Good News of Great Joy (Phil. 1:3-11)

This is flu season.  What’s the first thing you do to find out if you’ve got flu?  I normally measure my temperature.If my kids get sick, the first thing I do is to put my hand against their forehead and sense the heat.  Then if I smell a fish, I put a thermometer in their ear. How do you measure a spiritual flu? I believe you have to measure the level of joy you have.

It’s not easy to measure a person’s joy because everyone is different in expressing their joy.  Some people don’t show their joy externally, but they just show it in a peaceful manner.  Others might appear very joyful externally, but they are crying or angry deep inside.  So it’s easier to measure your won joy by just being self aware.  If you are easily irritated or angry, you might be having some spiritual flu.  Sometimes it’s hard to get out of a spiritual flu, but it’s important that you know when you are spiritually sick.  Unfortunately, many people don’t know when they are spiritually under the weather.

I believe joy is the measure of your spiritual temperature because the ultimate experience of a Christian is the experience of Joy.  The good news of the gospel is the good news of great joy.  When a person gets the good news, he is lifted up to a level of amazing joy that nothing in the world can compare.  It eliminates every negative emotion in life and nothing on earth can tear this person down.  Not even confinement in prison.

Paul, sitting in prison, wrote this letter to the church in Philippi and he started like this, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you.”  He was giving thanks and praying with joy in prison!  If you know Paul’s life, you know that nothing could tear him down.  He had been beaten and flogged many times.  They didn’t seem to bother him.  Once, he was stoned by a group of angry people and they left him behind thinking that he was dead.  But he bounced back and continued to share this good news of great joy.

In the past, Paul used to be one of those angry people.  He went about hunting for Christians and persecuted them.  He approved of and watched Stephen being stoned to death; Stephen became the first Christian martyr.  You can see that Paul was obviously a killjoy for those who believe in the good news of great joy.  You might want to argue that he found joy in persecuting and torturing Christians, but that’s not the kind of joy we are talking about.  That’s a kind of satisfaction that feeds his darkness, or feeds the virus that is eating his soul.

For two thousand years, people have been studying this man and wonder what power had made this man turned from a murderer to missionary.  He used to take people’s life, but now he is willing to sacrifice his life.  He turned from a hater of the good news of great joy to a lover of the gospel.  Whatever happened to him that turned this man of deep darkness into one of the greatest Apostles of Light in history?  It is not just the miracle of his transformation that was marvelous, but his amazing ability to articulate this good news of great joy that made him the most influential man in history. 

So it’s not about the change in this man’s life that amazes me most, but the change that happens to everything within him and around him that amazes me.  It is the kind of change that makes everyone that sees it says, “I want it!  I want the thing that Paul has got!”

The truth is, when you get what Paul had got, everything changes in your life.  This morning, we will peek into Paul’s life through this small window at the opening of his letter to the Philippians.  If we want to share the joy with him, first we need to…

1 – Share the Gospel with him

Paul begins, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.”  He said, “I thank my God every time I remember you.”  This sentence melted my heart as a pastor because it teaches me an important lesson. It made me meditate on it for a long time this week, and I asked myself, “Do I thank my God every time I remember you, my congregation?”  I want to love you the way Paul loves the Philippians, the Corinthians, the Thessalonians, and the Colossians.  You can hear his passion in saying “my God,” not just “I thank God,” but “I thank my God.”

Then he said that he was constantly praying with joy in every one of his prayer for all of them.  He is praying with joy.  When you pray do you feel joy?  A lot of people when they pray, they look very uncomfortable, and very sad, as if prayer is only for desperate house wives!  Do they pray at all?  I’ve never watched the show, so I don’t know.  But prayer for Paul is a joy because in his prayer he remembered every one of his sheep that God has entrusted him and he prayed for all of them.  Again, I am preaching to myself this morning, but it applies to everyone who cares about God’s people, especially if you an elder.

Now he gives the reason for his care and joy, he said, “because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.”  His reason is that they share the gospel from the very beginning to now.  What is the gospel?  The gospel is, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).  But in here Paul revealed more about the gospel.  He said in the next verse, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (v.6).

This verse reveals a secret of his joy, or Christian joy.  The God that began the good work in you will bring it to completion!  Many people don’t understand this concept.  They think our completion of salvation depend on their ability to continue the good work. 

I think I’ve told you this story before.  It was about my friend who got injured in a motorcycle accident, a couple of days later he showed up at the tea house that we met regularly, with bandages all over his body.  He said that he wished he died at the moment of accident because he had been a good Christian those days, attending church regularly and doing devotion daily.  He was sure that he would definitely go to heaven if he died at that moment.  But now, he had to start over again.  He was not sure if he could keep up with the good work.  He hoped God wouldn’t take him at the wrong moment when his spiritual life is not good.

But, he didn’t understand the gospel.  A lot of people think like him, but that’s not the gospel.  The gospel is that the God that began the good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.  (“The day of Jesus Christ” means when Jesus comes back again to judge the world.)  God didn’t just initiate the salvation, but God will bring it into completion. 

That’s the good news.  When you get it, it changes everything.  That’s why it’s the good news of great joy.  That gospel doesn’t say that the believer will never go through hardship in life, but that when we go through hardship, we can still feel joy.  “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil,” because God who started out with me in this journey, is guiding me to make sure that I arrive there safely.  It changes everything!  It changes your attitude towards suffering, it changes your attitude toward poverty, it changes your attitude toward prosperity, it changes your entire outlook of life, and your behaviors.  It’s just so powerful!  Most importantly, from that moment on, your heart is filled with the unquenchable joy.

If you want to share the unquenchable joy of Paul, you must share the same gospel that he believes, which is the true gospel.  Secondly, if you want to share the unquenchable joy of Paul, you must …

2 - Share the wise-love with him

Paul continued, “It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart (see the mutual love they shared), for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus (see is love for them?). 9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

Paul prayed for three more results that will become a reality in our Christian life.  First, he prayed that your love may over flow more and more with knowledge and full insight.  He wants your love not to be sentimental, but growing with knowledge and insight.  The more you love God and others, the more you gain knowledge of God’s love and grace.  Many people believe in God with blind faith, and they just stay there.  Paul wants us to move beyond blind faith and love.  He wants us to attain a knowledgeable love, or wise-love.  Only Christianity can handle and encourage an intellectual faith; no other religion allows that.  None of them stands the litmus test of intellectualism.

Secondly, Paul prayed that your love will have commonsense and discernment, “to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless.”  Love without commonsense and discernment is dangerous.  When I was young, a friend of mine once said that he doesn’t want to marry a Christian woman.  I was surprised and asked, “Why not?  You are a Christian.”  He said, “Christian woman are very nice, kind, and loving, but they are stupid.”  Of course that was not true!  He just happened to come across some Christian girls that were kind to everyone unconditionally, including thieves and swindlers that took advantage of them.  Maybe that’s why Paul prayed that Christian men and women wouldn’t just naively love everything and everyone without discernment.  Maybe Paul foresaw that some Christians of our times will even love the terrorists unconditionally.  That’s why Paul is praying for commonsense for us, or we won’t be pure and blameless in the day of Christ.

Finally, Paul prayed that our overflowing love will produce “the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”  In other words, our love will bear fruit.  When we live a fruitful life, God is glorified and praised.  What are the fruits that follow love?  Joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-control.  Check it out on Galatians 5:22-23 and memorize it.  According to this list, the first outcome of love is joy.

This is the season for the good news of great joy.  If you don’t feel the joy, you can get it by sharing the same gospel with Paul—the gospel that changes everything.  And share the wise-love Paul has—the kind of love that bear the fruit of joy!

[tag:joy good_news]