Paul and Timothy are in Rome and Paul is under house arrest.  As we learn in the letter his appeal to and trial before Caesar is nearing some conclusion and he is awaiting the outcome.  The people of the Church at Philippi have sent Epaphroditus with a gift for Paul and to inquire about his wellbeing.  Paul’s response is, well, joy.

Joy for the Philippians

Paul is joyful first for the Philippians and the work that God is doing in them.  He thanks God and prays with (wait for it) Joy because they were eager to accept the Gospel and partner with Paul and, more importantly, with God in spreading the Gospel. 

And what does he pray with Joy? That the Philippians love will continue to increase in wisdom and insight to let them find the very best and bear the fruit of righteousness.

Joy in the Gospel

Don’t think that Paul was happy about his circumstances, about being on trial and under house arrest.  But he was joyful that because of his condition the gospel was being preached.

• It was being preached through his example.  Even the praetorians were aware that Paul was there because of Christ, not some crime he had committed.
• By others encouraged by his example.  Other Christians in Rome were emboldened by what was happening to Paul and spoke out.
• By those who were jealous of Paul’s status.  Paul didn’t care how it was preached or why.  He could trust God for the outcome.

Joy in What May Come

It was possible that Caesar would find against Paul and order his execution.  But even in this Paul found joy because the prospect of death in this body meant he would be with God.  In fact either prospect, to live or die, was such a joyful prospect that he could hardly decide which he would rather have happen.

He uses his personal joy and his belief that “what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance” to encourage the Philippians to stand firm, “contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened”.  He tells them that, like him, they will suffer for Christ.  Implied is the notion they should do so with joy, for the same reasons as Paul.

 Questions

1. What is joy?  Is a feeling or something else?
2. How much do we love the Gospel, the Good News that Christ has made a way for us, and everybody else, to be at peace with God?
3. Is it really OK for the Gospel to be preached for the wrong reasons?
4. Do others see the Gospel through our example?
5. Can we say, and mean it, that if God wills us to live or die, that’s just fine?

The city of Philippi was located on the Northern Shore of the Aegean Sea in the Western portion of modern Greece, south of Bulgaria near the town of Kavala. It currently exists only as an archeological site having been abandoned in the 14th Century after the Ottoman conquest.

Philippi was founded on the remains of an even older village in 356 BC by Philip II, the king of Macedon and Alexander the Great’s father, to gain control of gold mines in the area and a strategic position along the Macedonian Royal Road the Romans later reconstructed as the Via Egnatia. Philip eventually established a mint, after the discover of even more gold in the area.

After the death of Alexander and the disintegration of his Empire, the city experienced a significant decline. It was only a small town, perhaps 2000 inhabitants, by the time the Romans conquered the area in 167 BC and Philippi disappeared from the historical record.

It does not appear again until 42 BC when Mark Antony and Octavian fought the climatic battle in their Civil War with Brutus and Cassius that followed the murder of Julius Caesar on the plain just to the west of Philippi. With Octavian’s (Caesar Augustus) ascension to the Imperial throne, Philippi was made a Roman Colony and a retired Roman soldiers were given land there.

At the time of the New Testament, Philippi was an important stop along the Via Egnatia that linked Rome directly with its Empire in Asia Minor and the east. From Rome one went south on the Via Appia to the seaport of Brundisium (modern Brindisi) in the heel of the Italian boot, made a short sea voyage to Dyrrachium and then straight east over the Via Egnatia to Asia Minor.

It was placed on the Via Appia for exactly the same reason Philipp had created the city; its gold mines. But, because of the large number of retired soldiers, it was an especially loyal colony, ruled directly from Rome. Think of places in the US you know today that are smallish towns with conservative politics, large numbers of retired military personnel and vibrant economies and you will quickly get the idea of the type of place 1st Century Philippi was.

The Beginning of the Philippian Church

Philippi was the first place in Europe where the Gospel was preached and the story of the founding of the church there is told in Acts 16:6-40. Paul feels he is prohibited by the Holy Spirit from preaching in Asia Minor but experiences a vision of a man from Macedonia asking for help. As a result, he and his companions went to Philippi, the principal city in Macedonia. Because of its status as a Roman colony, there were few Jews and no synagogue, typically the jumping off point for Paul’s preaching. So they went looking for the spot near the river where the Jews went to worship and pray.

They found a group of Jews at the river, among them Lydia, who was evidently not a Jew but a Worshiper of God (and an interesting story in her own right) who became the first recorded convert in Philippi.

As they continued to speak with people by the river over the following days, they were often met by a slave girl possessed by a spirit who’s masters were making money using her to tell people’s fortunes. Paul delivered the girl from the spirit, but her masters, who had lost a source of income, dragged Paul and Silvanus before the magistrates and charged them with being un-Roman and teaching things Romans should not hear.

Paul and Silvanus were beaten and thrown in prison, then saved by a miraculous earthquake that loosened their chains. The fact they did not escape when they could kept the jailer from killing himself and he brought Paul and Silvanus to his home. That morning he received an order to release the two, but they refused to go insisting that the magistrates come themselves and escort them out. They would not be shuffled out of town quietly when their rights as Roman Citizens had been violated.

The magistrates were very disquieted to learn that Paul and Silvanus were Roman Citizens and came to the prison to try and appease them and get them out of town. Paul obliged but not before stopping at Lydia’s home to encourage the believers there.

The Reason for the Letter

Before nearly universal postal service existed, most letters intended to travel any distance were written whenever someone trustworthy was available to carry the letter, and so it was with the Letter to the Philippians. The best evidence seems to be that Paul was in Prison in Rome awaiting the outcome of his appeal to Caesar. The Philippians had heard of Paul’s imprisonment and had sent Epaphroditus to Rome with a gift and perhaps a letter. In, any event, Paul took advantage of Epaphroditus’ availability to send his thanks and encouragement back to the Philippian church.

There appear to be 5 major purposes for writing this intensely personal letter. 1) The usual sort of discussion among friends, Paul wishes to let the Philippians know how he is doing and what plans he has made if he is released. 2) Paul is looking to smooth over some division in the church and so Paul writes to encourage them in unity and humility. 3) He is looking to refute teachings of the Judiazers and antinomianists. 4) To introduce Timothy. 5) Another usual thing among friends, to thank them for their concern and gifts.

Now if only Apple would take the hint an push updates, not the entire OS every time there is a minor fix.

Now that Mark Hurd is history and you have the opportunity to think about the direction of your business in general and your PC business in particular, lets talk about crapware.  Really, there is way too much of it on the computers you sell.

I’ve had experience with three of them, two laptops and a Windows Home Server (EX495).  All of these are fine machines hardware wise, especially the server which is one of the nicest packages I have ever seen, but you compromise the whole user experience by loading it down with so much unwanted and unusable software it boggles the mind.

Lets start with the server.  The biggest problem is the default installation of Norton AV.  Nobody with any sense runs Norton or McAfee.  Nobody.  And the uninstall procedure can be complicated.  Why would you do this to us?

Then there is your own home rolled software.  The only part that is in any way useful is the portion that lets me back up Macs to the server.  The media portions either duplicate functionality provided by the WHS natively or easily obtained by addons in a better fashion.

On the laptops it was even worse.  Norton, HP Media, HP Games, HP DVD, HP Update, HP Advisor, a crappy toolbar, DVD burners, media managers,  on and on ad nauseaum.  None of these things add an iota of value and nobody would pick any of the selections on the open market on their own merits.  And the worst offender of all is Wild Tangent games.  Its malware pure and simple.  It won’t go away. Even after you run the uninstall program you still have to hack the registry to remove the links to the games in the Windows Games menu.

The bottom line is that I have never found preinstalled software or OEM software that was any way useful.  Perhaps thinking about your customers can provide you with a competitive advantage in a world of shrinking margins.  Pre-install software based on what your customers will find useful and provide a full OEM install disk for Windows.  That’ll catch our attention.

But now things have changed because of pre-loading blocking capabilities being added to Webkit. Cool. Now most ads are blocked prior to loading and the speed of Chrome shows through. Add to that some decent addons like Gmail Checker Plus (the 1.1.8 pre release version) and some very nice features in Gmail two of which only work with Chrome (drag and drop attachments, in-line pictures, and attachment downloads) makes Chrome a no brainer for for heavy Gmail users like me.

Dream Host’s price can’t be beat, $1.98 per month with Shell access, FTP, SFTP, unlimited domains/subdomains and all the MySQL databases I care to use.  Bandwidth and storage are also theoretically unlimited but I’m sure that’s not exactly true, more like they haven’t set a limit, but if I use too much they’ll let me know.

So we’ll see how it goes.

Once you’ve installed the program and given it your login credentials for your Gmail account, it downloads your contacts and all the attachments in your Gmail account.  The attachments are stored in a folder on your local machine by contact name, and are indexed by MailBrowser so you can search them.  The MB interface presents you with information about your contacts, and what they have sent you either by thread or as a list of files.

Among the helpful things you can do is edit files opened from the MB interface.  The changed file is synced back to your Gmail account and you can get a link to email the changes back.

This addon is still under heavy development but has lots of potential.  I would like to see it run in Gmail as a loadable gadget to give even deeper integration.  But even as is it is very usable.

As far as security goes, the developers say this addon only communicates with Gmail, nothing goes back to them.  Your files are stored and indexed on your machine and under your control.

Got mine yesterday, up and running today.  Very nice piece of equipment.