You might be a construction worker. You have another business. You might be a student. You have another business.
You might be a single parent. You have another business. You might be in between jobs, but you're always on this job. It is a business that comes from God. What's more, it's a family business. That is, now that you're a part of God's spiritual family, you're part of the family business. No matter what kind of career you pursue, as a believer, you must have a higher calling on your life that comes straight from God.
That's what you'll discover today on Connect with Skip Hitek as he talks about the family business you're a part of. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will give you the tools you need to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is mysterious.
In the Bible, Jesus even said, he moves like the wind. Even so, Christians are instructed to know and be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and his help, counsel, and comfort, as Skip Hitek reminds us. You can't neglect the Holy Spirit since the scripture is full of the Holy Spirit from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation. Not only is the Bible full of the Holy Spirit, you can be too. The Holy Spirit is a divine person who helps us. How many of you think you need all the help you can get to live your Christian life?
Yeah, I'm with you. We need help. Discover who the Holy Spirit is with Pastor Skip's DVD study, Expound Holy Spirit. And for a limited time, you can also get a copy of Lenya Heitzig's booklet called Empower, Discover Your Spiritual Gifts. Both resources are our thanks for your gift of $25 or more to help expand this Bible teaching outreach.
To give online securely, visit connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Philippians chapter one as Skip Heitzig starts today's study. I have a friend who was a director. He was a crusade director of the Billy Graham Association. His job was to get on planes and fly to different parts of the country and help organize those huge evangelistic crusades for Dr. Billy Graham. So one day he's in an airplane, he's flying across country and sitting next to him was Tom Cruise, the actor, who asked my friend, so what do you do for a living?
My friend was always looking for ways to get the gospel presented. So he looked at Tom Cruise and he said, I'm in the security business. Now that's a huge buzzword for actors because actors and musicians are always looking for good security people. So he goes, really you're in security?
So my friend went on to tell him about how to have eternal security in Jesus Christ and that was the platform that he used. I'm in the security business. You're part of a business. You have a business and I'm not just meaning that you have a occupational business, a professional business, that I know, but you have another business. You have a spiritual business. You have a vocational business.
You have a high and holy business and that is God's business and that's what I want to talk to you about here so that you might be a financial investor but you have another business. You might be a consultant but you have another business. You might be a construction worker. You have another business. You might be a student. You have another business.
You might be a single parent. You have another business. You might be in between jobs but you're always on this job. It is a business that comes from God. What's more, it's a family business. That is, now that you're a part of God's spiritual family, you're part of the family business.
You remember what Jesus said when he was, I think, 12 years old and his mother found him in the temple speaking to the leadership there and he said to her, don't you know that I must be about my father's business. We are in that business, that family business and I want you to just make a note in verse five even though we haven't even read it yet. Notice the word in verse five, fellowship. You see that word? Some newer translations translated partnership.
I think that's a better choice. It is a partnership. It is the word koinonia translated fellowship or partnership. We are partners with God in a family business. God is our father. Jesus said, I am going to my father and your father.
The book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers. So we are part of a family business. I was reading a little article in Forbes magazine this week about businesses in the United States of America and the article said that family business in America is responsible for 50% of the gross national product. That it is essentially a country business. It is not a country built on family businesses. Now some of us think of family businesses as the store down the street owned by a family and it's been in the family for a few years but the article goes on to say that Walmart is a family business as is Ford Motor Company, Tyson Foods, Sears and Comcast. All of those are family businesses but the same article noted that less than one third of those businesses will survive the transition from the first generation to the second generation and those that do survive 50% of them will not survive the transition from the second to the third generation.
Why is that? The article says these are businesses that get stuck doing things the same way. In other words, the business outgrows the structure. So we are in a business. We are in a family business, a partnership with God, with the Lord and with others. Now we in this business have a product. Every business has a product. Yes, we have a product. Our product is the gospel. That's our product. That's what we give out.
That's what we disseminate. That's what we're always sharing, the gospel. You'll notice in verse 5 he says, for your fellowship in the gospel. Down in verse 7 he talks about the defense and the confirmation of the gospel. In verse 12 he speaks about the furtherance of the gospel. That is our product.
Why is it our product? Because it's only the gospel that brings change. That's where the life change comes from. Now you know what the gospel is. You know what the gospel means. Gospel means the good news. The good news that what Jesus did on the cross was enough to get you from earth to heaven.
That's the good news. That he paid the price. He did the heavy lifting. We can trust that he died, was buried, was risen from the dead for our justification. That's the gospel. Now it's that gospel that changed Paul's life. He heard it.
He received it. It changed him from a persecutor into a preacher. From Saul of Tarsus to Paul the Apostle. It changed Timothy, also mentioned here in our text in verse 1. Timothy was probably 15 years old when he first heard the gospel preached by that Paul who came through his town on a missionary journey.
It changed him. It was the gospel who changed the lives of people at Philippi like Lydia and like the jailer, the Philippian jailer. And now there is a church there all because of the gospel. And now they, church members, are partners with Paul in the family business of the gospel. Let's look at our text.
Let's get familiar at least with it as we jump in. I'm going to be looking with you today from verses 3 to verse 8 of chapter 1, but can we just begin in verse 1 and go down to verse 8 for the sake of context. Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making requests for you all with joy. For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Just as it is right for me to think this of you all because I have you in my heart in as much as both in my chains and in the defense and the confirmation of the gospel, you are partakers with me of grace.
For God is my witness how greatly I long for you with all the affection of Jesus Christ. I want to share with you some principles of partnership. Look at these as three partnership principles in keeping the family business strong.
They're pretty simple. Be thankful, be confident, be aware. Be thankful, be confident, be aware. Could you say those with me? Be thankful, be confident, be aware.
Let's begin with the first. Be thankful. Paul was thankful. Be thankful for God's work collectively. Go back to verse three. Go back to verse three. Listen to what he writes. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making requests for you all with joy for your fellowship, partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Okay, Paul is writing from a prison cell in Rome.
We have discovered that in our first study. And while he's in that prison cell, he's got a lot of time on his hands. So he goes reminiscing. He has a large inventory of memories. And one of those memories is about the church of Philippi, how it started, where it is now.
And he says, I thank my God upon every, I put a smile on my face when I think of you and remember you in prayer, he would say. Now, the way I see it, the words I thank God, or I thank my God in verse three, and the word joy in verse four seem like strange words to apply to Paul's experience at Philippi. Because Philippi was sort of a pain all the way around. First of all, Paul didn't even want to go to Philippi, remember? He was trying to go several places.
The Holy Spirit was shutting that down. Finally, he ends up at Troas. He gets a vision of a man from Macedonia saying, come over here and help us.
So he goes to Macedonia, Philippi being the chief city. And he's probably looking around for a man that he saw in his vision, doesn't see a man, goes to a group of women at a riverside, Jewish women who are praying. And one of them, one of them named Lydia, listens to the message and receives Christ as her savior.
So Paul may have been thinking, I don't know, but this is what I would be thinking if I were Paul. Okay, we got one. You know, I've had more success on other missionary journeys. I didn't want to come here to begin with, but here I am.
We got one. But then things go from that place to much worse, to really, really bad. Because the next few days, a girl demon-possessed follows Paul and his team wherever he goes.
And one day they even mock him while they're praying. Paul discerns she's demon-possessed, delivers her from that demon. Paul gets taken to the center of town and gets beaten with rods and then put in jail.
R.C. Lenski, a commentator, tells us what that would have felt like. Under the many blows, the skin would be broken, the blood would ooze out, the inflamed welts would cover the whole back. The rod that it speaks about was called a vitus. A vitus is a three-foot-long stick that centurions carried.
The centurion used the vitus, the vine stick, for, how shall I say it, to motivate lazy soldiers. Paul got the full brunt of that vitus, that vine stick, those rods across his back. Then he gets put in jail. He gets put in the stocks.
Stocks were designed to pull the extremities out to their maximum reach so that you were immovable. So it's interesting that with that as the background, he says, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. Because that's not what I would write. I would say, when I think back to Philippi, I get sick to my stomach, my skin crawls, I break out in a sweat. But Paul says, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always and every prayer with joy. Now, there's a key there in how joy is produced. When the Holy Spirit, and he does this, it's a work of grace. When you look back through your catalog of memories, and the Holy Spirit is able to push the delete key so that what your mind lands on are not all the bad things people have done to you, not all the injustices, not all the wounds, not all the hurt, not all, well, let me tell you what's not right with other people.
When all that stuff goes away, and you can look back through all the maze of pain and say, but God was working. And for that I have joy. What is he thankful for?
Simple. He's thankful for what the gospel produced. It produced life change. People's lives were changed.
The church grew, a family was extended. His memory of Lydia's salvation brought him joy. His memory of the Philippian jailer's conversion and subsequent baptism brought him joy. His memory of how just a few people gathered around, and now there's a larger church, a vibrant church at Philippi, all of that brought him joy.
So listen to this principle. Paul's joy and thankfulness were directly proportional to the growth of the family business. I'm thankful for your partnership in the gospel.
My joy is directly proportional, Paul would say, to the growth of the family business. That's how he saw his life. Yes, this hurt. Yes, that was painful.
That was horrible. But, but the gospel changed people's lives through it. He was joyful. Same thought is expressed a few verses down. Verse 12, but I want you to know, brethren, that the things which have happened to me, now he's speaking about his present incarceration, he's been unjustly accused, he's been a prisoner of the Roman government, he's now locked up in a Roman prison.
Those are the things he refers to. The things that have happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the what? The gospel. The product of the gospel. The gospel.
The product has gone out. The life-changing element has gone out. So that it has become evident to the whole palace guard and to all the rest that my chains are in Christ. And most of the brethren in the Lord have become confident by my chains and are much more bold to speak the word without fear. So my painful hardship has extended the family and for that I'm joyful. This is Paul looking back.
This is the Holy Spirit pressing the delete key. Paul looking back saying, bless you pain, bless you problems, bless you prison, bless you chains. Because as hard as those were I see the effect the gospel has had and for that I have joy. Boy that's an attitude. That's an attitude. I read an article, I found an article this week about your attitude and it was all about the right kind of attitude in life and it was found in, of all places, the Huffington Post and the article was called, Your Attitude Determines Your Altitude. The article spoke about how your attitude affects your ability to enjoy your life. It affects your ability to be grateful for blessings, to note that these things are blessings to me. And the article went on to say it's the reason it's so important to hang out with the right kind of people who will influence your attitude.
You know there's an awful lot of people, even Christian people, who look like basset hounds. You know they're on their way to heaven but you'd never know it. And it's important to be with those people like Paul who can look back and go, ah, but look it filtered through it. Notice how God was at work. I have joy because of that.
I rejoice in that. My mind could go back as I go through my catalog of memories. I could think about the hardships when we started, the trials and the tears that we experienced, the betrayals I've had in ministry, but as I look back honestly so much has been deleted.
I remember things happen but I don't remember the particulars and I thank God for that selective memory disorder. I think it's from Him. I think back to changed lives and churches planted and souls saved and for that I rejoice. I'm thankful for God's work collectively.
Here's the second partnership principle. Not only be thankful for God's work collectively, be confident in God's work personally. And that's what he draws our attention to in verse six.
Being confident of this very thing. That he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Now allow me to unpack this little verse.
There's a lot in it. This personal work was begun by God. It's God's work. Notice what it says, being confident that he who has begun this good work. Paul is not referring to what the Philippians did. He's not saying kudos to you guys. You did such a great work at Philippi.
You planned, you strategized, you took demographic studies of the greater Philippian region. Nor is Paul talking about himself. He's not talking about or bragging about the work that he and Silas and Timothy did. Because frankly, he just showed up and God did the work. Now you might hear that and go, Skip, you're not giving Paul enough credit.
He did more than just show up. He spoke the word to Lydia. Yeah, but Luke who was with him, put it this way, the Lord opened up her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. So who did the work, Paul or God? Well, Paul spoke, but he spoke sort of because he was there and the Lord opened her heart. The Lord did that. Then Paul was put in prison and his back was covered with welts and he's in stocks and it's midnight. So he turns to his buddy and goes, Hey, let's sing. So they start singing hymns.
And what happened? An earthquake happened. An earthquake shook the prison and opened the doors and the chains fell off. Did Paul do that? That wasn't Paul's work. That was God's work.
Paul showed up, the Lord opened people's hearts, an earthquake happened. It is God's work that he was doing. I love that verse in Ephesians 2, for we are his workmanship. His poema, his work of art. God is the master artist, skillful artist, always looking to express himself. It's his work. Not only is it God's work, notice more carefully in the verse, it's a gradual work.
It says he who has begun a good work, now that word begun implies it's still going on. Think for a moment of the good work that God has begun in you. Think of the first time you heard the gospel. Maybe you heard it and parts of you said, yeah, I'm sort of touched by that. But then you heard it a second time and your heart softened. And a third time. Maybe it took several times till you finally said, I give up, I say, I give up.
I give up. Sometimes till you finally said, I give up, I surrender my life to Christ. At that moment, on that day, God began a work.
He initiated a task. It's an ongoing work. I bring this up because some of you that I'm talking to feel very discouraged as you look at your own life. There are problems in your life. There are imperfections in your life. And you're tempted to look at yourself and say, this is God's masterpiece? This is the workmanship? This is the poema, the great work of art?
Doesn't look very good to me. But what you're looking at is what a visitor to a great artist studio would see if you walked in and there is that artist with that white canvas spread out on a beautiful frame. And the visitor notices a splotch of orange and yellow and green. And the visitor thinks, I could do that. That's not art. I can throw paint at a canvas and put color on it.
And that visitor might even say, excuse me, Mr. Famous Artist. But that doesn't look like a great piece of art to me. And the artist would say, that's because you're looking at a work in progress. I have something in my mind. I have a goal for this. But you are just seeing it at its early stages, just like you are seeing you in the middle of the job.
That's Skip Hyten with a message from the series Technicolor Joy. Now we want to share about an exciting opportunity you have to take your knowledge of God's Word even deeper. Personal or small group Bible study is a great way to learn God's Word. But what if you want to learn more?
Go deeper. Calvary College offers classes in biblical studies, classes like the Fundamentals of Biblical Counseling. Take evening classes on campus or online, and transfer credits to Calvary Chapel University or Veritas for an accredited degree that will impact your spiritual life for the rest of your life. Apply now at calvaryabq.college.
That's calvaryabq.college. Listeners like you are a crucial part of helping connect people around the world to the good news of Jesus. If these messages have made a difference in your life, please consider helping connect others to Jesus so they too can experience His love and grace. You can do that by giving a gift today at connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Or you can call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in again tomorrow as Skip Heissig shows you that whatever God starts, He finishes, including the work He's accomplishing in you. You don't want to miss that. Connect with Skip Heissig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-09-21 07:57:31 / 2023-09-21 08:06:44 / 9