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South of Dallas
Red State Opinion |
Philippians 2 divides itself nicely into three sections, although of unequal lengths.
1) Paul urges the Philippians to humility by reminding them, via a hymn, of the ultimate humility of Christ.
2) He urges them to work and sacrifice without complaint as a result of the humility Christ engenders in them.
3) He introduces and commends Timothy to them and announces he is sending Epaphroditus home as well.
We don’t talk much about joy these days. We talk about fun or we talk about happiness. In fact the Declaration of Independence talks about the pursuit of happiness being one of the natural rights mankind enjoys as a gift from God. But I’m not sure that happiness is the same as joy, at least not the same kind of joy Paul is talking about in Philippians 1.
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.
History of the City
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.
Have you ever written a paper, article or letter and expounded on you first point in great detail, had two or three more points you wanted to make with just as much good stuff to say, but you ran out of steam or energy and just covered the remaining points in passing? That happens to me just about every time I write one of these studies, and it seems like it happens to Paul at the end of 1 Thessalonians.
Having praised the Thessalonians for their faithfulness, encouraged them in their suffering, and admonished them to abstain from sexual immorality he got to the main point of the letter which was to assure them that Christ would return for all of His people, whether they were dead or alive. And then the letter seems to fall off the edge of a cliff. In chapter 5:12-28 he hits so many topics in such rapid fire succession it almost makes the head spin. Here’s the list of instructions he gives:
In the Second half of 1 Thessalonians 4 Paul addresses the real reason he wrote to the Thessalonians. The early Church, and most of the Disciples, and especially Paul, were certain that Jesus would return during their lifetimes. This idea of Christ’s imminent return was what prompted Paul to oppose marriage, for example. Because of this belief, the Church at Thessalonica was worried that people who died before Christ’s return would have missed out on the glories of eternal life and the coming Kingdom.
Paul writes to assure them that whenever the Parousia occurs, Jesus will be there to take care of those who have died before He comes. The Greek word Parousia is used 24 times in the New Testament always in the context of a personal arrival or presence, and most often related to the second coming of Christ, although sometimes for arrivals of Disciples or even the “man of lawlessness”.
In the Greco-Roman world the word might have been used to talk of a state visit by a king, or the presence of a deity as by divine fire. It combined arrival and personal presence. So the use of the word in the context of Jesus would mean both His arrival and His personal presence.
We are going to look at 1 Thessalonians 4 in two parts because the subject change is so drastic at 4:12 that there is no real way to deal with the two parts as a whole. In 4:1 Paul does what Preachers have done throughout time, they say “Finally”, as if they were summing up and closing, when they are just getting started.
Finally, in this case, marks Paul’s transition from talking about his relationship with the the Thessalonians to the real reasons for his writing. He has finished telling them of his love and concern for the Thessalonians to giving them instruction, and in these verses he gives them instruction in three different, but interrelated areas. We can outline this part of the chapter by saying it works in concentric circles: family relations, church relations, and relationship with the world.
We should not overlook Paul’s reminder to the Thessalonians about the authority under which he issues these instructions: “You know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.’ And later: “he who rejects this instruction does not reject man, but God.” Very strong language. Paul asserts he is speaking on behalf of God and that the instructions he gives are directly from God.
Many preachers on TV today assure us that Christians are not supposed to suffer. The notion they are spreading is pretty simple and straightforward: Jesus came to save us, not just from our sin, but from the trials of everyday life. He came, they claim, to to save us from disease, poverty, bad relationships and trials of every kind. Here’s a clip that is illustrative of the point (the editorial comments are not mine but I agree with them).
What do you think of Pastor Osteen’s message? Does it square with what you know of scripture? What did Paul have to say about suffering in 1Thessalonians 3? With regard to trials or suffering Paul says the Thessalonians, and by extension all Christians were destined (or appointed in the King James) for trials.
But what kind of trials or suffering is Paul talking about? Well in the case of the Thessalonians I can think of two kinds: persecution because of their beliefs and/or persecution or worry on account of what was being said about Paul. Remember Paul left under a cloud having been accused of treason and sneaking out of town in the middle of the night, this after being run out of Philippi. Now while he was in Athens the rumors and whispers followed him and certainly what was being said about him filtered back to Thessalonica.
If you were a new believer how would you react to your parent in the faith being persecuted or having your reputation and faith slandered in the town square or worse? Was Paul living a less than victorious life when he was in jail, or to follow up on Pastor Osteen’s usage, was Jesus sacrifice for Paul in vain? And what of now when he speaks of “all our distress and persecution”?
Here is the truth, Jesus came to save us from our sins and for himself for eternity. He did not come to make us prosperous or healthy in this life. This does not mean we can never be healthy or that we cannot be financially well off, or that Jesus is opposed to those things. Nor doe it mean that promises of God’s provision are not to be believed. It just means that if God finds it necessary to allow us to suffer in order to save us from our sin and for eternity, he will do so. One commentary says this:
The truth is that affliction means that God loves us enough to give the best when we may only desire what is easy. The symbol of Christianity is the cross, not a feather bed. Affliction is just part of following Jesus; therefore Paul recognized that Christians are appointed to affliction.
So what are we in this for, why are we Christians? Is it just for what we can gain in this world or are our eyes on the real prize of eternity with Christ. What does it profit a man to gain the world and loose his soul?
We are going to be looking at the book of Thessalonians verse by verse, or nearly so, for the next several months, but before we dive in I wanted to say a brief word about about Bible study or Biblical interpretation.
We may not think about this sort of reasoning explicitly, but we use it just the same. It goes like this: If the Bible is God’s Word, and all of it is God’s word, then any of it is God’s Word. As a result of this kind of thinking we allow ourselves to break Scripture down in to finer and finer bits and the smallest snippet, the shortest sentence fragment becomes authoritative.
For example: “Thou shall not kill.’ That’s certainly in the Bible, but does it mean one may not kill in self defense or in defense of his family? May one kill as a police officer when protecting citizens lives and property? How about members of the military, can they kill in defense of their country? Without the context of scripture as a whole wrong conclusions about “Thou shall not kill” could be easily reached.
