Philippians 4:2-4
Reading from Philippians chapter
4, beginning at verse 2, the Apostle Paul says these words,
I entreat you, Odea, and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion,
help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel
together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose
names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again,
I will say rejoice. Let us pray together. Our Lord
and God, we need your help. And so we ask that the Holy Spirit
would come and dwell in our midst and dwell in each of us so that
we can see and hear and believe and understand and most especially
put into practice in our lives the things that are written here
in your holy scriptures for us. We need your help. We need your
grace. And so give it in abundance. This we ask in the name of Jesus,
our savior. Amen. Every Tuesday, Without
fail, unless there is a civic holiday or some other event. Every Tuesday without fail, we
put our refuse out at the street. We usually have a couple of cans
of yard waste, grass clippings, bush trimmings, and leaves and
sticks that fall. We always have a trash can mostly
full and then every other week, as those of you in the city do,
we roll out our recycling. And being the good recyclers
we are, we jump up and down on it and make it squash and we
fill it full with our milk bottles and our orange juice cans, metal
cans from cooking, our papers, and all sorts of things. We do
our duty. But every week, without fail,
those items of refuse are picked up. And think about all the items
that you throw away now. If you’ve lived long enough to
pass through a couple of generations, you’ve lived through maybe the
Great Depression. You’ve lived through the time
after the Depression where things were scarce. You’ve lived through
the World War era where when we were at war, items were precious. And now you have entered, and
we now live in a day that is a disposable day. We throw away
so much. Things that used to be built
to last are now built with a shelf life. They have a planned obsolescence. They have a short term expiration
date. We live in a disposable era. We use disposable razors. We
use disposable dishes. We use disposable diapers. We
use disposable automobiles. We dispose of everything. The brothers and sisters of the
Lord Jesus, while that may bring consternation to those who want
a green earth and want to be a zero waste culture, and those
are wonderful things to think through and necessary to be stewards
of the earth, we need to think about a more serious area of
our lives that has become disposable, and that is our relationships.
We are now in an era where we can divorce our friends. We are now in an era where with
the click of a button, we can unfriend someone with whom we
once enjoyed social relations in some way, shape or form. We’re living in a time where
we can dispose of relationships. We can dispose of friendships
that do us no good or cause us much harm. And I’m afraid it’s
entered the church as well. It’s entered the church in many
ways and shapes and forms. You’ve probably heard the joke
about the man who was found on a deserted island. He had been
in a plane crash in the sea. He somehow found himself marooned
on a small island. And when his rescuers found him,
they saw that he had been living pretty well. And as they were
taking a tour of his island, they noticed there were three
huts. And they asked him, what are the three huts? He said,
well, the middle one is my home. And so they went through it,
saw how he was living, what he was eating, what he was cooking.
And they said, well, that’s very nice. What are the other two
huts? And he said, well, the one on
this side is the first church that I went to. And I went to
it for a little while and had a little disagreement with myself.
And so the second building is my new church. But you see, that’s
really the way it is. That is often the way it is in
the American church where people of choices. We’re a people with
disposable relationships. And we need to have God’s word
help us think through how we may take more seriously our relationships
with one another and our relationships with the church. Now, let me
pause for just a moment and encourage you to think about the things
that the Apostle Paul will teach us in this way. Think about them
centered around church. OK, I know some of you have family
scuffles. I know some of you have work relational issues. I know that you have other relational
struggles in other places. And yes, you can apply these
principles to those. But I want us to think particularly
today, to think hard today about getting along in the life of
the church. God calls us to be peacemakers.
He calls us to pursue peace. He calls us to chase after peace. He calls us to go into the messes
of relationships and to make attempts to mend them. We read
in various places in the scripture where we’re called to do that,
Matthew 18. We have a brother who offends us, we go to them.
And if that doesn’t work, we take another brother. And if
that doesn’t work, we take it to the church. Or Galatians chapter
6 tells us that if anyone is caught in a sin, those who are
mature are to go and rescue them from that sin and that difficulty
in which they have become ensnared. You see, part of the reason we
covenant together as a church is so that we have accountability.
We will be faithful to one another. We will encourage one another
to live lives of obedience before the face of God, with one another
and before the watching world. You see, the last thing a church
needs is to be a church full of conflict. That church will
never grow and that church will never outlast the generation
that it has. Conflict. Conflict is an age
old issue in the life of God’s people. Go all the way back to
the garden when Satan entered. Satan, who had rejected God sometime
in eternity past, comes into the garden and says, I’m going
to wreck what God has made and called very good. He comes into
paradise where Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship. where Adam
and Eve had not only perfect fellowship with one another in
marriage, but perfect fellowship with God. Their vertical and
their horizontal relationships were in sync. They were perfect. They were blessed. And Satan
comes in and tempts them. He tries them and he pulls them
away from their allegiance to God. And, you know, just as soon
as Adam and Eve have done it and their eyes are open, they
run and they hide. And when God comes calling, in
the cool of the evening and says to Adam and Eve, where are you?
And they said, we’re hiding. Who told you to hide? Well, we’re
naked and we’re ashamed. Who told you that you were naked?
You see, sin had affected them so greatly. And immediately,
what do they say? He did it. She did it. Satan
did it. They start pointing fingers.
And so you see, conflict has been around since the garden.
And it goes down through the generations. Very shortly after
the garden, we find in the scriptures that Cain and Abel both sought
to worship God. God accepted Abel’s worship,
but he did not accept Cain’s. And Cain became angry and downcast. And God warned him, sin is crouching
at your door. Watch over it, lest it overtake
you. But Cain, one day in the field,
took Abel’s life. And you see conflict continued
and God cursed Cain and his offspring. And so we see a people, not a
people of God, but a people of Cain who go into the world and
they cause chaos and conflict. And very soon after that, we
read of Lamech. Lamech was a man of vengeance. If someone touches
me, if someone merely looks at me wrong, I will take their life. And he said, if the vengeance
upon Cain’s life is 70 fold, whoever even looks at Lamech.
My vengeance will be 70 fold. And so we see throughout the
Bible on and on and on, we see conflict between sinners, but
we also see a gospel solution. And we see it most centrally
in the person and work of Jesus. When we were at enmity with God,
when we were at odds with God, God sent his own son, Jesus,
into the world to bring reconciliation, to bring peace. And the apostle
Paul tells us in one place that we have, through the blood of
the cross, peace has been made between us and almighty God. And so what about our calling
as individuals, as individual Christians, but together as a
church family? What about our calling can we
find in today’s passage for God’s help and grace and our own peace? We have a very high calling in
the Beatitudes. God calls his people to be peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called the sons of God. But in our passage today
from Philippians, chapter four and verse two, the apostle says,
I entreat or I plead with you, Odia, and I entreat or I plead
with Syntyche. to agree in the Lord. You see,
brothers and sisters, we are called by God’s grace and through
the power of the redemption at the cross to agree with one another. to be like-minded Christians
together. You see, what the Apostle Paul
is calling you, Odia and Syntyche, and we who sit here today too,
is not just get along, go along, not just agree to disagree, not
to be at odds with one another, but to give each other space
or to unfriend each other, or just to go start this church
and that church. No, God is calling us to agree in the Lord. And
let me tell you, it is the highest form of unity. Sometimes we wonder how theology
can be practical. And here’s one way, especially
that it can. We believe in the triune God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe they are one God,
three persons. We believe they are one God,
three persons, co-eternal, or eternally existing. We believe
that there is rich fellowship in the Trinity. And that rich
fellowship in the Trinity is possible for us to attain in
some way on earth. when the blessings of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit come upon his church. And so you go back
to chapter two of Philippians, where the apostle Paul says,
I challenge you. I encourage you. I proclaim to
you that you ought to have the same mind, the same mind as Christ
Jesus, who considered equality with God, nothing to be grasped,
who considered the riches of heaven, something to be left
behind. He left heaven. He came to earth. He became a servant and he suffered. even unto death on the cross. And God has told us that that
same mind, that same attitude, that same outlook on the Christian
life and the Christian duty ought to be true of every one of us
in the church. We ought to want to serve one
another in the same way Christ has served us. But you see, it
has to be in truth. It has to be in the knowledge
of who God is and what he’s done and what he requires of us. And
he goes on in chapter two to teach us that we ought to pursue
the holiness of God. We ought to pursue the sanctification,
the holiness without which no one will see God’s face. And
we do that by learning the mind of Christ, by submitting ourselves
to the word. And so what is the highest form
of unity a church can have? It is unity in the mind of Christ
and that mind of Christ comes as we submit ourselves to the
teaching of Christ. In the beginning was the word
and the word was with God and the word was God. And that word
is Christ. And so sometimes we find ourselves
in the American church in the least common denominator. Why
do we get together as a church? Well, we love red carpet. Why
do we get together as a church? We love Pentecostal things. Why
do we love being together as a church? Because we like fried
chicken over barbecue. Or we like Eastern North Carolina
barbecue over Western. Why is it that we like to be
together as a church? Sometimes, and very often, it’s because
of a lowest common denominator. Ride by a church sign and see
what it is they hold forth as their greatest ideal. Contemporary
worship. Youth program. Something. How often is it the mind of Christ,
the truth of the Bible? It’s pretty rare these days,
but that is what the apostle Paul is calling us to be and
do, to be in agreement in the Lord. I want us to look at it
in two ways. One is problem, church problems. The second is church problem
solvers. First, church problems. Where
do church problems arise from? Well, two categories, one is
preference and the other is doctrine. Now we’re about to hit the 500th
anniversary of the Reformation. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses
or his disagreements with the Roman Catholic Church on the
chapel door in Wittenberg, the town where he labored as a professor
of the New Testament. And that was a way for him to
start a conversation. That was a way back in their
culture and time to start a debate. All the wise men of the city
and town would take those 95 theses, they would digest them
into their heart and mind, and they would come and have a discussion
with Luther. A theological discussion, a biblical
discussion, a cultural discussion, an ecclesiastical discussion.
But a discussion was started when he nailed his 95 disputes. They were theological, worship,
justification by faith alone, the authority of the church,
the bondage of the human will because of sin. All these issues
would come to the forefront in the life of the church and in
the Reformation. And so there was a problem in
the church over doctrine. But let me tell you, doctrinal
disputes in the church are rare. It is most often that we find
our disputes in the life of the congregation over preference,
over the color of the carpet, over the provider of the heating
and cooling company that will give us a new system, over, oh,
you name it, and keep it low-level preference. That’s where most
church disputes come. Let me give an example. There
was a little church outside the town we lived in when I was in
seminary. It was a Presbyterian and Reformed congregation, a
little church called Faith. And I would go preach there on
Sunday nights, often during seminary. It was a little congregation,
eight or 10 people, most Sunday nights. And as I began to get
to know the people, I began to ask, what is your story? And
you know what their story was? And this church just recently
closed, maybe a couple months ago, I heard a tale of. They
began because they split with their former church over an air
conditioning system. Not doctrine, but preference. And it was a battle to end all
battles. Oh, maybe best price, who knows? Best provider, who knows? Best
brand, you know, was it ring or train or who cares? agree in the Lord on the main
things. But anyway, they formed. And
so you have examples like Martin Luther nailing his 95 disputes,
which were serious, on the door and causing a rift, a schism
in the church that would lead to the Reformation and to where
we sit today. Or you can split or disagree
over air conditioning units. A small percentage of most churches
has a dispute, and that dispute with a small percentage of people
often hurts the whole congregation. I mean, how many people has the
apostle Paul singled out in his letter here? He singled out two. Now, who knows how big the church
at Philippi is? Who knows what the situation is? But he singled
out two. He singled out two and told them
to agree in the Lord. You see, disputes in the church
are often between just a few people, just a few people, but
it leads to problems with the whole congregation. There’s a
very interesting statistic. I’ve heard this for many years.
It’s still true, and it’s still exactly the same. But generally,
a church busts up or a pastor leaves a congregation because
of seven or fewer people. That is a sad statistic. I was
talking recently with a minister who went to a church and the
church had about eight or 900 people. It was bumping along
and they called this pastor because of his gifts and abilities and
his leadership. And that church grew to close to 3000 people
in weekly attendance. But do you know there were about
seven or fewer people who didn’t like the guy? They didn’t like
his style. They didn’t like his authority.
They didn’t like his preaching. They didn’t like the authority
of God’s word coming to bear. And they were losing control.
Is that doctrine or preference? Well, it’s really preference.
And they ran this pastor out of town. And now 25 years later,
that church can hardly make its payroll. That church can hardly
keep the lights on. That church, which once had 3,000
people in weekly attendance, growing in faith, can now hardly
keep its doors open because of seven or fewer people. And so
why does the apostle Paul single out Syntyche and Euodia? Well,
if you look through verses two through four, you’ll see why.
One is unity is important. Agree in the Lord. You’ll see
also that he has labored side by side with these two ladies.
They have been in gospel ministry together at Philippi. He literally
means we have been yoke fellows. We have been oxen teamed together
under the same yoke. That is the yoke of Christ and
gospel ministry. We have labored side by side
together in the faith. And there needs to be reconciliation.
There needs to be peace made between these two ladies. Now,
what happens when there are issues in a church? Well, they suck
the oxygen out of the room. You see, the squeaky wheel always
gets the oil. And so when problems persist
and they continue, those who need God’s grace and mercy and
ministry are often overlooked. Their needs are eclipsed. because
the problems with just a handful of people have removed the oxygen
out of the room. They’ve taken the life away.
And so, so many churches, it’s true in America, so many churches
are embroiled in issues because of just a handful of people. Think through your church life.
Think through where all you’ve been and what were the scuffles
over. Was it over doctrine or preference? Was a preference turned into
a doctrine? Or was a doctrine overlooked? Was it serious? Was it petty? Could it have been
resolved? Was it something that could have just been decided
and submitted to paint color or carpet color or whatever?
Think through it and think about how much heartache it has caused.
I think through a particular church situation some years ago
that I have knowledge of. And I think of about a thousand
people who are spiritually homeless because of only a few that had
a preference and they demanded and they got their way. And many
people that I know and love are without a church home because
they did not fit that preference and they had to move on. You
see, it is serious business. That is why the Apostle Paul
brings it up. I mean, after all, how would you like to be in church?
and have a letter from the Apostle Paul come, and as it is being
read aloud, all of a sudden, there’s your name and your friend’s
name. Oh my goodness, I would, I guess I would treat that church
as disposable and go elsewhere. That’s what I would do. I couldn’t
take it. But you see, church problems
exist. And friends, it’s because Satan, he finds an easy foothold. You see, Satan doesn’t have to
work hard to tear up the American church. Oh, he just comes in
and he finds willing servants. They don’t know it. They just
bump along and they come dissatisfied and grumpy and they don’t seek
the mind of the Lord. They don’t work through the Holy
Spirit, but they still insist on their way. It’s not doctrine,
it’s preference. And Satan uses us to destroy
our own congregations. So there’s church problems. How
about church problem solvers? Well, there’s two ways he encourages
us to solve this problem with the gospel. And one is through
these two ladies working it out. The other is through mature ones
in the congregation helping them along. There’s a ministry in
the United States. It’s an important ministry and
it’s called Peacemaker Ministries. Peacemaker Ministries was started
by an attorney named Ken Sandy. I believe his experience in law
practice was in mediation, entering in situations where two parties
needed to come to an agreement. Maybe it was over business or
finances or family mediation, all those sorts of things. But
he realized that sin has so affected the church that there needs to
be a professional outside group that can come into a church and
mediate problems. And so Peacemaker Ministries
has popped up and they have a very helpful chart that speaks of
how to be a peacemaker. And on that chart, it has a healthy
range of reactions to a problem. And the healthy range of reactions
to a problem include overlooking an offense, being reconciled
to a brother, negotiating or navigating through an issue.
where we don’t see eye to eye, we mediate, we arbitrate, we
have accountability. And if you stay within that healthy
range, very often you’ll come to a conclusion that is amicable
for all sides, it’s good for the whole. But there’s a slippery
slope, and down that slippery slope at the bottom of each slope
is death. And on one side of that slippery
slope, death is through murder. And it starts as you slide down
that slope through attack. You know, we love to attack somebody
and say, well, if he weren’t such a jerk or if she wasn’t
so selfish or whatever, and we forget that we have sin as well.
And so we attack, we assault, we litigate and we murder until
we get what we want or until everybody’s left for dead. On
the other side of that slippery slope is death. And it comes
in the form of suicide. And it comes in the form of escaping
the problem, just moving away from it, denying there’s a problem,
running from that problem, and ultimately in suicide. Now, suicide
doesn’t have to end in a physical death. It can be spiritual. Our
friend who was on the deserted island, in a way, committed spiritual
suicide by leaving one church and going to another. You know,
we vow and declare we love our church. We love our people. Whatever
comes or goes, we’ll work through problems. We make our vows. We
say we’ll submit. We love the Bible. We love the
Holy Spirit. We say that all the resources of heaven will
help me with my church. And then we just, we walk out
the door. And so this peacemakers ministry
has helped us understand the anatomy of peacemaking problems
and processes. It’s difficult. It’s difficult
to go through these situations, but we must remember this. The
church has been bought with the blood of Jesus. And it is not
disposable, but it is worth fighting for. It is worth getting our
fingernails dirty for. It is worth trying and striving
after peace whenever possible. And God gives us tools. He gives
us Matthew 18. He gives us Galatians 6. We’re
Presbyterians, so he gives us our book of discipline, which
is helpful to us because it’s founded on principles of the
Bible and gives us a way. But here in this passage, the
apostle Paul turns to three people. and says to help. First, he turns
to Euodia and Syntyche, and he says, you two agree in the Lord. Be like-minded. Be like-minded
like the mind of Christ who left heaven and came to serve Christians. And then he speaks to a special
yoke fellow. He says in verse two, yes, I
ask you also true companion, not named, but this guy for sure
knows who he is, help these women. who have labored side by side.
And so there’s a challenge for us. There’s a challenge for us
as Christians. If we are in disagreement with
another person, we need to agree in the Lord. And maybe it is
we need to sit down at a table and say, what are the things
that we agree about and start high? We love Jesus. We love
worship. We love the truth of the Bible.
We love church. We love the fellowship we have.
And we are not, like Samson, going to stand in the middle
of the congregation, just a few of us, and destroy the whole
by pulling down the columns, as Samson did, and saying, if
I can’t have peace, nobody. But we will value the things
that God says the value and we’ll figure out how to work this thing
through. And by God’s grace, by the work
of the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Holy Word, it is possible
for two people who strongly disagree to come back together. One thing
we must understand, though, is that sinners, we will disagree. I mean, here’s the Apostle Paul
writing from a Philippian jail. And if you go and read in the
account of Acts, there was a time When Paul and Barnabas set sail,
or Paul set sail without John Mark. And you know why he didn’t
set sail with John Mark? John Mark had abandoned him at
another point in time. And Barnabas wanted to take John
Mark. I love John Mark. And Paul said, no, I’m not going
with John Mark. He’s abandoned me once. These
trips are so serious and dangerous and gospel oriented. I can’t
take a John Mark. And so they separate. And so
there are times, yes, where it may not work out. But as far
as possible, Paul says to the Romans, be at peace with one
another. And so he calls two of us, individuals
of us to agree in the Lord. But he also calls those in the
church who are mature to enter a situation and to help. And
when he says in verse two, help these two, he’s literally saying,
pull them in and pull them together. It sounds a little forceful. And the language very often Paul
uses military type language, but he’s saying you need to help
these to get it together. And why? It’s because the gospel
and its witness is at stake. You see, Philippi was a church.
It was in the middle of a pagan culture. And we don’t want a
church, whether it’s ours or the church at Philippi or any
other church in the world, to use pagan principles. Yet call
on the name of Christ. for what a wicked witness that
is. In fact, it is no witness at
all to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so dear brothers and sisters
of the Lord Jesus Christ, God calls us maybe not to agree in
preferences. Maybe we differ on paint colors
and carpet colors and how often we serve the Lord’s supper or
things like that, but we are called in the big things to agree
in the Lord. And we need to remember this,
that it took Jesus dying on the cross for us to even gain entrance
in the church. And so when our disagreements
are petty and they’re over preference or things that really don’t matter
all that much, we need to remember that the blood of Christ was
spilled for our salvation. It was spilled for our sanctification. It was spilled for our glorification.
And it was spilled so that we might walk together in unity,
preaching Jesus to the nations and gathering up more men and
women and boys and girls in the faith and making it safely to
heaven. But that blood was not spilled
for pettiness. or to be a church that is a circular firing squad.
You know what that is, don’t you? Where you all stand in a
circle and count to three and you shoot and you hope nobody’s
got good aim. But very often we do. But God
calls us to so much more. And he ends this little section
with a verse. In verse four, he says, rejoice
in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. You see what he’s doing there.
He’s saying, if you worship, if you rejoice, if you’re thankful,
if your attitude is like-minded in Christ, you’ll have a unified
church, a body of believers. I have a friend who says this.
He says, what the American church needs is a good dose of persecution. You’ll see who really loves the
Lord. You’ll see who really loves one another. And you’ll see when
we enter the basement catacombs to worship while persecution
is unfolding all around us. You’ll see who really loves the
Lord. And that is very true if we have
the same mind of Christ. Come hell or high water, come
pain and suffering, come thick or thin, come red carpet or green
carpet or mauve carpet or blue carpet. We will agree in the
things of the Lord. And when the going gets tough
spiritually, we’ll be able to stick together. Pray with me,
if you will. Our Lord and God, we thank you
for Jesus. We thank you for him being the great peacemaker. And
we do ask and pray that our mind would have the mind of Christ.
that our mind would put others first, put others’ needs first,
but also it would put truth in mind. We remember that Jesus
went to the cross because of truth, because there was sin
and there was a holy God. And that sin must be dealt with
faithfully. And so help us to love one another
and to be reconciled to one another in truth and in grace and in
peace. Lord, this is not our nature.
By nature, we fight. By nature, we claw at one another.
We retreat and we pursue in murderous ways. Lord, help us to do it
the right way, the godly way, the biblical way, and to bring
peace as far as possible with us to all men. And this we ask
and pray in the strong name of Jesus, the great peacemaker.
And it’s in his name we pray. Amen. Let us stand together and
respond to God’s goodness as we sing a little chorus, Rejoice
in the Lord Always, number 489.