Philippians 1:3-5 Great Fellowship

by Larry Ferrell | November 17, 2017
What do you do when you pray? Perhaps you will answer, “Well, I ask God for anything I really need. If I get desperate enough for something or if I end up in real trouble, I pray to God about it.” Is this really what prayer is all about? An answer to that question comes from the opening chapter of Philippians. The apostle Paul has just introduced himself to the Christians at Philippi had he greeted them in the name of Jesus Christ. Now he mentions how he prays for them, beginning with spiritual needs. In Paul’s mind spiritual realities always came before physical ones. He was not insensitive to material needs. At times he mentioned them, but he knew that these were always less important than spiritual things – for himself first of all and also for all Christians. Paul’s prayer is a great prayer. It’s an example of prayer on which we may pattern our own prayer life.

In his prayers Paul always thanked God for evidence of spiritual blessing among Christians. Although Paul was sensitive to the problems in his churches, he was even more sensitive to the mercies of God. He knew people’s hearts. He knew that there is no good in man that can satisfy God. He knew that Christians live a great deal of their lives in the flesh instead of in the Spirit. He knew that we all fall short of what God would like us to be. But Paul also acquainted with God’s grace and he gloried in it. He knew that God has provided wonderfully for His children – for their salvation and for their constant and continuing growth in the Christian life. Consequently, Paul was continually thankful for these things. Do your prayers follow this pattern?

The thing that Paul is most thankful for inn regard to the Christians at Philippi is their fellowship with him in the gospel “from the first day until now” (v.5). What does this mean? The word fellowship has been so watered down in contemporary speech that it conveys only a faint suggestion of what it meant in earlier times. When we speak of fellowship today, we generally mean no more than comradeship, the sharing of good times. But fellowship originally meant much more than sharing of something, like the fellowship of bank robbers dividing their loot. It meant a sharing in something, participating in something greater than the people involved and more lasting than the activity of any given moment. When the Bible uses the word, it means being caught up into a communion created by God. This is what Paul was so thankful for in the case of the young church at Philippi. They may have had things in common. But Paul is not speaking of these. He is thankful for their share in the gospel of God. They had been taken up into a divine fellowship. They were united, not upon a social level, but by their commitment to the truths of the gospel.

Paul mentions fellowship three times in this epistle. He points to our fellowship in the gospel of God, our fellowship with the Holy Spirit, and our fellowship in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. In this way he teaches that we have the privilege of sharing in the full nature of God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What a privilege for Christians! If you are a Christian, you already have a share in the gospel. That fellowship is yours by virtue of your conversion to Christ. The fellowship with the Spirit is something in which you grow. It is also possible that in God’s great tenderness and gentle compassion you may also touch upon the fellowship of the sufferings of our Lord.

Philippians 1:3-5 Reflection Questions:
What do you do when you pray? In your mind are spiritual realities before physical ones?
How has this study changed the way you pray?
Is your fellowship with the Holy Spirit growing?

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Isaiah 1:2-9 The Sinful Nation

by Larry Ferrell | November 11, 2017
Having introduced himself as a man whose message and whose ability to perceive its truth are both from God; Isaiah turns to expose the inner quality of the period whose outward shape he summarized in the names of the kings.
At once it becomes apparent why the vision concerns ‘Judah and Jerusalem’. Like us Christians, the people of this city and nation were the Lord’s own children and people (vv. 2-3), language which strongly recalls the exodus from Egypt and the forging of the covenant at Sinai. It must have seemed as strange to the more powerful nations around as it does to the world today, that as the Lord’s people, they, like us, had been chosen to play a key role in His purposes for the world. But they were in no state to fulfill their high calling. The Lord had been a Father to them, but, like headstrong, ungrateful children, they had rebelled against Him, and already this rebellion had cost them dearly. The image of verses 5-6 is followed by a stark description of their condition in verses 7-9. For these people the judgment of God was no mere theological abstraction, or something that existed somewhere else or might be experienced at some future time, as we tend to think of it. It was a very present, painful reality.

In bringing His rebellious people to trial, the Lord was doing no more than the Law of Moses required, but His was a special grief, for He was judge as well as Parent. Isaiah too, longed for the people to repent rather than to go on suffering, but everything now depended on the attitude of the remnant whom the Lord had so far graciously spared. Would they at least learn from the experience and turn back to the Lord?

The call to heaven and earth to listen in verse 2 serves two purposes. It underlines just how high the stakes are in this confrontation between the Lord and His people. In the very real sense the welfare of the entire universe depends now, as then, on how God’s people respond to His Word. It also foreshadows the climax towards which the whole vision of Isaiah moves. For, as we have already seen, the Word which God speaks to His people here is destined to have its final outworking in a new universe, new heavens, and a new earth (Is. 65:17; 66:22).

Isaiah 1:2-9 Reflection Questions:
How do you feel about the fact that you were chosen to play a key role in God’s purposes for the world?
Have you ever rebelled against God?
What’s your feeling about that the entire universe depending on how you respond to God’s Word? How are you responding?

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