Joy for All Seasons of Life

Philippians 1:1-2 and Acts 16:6

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
July 3, 2022

The book of Philippians, the little book Paul wrote from a prison cell is such a great piece of writing and one of the reasons is that is has a really good story behind it that is given to us in the book of Acts chapter 16 about how Paul established that church, how there came to be a church at Philippi at all.

Paul had made one journey through Asia minor, establishing churches and then had come back to his home church in Antioch and there was a controversy that arose there whether or not and under what conditions non-Jewish people, Gentiles, should be accepted in this movement, following Jesus the messiah, allowing them to become Christian. There was a faction that said, “They must be converted to Judaism and undergo circumcision and proselyte baptism and accept the law if they’re going to come into the church.” Others said, “No, it is by grace only, by believing in Jesus as the messiah.”

So there was a conference held in Jerusalem, the two factions, Paul, Barnabas and Peter were there and the leaders of the church in Jerusalem, and after much discussion and study of Scripture and prayer they concluded that God was clearly accepting Gentiles into the Christian church solely on the basis of their faith in Jesus the Messiah without any additions coming from the former practices of Jewish faith.

And so James, the pastor of the church of Jerusalem, wrote a letter to send out to the gentile churches to let them know about the decision that had been reached there. So Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch and shared the letter up there and then they thought that it would be good to take the letter out to those churches that he has already established.

Barnabas said, “Let’s ask John Mark to go with us,” he had been with them for a while in the first journey, but he had abandoned them and Paul was not about to go with him again, he felt that he could not trust him. So Barnabas and John Mark split up with Paul. They headed out one way and Paul took a fellow named Silas, and they went through Cilicia, Syria, and visited the churches that they previously established then they felt, “We need to keep going and preach the gospel in other places” and that’s when this got a bit dicey for them. They were going to go down to Asia Minor, further, but the book of Acts, chapter 16:6, said, “But the Spirit of God would not permit them to go there so they headed out to Mysia and Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to do so.

So they headed out south again and ended up in a dead-end in a place called Troas, right in the sea. They’d gone as far as they could and now the water is in front of them and they don’t know what to do next. And clearly they prayed and sought God’s leadership and during the middle of the night, the apostle Paul had a vision, a dream, of a man from Macedonia, just across the waters, saying to him, “Come over here and help us.”

So the next morning over breakfast, Paul says, “Let me tell you about my dream. A man from Macedonia told us that we should go there and help him so maybe we need to go there.” So they boarded a ship, crossed the waters and they got to this port city called Nilopolis and from there into Philippi, the place where the Philippian church would grow up.

When he got to Philippi things got really interesting. First, he was preaching close to the riverside to a group of women that had gathered for prayer in the Sabbath and one of them, Lydia, a wealthy business woman, gave her heart to Christ, believed in the gospel and she invited Paul and his crew, which now consisted of Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke, to stay in her house while they were in Philippi. It’s probably in Lydia’s house that the church of Phillip began to form, Lydia and her household and her friends.

Paul was walking through the streets of Phillip a few days later and there was a demon-possessed slave girl who began to follow him everywhere he went and yelled really loud, “This man is the servant of the most high God, listen to him.” Well you can’t get better advertisement than that. So Paul had enough of her yelling and turned around and cast the demon out and set her free in the name of Jesus.

But when the demon left, she lost her capacity that had been given by the demon to foretell the future in some ways. And the people who owned her were pretty angry about that, now she was a non-profit slave. And they accused Paul and Silas of stirring things up in the city and they were arrested and beaten, without a trial and thrown into the deepest part of the prison. And that’s when it gets interesting. They are in the darkest dungeon in the prison in Phillip and the Scriptures say that began to sing and praise God and the other prisoners were listening.

What I want you to underscore there is that this is the most unreasonable response I can imagine to having been beaten and thrown in jail. To sing praises to God, the God that had brought them to Philippi and now has abandoned them, perhaps, that’s the way it looks, isn’t it. This unreasonable scene where Paul and Silas were in prison, but it is really important that Scriptures tell us that the other prisoners were listening.

You might remember reading what happened there. In the middle of the singing there is an earthquake, the hinges fall off the doors of the jail cells and the prisoner’s bonds are loosened and they all could have escaped. And the Roman jailor who is responsible for them, drew his sword and he was going to take his own life, thinking that he would be completely dishonored, he failed to keep the prisoners together and Paul stopped him, “Do yourself no harm we’re all here.” And then the jailor asked him this interesting question, given that the jailor has not background in Christian theology, she says, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Where did he get language like that? Maybe the songs that Paul and Silas had been singing and he had been listening to these songs, and they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.” So the jailor took them to his own house, he bound up their wounds, he was baptized and he and his household became part of that church in Philippi which now is comprised of a business woman and her friends, a former slave girl who had been demon possessed and now a Roman jailor and his family, that’s how the little church in Philippi was beginning to look like.

Paul did not stay there long because of his conflict with the authorities. The next day he went before them and told them that he was a Roman citizen and he had been mistreated. They quickly apologized and sent him out of town. So Paul left that church in the hands of Luke and Timothy and he went off his way, down to Thessalonica where he planted church, down to Athens where he could not plant a church and eventually to Corinth, but he stayed in touch with those friends in Philippi over the years in many different ways. They often visited him and offered him financial gifts to support his ministry.

And a few years later, he is arrested and put in a Roman cell in Rome, he is languishing in a Roman jail. He knows very well that he could lose his life, he is awaiting trial. And he writes a letter back to his friends in Philippi, it’s a thank you note to thank them for the gifts they had given him. It’s an explanation why the man who brought the gifts, a man named Epaphroditus, took so long in returning. He had grown very ill and almost died, Paul tells them about that. And it’s an updated missionary newsletter to let them know who he had been doing down here in Rome because they are concerned about him. And so he writes this little letter, it’s only 104 verses long, just a few pages in our Bible. He writes it from a prison cell and sends this with his friend Epaphroditus, and sent to Philippi. The theme, if there is a theme in this letter, is joy.

Sixteen times, Paul uses the word “joy” or “rejoice,” the joy that is a part of his life and he recommends upon his friends in Philippi. It’s an awkward thing, isn’t it, to write about joy from a prison cell. It’s surprising, it’s unreasonable, and yet it is the very kind of thing that was Paul’s life with God. Paul could have been wallowing in self-pity, talking about he had served Christ so faithfully, obey Christ coming through Philippi and yet now here he is here in a prison cell. But instead of wallowing on his self-pity he comes to this thing called joy. He is not just trying to put on a good face so that his friends are not worried about him, he is genuinely who he is. Although it is unreasonable for him to be writing about joy from a Roman prison cell, it is unreasonable, but for the Philippians it is not unbelievable because they had seen him do the very thing when he was right there among them. He was in a jail cell, exuding the joy of Christ.

This joy was not some kind of giddy happiness. Happiness is tied so closely to happenstance, to what happens all around us, to circumstance.

Christian joy is much different and difficult to define. It is different from peace, they’re distinguished from each other, but it’s not unrelated to the peace that God gives. Joy is a kind of faith and abiding confidence in God. A kind of exuberance about life, the ability to see through the fog of circumstances and see what else is going on in the world besides just the evil, there is also the good that God is doing in the world. Joy is the capacity to see that, it is a celebration of Christ’s presence, of Christ power, even though the circumstances around us are challenging or painful. It’s a kind of contentment, a deep-seated satisfaction with life because Christ is part of it.

In Philippians 4:10 and 11, Paul says, “I rejoice in the Lord greatly.”

Joy is a deep-seeded contentment. I don’t know how you get that kind of response, except to think very differently about reality. Not being tied to just what our eyes can see, or our hands can touch, not being tied simply on the five sense, but to understand that in the midst of all circumstances there are other things that are going on that Christ is present and that God is at work. Paul looks at the world very differently since he began to follow Christ. He sees through a new lens; his perspective is radically different. And it is that perspective that allows the holy spirit to produce joy in him and in us.

This morning I received a text from Jerry, a friend in Dallas. He said, I stumbled and fell and was taken to the emergency room. I complained of pain in my ear and today I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The doctor said, “It is benign, we can take care of this with radiation and therapy. Then if it is maligned you have approximately 12-18 months of life.”

My friend said, “J.C., I’m calling everyone that I know and I am asking for prayers. I am at peace and joy is a part of my life because my life is in God’s hands. I’m asking for people to pray for me that God will do His perfect will in my life and that he be glorified.”

When the storms of life come, can you have this same confidence that my friend Jerry has?

Through Jesus Christ, we can have joy that is unexplainable, a deep-seated confidence that God is graceful and merciful to me, that he is working in my life and in the life of others and that God is sovereign.” This confidence can be ours today.