Episode #119 - Fight... for Unity (Phil 4:3)

0:00If you turn your ear to wisdom, cry aloud for understanding. If you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Welcome to Project Philippians, a deep dive into one of the richest treasure minds in Scripture. And delighted to have you join me today for another excavation, you do an amazing 2000-year-old work. Hey guys, welcome back. You know, one of the common themes that we've been talking about in this podcast is the idea of unity. Unity in the church, church unity has been a really important topic on Paul's mind. It's woven throughout this book of Philippians. And I was just reminded yesterday I was talking with a friend reminiscing about something that happened years ago in my life. Back when I was a pastor of a college group in Portland, Oregon, shout out to all you Montevilla friends out there.

1:00Hey, send me an email, will you? I was just a delightful time of my life and a wonderful opportunity to learn about serving the Lord. But one of the most profound events that happened to me was I was invited to participate in what was called a pastor's prayer summit. Now, these were annual events put together by some of the founders of Multnomah Bible College and some other ministries. And they invited pastors from all over the city of Portland, Oregon. And so there was about a hundred men who went up to a conference center for four days. And these were pastors from every different background, every theological background, the denominational background, ethnic background, the diversity was stunning. And so we got together. But for four days, we did basically nothing but pray and fellowship and worship together. There was no other agenda. It was just get on our knees and pray and sing together for hour after hour after hour. I have to tell you, it was stunning to hear all these men, these different ages and different

2:03backgrounds getting together and praying to God to come and reveal Himself to the church and the city of Portland, Oregon. It was just, it was beautiful. But one of the things that came out of that event was that there was one particular year during the summit was announced that Billy Graham was going to visit Portland, Oregon. He had been invited to come and he was going to come and do one of his crusades in Portland, Oregon. This is back in the 90s. And I remember his team came in the months in advance to prepare the city for the crusade. They wanted to train people to be counselors for this crusade. So they sponsored what were called Christian life and witness classes. And these were intended to be classes at multiple churches throughout the city where people would come who wanted to be counselors at the Billy Graham crusade. And they were expecting 100 people in each church to come. They wanted to have several hundred people available. Well, they planned, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was maybe five or ten

3:04different churches where they would have these classes. And I remember going the first one, I'll never forget, the church was absolutely packed out there. We're not hundreds, but thousands of people cramming into this church. They had to open up all the different rooms for overflow rooms. And people were just hungry to be part of what God was doing. And that happened at church after church, after church, tens of thousands of Christians were coming together. It was the closest thing that I had ever seen to a revival of the church. And people were just so hungry to see God come. And it was just a time of worship and prayer and preparation. And when Billy Graham came, the stadiums were filled, the overflow stadiums were filled. It was just the spirit of God who came in power on Portland over those weeks. And I saw and heard about many different salvation miracles and just beautiful stories that came at that time. But I believe in my heart that the power of that event could be traced back to that time

4:05at the Cannon Beach Conference Center where those 150 pastors got on our knees together and prayed and worshiped God in true spiritual unity. It was this united call to God that he listened to and he responded to. And we saw the powerful impact on our city as a result. And so ever since that time, I have just had a powerful desire to see God continue to build unity in the church today. And it's something that I know was absolutely critical to Paul as well. He wanted, he knew that God wanted to see unity in the church today. And that's why it was a theme of this book. And that's why we've been talking about it. And that's why we're going to talk about it again today. Because last time in our episode, we talked about a couple of people who were threatening the unity of the church. They had a dispute between them, some sort of an argument. And Paul basically told them, stop fighting.

5:06Stop fighting. It is too critical. Church unity is just too critical. But that wasn't the end of his instruction to these folks. He didn't want them just to stop fighting. He wanted them to start fighting. To start fighting for unity. And that's what we're going to look at today. The battle for unity. But first, let's pray. Holy Spirit, you love. When your children love. Lord, we want to be people who are lovers, loving those around us, loving our brothers and sisters at Christ, loving you and loving those whom you love. And so God, that's what you want to work into our life. But it's not an easy process. And so I asked it today, you would help us to hear it once again. How can we do this? What can we do to become more like Jesus who loved us? Guide us in that today. We pray, Lord Jesus. Thank you. We love you. Amen. Well, hey, friends, this is Kevin. Welcome back to Project Philippians, our weekly excavation into the treasure mine of Philippians.

6:10And we are studying unity. And that's not a topic that we talk about very much today. And I don't know exactly why, because there's such, I mean, conflict, escalation of conflict in our communities and in our country, in our world. It's just at unprecedented levels. The division and disunity is just catastrophic across society. And I am so convinced that God wants to use his church to bring healing and reconciliation in ways that would just be miraculous. But it's got to start by churches that are fighting for unity inside the church of God. And I'm not just talking about the church unity inside a single church building, but across denominational boundaries and divides. We need to be a people who represent the oneness of the triune God. And so that's what God is trying to do in our lives.

7:12And I believe that that's what Paul wrote this letter of Philippians for. There was one of the primary reasons he took his pen in his hand and wrote down this letter. It was because he saw that unity was being threatened in the church and he wanted to somehow encourage these people to come back to this realization that their united love for each other was their most powerful gift to the world. But as we saw last week, there was a problem. There were some people probably in leadership who were having a dispute between them that was threatening this unity. And so we talked last week about how he came to these people and he said, listen, Yodia, listen, sentiki, I played with you. Please find a way to amulacably reconcile your dispute between each other, come together and find a way to have the mind of Christ, to have Christ's mindset on your situation. This is not just a dispute between the two of you.

8:14This represents the theology of the church. And Paul went back all the way to chapter 2 where he painted a picture of what unity looks like as an outgrowth of our understanding of who Jesus is and what he did for us. And he presented this beautiful hymn to Christ in chapter 2, this extraordinary crystallological hymn that put Christ at the center of the universe. And now he's taking that picture of who Christ was in his self-sacrificial loving service to humanity. And he said, all of that means nothing unless it can be applied and into the story of a dispute between two bickering people. It has to be real in our day-to-day lives or else let's not real at all. But anyone who's tried to build relationships in a church like meaningful deep life-changing relationships, you know that there's always going to be some pushback, there's going

9:15to be some opposition and barriers to that type of relationship because that's God's stuff right there. You know, that's the stuff that Christ wants to do in our lives, build these deep relationships. And so obviously the enemy is going to come in and he's going to attack and he's going to throw in all sorts of burgeoned brambles that are going to try to separate us. What's our tendency? Our tendency is to drift away from unity, to drift into contempt or contention or conflict. And Paul says, you need to find the mind of Christ. But what's interesting about this passage that we're going to look at today is that Paul didn't just speak to the people who were in the middle of a fight. I mean, he addressed them by name, which is kind of unique. He addressed them specifically and told them, get together, get connected and connected to Jesus. But he didn't leave it with just them. He says, it's not just your responsibility. And that's what we're going to look at today.

10:16So read with me. We're going to start in verse two, Philippians chapter four. He says, I plead with Yodia and I plead with Sintiki to be of the same mind in the Lord. Verse three, yes and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are written in the book of life. So he looks at these two people who are having dispute and he says, you need to work on this. But then he points his finger at someone else and he says, listen, I need you to be involved in the situation too. I want you to come alongside and help these women. So the principle that is laying out here is that unity and the battle and fight for unity is the responsibility of all of us, not just those who are arguing, but all of us have an obligation and a responsibility to fight for unity in Christ's church.

11:19Okay. So let's look at these words again. So in verse two, he's pleading with these women and selling them to stab the same mind in the Lord. And then in verse three, he's turning to someone else and he's saying, yes and I ask you, my true companion, help these women. Okay. So we got to peel this apart a little bit. Who is he talking to? Now those of you who listened to our little excurses last week into the life of Luke know that it's been my theory, my hypothesis for some time now that he is referring to Luke here because Luke had spent six years of his life as a pastor to the church in Philippi and he was a man who was a true companion of Paul's, a true Yoke fellow, which is the Greek word here, somebody sharing the same plow yoke that Paul had been pulling on all these years. And so I believe that it may have been Luke here that he was referring to. But that's a hypothesis. There's been lots of speculation and theories over the centuries of who he might be talking

12:19to because he doesn't name him. Now in the Greek, the word is Susage and that some people said, well, maybe he is talking to a man named Susage, but the problem is that unlike Yodia, Sintiki and Clement, those are common names that are found on inscriptions throughout ancient literature, but Susage has never been found as a name. So most people don't think it was a name. Most people think he was referring to this person anonymously. And I think that would be perfectly fitting if it was Luke. But another possibility is that he wasn't referring to any specific person that he was just speaking to the people of Philippi and saying, listen, you've heard my request for unity. And if any of you are true companions, if any of you consider yourself one of my friends and a true friendly person, then prove that now by getting involved in this specific situation, which is threatening to jeopardize everything that we hold dear as a church, get involved.

13:21And you know, right away, Paul is commanding us right there to do something that is utterly counter-cultural and goes against our grain. Because if you are like me and like most people I know, then our tendency is to not get involved in other people's business. If we see a situation where people are in a conflict, our natural tendency is to steer wide around that and to say, oh, hope that works out well for you. But I'm not getting involved because if I get involved, then I'm going to get shrapnel. I'm going to, if I come in between these two people, there's going to be conflict that's going to be blowback on me. And I just don't want to take that risk. So I'm just going to stay clear. That I think is our tendency. But Paul here is saying that that is not our prerogative. He is saying that unity and love and community is too precious and too rare of commodity for

14:23us to just leave it to chance. And so he says, we must fight. We must fight against our natural inclination to avoid conflict and to mind our own business. We need to fight for unity. Notice he doesn't instruct these two ladies to ask for help. He instructs his true friend to offer help to get involved. Now, I'm just going to say right up front what I think you're probably thinking as well that, hey, that listen, Paul, that is a tall command. That's asking a lot. I'll just be honest, I don't feel like I have what it takes to be of any value or help in these situations. I can't say anything here. And you know, so as I've just been sitting with this verse this last week or so, just pondering that response, that natural response in my heart, I just, I've come to the conclusion

15:25that what Paul is trying to communicate to us is simply this. He wants us, all of us, to have a heart to help when it's hard for heaven's sake. That's kind of the outline of what I'm going to talk about. He had Paul wants us and the Lord wants us to have a heart to help when it's hard for heaven's sake. He wants us to have a heart and a desire for this. And I can tell you, I have a memory that came back to me just recently of when God first began to put that heart into me. I remember I was a teenager and I was out in the parking lot of a mall and I saw this family coming out of a store together and climbing into their car together. And they were at each other's throats. They were just yelling and bickering and shouting just the most disrespectful, unloving, and gracious words you can imagine between a family. And I remember just sitting there thinking about that and just stunned.

16:27And I remember asking God, Lord, I don't think there's anything I could do to help this family. But will you help me to someday become the type of person who could? Would you help me to someday be the type of person who could speak life into such a hopeless situation like the one I saw tonight? And I really believe that God used that to begin to build a heart into me of a desiring to be a peacemaker. And I still have a long way to go. I'll tell you what, but he began the process of giving us a heart. And I think that's what Paul is calling on us as well. He wants to give us a heart, a sensitivity, a desire to see the intrinsic value of harmony and unity. It's kind of like a music teacher. If you've ever been in a band or a choir, one of the things that the teacher tries to get the people in the class to do is to listen to those around them. And to begin to get a sensitivity for when your notes are just a little bit off from the

17:30other people's notes, there's a discordant sound there when you're not quite in tune with each other. And so it's by listening to each other that you begin to build the sensitivity and appreciation for being in tune and being harmonious. Now, one of the ways that Paul expresses this in this passage is by using this really interesting word play. Now long time listeners will remember that Paul is a word Smith. He loves to build words together, compound words made up of different parts. And there's this one prefix that he uses often in this book. And it is the prefix soon or sin. It's S-U-N or S-Y-N. It's not always obvious in the English, but in the Greek, he takes a number of different words and he puts this soon prefix on the began and soon or sin in the Greek means together. It has the emphasis on being connected or coming together, like the word synagogue means a place where they would come together to pray and to worship.

18:34What's interesting is that in the book of Philippians, he uses this particular prefix all over the place. It's just scattered several times on lots of different words. My count he uses is at 16 times in these four short chapters where he takes a verb and he puts this soon prefix on it, it means together. So he talks about sharing together or working together or rejoicing together or even fighting together over and over again. He talks about coming together to do things as a connected body. But what's interesting is that in this particular passage, verses two and three Paul uses a cluster of those words. He uses at least four times. Five, if you count Sintiki's name, she has that prefix as well. He uses this compound prefix that means togetherness five times. So it's like he's pounding a drum just saying, you need to come together to help together. These women who have labored together at my side along with the others who have worked

19:35together with me, it's like he wants to remind them of this extraordinary privilege of togetherness. He wants to build in their heart a hunger to be together, to be united. But the second thing is he wants us to have a heart to help and that is critical. He wants us to help to assist to come alongside. In fact, the word he uses here for help these women is another one of those connection words. It's the word soon Lombano, which literally means to come together to lend a hand. And the idea here is this is not something you can do from a distance. This is not like rendering a judgment from on high or coming alongside and just shouting advice from the sidelines. This is getting involved personally and getting up close to the situation. This word is not a word that Paul uses anywhere else, but Luke uses it in Luke chapter

20:37five when he's talking about the disciples who were fishing and they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and soon Lombano to come and help lend a hand. Get up close. And just shout advice from the other boat. Get over here. We need your help. And that's the type of idea that Paul is trying to express here. We need to come alongside because this unity and this harmony is too important to just leave up to chance to leave up to these people who can't maybe see things clearly when they're so enmeshed in the conflict itself. So somebody with a heart of love needs to come alongside to help them. So there's another biblical word for this concept. It's the word peacemaker. And an author who's written more about this than anyone else I know is a man by the name of Ken Sandy. He's got a book called The peacemaker. It's a biblical guide to resolving personal conflicts. And in that book, he makes a statement.

21:38He says peacemakers breathe grace. They draw on the goodness and power of Jesus Christ and then bring His love and mercy and forgiveness and wisdom to the conflicts of daily life. God delights to breathe His grace through peacemakers, using them to dissipate anger, improve understanding, promote justice and encourage repentance and reconciliation. I love that line, peacemakers breathe grace. You can just visualize that, can't you? It's the picture of a man or a woman who can come into a conflict situation, come into a place where people are tense and irritable and at each other's throats. And they can just breathe out the grace that God has breathed into their lives, that the Holy Spirit is breathing through them. Christ's love and mercy and forgiveness. And that is the picture that I think Paul is painting of a man or woman who comes alongside

22:39to help in times of conflict. And one of Ken Sande's writings, he tells a story of a pastor who came to one of these peacemaker training conferences that Ken puts on. And afterwards on his drive home, he heard about this conflict in his town. We had to do with a football team at his local high school. And he heard about that and he got home. He talked to his wife about it and she said, you've been trained now in peacemaking. You should go and help resolve that conflict. And the pastor first said, no, I'm a pastor of a church, not of a high school. And he did not want to get involved. But he was finally persuaded. He picked up the phone and he called the principal and offered help and she accepted his offer. And he went down to that school and he spoke to the parties that were in conflict. And he said he went with fear and trembling. But he said he just felt like the Holy Spirit gave him words that were able to defuse the situation and diminish the tension in the room. He was, and he just asked questions and probed. With loving, gentle heart, he was able to steer them towards reconciliation.

23:41And it was just a beautiful thing. But that very story reminds me of the third thing in this passage that God highlighted for me this week. He wants us to have a heart to help when it's hard, when it's hard. Because conflict resolution is not easy at all. It's challenging. It's hard. We feel like we don't have what it takes the equipment to be able to speak to people who are having conflict. That's a scary thing to do. It takes wisdom. It takes tact. It takes patience. It's just so difficult. And so often I'm afraid we just, we say to ourselves, let's just let them deal with it on their own or go out and take it to court or something. And Paul actually speaks to that very idea in 1 Corinthians. On chapter 6, he's talking to another group of people that are having conflicts. And these people are suing each other and taking it to the public courts. And Paul rebukes them in 1 Corinthians 6. 5, he says, I say this to your shame.

24:42Is it possible that there's nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? And I believe his point there is, he's saying, of course there is. Of course there are people in your church who are wise enough to help you through this dispute. And why? Because that's what the Holy Spirit wants to do. That's why he gives us spiritual gifts. That's why the Holy Spirit wants to come in us. And breathe his grace through us even when it's hard. Now I think that in this Philippians 4 passage, we get some hints about how to do that. And that's what I want to look at next. Because knowing that it's hard, it helps us when we have some equipment. And so Paul gives us some equipment. Or perhaps it's better to say he lays down some principles that will help equip us to become peacemakers. The first principle I see is just what we talked about when we were looking at Yodia and Sintiki and how he addressed them with respect. He didn't take sides. He didn't shame or blame. He just came in and with love, he expressed his heart of love for both of them equally.

25:48And so that's the model that we need to follow. That when we are working with people who are contentious, we need to start from a level of love. So I haven't had a lot of opportunities in the church situation to resolve conflicts. But as a manager of software development organization, I've had many opportunities to help resolve issues amongst the staff at my company. And over the years, I feel like I've gotten pretty good at it. I didn't, when I was younger, I just did not feel like I had the stuff to help resolve things. But I've come to learn that God has given me a special gift. And that is the gift of listening. I'm able to listen. And that's what I bring to these situations. When I have a couple of people in my office or in a conference room who are arguing or disagreeing or contentious with each other, I start with a foundation of respectful listening. And I've become very good at just asking probing questions in a way that doesn't shame or blame anybody or point fingers, but it just communicates that I'm very interested in

26:53their perspective and their view. And I'll be honest, sometimes they can't articulate it very well. And so it takes a lot of work just to understand and listen. I keep asking questions until I understand it. And then once I do, then I can translate that into words that the other person might be able to understand too. And I could say, well, what I hear you saying is this. And does that make sense to you too? And I turn to the other party. And I'll just have these conversations where they can tell that I care about them. And I care not about them winning, but I care about the joy that comes when a team can work together. And so we work through difficult issues. And although that's never an easy thing, it is, I always come out of those situations feeling like the Spirit of God used me in that time. And that is a joyful privilege that that's the Holy Spirit wants to do this. Not only in your church or in your small groups, but even in your jobs or your dorms or wherever God has you stationed right now.

27:54OK, there's a few more principles here in Marana at times. So let me just blow them real quick. The second principle I see is he says, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel. And when I first read that, I wonder why did he bring that up? And I think that the answer is that he wants this loyal companion, this peacemaker, to remind him that these people are worthy of admiration, that we need to see people with God's eyes. And remember that these are people who either have been or have the potential to be someday teammates in God's kingdom. And so the principle here is to not come in with a feeling of superiority. It's so easy for us that when we see people fighting to look down on them and to disrespect them because of their contentious attitudes, and Paul wants to help us to not come in with a superiority, but to come in with love and a heart of service and a heart of respect and admiration for these people, to look up to them and not down on them.

28:58Now, speaking of respect, I think that there's another principle buried in here. It's just a subtle clue, but I think he's telling his true companion to look at these women and not to look down upon them for their gender either. And the way I get that is because he says, help these women who have contended at my side along with climate and the rest of my fellow workers. Now we don't know who climate is. He's not mentioned elsewhere, but he's obviously somebody that the Philippians knew and respected. And Paul is saying, understand that these women were esteemed teammates of mine at the same level as climate. So don't look down upon them as being inferior in some way or don't look down upon even their gender or their politics or whatever else. These are my teammates. I love them just like I love you. And then at the end of the verse, there's one last principle that he lays before us to help us when it's hard. And that is to remind us that these people that we're working with and that we're fighting

29:59for and that we're praying with and that we're trying to bring together. The reason we're doing it is because their names are written in the book of life. Now unfortunately, I don't have time to data unpack the meaning of that phrase. And we're going to look at it again next episode. But I believe that the essence is that he wants to remind his loyal yoke fellow, his true companion, who's the peacemaker coming in this and also remind Eudia and Sintiki themselves that this is for heaven's sake that we are working and fighting for unity. We're doing it because you are citizens of heaven. And as citizens of heaven, we're called to live to a different standard. We're called to live as children of God, members of one family. And so my friends, this is part of what it means to be a Christ follower. It's to be one who wants to seek peace and to become a peacemaker in Christ's family.

31:04Now of course, this doesn't mean that we're supposed to overlook sin or overlook false doctrine or just have peace and unity at all costs and forget about our distinctions. There's time to fight for truth and righteousness also. But the point here is that we need to be people who, though we are earnestly desiring righteousness and godliness in the church, we also must be earnestly desiring, a loving unity, a fellowship of loving communion between each other. That's the picture that Paul is yearning for and that's the painting that he wants us to have. And why? Look, my friends, because that is the heart of God. When Jesus came on this planet, one of the first things he said when he preached on the sermon on the Mount was blessed are the peacemakers. And do you remember how he concluded that blessing? He said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

32:09When we are working and fighting for unity and communion between believers, we are expressing our nature as children of the God who loves to love. And that is our privilege to be ambassadors of his peace in a world that is filled with contention. Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing peace. Jesus, thank you for dying so that we could have peace, not only peace with you, peace with God, but also peace with brothers and sisters who we might normally not get along very well with. And so Lord Jesus, I come to you and I ask that you would help us send your spirit again to give us the wisdom and grace to be able to breathe grace in lives and in situations where there is currently contention and pain and frustration and bitterness.

33:12Teach us how to have hearts that want to intervene and want to help and then give us the wisdom to know how by the Spirit of God within us. Thank you, Jesus. We love you. Amen. It's been an honor to have you spend this time with me, but don't let it end here. May the words of God continue to resonate in your heart and transform your life until the day you meet on glorious King and Savior face to face. Amen.