Friends, today we are finishing the Book of Philippians, so we are just 4 verses from the end. Next Sunday, a stand alone message and then the next Sunday, Pastor Travis will take over and we're extremely glad that he's going to be

here. So he'll start on September 7th.

LISTEN! 

Last four verses of Philippians chapter 4 please. Paul says, “Now to our God and Father, be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus, the brethren who are with me, greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Let's pray together. We are grateful, Father, for this book. Thank you that you inspired it, wrote it, preserved it. Gave it to us in a language we can read. It's your great generosity. Lord, I pray we will understand your truth today. I pray we draw near to You today. I pray we'd open our hearts to the Holy Spirit today. And you would guide each one of us. Trust our time to you. We're grateful for your goodness. To us in Christ, we pray in His name, Amen.

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise him above you. Heavenly hosts praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” We sang that a little earlier. The title of it is The Doxology, and it is also a doxology.

Here's another one. ”Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy

Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”

Here's another doxology. It's in verse 20. “Now to our God and Father

Be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Paul starts this last four verses with a doxology. We're going to begin today with an anatomy of a doxology. I know none of you intended to come to an anatomy class today. Well, that's what you're getting. It's the risk you take of coming to church. So we're going to do that. We have an outline, I believe. Yes, there's an outline in your bulletin. Welcome to follow along on that if you like.

Here's the anatomy of a doxology.

A doxology is a short liturgical statement that declares praise to God. The Bible is full of them. We use them in our worship. Is a short liturgical statement or expression that gives praise to God. It comes from 2 words, the word daksha, which is Greek for glory, and the word logos which is Greek for word. So it is literally a doxology is literally a word of glory. It's a word of glory that we express to give praise to God. The short offering of praise. We affirm his Trinity, and we declare that He is a God worthy of amazing praise. So here's what we're talking about here. We're talking about the fact that God innately possesses glory. It's part of who he is. He doesn't need to go get it. He didn't need to develop it. It was just his. From the eternity past, he possesses glory. So biblical glory refers to the fact. That God possesses all of his attributes in perfection. God is truthful in perfection.

You know, Abraham Lincoln was honest. But God is truthful in perfection.

Everything about him is perfectly true. Nothing is lacking in the perfection in God's reality. So he possesses glory. He's full, He's perfect, He's great, He's brilliant, and all of his attributes, everything that's true about him is

perfectly true. He possesses them. He didn't go get them. He doesn't need to retain them. It's just part of who he is. But then the Bible says to us. We are to

ascribe glory to Him. We're supposed to say what's true about God. We give him glory.

The Bible says let all the earth give him glory. And that literally means just declare that he is glorious. We don't give God glory in the sense that we gather up some glory and we say, hey God, here's another piece of glory. We don't have it to give. He's got all of it. We only give it to him in the sense that we ascribe it to him and that we say. God, you are a glorious being. We're going to say what's true about you.

Now why is God glorious? As I said at the end of last week, we don't have time for that. That's a 90,000 hour sermon. On the back of your outline in the bulletin today, I started that list. It's a very short start.

It's a much longer list, but God is glorious because he is perfect. He is, He is all powerful, He's omniscient, He's all loving, He's eternal, He's compassionate, He's forgiving, He's patient, He's long-suffering, and all of these things that he possesses, He possesses Perfectly. He's not pretty patient. He's perfectly patient.

He's glorious in that a writer named Anselm, we call him St. Anselm, said in 1098 AD. “God is the being, then, which none greater can be conceived.”

How many have ever heard that before? We have some Ambrose students in

the back that have heard that before. God is the being than which none greater can be conceived.

What that means is he is the perfect being. There is no way to think of

a way to make God more perfect. To make him more glorious, to make him more holy, to make him more omniscient. There is no way to improve a God.

There is no one greater than God, and no one could be saved, could be

conceived, who is greater than God. And Paul says in this passage, and he's our Father. This amazing, unbelievable being is intimately connected with us.

When we trust Christ, we're adopted into the family of God. Your father. Is the being who created everything, who sustains everything, who will culminate everything, who will recreate everything.

That's your father. He's infinitely connected with all of us. He is our personal God. He's not the Father that we had. You may have had a great father. I hope you did. He's the father you needed. He's not the father you had, he's the father you wanted. He's an unbelievable amazing being, perfectly righteous, patient, just truthful and an amazing father connected to us, to me.

I don't care if you're Billy Graham. Or a retired grocer who trusts Christ living in near poverty in Sheboygan. He's still their father. If I trust Christ, I have the God of the universe as my own personal Father, so he says my responsibility is to give glory to him.

How long? Well, forever and ever. Forever and ever he is glorious. Forever and ever I declare it. I ascribe it. And I need to be a person who threw out my life. And forever is saying, God, I give you glory. I say what's true about you, your glorious being? How long is forever and ever?

Well, we say one day we'll enter eternity. What did we just say? One day.

Which is a measure of time. Eternity is so mind boggling to us we don't even have a way to talk about it. Every time we try to talk about eternity, we use a time measurement.

We're like fish living in water. They don't know anything but water. We live in time and we don't know anything but time. But there is a time coming when time will not exist and we will forever be a being who is giving praise to God. And Paul ends this doxology by saying Amen.

This is most certainly true. So, friends, the word Amen is a very interesting word. If you use it at the beginning of a discourse, you're saying this is absolutely true. Listen up.

So when Jesus says in John 5:25, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in him who sends me, has eternal life, does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life.

He is literally saying. Amen. Amen, I say to you.

He's starting his statement with Amen. Well, when used at the end of a statement like Paul does here, it means. So be it, may it be fulfilled. Let it be true. Amen. This is true. Let it be fulfilled.

Now Amen is an amazing word, because it is almost the universal Christian word. Amen from Hebrew was transliterated into Greek as Amen. And into Latin as Amen, and into English as Amen. And in multiple languages, Amen. When you say Amen in so many languages, if you're a follower of Christ, you know exactly what is being said there. It is true. Or let it be true, let it be fulfilled. Now friends, please be quite clear, me giving glory to God is only declaring what's true about Him. It's not an award ceremony for God being good. This is not God getting the Nobel Peace Prize for goodness.

The Anatomy of a Believing Friend Group (vv21-22)

It's me just recognizing who he is and what he is about. Second issue.

Verses 21 and 22, The anatomy of a believing friend group. So Paul. Is writing to his friends in Philippi from himself and his friends in Rome.

And he is giving us some insight into what it's like to be friends as Christian.

Verse 21, “Greet every saint. In Christ Jesus, the brethren who are with me greet you. All the Saints greet you, especially those of the household of Caesar.

So this extremely warm, positive, friendly letter. He starts it with friendship. He ends it with friendship. And he's saying, listen, we are people whose lives are defined by Jesus, all of us. It's the most important thing about us. It's not our gender, it's not our job, it's not our education, it's not our track record, none of that. The fact that we were all rescued by Jesus, that defines all of us and he says. I'm greeting you.

And the people with me are greeting you, and especially in a household, Caesar, are greeting you. And please, you greet all the saints there. So the word great is a word that means to draw to oneself, to salute 1 to greet, to bid, to welcome, to bid well, to receive joyfully, to welcome someone. It's a very robust word. It's not passing in the hallway. How are you doing? Boom.

It's a very personal connection with someone. So I was raised as the oldest child in a family of five. We would visit my aunt and uncle in their little farm outside of Saint Paul or Minneapolis, and when the visit was over 123 days, my mom and dad would round us all up in the car, put us in the back of the station wagon, start the car, and then my uncle would lean on my dad's window. And my aunt would lean on my mother's window. And they would talk for 1/2 hour.

And we're in the back saying, Dad, can we go play? No, we're leaving you kids to stay here. And then blah, blah, blah, blah. In our family, we called it the Minnesota goodbye. It took forever. And so what Paul is talking about here is the Philippian hello. The Philippian hello. It takes forever. This word is pronounced esparzomy, and it means greeting those you meet, generally by embracing and kissing. A journey was frequently delayed by the greeting.

It's the Philippian hello. It's going to take a while. And it's part of the reason I love Faith Community Bible Church is the 5 minute greeting. I've been to dozens of churches. Let's stand up and greet each other. Hi, my name is Dave. All right, everybody sit down. We're done. I've made some great friends in the five minute greeting here, and I absolutely love that. So the point of this is saying greet people, really engage them. All the saints greet you. These are the people who have trusted Christ. This is their definition by standing, not by behavior.

The people in Corinth were called Saints. But if you read the book of Corinthians. There was some poor behavior going on there. This is who you are by standing. You stand before the God of the universe, not guilty. Because the righteousness of Christ was credited to you.

You had nothing to offer him 0. But you were given his righteousness when you trusted in Christ. And so you are a saint by standing. And he's saying, I want to greet all of you, all of you who are saints by standing. Friends, there's a very popular phrase in the Christian faith called I'm just a Sinner saved by grace. And I absolutely hate that phrase because it's theological nonsense.

It is saying I am a sinner. That's my core identity. But that's not true of us.

It's more accurate to say “I'm a saint who's still capable of sinning”.

Because then my core identity is as a saint, a person redeemed by God. You're saying. Dave, your great learning is driving you mad. And I'm saying I don't have that much great learning. But this is important. This is important. I am not a Sinner saved by grace. I am a saint who is, as the Bible says, in Christ Jesus.

I live in the sphere of Jesus. It means I'm connected to him, I'm hooked to

him the way a branch is hooked to the vine. You can't really tell where the vine ends and the branch starts. I'm not a separated sinner anymore. Life is

different for me. I'm a starkly different person now that I've been rescued and he says to greet everyone of the saints.Everyone of them.

The ones who like me and the ones who don't. The grumpy ones and the happy ones. The hard working ones and the takers, the lazy and the diligent greet them all. If you're in Christ, you deserve a greeting. The Christian faith does not allow for a cool kids table and a nerd table.

It's absolutely unknown in the New Testament. In the New Testament, it's all

the rescued kids at one table. And Paul understood that, and we understand it, at least theologically, and we are fighting to live in that more and more and more. This word, greet the brother, and obviously it's used for biological siblings many times, but here's spiritual siblings where people related to the same Father because we put our trust in Christ, we gave up on working. We said it has to be Jesus and therefore we're related to each other and we are crazy, crazy close to each other. Same values, same destiny, same hopes, same book we read, same Savior we love.

Same things we're striving for. Love God, love others, fish for men, make disciples. We're all that close to each other.

Friends, I have a biological brother whom I love with a passion, who doesn't know Christ, who has no interest in Christ. Whom I've prayed for literally decades.

I'm closer to everyone here who has trusted Christ than I am to my brother.

Not to say not to badmouth my brother, we have a fine relationship. I'm so much closer to all of you who have trusted Christ than to him. It's

ridiculous. It's unbelievable. And then he says those of the house of Caesar greet you.

So Caesar obviously is the title taken by all the Roman rulers. And the word is pretty poignant because Caesar literally means severed. So they are severed from God, severed from humility, severed from compassion, severed from service, severed from heaven.

It's a very accurate statement. They believe themselves to be God. They are severed from sanity in that case. But Paul says there's people in the household of Caesar who have come to faith. 

It's a very famous Greek word pronounced oikos with three different meanings.

First, meeting your house, let's go back to the house. If you said that in Greek, you'd say let's go to the oikos.

The second meaning of oikos means all of those people who reside together in a family unit. They can be biologically related. It can include servants, it can include people who board there. It can include your cousin whom you've adopted. Anybody who lives in this household is part of the oikos or the family. And Paul says there's people in the way of Caesar who trusted Christ.

The third meaning of it is the mythological meaning, the evangelism meaning that you and I each have an oikos. We have a realm of connection and influence. We have family members, friends, we have neighbors, we have

Co-workers, we have people in the club with us, we have people we play pickleball with, we have people we see every week at the gas station. We have these people in our oikos in our realm of influence and it's easiest to share Christ with people in our oikos.

And in this case, Paul is saying, Listen, people in the Oikasi, the household of Caesar, have trusted Christ. This amazing, powerful, horrible individual who hates Jesus. Some of his people trusted Jesus.

Maybe not his blood relatives, but certainly some of his servants, certainly some of his soldiers, some of his elite guards who were guarding Paul trusted Christ. Here's the application, friends.

You can put the spiritual, evangelistic rock star in jail. But you can't put

the gospel in jail. The Gospel doesn't have boundaries. It just goes where the Holy Spirit wants it to be. And so Paul's in jail, and the gospel is absolutely flourishing, even though he himself is in jail.

The anatomy of a Benediction  (v.23)

Benediction is a Latin word that comes from 2 words, good and speak. It just means to speak well. So when a pastor, priest, whatever stands up at the end of the service, you know now and says, “May the love of the Father be with you and may you be blessed by the Holy Spirit gives those kinds of blessings. That person is just speaking well to you over the top of you saying here's a spiritual

blessing for you as you go out.

And so Paul gives a benediction, verse 23. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit.” With the immaterial part of you, I want you to have grace.

I want you to have the unmerited favor of God in your life. Unmerited favor,  you're forgiven despite the fact that you had no merit. Despite the fact you had nothing to offer to God. Despite the fact that you were head over your fist in the face of God.

God extended grace at that point in His mercy. He fails to give us what He withholds from us so that the judgment is due. But in his grace, he gives

to us the forgiveness we're not due. And so they both work together as we receive that kindness from God. But it also means grace also means. The unmerited ability of God. We say to one another, well, God give you grace for what you're going through. We basically are saying God give you the ability to deal with his very, very hard thing. We have all these challenges in our life

and God gives us the ability to weather them. I think to myself, how would I

be weathering this stuff of life without Christ?

How would I be weathering the things that happen without Christ, The people who lose their spouse, lose their child, lose their grandchild, come in, get, you know, have cancer, whatever they do. How do you weather that without Christ? And Paul says that kind of unmerited ability. I want that to be in your life as well. He gives us the grace of God not because of the church we go to. Now because of our denomination. Now because of our track record. Not because

we're really good people. He gives it to us because in Christ He decided

to give it to us. It all came from Christ.

My favorite devotional book is called Trust for today. I want to read to you their definition of Grace from May.27. “Grace is the absolute and unforced favor gained by Christ's death and resurrection. Allowing God to be completely for us and endlessly in love with us, apart from anything we must prove. Grace is an actual reality, a way of life in which we no longer strive for acceptance. We mature, heal and are released into his intentions by trusting all the power of Jesus. It is fused in us, creating an entirely new person. The grace of God, Paul says, Be with your immaterial spirit. Trust for Today 5:27

Be in your heart, in your life. Some people in their spirit are angry. Some people in their spirit are depressed. Some people in their spirit are anxious. Some people in their spirit are envious. But we in our spirit can be full of grace.

Full of the grace of God in our lives, so Paul says. I've got this great love for the Philippians believers. It comes out through the whole 4 chapters. He has a great love for them and they have a great love for him for this reason.

You can read in Acts 16, Paul showed up in Philippi, started saying what was true about Jesus. A woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, heard the Gospel message, understood that she needed it, trusted Christ, flippy and jailer, and his whole household heard it. People started hearing the message and trusting Christ because Paul came into town and brought to them a message they had never heard. He came into town and said to them, listen. If you're living in a works religion, you're living in debauchery. You're living in any kind of darkness. Here's what's true. The truth is, you're separated from God because of your sin. The truth is, you can't personally fix it. You can't work it off. It doesn't work.

The truth is, you're eternally lost without some help. You're hopeless and helpless. But the further truth is Jesus paid for your sin on the cross. Was supposed to us. We were supposed to be up there. It was my sin. It wasn't his.

But he died as my substitute and paid for my sin. Paul brings this message to town and says if you will put your trust in Jesus Christ, God will forgive you. That's what you need to do.

I want to read you probably the most famous trust passage in the New Testament, Ephesians 2:8 and 9. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, that not of yourselves it's a gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one may boast.” Paul brought that message to town. 

The Philippians loved him for it. And they responded to it, and he loved them for that. They had an amazing relationship. They had a wonderful relationship. Paul loved these people, so they were extremely special to him. He begins his letter with this great grace to you and peace from God our Father and the 

Lord Jesus Christ. He ends his letter with this. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

There's your anatomy lesson. Well, let's do one more. 

The anatomy of sanity and joy and wisdom

The anatomy of sanity, joy, and wisdom throughout the entire book of Philippians is very simple.

Pursue Jesus.

You want to be a person of wisdom. Pursue Jesus

I want to be a person of sanity.        Pursue Jesus

I want to be a person of joy.             Pursue Jesus

That's the core answer to what he's saying. This book is 104 verses long.

And he mentions it by pronoun another 14 times.

What do you think this book is about? What do you think he's talking about?

Steve and I gave this title to the book when we started. 200 years ago? I

guess I don't know.

Philippians, the key to joy. (Hint Jesus.)

That's what this book is about. It's about drawing near to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's about the fact that He is the source of life and joy. Paul is not

preaching a concept. He's not preaching philosophy. He's not preaching a way of life.

He is preaching a person. A person to whom we have the opportunity to draw near through faith. I want to close this message by rehearsing with you.

The things that Paul said about Jesus in these 4 chapters, he said.

●    He describes himself as a bond servant of Jesus.

●    All the Saints addressed are in Jesus Christ.

●    Paul's imprisonment is in Christ, and he makes his imprisonment all about Christ.

●    In prison, Christ is being preached. Christ is being magnified in Paul's body. The secret of his cheerfulness and sustaining is in Christ.

●    Jesus defined Paul’s whole life, he said, for me to live as Christ.

●    For Paul to die would be gained because he would go to be with Christ.

●    Christ controlled all his and the Philippians conduct walk in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

●    Be filled with the fruit of righteousness through Christ. Believe in

Christ. Accept the gift of suffering for the sake of Christ.

●    Paul calls us to complete the original glory of Christ before his. I'm sorry to contemplate.

●    The original glory of Christ before his incarnation.

●    Jesus. Amazing acts of incarnation. Crucifixion for our sakes.

And resurrection.

●    Paul's hopes, intentions, resolution, and action are all in Christ.

●    I trust in the Lord to come to you quickly. It's personal joy for Paul and for the Philippians is found in Christ. Paul countered all things rubbish in the light of knowing Christ.

●    Paul found righteousness not in his works, but through faith in Christ.

●    Paul like to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. And the fellowship of his suffering, and the conformity unto his death, Paul found strength to do all things through Christ.

●    He had settled hope of eternal joy in the person of Christ. He looked to heaven for the return of Christ.

●    He anticipated the transformation of his own body through the power

of Christ.

●    He declared that Christ can subdue all things under himself.

●    He commanded the Philippians and us to stand firm in Christ and to have one mind in Christ.

●    He reminded us that the Lord is at hand spiritually and in terms of His imminent return.

●    He assured us that God will provide everything we need in His riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

●    He closed by blessing us with a benediction, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have observed in myself friends over the years of knowing Christ. My life has the greatest joy when I'm closest to the Lord Jesus. That's what Paul is saying everyone 7 verses he says yeah we need to pursue Christ.

We need to draw near to him. A man named Hadley Moore wrote this. The epistle Witnesses to Jesus.

“As to a treasure worth all our seeking at any cost. Infinitely precious to

our joyful finding. Infinitely deserving of our keeping, of our holding.

As He and His mercy has laid hold of us and will keep hold of us even to the end. Unto the day of Christ Jesus. And we pray for us.

Grateful Father. For this book and for the message about the Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm asking by your spirit that everyone of us. Everyone of us would be people who draw near to Christ. Would keep us from distractions that pull us away to shiny stuff. Help us to center like Paul did on the person of Christ. Hope is in Christ, Faith in Christ. Help us to center like Paul did, on the love of Christ.

We thank you so much for what the Lord Jesus did for us. We pray these things in Christ's name, Amen. The Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit. Amen.