Philippians

Thursday I went to see my mother-in-law in South Carolina.  I went by myself and with the dog, because my husband had to work on my car (big job) and he says the dog is too demanding for him to take care of both!  The dog can be very clingy.  Anyway, I really just went because it was my mother-in-law’s 76^th birthday and I didn’t want to see anyone else there, so I came home Friday.  I was driving the truck, which has no cruise control and little power, and I drove through the mountains, so it was tiring. 

My mother-in-law’s phone rings constantly.  I would listen to her conversations to try to figure out who is on the other end of the line.  I could usually tell by what she said.  I bring this up because reading some of Paul’s epistles is a little like listening to one side of a phone conversation; if you don’t know a lot about the other person on the line, it won’t make much sense to you.  So today in this lesson I am mostly going to talk about the people on the other end of the line so the rest of Philippians will make sense to you.

Paul’s first encounter with the Philippians was on his second missionary journey, with Silas, recorded in Acts 16, so let’s go there.  Up until this time the gospel was only spread in “Asia” which doesn’t mean China and India, as we think of it, but Asia Minor, which is Turkey, the middle East.  The gospel had also gone into parts of Africa, such as Ethiopia and Cyrene.  It had not gone into Europe, which means across the Bosporus into Greece, specifically northern Greece, called Macedonia.  The books of Acts says that the Holy Spirit somehow prevented Paul and Timothy, whom he had met in Lystra (part of Turkey), from going anywhere else in Turkey, such as the northern part (Bithynia).   Acts 16:9 records that Paul has a vision, which has come to be named “the Macedonian call” to go over to the European side.  And the first place to visit was Philippi.

There is an interesting comment about Timothy in 16:3.  Paul might have known him, or led him to Christ, on an earlier visit to Lystra when Paul had been stoned.  Timothy went through circumcision as an adult so that the Jews of his town would not be critical of him.  I think if Paul had a fault it might have been his over-carefulness about pleasing the Jews of a particular area, especially on this specific subject.  Timothy’s mother was a Jew but she apparently deferred to her Gentile husband.  The Gentiles thought the whole circumcision thing was barbaric, anyway.  Whether Paul and Timothy were right in this matter is hard to tell; Luke seems to indicate it wasn’t a matter of obedience but a matter of influence.  Luke was a Gentile himself and perhaps not circumcised or much concerned about it.

What do we know about Philippi?  It was founded by Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great.  Alexander wouldn’t have been great if his father had not conquered Greece (the lower part) in the 4^th century B.C.  Later it became a Roman city and was given colony status, which gave it special privileges.  It was, like Corinth, a multicultural, cosmopolitan place, on a trade route called the Via Egnitia. 

I read an interesting article about the culture of this time and how business networking was done.  If you have seen the movie The Godfather, you have an idea of how it worked.  A businessman, say a baker, would seek out a patron, who protected him and helped him with negotiations.  In return, the patron could expect favors from the baker.  If the patron wanted to give a large party and needed bread, the baker would provide it at a very reasonable cost.  The rules of these relationships were built into the system; they didn’t need to be explained.  It was what is called a high context culture.  We live in a low context culture.  We expect the social rules to be explained.  We also would consider this kind of patronage system to be unethical.  Many cultures do not have this kind of need for explanation, nor do they see ethics the same way we do.  For example, giving a gift to a government official in the U.S. is seen as a bribe.  In other cultures, it is seen as normal and expected.

Consequently, the Philippians lived in a system where every gift had a string attached.  If I do something for you, you are indebted to do something for me, and on and on.  (In Japan, if you take a dish to someone, they must return it with food).  We must keep that in mind as we go through this book.  Paul is trying to teach them a different way of thinking—that a gift does not entail a gift in return, that giving should be done willingly without expectation, and that they should depend on God as the real giver of gifts.  In this sense, Christianity is counter-cultural, or culture-transcending.  It’s not that their culture is bad, only that it could get in the way of spiritual growth, which is really the theme of this book.

Now Timothy and Paul are in foreign waters.  While there were Jewish persons everywhere because of the dispersion of the exile we learned about in the end of II Kings, just like today, this was a much more Gentile place.  So everyone they encounter is Gentile, but some are open to a monotheistic, nonpagan style of worship. This is true of Lydia, the first convert, a businesswoman, a “seller of purple” dye that was very prized.  She would be like a diamond broker today, in terms of who her clientele is.  Interestingly, these believers in one God worshiped outside the city beside a river, so Lydia was quickly baptized!  And she immediately practiced the ancient rite of hospitality and insisted they stay with her.  Why don’t we do that anymore?

The rest of Acts 16 tells about the slave girl who is being used for fortune-telling and who is exorcised of the demons.  Soon Paul and Silas (not sure where Timothy went) are in jail, after having been beaten.  Interestingly, Paul keeps his mouth shut, almost as if, “let’s see what happens here.”  As a Roman citizen, he could have prevented that from happening!  And then we wouldn’t have the story of the Philippian jailer. 

Notice also the “we,” in these verses, which means Luke is with them.  In verse 19 it changes to “they,” when Paul and Silas go to jail. Does Luke stand back and watch, the journalist, and thereby forgo jail?

We might read Acts 16 and think this all took place in a 24- to 48-hour period, but I don’t think that is the case. Since at the end it mentions “the brethren,” I think the jail incident happened much later, after there had been time for a church to be established.  It also says the girl followed them for several days.  We have two mentions in this chapter of Paul being annoyed, once at the girl and once at the magistrates; I like that.  Paul was a human being and very imperfect. 

All this is background to Philippians 1.  Philippians 1:1-2 is enough for one lesson.

Verse 1.  Paul does not refer to himself as an apostle here, but to himself and Timothy as slaves (bondservants) of Christ.  That is a clue to the tone of the letter.  He is writing affectionately, not to prove a point about authority (as he would with the Corinthians.)

“To all the saints who are in Philippi.”  This does not mean all the saints in one meeting or body.  There were probably several house churches that were connected.  Interestingly, the oldest church building was found by archaeologists in Philippi, but it dates back to 300s, not the first century.  There just weren’t “basilicas” for Christians in those days.  I am glad to be a “saint,” too, but it has nothing to do with me.

“with the overseers and deacons.”  The “bishops” or “presbyters” were the overseers.  They took care of the internal, spiritual needs; the deacons took care of the external, temporal needs.  In the time of the apostles, the apostles did the “big picture” overseeing; after that time, the bishops would come to oversee the churches in an area or region.  We do not use that term in the Baptist church but it is not unbiblical.  As I said earlier, Santa Claus comes from legends about the bishop of Myra, in Turkey.  Today Baptists call the bishops or overseers “pastors.”  Interestingly, there is more than one overseer.  We could get into a big argument here, but I would say there is a lot of latitude in how a church runs its business as long as it is within certain parameters, so the Baptist version is not the only one.  We stress congregational rule while other churches stress oversight and connection between churches.

v. 2:  Grace and peace.  The order is to be preserved:  We get grace so we can live in peace.  Peace is not the absence of war, but living in total harmony.  I don’t think most Christians are experiencing peace because they allow so much to tear at them.  We live in so much fear and rebellion.  In the last couple of lessons I have asked, “what would happen to us, what would we accomplish, if we weren’t fearful?”  and “what would happen to us, what would we accomplish, if we were radically obedient?”  I think the two go hand in hand. 

This is not any kind of grace and peace; it is that grace and peace that only comes from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

In verse 3, Paul starts a prayer for the Philippians.  It is full of affection, thankfulness for them, hope, fellowship, and faith that they will grow spiritually, which means to grow in love, knowledge, discernment, excellence, blamelessness, righteousness, and praise and glory to God.  There is also a strong sense of the Second Coming here.  We will perhaps look more deeply at this next week. 

So what are the “take-aways?”

·         I would point out v. 6, a great one to memorize.  And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

·         Paul is a human being with human emotions and human relationships.

·         We must transcend our culture as we grow in Christ, not because our culture is bad in every way but because there is so much more to be understood and enjoyed in the Christian life.  Each Christian must make the decision of what is to be transcended based on whether it holds him or her back.  I don’t believe in someone’s telling you what you should give up if it’s not clearly there in Scripture.

·         Keep grace and peace in the forefront.

·         Always study the Bible in context with other parts of the Bible.  Philippians doesn’t make total sense without Acts or other parts.