Philippians KJV

Before you hear a line of Philippians, you need to know where the church it was written to came from. Acts 16 calls Philippi “the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony.” A Roman colony was a piece of Rome planted on foreign soil, governed under Roman law and filled with Roman citizens, a long way from Rome.

The church there began by a riverside, where Paul sat down with the women who came to pray. Luke doesn’t say Lydia was persuaded. He says the Lord opened her heart. Then Paul cast a spirit of divination out of a slave girl, her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, and the city’s own pride became the charge: these men teach customs we may not receive, “being Romans.” Paul and Silas were beaten and thrown into the inner prison with their feet fast in the stocks.

“And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God.” That same night the jailer asked what he must do to be saved, and he was later sitting among the people who received this letter. The joy in Philippians isn’t a temperament. It was born in a cell in that very city, and this letter never promises that your trouble will lift.

Now Paul is a prisoner again, writing to friends he loves from a place he cannot leave, not knowing whether he will live or die. So what does a man in that place find to rejoice about?