Bible Survey - Philippians
Vern Peterman · Oct 26, 2014
Bible Survey, No. 42
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926444226022

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

We are in Philippians today, and I'm going to start by, we've got a fair amount of slides to step through. I think Philippians is one of those books where understanding the historical background and the culture is real helpful in understanding the book. You've only got four chapters, but there's a lot packed in it, and understanding the historical and cultural background is just huge with Philippians. Philippi is a city at the base of a mountain.

Up on the mountain there were gold mines and graves. So this is looking down, getting up on the mountain and looking down on Philippi. paved road that you see in here, it's just the old Roman road with asphalt on top. The Romans did a great job on the road, but they just went over the top of it with asphalt to smooth it out. The old Roman road, aside from being individual stones, one on another, the old Roman road had quite a few wheel ruts. just from going over and over and over the same set of stones there.

And then here you see up in this area is the pagan temples, including the Egyptian temples. Here is the Agora, the marketplace, where Paul cast the demon out of the girl as recorded in Acts. And then, of course, the owners got ticked off and they had him beaten. in Silas Beaton. And then this farther here is the gymnasium bathhouse. So those are some of the remains of Philippi.

Time frame, here's the last Old Testament book written, Malachi, about the year 400. Philippi was founded as a kind of a pre-Roman, Greek city about that time, about 350. And then a Roman capture here in the middle of the second century BC. And then the Roman colony established at 30 AD.

Now here's the interesting thing. We'll take a look at it here. Ever hear of Julius Caesar and Brutus and Mark Anthony, those names? This was made into a play by Shakespeare. So anyway, that battle that was fought was fought right near Philippi and then when the battle was over, those soldiers then decided to settle down at Philippi, the ones who survived, settled down at Philippi and then that was about 42 BC and then 30 AD the Romans established it as a Roman colony. Lots of Roman soldiers in the history, so there's a lot of tradition of Roman soldiers and Roman influence. Here are some of the major cities of Greece and Macedonia, and of course here's Philippi, the first church established on the European continent. And then there was a major east-west route, that's the Roman road that goes all the way across there. The Romans ultimately ended up building by hand, and it's the soldiers that did the work, they built Roman roads enough to go twice around the earth. All by hand. Lots of hard work. Lots and lots of hard work.

But one of those major roads that was established was this one here, going from what's become Istanbul, there east-west through Philippi and then Thessalonica and all the way over to the coast, cutting east-west across. These are the pagan temples. Samson did what he did in Philistia, which is in Israel's territory. It was one of the Philistine cities on the coast of Israel, along the coast. So here are some parts of the Ignatian Way, just so you can see what that was like.

This is a part that hasn't been paved over. A lot of it actually has because the Romans did a really good job and all they had to do was pave over the top of it and they had a good road. But you can see some of the ruts from the chariot wheels that had developed. They were just driving over and over and over. They got to a place where the chariot wheels just wore down a rut into the rock. Here's kind of a closer up where you can see some of the ruts from the chariot wheels developing there. The Romans would establish a Roman colony and that colony was to represent Roman identity and culture. in whatever that colony was. There were various Roman colonies. We'll take a look at it.

Antioch, where the believers were first called Christians. Antioch, which was a major center. It was the place from which the Apostle Paul was sent on a couple of his journeys. He went through there at another time when he came from Jerusalem. Antioch and then Pisidian Antioch, that is to differentiate between the two. Pisidian Antioch and Lystra were two of the five major cities of Galatia, and those were Roman colonies. Lystra was where Timothy was from.

Corinth. Apostle Paul wrote letters to Corinth. We have two of them. It seems from those letters that he wrote at least four, but we have two of them, 1st and 2nd Corinthians. But Corinth was also a Roman colony established to represent Roman identity and culture. And then Philippi. Philippi is the only one, however, that's named as a colony. In other words, it's called a colony in the New Testament. And that's Acts 16, 12. So all five of those are Roman colonies that are mentioned at one point or another in the New Testament. But Philippi is the only one named.

So here you see him on a map. Now here is, remember we looked at a shot, you know, a photo from down on the mountainside. And then this is an aerial view. What you have is, up here is the mountain, okay? And then here are some of these pagan temples that we saw from the view from the mountain. And here's the forum, or the agora, or the marketplace. And then this is that bathhouse that you see. bathhouse, gymnasium.

It was there at Philippi. Over here, and we'll see some shots of it, is the theater. The theater was important because the theater was not just a place where they had plays, it was also a place where they'd have military demonstrations. So you'd have guys doing mock battles and things like that at the theater. And so you'd have people gathering around to watch the military demonstrations. And because you had a large number of Roman soldiers with a history of having been Roman soldiers, that was a key area. And Paul actually made some reference to, not so much the theater, but these military exercises as an athletic event.

Okay, I'm going to pass through that one. Tradition says this was Paul and Silas' prison cell. That's debated, so not known. Here's an archaeologist digging into a philippi. Here's the theater that we looked at an aerial of, and it was down here that they would have various kinds of military exercises and demonstrations. And another shot looking at the theater, looking down. Okay, so here you have some things labeled.

Those in Philippi worshiped Dionysius and Athena, were a couple of them. Athena was the goddess for the soldiers. That was one of the reasons why Athena's temple would be important, because of the Roman soldiers there. So some of the different ones, Dionysius was the god of wine, ecstasy, and orgies. So this is the pagan world, it's raunchy. Just like our culture is getting more and more so.

Yes, and then Athena the goddess of wisdom and military victory, and then you have the Egyptian deities. It's real interesting that the Egyptian deities got carried about even though Egypt was in decline itself and being subject to the Greeks and then the Romans and that kind of thing. Egypt was in decline, the deities continued on. As a matter of fact, some of that continued over into the Catholic Church. how you pay monies to spend less time in purgatory, that's an Egyptian practice.

Do you have that on a single slide? I can send it to you if you're interested. Yeah, no problem. So you've got different ones. It's interesting too, the Egyptians actually had 700 deities. So to have just a few of them, they just kind of picked some of the The ones that seemed to be a favorite, but didn't try to keep up all 700 deities. The plagues on Egypt were against the gods. Exactly. The plagues were directed against the gods and the Bible says so.

It seems like in one or two places in the Bible they talk about the God-bearing angels that worship the Queen of Heaven. Is that what they're talking about? Isis is the Queen of Heaven, but that term was actually used in other pantheons out of Babylon. And so the Queen of Heaven is actually a title that fits several different pagan pantheons. Ishtar. Yes, Ishtar. And then Artemis, of course the Ephesians had the great temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. that's now a cow field, you know, a cow pasture. And that was dedicated to Artemis, right? Yeah.

Is the derivative of this group that's over there in the Middle East now? No, I don't think it has anything to do with it. The ISIS over there in the Middle East now is just the acronym. It's the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. In fact, they would have no regard whatsoever for the Egyptian deity. They would have no regard whatsoever. It's such an unusual word. What's that? It's an English acronym, yeah. And notice, often depicted as an infant held by his mother. A lot of the Madonna and child kind of ideologies came out of this, ultimately.

Okay, then we have rocks and tombstones in Philippi. Nine rocks in the mountain above Philippi show Artemis, that is also known as Diana. near the crescent moon depicting in that culture death in the afterlife. To show the show a relief of the goddess and then show a crescent moon nearby and that was a symbol that meant death in the afterlife. And so that's up on the mountain. Numerous rock and tombstone carvings show the Thracian horsemen taking souls into the afterlife. So you have the society of the Thracian horsemen and you'd call upon them if a loved one died. Survivors were to return to the graves annually to conduct rituals for the dead and make sure that their path into the afterlife was assured.

Here's the Genghis River where Paul and his companions introduced Lydia to the gospel. They met by a river because they didn't have a synagogue, which indicates, at least at the time, they didn't have ten adult males, Jewish males. That's what was required to form a synagogue. So instead they met by the river, a small Jewish group at the time. So, you know, Paul wrote early on there, I thank my God and all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day there by the river until now.

Now, the Roman soldiers. One of the key things with that is the Roman soldiers often depicted, and even as people go through Ephesians chapter 6 and they talk about spiritual warfare, often in Christian circles we depict the Roman soldiers fighting individually. And it's often taught from that standpoint.

And so here'd be another one. The difference here, Paul did not use or describe what's called the pilum. That's the spear. And the spears were made with a head that would break off so that if you threw it, it was unlikely to come back at you with a head on it. So here'd be another depiction.

Now, this indicates that this is a centurion or higher officer, if they had this plume on the top. But this was what the soldiers trained in. Not so much the individual fighting, but the tortoise formation was really big out on the battlefield. And they had variations on it. For example, if there are cavalry coming at you, you only get that pilum, that spear sticking out with the butt end of the spear stuck into the ground. So the cavalrymen and the horsemen are being, you know, pierced, impaled by their own advance. And so the centurion would call out different commands for different forms of the tortoise formation.

And the practice was then to be able to switch from one to the next and get there quickly and have everybody know their place. The other thing that they had that would involve teamwork was they had the lorica segmentata, this was the breastplate, In the Lorca Segmentata, just like you see it tied up in the front, it's also tied in the back. And you had to have a fellow soldier tie that up. You couldn't do it yourself. So it's another part of the teamwork. And of course, he's going to do yours, and you're going to do his, and it's a matter of, I want this guy to do it right. So that was another part of the teamwork.

And Paul talks about standing firm. And one of the things that they had was these spiked sandals so they would keep a grip. Now let's go back here. Imagine what happens, you got this in place, what happens if one guy slips and falls? Like you said last week in the sermon, you've got vulnerability there all of a sudden where you're going to start taking people out. So you don't want some guy to just slip, right? So keeping a good solid footing was important, not just for the individual soldier, but for everybody, right? For everybody. Okay. And one more thing, and this is not in your handout. Both Ephesians and Philippians have gambling terms.

And it comes in Ephesians, as a result, we are no longer children in Ephesians 4.14. We are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. So that's a shipping or nautical description. And the next one, by the trickery, that's kubeia, the trickery of men. And that's trick dice. And this right here is cheater dice.

The left one has two sixes. Dice should always have opposite sides add up to seven. But what they would do is they would either, like they did with this one, have six on opposite sides, six and then another six. They'd either have that or they'd put a weight inside the die so that it would tend to fall on certain numbers. So they weighed it or changed the numbers. So this is trick dice from Roman times. And these six to the right are not trick dice. They're not cheater dice. So Paul used that term with the Ephesians for trick dice. That's the trickery of men.

In Philippians, really interesting, the fellow who brought the money and the letter to Paul from the church at Philippi was Epaphroditus. And so Paul says in Philippians, He writes about Epaphroditus as an example to be followed. And what's interesting is when they would roll the dice, in order to get good luck, they would call upon Aphrodite. And the way they would do it is they would say, Epaphroditus, and then roll the dice.

And Paul wrote that Epaphroditus It usually comes translated as risk. But the word that Paul used was to put everything on one roll of the dice. Bet everything on one roll of the dice. That's the word that he used that translated risk. So real interesting that he drew from you know, these rolling of the dice kinds of terms as he wrote Ephesians and Philippians.

All right, let's take a look at your handout. So we mentioned the connection here between, you know, here's Brutus and Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony and Cassius are some of the names that are brought out in the Shakespearean play. And Mark Anthony is in another Shakespearean play, with Cleopatra. So you've got both of those there. That is the Mark Anthony, the guy. Then you have Philippians at a glance.

It does break down nicely into the four chapters that are there. And you have kind of the summary of the topics on the lower part, experience, examples, and exhortation. That's probably a good way to look at it in summary there. Then you have the outline given in the four parts for each of the chapters, as shown there below. Here's a part of what's interesting. The Apostle Paul was given funds by Epaphroditus brought a letter and brought some funds and Paul is going to send him back with this book of Philippians.

In the Roman and Greek culture it was considered beyond rude to thank somebody directly. That seems kind of strange to us, but it was considered beyond rude. And here's why. It was permissible to thank the gods for something. But if you thanked somebody directly, that was considered something that would draw the anger of the gods on the person that you thanked.

And so the Apostle Paul doesn't buck that. What he does is he starts off and he says, I thank my God for you. Thank my God for you. So Paul is writing a four chapter long thank you letter in a culture in which you can't say thank you. So that's kind of the character of the book. He doesn't actually thank them, but he's expressing thanks and credits it to God.

Now Philippians has got a number of themes that run through it and so we'll take a look there at the top of page 2. One is heavenly citizenship and a lot of people read through Philippians and they'll see that chapter 3 is the only place where they recognize the heavenly citizenship. The truth is he had one place in chapter 1, one place in chapter 3, and one place in chapter 4. where he made reference to heavenly citizenship. It's just most of the time people don't recognize it as that.

So the first one is Philippians 1.27, only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. And that Greek word is politetoumai, which is citizen behavior. Citizen behavior. So why would he make an emphasis on citizenship?

It's because there were a great many either active or retired Roman soldiers in Philippi. And a Roman soldier upon retirement received their Roman citizenship. And in some cases, people went out and paid for it or did other things to try to get it early. But Roman soldiers would typically get their Roman citizenship at age 35, which was the age of retirement for a Roman soldier.

And so citizenship was something they valued, whether they had it or were working towards it. Obviously, if you were born in a Roman colony, then you were a Roman citizen. Not necessarily, no. Paul was, and Tarsus was not a Roman colony. Now, we don't know for certain how Paul got his Roman citizenship. It is possible because he had it from birth. It's possible because he was a tent maker, right? So his dad was a tent maker. That would be the tradition. And it so happened that there was a major movement of Roman soldiers coming through Tarsus, and it's quite possible that the Apostle Paul's father made a deal with the Roman army, I will make tents for you. But here's what I want. I want Roman citizenship, and I want my son to have Roman citizenship. And so that kind of a deal may explain why would this Jew from Tarsus have Roman citizenship from birth. That may explain it.

It wasn't challenged when Paul made that appeal, how can you jail me when I'm a Roman citizen, I appeal to Caesar, and they didn't challenge that, so it must have been something that he could certify. Yes, there was a document and a kind of a medal that you had to indicate, yes, I'm a genuine Roman citizen.

The next one you have here, aside from Philippians 1.27, conduct yourselves as citizens. And by the way, citizen behavior, where was the citizenship?

Conduct yourselves as heavenly citizens, right? So the next one shows up, and this is one people recognize, for our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then that one is palateuma, figuratively speaking, meaning citizenship. And then when the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians in 219, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of God's household. That's sum polites, together citizens.

Here in Philippians, the last reference to citizenship comes in this form. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. Indeed, true companion, I ask you also to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel, together with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life. The Book of Life, we tend to try to isolate it, but in ancient times, all the way back into the time of Moses and the Exodus, the Book of Life in ancient times was the list of living honored citizens. The list of living honored citizens. So that would make reference to citizenship, right? So it's the third and final reference to citizenship in the Book of Philippians.

So you've got Paul coming in with different ways of expressing citizenship, and Philippians 3.20 is just one of them. And that's a key thing to know the Book of Life is the list of living citizens, what that means then, is if your name is in the Book of Life, as a believer, it means that you have a citizenship.

And notice, you could have a citizenship in a place you didn't even live. The Apostle Paul, as far as we know, lived for decades before he went to Rome, where he had a citizenship from birth. So here's a place where we're living now, we're living here in these bodies, but our citizenship is somewhere else. Citizenship is somewhere else that we haven't been to yet.

So is that kind of connected to the census taking in the Old Testament that they did so often? That's right, and what you will see is They'll go through the census taking, and they've got this tribe, and you've got this many people, and going down there, and essentially they're summarizing the Book of Life. They're summarizing the Book of Life. Tiberius, what you're talking about in church service, they did the census, right?

Yeah. When they had to go and sign their name. Yeah, so what you'll have is, here's a list of living citizens, and that's the Book of Life. Of course, what the government was interested in was to make sure your name was on the tax rolls. Yes, yeah, you go to get your tax rolls. I don't really care if you're a citizen, as long as you're paying your taxes. Yeah, and the citizenship at that time bought some, as we see with Paul, some particular rights and privileges.

It was, in the time that Paul wrote, it was death penalty to beat a Roman citizen without proper trial. So that's why Paul says, you know, are you in the habit of beating a Roman citizen? And they go, bleah! They really back off from it. The guy goes right to the centurion and said, you know, do you realize this guy's a Roman citizen? Now, the flip side is to claim that you were a Roman citizen when you weren't was also very dangerous. You risk your life.

Okay, now let's take a look at page 3. Military terminology and illustrations. And of course we saw there in the theater that would be a place where they would have a lot of demonstration of military activity and exercises. One of the places where it shows up is Philippians 1, 25 and 26. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith. And that word for progress was used of military advancement. Military advancement.

Philippians 1.27-30 has several different terms that go along with military terminology and practice. So only conduct yourselves, and we talked about that being citizen behavior, right? "...in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm." This is the stand firm or standing firm.

We make note it's in First Corinthians. Now, why would he use that military term with the Church of Corinth? Because remember, it's on the list of Roman colonies, right? And then he does it in Ephesians. He talks about standing firm in Ephesians. And Ephesus was a major city with a Roman governor and 3,000 Roman soldiers. It was not a Roman colony, but there was a significant Roman presence there with 3,000 soldiers and a Roman governor.

So Ephesians and then you see it also in Galatians 5.1 standing firm and Galatia had five major cities two of which Lystra and city in Antioch were Roman colonies.

So again you'd have to understand from the background why those terms are used exactly in those places and then the last use of standing firm is in Philippians 1.27. So where you see the term standing firm, which by the way is just one Greek word, where you see that there is good reason for that term to be used because it's either a Roman colony or you have a significant Roman military presence.

Then we see striving together. That's what the guys did when they're in the tortoise formation. They're striving together. And he talks about being of one mind and one spirit. He talks about the need for unity there at the church at Philippi. And then, in no way alarmed, that word that's translated alarmed, it was used of a horse that panicked in battle. In no way like the horse panicking in battle by your opponents. And then, The last one, there in verse 30, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me. This word conflict was used in athletic and military context. So you have several times he's drawing words that would mean a lot to these believers in Philippi, many of them being Roman soldiers or retired Roman soldiers, or if not, having a lot of exposure to what that was. You go to the theater and see him doing a demonstration. A lot of these words here would have meaning to everyone there.

The next that you see, Philippians 2.25, but I thought it necessary to send you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, together soldier. So he would draw again upon the military terminology because they would know exactly what that meant. It would mean a lot to them.

So here's Philippians 4.1. Therefore, my beloved brethren, whom I long to see, my joy and crown, in this way stand firm. Stand firm.

And then finally, for Philippians 4.7, "...and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

This word for guard is fascinating. It's a forward-stationed spy. Forward-stationed spy. It's somebody who goes right and is mixed in with the enemy and then sends word back. or goes back himself to tell about, you know, here's what they're doing and where they are and how many there are and that kind of thing. So that's this word guard, okay? It's not just somebody standing guard, it's somebody who's giving you advance notice. Yeah? Like a forward air controller. Yes. Yeah. During World War II, my dad was just getting ready to load up on a plane.

He had been through radar school and they were going to drop him in behind enemy lines with radar and communication equipment and report back what's going on, what planes, what ships, things like that. And just as they were loading him on the plane, they said, stop, the Japanese just surrendered. Okay, so this is this military spy reporting back and he's actually positioned with the enemy. He's gotten in with the enemy in order to be able to send back information about what's going on.

Okay, let's take a look at the last page, page four. Athletic terminology and illustrations. Now there are several places where it shows up here. I'm going to make particular note of one of them and that's Philippians 3, 12-14. People debate about, you know, okay, is this a chariot race or some other kind of competition? I'm just about certain it is a chariot race. Just studying the thing over. I did an expand and explain for all of Philippians, and so I'm going to read from the expand and explain version.

Just so you don't misunderstand me, I want you to know that I have not even at this point already taken possession by my own actions of total knowledge of Christ or of conformity with Him. Nor have I already been made completely spiritually mature by being conformed to His image by God's own doing.

But I am right now continuing to press on without hesitation or let up in order that I will take down as a prize that for which I was also taken down as a prize by Christ, Christ Jesus, at the time when he pursued me as a prize. Brethren in Christ, having a spiritual relationship with one another because of relationship with Him, I do not make a judgment regarding myself based on careful consideration as having already taken down the prize, but I have one thing in my focus.

I am constantly in the process of forgetting what lies in the past, and I am continually reaching forward to what lies ahead in the future. I am right now continuing to press on without hesitation or let up, looking with constant attention towards the person of Christ for the prize of the upward call of God in the heavenlies. When this life is completed at His declaration, which upward call to me as the victor I have by reason of my being in Christ Jesus, which will bring me to a place of being rewarded by Christ and being fully conformed to Him, only at that victorious moment will my condition be permanently conformed to the position I already have in Christ.

So he's describing, using a chariot race analogy, his looking forward, because what they would do is, here's the goal post, and they'd have a post and that's your goal, and the chariot racers would focus on that goal. They'd just have their eyes riveted on the goal, and they would even lean towards it, in the chariot, and everything was focused on the goal.

And you're not looking back and, how's this guy doing? Not distracted by anything, just focused on the goal. And he's saying, Christ is the one on whom I am focused. I do not get distracted by anything. He says, I haven't reached the goal yet, but I keep my focus there. Keep my focus there. So that's what he's describing.

And what's interesting, too, is that he's going for the prize, and he says, Christ looked at me as a prize. Isn't that amazing? Christ looked at me as a prize. I'm going for the prize that is Him, but He looked at me as a prize. Isn't that astounding? For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, right?

So then another one that comes out is in Philippians 4.1. We have a kind of a one slide table of the different crowns and rewards, and this is one of them. It's a Stephanos crown. It's not a diadem crown or royalty crown. This is a Stephanos crown, which crown was used, it was given to the victor in an athletic competition.

Therefore my beloved brethren, whom I long to see, my joy and crown And in this way stand firm in the Lord, my beloved. So, frequent use of key words or families of words. One of them that comes out real strongly every single chapter in Philippians is phrenao, a mindedness. Phrenao, this mindedness. Chapter one has an occurrence, chapter two has got four occurrences, chapter three has three, and chapter four has two occurrences. So he weaves it into every single chapter. And there's a reason why he would do this.

To those in Philippi, what were they trained, as a Roman colony, what were they trained to do? They were trained to think as Romans, right? Have a mindedness about being Roman. Every thought, everything you do, what you eat, everything you do, you're Roman. That's what the Roman colony assignment was all about. So Paul says, okay, you've been trained to have this mindedness where everything you do, everything relates to Rome. He says, I want you to have that mindedness, everything relates to Christ. A mindset. And so he just keeps bringing that up, that mindedness about Christ. The other word that he uses repeatedly, chapter 3 only has one occurrence, but the other chapters have a number of occurrences, is words based on the Keres family of words.

And so it comes across as grace in verse two. It comes across as thanking. I thank my God for you is also out of that charis family of words. It comes across as joy and rejoicing. And so he continues to use that charis family of words. Now let's talk about this word charis. Charis was used as a greeting in the Greek culture. When you would greet someone, You'd say charis. When you say goodbye, actually, you'd say charis. So charis was the standard greeting in the Greek culture.

But what did it mean? We translate often as grace. What did it mean? It meant a favor that you would do for a friend or relative and you didn't expect anything in return. It's the same idea that you do it because it's the right thing to do, it's because someone has a need that you can meet. Just like Jesus said, or Paul wrote, just as Christ has forgiven us, we should show the same mindedness.

There are a number of Christian words that the Christians had a different definition than was used in the pagan world. Is God's grace towards us just a favor done for a friend or relative that you don't expect anything in return? Is that God's grace? No. What is God's grace? We usually say unmerited favor. Unmerited favor would be a brief definition, right? And if you think about it, Christ died for us when we were friends. No, when we were enemies. And so here's something, we take the word grace, and in the pagan culture it just means this. And all of a sudden grace becomes this massive, huge word.

And here's the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Ephesus, and what does he say? He says, God has wealths, riches of grace, and it's surpassing riches. It's like over the top. Wealths of grace. fabulously wealthy in grace, and that grace is so massive that he's going to show, that is visibly demonstrate, his wealth of grace on into the rolling ages of eternity.

So you take the pagan definition and just blow it so that it's infinite. Just like love and mercy also got an expanded definition, some people have made the little acronym, God's Riches at Christ's Expense. And you can never put it into words. If J.B. Phillips, your God, was too small, you can't put him in a box and just label him and say, well, here's what God is. He's more than anything we can say. We see this word grace, and imagine Here are these pagan people. You saw the pictures of the pagan temples. Here are these pagan people.

Do the gods ever love them? No. The gods don't love you. And do the gods ever have grace on you? No. Are the gods kind to you? No. Are the gods merciful? Not really. Do the gods ever bless you? No. So Paul comes into this culture where the gods don't do any of those things.

And what does he do? He just, you know, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. I mean, there's a God that does that? You know, this is astounding stuff. And who loves you and shows kindness and has grace that's way, way over the top, a wealth of it. He could just blow them out of the water, so to speak. Just blow them away with how phenomenal God's character, love, grace and mercy are.

To me it's not surprising that God's created by man would have man's characteristics and frailties, whereas the God who created the universe would be far above any human characteristics. Yeah. And one thing is, often if Christians fall short of what is biblical, it's because they tend to impose human characteristics upon God. And that's part of what legalism amounts to. It is, well, then God must require this and this and this and this and this and, you know, doesn't understand grace.

To me, Philippians, Paul seems to be so overwhelmed with the fact that he, the persecutor of the church, was singled out by Christ as the prize. And it says that in the process of forgetting what lies in the past. I mean, he is so overwhelmed by what Christ did for him. He testified every time I had an opportunity, I'd vote death for the Christian. But what does he do? He doesn't sit there and beat himself up over this, but he instead presses on about how amazing God's grace is.

How astounding God's grace is. Philippians, more than any other book, is just a positive song of praise to God, His mercy, His love, His grace, the position we have in Christ. That to me is the saddest thing about Islam, is that they can only look and hope for a merciful response for God. They can't have a hope that's built on any promises of God or any love and grace of God. It is such a fatalistic, dead-end sort of thing and it is sad. In the biblical terms, God is someone that you can know and must know, right? Whereas Allah is unknowable, right? Allah is unknowable.

It goes back to Romans, but all of the Apostles of Paul speak of it. Romans 15, 13. Now may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing that the Holy Spirit give you this confidence, this hope, that yes, this is really what God is like. This is really what He does. To add to that, it's so amazing that the world, you can see where they're really at when they say that all gods are the same and they all get you to the same place. And you hear these comments just constantly and all the time. Allah and God, and I guess all these great gods, They all get you to salvation someday.

And look at the difference. The huge difference in these spiritual beings. We've talked about grace. How about another word, hope? With the Greek and Egyptian gods, it was always an I hope so. But we have a certain and fixed and absolute hope. That's different. It's not a God of probabilities. That's why you can have a peace that goes beyond understanding. I can't understand how it is, but I know the peace and the confidence and the hope that God lives.

As far as the afterlife goes in these pagan religions, I've heard of reincarnation, but what was the general afterlife that these people hoped for? They had, of course, different pantheons for the Romans and for the Greeks and the Egyptians and whatnot, so different pantheons, but they all had a belief in an afterlife and you had to do various things to make sure that didn't get messed up. And so you had the Thracian, the Society of the Thracian Horsemen that came alongside and helped the family with the loss of a loved one. And they did various rituals and said various things that were supposed to guide them to a better afterlife. And so the family had to go back every year to the grave and do various things so that the afterlife remained good. In ancient Egypt, where a lot of that started, was everybody worked for the pharaoh's quality of afterlife. That was the thought. Everybody's going to work so that the pharaoh has a good afterlife.

So where did they end up when they died? What's that? Where did they end up when they died? Well, a lot of the temples for the Egyptians have all kinds of things left in the temple And your afterlife was in the temple. And that's one reason why they would seal things up and they would leave jars of honey and different things. Because you're going to live your afterlife in that temple. That's where you're going to spend the rest of eternity, right? And so everybody worked really, really hard to make sure that the Pharaoh had a good afterlife.

And then of course there was religion for the common people too, but it was all through the priests and their stuff. So the indulgences in the Catholic Church where you paid and had spent less time in purgatory, that's basically an Egyptian belief and practice. That's where it came from. And so the common people not having, like the pharaoh or the whole countries working to make sure the pharaoh has a good afterlife, The common people would have to, you know, they'd have priests and they'd have to, you know, pay these priests, you know, for doing different things to, you know, make your afterlife, you know, halfway decent. But most certainly everybody's got to make sure the Pharaoh's afterlife is decent, right?

So anyway, that was the answer, that's the answer to the question that basically you had to keep doing things when someone died or else they might not have a good afterlife. Yeah, it might go bad. So, yeah, there was no certainty. And others, you wanted other people to care for you, or boy, your afterlife might stink. So, that was the mindset. Yes? If it happened at all, it probably only happened for a generation. Likely. Once the people forget about you, what goes on?

And one of the other things that would happen too is, okay, here's this temple for this pharaoh, and a lot of those got broken into, things taken, so that could wreck the pharaoh's afterlife, right? Even Solomon, in all his wisdom, when he wrote Ecclesiastes, from that world, rationale point of view, talked about what does it matter how you do now, who comes after you might be a fool, and talks about how you get forgotten soon. So there's a lot of unknown. Where there's unknown, man will fill in rationally for you. But think of, in contrast to that, think of the message that the Apostle Paul could carry into these places.

You know, instead of an I hope so, you know, afterlife, it's having absolute certain and fixed hope in the afterlife. Instead of having gods who really don't care about you, and you've got to try to get their attention and earn their favor, you have a God who loves you so much, He sent His Son to die for you, even while you were an enemy. And His grace is so astounding that it's just going to take forever for Him to show it all. We're going to be gasping in awe for eternity. Our hope is based on God's character and not ours.

Yeah. Yep. Okay. Lord, we do thank You for what You've revealed in this fantastic book of Philippians. seeing the history and culture makes a great book even greater and we just we thank you for those insights and but we thank you for the wonderful things that are revealed that are true true of you and true of us I just thank you in Jesus name amen