Sermon Central
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To Live: Humility Series
Contributed by Mark Nichols on Aug 5, 2009 (message contributor)
Summary: Paul says that if we want to have joy in this life, we must learn to get along with those in the church...and that is going to require humility on our part!
TEXT: Philippians 2:1-11
TITLE: To Live: Humility (part 4)
SERIES: TO LIVE
TOPIC: Humility
OCCASION: Burnside Christian Church, June 5, 2009
PROP.: Paul wants us to continue to get along…and to continue to get along with one another, it will require HUMILITY!
INTRODUCTION: Good morning! Turn to the book of Philippians with me. We are studying the entire book of Philippians…all four chapters. It will take us a total of 10 weeks.
I’ve asked you to do two things while we are studying this book together.
1. Bring your Bible and a Pen. Hold up your Bible and pen today!
2. Read through the book of Philippians
I want you to take ownership of this book. Read it as though Paul is writing this letter with your name at the top of it! I want you to become familiar with this book.
If you’re new with us, we are on week 3 of a message series called: To Live.
And what we’re doing is we are going through the book of Philippians verse by verse and learning what Paul tells us on how we are to live!
And that seems strange to you and me because Paul is a prisoner. Now normally, you and I wouldn’t take advice on how to live life from a prisoner.
But what makes Paul so different is that he is in prison…falsely accused of being a blasphemer and a traitor…he’s been beaten…he’s away from friends and family and yet…HE HAS JOY!
That is someone I want to learn life from, how about you?
So here are the big ideas we’ve learned so far from Paul:
Week 1 - To Live - Grace & Peace
What we learned in week one is that Paul is a slave of Jesus Christ. And because Paul is a slave of Jesus Christ there are two things that he has that he wants us to have: GRACE & PEACE! How do you get God’s grace? How do experience a peace in life that only Jesus can give? Become a slave of Jesus Christ!
Week 2 - To Live - Grow. In week 2 we learned that God is working in your life…RIGHT NOW! God is working because He wants you to grow! He wants to shape you and mould you into the person He desires you to be. And God is causing you to grow by using bad times in your life…all the stuff that you are going through and living through right now, God is using that to shape you into the person he wants you to be! But God is also causing you to grow using good times too.
Week 3 - To Live - Deliverance. Last week we learned Paul was confident he was going to be delivered. It was going to take time and while we are waiting to be delivered, there is three things you need to do:
1. Read God’s word
2. Continue Your Mission
3. Understand God’s plans are perfect
We now find ourselves in Philippians chapter 2:1-11
Before we read our text this morning, I want to give you a little background of the church.
--The composition of the Philippian Church
You can read about how this church got started in Acts 15 & 16. So I want to tell you a little bit about this church.
The city of Philippi is around 50,000 in size. It was very much a roman city…even though it’s located in what we know as Greece. It was composed of several ex-Roman military types…once these soldiers were done serving the emperor, they would move their families to this city and settle down.
So Paul has come to visit this city to start a church there. And even though it was a Roman city, it was multi-cultural. It had men, women, slaves, people who were free…it was a diverse area.
And this is the flavor that the church in Philippi was soon going to have. It was very diverse…in fact, here are the people we know belonged to the church there….
THE FIRST PERSON TO JOIN THE CHURCH WAS A WOMAN NAMED…
1. Lydia. She was a business woman, she sold purple clothes. She had heard the message of Jesus Christ from Paul and her and her entire family were the first members who were baptized into Christ!
THE SECOND KNOWN CONVERT TO THE PHILIPPIAN CHRISTIAN CHURCH was a..
2. Slave girl. - She was probably a teenager. She was possessed by a demon. And what the apostle Paul did was he cast out the demon and it ended up getting him in trouble but it freed the girl from the influence of that demon.
THE NEXT PERSON TO JOIN THE CHURCH WAS…
Probably an ex-Roman soldier who has now become a
3. Prison Guard
You see, after Paul had gotten rid of the demon in the girl, Paul got in trouble and went to prison because that demon possessed girl was making her owners a lot of money because she could tell the future. So the owners of the slave girl had Paul put in prison.
