David Capes completed the summer series on Philippians with a study of Chapter 4 and friendship. Our words can be positive or negative. Chapter 4 1. Paul begins with terms of endearment. 2. Paul is calling the church together to help these women: my true yoke-fellows. 3. Paul stresses the indicative and the imperative: what we believe indicates how we behave. 4. Paul encourages rejoicing always. Joy has been a theme throughout the letter. 5. Paul requests Christians use gentleness/reasonableness in all situations. 6. Paul asks us not to be anxious but pray with thanksgiving. 7. Paul suggests imitating him, not as a model of perfection but to point others to Christ. Points for home * Rejoice in the Lord and praise His name.
- Be famous for our gentleness.
- Pray out our anxieties and don’t forget to thank God for the answers.
* Renew your mind by meditating on the true, the good, and the beautiful. Listen to David share Paul’s love and concern for the church to be unified, not just the two women who disagreed but also for the church as a whole.
Lesson Transcript
Session 5 - Philippians: Friendship and Christian Living
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Introduction: Friendship in Philippians
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Bernard: It's good to see you again. Everybody. Good? Great to see you and talk about Philippians Frost. Philippe, so I almost said that wrong, uh, to the Philippians. That's the letter we've been talking about in chapter four is where we're gonna be today. I'm gonna just, remind you, when I was with you a few weeks ago, we talked about this as a friendship letter.
A lot of ancient letters were friendship letters, which meant among other things, they, they was designed to secure to make friends or to secure friendship, or sometimes even to criticize an enemy so that in criticizing the enemy you can have a stronger sort of connection with the other [00:01:00] person against the enemy.
Do you know how that works? Right. It. You see that all the time. So friendship in the ancient world was a very important topic among philosophers and moralists of the days. And we see it in the book of Philippians in particular. And here are some of the characteristics of what friendship was described at by most people.
Characteristics of Ancient Friendship
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Bernard: And we see that reflected here. It involved fellowship that is not, not just having, cookies and Kool-Aid after church fellowship meant sharing one's life together. Participating in the life of the other person. That was a very important part. You really couldn't be a friend without participating in the life of another person, both for the good and the bad.
There needed to be equality, at least in the ancient world. There was a sense in which, you know, I can be a friend with people roughly my same station, but I can't be a, I can't really be a friend with somebody who's above me. I can't be a friend with somebody who's below me. [00:02:00] Now Christianity comes along and says, now wait a minute.
Let's redefine all those categories. Let's think about that and, and, and let's make sure that we understand that in Christ there is, there is one body, one church, one faith, one baptism that men women is inequality them. That Jew and Gentile, there was an equality there with slave and free.
There was inequality. And so Christianity comes along to try to remake, re-engineer those whole, those particular categories, but that was an important part of it as well. Friends hold things in common. I talked a little bit about that last time I was here. We hold things in common. We might own things together, We might do things together. We might go places together. We might have experiences together. We might go on a cruise together with friends. Right. So if you, some of you have done that, you've gone on trips, holding things in common, and [00:03:00] friends also kind of keep together the same mind they think alike. To be a friend is to think alike with someone else, to have the same ideas.
And those, that particular word for thinking occurs over and over and over again in Philippians. So these are some of the characteristics. Now, one of the things we're, we're recognizing as we study linguistics and linguistic theory and other thing is that language. Words not only mean things, but words do things.
how certain words do things to you, somebody might say a word to you and boy that hurts, or somebody might say another word to you and say, boy, that makes me feel so good. Words have a tendency to not only mean something, but they also do things.
The Power of Words
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Bernard: And so we see that reflected here in the book of Philippians.
And so Paul talks about rivalry and competition in a way as being the exact opposite [00:04:00] of friendship. So issues of rivalry, self-promotion, envy. a friend in a situation like that. And so Paul, I think, and the moralist of the day would describe. And so when we move in chapter four, we're gonna see that there are two women in the church who have a rivalry among them and what Paul says to do about it. But finally, it focuses their attention on equality. equality and [00:05:00] unity together. Jesus said the church will be recognized by the world when it is united and obviously the church is not united.
Paul's Letter to the Philippians - Chapter 4
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Bernard: So Paul turns to chapter four, and this is what I want you to see.
He says, therefore, brothers, my brothers whom I love, and I long for my joy and my crown. Paul is not indifferent to these people. He's very attached to these folks. He's very interested in these [00:06:00] He says, my joy and my crown stand firm in the Lord my beloved. I want you to see that in this one sentence. their connection, and he doesn't call anyone else. He says, you are my joy and my crown. You are my chairman Fort. You are my joy. You are my [00:07:00] crown people of this church.
and then what happens next?
Euodia and Syntyche: Resolving Conflict
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Bernard: Then what happens next is, is he recognizes now toward the end of the end of his. Letter. He says There are two women in particular in the church that are not getting along. After all that, he says, there's two women. These Yodi and ee probably never had statues made [00:08:00] of them. They were not of that station. He said, I want you to agree in the Lord. to have the same mind together.
The same mind that is in the Lord. That's not necessarily a bad thing. So these, this rivalry was, was known in the church. Everybody from the nursery up [00:09:00] until senior adults, they knew about this rivalry. So they said, yes, please agree.
We're fellow workers. he calls upon someone. and here's the someone true [00:10:00] companion. [00:11:00] [00:12:00] [00:13:00] [00:14:00] [00:15:00] [00:16:00] [00:17:00] [00:18:00] [00:19:00] [00:20:00] [00:21:00] [00:22:00] [00:23:00] [00:24:00] [00:25:00] [00:26:00] [00:27:00] [00:28:00] [00:29:00] [00:30:00] [00:31:00] [00:32:00] [00:33:00] [00:34:00] [00:35:00] [00:36:00] [00:37:00] [00:38:00] [00:39:00] [00:40:00] Do you think about that Most of the time? Is that most of what you read about, most of what you watch and talk about with other people? Maybe it's another person. Maybe there's somebody that you just think about and you, you, you, you, you're sort of fixated on that person and, and, and, and you think about 'em all the time and you, you're trying [00:41:00] to connect with 'em.[00:42:00] [00:43:00] [00:44:00]
so I Think we have to be careful how our thoughts are formed. We used to say it this way, garbage in. Garbage out, what kind of garbage you got coming in, things that you're seeing, things that you're doing, things that you're hearing, things that are influencing you. Paul says, let's readjust Now, because all That's true [00:45:00] [00:46:00] [00:47:00] [00:48:00] [00:49:00] [00:50:00] [00:51:00] [00:52:00] [00:53:00] [00:54:00] [00:55:00] [00:56:00] [00:57:00] [00:58:00] we, say amen. Amen. Thank you so much. Good to be with you.
