Preaching Christ
Philippians 1:15-17 · Roger Henderson · Feb 11, 2024
Philippians (2021-24), No. 06
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193494093

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, today we're down to moving kind of slowly, about two or three verses each time through the Philippians here. So today we're going to talk about preaching Christ. I want to go back and just look at what Roy did last week, which I thought was great. I'm going to use the Wyss translation. And then actually, Wyss also, besides his translation, has a additional volumes that he has on certain books of scripture, and so they're very helpful, too. It actually is very helpful to have them electronically, so I know I talked to Bob here about that, and I'm not in the business selling these. They've just been a blessing to me, so I tell people about it. So actually, doing that, I'm able to take some of his comments and put them in the presentation.

Okay, so let's get started here. So today we'll do verses 15 through 17. So let's go back and, okay, so last week's verses, so let's just look, the first one was in verse 12. Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel." So I was really, as Roy went through that last week, I just thought it was so neat.

I really like what Lise had done in this translation, particularly with this word for progress. And I'm not really good at pronunciation here, but I, profitable pay, something like that. I give it advancement, or literally, it's to cut before. And we had just an outstanding description of that word, that Greek word. And so here it is. It's in parts here.

So it was used of an army of pioneer woodcutters. I never actually realized there was such a thing as pioneer woodcutters, but whatever, which pursued the regular army. I guess it must be for military, I'm assuming. It rose through an impenetrable forest. thus making possible the pioneering advancement of the ladder into regions where otherwise it could not have gone. So what Wyss has done, he takes that idea of that word, proptope, and he incorporates it in his translation. And here's how it comes out. We saw it last week.

The last part of 12, 12b says, and these things which are holding me down, have come to result rather in the pioneering advancement of the Good News. So he's basically saying, as we talked last week, about how God's Word got to go into places where, because of his imprisonment, just the opposite of what you think, it got to go into places where it never would have gone before. And we're going to see that shortly when we review the other verses. But this pioneering advancement of the good news of the gospel, just incredible. So it's just the opposite of what man would think. And as I kind of looked through what we did last week and this week, it just is astounding how God uses things that man thinks are impossible or are going to be for detriment. He'll use them for the good. And he did that certainly in his imprisonment.

Okay, so now the next verse from last week. So we see here, So it was recognized my shackles, my imprisonments are because of Christ. And that was kind of, I think we spent some time talking about that. You know, you read that in kind of the New American Standard and it seems like, well, the cause of Christ, we just kind of squeaked by, you know. His imprisonment was because, that was his will, that was God's will. in Paul's life, that to get the gospel out.

So kind of the opposite of what we would think. And the other thing that struck me about this was that it was not just some of the Praetorian Guard, it was the whole Praetorian Guard and then everyone else. And I looked a little bit up about the Praetorian Guard and Constable was quoting someone, I think Robertson, and said that there were originally in Rome 10,000 Praetorian Guards and they were specially trained. Man, it was a position that you, if you were a soldier, you wanted to have that position. And their job doesn't sound too inviting being shackled to prisoners. But anyway, they were a select group.

And so the whole Praetorian Guard, wow. heard the gospel. That's just amazing. And he said that everyone else. So this seeming tragedies, our brother Hal would say that, the seeming tragedies of life, and we all have them, they seem like a tragedy, but God has a purpose in everything in a believer's life. So if you have comments or additional thoughts, just let me know.

And then 14 from last week, And most of the brethren, trusting the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear. So I just took some other parts from Weiss here. Having been influenced by the gentle persuasion of my shackles to take the steps of confidence. And then the last part are more are more abundantly bold, fearlessly breaking their silence and speaking the word of God.

So we're gonna see this as we move into 15 through seven. We're gonna see how, we're gonna see there were two camps. And if you read ahead, you already know there's gonna be two groups of, and they're actually believers as best we can tell, two believers, but they had different motivations. Sad to say that we can have believers that have motivations that aren't in line with what God would have them do. So we're gonna see that. So now we're gonna, go into any of the thoughts about these verses from last week, I'm just gonna go ahead and jump into this week. Well, okay, so here's this week's. So this kind of continues on. So now he's gonna talk about this brethren.

He says, some to be sure are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from goodwill. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for defense of the gospel, the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress and my imprisonment. So you already see there's, and it's going to use the idea of the some, in my translation, it's the some or other issues in other translations. The some, some do this and some do that. Some are doing it out of goodwill.

Some are doing it out of envy and strife. And you think, wow, that's terrible. Why would believers do things out of envy and strife? Well, I have a really cool thing at the end here I want to show you that from Macaulay that he kind of points out about, you know, and actually studying Romans in the main service, we see why believers, even though they're believers, can do things that are not honoring to God. They can walk in the flesh and do things that are not Christ-like.

Okay, so I'm gonna jump into these guys here. Verse one, some, to be sure, are preaching Christ. So the main thrust of this is some are preaching Christ. Okay, and so who are the some? And I think from, then Luis has it, certain ones. So from the previous verse we know, if you look at the near context, it's brethren. So some of those brethren, some to be sure, are preaching Christ. And he's gonna go into the two different groups here right after this.

So preaching is this word to preach, to herald, to proclaim, and it's in the present tense. And what that means is that it's They're continually doing that continuous action, they're continually, it's wonderful, they're continually preaching Christ. That's just wonderful. And several verses that use the same word in the original language, just really exciting verses, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jew a stumbling block, to the Gentile's foolishness, then another one in 2 Corinthians, or we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord. and as your bond servants for Jesus' sake. So those two verses use the same word here, proclaiming or preaching.

And so the next we're gonna see, the last part of this verse, verse 15, we're gonna see the two motivations. There's gonna be one, a negative motivation, a bad motivation, and then a good motivation. Okay. All right, so the first one, the first Psalm, he calls them the Psalm here. The first Psalm here, do it from envy and strife. So we're going to look at the definition of those words in the original language and go from there. And it's even from, or you can say it's because of.

So they're preaching Christ. because of envy and strife. So you ought to think about, if you're a good Bible student, you ought to think about, have you read about any group of people that Paul's encountered in his ministries that were kind of against him? Anybody have any ideas about who those people might be? If you look through Corinthians, you look at his whole ministry, who was he, who was his, he was constantly interchanging with these people.

Since you said that, you're in good company. I looked through the different commentators, and there was only one. I used three. I used Wiest, McCauley, and Constable. Wiest was the only one that picked up on that and said, well, you know, these guys that are are doing this envy and strife that, you know, I think this is the Judaizers.

That's a group of people. They're very envious because they want to preach Christ. They want you to become a Jew. They want you to follow the Jewish traditions. You just can't become a Christian. You got to go through the Jewish porthole, so to speak.

So Wyss was the only one that picked up on that. I thought that was really interesting. So let's carry on here. I'm going to get ahead of myself. So envy is the idea. It's displeasure. It's when you see someone else getting a good thing and you say, well, they got a new car. They got a new house. They got a new boat. They got a new whatever.

And you're displeased about it. But it even goes beyond that. And buying kind of brings it across. It's a desire to, it's not only you're envious of that, but you want to deprive them of that. It's even worse. You don't want them. So these people, were envious of Paul and they didn't want to see that he's succeeding, even in prison he succeeded. That's pretty sad. And actually, but here's the sad news.

Envy, if you look in Galatians there, which ties very much into what we're doing the main service in, Romans, It talks about that's a deed of the flesh. So I'm sorry to say that we as believers can be doing the deeds of the flesh and we're not walking with Christ. So we can be do we can be engaging in envy. I think we're honest with ourselves. We, we may do that sometimes. And then carrying on.

Here's another place where Envy shows up in Titus. for we also once were foolish ourselves." Now this is speaking about Antiochus looking back before we once were, so before they were believers. So it occurs, envy occurs before we're believers, and unfortunately even believers can do that. It occurs in both, in Scripture in both places. For we once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our lives in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another."

Pretty sad list there. Okay, so that's envy. So now we're going to move to the next one, which is that they're not only envious, but they want to do something about it. They want to stir things up. And that's strife. quarrels, especially rivalries. Boy, this is what I kind of came across. That's what the Judaizers were about. Brother Paul, you've got to follow the law. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. You've got to do all these things. That's what they were about.

Again, strife is another deed of the flesh. Believers can be involved in strife. And then Titus talks about it. but avoid foolish controversies and strife and disputes about the law. So here's some comments from Wiest, and he calls them the group, the one group of the sum preached because they were envious of Paul and were at odds with him. And the second comment is, they preach Christ, but their real objective was to adhere to the law. They're all about, well, Paul, that's fine. You can become a believer in Christ, but you've got to follow the law. And we see that in Galatians. We taught that several years ago here. Galatians just follow that. That's what the Judaizers were about.

So I've been, I don't know, any thoughts, comments? Go ahead, Jim. All throughout Paul's missionary journeys, the Jews were envious of his prominence. They were envious of all the people that were following him and going over to his side, basically. So that's what Constable says. They were envious of Paul's prominence and were striving with their fellow believers for selfish reasons.

Exactly, exactly. So that's the one group we're going to see. Now we're going to see on the other side there's another group. I thought Weiss did a really good job. This is where he really shined, in my opinion. So that's a group that do it out, and they're preaching Christ. They're apparently preaching Christ truthfully, and McCauley's going to kind of point that out.

It doesn't seem like Paul says, no, they're giving a false gospel. In fact, in 18, we're going to see next week, he commends them. He says, I don't care if Christ is preached, whether you have good motives, bad motives. Because he was still validating their teaching, but the gospels could still be taught, even with a sin nature. Yeah, I know. Men can do it out of the wrong reasons, but as long as Christ is glorified, then that's 18. We'll see 18 next week. Yeah, go ahead.

There were probably several churches in Rome before Paul ever got there. Paul even desired to get to Rome to make sure that they were preaching, you know, the right doctrine. And so here's several preachers. And once Paul gets there as a prisoner, then all these preachers are thinking, hey, maybe I'm the I'm going to be the leader now.

That's good. Yeah, well, he's in prison. And they take it, we're going to say, they take advantage of the situation. It's like, well, my adversary is in jail now. I mean, you look at the political scene today, you think, things haven't changed one bit. Not one bit. They put people in jail. We do all kinds of things. Even in Corinth, they had a problem. Some were of Apollos, some were of Peter, some were of Paul, some were of Christ. There is divisions there.

Exactly. Exactly. That's good, Bob. That's good. Okay. That's great. Okay. All right. So let's go on to the good guys. The second sum, I call them, but some also from goodwill. So let's look at some words here. It's literally, they were preaching Christ from goodwill. And that's the motivation that God desires, right? You preach it according to his, according to the spirit. So goodwill is this word, you do kia, good pleasure. It's from a word to please or favor. I have a couple of places it shows up here. We're going to see it later in a couple of months.

Philippians 2.13. For it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. And then in Ephesians. And so this is the same word just used in this verse.

Goodwill. He made known to us a mystery of his will according to his kind intention which he serviced in him. So this is kind of an easy question. What's to be the source of everything we do in our life as a believer, right? It's Christ's life. It's to be Christ working through us. The source of this goodwill is to be Christ.

So that was 15. Go ahead. Other things? Yeah, Roger, I was just thinking of the emphasis here. Isn't it very strong on fellowship or partnership with Paul? The goodwill would be a manifestation of that partnership, that they're joining him now because of the progress of the gospel being evident, and they wanted just to be a part of that with him in partnership. I think that's the emphasis here, isn't it?

Yeah, I think you're right, Roy. That's good. That's really good. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, they were preaching it from, so I have a, we'll see a little bit more along this line. We're going to see a bit, you saw this, the two camps here, so to speak, the two sums, the two others, and then we're going to see that would be began with some additional characteristics here. Okay. How do you tell the difference? Say again? If you're out in the audience, how do you tell the difference if they're preaching out of Indian strength?

Well, actually, that's kind of Paul's... we're going to see that in verse 18. He's going to say, well, you know, their internal motivation... you can't look at a man's heart, right? You can't look inside his heart. And Paul's gonna say, well, if God is glorified, if they're preaching the truth, then their motivations, that's not good, but it's the most important thing is that Christ is preached.

That's what he says. Yeah, and Roger, just that verse in Romans comes to mind, I think really fits here that the gospel, the good news is the power of God unto salvation. Amen. That's what he's rejoicing about. Right. No, I agree. That's why he rejoiced. And that's why I think he penned these verses.

Some people are going to say, well, those Judaizers, they're preaching Christ, but they're the bad guys. And we kind of see it. Think about today. Think about the Christian landscape today, right? So if you see a brother or a sister, and they're saying things, and you know their background, their denomination, or whatever, you think, well, that denomination has a lot of wrong things.

But if Christ is preached, according to what Paul is saying here, praise the Lord. We're thankful for that. Then you run into people that have gone to these churches, but yet, that's where they were saved. And it's true, that's all I know. You know, you gotta look at that. Well, it seems like, actually, Bob and I talk about this sometimes.

God is so gracious that no matter where you're at in your Christian walk, so to speak, it's almost like, especially in this country, there's a church for you, right? I mean, how many churches do you have? So many. It's just the opposite of almost any other country in the world. We have so many churches. Now you can say, well, Roger, a lot of those churches, You know, you have some serious problems for some of those churches. But if Christ is preached and people are saved, then, you know, we praise the Lord for that. Okay. So let's go on.

16. So now he's going to look back.

He says the latter, just from verse 15, the latter, and that's the second, the second group, do it proclaiming Christ out of love. So they're proclaiming out of their love. And so let's look at that for a second. So the idea is out of God's love as a source, and we brings it across, some indeed out of the spirit of love. So, and then we see this, you know, the idea of this shows up in various places, various verses. We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope.

And the other group, actually, it gets a little bit, when you look across from people talking, some are using some, some are using other, and your head kind of gets, okay, this is the second group, the second sum. The other group was composed, so here, this is Wiest again.

So he was the best one, I thought, as far as trying to, he took a shot at, I'm gonna try to identify these two groups, and what we know from scripture. So we says here, the other group was composed of Gentile converts and friends of Paul who were encouraged to preach by the thought that it would give great joy to the great apostle whose liberty was restricted. So they were doing it out of their love, their love for the Lord and their love for Paul. Paul's hindered, Paul can't, to their mind, he can't get out and preach the gospel. So we're gonna support that, we're gonna be part of that. And I think it's up to Roy's point. They're laboring with Paul and the gospel.

So I thought his two comments were just right to the point. So Weiss kind of identifies the two camps. You got the Judaizers and you have the mostly Gentile, it seems like, converts. And they're both preaching the gospel, but their motivations are different.

That's kind of the gist of this whole passage here. And he's gonna point something out about these seven. So this latter, or the second group, who proclaim Christ out of love, that they know something, they understand something, which Judaizers, the other group, didn't understand. He's gonna express that in the rest of this verse here.

Knowing that, so that this other sum, they're doing their preaching out of love, but they understood Paul's ministry. They understood what Paul was about, and it's gonna be This understanding is expressed in the rest of that verse. They understood what Paul was about. What was the ministry that God had called Paul to?

And so basically, I am appointed to be set or destined. It's present tense, continuous action, continually doing that. I'm appointed, this is what these good believers knew about Paul. I'm appointed, and this is a cool word that shows up in other places in Scripture, and here's one of the places, and here's a place where Paul's appointed for not only for preaching the gospel, he's appointed to another thing, which is not as pleasant. So in 1 Thessalonians 3, it says, so that no one would be disturbed by these afflictions." So Paul was undergoing afflictions, trials of affliction in his life. For you yourself know that we have been destined or appointed for this. So Paul was appointed for getting out the gospel and he was appointed and destined to have afflictions.

And I know we're all thinking, And that's just like us, right? We're just the same category. Paul is a super saint in some sense, but he's just like us. We're appointed to tell people about Christ, and we're appointed to have afflictions. And God does that. We don't get to choose our afflictions. He chooses them for us in love.

In this case, I'm appointed for defense. Apologia. And this is really cool, I thought. It's a technical word in the law court speaking of a verbal defense presented by a lawyer who defends his client. And if you think of Paul, boy, he is the ultimate... Just look at what we're doing in Romans, how careful he is.

He goes over and he comes back every possible way you can think of. I'm not going to leave any loopholes here. There's going to be no loopholes in my presentation of the gospel, the good news about Christ. I'm going to come from every angle and show you, convince you that this is what you need to believe and trust.

So he does that. I'm appointed for defending the gospel. And then it shows up, we had before, earlier. Since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you are partakers of grace, of grace with me. Back to that sharing in common with Paul. Okay, so that's 16. Before we go on to 17, any thoughts about this? Okay. Probably not.

It's made a big deal of sometimes how in God's plan we're to be partners with him of the affliction, but that partnership of the affliction is maybe overemphasized. And really the emphasis is the power of God is demonstrated and our joy should be the focus of sharing with each other this common fellowship of being a prisoner of Christ. And I think that's really strongly presented in verse 12. In teaching that, it just hit me that I'm his prisoner. and working together as an instrument that he works through.

It's not me, it's him that is glorified. Isn't that something? Yeah, that's a good one. That's good. The tendency of my sin nature is to be jealous of others that teach the word. And I look at that and I say, that's not of Christ. That's got to be who I was, not him, right? Big difference.

All right, now that's good. All right. Other thoughts? Now we'll go on to 17 here. Okay, so now we're back to the, you know, he's using that idea of the former. Okay, so now we're back to the bad guys, the good guys and the bad guys. So the bad guys, the former, proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition. So this is what we're talking about. So we had them described back in verse 15, envy and strife. Now we see another word that describes them about their selfish ambition.

And this is where Macaulay, I like this, he points out, and I couldn't, I didn't see it either. He says there's no indication in the context of the message. of each group basically, both preach Christ, a fact that is repeated three times. 15, 17, and we'll see it next week in 18.

They preach Christ, and Paul never, he's really hard about their motivation. What's your motivation? What's your motivation? But their content, he doesn't put down their content. The content was correct, apparently, because he doesn't mention the content. But it was a motivation that he was concerned about. Why are you doing this?

Why are you preaching Christ? You know, the Judaizers were preaching Christ to, you know, it was for self-advancement, to be better than Paul, for many, many reasons they had. So I thought that was a really good observation about the that guy, so to speak. So were these Judaizers believers? Yes, we can tell they were. Okay. Okay?

So, selfish ambition is the idea of self-seeking. It's that, you know, they're seeking themselves, that they're seeking to glorify self. Self-willed. Vine says self-willed is the underlying word, the self-willed, self-motivated. Rather than, or not from, And he puts in here this idea of pure motives. God desires that we have a motivation that He motivates it, the Holy Spirit motivates it.

But these guys were not being motivated by the Holy Spirit. We would say they're out of fellowship. We would say that believer is out of fellowship thinking to glorify himself when Christ is to be glorified. He says he's got the first grade here doing it from selfish ambition. They're not doing it from pure motive. Their motives are not, and the word actually is, it's akin to being pure, they're not sincere.

And we, all the time, right? We're questioning people's sincerity when they do things. Are they sincere about that? Are you just doing that to look good, right? More like rivalry. Right. They were, I think, offensive. They were jealous of Paul. They wanted to be the top dog. They wanted to be the ones that had the crowds gather around.

Hey, Roger? Yes, go ahead. Maybe it would help us to distinguish between the Judaizers who were truly Jews and the Judaizers using quote-unquote Judaizers that were members of the body of Christ that wanted to inflict circumcision and other things upon the Gentile people. Right.

The only ones that threw him in prison, I don't think they were the believers that did that. They were the ones that were truly Jews. They didn't want Christ's name to be preached at all. No, I agree. That's a good distinction. I didn't really make that clear. You're right.

There's a subset of these guys. The Jewish Christians, so to speak, they said, well, you just can't Grace can't be that gracious. You've got to have these other things in here. They wanted to impose other things on believers. They were doing right things for the wrong reasons. You have to be circumcised. You have to follow the law. You have to do those kind of things. That's what Roy is pointing out. That's a group that Paul is addressing here, it seems like. That's good.

Okay, so he says, the former proclaimed Christ out of selfish ambition rather than pure motives. And so here's Weiss' take on this. He says, this group apparently was composed of Judaizers, Jews, who taught that Gentiles had to enter Christianity through the gates of Judaism. They wanted to, it's fine, you can become a believer in Christ, but you've got to do all the rest of the stuff in Judaism.

Well, Paul was, he was really hard about that. He was just, he spent Galatians, you know, and many others talking about why we don't want to do that, you know. He was hard on Peter when Peter kind of sided with the Jews. He said, you can't do that, that's hypocritical, you're not sincere. Go ahead, Jim, you had something?

Yeah, these, the Jews could not get away from the from the law, basically. They were so, you know, they had centuries of millennia of the law. They just could not get away from that. You have to obey the law. You have to be Abraham's child and you have to be circumcised. Without those two, How can you be saved? Exactly, exactly. I know it is, and you can kind of see that.

I mean, I can understand it at some level, but here's Paul who becomes a believer and realizes the unfathomable riches of God's grace and says that, you know, That's a wrong motivation. You cannot do that. He's so hard on those guys. Paul was instructed by the Holy Spirit himself. He was saved by seeing Jesus. He had Jesus' twelve disciples. He instructed those guys very closely for three years. So they and Paul were the only ones who really were firmly fixed in this new covenant, basically.

The rest of them, you know, you might obey the law. How else can you be saved? Right, I know. Isn't that, that's true of anyone that gets saved today. I mean, Once they put their trust in Christ, they don't immediately turn their life around. No. I mean, they've still got all these habits, all these ideas. Even Paul, it took him two or three years to get Judaism out of him. Right. Absolutely. And then also just look at the struggle. the apostle paul who spent three years with the lord has we saw described in chapter seven of romans i mean he just like all of us we all struggle with that that adamic nature still is there we still we're still drawn away from christ so it's still there it's good Okay, so let's go here.

This is the last part of the question. Okay, so here's the part that's kind of sad. It's bad enough that I had the wrong motivations, but just like they wanted to cause me distress in my imprisonment. Boy, I mean, well, but it's not... I'm afraid that our fall of nature is not too pretty.

Yeah, well how do you exalt yourself? Most people do it by putting other people down. Putting the exalted person down, you know, down below my level so I can be... So we shouldn't be so surprised when we see our world. And what are people doing? They're putting each other down as much as they possibly can. Climbing on top of other people to get to the top. You know, it's interesting.

Here's Paul in prison, and he's distressed by what's going on outside of prison. Wouldn't I be, where's my next meal going to come? Where's my next whatever? And he's So he's falsely accused and everybody else said he's not depressed about that. I don't know. That's pretty amazing. Okay. So he's, he's, um, so he's, uh, the last one, we had a question there. Okay. Okay.

Thinking to cause me distress. So thinking is the idea to expect or imagine or suppose. The cause, the idea is to stir up And it's present tense that, you know, they had to stir me up and stir up the stress. And this is this interesting word, phallipsis. It's the idea of pressing in.

It's like when you're, you'll say, I'm in a tight situation. You feel constrained. You feel the pressure of my work. I'm like, you know, making money, whatever it might be. I feel this pressure. There's this pressure. And that's, they want to cause him distress, a pressure. Like being between a rock and a hard place. So we'll see this down the road here later in the year.

Nevertheless, you've done well to share with me in my affliction. So afflictions are a synonym of this word. My afflictions are this pressure. So they're sharing, they're sharing the blessings with Paul and they're sharing the afflictions with Paul in this verse. And then here's the one that always got to be here, the momentary light afflictions. Can you describe your life with your practice of light afflictions? I have a hard time. At the moment, we think they're pretty heavy. Well, I think about you and Lamb, you and Sue, I mean, I just, Me, that's way beyond my afflictions.

But anyway, but the Lord, by comparison, you know, He's producing in you an eternal way of glory far beyond all comparison. So, He always wants us to compare what's happening now with the future, what will be the glory we'll have in the future. So, these momentary, quote, pressures and afflictions.

Roger? Yeah, go ahead. Just a thought here that each of us in our family have members who have not believed or trusted in Christ or who have believed and then turned away from Christ and gone into error. And that's an affliction, isn't it? That's also a, how do I say it? Being a member of God's family, being under him, we share his burden, just like he had a burden for Paul. And he said, why are you persecuting me, running him on the Damascus Road? And that's what we're appointed to, the suffering of Christ for each of us to share. Man, isn't that something? Yeah, no, that's great, Ron. That's really good. Another verse that really is saying almost the same thing as 2 Corinthians 4, 17 and Romans 8, 18.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to me. I know, I know. God is always saying, compare where you are now with this, compare this. And by doing that, it causes us to step back and say, well, wait a minute. You know, this life is temporal. Yes, it's hard, but look at what the future holds for those who love you. That's what he's constantly reminding us to keep our focus on.

Okay, now I have one more thought. In my thing that caused me distress in my imprisonment, Luis has thinking to raise up additional afflictions to my already existing chains. And you know what, if you notice in the translation what they've done is, The word imprisonment is actually, I think, chains or something like that. That's kind of in the chains I'm bound up with. Okay, I want to get this last one before my time runs out here. Okay, so final thoughts. So this final thought was really interesting. This is from McCauley. He has a couple different things. This is one that's written down. So this is kind of cool.

They, the ones with the wrong motives, listen to this, they were pro-Christ, right? They were believers, right? But anti-Paul. Pro-Christ, anti-Paul. It kind of catches your attention there. For those with the wrong motives, for those with the wrong motives, important lessons can be learned.

So he has three lessons he says we can learn. I think these are, the more I thought about them, the more I thought they were right on. The first lesson, it is impossible for, first, it is possible, not impossible, it is possible for men who teach truth to stand in bitter opposition to each other who teach the same truth. I don't think like that. I think that's, you know, we see godly men many times on different sides of issues from scripture.

And they can be pretty vehement about that. Okay, second, it's possible to teach the truth for selfish reasons. I think that's possible. And then thirdly, it's possible for believers to use the suffering of others to promote themselves. I think the last one probably speaks to me the most, because maybe in your experience you've seen this too.

People will use this phraseology, well, you wouldn't be suffering that if you were praying more, whatever. Yeah, they'll put the burden on you. Have more faith. Have more faith. They actually are not well taught when they say that. They don't realize what they're saying. They're kind of saying, if you just were a little bit better taught, understood better, you wouldn't have this problem.

Well, first of all, If you haven't read your scriptures well, because Christ says in the verse we just read today, you're appointed. You're appointed to trials. Well, wait a minute. What does it have to do with my praying more, having more faith, when the Lord says you're appointed to trials? And it doesn't fit with God to say that your actions are going to change His plan for your life. He has a plan for your life, and He's going to carry it out. And so when you go off on that rabbit trail, You know, that's not a good way out of the trail.

Anyway, I thought those were interesting. I don't, you know, he didn't give verses to back those up, but I thought they were just interesting observations about trying to take that text and apply it to... Hey, Roger? Go ahead. I think there were a lot of Christians in Rome who were wondering, what did you do wrong, Paul? How did you screw up?

And this whole passage, Paul is trying to tell them that I'm here for the furtherance of the gospel. God put me here. If he had to put me here, he would have been able to write the last four books of the Bible. Well, that's exactly why, since the believer is in God's plan for his life, who are we to say the plan that we're living out, we're all living out a plan, every believer is living out a plan for his life.

Who are we to say, well, that shouldn't have happened to me. This should have happened to me. You can't do that. Say, Lord, this is hard. I'm going to trust you. I'm going to walk with you by faith for all I have. And yes, it's not pleasant, but I know that you. You have a plan for me, you know, it involves involves. Difficulties too, so thank you Roger. That's right on. I think. Thank you so much. Okay. Well. Any final hi, Miles. I just saw you there. Hey, I'm glad I can be here. All right. Okay. Well, um. Any other final thoughts, sir? I was just thinking, if we had to pick our own afflictions, which ones would we pick? Yeah, I know. Imagine if we had to...

The easy ones. Yeah, the easy ones. Well, God is so wise, and it's with Him. He doesn't leave that to us. I think that's important to see. If you think that you're in charge of your afflictions, or you're You can cause your own problem. I'm not discounting that. You can be in jail for taking stuff, right? Or doing bad things. You can't blame God for that. But if you're kind of walking your normal Christian walk, and you have trials and tribulations that you don't know why they happen necessarily, but you trust the Lord that He has a purpose and a plan for all of those.

There probably wouldn't be any growth involved, would it? That's true. But I think I'm kind of ironic here is that these guys are trying to cause Paul affliction. Paul is the very guy who knew probably better than anyone how profitable affliction was to him. He's probably just thankful for it. No, that's great. Well, actually, I'm going to have to close it out here. I apologize. It's getting the musicians want to practice here. OK, so let's just close it.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for today. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior, and thank you for your word. Lord, we're so thankful that you're so precise and use Paul and his ministries and his life in imprisonment. You use it for the furtherance of the good news about your son, and we thank you for this time. In Christ's name, amen. Amen.