SHOW NOTES: - Head to our Start Page for all you need to begin! - Join the RECAPtains - Check out the TBR Store - Show credits FROM TODAY’S RECAP: - Video: Philippians Overview - Acts 16:11-40 - Acts 16:1-5 - Video: 1 Timothy Overview - Knowing Jesus as God BIBLE READING & LISTENING: Follow along on the Bible App, or to listen to the Bible, try Dwell! SOCIALS: The Bible Recap: Instagram | Facebook | TikTok D-Group: Instagram | Facebook TLC: Instagram | Facebook D-GROUP: D-Group is brought to you by the same team that brings you The Bible Recap. TBR is where we read the Bible, and D-Group is where we study the Bible. D-Group is an international network of Bible study groups that meet weekly in homes, churches, and online. Find or start one near you today! DISCLAIMER: The Bible Recap, Tara-Leigh Cobble, and affiliates are not a church, pastor, spiritual authority, or counseling service. Listeners and viewers consume this content on a voluntary basis and assume all responsibility for the resulting consequences and impact. Links to specific resources and content: This is not an endorsement of the entire website, author, organization, etc.. Their views may not represent our own.
Full Episode
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Today in our New Testament plan, we finished book 16, and in our full Bible plan, we finished book 55. We first met the Philippians in Acts 16. Here's a quick refresher. Philippi is where Paul and Silas were arrested, and God used that to save their prison guard and his whole family.
It's also where they met Lydia, whose whole family converted to Christianity too. And it's also where they met a demonized girl and set her free from the demon and from slavery. Today, Paul writes an encouragement-filled letter to the church here. From day one, they've had a unique relationship with Paul.
He planted this church and he's watched it grow and he's confident that God will finish what he started in them. He repeats this idea a few times in this short letter. In 1.6, he says, "...he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus."
And in 2, 12-13, he says, He indicates that God is the one doing the good works through them and even creating the desire in them to do those things. And here's one important point of clarification. Paul's words to work out their own salvation is not a call to figure out how to save yourself. If you could do that, you wouldn't need a savior.
The context here and in everything else he says helps clarify that he's talking about living lives that demonstrate the gratitude and awe we feel toward God for saving us. This is a nod to the process of sanctification, where God works in us to conform us to the image of his Son. The Philippians have already seen firsthand how Paul responds to being imprisoned.
When they imprisoned him, he used it as an opportunity to share the gospel. In fact, there's a good chance his former prison guard is one of the people reading this letter. And now Paul is in prison again, probably in Rome at this point, and he's still singing the same tune, the gospel of Christ, all day long. He knows that his trials aren't without purpose.
Trials can even cause our confidence in Christ to increase, he says. He doesn't know how things will shake out, but he's hopeful and trusting and surrendered. He gets pretty vulnerable with them and says, look, I'd rather just step over death and into the other realm and be with Jesus right now. But on the other hand, it's probably better for you guys if I stick around a little bit longer.
So I'm guessing that's what he has in store, but I'm good with whatever. He encourages them to be strong in the face of persecution too, not to be frightened by it all. And in 129, he says something that none of us really want to hear. He says that not only has belief been granted to us, but that suffering has been granted to us. That's not really the prize I was hoping for.
I'm more interested in the crowns. But he goes on to say how we should live in harmony in the midst of suffering. This is important because suffering can bring out the worst in you. It can prompt you to be short-tempered and selfish and live from a scarcity mentality. So Paul reminds them to count others as more significant, not equal, but better. He says to look to other people's interests.
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