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Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you to week three, day one of our
look through the New Testament. We're doing a quick book a day survey through
the New Testament just to give you a sense of what the whole New Testament's
about. And as you've seen in the past weeks, we're trying to focus on what does
that book have to say to my life?

How can it change my life? The book of Philippians is what we're starting with
this week. Philippians is a personal book.

It's all about the release of joy in our lives. While Romans might have the most
sweeping historical impact through the Reformation, Philippians might be the
letter in the New Testament that has the most personal impact. As I talk to
people, many say that their life verse, the verse in the Bible that speaks most
powerfully to them, comes from Philippians.

Philippians includes familiar verses like, "He who began a good work in you will
complete it. " Thanks us for nothing, but pray about everything. I press on
towards the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus.

Rejoice in the Lord always. For me to live is Christ, to die is gained. I can do
all things through Christ who strengthens me.

You'll find verses throughout Philippians like this that impact our heart and
our daily lives. Now, make no mistake, Philippians is also a book that has
tremendous theological impact. Chapter 2 of Philippians focuses on the person of
Christ, the center of our faith.

In that chapter, our hearts are challenged to explore the depths of the kenosis,
the emptying of Christ so that he could give us all that we truly need in him.
At the center of all of this in the book of Philippians, Philippians shouts a
message of joy, and we all need that message. Philippians is a message of joy
from a joyous messenger.

The Apostle Paul, who wrote the book of Philippians, was a man filled with joy.
Thankfulness and joy, no matter what was happening in his life, was one of the
major themes that the Holy Spirit inspired in Paul's life, you see it in the
book of Acts, and in his writing that you see in the letters of the New
Testament. This is perhaps no better exemplified than in Paul's first visit to
the Philippians, which we're told about in Acts chapter 16.

Things did not start so well, and as a result, he was thrown into prison where
he and his friend Silas ended up singing through the night. In the worst of
circumstances, Paul was a joyous messenger with a joyous message. Well, God has
a joyous message for you today.

The words rejoice or joy are used 15 times in the book of Philippians. Paul
talks about rejoicing or being filled with joy in our prayers for others or in
the way that Christ has preached in our faith, in our unity with one another,
and our relationships with one another. He talks about rejoicing in the Lord, he
talks about joy in the results of ministry, he talks about giving each other a
joyous welcome, he talks about joy even in suffering.

This letter was first written to Philippi, a place where the people needed joy.
That's why we can so easily relate to this book, because we all need joy to
invade the places of our lives. Philippi was an interesting city in the Roman
Empire.

It was a rich city with gold mines just outside of the town. They'd been nearly
mined out by Paul's day, but their presence had brought many riches to Philippi.
They were rich, but Paul wrote to remind them that joy isn't found in
possessions.

Philippi was also a strategic city. The city had been founded by Philip, the
father of Alexander the Great. He put the city in a strategic place along a
major path in the mountains between Europe and Asia, a very important place in
that part of the world.

It may have been strategic, it may have been in the right place, but Paul wrote
to the Philippians to remind them that joy isn't found in a place. Philippi was
also a Roman city, or what was called in that day an official Roman colony. It
was a little piece of Roman culture outside of Rome.

In Acts chapter 1621, the Philippians refer to themselves as Romans. They took
pride in being Roman, because Rome was the center of power in that day. But joy
isn't found in prestige or power.

Paul wrote to remind them of where to really find joy. How about you? Where do
you find joy?

Have you been trying to find joy in things that you can buy or in a place that
you can live or in some prestige which you can attach to yourself? Paul writes
to tell us the good news. Joy is not in a place, not in a possession, or not in
some power in your life.

Joy is found in a person. Joy is found in Jesus Christ. In Philippians 419, Paul
says joy is found in the one who supplies our need, not in the riches that he
might give.

In Philippians 2, 9-10, Paul says joy is found in the worship of Jesus and not
in your circumstances. And in Philippians 320, we're told that joy is found in a
heavenly relationship, not a Roman citizenship. God has good news for you.

He has made great joy available to you. Now understanding this, why we sometimes
paint Christianity in only somber tones is difficult to understand. You just
pick up a Bible and you start to read.

It's filled with amazing stories of joy that include the most joyful event in
all of human history, the resurrection of Christ. Christians are to be people of
joy who look at life and think this is great because of the greatness of God.
Sometimes I meet people who say they're believers in Christ, yet they approach
life with apathy, with discontentment, with a scowl on their face.

They say Jesus is the joy of my life, but there's no genuine joy there. Would
you say that your life is filled with genuine joy? I don't mean a moment of
happiness here and there, but a life that's colored and filled with joy.

Yeah, we all face difficult circumstances. I understand that. Life sometimes
seems to kick the joy right out of you.

How do you find joy in the reality of the struggles that we all face? Well, Paul
was certainly qualified to write about joy under any circumstance. If I were
writing a letter about joy, I'd probably want to be on the beach somewhere
watching the waves come in, or maybe up in the mountains listening to the wind
pushing through the trees.

Maybe some of you would be able to write about joy in the golf course after you
just made a hole in one. Hold and write, rejoice in the Lord always, because he
just made a hole in one. He wasn't on a beach somewhere.

He wasn't in the mountains. Where was Paul when he wrote this great letter about
joy? Paul was writing from a prison in Rome during a very difficult time in his
life when many people had abandoned him and disappointed him.

The prisons today are terrible places, but the prisons in Paul's day, they were
dark, smelly, moldy caves. From that kind of pit, Paul wrote about genuine joy.
And that convinces me that joy can be a part of any life.

Joy can be a part of your life. This is a letter about real people and real joy,
and it's about how to find joy in the midst of any relationship or circumstance.
Just remember one thing as you take a look at the book of Philippians.

Joy is a process. For a lot of us, it feels like joy should be like flipping a
switch somewhere inside of us. All of a sudden, we got joy for the day.

And then somebody flips it down. You don't have joy that day. You spend the rest
of your life flipping the switch up and down.

That is not what joy is like. The Bible tells us joy is a process. It's not a
matter of flipping a switch.

It's a matter of understanding God's process. And it is often surprising when we
discover that in God's process, the very places that we tend to see our joy
being stolen from us are the same places where God wants to work to create joy
in us. We don't need to go to a different place to find joy.

We need to find out how God wants to give us joy in the very places, sometimes
where it seems like our joy is being taken from us. So as we walk through
Philippians, Paul talks about eight places where joy is won or lost. In chapter
1, he talks about your relationships and about your problems.

You can either lose joy in your relationships or you can see God bring joy even
out of difficult relationships. And it's true even with problems. The problems
are not something we're joyous about, but God can bring us a measure of joy even
in the midst of the problems.

In chapter 2, he talks about finding joy in the midst of your potential and in
the midst of your work. In chapter 3, he talks about finding joy when you
consider your accomplishments and when you consider your future. In chapter 4,
he talks about joy being found in your thoughts and in your finances.

So if you're thinking, "Yeah, sure, my finances. " Paul says in chapter 4 that
no matter what financial circumstances he was in, he'd learn to be content. He'd
learn to find joy.

So let's just go through those again, those eight things. Let me read some of
the verses from those chapters that remind us of where joy comes from. First, we
find joy in how God deals with us in our relationship to the people.

Philippians 1, 3 to 4, Paul says, "I thank my God in all of my remembrance of
you, and I pray with joy in my every prayer for you all. " We can find joy even
when it comes to problems. Philippians 1, 21 says, "To live is Christ, and to
die is gain.

" We find joy in the area of our potential, how we look at what's the best we
could do, what's the greatest thing we could do in our lives. For some of us,
that's a great place of stress. Paul said it can be a great place of joy.

But how does that happen? Well, he talks about it in Philippians 2, 5 to 7, when
he says, "Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who
did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, but humbled
himself. " You can have joy when it comes to your job.

Philippians 2, 25 to 26 says, "Risk yourself for the work of Christ. " And you
need to see the work of Christ in any job that you have. You can have joy in the
area of your past accomplishments.

Paul said he found joy there by Philippians 3, 8, counting them as loss, in
order that he might gain Christ. Jesus is greater than any accomplishment. You
have joy with your future plans.

Philippians 3, 14 says, "Press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus. " You have joy in your thoughts. Philippians 4, 8
says, "Whatever is good, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is
pure, whatever is lovely, if there's anything excellent or worthy of praise, let
your mind dwell on these things.

" And you have joy in the area of your finances. Philippians 4, 19, "My God
shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus. "
And then to top it all off, you have Philippians 4, 13.

In any circumstance, you can find joy because that verse tells us, "I can do all
things through Christ who strengthens me. " Let's pray together. Jesus, we want
to live with your kind of joy.

Not the temporary happiness that this world offers, but the eternal joy that
only you can offer. And even through the process of grief, even through the
process of disappointment and hurt and problems, you promise us that you can
work in our lives to give us the security of joy, the certainty of joy, because
the joy you want to give is greater than any problem, is greater than any
relationship, is greater than anything. And so we look to you, the source of our
joy.

Thank you, Jesus, in your name, amen. Join us tomorrow. We're going to take a
look at the book of Colossians and what God has to say to us about the real
truth.