and accomplished in your son to be sufficient. We give you thanks, Lord, for all these things. In Jesus' name, Amen.