Philippians - Chapter 1 Review
Philippians · Roger Henderson · Mar 18, 2012
Philippians (2012), No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49263632556

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

Well today is, these reviews are always, I look at this and I say, I don't know. You probably noticed that I've kind of adopted this idea of just doing questions. I kind of thought, well, you know. It's hard. Each section of verses we study has just so many neat points. And so I just try to develop some questions on each section that we covered before. And then actually, and then we hit particular ones that we may have questions about. So I'm trying to think.

Do we want to try to read the entire chapter? Would someone like me divide it up between different folks? Because hopefully we'll cover the whole chapter today. So if someone, a group of folks, would like to read half and somebody else read half, that would be great. I'll read through verse 11. Okay, alright, that sounds great.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God every time I remember you. And on my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from this day until now, being confident in this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you since I have you in my heart, for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. I can read down through 20, I guess. Okay.

I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole Praetorian Guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear. 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 the defense of the gospel. The former proclaimed Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motive, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice. For I know that this shall turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that I shall not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor, yet what I shall choose I want not. For I am in a strait between two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.

And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith. That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again. Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ, that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel, and in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God. For unto you it is given, in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now here to be in me. Great, thanks.

So, actually you know it's neat as you read through there, Paul's describing his interaction with the Philippian believers. The more I read this, the more intimate I see his relationship with the Philippians. It's neat. He just talks about how they have supported him. while he's been in prison, how they, you know, they're with him through the whole process.

And so it's just, so I think that actually is going to help us in interpreting some of the passages here. So let's just kind of jump into it here. So I kind of portioned the sections just like we taught them, and then I developed some questions along the way here. In some cases they're not real hard questions, they're just kind of observing what the verse says.

So the first one is, what term does Paul use when addressing the saints at Philippi? It's in verse 1, and it's not hard. Say again. OK, that's certainly one. That wasn't the one I was looking for. That's good. OK. There's another term that is very commonly used by Paul in almost all of his writings. It really is a significant aspect of the Christian life. And he points it out in terms of the Philippians, as well as many other people he writes to as well.

Saints in Christ Jesus. OK. Well, I was looking particularly for in Christ. Here at Holly Hills we look at that a fair amount, and that's a significant thing to kind of camp on, that we're in Christ, we're in union with Christ. He points that out to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi. So I just thought, as we go through here, we're just picking up summary points, just things to look at. It's a thing to note. Most of his writings, he'll point that out about the believers he's interacting with. You're in Christ. You're in union with Christ. And we're going to see that Christ is your life later on.

So kind of a significant point to keep track of. Do we have any indication of what Paul was thanking God for in these verses? And this isn't hard, there's not really trick questions here. And it's something we're going to see as we go through. He talks about this aspect of his relationship with the Philippian believers. Well, he's really thanking them for the believers. He is, right. But there's a certain aspect about what he's... something that they... I'll give it away if I say it. The partnership in the gospel. The participation? Exactly, exactly. That's what... And we're going to see, that's a pretty significant point. Okay. What's another word that describes Philippians participation in the gospel?

And here I'm looking for it, and I wasn't here when this was taught, and I actually didn't listen to it unfortunately either, so I think Bob taught this one. That word participation, does that remind you of another word? If you haven't, you know, a lot of times like with Jim and I and Bob, we'll look up the original word, and so that's a big help. But what do you think that word participation is about? Does it remind you of other words that you...

Actually, it's a word that we have in First John a lot. And it's pretty significant, I think, in kind of grasping what the relationship of Paul and the Flippings were about. Is it fellowship? Exactly, it is. So that's kind of neat. I think you have it in your office. That's good, I'm proud of you. That's cool.

So actually, he's saying, I have a sharing in common. look at the original word, it really makes that bond between the Philippians. We think of our fellowship here at Holly Hills with believers here. He said, I have this fellowship, this joint participation. And he's going to really camp on that, this joint participation. And he's just thanking God that they were partners in the gospel.

And in a way, you think, wait a minute. He's in prison, and they're not in prison. How can we imagine any kind of partnership? You think, well, wait a minute, I have to at least be with the person, you know? Well, they were partners in the gospel, even though he's in prison, which is just kind of, you know, mind boggling, you know? So that's, I thought that was just really cool. Okay, so let's go on here.

All right, so actually I repeated verse five again here, because I want to kind of make some points about verse five, especially in verse six and verse seven here. So my first question here, how strong is false confidence in God's working in the believers at Philippi. And here again I'm kind of camping on the fact that if you were to look up the tense of the word confidence, actually I'm looking at verse 6 here in this case. So what do you think? Is this a strong statement of confidence? Is this a mediocre statement of confidence? And if I told you the Greek tense would that That probably would help a lot, I'm hoping. So what if I told you it was in the perfect tense? It is in the perfect tense. So would you say, remember about the perfect tense? Completed action in the past time, with results in the present and on into the future. So that's a pretty strong confidence. I'm answering my question. I'm answering the question I answered, right? He was confident. I think that's going to be a key thing to understanding. Jim did a great job.

We went through verse 6. I went back and listened to what Vern did. This is just a total side point, but it was just really neat. It turns out on the day that Vern talked about, verse 6, was the day that Mike became an elder. And it was really neat. I didn't listen to the whole first part. It was really cool. I had forgotten about that. It was special for me. I thought, wow, this is back in 2003. And it was just kind of really cool. So I thought that was really neat. That's a total side point. Anyway, so we want to try to understand. Verse 6 is kind of a key verse here. We want to try to understand that.

So in understanding verse 6, one of the key things What is good works that God has begun the believers at Philippi? Because it says, basically, I'm confident of this very thing that he who began a good work, he is capitalized as God. And you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. So what is the good work here?

And notice that it's a good work. There was no definite article there, which I think is kind of So you might remember what we talked about here. And in some cases, I think I kind of got the sense, and Jim did a great job, but you're going to think, well, I've used this verse in the other content. I've learned it this way. And it's kind of like, well, wait a minute. You're telling me it means this. And it kind of, maybe it was kind of a surprise.

So what's the good work here that Paul's referring to here in this verse? And I want to look at some other verses And it's always, it's never God's good work in the believer, it's the good work of the believer. And we talked about how that good work is always empowered by fellowship with Christ, but it's not God's good work in the believer, it's the believer's good work. And that's just a hint, by way of trying to figure out what, remember what we said in that verse, what is the good work that the believers are doing? but we glean from that. So what is the good work that God has begun in the believers of Philippi?

It's their participation in the gospel with him. So understanding and may amplify in that good work and kind of following what Jim was talking about. Let's look at Ephesians chapter 2. And if someone could read verse 10, Ephesians chapter 2. And this is one of the cases of the usage of the same word pair, good works.

Ephesians 2.10.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Right. So one of the keys here is that the source of this work is God. Right? I mean, that's key. Well, you know, in thinking on this, as we went through that class, in the context of what Jim is saying, it's the good work of the believers in advancing the gospel. Right. But that couldn't happen unless the Lord had worked in them. Right, right. It has to be. It has to be a failure. I agree, I agree.

So I think it's important to realize, and actually, he thanks him that God has begun a good work in you. He thanks him, so he already kind of points to that. So I think that's key too. What's in view here is that they participated with Paul. If you look at, what I also like is there's kind of like a timeline here. And Vernon pointed this out.

If you look at, it says in verse 5, in view of your participation in the gospel, which we just talked about as being, that's what he's focusing on, from the first day, so there was a beginning, right, the first day, until now, seems to be what verse 6 is talking about, and then on into the day of Christ, right, so there's a, this is over a time period, and so what Paul's saying is, wow, I'm confident, and this confidence is rock solid, you know, God has done a good work, and it's a work of this, working in the gospel, and he's going to carry it through to the end. And it's interesting, you look at a bunch of other people, and look at that verse, and they'll take that verse, they'll take it out of context, and they'll move it over here, and they'll apply it to many other things that God does. I want to show you one of those in a second here, but that's, but it's important to see where it's, where it comes in that flow.

But I think it's also important that what you said is that God is the source, just like we read in Ephesians, He's the source of any good work. It can't be a good work otherwise. So He's the source of that good work. And Paul's pointing out here that, and he's confident that God's going to continue that.

One of the things we also mentioned was just how not to hang our hat on the sanctification interpretation at first, but that even if you did incorrectly interpret it, there are still verses that support what you might see here. And I was asked by someone what would be a better verse to support the, in this case, incorrect view of sanctification, because this has to do with the gospel rather than sanctification. And I talked to Vern about that, and he mentioned 1 Corinthians 1, 4-9 as being an excellent verse for what this verse doesn't say, but many people want it to say.

I mean I wrote it down in my notes. Why don't you read that? It was just helpful. I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ. He mentioned that in Christ Jesus that in everything you were enriched in him again in all speech and all knowledge even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you. so that you are not lacking in any gift awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless, in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." And so if you're wanting to really pound home the idea of God doing a work in you so as to present you blameless in the end, this isn't the one, but 1 Corinthians 1, 4-9 might be a better option for you there. 1 Corinthians 1, 4-9.

Some people will take this to be that good work, to be salvation. It's interesting. Some people say, well, that's a verse I can hang on. I can see my child who walked away from the Lord, and I'm confident. And that's absolutely true. You can be confident. And I wanted to kind of go down that path.

Let me just skip over this third question for a second, and I'll come back to it. So then, last I have, what three things were the Philippians partaker of with Paul? And it depends on how you count these things. Three may be, I could count differently. So what things, and we've mentioned one already, the first one we mentioned was participation in the gospel. So what else do you see in these down through eight that they participated with Paul in?

And it's not hard again, it's just looking at... Well, the advancement of the gospel. Right, right, okay. And actually, he's kind of more specific down in verse 7. He says, in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. So he kind of expands that. That's why you can count depending on how you count here. And then, basically, you all are partakers of grace with me. And if you look back, it's in my imprisonment. So he saw grace in that. That's kind of interesting. So that's what I was looking for.

So I'm going to kind of diverge here for a second. I have actually the last chart in the handout, but basically if you look at, you know, God does things over past, present, and future. And salvation has, you know, and that's one of the things that's kind of key when you look through scripture. You look at God's work of salvation, many times you say, well what aspect of salvation is being presented here? So the first aspect of salvation is that we're saved from the penalty of sin. We're saved from eternal death to eternal life.

And the verses you'll see for that many times are like, we have been saved, like in Ephesians 2.8, you have been saved by grace through faith.

So it's in the past tense, past completed action. In the present tense of salvation, And I was kind of thinking, actually, on this timeline, you could put that as a point on that graph, a point in time, whereas the middle one, the present tense, is over your Christian life. you may not realize the truths that God is doing in your life, but they're true. So the present tense of salvation, that you've been saved from the power of sin, saved from the sin nature to be alive with God. And you find that kind of in Romans a lot, in Romans 6-11.

We are dead to sin, but alive to God. And then the last one, is basically, could be another point in time, saved from the presence of sin when you go to be with the Lord. You're saved from the very presence of sin. From the presence of sin nature to the absence of sin nature.

So some people I found as I kind of looked through, will take that idea, God has begun a good work in you, and it's absolutely true. This is over time, ending as we go to be with the Lord. So I mean, this is absolutely true, but that verse is not talking to that.

So I think that's one of the things that you find as you go through scripture. It's good to see that God operates in time for the believer. He's operating from when they're saved to when they go home to be with him. And there's different aspects of salvation.

So I just kind of presented this as a way to make sure that we see that those principles, that verse is not, by saying that verse applies to the Philippians, in its direct sense, is correct, but we have to realize that scripture talks about, as pointed out before, about salvation and other aspects that God is working to carry out that no-believer's life.

So, one incorrect view would be using that as an eternal security fasting. And folks, I think folks have kind of used that, but I think I've used that, not realizing that, oh wait a minute, what's the context? And that's some of the danger, taking verses out of context and applying them in general, you know, other senses. And it kind of falls in that same condition that we talked about last time, is that even if you misinterpret it that way, that's still the truth of the scripture.

Right. As we know. So, yeah, it really does this incorrectly, am I still biblical? So am I going to go to bat with this and really, you know, nail it home? It depends sometimes. It may not be, you know, worth going to the mat on, but... No, I understand what you're saying. And actually, what's interesting, we're going to see that exactly what Paul, he encourages the believers to be truthful, to love, talks about their love being lived out in their lives, they're delivered out in honesty and truth, but with sensitivity. And that's kind of the thing.

Do you hammer somebody over the head with a truth, but lose them as a friend? I mean, you can present the truth and say, here it is, and they, well, I don't know about that. And you say, well, this is God's word and you present your case, but you beat him over the head with it. I'm going to beat you into submission. Alright, so the next section here.

First question is, what does Paul mean by real knowledge and discernment in your love? So this is where he's saying, And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and discernment." So he wants their love lived out in their life to bound or super bound in two aspects. So what does he mean by real knowledge and discernment? Here again, it helps a lot if you can look up the words. But do you remember what we talked about there? And unfortunately, I've been gone a lot this year. I wasn't in this class either. Well, let me go ahead.

Actually, the real knowledge is this word. It's a form of gnosis. It's epinosis. And it's basically knowledge applied. So it seems like he's saying, I want your love to be applied. I don't want you just to say love in a theoretical sense. Well, I love you, brother. And they go, oh, you do? That's nice. Glad you could say that.

And then something comes along, and you're nowhere to be found. you know, from God, love results in action. So it's, he says, he wants you to be loving with real knowledge, knowledge applied, and with discernment. And this is a word for sensitivity, to be delicate sensibility. So I thought that was kind of cool, that our love is to be lived out in shoe leather, so to speak, but with discernment. And that's, once again, do we, in our theology, are we so, you know, we want to get our point across and we want to be right, that we just, you know, we go overboard and we wind up without a friend maybe.

Okay, what does it mean to approve the things that are excellent? And once again, it helps tremendously if you, any of you guys remember, I'll kind of go back to Hal's story here. Guys, remember, a couple of you folks over here, and Hal was here, and we all were here, but this is a study that Hal did between testing, that word approve is to put to the test.

There's a couple of different words in the Greek for testing. One is to test, show us to be approved, which is our word right here. So this is a word that we're testing to approve something. So it's this word dokimazo and there's another word that it's a different kind of test for failure.

This is the one that looks at the positive side. You're testing to prove that it is what it is. So you're testing here in verse 10. You may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ. And here once again he refers to the day of Christ here again. So approve the things that are excellent. So I found that things that are excellent seem to be things of significance, like you could say Christian marriage, you could say things like raising a family, you could say loving your brother. So, it seems like he wants you to put into the test that things are excellent, so that in order that you may be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ. He wants you to be rightly dividing the truth, I believe, from here in this verse.

And then he goes on here in the next, my next question here, talking about the fruits of righteousness, having been filled with the fruits of righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. So what do you think the fruits of righteousness is about here? And it's all sound like something else that we hear a fair amount in scripture. Do you mean the fruit of the spirit?

That's what I thought too. Love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness. And I did a search on fruits of righteousness. This is the only place that appeared, that particular phrase. But in terms of the fruit of the spirit, that occurs quite a few times. Fruit of the spirit. Fruits of righteousness.

So I think it seems to refer to that. It's certainly clear that it isn't our fault. No, exactly, exactly. So we're just kind of whizzing through this. And this section of verses here, he talks about his imprisonment. And some of these are real obvious. I've already answered the question. What were Paul's circumstances? His circumstances were that he was in prison.

And who knew about his imprisonment? You know, as we went through this, I think Jim went through this one basically, the Praetorian Guard knew about they were protecting him and it seemed to spread to the Praetorian Guard and to everyone else. And I was thinking, well, everyone else, you know, we talked about that, Jim, Certainly the believers knew that, but it's possible that this news spread beyond the believers. It's not, you know, he doesn't really say that, but he does say everyone else.

Okay, and then what was Paul's view about his imprisonment? Was he angry about that? So I found at least three things that he said about that. First one is the greater progress of the gospel in verse 12 there. He said, now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstance and my imprisonment have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel. So he saw that.

And then down in verse 14 he said, that most of the brethren trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment so they trusted in the Lord they were built up because of that and then the last one was have far more courage to speak the Word of God so that's that's pretty amazing that and that's part of what you know kind of flows on to the other verses pretty amazing what his imprisonment resulted in so stop me if I Let's see here, if I go too far here, if you want me to slow down. Okay, so what were the contrasting, and this is the one that we taught here, and then we actually taught it in the main service too, and that was when Vern, so what were the contrasting motivations for preaching Christ from these verses? So there were the good guys and the bad guys, right? So what are the, quote, bad guys, what was their motivation?

Selfish ambition. Right. Evil, envy and strife. That's not too high on the list of... And then how about the positive aspects? What were the positive aspects? Love or pure motives. Right. Okay, good, good. So does yours have, what does yours have in verse 15? Does it have goodwill? Oh yeah, goodwill. Okay, great. So I found goodwill and pure motives. Okay.

Okay, who knew that Paul was appointed for defense of the gospel? So he says in here that And this is the one where I noticed in the King James, I talked with Dorit, 16 and 17 are flipped in the King James, I believe. 17 comes before 16. This seems a little bit better because he says the latter, and he's going to refer to 15, and it seems to fit better, at least from what I can tell. So basically, the people that were preaching from goodwill, they were convinced that Paul was appointed for the defense of the gospel. Whereas the other ones who had an envious strife, maybe they had a problem with that. Maybe that's why they were envious. They said, well, why couldn't it be me? Why can't I do this? Me too. So it points back to the latter.

The latter do it out of love, which points back doing it from goodwill. And then, who was trying to cause him distress in his imprisonment? So we're kind of focusing on the group that had positive things and negative things. This was a group that was proclaiming from selfish ambitions, right?

Question for you. I wasn't here for this class. Did you talk about whether or not these were believers or unbelievers? Not a whole lot. I kind of assumed that they were believers, just from how it was written, because he's going to say later on that he rejoiced, and we're kind of getting into the next part, that he rejoiced that the gospel was being presented. And he said that he was excited about that. So I took it as being believers.

But I'm open to other thoughts if you want to make a case. the messenger, it's not the power. And so what might we say whether or not this is a believer or an unbeliever here, their message, if it were accurate and clear, had the power to be effective and also cause Paul rejoicing because the message itself is being proclaimed.

And in today's environment, I mean, there's sometimes where maybe even clear Gospels being shared and we're just really not sure if it's coming through right. I'm with you on that. It's hard to tell. It's hard to tell. But at any rate, he was excited about the message. He was excited that the Gospel was being preached and that was his focus. He was rejoicing in that. That's good. So I think we're going to talk about some of those things. And this is just what we talked about. How did he view the proclamation of the gospel? He was rejoicing.

It's being proclaimed. And that's in verse 1. What then? Only in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. In this I will rejoice. Yes, I will rejoice. And this is kind of something that we kind of went through. and this is not necessarily in what Paul's writing here in this first chapter, but in general, what is a Christian told to rejoice in? The Lord. Exactly. Okay, good.

So if you look through, that's, you know, we're to rejoice in many other things too, but that's one of the main things, we rejoice in the Lord. It seems like once, if we're doing that, a lot of the other rejoicing will be you know, to rejoicing, because we're trusting that his purposes are being carried out. And okay, and then basically we've kind of answered that already. He rejoiced that the gospel is being proclaimed.

Okay, how will Christ, down toward the end here, he talks about, according to my earnest expectations and hope, I will not be put to shame in anything, But with all boldness, Christ even now, as always, will be exalted in my body by life or by death. So how will be, you know, the word exalt is to make great, to magnify. How will Christ be, according to this verse, how will he be exalted? And it seems like it's a two-pronged answer. It's sort of like he'll be exalted in either death or life.

Because his purposes will be carried out. And Paul realized that. That's God's plan. He will be made great either in his death or in his life. Either way. And he's going to talk about that tension between death and life here in the next set of verses. You know, we might think, and that's what the, if you think about Christ's death on the cross, the disciples in the immediate context thought that was defeat. So... Well, and Roger, does that go back to 17?

I had a note from my class saying that knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel, that it was understood by Paul and the Philippian believers that that was who he was, that was his position. Right. That seemed to be, you know, he was certainly from verse 17, that he was, that was his ministry. He was appointed for that. And so here, whether by life or by death, he was confident. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Magnified. Okay. I think that even holds true as we look back at Paul and his entire life. We see that even in his death. Right.

For him to be exalted. So I don't know whether he thought about that that would be long reaching into thousands of years later, but it still is. Yeah, we often think that, well, death is sort of a negative thing. But for the believer, it's absolutely the opposite of that. It's a wonderful thing. Maybe not the going through the dying process, OK. All right. So here's a cool section. OK. So first question.

What does it mean? Some of these are really, I had to think of some question here. What does it mean to live as Christ? What does that mean? For all Hollyhollites, it should be no problem to answer this question. It's Christ's life, isn't it? Right. Christ is our life, right? So if we're not living His life, we're living the self-life, right? We're out from our Adamic nature. So the Christian life is Christ. But it has to remain on in the flesh, so it is talking about physical life as well.

Yeah. Okay, that's a good point. That's a good point. Actually, what I thought was interesting here is that you look at the... I'm not sure you pointed this out, Jim. you know it says it's actually living right to be living versus with the verb tenses and to have died so he's contrasting to be living versus have died so i thought what is that is there any significance there and only i could think about is that obviously the living part christ is you know as we live we're living the life of christ the very life of christ and when we die he's not looking so much as a the process of dying but that we're with the lord We have died, because if you look at it, it's the eros tense there in that case. So that's kind of interesting.

OK, so it says, let me ask a trick question. Can Paul really choose living or dying? It seems like he's sort of saying that, right? Because he says there, he says, but if I'm to live on the flesh, it will mean fruitful life for me. I don't know which to choose. And so I'm like, OK. But he's not come to a conclusion. I think that's really important. He's not come to a conclusion here. The Lord, you know, it's obvious that he came to a conclusion about living or dying.

You know, this might sound silly, but I was thinking like in a military family, like Matt and Caroline. Matt has to go off to serve, but Caroline has to stay. And she'd love to be with Matt, but she realizes that she has a place in that relationship where she stays with the children.

Because it's for their benefit. I think Paul's heart is always torn. He would love to be home, because he knows his Lord is waiting for him in fullness. Exactly, that's good. But does he stay? Because he also, because of where he is in Christ, he loves the body and knows that it's beneficial for him to be there with them.

That's great. That's good. That's exactly what we see in these verses. That's great. Why was he hard-pressed? You answered that question. That's good. So what was the conclusion about his choice? And actually, it's somewhat a trick question, but I think the conclusion is in the next verse.

I have a question about can Paul really choose living or dying? Okay. Can he choose to die? Well, okay, I'm thinking... I don't know. Tell me where you're going with this. He might have been in prison to a point where he was near death. He goes on to say that he's confident of the choice that he has to make. There's a conclusion about it, but it really seems that the choice was even more real to him than we might recognize. Just because he was hard-pressed in both directions, he didn't know which to choose. It's not as though he was going to, you know, put himself to death.

But, I mean, I can imagine the person being in prison so much so that Are you saying the will to live is going to hell? Yeah. That's a five. Because he's definitely talking about remaining in the party. And he's separating the two through a very difficult decision. So I don't know.

It seems there might be a little bit more to it than just... And I may, you know, it's possible that I, you know, I was looking at it, just kind of thinking about it, you know, it seemed to a casual reader that we thought, oh, wow, Paul, he can choose life or death. And, you know, so anyway, that's okay. I was thinking of Hal. Hal kind of struggled with that a little bit, didn't he?

Yeah, that's true. I think that, you know, because he loved the body, he loved to teach. Right. But then when, and so he did did what he thought was, you know, well, all right, Lord, if you want me to stay here, I'll continue on. Right. And it finally came to the time when he said, no, I guess the Lord wants me home. And he was ready for that. Yeah. I wonder if this may sort of, I don't know, that there's a convincing process. The Lord convinced him over a time period. And I don't know. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So I think that, and now he states it, he was convinced that I would remain on and continue with you for your progress and joy in your faith.

So he came to that point, sort of like you mentioned with Caroline. That's the point, and he realized that was what God had for him, and he was settled about that. What did Paul decide to see in the lives of the Philippians? Basically, I think it's already back in 2 Germania.

Basically their progress in joining the faith. Bounding in Christ. In this one, in 26, he talks about that he wanted their confidence to abound in Christ Jesus. So they would see that by him remaining on with them, that would give them even more confidence, that would build up their confidence in the Lord. You know, I like my version better on that. Okay, sure, read your version. It says that you're rejoicing maybe more abundant in Christ Jesus for me by my coming to you again. That, you know, as you look at that, it's proud confidence in me.

He's not, you see what I'm saying? I found that hard to read. No, I agree with you. That's a hard, I read that, and you read that, and you have to kind of read it two or three times, and you think, oh. What's that boasting term that we was much, much more contextually sound, I think. Do you remember that? Good. Okay, that's great. Okay. And then the last one, Jim gave me a verse, gave me one of his verses, which is cool. Maybe this is really cool. A cool one here. So this is great. So there's all kinds of neat things here. So you guys remember what's another translation for conduct yourself? Does anybody remember? Okay.

Well, it's basically the idea of citizenship. Conduct yourself as a citizen. you could conduct yourself as a citizen, and actually it has implied, since our citizenship is in heaven, you're conducting yourself as a heavenly citizen. And I thought that was really cool. So, conduct yourself as a heavenly citizen in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Another question we kind of went through here.

Actually we saw this, what does the faith mean in these verses above? Actually the faith occurs here and actually occurred in a few other places I think earlier on too. And we see that in the end of 27 there it says, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel. You know, and we kind of pointed back to Jude there, where it talks about the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints, the body of truth. And you see, it kind of pops up throughout the New Testament, the body of truth about who Christ is and what he's done.

And this one, I think this question is answered, how can you not be alarmed by your opponents? And this is where we saw the contrast between the sign of destruction but salvation for you, this contrasting thing that for one, your opponents are in no way alarmed by your opponents, which is a sign of destruction for them. So your lack of being alarmed kind of unnerves them, so to speak. So the same lack of being alarmed builds your confidence for you salvation, but in them it's a sign of destruction.

And then you remember what the... And some verses actually say it a little more explicitly. What does a sign of destruction or a sign of... What did yours have, Ingrid? You or somebody else read it. I forgot when they read it. You have a sign of destruction or you have something else?

Which verse? Verse 28. Oh, okay. Without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you, this is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved and led by God. Okay, they had destroyed. Mine says perdition. Perdition, yeah. And you know, that word literally is everlasting damnation, hell, not a real pretty picture. So they're contrasting signs here by you not being alarmed.

And then, what two things have been granted? And granted, these are grace gifts to you. And this is the one that always, in a way, it's easy to say it, but it's harder to trust the Lord that that's the case. So what are the two things? They're in verse 29. The first one says, Amen, oh wonderful. The second one says, oh no. So you get a two part deal here.

Not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. We had a discussion earlier on in the going on about filling up the sufferings of Christ. I mean, it's actually mind-boggling. You think, my little world, I'm going to add to that. You're not actually adding to it, in a sense, because Christ paid for all the sins.

But for that to be counted, so to speak, in a sense, or to be noteworthy. OK. So we actually made it by a second. OK. So we just kind of skimmed along the top and hopefully we reminded you of some things along the way here. To have one class to review the whole chapter is challenging. So anyway, well thanks. Great comments and it's great for Jim and I and Bob. It's a pleasure to be able to teach the class and have you guys comment and stuff. We learn a lot as we do this. So we'll start in the chapter two. Bob has the first two weeks, I think, and then Jim has the next two weeks. We tried to do it in two-week segments. It just seemed like it made a little bit of continuity between weeks. Okay, well, let's close then.

Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for this day. We thank you for the blessings we have, Father. We thank you for just our time in the first chapter of Philippians, Lord. We thank you that we can continue on in this book, Father, and we praise you just for the things we're learning. In Christ's name, Amen.