Spiritual Stability, Part 2: Harmony and Joy

The violently hostile intent of the enemies of Christ leads them to be willing to find any advantage by which they can discredit the church. And the church's discord and infighting is one that they use frequently. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Financial stability comes with managing your money well. Structural stability in automobiles or office buildings requires skillful engineering. But what does it take to experience spiritual stability? Consider that today as John MacArthur continues his study on Grace to You called Seven Steps to Spiritual Stability. Now before the lesson, John, it's been a busy few days for our staff since we got back from the Christmas break. Take a moment here to tell our listeners what was waiting for us when we returned to the office here. Well, at the beginning of every year, it's a mountain of mail because the greatest amount of mail comes in the last weeks of every year as people do their year-end giving. So when we come back, there's just a massive mountain of mail that's delivered to us by the post office. And I have to say, Phil, it's probably the most joyful time of the year because when we go through that mail, we not only receive gifts from tens of thousands of people around the country, but we also receive letters of thanks.

And, you know, our people are so faithful, so diligent. This is an amazing place to work. We had a board meeting just recently, and we talked about that with our board, how we have employees who've been here for decades and decades.

And there's a joy here. There's a fellowship here. There's affection among our staff. And what are we, 60 to 70 people maybe on our staff?

It's not massive by any means, and yet we cover the globe with the teaching of the Word of God. These people are so profoundly rewarded when we get to read all the incredible testimonies. So we return to an overflow of email, thank you notes, financial gifts, and it was clearly sacrificial and humbling.

In the last weeks of 2022, I was telling people that this is a significant time for them to give, and that's exactly what happened. We teach the Bible, and we minister to people, and people do the rest. So with all the difficulties in the world, with all of the challenges economically, with people under mandates and things losing jobs and all those sad realities, we can tell you this. The Lord has sustained us again by the faithful giving of those who love the Word of God. In fact, we believe God has prepared grace to you for just a time like this. The tougher it gets in the world, the more the truth of God means. The people want something more than a superficial understanding of Scripture, and so as times are more challenging, it seems the people who listen to grace to you are more generous, and we're so profoundly grateful.

So by all measures, we're starting 2023 on solid footing. Speaking for all of us, we want to say a deep, deep thank you for your faithfulness. Yes, friend, thank you. Your generosity is going to help us take verse-by-verse Bible teaching to God's people all over the world in 2023.

And so, again, thank you so much for your partnership. And now I encourage you to follow along with John MacArthur as he spells out seven steps to spiritual stability. Would you open your Bible now to Philippians chapter 4, this lovely letter from the Apostle Paul to the Christians in the city of Philippi? We're looking at chapter 4, verses 1 through 9, and entitling that particular unit of Scripture, spiritual stability...spiritual stability.

Taking that little phrase in verse 1, stand firm in the Lord, as the theme of this wonderful passage. Now generally, I would say that we in our society admire someone who stands firm or stands true or stands up for what he or she believes. We admire resolute kind of people, people who are very stable against pressure, who are unwavering, who are uncompromising, who are courageous and bold. We admire people who can't be bought, can't be bribed, can't be intimidated, can't be softened up, can't be defeated. Just in general, I think we hold out admiration for that kind of person. Maybe in especially poetic terms, Rudyard Kipling summed it up as well as anyone when he wrote these familiar words.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too, if you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated don't give way to hating and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise, if you can dream and not make dreams your master, if you can think and not make thoughts your aim, if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools, if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings, not lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you but none too much, if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that's in it and which is more, you'll be a man, my son. We honor somebody who is uncompromising, resolute, firm, strong, bold, courageous. We call that integrity. And there's something very admirable about that kind of human character, that sort of heroic stability.

We applaud it. We look for those kinds of people to be our models and our examples and our leaders. And if in fact courage of conviction, integrity, credibility, a non-compromising, resolute, truth-bearing, strong, firm stance is admirable among those in our society, how much more essential is it to those who are Christians? After all, the very term Christian identifies us with Christ and Christ was the most uncompromising, courageous, firm-standing person who ever lived. He would not compromise. He would not deviate from the truth. He could not be bought.

He would not sell out. He is the model of courageous integrity. And those of us who name the name of Christ should know something of that kind of stability, that kind of firmness, consistency, that kind of steadfastness and that is precisely what the New Testament affirms. Because repeatedly throughout the New Testament, Christians are called to stand firm over and over and over again in a number of different ways using a number of different terms. We are called not to be tossed around. We are called not to doubt or be unstable or be like the waves of the sea tossed to and fro. We are called to be firm, to stand strong. A number of times it says to be of good courage, to be fixed like men, to not be unstable. We are told to be bold, to be uncompromising in living for Jesus Christ. I suppose we could turn to a number of passages to see this, but let me just draw your attention to one just a page or so beyond our text. Colossians is the next epistle.

Chapter 2 verse 5 sums it up well. Paul writing to the saints in Colossae in verse 5 says, Even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit. What he means is I think about you all the time.

You're always on my heart, you're always on my mind. And what is my desire? Rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ. My real desire for you is that I might know the joy of seeing the good discipline that leads to a stable faith, an unwavering faith, a strong faith. I suppose that any of us who knows Christ personally would admit to the fact that we wish our faith were stronger than it is.

None of us is particularly enamored with the prospect of stumbling and bumbling and teetering and tottering around in our spiritual experience, and yet that is in fact the experience of many of us. We would all desire to be firm. We would all desire to be strong. I don't think we want to be victimized by difficulty. I don't think we want to be knocked over by troubles and trials and problems in life. I don't think we want to be defeated by temptation, the onslaught of the world, the flesh and the devil to trip us up and cause us to fall into sin.

I think we would be like the Apostle Paul who saw the sin in his life but hated it and said, when I do it, I don't want to do it. I think we would all like to stand firm and be strong. We also must recognize that it won't be easy because we are in a warfare. We were saved to conflict. We are soldiers. We've been called into battle.

That's why this term in verse 1, stand firm in the Lord, is a military term because we are on spiritual, military duty in conflict with the enemy. So we might all say, well, yeah, I appreciate the exhortation to stand firm, be strong, be bold, be courageous, be stable, but how do I do that? How can I reach that kind of stability? In fact, if you look at Christians around you, you might assume that some are more stable than others and that's a correct assumption.

Some appear very stable, some appear very unstable and then all in between there are all kinds of different degrees of stability. There may be sort of the rising feeling in your heart that maybe you're just sort of genetically unstable. Well, I want to indicate to you that genetics have nothing to do with spiritual resources. It's not something you inherited, your basic instability. It's a spiritual issue and there's no real mystery in understanding why some people are unstable in spiritual things and some people are very stable, why some people are immature, some people are very mature, why some people collapse under trials, collapse under temptation, other people endure trials, endure temptation with victory, why some people are seemingly always defeated and others are always triumphing in Christ.

There's no real mystery to that. It's just a problem that can be solved by the development of spiritual stability that comes through certain principles. That should be very encouraging to you. You may be weak in the faith, you may be unstable, you may be a new Christian and there's a certain amount of instability in just that because you haven't had an opportunity to grow strong, but the process is clearly outlined in the Word of God. As I just read you in Colossians 2, 5, it is associated with good discipline.

The disciplined life becomes the stable life. And so you have to understand that in order to be spiritually stable and not knocked over by all the things that come your way, whether it's the persecution of hostile people or whether it's the temptation of Satan and the flesh or whether it's the trials and troubles that just make up life in this fallen world, there are principles that will enable you to become strong. Now would you notice back in verse 1 where Paul introduced the basic principle of standing firm, he used the little word so. That means thus or in this way stand firm in the Lord and then he outlines how to do it. He's saying to the Philippians, if you're going to be firm in the Lord, strong, resolute, stable Christians, here is how you must do it. And then starting in verse 2, he gives them a series of principles. These are the things that produce spiritual stability. Let's look at the first principle.

We have already considered verse 1, so we'll move from there. Let's consider the first principle. Here is how you are to be spiritually stable. Principle number 1, by maintaining or cultivating harmony or peace in the fellowship of love. By cultivating harmony or peace in the fellowship of love. Now I need to explain that a little bit.

Let me do that. I am convinced that this pursuit of spiritual stability, and I know Paul was convinced of it as well, is somewhat dependent on associations that we have. I can tell you in my own life that it is obvious to me that I become more unstable in isolation from other believers.

That the fellowship of believers, the close, intimate, loving harmony of the body of Christ is a tremendous factor in my own stability. And I believe that you experience that too as a Christian. That's what the church is all about. It's all about people holding up other people.

It's all about accountability. It's all about caring. It's about mutual love and harmony and peace. It's about having our lives so intertwined that we can support one another and sustain one another, lean on one another, hold one another up, restore one another when one has fallen, as Paul says in Galatians, and after you've restored them, build them up.

We're all about that kind of involvement. And that is precisely what is on the mind of the Apostle Paul in verses 2 and 3 as he moves into his subject in some detail. He writes, I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord.

Indeed, Syzygus, that's the Greek word there, translated true comrade in the New American, indeed Syzygus, I ask you also to help these women who have shared my struggle and the cause of the gospel together with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life. Now what Paul does here is very, very fascinating to me. He identifies a problem of conflict in the Philippian church in no uncertain terms.

He's not at all vague. He names the two women who are the problem. And then he names a person to help the problem out, very specific. What he is after here is unity in the church, harmony in the church. You see, there are potential discords at many levels of church life that threaten stability.

Let me give you a very simple insight. When a church is generally unstable, when there is a conflict in a church at a high level, it will generate instability throughout the whole church. The people will fall victim to that instability.

On the other hand, where there is unity and oneness and peace and harmony as a whole, the people enjoy the stability that that provides for all of them. Paul knows that. And he knows that two women having a major conflict in a church can threaten the spiritual stability of believers throughout that congregation because they will fall to all kinds of sins, party spirit, criticism, negative attitudes, bitterness, revenge, hostility, unforgiveness, pride.

Paul knows that. He also knows that when people make peace and make harmony and love one another and cultivate the relationship of the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, as Paul calls it, that when that goes on, there is stability throughout the whole church. It's as if the general strength becomes the individual strength when you know you're loved, when you know that people really love you, and when you have made loving commitments to others in the body of Christ, and when you know that the loving people of the church care about you and are praying for you and you're working together with them and they're working together with you and you know that love is at work and you're held accountable but you're also helped and encouraged and nurtured, that provides stability. There are a lot of people in churches, you know, that don't have that.

And they flounder and they drift and they flop and they fall because the environment they're in is not supportive, it's not sustaining. We are to support the weak. We are to lift up the fallen, to restore the broken, those overtaken in sin. We are to demonstrate love at work which stabilizes the church.

And that's what he's calling for here. Now let me say this to you right here as a footnote and I'll repeat this as we go through. Spiritual stability is related to the attitudes that you have, OK? It's not related to your circumstances. It's related to how you think. It's directly related to how you think, how you react to what's going on in your environment. And if you learn to react properly, you will have spiritual stability.

And if you don't, you will not. It's how you think that is the issue. And so Paul is going to teach us here how to think. In fact, when he comes down finally to verse 8, he says, Let your mind dwell on these things. It's how you think that brings spiritual stability. And primarily it is not how you think about you.

It is not how you think about your problem. It is how you think about God that controls your spiritual stability. Everything resolves itself in your theology. And how you think about God will control your spiritual life in every dimension.

And we're going to see that unfold. But let's start with this matter of pursuing or cultivating harmony or peace in the fellowship of love. Verse 2, he uses the word urge here, parakaleo, we'll get the word paraclete from which the Holy Spirit is called in John's gospel, one who comes alongside to plead or beg or encourage or help. So Paul is in a pleading, begging, encouraging mode and he says, I want to plead with these two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to please live in harmony in the Lord.

This is most fascinating, most fascinating. Paul is this great theologian with this immense theological mind and this tremendous logical capability and he is delving into the depths of great divine truth and even in the book of Philippians which we tend to think for the most part is a little bit lighter weight than some of the other epistles like Galatians and Romans and Corinthians, but in fact is very, very deep. We wonder how he could sort of after digging deeply into great truth, pop up to the surface and say, hey, will you tell those two women to get their act together?

It seems a bit on the trite side. I mean, there's so many grandiose things he's been dealing with. In chapter 3, he was deeply concerned about the fact that the Philippians were under the attack of false teachers advocating false gospels, false doctrines. And you say with all of those deadly threats to the purposes of God that were skewing and perverting the doctrines of salvation, why would he all of a sudden pop up to the surface after depths like that and say, get those two women together?

I'll tell you why. Because he understood how discord is equally a deadly threat to the life of the church. It will rob a church of its power and it will destroy its testimony.

There's a sense in which he is reminding us of the stakes in this particular game that we're involved in. The violently hostile intent of the enemies of Christ leads them to be willing to find any advantage by which they can discredit the church. And the church's discord and infighting is one that they use frequently. This could be devastating to the testimony of the Philippians.

They were under glass. Everyone was watching in this pagan culture. Discord, disunity, conflict at the level of the church could have devastated the integrity of their testimony. And apparently, they were really seriously on the edge of that. Go back to chapter 1, verse 27.

Do you remember it? He says, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. In other words, live consistent with your message so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear that you are standing firm...here it is...in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel. He's crying for unity there. He recognizes that they've got opponents in verse 28.

He recognizes that. But he says, you've got to stand firm. You've got to be true to what you believe. You've got to live worthy lives.

In chapter 2, verse 2, he says, if you want to make my joy complete...the assumption here is it isn't complete...then be of the same mind, love everybody the same, be united in spirit and intent on one purpose, stop doing things from selfishness and empty conceit, be humble, regard others as more important than yourself, don't look on your own things but on the interests of others, be like Christ. There was obviously some discord. Chapter 2, verse 14, indicates that they were grumbling and disputing about things. That had to stop.

Now maybe he focuses a little more directly on the problem. Here are two women who apparently are leading two factions of discord in the church. And he says, I want to urge these two women to live in harmony in the Lord. Now obviously, we don't know much about these women.

But let me tell you what we can surmise from this one verse and the background. Number one, theirs was not a doctrinal issue. It was not a debate over doctrine or he would have resolved it by taking one side or the other, right? If one was teaching truth and one was teaching error, he would have sided with one or the other. It had nothing to do with reality in terms of truth and that is usually the case in church conflict. It has to do with opinion rather than doctrine.

The second thing we know about it is these two ladies were church members. So you had two church members, obviously prominent, they simply are known by name here, prominent church members who are having some kind of personal conflict that's not related to doctrine. Now if it had been related to doctrine, there's a place for conflict. A heretic has to be admonished and then put out.

Somebody who's teaching error has got to be exposed and eliminated. Anybody preaching a false gospel is cursed in Galatians 1. We're not talking about doctrinal error here, we're talking about two women who couldn't get along with each other, had picked sides, caused a conflict and lined up people on both sides against each other. They were prominent women and they were obviously beloved women who were having an impact. Now just who were they?

Well we don't know, but we can surmise this. Paul says in verse 3 that they were formerly working with Him in the struggle of the gospel. It may well be that they were among those women who were by the river in Philippi when Paul arrived there the first time and started the church. Remember when he came to Philippi, there was no synagogue there? The reason that he would always go to the synagogue and preach first to the Jews, win them to Christ, then get those converted Jews on his side and go evangelize the Gentiles in the city. But when he came to this city of Philippi, there was no synagogue. The reason was it took 11 men to constitute enough to have a synagogue. There weren't 11 Jewish men there who lived in that city, so there was no synagogue. So some faithful Jewish women met together to worship Jehovah God by the river. They didn't have an official synagogue. So Paul went in and that's where the church really began, with that ministry of evangelism to those women.

It's very possible that among those women were these two, Euodia and Syntyche, we don't know. We do know that they were creating havoc in the church, such havoc that the church was not striving together in one mind for the faith of the gospel, such havoc that they were not maintaining a mutual love for one another and needed to be reminded of the fact they were proud rather than humble and they were self-serving rather than others serving as he did in chapter 2. And here he identifies their leaders.

And he is deeply concerned about this. So he simply says to them, let them live in harmony. Let them live in harmony. Recognizing that the only issue was an issue of a lack of harmony, a lack of love, which is always the presence of pride and the absence of humility.

They were demanding their own way rather than being concerned about the other. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His first study of 2023 is showing you seven steps to spiritual stability. And friend, with the new year in mind, let me tell you about an app that will help you spend more time in God's Word this year than ever before. It's called the Study Bible, and it's free to download at our website. It includes multiple Bible translations, links to thousands of free Bible study tools, and you can easily add all of John's notes from the MacArthur Study Bible. To get the Study Bible app, contact us today.

Go to our website, gty.org. The Study Bible app is available for Apple and Android devices. Again, this app gives you the text of Scripture and free access to devotional study guides and sermons, all of them related to whatever passage you're studying. And for a small price, you can add the notes from the MacArthur Study Bible. It's a tremendous all-in-one Bible study tool for your phone or your tablet. And again, you can download the Study Bible app at our website, gty.org. And if you're benefitting from what you've learned on the Grace To You broadcast or perhaps from a free book that you received from us in the mail, we'd love to hear about it. You can email your feedback to letters at gty.org, or if you prefer regular mail, write to us at Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. And our email address one more time, letters at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to be back tomorrow when John looks at how you can be a peacemaker and experience maximum joy with other believers. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.