Jesus was a rebel, outlaw, renegade, and hardcore, sanctified troublemaker. He never sinned, but He lived His life by a set of rules that His culture did not approve of, especially the stuffed-shirt religious types. Examples include healing on the Sabbath, throwing over tables in the temple, eating with godless sinners, and not washing His hands before eating. Clearly, Jesus was no coward who conformed to social pressure.

Jesus was ultimately murdered in an attempt to stop Him from literally turning the world upside down, which was as effective as blowing on the head of a dandelion to exterminate it. Nonetheless, Jesus endured the cross, as Hebrews 12:2 says, “for the joy that was set before him” and never lost His joy even in the midst of betrayal, poverty, injustice, loneliness, pain, suffering, slander, and even death. Jesus was single-minded in His mission to pursue God’s glory in heaven and our salvation on earth. Jesus lived without those things that we would typically associate with joy, such as health, wealth, sex, and comfort, yet He is the freest and happiest person who has ever lived. Jesus is the most joyful person who has ever lived because He was the most obedient, God-glorifying, humble, sacrificial person who has ever lived. Paradoxically, He had joy despite being a “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3).

Following his conversion, Paul patterned his life after Jesus and also lived as a rebel, outlaw, renegade, and hardcore, sanctified troublemaker. He too was single, broke, often homeless, and so hated that he got run out of more than a few towns after taking a good beating. Paul writes Philippians while he is sitting on the floor of a filthy Roman jail (Philippians 1:13–17)—a brutal place and nothing like the Paris Hilton Camp Cupcake Clubhouses that we see today. Alone in his jail cell, flat broke, tired, hungry, sick, abandoned, and facing the prospect of a brutal death, Paul sat down to write a letter to his friends in Philippi, who enjoyed one of the few churches written to in the New Testament that did not sound like it had been taken over by drunk carnival workers.

Founded by Paul in roughly 50 AD, the church at Philippi was the first church in Europe. The church began when the team of Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke met with some Jewish women at their place of prayer in Acts 16. Their first converts were a wealthy upper class Asian businesswoman, Lydia, and her family; a demon-possessed lower class Greek slave girl; and a middle class Roman jailer and his family. Despite racial, economic, gender, and political differences, the church grew to be very healthy and filled with joy as they grew together in their love for and service of Jesus Christ.

Importantly, the church at Philippi was not filled with the kind of sin that we see in such places as Corinth or heresy that we see in such places as Galatia. For the most part, the church was doing well. In his absence, Paul’s loving and gracious pastoral tone of affection warns them against a possible slide into sin or heresy and is markedly different than his terse tone in some other New Testament letters.

In typical rebel fashion, Paul writes the church about joy and how it can be found in the darkest and most painful seasons of life, providing we jettison the impotent insights of culture and religion and keep our gaze fixed on Jesus. Throughout the 104 verses of the letter, the key words that appear include “joy” or “rejoice,” “Jesus” or “Christ,” “in Christ,” and “gospel,” which appears more than in any of Paul’s other letters. Together, they reveal that the secret of our joy is seeing the gospel of Jesus Christ going out even through our pain, trial, and affliction. Thus, joy as presented in Philippians is less a feeling based upon our experience, but rather a lifestyle that results in others experiencing the transforming power of Jesus Christ. As illustrations of a life lived for joy, Paul includes the story of Jesus’ joy in suffering (Philippians 2:6–11), along with his own (Philippians 3:4–14).

To guard the joy that comes only from living for God’s glory even amidst our hardships so that others will see countercultural lives patterned after Jesus’ own life, Paul also warns the church to “look out for” people who get us off Jesus’ mission. They include people who have selfish ambition and envy (Philippians 1:15–17), opponents of Christianity (Philippians 1:27–28), people with their own interests that conflict with Jesus’ (Philippians 2:21), and religious “dogs” who seek to enslave people by their goofy rules (Philippians 3:18–19).

Upon the letter’s arrival, the entire church would have gathered to hear it be read aloud. The would have undoubtedly been encouraged by the tone of love and appreciation from their founding pastor, for whom they were greatly concerned. Among those listening were some godly women in the church that Scripture makes note of, such as Lydia (Acts 16) and Euodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4:3).

Paul wrote to thank the Philippian church for their generous gift to him (Philippians 4:10–11). Paul also used the Philippian church as a model of sacrificial financial giving for the Corinthian church (2 Corinthians 8:15). Additional reasons for the letter include informing them about one of their deacons named Epaphroditus who had been sent to help Paul but had fallen ill and nearly died (Philippians 2:19–30), encourage them in their trials (Philippians 1:28–30), appeal for unity (Philippians 4:3), and rebuke “brothers” who were serving Christ with impure motives and ill will toward Paul (Philippians 1:14–17).

Our study of Philippians will also highlight some of the similarities between their situation in Philippi and ours in Seattle. First, their city was part of the greatest nation on the earth in its day, the Roman Empire. That nation, like our own, had grown very fat and happy yet lacked joy. Second, the city of Philippi, while not a capital city, was the leading regional city, as Seattle is in ours, which means it was a strategic hub from which information, goods, and people traveled to other cities and rural areas. This made it a strategic church planting and culture-changing center much like Seattle. Third, the church at Philippi was roughly the same age as Mars Hill Church, which commemorates its eleventh anniversary by beginning our study of Philippians. Fourth, their city was, like ours, very diverse in every way, including language, ethnicity, and culture. Fifth, the spiritual diversity of the city was great, yet the biblical knowledge of the people was minimal. Philippi had Greek gods and goddesses, a pantheon of cults, Egyptian religion, imperial religion, witchcraft, yet not even the ten men who were needed to comprise a Jewish synagogue.

Paul’s letter is incredibly timely for us since we live in an over-medicated society that exists for the “pursuit of happiness.” The sermons in this series will, as you might expect, contain a great deal of controversy. Too often Philippians is quoted like some pagan mantra by churchy types who have trouble with all the pain, suffering, evil, injustice, hardship, and difficulty in our fallen world. Rather than diving headlong into reality, they instead prefer to quote the verses on joy out of context while sporting the same blank-eyed, fake-smile stare as a basset hound that just heard a high-pitched whistle. To illustrate this point, the sermons will include clips from various Christian teachers and products to show how joy is more than just an easy life or vacuous cheery outlook on the brutal seasons of life. To be fair, we will also critique the various inane places where our culture, including advertisers, tell us to fish for our joy apart from Jesus, which will provide plenty of comedic fodder.