And the schoolboy said that an epistle is the wife of an apostle. But you know much better than that, of course. An epistle is a letter, and it is one of quite a number that we have in our New Testament from the pen of the apostle Paul. Now, almost invariably, when we turn to one of Paul's letters in order to study it, I feel it incumbent upon me to remind you of the background. Now I must have done this twice or maybe three times before, so some of you should be well acquainted with the background. If you're not, then it indicates that I certainly am in order in going over it again. I may even have suggested to some of you that it be a good idea to scribble it down and then to put it somewhere in the front or the back of your Bible. Because when you read one of the Apostle Paul's letters, it's always going to make more sense to you if you know where in his life the letter falls. What were the circumstances that surrounded him when he penned the letter and so on? Because, of course, the circumstances surrounding the life of the Apostle Paul were so very different at one part of his life. than the other part of his life, and so they have a bearing on his letters as he wrote. I wonder how many of you remember could tell me how many letters we have in our New Testament from the pen of the Apostle Paul. Would anybody like to venture a suggestion? Thirteen. Thirteen. Would anybody like to differ with that? It depends on whether or not you feel the Apostle Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. Now, I'm not going to settle that controversy tonight, so we'll leave the Epistle to the Hebrews out, and that does indeed leave us with thirteen letters. Now, seeing you were so intelligent and gave me that answer, do you remember which of his thirteen letters he wrote first? Very good. I'd like to think that that was because I've said it and said it again. You actually remembered it. These thirteen letters were not written in the order that we have them in our New Testament. The chronological order, that is, the order in time, is quite different. And the Apostle Paul actually wrote them in four different groupings. Two in group number one. four in group number two, four in group number three, and that leaves us with three for the fourth and final group. Now again, I wonder if you remember the long names that scholars have attached to these four groups. In the first grouping, we have the first and second letters to the Thessalonians. Now that's very easy to remember because the Apostle Paul wrote first about last things. That's a good way to remember it. I don't know whether you remembered that tip. We have the first letter to the Thessalonians which deals in a general way with the coming of the Lord Jesus for his people and the second epistle which deals again in a general way with the coming of the Lord Jesus with his people. And this group is called eschatological. Now, you won't be able to write that down because you don't know whether there's a K in it or not, but it isn't too important. It means that the doctrine of eschatology, of course, is the doctrine of future things. Things that are going to happen in the future. That's the reason why in one of those letters, and I know you know which one, and it's the fourth chapter, where we read about the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, the dead in Christ shall what? Rise first, and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and what comes next? And so, my what an intelligent congregation we have tonight. So we have those two letters with which the thirteen letters open. And Paul wrote them, and then, if he didn't suspend his writings, at that point, if he wrote immediately thereafter, whatever he wrote has not been preserved for us. Then he began another group of letters, and these were the first and second letters to the Corinthians. the letter to the Galatians and the letter to the Romans. And I see some of you writing so very rapidly you're going to get right as cramp. First and second Corinthians, Galatians and Romans. Now the Apostle Paul wrote these letters while he was on his missionary journeys. If he wrote any on his first missionary journey, we don't have it in our Bible. but he wrote on his second and third missionary journeys and these letters I just mentioned to you. They have a long name also. The scholars call this second group the Soteriological Group. Now the first word gave you a problem. The second will give you a bigger one, so forget it. Soteriology is really, since Soteri means safety, These are the salvation epistles. These are the epistles that have to do with salvation. Shall we give them to you again? First and second, Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans. Now that's group number two. Now when we come to the third group, which usually we common folk call the prison epistles, it becomes quite apparent. that they were written from Rome when the Apostle Paul was a prisoner, and here they are. Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and then just a little later, the one we are going to study this week, Philippians. Again, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon. Those three incidentally were sent out in a batch. by the same messenger, and Philippians followed very shortly thereafter. Now this group is particularly important. It's called the Christological Group, because Christ is the one around whom these four letters particularly revolve. Or so the scholars feel, and that's the reason why they called the third group of letters, Give them to you again, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and then Philippians, the Christological letters. So we have the eschatological, the soteriological, and now the Christological. The last one is the ecclesiological. Now that gives you no problem. Things ecclesiastical are the things that have to do with the church. and again we common folk have a name for the last three, we usually call them the pastoral epistles. And after the Apostle Paul was released from prison in Rome, while he was travelling after his release, he wrote the first letter to Timothy and the letter to Titus, then they seized him violently, unexpectedly, and apparently at Troas, where he left behind his parchments and his cloak and so on, they whisked him back to Rome, and there in the common dungeon, before he was taken out and beheaded, he wrote his final letter, the second letter to Timothy. So in that fourth group, we have three ecclesiological letters, First Timothy, Titus, and Second Timothy, written in that order. So here you have thirteen letters from the pen of the Apostle Paul, and I've been preparing a little sheet. Maybe I'll finish it this week, and at the end of the week, distributed to you so that you can look at the life and journeys of the Apostle Paul and be able to slip these letters in the order that we've given them to you tonight into that outline. and maybe tuck that also somewhere in your Bible and be able to memorize it if you choose or at least make reference to it from time to time. Now I don't believe that I have wasted those ten minutes in going over that and reminding those of you who covered it before about it and bringing it to mind to those of you who had a vague idea what it was all about. It's really very simple and very clear. Now let's read from Philippians, shall we? And here is an epistle of several chapters that have a two-verse introduction and a four-verse conclusion. Let's do something different and not only read the beginning tonight, but also read the ending. Shall we do that? Two verses... to introduce the Epistle to the Philippians. Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that's the introduction, and we could spend the rest of the time at our disposal tonight just looking into those two verses. And indeed we're going to spend a considerable portion of it in just a few moments. Let's go now to the end and look at the last four verses, and these of course are in the fourth chapter where we have in this order... an ascription, and then a salutation, and finally a benediction. Verse twenty, verse twenty-one, and verse twenty-two and twenty-three. Now unto God and our Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. Now that's an ascription of praise to God. Salute every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren which are with me greet you. All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's household. Now there we have a two-verse salutation. And then we come to the benediction, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. And I'm sure that if we hadn't used up all of the time that was left to us with the first two verses, we still would need a little more time to add to what was left in order to deal with the last four verses. But those, of course, lie ahead of us if indeed in our study we ever reach them. Verses one and two of chapter one, then, where we have the introduction. We've looked at the background and we noticed that this epistle was one of the prison epistles. One of that group of letters are called the Christological letters. And its Christological character is going to be very obvious to you. In fact, perhaps a keynote in this epistle is a verse that is very familiar to you, and I'll read it to you. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. We are going to be noting in our study of Philippians the mind of Christ. That's the reason why we're going to be singing as our theme song, May the mind of Christ my Savior dwell in me from day to day. We are going to look at the evidences of the mind of Christ. We are going to look at the examples of the mind of Christ. We are going to look at the enemies of the mind of Christ. And we are going to look at the effects of the mind of Christ. And in this Christological letter, those things are very, very readily discovered. But before plunging into the main part of the letter, in which the mind of Christ is going to be bared for the believers, and they are going to be exhorted to allow that mind to be developed in them, the Apostle Paul and a colleague is going to greet the people to whom he is writing. There are four things I'd like you to notice in these verses of introduction. Let me name the four of them, and then just very quickly we'll look at them. There's a combination here. There's an occupation here. There's a position here, and there's a location. It begins Paul and Timotheus. Now there's the combination. And I don't think that if you know anything at all about the early history of the church, anything at all about the Word of God, you can but agree with me that here we have a most remarkable and successful and profitable combination. Paul and Timothy. Now Timothy is called by the Apostle Paul, his dearly beloved, he's called his son in the faith, obviously The ministry of the Apostle Paul had had a tremendous impact upon the life of Timothy, and Timothy had come to know the Lord Jesus through Paul's ministry. Now Paul was not content with leading Timothy to Christ. He was very, very anxious to nurture him in the things of the Lord. One of old said, I have no greater joy than that my children walk. in truth and if there is one joy that is greater than the joy of leading a soul to Christ it's the joy of coming back after years and finding that soul going on with the Lord now Timothy was tremendously encouraged because this young man whom apparently he had spiritually fathered not only was nurtured in the things of God and grew spiritually, but eventually became a companion and fellow laborer of the Apostle Paul. So here they are as father and son in the faith, shoulder to shoulder serving the Lord. What a combination. I sometimes feel convicted in the course of traveling around, ministering the Word of God, that I so seldom do what used to be the practice back in the old country. When I was just fourteen years of age and beginning to try my hand at preaching, fifteen and sixteen, I would be invited by older brethren to go out with them when they took a gospel service or had a ministry meeting, and I was encouraged as a young man, very faltering, And I'm sure very hard to listen to. I was encouraged to hear the sound of my own voice and to give a little word of testimony, a little word from the word of God, a little word of ministry, five minutes, ten minutes. In fact, I've gone out with brethren who said, now you take all the time you feel you can handle and what is left I'll take. That in spite of the fact that they were the invited preachers and I wasn't. I say I sometimes feel convicted that I so seldom find myself filling a pulpit with a younger man beside me. I have an idea that Timothy became the young man that he was, because Paul saw to it that he was actively involved in the work of God and in the ministry of the Word of God. So here is a beautiful combination. Then comes an occupation. Not only do we have two men standing shoulder to shoulder, but we have them standing together as the servants of Jesus Christ. Now there are all kinds of occupations in this old world. Some good, some bad, and some sort of in-between or indifferent. Actually the writers here are not only calling themselves servants, The word that is used here means one possessed by another. It really means that they were bond slaves of Jesus Christ. These men were so utterly abandoned to the will of God and so dedicated to the service of God that they did not consider their lives to belong to themselves, but instead they said, we together are bond slaves of Jesus Christ. We cannot know what true liberty and freedom are until we become bond slaves of the Lord Jesus, sold out to the Christ of God. This was the highest occupation, servants of the living God. Bond slaves to Jesus Christ. Like an old chimney sweep in England, whose testimony was, that he lived to preach the gospel, and he swept chimneys to pay his expenses. That man refused to put the cart before the horse. He had his priorities straight. Too many of us feel that service for God is a sideline. It's a hobby. It's something that we should do upon occasions when we find time for it. But if we had our priority state, we would say that to serve God is the very first thing in importance, and let everything else fall into its own place behind this, being a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I mentioned a man this morning by the name of Ernest Lough. When he was a young man, he worked in Buckingham Palace. But all he did was shine the shoes. That was his job. But he was very proud to be in the service of the Queen of England. That was Queen Victoria, even though he only blacked the boots. The service to which we are called and into which we've been privileged to enter is not the service of the Queen of England or the King of England. or the President of the United States with the service of the King of Kings. What an occupation. There can be no higher. Then comes a position to all the saints in Christ Jesus with the bishops and deacons. Now the position that I'm talking about is not the position of saint. It's not the position of bishop. It's not the position of deacon. It's the position of being in Christ. And that's a very lofty position. I don't know what you think about this word, saint. So many people associate the word with a halo, and they feel that a person cannot be a saint. whose life is not particularly pious and holy and different from other lives. Now the fact is that there are saints who are living very selfishly. There are even saints who are living very sinfully. Of course, being saints they shouldn't be living that way. But the moment you became a believer in the Lord Jesus, The moment your sins were washed away, that moment you became, in Bible parlance, a saint. Now God expects you to be saintly, since you are a saint. And here the Apostle Paul with Timothy is greeting the saints. That is, he is greeting the commonplace believers. In fact, he says, he greets all the saints. And I like that because it's obvious that the Apostle Paul was not, he was not partial. Some Christians are so easy to love and some Christians are so difficult to even abide or endure. But however, Paul says, my greetings come to all of the saints, every one of them. Every believer was included. And then he mentions the bishops and deacons. I think it's interesting the order here. He greets the saints first, and then the bishops and the deacons. When a public speaker stands up, he always starts out with the chairman and guests of honor, and then eventually he comes down to the rank and file and says, Ladies and Gentlemen, unless he's like the speaker who addressed a hometown crowd and said, Friends, I won't call you, ladies and gentlemen, I know you too well. Here the Apostle Paul greets the saints first. It might be a subtle reminder that those who are bishops and deacons and have a function in the church must remember that they are the servants of the rank and file, and so it's to the saints first and then to the bishops and deacons. And please don't imagine a strange split kind of cap and a crook and an apron and gaiters when you read that word bishop, will you? Please just put it into its proper New Testament context. and realize that the word here is overseer. A bishop is an overseer. An overseer is an elder. Therefore, an elder is a bishop, and a bishop is an elder. And instead of having one bishop over many churches, as is a practice in Christendom today, you'll find in the New Testament, in every New Testament church, there were several bishops. And it's very tragic that the practice has been changed. where New Testament churches still exist, they have to be overseers, elders, bishops, plural, in each of them. For a church to be scripturally constituted, this is what is demanded. And the work of the bishop, of the overseer, of the elder was to be a spiritual work. And to release him for that spiritual work, the local church was to recognize deacons and give to them the chores and material things to do. But they were to do these things as unto the Lord, and even those mundane tasks were only to be entrusted to men who were filled with the Holy Ghost. Read the book of the Acts and see how the work of God, even the most mundane tasks, were only to be entrusted to those in whom God could have confidence because their lives measured up to the standard that he laid down. Read about the choosing of the deacons in the early church and see how men were chosen who were filled with the Holy Ghost to wait on their fellow believers. Here then we have a combination. We have an occupation and we have a position. For every believer, whether just simply a saint or a bishop or an elder or a deacon, they are in Christ. That's their position. And I say again, there cannot be a position more elevated than that. I'm glad that when God looks at me, he sees me in Christ. Because in spite of my failures, in spite of my weaknesses, in spite of my idiosyncrasies, in spite of those things that must be grieving to him when he sees me in this position, in Christ, he sees me as being as faultless and flawless as his own well-beloved son. It's my position. In Christ, I'm perfect. Now God wants me to aspire through the Spirit of God to become practically what I am positionally. He wants me to become, as we were saying this morning, day by day increasingly more like the Lord Jesus whose name I bear. Positionally I am in Christ. That's what makes me a saint. Practically I'm expected to become saintly and to measure up. One last thing here, and that is the location, which are at Philippi. Now, Philippi is a very interesting, it was a very interesting town, and this also has a bearing on the letter because the citizens of Philippi were not bound by the laws of the towns that surrounded Philippi. because Philippi was a Roman colony. And the people of Philippi enjoyed a special citizenship. They were Roman citizens. And the Apostle Paul uses this as a very beautiful illustration as the letter opens and goes on. And we'll see it when we arrive at that point. Now, after the greeting... which combines these four things, a combination, an occupation, a position, and a location, we come to the blessing. Grace be unto you in peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. A dual blessing from a dual source. An Old Testament blessing and a New Testament blessing for... Peace is an Old Testament word, and grace is a New Testament word. And here also we have words that had significance, the one for the Gentiles and the other for the Jews. So it's a beautifully, a complete and embracing blessing. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus. Christ. That's the introduction. Now we move into the main body of the epistle with these words. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always, in every prayer of mine for you all, making request with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace. For God is my record, how greatly I longed after you all, in the bowels of Jesus Christ, and this I pray. And now we come to the evidences of the Christ mind. The evidences of the mind of Christ. And there are four of them, and we'll find mention made of them, sometimes a little more... a little more obviously than others, but we'll come across this quartet from time to time. The Apostle Paul first of all suggests them in his prayer. In fact, he requests them. Earlier on I read, Making in every prayer of mine for you request with joy. Now this is what he prays, that your love may abound. Verse nine, yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment. Now what we have here of course is spiritual affection. That's evidence number one of the mind of Christ. Where a believer is developing the mind of Christ, a spiritual affection will become more and more apparent. It's the first of four evidences of the Christ mind, and it is requested in the prayer of the Apostle Paul, that your love may abound yet more and more. Go on to verse ten. This, I pray... that ye may approve things that are excellent. Now that's the second evidence of the Christ mind, and this is spiritual discernment. That ye may approve, or try, the margin says, the things that, and again the margin says, differ. If a man is developing the mind of Christ, He will not only become more spiritually loving, but he'll become more spiritually discerning. My how many undiscerning believers there are in the world today. Believers who can see no further than the ends of their noses. believers who, because they are not well instructed in the things of God, not well taught in the word of God, they have not developed the art of communion with the God of heaven, they are not developing the mind of Christ, they get blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine because they are not capable of trying the things that differ. Now the Word of God, as we were learning this morning, is our yardstick, it is our rule, it is that to which we must bring everything else for comparison if we want to be able to try the things that differ, if we want to be men and women of spiritual discernment. The second then of these evidences of the Christ mind is spiritual discernment. This I pray says, verse nine, that your love may abound. Verse ten, that ye may approve things that are excellent, that ye may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ. Now what we have here, of course, is spiritual reality. I don't think that you've lived as long as you've lived as a Christian. without realizing that phoniness and insincerity and unrealness, to coin a word, is sometimes manifested even in the lives of Christians. There are Christians who are not as sincere as they should be, as real, as straight up and down as God expects them to be. But when a man or woman is developing the mind of Christ, they will not only develop or know a deepening spiritual affection and a growing sense of spiritual discernment, but also they will become more spiritually real and sincere. I wondered if you're a Christian who is known as a sincere and real person. spiritual reality now let's look for the fourth one in verse eleven being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by jesus christ under the glory and praise of god a man who has the mind of christ will be a man who knows what spiritual fruit is because you can't have the mind of Christ and not produce. You cannot have the mind of Christ and not reproduce. You cannot have the mind of Christ and be fruitless. So there are four evidences of the mind of Christ. I'll give them to you again. Spiritual affection, spiritual discernment, spiritual reality, and finally spiritual fruit. And they are introduced to us here, where we find them requested in Paul's prayer. Now we're going to go on and see that they are not only requested in Paul's prayer, but they are revealed in Paul's posture, and they're also recommended in Paul's plea. Let's read on a little further and see if we can find these four things again. But, this is verse twelve, I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel, so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places. Now can you, in those verses, find an evidence of the mind of Christ, one of those four things that I mentioned a few moments ago, that was requested in Paul's prayer and now is being revealed in his posture or his attitude? You know, if most of us had been put in Paul's position, where we were bound, we were actually in bonds and in prison, our liberty being taken away from us and our activities being totally restricted, why the reason why America refuses to let a day go by without acknowledging that there are fifty Americans being held hostage, Now with the ambassador there in Colombia, the reason why our government will not allow us to forget, and the media will not allow us to forget, is because the loss of one's freedom is such a desperate thing. Paul had lost his freedom, but he's not sitting there ringing his hands. He's not sitting there complaining. He's not sitting there crying out, Oh, Lord, why me? I have a little track beside my bed, and I read it just a couple of days again for the unteenth time, and it's entitled, Why Me, and it's about suffering. And very often, when problems come into our lives, that the very first thing we do, we cry out, why me? But not the Apostle Paul. He says, now I know you've heard that I'm bound. I know that you've learned that I'm in prison. I realize that you realize that a price is being exacted of me, but I want you to know that this is no mistake. Why, he says, the things that have happened to me have fallen out for the furtherance of the gospel so that my bonds in Christ are manifested throughout the whole palace. Do you know what this is? This is spiritual discernment. This is one of the evidences of the mind of Christ. He's not questioning. He's not wondering. He knows that he's bound. He knows he's a prisoner. He knows his liberty is gone. But he sees beyond all this. And what he realizes is manifested in that he calls himself not a prisoner of the Jews and not a prisoner of the Romans, but a prisoner of Jesus Christ. Why, he says, the Lord has had a hand in this. And I'm quite sure that there's nothing wrong. This is no mistake. This is the will of God. And already I can see the benefits and blessings that are flowing out from it. So the Apostle Paul was not going to pray for others something that he didn't know himself. One of the four evidences of the mind of Christ is spiritual discernment. and it's manifested here. Now it's half past eight. We'll have to look for the other three in our next session. Shall we bow in prayer, and then we'll have a quiet moment of meditation while the instrument is played, and the service will be over. Our Heavenly Father, forbid that we should hear these things, read these things, be reminded of these things, and not take them to our hearts. If the Apostle Paul prayed for the Philippians that they might develop a deepening love for one another, a growing appreciation of things as they truly are, a reality and fruit that was spiritual, we believe his concern would have been exactly the same for us. We should be asking ourselves what we know of spiritual affection, what we know of spiritual discernment, what we in our own lives know of spiritual reality and sincerity, and of spiritual fruit. Granted, we might go away thoughtfully tonight and concerned to know the will of God in our lives. Oh, that we might become a little more like the Lord Jesus, and that indeed his mind might be. In us, we ask in His name. Amen.