Philippians 4:8-9

How we doing? How we doing? Good. I feel like I should start with an apology.

All the Christmas theme, I don't have a Christmas message for you. So I know that's what you all showed up for. But Judy said they're all Christmas messages because they're all in light of the fact that Jesus lives, that Jesus was born, that he is Savior. So I can't not preach a Christmas message, but I'll have one little lame Christmas tie-in for you, maybe. We'll see how it goes. Okay, so we're looking at Philippians 4, 8 and 9.

We've been kind of slowly crawling our way through Philippians as I've been up here, and we're getting towards the end. Paul's kind of wrapping up this message.

So let's read, and then we'll pray. So Philippians 4, 8 and 9. If you want to have it in front of you, that would not be a bad idea at all. You got Bibles in the chairs in front of you. It says, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any moral excellence, if there's anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things.

Do what you have learned and received and heard from me and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. Father God, I just am so thankful for these words, these words of wisdom and of your care for us. And yeah, Lord, I just, as we open this up today, I just pray that you're able to speak into our lives and show us, sharpen us, love us, show us how we should be seeking you in community, individually, together. Yeah, God, we're just so thankful to have these words from you.

Help us to be blessed by them and to return that glory to you. In Jesus' name, amen. So we've talked about Philippians a few times. Paul's in prison. He's writing this letter back to this church that he started earlier. And one thing we talked about in the previous, last time I was up here, I don't know, three, four weeks ago, whatever it was, in the previous paragraph of this letter, he's talking to this group and he keeps using the word you.

And we talked about the fact that these are actually plural yous. He's writing to a community. He's not writing to a you. It's not a letter to a you. It's a letter to a you. If you're listening online, that made no sense to you. And it's a plural you because he's writing to a community. And I mentioned that it's kind of funny that in English, we don't really have a plural you, and I didn't know why.

And a certain classical Christian educator sitting over here did a little research on her own and discovered, so I thought I'd share this with you. In Old English, the you was plural, and the thee and thou were singular. But over time, as language has developed, the you that was plural became singular. In other words, we use language to make it all about me.

And I don't think I'm surprised by that at all, that in our individualistic culture, that even language has become more and more just about me. In the previous paragraph Paul's just and he's encouraged two women who are fellow workers in Christ to reconcile over some sort of disagreement that we don't know much about. He then encourages prayer to bring about peace of God, which surpasses understanding in Christ Jesus.

And here's my Christmas tie-in. Everything we're talking about here happens in a world where Jesus reigns.

Everything we're talking about happens in a world where Jesus has been born, has lived the perfect life, has died for our sins, and we get to accept that. Yeah, it happens in a world where Jesus reigns. And so with that in mind, we look at verses eight and nine, which we have on the screen. And so let me offer just a summary of those, not trying to... Be too cute with it or anything, but just something that we can kind of refer back to as a summary of what we're talking about in this passage.

Think about good things and be like me. Think about good things and be like me. Me being Paul, by the way, I'm not standing up here saying, be like me. This is Paul writing and he's saying this to the Philippian church. Think about good things and be like me. So I put up this little grid as different ways to read this, different ways to think about this passage, kind of different perspectives, you could say.

And so on the Y-axis there, we can look at it as a community message or an individual message. In other words, is this to me or is it to a group? And spoiler alert, I'll skip to the end. The answer is yes, it's all of these things, but I think it's important that we look at it from all of these perspectives.

If we only look at it from one perspective, and in our culture, it tends to be that individualistic achievement perspective is the easiest way to look at it, kind of the default way to look at it. And that's fine, but if we only look at it from that perspective, I think we lose a little bit of the fullness of it. So different ways to look at it as a community, individualistic, and also on the X-axis there, you've got achievements. So it's about what I do, I can do these things versus the gospel.

Christ has done these things for me. So just different ways to look at it, different mindsets. And I'm not proposing that there's some secret message here that's not accessible to normal people. This is actually really, really simple. And the original hearers of this message, the original readers of the letter would have looked at it differently than we naturally do in our culture. So we're just kind of opening our eyes up to that.

So first of all, from this individual achievement-oriented reading, in other words, if we look at this message as it is to me and I can do this, okay? That's kind of what we're saying here. And we read this passage from that perspective and we see that I have my own efforts. I need to think about things that are true. I need to think about things that are honorable and just and pure and lovely and commendable and excellent and praiseworthy.

I need to do that. And if any other thoughts pop into my head or any other messages that don't fit those descriptions from outside distract me, I need to gut out. I need to clench my teeth. I need to flex my muscles. And I need to do the things that I need to do to think about these things and not other things. I need to do it on my own. I should do it on my own. I can do it on my own. Paul did it on his own. And so I can do it too.

That's kind of how we naturally read this. And I don't want to say that that's a terrible thing, but there's other ways to read it as well. So think about good things, be like me. I can do that. In part of my prep for this, I listened to a sermon on Philippians 8 and 9. It was a sermon by the head of the preaching department at a prominent West Coast Christian college. It was a one-hour sermon. You're welcome. I'm not going for one hour.

And it was entirely this message of, you need to do these things. Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage in your brain, garbage will come out in terms of your behavior. Whatever you fill your mind with will corrupt you. That was the entire sermon. And he used this passage to say that. He actually said at one point that if there's something wrong with your kids, it's because of some evil or filth that they were exposed to. And this is where my feathers got ruffled a little bit.

Because I think anybody who's spent 10 minutes with a kid, let alone raised one for 18 years, knows that raising kids is not a math equation. They shockingly, they're not machines that are input in, output out, and then we can figure out exactly why everything is going on the way it does.

If that were the case, I can tell you that the vibe in this building after church would be a lot different because we'd tell all the kids, go sit in the corner quietly and wait while the adults are talking, and they would. And that would be super weird because that is entirely not what happens after church in this building. That just kids do weird things.

If your kid at age four or age eight or age nine or age 19 does something weird and irrational, I would propose that it's at least possible, I would say very probable, that it's not your fault. Kids do that. It's our job to guide and correct, but it's the natural state of a child to do some weird stuff sometimes. I walked in just this morning and I got out the vacuum to do a little kind of spot vacuuming.

And first thing I did is I cleaned out the vacuum. And there were some, you guys know the nerds, candies, little, some people were here on Wednesday with the youth. And there were some nerds in the vacuum. I was like, oh, somebody's, you know, youth was here, spilled some candy, they cleaned it up. That's great. And then I start vacuuming and there are nerds like everywhere. I bet if you look in the nooks and crannies of your chair right now, you'll find some nerds.

They made an attempt to clean them up. I know that for a fact because they were in the bathroom. But on Wednesday night, youth had some fun with nerds. I don't know what happened. Kids do weird things. I know every parent probably has a story like this. I got permission from my kids to share this. When Eli was four and Abby was one, we lived in a house in Sammamish. The two kids' bedrooms were upstairs and pretty much everything else in the house was downstairs.

So they had a fair amount of autonomy as a four-year-old and a one-year-old. And Eli would crawl up in Abby's crib sometimes in the morning and they would hang out. Great sibling bonding time. Awesome. You know, what could go wrong, right? Well, Eli got the idea one day to dig through his craft drawer that he had in his room and grab a pair of scissors and cut a clump of hair off of his one-year-old sister's never before cut hair.

And we walk in there, everybody's happy, but there's this clump of hair in the crib and it's like, where did this come from? And Eli and his four-year-old brain thought he could somehow get away with it. And he lied through his teeth about not cutting his sister's hair. We knew exactly what was going on, but it was clear that he had done that and had given her her first haircut.

Point is this, Eli didn't do that. Your youth group kids did not spread nerds all over the sanctuary because of some corruption in their brain that they've been corrupted by some outside forces. Kids do weird things sometimes. And side note, adults, you're not off the hook. We all do weird things sometimes too. We're just maybe a little bit better at hiding it. So this individualistic, achievement-oriented reading of this passage is fine. Think about good things only. Paul did it. So can you.

If you don't, it'll poison your mind. Here's the thing. That's actually a good message. There's actually a lot of wisdom there. If that's what you want to take from this message, honestly, that is great. That is, you know, if you want to measure what you're putting in your mind versus what is true and honorable and pure and just and lovely and commendable and of moral excellence and praiseworthy, I think that's great.

And if thinking of the life of Paul helps you be like, hey, he did these things, I can do them too.

I think that's great. I think there's actually a lot of wisdom in that. In fact, I went and visited my mom yesterday. My mom is in a hospice care home in Redmond, and she's, you know, wonderful Christian woman towards the end of her life, very wise Christian woman, exactly the kind of person that when they start spewing wisdom, you want to pay attention. And we were talking and she was asking when I was teaching next. I said, I was teaching tomorrow. And what are you teaching on?

I'm teaching on Philippians 4, 8, and 9. And she's like, she just lit up. She's like, oh, that's so cool. That's great. You have to tell people. So here you go. Here's what my mom said. She said, you have to tell people to seek from the Holy Spirit, find something that the Holy Spirit is telling you. Let me read what I wrote here so I say it correctly.

Everyone should ask the Holy Spirit and walk out of here with one way that they can grow in thinking about what is true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and commendable and excellent and praiseworthy. We're actually going to spend some time at the end doing that because my mom said so. And because I think it's also just a good idea. It's good wisdom. But there's other ways to read this. So if we look at our chart.

We're going to move on and look at it because Paul's not necessarily writing to this achievement individualistic kind of mindset of people. So let's look at it from an individualistic perspective, but in light of the gospel. So Paul lived and preached in a world where Jesus reigned. His message was not pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Jesus has done this for you. He was bringing the gospel and bringing the implications of the gospel into the world.

So as Paul says, you know, think about good things and be like me. Well, what was Paul like? What did he do? What did he go through? Paul did a lot of really good things. He planted churches. He wrote letters that were inspired by the Holy Spirit and were scripture. He trained up young ministers in the gospel. He did all that through pain, persecution, poverty, punishment. Sorry, that's an alliteration. He did some amazing things, but he also had some

regrets. It was not all smooth sailing for him. We're going to look at Acts 22, 20. This is kind of our Paul recollecting. And this is kind of our first, if you look at it chronologically, this is one of our first views of Paul. And this is Paul speaking. This is from his voice and Stephen is an early Christian witness.

And he says, Paul says, and when the blood of your witness Stephen was being shed, Stephen's being executed, I, Paul, stood there giving approval and guarding the clothes of those who killed him. So this is our first view of Paul, not a flattering view, right? Not a flattering view. Paul eventually converted to Christianity after a career of essentially hunting Christians. He did convert to Christianity. He did repent, but he had this in his past. He had this to deal with.

We're going to look at 2 Corinthians 11. So this is kind of mid-ministry for Paul. And again, this is in light of Paul saying, be like me. Well, what was Paul like? He says, I'm talking like a madman. I'm a better one with far more labors, many more imprisonments, far worse beatings, many times near death. Five times I received the 40 lashes minus one from the Jews. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three

times I was shipwrecked. I've spent a night and a day on the open sea. On frequent journeys, I face dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers in the sea, and dangers among false brothers. Toil and hardship, many sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, cold, and without clothing, not to mention other things.

There is the daily pressure on me, my concern for all the churches. Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble and I do not burn with indignation? If boasting is necessary, I will boast about my weakness. Paul's life, and Paul as an individual, is full of weakness and suffering. He didn't live a life that we would look at today and be like, okay, that guy's got it all together. Okay, quite the opposite. We would have seen a lot of struggle.

We would have seen a dirty, honestly, just a dirty, filthy mess. Now, an effective dirty, filthy mess, but we would have seen a dirty, filthy mess looking at Paul. So when Paul says, be like me, okay, we might need to adjust our picture of what he's saying there and of what that might look like. It's not your typical person that you would look at these days and say, they've got it all together.

So what Paul's saying in Philippians 4, 9, when he says, do what you have learned and received and heard in me, a large portion of what he's referring to is to say, repent. Be like me. Do like me. Repent like me. Repent like me. And don't be surprised when you have to repent like me, because you will have to repent like me. This is this individualistic reading, but in light of the gospel, you will make mistakes like me.

So be ready to repent like me. Your life will be difficult like my life has been difficult.

So be ready to lean on Christ like me. So that's that, looking back at our chart, that's that individualistic gospel-centered reading. It's about me, but I need the gospel. I need Christ to live in, and so will you. Paul's saying that. So kind of the third quadrant there, Lori, if we got that slide, perfect. As Paul's saying, think good things and be like me. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this one, the community achievement kind of perspective on this.

I'll just say that Paul's writing to this community in Philippi, this church. I would argue that the greatest achievement of the Philippian church as a community, we're going to see it in Philippians 1.27 and 2.2. So we'll look at these two scriptures. As earlier in the same letter, Paul says to the church, he says in verse 127, he says, just one thing, whether I come and see you or I'm absent, I will hear about you that.

You are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel. And then a few sentences later, he says, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. So it seems that the greatest achievement as a community of this Philippian church is their unity. This whole letter has been writing to them, encouraging them and in ways that they need to maybe sharpen a little bit around the idea of unity.

That's the theme of the whole letter. And nobody's perfect. So we need the gospel, even when it comes to community, we need the gospel mindset to make that happen. So that's that fourth quadrant on the chart. And this is where I think... If you press Paul, he would have said, yes, this is what I'm writing. Not that we can't get individualistic things out of it at all. There's great wisdom there. But I really think this was the original intent here.

So I'll make two observations about how we can read this passage in light of community and in light of the gospel. Paul's writing to a community and he's writing with the purpose of applying the gospel to the world. The whole letter has been a message to and for and of community. Remember all those plural yous in the previous paragraph. This is written to a group. So two observations. First, when Paul says, be like me, okay, he was not perfect in his relationships.

Far from it. We're going to look at one relationship in Paul's life and kind of trace it and see how it was not perfect. So back in Acts, Acts can kind of serve as a description of Paul's life to some extent, description of the early church, a bit of a biography. So we're going to follow this relationship through this. And it's the relationship between Paul and a young man named John Mark, sometimes called Mark, as in the gospel of Mark, sometimes called John,

sometimes called John who is called Mark. It's a little confusing. We're going to call him John Mark. This is the same guy. We're going to look at one relationship. So starting with Acts 13, 13, it says, now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Pergo and Pamphylia, and John left them and returned to Jerusalem. That's all we know. That's all that's happened there. We don't know why. This is kind of mid to early in Paul's first missionary journey.

Okay. They've been sent out, this traveling group, this ministry team. They've made a couple stops. And John, John Mark, again we don't know why probably because it doesn't matter he says I'm out I'm going home. And again, we're not told like in the moment, like what is the reaction to that? But it's clear as we look further on in Paul's story that this was not a good thing. It was not a neutral thing. This was a bad thing. This hurt Paul. Let's look at the next passage at Acts 15.

So a little bit later on, some time has passed. This traveling ministry group has kind of regrouped. They've gone back to Jerusalem and they're now headed out. They're prepping to head out on their second ministry journey. It says, Paul says, let's go back and visit the brothers and sisters in every town where we have preached the word of the Lord and see how they're doing. So he essentially proposes another ministry journey.

Now, Barnabas wanted to take with him John called Mark, their cousins, by the way, but Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Panhandle. Pamphylia, and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with them and sailed away to Cyprus. Paul chose Silas and departed.

So this little rift that we saw briefly in Acts 13 between Paul and John Mark, that it just kind of happens and we're not really told much about it, it clearly was significant to the point that when Barnabas wanted to include Mark in this party, Paul's like. And I don't want to like project too much into it, but I can kind of picture this like, no, I can't count on the guy. I can't trust the guy. He left us last time.

And last time was some time ago. So it's not as if, yeah, there's a bit of a grudge that is being held here. There's a rift in the relationship between Paul and John Mark. Barnabas wanted him to be part of the team and Paul said no. And he was serious enough about it that Paul and Barnabas ended up splitting and going their separate ways. Importantly in all this, we're not told who was right, okay? Nobody's justified in this rift, in this relationship.

And I think that's important because honestly, when rifts and relationships happen and reconciliation is needed, it's often of very little importance who originally was right and who was wrong. It has a lot more to do with who can actually humble themselves and reconcile.

And as we look forward in Paul's life, we see that reconciliation has happened. So there's this easy to miss moment. It's in 2 Timothy. So Paul is writing. He's kind of at the end of his instructions to his ministry protege, Timothy. And he says in 2 Timothy 4.11, he just makes this comment to Timothy, get Mark, again, same guy, John, Mark, Mark, John, get Mark and bring him with you for he is very useful to me for ministry. So reconciliation has happened towards the end of Paul's life.

He's now able to look at Mark who had hurt him significantly. And again, we don't know all the details, but reconciliation has happened to now. He's turned into Timothy and you can almost picture him saying, take Mark. He's a good dude. He's a good dude. He's going to serve you well. You want him on your team. Reconciliation clearly has happened.

So as we look at this in light of Philippians 4, 9, where Paul's saying, be like me, be like me in my relationships, don't expect smooth sailing, expect rifts, expect reconciliation to happen. It's not necessarily gonna be easy. Don't be surprised that we sometimes need to seek reconciliation and forgiveness from others, and that we actually need to give that to them as well. So that's one observation from looking at this passage in light of community.

Second observation, if we look at, Lori, I don't know if I have it as the next slide. Yeah, we do. Okay. So if we look at this passage here from Philippians 4, 8, and 9, and we look at it in terms of how we view others, you know, you guys know me a little bit. Some of you better than others, and that's fine. If you know me at all, you know there are things that you could think about me that are negative.

Okay. You know that I have faults. That surprises nobody. And if you're curious about what some of them are, talk to Cheryl. She's got a long list and I don't blame her at all. We all have that. We all can view other people from a standpoint of their faults. And some of us are very, very good at doing that. But we have other choices as well. If you're anything like me, and I'm guessing that at least some of you are, one of your best talents is finding fault in others.

And I would just say, what if we read Philippians 4.8 as if it were about the people around you? What if we thought of the people around us as these things and read Philippians 4.8 as a letter to a community and said, hey, whatever is true about how God views the people around me, I want to think about those things. Whatever is honorable about my coworkers, who not everything might be honorable about them, but whatever is honorable about my coworkers, I want to dwell on those things.

Whatever is just about this difficult relationship that really doesn't feel just, that there's a lot of friction and some hurt, what if maybe I just focused on the just part of that for now? What if whatever is pure about people that are different than me and I don't understand them? What if I just focused on what is, and dwelt on what is pure about them? Whatever's lovely about, maybe somebody comes to mind when I say this, about my least favorite person that I have to interact with regularly.

What if I focused on what is lovely about that person? I think there probably is something that you could do there. What if I focused on and dwelt on and thought about what is commendable about someone who maybe hasn't heard much commendation lately? What if there's any moral excellence in those close to me that I know best, and I think about what's best about them from a moral perspective?

And if there's anything praiseworthy in someone who hasn't heard praise for me in a while, and what if I stopped withholding that praise and actually shared praise with someone? What if I dwelt on those things? So I think this is a powerful message to the individual, but I think it's also a powerful message to the community.

And we can share, we can think of it in terms of community mindset and that impacts how we see others. It's so easy. If you're in a community, you're in a community with imperfect people. That is. That's the math of it. There's imperfect people. That is the community that you are in. And so if we fall into the trap or the habit of walking into a room, entering a community setting, and quickly stereotyping and finding faults and whatnot, we don't accomplish anything doing that.

To take a Philippians 4, 8 mindset into those settings is just so much better. If we can look at the people around us and dwell on what is honorable and just and pure and true, then I think there's a lot more community building that happens there. And it takes the gospel to do that. This is not a pull yourself up by the bootstraps and grit your teeth really hard. You can do it. This is a recognize the truth of the gospel that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were very much imperfect people, Christ died for us. And so as we enter into relationships with other imperfect people, we can take that same attitude with us. I hope we can. I'm working on it for sure.

So I'm going to invite the worship team up and I'm going to give you two applications while they're getting set up. And then we're going to spend some time in prayer because my mom said, and I also think it's a good idea. we're going to seek the Holy Spirit in this. So two applications. One, let me start with the second one, actually. Read Philippians 4.8 about others. Read Philippians 4.8 about others.

And maybe this list of, I don't know whether it's seven or eight words, true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, praiseworthy. Maybe there's just a couple that you're going to commit to, hey, this week, tomorrow, this afternoon, whatever the timeframe is, I'm going to just kind of focus on what's lovely about the people around me, or I'm gonna focus on what's praiseworthy. And rather than withholding praise, I'm actually gonna give praise to people.

And there's something we can do as we read Philippians 4, 8, in light of others. Second application is just, I wrote, strive for purity of mind. Strive for purity of mind. I don't think this is just an individual message, but I think there's great individual wisdom in looking at this and saying, hey, are there things that are not true, that are not honorable, not just, not pure, et cetera, that I am allowing in? And how is that affecting me?

Are there things that I need to, to cull out of my daily routines and rhythms that are not just, that are not God's best for me. So we're going to pray. And I want to specifically ask for, we'll probably take a moment in silence as well to just kind of think about that.

Think about how we can grow in this. Think about what, what is it that the Lord has for us and that the Holy Spirit might be kind of kind of speaking to you on or chipping away at as far as how you can be bringing these things into your mind and not other things. So let's pray. Father God, I just, we just humbly come before you. You are God. You love us. Those are two things that are not to be taken for granted, that you are God of the universe, yet you care about us.

You want relationship with us. you care about our minds you care about our relationships you care about how we love others. And so god i just want to take a moment here for for each of us to just sit with you, to sit with you and and ask you lord how can we focus on what is lovely what is commendable what is excellent what is praiseworthy god what do you have for us in this let us just ask you that now, And God, as we go out into our afternoon, into our week, just help us, Lord.

We need your help. This is not a we can do it through our own efforts kind of thing, Lord. We need you. We need the gospel. We need your grace. We need your forgiveness in order to view others this way, in order to be a community and in all the little communities that we each are a part of, our families, our work community, our friends, our just different groups that we're a part of. God, help us to see others this way.

Help that in a way that honestly seems kind of impossible and that we need you for. Help us to see others as lovely and praiseworthy and honorable and not to default to the faults that are so easy to see, Lord. Just open our eyes to the beauty that is in the people around us. Lord, do that in a way that only you can, that's beyond our power, that's beyond what we could grit our teeth and do. But Lord, you can come in and help us and show us and love us in that way.

Thank you, Lord. It's in your son's precious name that we pray. Amen. Why don't you guys stand as we just close?