A Supply of Glory

[0:00] So, Philippians 4, 19-23, this will top us off on the book of Philippians. That will be the tail end here. And so here we go, Philippians chapter 4, 19-23.

[0:19] Let's read the text together before we dive all the way in. And my God will supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

[0:32] Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren who are with me greet you.

[0:44] All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. Amen.

[0:56] So, let's just kind of go back a little bit and think what we've already talked about. And, you know, particularly last week, what we were seeing is that the Philippians had given to Paul.

[1:09] They had sent Epaphroditus to him to provide for him. He's sending back a thank you letter. And so as he's doing so, he's telling them thank you for the gift.

[1:23] But he's encouraging them to continue to do so. Now, you've got to remember, they're a poor church. They don't have a lot. They've been through a lot of difficulties.

[1:36] And so you might think to yourself that maybe they might would think or say to Paul, Well, Paul, we've given you a gift, but we really just can't do any more.

[1:50] We don't have enough. And we've got to take care of our own needs and our own families. So what are we supposed to do with this? Well, so I think that's why Paul comes to verse 19, is that he wants to encourage them about their giving and about needs in general.

[2:12] And he's telling them that there's three things that will help to encourage them in their giving. And one of those things is going to be God's promise.

[2:22] In verse 19, there's a promise that Paul is saying that's from God. And my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

[2:36] So what is that action that God is going to take in this verse? What action is he taking? He's going to supply everything.

[2:47] He's going to supply. Now, your translation that you have, what word does yours use besides the word supply? Meat. Meat. Okay. Somebody else?

[2:58] You got another one? Supply, meat. Okay. Let's then take a look at what's the source of this supply that he's going to give.

[3:15] He's going to meet their needs. He's going to supply their needs from what source? Glory in Christ Jesus. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. The riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

[3:29] And we want to kind of think about these two phrases and these two words. This word supply is a word that means to fill something up. So have you ever taken and you had your cup of coffee and you were about, well, you had your cup and you were going to get your coffee.

[3:46] Now, if you don't drink coffee, something's wrong with you. But you got your cup and you start pouring the coffee in. And as you do, you get it right to the top.

[3:57] Maybe you weren't looking and it spills over the edge. Right? But there is a point at which you can fill your cup fuller than what it can do.

[4:07] Right? There's this property of water that as you fill it, it'll hold together right there on the top in a little bubble. If you poke it, it'll start to drip over the side. Now, that's when it is full to the fill.

[4:19] Right? It is just overabundantly full. But it's that point right there. This word supply means to fill to that point.

[4:31] There's no room for anything else. It is filled to that point. That's what this word is. So he's saying that God is going to fill all your needs.

[4:43] Okay? Well, then the text says, according to. According to. Do you see that? That is a strange way of talking.

[4:57] According to. If I needed gas money and you gave me $20 for gas, you would be filling up my need from your source.

[5:21] Not according to your source. That's two different things. If you give me $20 for gas, the bottom line for you is $20 less.

[5:38] Right? Your supply diminishes if you give me from your supply. But if you have the capability of giving to me according to your supply, that means you could give me all the way up to all that you have, and it would never diminish what you have.

[5:57] That's what this is saying. Is that God gives us not something that diminishes His ability to give. It doesn't diminish His riches.

[6:09] But He can give to us according to His riches, so that we can have all of His riches, and He would never diminish in any of His riches at all.

[6:26] I think that's a beautiful thought. I mean, that's why He can meet my needs and your needs at the same time. Right? He just never diminishes in these riches.

[6:38] This word riches, this, if somebody in that culture was this word, they were the 1%.

[6:48] Their supply or their wealth was unusual for the circumstances. They had and owned so much that everyone looked to them as somebody who was unusual because they had more wealth than everyone else.

[7:06] That's who God is, is He's got more than everyone else. And it's specifically the riches in glory in Christ Jesus. It's the riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

[7:22] This word glory, this word glory is the sum total of all the attributes of God. It's the brilliance.

[7:34] If you were to take all of God and who He is and turn it into light, it would be blinding to us. We couldn't see it. So as we think about it, it's overwhelming.

[7:46] It's just all of who He is. So He's supplying our needs, filling up our needs according to the riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

[7:59] So the second person of the Trinity, and because it's Christ Jesus, it's the Messiah, it's the God-man, it's the 100% man, 100% God, who has come into this world and has provided salvation and given to us His life, God meets our needs according to the riches of all that He has done in Christ.

[8:26] So here's what this means as Paul's talking to the Philippians. God meets your needs, not your wants.

[8:38] God gets to define what your needs are and not us. We have a tendency to think that we need things in this life and we even have a tendency to think that some of the legitimate needs we have need to be met in a certain way.

[8:56] And God doesn't work that way. He's not meeting our wants. He's not meeting what we think is our needs, but He's meeting what He knows is our need.

[9:07] So if you can look at the Philippians for a second and they've emptied out their coffers and they've given to Paul and the ministry's going to go on and they're looking around going like, okay, everybody needs to go back to work so we can fill up the coffers again.

[9:19] How are we going to survive? How are we going to do ministry? Can you imagine that your budget is drained? This church has drained their budget on this missionary and they're looking around the culture around them going, how are we going to do ministry here locally?

[9:33] How are we going to give to people who have a need? How are we going to supply anything at all? And Paul is saying, my God will supply your need.

[9:45] He will fill up your need according to the riches in the glory in Christ Jesus. So they could actually still do whatever it is that they needed to do.

[9:59] They may not have money to do things that the world would say is a good thing, but that doesn't mean that they can't do ministry. In other words, you don't have to have the trappings of this world to be able to do ministry.

[10:13] We could be meeting in a cave in the Middle East and none of us have homes and none of us have jobs and we could still be obedient to the Scriptures, doing ministry and serving Christ.

[10:30] How is that possible since we would have no money? Because He supplies what we need. He supplies what we need. Because it's all your needs, I think that He's talking about things like physical needs, spiritual needs, emotional needs.

[10:51] I think He's talking about all those things. But here's the thing. We have to be someone who at the beginning of this, we're giving for the spread of the Gospel. Here's what happens.

[11:02] A lot of people are not interested in giving for the spread of the Gospel and instead they spend their money on things and they get themselves into debt and they get all kinds of other things going on and then they come back to a verse like this and they go, well God, I've made a mess of my life, I've made a mess of my finances and I haven't really been giving to your cause but you say you'll supply all my needs so could you please give me some money because I need some.

[11:27] And He's probably going to say, cancel cable, cancel your internet, cancel your cell phone, I mean, you know what I'm saying? We have a tendency to get ourselves in trouble and then come to God to bail us out.

[11:41] That's not what this verse is about. This verse is about someone who's expending like a widow and giving everything she's got. In that little mic, giving everything for the spread of the Gospel, wanting God to be glorified and going like, no Lord, I just need to eat today.

[11:58] You know, George Mueller, he was a pastor in the 1800s over in England and he vowed that he would never ask anybody for money.

[12:09] He would just pray and ask the Lord to supply. He opened up several orphanages and one story is that they were gathering together, gathering all the orphans together, all the boys together for mealtime and they were out of food.

[12:28] And they had been praying all week for food, they had been praying for the money to buy the food. And as they came in, they had all the boys come in, they all sit at the tables, and Brother Mueller gets up and he begins to pray.

[12:42] And as he begins to pray, Lord, thank you for how you have supplied and given all of our needs. There was a knock at the door. And they go open up the door and a guy driving a bread truck car broke down right there in front of the orphanage and he had to get rid of the bread or otherwise it was going to spoil.

[13:03] And so they were able to feed the orphans that day. Now that's one of those things we hear about and we kind of go like, wow! I mean, to see that in our lives, well, to see that in our lives, we would have to live the way George Mueller lived and that is expending everything.

[13:20] But you know, we struggle just to give a 10% to the church. We don't give everything, right? I don't.

[13:32] So we struggle with that. We've got so much prosperity in our world and we spend so much on other things. And I'm not saying that you need to just give everything over here.

[13:42] I'm just saying that we need to have an attitude that recognizes God meeting our need is about a need that comes about because we've expended ourselves for the gospel.

[13:55] We've expended ourselves for the gospel. And so Paul is encouraging them that God has this promise for them. Second thing, in verse 20, is God's worth.

[14:11] Paul always kind of ends his letters with this praise to God. He says, Now to our God and Father be glory forever and ever.

[14:21] Amen. Who is it that Paul is praising? Specifically? God our Father. God our Father. That's right.

[14:33] So, why the Father? Why not the Son? Why not the Spirit? I think it's so fascinating to me because we know that the Trinity is there.

[14:50] We will talk about the Trinity. We don't understand it typically. And so because it's so mysterious to us, we have a tendency to just be like, well, God, and we'll just sort of, just like, okay, God.

[15:02] And we're just like, yeah, Father, okay, but God. Just God. It's just God. But Paul so often will narrow down on one of the persons of the Trinity. I mean, verse 19, it's the glory, it's the riches and glory in Christ Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.

[15:19] Now he comes to give praise and it's now praise to God and Father. So now he's focusing in on the Father. And we tend to not do that. We tend to just go, God, because like, like we're scared or something to talk, you know, it's like, I mean, about the only time we ever say anything separate to any of them is we say, dear God, meaning Father, and then we say, in Jesus' name.

[15:44] But like, oh, I don't really want to talk to any of the three of them separately. That would be weird, you know, and it's like, no, it's great. We come to worship the Father by the Son through the Holy Spirit, you know.

[15:58] We pray to the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son. It is good for us to distinguish and understand that God is a Trinity.

[16:10] And so he is looking at God himself. And I think here's the reason why he's looking at the Father. Because the Father is the planner. The Father is the source. If you think about creation, right?

[16:22] In creation, the Father planned it, the Son is the word of it, creating it, and the Spirit is the power. You think of redemption, the Father planned redemption, the Son accomplished redemption, and the Spirit applies redemption.

[16:36] All three of them work in unison in all the work that they do. So, they do not disagree about what they're doing.

[16:46] They work cooperatively together. And so, it is the Father who's the source, and so it's right for us to give praise to the Father because He's the one who's going to supply our need through Christ.

[17:03] There's a, there's some things about the Father that we've seen throughout the book of Philippians. I'll just read them to you. Just a couple of things to think about. In Paul's own words, he is, in Philippians 1-2, God is the giver of grace.

[17:20] In Philippians 1-6, He's the worker of salvation. In Philippians 2-9-11, He's the exalter of Christ. In Philippians 2-13, He's the conformer of Christ's likeness.

[17:34] In Philippians 2-15, He's the father of believers. In Philippians 3-15, He's the revealer of truth. In Philippians 4-7-9, He is the giver of peace.

[17:46] And now here in verse 19, He's the giver, He's the supplier of needs. This is who the Father is. And it's right and good for us to go to the Father and say, Father, we give you praise.

[18:02] Look at what you have done for us. We give you thanks. Praise. And what we call, refer to as the model prayer, or somebody refers to it as the Lord's prayer.

[18:14] The rest is our Father, which art in heaven. Yeah. That's right. That's exactly right. And, I don't know, this is maybe a little bit off the subject, but I can never forget the church I grew up in.

[18:30] It had a high vaulted ceiling above the, well, over the entire sanctuary. But on the wall above through the pastor, the collector, and so forth, there was a circular painting of a hand reaching down, a lamb, and a dove.

[18:53] Hmm. Symbolizing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Right. And that has stayed in my mind ever since. Well, so, when we look at his praise here in verse 20, now to God and our Father, he says, be glory forever and ever.

[19:13] If God is glorious, and that's the sum total of his attributes, how can Paul say, glory be to him? What does that mean to say glory be to you?

[19:29] All praise, all honor, all service. Okay. Somebody else you got to talk. Is he adding anything to God by saying this?

[19:49] Do you understand what I'm saying? Is God less glorious and so he's trying to add glory to God? I think he's emphasizing that everything comes from God and that through his Son and the Holy Spirit, they just get it administered where it needs to be.

[20:13] Okay. I think it's interesting because he could have said, you know, Neil, you were kind of giving some synonyms of glory, and you were saying glory and praise, and he could have said praise.

[20:26] There is a word for that. And there's even a word for boasting in, to glory in, but this word here is doxa, which is glory.

[20:42] Here's what I think is fascinating. He is saying, now to God and Father be glory. In other words, we need to see and recognize his glory.

[20:55] We can't add to God's glory. We can't make God more glorious than he is. All we can do is recognize and see God's glory. So here's, here's the way that I understand this.

[21:08] I understand this as a statement that says that I'm, I'm recognizing God's glory glory, and I'm becoming satisfied with God's glory.

[21:22] To be satisfied with God, to not need anything but God. So in this moment as he's telling the Philippians, okay, so your needs are going to be met, but which are you satisfied with?

[21:36] Which part is the glory? Is the glory and the praise and all this going to go to God because he's meeting your needs or because of who he is? Because of who he is. That's right. Because we should be satisfied in him.

[21:53] Paul was in prison. He wasn't sure that he, if he was going to be set free or if he was executed. But he's satisfied with God and exclaiming glory be to God in the middle of this.

[22:12] He could have been thinking that God, you're great and I want to praise you but I'd also like to have freedom. God, you're great, you're glorious and all glory to you and I would also like to have whatever else he could put in there.

[22:30] Do you see what I'm saying? Here's what I'm saying. Sometimes we think that we're satisfied with God when really we want God and something else. and to give God all the glory is to be satisfied with him.

[22:46] Let me put it in this way. A husband is satisfied with his wife. A wife is satisfied with her husband but if either one of them says yes but I also want.

[23:02] okay, now all of a sudden we get the feel of that. That's not glorious at all to say this and also whatever this is.

[23:14] There's a pastor that I have looked up to for years. He wrote, he was diagnosed with cancer years back and survived through the cancer but wrote an article called Don't Waste Your Cancer and from that he went after several different thoughts and ideas and I'll just give you one of them and this has to do with what do I want?

[23:37] Do I want to be satisfied in God or do I want something else? And here's what he says, do I think that beating cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ?

[23:53] Do I think beating cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ? and that's a hard statement to say but you could take out cancer and you could put anything else in there.

[24:09] You could put anything else in there you want to. You could put your financial situation, you could put logistical situations. We go through those things and it's not like he said, okay, well I'm not going to have any kind of cancer treatments or anything else like that.

[24:23] No, no, he had the cancer treatments. He did what the doctor prescribed because that's what we do. There's nothing wrong with doing these things, it's just the attitude that we have as we go through them.

[24:37] We want to make sure that we are satisfied in God, that we understand his glory, that we know his glory, that we love his glory, that we want him to be the one thing that brings us the most satisfaction out of everything and that we need nothing else to be satisfied in life but him.

[24:58] And I'm just not sure that any of us are there. I don't think that I'm there. I think that's the hard fight. So Paul is saying to the Philippians, listen, you've given and that's good and so God's going to supply your needs, God is worthy of praise, worthy for you to be satisfied in, and the last thing he says is about God's grace.

[25:22] and let's see. I've got to find my verses.

[25:38] There we go. 21 through 23. He says, greet every saint in Christ Jesus, the brethren who are with me greet you, all the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

[25:54] So he's just kind of giving his farewells. It's kind of interesting. We could dive into it, but my point is to get down to verse 23. This is the way Paul greets in a lot of ways.

[26:07] He wants people to have grace and peace or grace and knowledge or something like that. Grace, how have you heard grace defined before?

[26:20] What's a way that you've heard grace defined? Unmarried in favor. Okay. Anything else? So there's a couple ways you can think about it.

[26:33] One is to compare grace and mercy together. Right? Whereas mercy is not getting something you deserve. You've done something wrong. You deserve punishment, but you don't get it.

[26:45] So that's mercy because you don't get what you deserve. Grace is getting that which you don't deserve, the unmarried in favor. I don't deserve to be a child of God, yet I'm a child of God.

[26:57] Does that make sense? So one of the things about grace, when he says, grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you, we need grace every day.

[27:09] And I think it's good for us to think of grace like manna. You know, in the wilderness, the manna that was given. How much could you go get every day? Just enough for that day.

[27:22] That's right. And of course on the Sabbath you would go out and get twice as much, but the point is that you couldn't go on Monday and get grace or get manna for all week long.

[27:36] And that's the way our lives are with God. We have enough grace for right now, this moment. And you all have things you're thinking about for next week or next year, or you've got things in your own body that you're thinking, oh, that's eventually going to have to have been taken care of.

[27:50] Or you've got family members that you know that they're just right on the precipice of doing something really dumb or something that's going to be harmful to themselves. Or you're just wondering are they ever going to come out of that?

[28:01] And we have worries and anxieties that will build up because we look at this and grace, God is not going to give me grace for what's going to happen two weeks from now, today.

[28:13] He's going to give me grace today for today. He's going to help me through today by His grace for today.

[28:25] And when I spend my time today thinking about two weeks from now, then all I can do is be anxious about that because I'm just trying to solve that problem and we're just not there yet.

[28:38] God's not going to give me that grace today because we're living today. That's what the Sermon on the Mount talks about, you know, right? That today has enough trouble of its own.

[28:51] So seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness that all these things will be added to you. So, in the end then, as these people are seeking to try to serve the Lord, serve with Paul, help him to spread the gospel and they've given of themselves, he wants them to walk away in the end at the last of this letter looking at God's promise, looking at God's worth, and looking at God's grace that he will help supply their needs and help them walk through it.

[29:29] NINGNINGNINGNING