Category: <span>Blog & Bible Study</span>

Is there any question we ask more than “how long will this take?” I’ve started noticing lately that the vast majority of our questions revolve around time. How long will this take? How much farther? Will this be done soon? What time will you be here? We don’t just live in time we seem to...

Tonight’s passage completes Paul’s first command in the letter to the Philippians. In 1:27 he began the passage by commanding them “Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ . . .” The rest of the passage gave the tools necessary to complete that command. Paul equates living worthy of the gospel...

In Matthew 20:16, within the context of the parable of the workers, Jesus said, “So the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” In Matthew 19:30, after sharing that everyone that leaves anything or anyone for His sake will be rewarded a hundredfold, Jesus said “But many who are first will be...

In Paul’s call to unity through humility in the Philippian church he does something no other gospel writer had done before or would do after, he used Jesus as the example. These few verses that we will study tonight are of incredible importance. In many ways, they are a summation of Paul’s theology, they represent...

Not long ago I was reading an article about how a man, who viewed himself as a “secular Jew”, came to faith in Jesus. While the entire article was quite interesting there was one line in it that has set me to thinking. As he was sharing about the household he grew up in, about...

In the last passage we studied Paul gave his first command of the letter to the Philippians, “Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Paul purposefully used a political phrase to teach the Philippians that being found in Christ was being found out of everything else. When the Bible calls Jesus...

Tonight’s text begins moving us into the instruction and confrontation portion of Paul’s letter to his friends in Philippi. Over our first few weeks we have talked a lot about this letter being a real model for Christian friendship, tonight we begin to see that true friendship that is based upon being mutually found in...

In our last lesson Paul moves from sharing his prayers for the Philippians to addressing their concerns for him. He dealt with their concerns about how his imprisonment would affect the gospel and the reality that there were people now preaching that may not be qualified or whose motives may not be pure. In tonight’s...

In tonight’s passage Paul moves from sharing his prayers for the Philippians to addressing their worries and concerns about him. He doesn’t tell them not to worry, he doesn’t judge them for being anxious, he doesn’t even try to convince them that there is nothing for them to be concerned about; he addresses the reality...

Paul has shown us so far that two of the bedrocks of Christian friendship are thanksgiving and prayer. It is difficult if not impossible to have “fellowship” with someone that we are not thankful for. Fellowship is far more than agreement, unity or even friendship. Fellowship, as it is defined in Scripture is partnership, it...