The Most Famous Thank-You Letter in Church History

But my God will supply all your needs according to his riches. And how rich is he?

He's very rich. Keep in mind that the context here has to do with God meeting the needs of the Philippians as they met the needs of Paul. Paul isn't saying here that God will give Christians a blank check for whatever they think they want. In fact, the implication of the immediate context is you gave and really couldn't afford to and God's going to make up the need you now have. When we support God's work, we're quite literally playing a key strategic role in what God's doing.

We can do that as we support our church, a missionary, or a Christian organization. The ancient Christian church in Philippi supported the Apostle Paul. And in Philippians chapter 4, Paul thanked them for co-laboring with him in gospel ministry.

Paul knew that because they were supporting him, they ended up being a bit stretched financially themselves. They gave until it hurt and Paul wrote to thank and encourage them. In this message, Stephen Davey is looking at that thank you note from Paul. Watch someone who knows how to thank God and you'll be around someone who also knows how to thank other people too. Instead of complaining for the way people don't come through or the way things didn't work out as expected or even trails that didn't have escalators when it got steep, these people find a way to send a word of thanks and encouragement.

One author put it this way, the more mature prayers of thanksgiving are not those offered for the obvious blessings, but those spoken in gratitude for obstacles overcome, for insights gained, and for help received in time of need. By the way, that's exactly where you find the Apostle Paul. He's in a place in his own life where things didn't work out as he had expected. He is disappointed, no doubt, by the apparent lack of concern from the believers in Rome where he is under house arrest.

His trail has effectively dead ended in house arrest. What we can lose in our exposition of the book of Philippians is the fact that Paul is actually writing a thank you to these believers. In fact, this happens to be one of his motives in sending this letter, to thank this church for their support through financial gifts and prayer. Imagine, by the way, still, don't miss it, he's writing a thank you letter while in chains. It's not exactly the time when you might think, I want to write a thank you letter to somebody. Give me a little slack on this chain so I can write it, which is what he did. Sam Gordon wrote in his wonderful little commentary that this letter is the most famous thank you letter in church history. I agree.

I agree. So take your copy, would you? Let's go back again and pick up where we left off, this time at chapter 4 and verse 15. And what I'm going to do is literally cover this entire paragraph. It'll be miraculous, I'm sure, when we're all said and done. But what I want to do is work through these verses rather quickly, but give you five summary statements that sort of capture the content of this thank you letter.

And the first summary statement is this. Paul says, thank you for sharing with me, partnering with me in ministry. Notice verse 15. You yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel after I left Macedonia, no church shared with me, underline that, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, but you alone. Now what Paul is doing here is he's taking them back to the very beginning.

They've been at this now more than a decade, them supporting him and with him traveling. If you go back in time, if you were with us, it's about two years ago when we began this study, but when he first arrived in the city of Philippi, in the region of Macedonia, there were no Christians, there wasn't any church, there was no missionary, no gospel. Paul was the first one to arrive. By the time Paul left, and it wasn't long before he did, of course following the usual riot and time in prison, there was a church. It was meeting in the home of a wealthy woman, the first convert in Philippi.

In fact, she's the first convert in all of Europe. A woman by the name of Lydia who opened her home for this church. Now the members of that infant church would have included a former demon-possessed slave whom Paul had won by faith to Christ as he delivered to her the gospel, and she would have been joined by the entire family of the local warden who ran the nearby jail, and he'd come to faith after an earthquake had had all of the bonds and chains fall off Paul and Silas, and he'd had enough, and he said, what must I do to be saved? And he and his whole family believed, so they're there in this home and you have the beginnings of this wonderful little church.

Now Paul doesn't add any historical commentary in this thank-you letter. In fact, he just starts verse 15 by basically saying, you all know this already. You all know this.

We've been through this together. The generosity of the Philippian church goes back a long way. From that initial visit, this church will remain loyal and supportive of Paul. They will send him gifts from time to time, and since Paul was constantly on the move, they really needed a GPS tracking system which they didn't have because he'd kind of fall off the scene and they'd have trouble tracking him down.

And that seems to have happened here. When he was incarcerated in Rome, he'd lost track of him until finally they got news. He's incarcerated. He's in need.

He's even cold in the winter months. He has no financial support, and they immediately began a collection, sent it by way of Epaphroditus, and Paul writes them a letter to thank them, and that letter is called the book of Philippians. Just thank-you letter. Now we know from Paul's biography that's given to us in detail in the book of Acts that when he traveled, he'd take away his... he'd take along his tools to make tents. He was a tent maker. That's where we get that expression, tent maker or marketplace minister. He supported his missionary travels by selling, making and selling a half dozen tents or so, and his standard policy was to support himself. In fact, at one point, he refused gifts from the Corinthian church because they would have misinterpreted it, and they would have misrepresented him. But now he's under house arrest. He's totally dependent on the financial gifts of others, and as I read verse 15, I don't know about you, I had you mark it, but then the very last word strikes me.

I don't want to spend some time on it. It's that word alone. Alone. He writes to them this staggering revelation to us. No church but you alone.

Stop and let that sink in. This is late in Paul's ministry. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of churches, potential supporting churches. None of them, none of them captured either the vision of Paul or the value of Paul. Everybody just kind of forgot about him. One of the reasons I agree with one commentator who wrote that the Philippian church is worth remembering is because they were the church that remembered.

In fact, they never forgot Paul. Their financial and material gifts to him were really their own acts of gratitude for what he had done in their lives, and they were so thankful for what he had done. By the way, this becomes a wonderful place to pull over for just a moment and make sure that we thank together people in our lives who've impacted us.

Maybe it's a teacher or a discipler or a mentor who taught you and led you. Maybe even a pastor. I'm not saying that so you'll write me notes or give me money. Krispy Kreme is fine if you want to do that.

No, don't do that actually, please. But take time to write. A note. Give thanks to others. Now I want to point out the fact that Paul doesn't refer to their financial gifts as money. He never uses the word. But I want you to notice that he calls it here in verse 15, sharing.

Thank you for sharing. It's a word he's already used earlier in chapter 1, and it's translated partnering. It's from the word koinonia, from the koinon word group that means, by the way, we're going to have a little dinner after church and we're going to have some fellowship. This word koinon or koinonia refers to deep, sacrificial investment in partnering together. And Paul used that earlier as well in chapter 1 as he described this church as partakers.

Same root word. Partakers with me in grace is the way he put it. He's effectively saying, listen, for all these years now you have partnered together in not only experiencing with me the extravagant grace of God, you have worked with me to deliver that gospel message to our world. And now here in chapter 4, Paul once again uses that same root word as he writes here that you have shared with me in this matter. Now Paul implies, obviously, I did the preaching, I did the traveling, but I want you to understand he effectively says that you have partnered together with me in doing this. We are actually equal partners with one another.

Imagine being a partner with Paul. There's an unwritten volume here in their support. We know from other letters and accounts that other churches have begun criticizing Paul, his methods, even his emphasis on grace. There were those that were saying, you preach that and I mean everybody's just going to go, sin!

You can't tell them that, you know, it's all covered. Some of his letters, he explains the misconceptions and misinterpretations of churches and believers. There was a lot of heartburn over the ministry of the apostle Paul, not from this church.

They didn't buy into the majority opinion about this veteran missionary statesman. There was actually a sentiment we picked up from earlier passages where the church in Rome, where Paul right now is under house arrest, that the church in Rome seemed to have come to the conclusion that Paul is deserving of this incarceration. You pull aside a member of the church in Rome and they say, yeah, yeah, Paul, he's under house arrest. We don't know where it is because we haven't visited him.

And frankly, we believe he deserved it. So when Epaphroditus arrives with this, we're told that he had to search for Paul. Nobody in the church knew where he was.

Can you imagine? When he receives this gift from these believers in Philippi, he very transparently opens up his heart and he says, no other church has supported me but you alone. Can you imagine what this says about those other churches?

I mean, think for a moment. Where were those other churches? Where were those churches who, for whatever reason, missed it? I mean, they missed it. Paul even mentions, look at verse 16, that even Thessalonica, which is next door to their city, you sent a gift more than once for my needs.

I mean, where were the others? Can you imagine the embarrassment of receiving this letter 10, 20, 30 years after it's begun circulating and you're in another church and you hear the apostle Paul, who by that point had become a legend, say, no other church supported me but you in Philippi. You'd sit there and realize, hey, he's talking about us. Are we? Nineteen hundred years later, a church that would miss it. Would we miss it?

I pray not. Paul says, thank you for not forgetting me, for being faithful partners. Secondly, he says to them, and I'll summarize it this way, you are sharing in my reward.

It's a staggering thought. Verse 17, not that I seek the gift itself, but I seek for the profit which increases to your account. In other words, I'm thrilled to receive your gift for what it did for me, but I'm really thrilled because of what it's going to do for you.

It's going to do for you. Your gift is increasing to your own account, and of that, God will one day reward you. Imagine tagging on to the ministry of the apostle Paul and finding out that the reward he will be given from Christ is shared by you.

That's the staggering principle of co-laboring in ministry. And by the way, Paul is using financial terminology. He's using a banking term. The present participle translated increases.

The profit which increases to your account is a word that refers to the multiplication of compounding interest. So Paul is saying, effectively, get out your calculators, your spiritual calculators, and understand that the gifts you are giving me are actually multiplying your own spiritual interest, which is going directly into your ministry account, from which God will one day reward you. Every time you give a gift, every time you, as a member of this assembly, give a gift to a missionary, you are fellowshipping not just with their ministry, but their reward.

Wow. And really, frankly, here's the point. You're not giving anything away. You're not giving anything away.

The dividends will last forever. Nobody, beloved, thought Paul was worth the investment, but this church. They missed it. The other churches missed it.

I had a little bit of a tangible illustration. Not even my notes came to my mind at the first service. I remember standing in line at Cracker Barrel, which is where I go for devotions. At any rate, I'm standing in line.

It's a long line. I was alone. I think I was traveling.

I was alone. And there was a guy in front of me who was disturbed. He was upset. And I thought it was because of the line.

And it was a long line. And finally, we kind of engaged in conversation, and I said, you know, what's bothering you? And he said, oh, I missed it. What? He said, if I had only known, I would have invested in Cracker Barrel stock years ago, and he had it tabulated.

If I had done such and such an amount 20 years ago, I would be immensely wealthy. And he was there, I guess, to bother himself. Every time he went to eat, I was there for the pancakes and the maple syrup. He missed the investment.

And he'll never forget it. Imagine how all the other churches missed the most important, listen, the most important missionary in church history, the most strategic ambassador in church history. It makes me, frankly, shudder at the thought of, oh, God, what might we be missing? And here we are. By the way, the multiplication of the interest is still compounding to their account because here we are 1,900 years later saying we want to be just like the Philippians. They're still impacting. Can you imagine the potential God has given to us in what we've just seen? These graduates.

And really, hardly without the assembly knowing now 10, 11, 12 countries and 23 states, guess what? We're tagged to their ministry account. Thank you for being faithful partners. Thank you for sharing in my reward. Thirdly, Paul writes, you generously, your generosity took care of everything I needed. Your generosity took care of everything I needed. Look at verse 18. But I have received everything in full and have an abundance. I am amply supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent. Now, what Paul does here is say the same thing three different ways to give emphasis.

First, he writes, I have received everything in full. This is another commercial overtone in the language that refers to payment that settles all past debts. Paul was responsible to pay the rent for this apartment where he was under house arrest.

That was the established rule of law. He was in arrears. He didn't have any money. So Paul is effectively saying here, your gift settled all my debt, paid the rent from the past, and now I have some even for the future. Next, he writes, I have everything in abundance. This translates a Greek verb that means it's just overflowing.

So they're not giving to him just enough. They're giving to him so much that he's overflowing in their generosity. Finally, he says, I am amply supplied. That means I am completely stocked. I am completely filled. Paul now provides even more incentives.

Number four, I would summarize it this way. What you did for me is something God took note of. What you did for me is something God took note of. Notice the latter part of verse 18, having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, here's what it is, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God. Paul shifts in his terminology from the bank to the temple. And he wants them and us to understand that these gifts are like sacrifices. They're laid on the altar as it were to the glory of God. We as priests, the holy priesthood, 1 Peter, effectively, metaphorically, give sacrifices to God. And that language is used metaphorically in the Bible. Even David in Psalm 51 says that the sacrifices which are acceptable to God are broken heart.

Have you given him that lately? A contrite, humble spirit. That's an acceptable sacrifice. Paul would write to the Romans to put your bodies on the altar as living sacrifices, Romans 12. The writer of Hebrews says offer to God the sacrifice of praise, Hebrews 13, verse 15. And later on in that same chapter he writes, and do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. And now here to the Philippians, Paul wants them to understand that they haven't simply given them money. He wants them to understand that their gift wasn't related to their wealth, their gift was really related to their worship. He says you built an altar and you placed on that altar precious things. And I want you to know that that offering was observed by God because it's like sweet aroma ascending to him. God took note. Paul adds another encouragement for these needy Philippian believers who gave out of their own poverty.

I summarize it with his fifth statement. God will respond to your needs like you responded to mine. That's what Paul says.

God will respond to your needs just like you responded to mine. Verse 19, and my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in or by Christ Jesus. I love the way he begins that. That's a sermon we could, you know, camp out there.

But my God, I love that. But my God, not just any God. There's nothing God's can't do anything.

My God, the true and living God, my God, not the gods of the Pantheon, Greek or Roman, not the gods of Egypt, not the gods of the Athenians. My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches. That can be understood adverbially to mean in return for how you gave generously to me, God is going to give generously to you.

The only difference is the Philippians had limited funds. God's funds are not limited. Paul says he's going to give you, notice the text carefully, he will give to you according to his riches.

Here's what that means. Suppose I need some money and you happen to have a million dollars, one million dollars. It's free and clear, you don't owe it to anybody, it's just kind of laying in your ranking account, just ready for somebody like me to come along and say I got a need. If you said to me, Stephen, I appreciate you telling me you've got that need, so here's a check and you write out a check and you hand it to me for $10. You would be giving to me out of your riches. But if you gave me your checkbook and you said, Stephen, here's a blank check, you fill in what you need and I'll give it to you up to one million dollars, because that's how much I have. That would be giving to me according to your riches.

Go back to this text and look again. But my God will supply all your needs according to his riches. And how rich is he?

He's very rich. Now keep in mind that the context here has to do with God meeting the needs of the Philippians as they met the needs of Paul. Paul isn't saying here that God will give Christians a blank check for whatever they think they want. He's not saying you can have anything you want to have, or anything you tell God you think you need.

Here's the meaning. God will give us what we truly need as a result of giving our time and treasure to help others in need. In fact, the implication of the immediate context is you gave and really couldn't afford to and God's going to make up the need you now have.

Which is what the Philippians did. You come to the end of this kind of paragraph and you end up trusting. You end up exercising faith in God. You end up worshiping God.

You end up giving glory to God for the fact that he opened your eyes to some particular investment that you're so grateful you didn't miss. And Paul kind of breaks out in this thank you letter and he says, okay, let's sing. And he adds this doxological statement in verse 20. Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Notice, by the way, how he shifts from my God in verse 19 to our God in verse 20. Paul is effectively saying I want you all to sing with me. Let's all sing this doxological statement of truth that we're still singing to this day.

The glory of God which will be forever and ever. And then he writes amen which proves he's Baptist, right? Amen. Amen means yes, that's true. That's what that means, by the way. It also means and so shall it be. Amen, so shall it be. True. Paul was writing this in a way that kind of invites the entire Philippian assembly and they would have seen that doxological formula and they would have known what they were supposed to do.

So if we read it correctly with the intonation that the reader would have read it in the assembly, it's kind of like this. Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

And all the people would say amen. It's true. It's true. It shall come to pass.

It is true. And what can any of us do but praise God for his extravagant grace? I sure hope this time in God's Word has encouraged you today. You've tuned in to Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey.

I'm Scott Wiley. Stephen's in a series called Extravagant Grace. Today's lesson is entitled The Most Famous Thank You Letter in Church History.

We have one more lesson to go in this series and we'll bring you that next time. I invite you to give us a call today if you're interested in owning a copy of this series on CD. Our number here in the office is 866-48-BIBLE. You can call us each weekday at that number. Many of our listeners like having CDs in their library of biblical resources and we can help you with that. We also have this and all of Stephen's teaching online that you can access free of charge. The web address is wisdomonline.org and the phone number once again is 866-48-BIBLE. You can send Stephen a note if you address it to Wisdom for the Heart, PO Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. Please join us again next time for more Wisdom for the Heart. .