Intro to Philippians

It was a nice place, Philippi. A Greek city, just a few miles in from the seaside resort of Neapolis (home of the ice-cream), but in 42 BC it had become a Roman colony. Mark Anthony and Emperor Augustus had fought there to beat Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar.

Philippi was a small city by our standards - 10,000 people. Smaller than Leyland. But now very Roman: governed by Roman law, lived in by Roman ex-pats, who dressed like Romans (tight jeans and handbags), spoke Latin (‘Ciao!’) and built all the public buildings the Roman way - libraries, coliseums, amphitheatres, the works.






That was for the ruling class. The rest still spoke Greek, wore their Greek togas, ate moussaka and worked as builders, tradesmen, shopkeepers. These were the underclass. They would have made up most of the small church that Paul wrote to in about 60 AD - the letter we begin looking at on Sunday: ‘Philippians’.

The hopes and fears of all the years

How do you start to talk about someone like Jesus? If you bump into someone and they say to you, ‘Who is this Jesus? I’ve heard of him - who is he?’, where do you start? Do you say, ‘He’s the Son of God’? That’s not very clear to people. Do you say he’s the Christ, the Messiah? That would take some explaining. How about ‘The Miracle Maker’? That doesn’t quite do it either.

Matthew starts his account of Jesus with a trace back through time - a long family history of Jesus. He starts to talk about Jesus with the hopes and expectations of over 2000 years of history, and he says in this one man, it all comes together!

Jesus, coming to earth, brings the answer to all the troubles, all the longings, of the world … of our lives. He is “the son of David, the son of Abraham”.

John Calvin on 'trials'

John Calvin

John Calvin (1509-1564) was a man who knew all about suffering. But here's what he said to those who accused the Reformers, the preachers of the true gospel, of stirring up trouble:

"Here is, as it were, a certain characteristic of the divine Word, that it never comes forth while Satan is at rest and sleeping. This is the surest and most trustworthy mark to distinguish it from lying doctrines, which readily present themselves, are received with attentive ears by all, and are listened to by an applauding world...