Today we conclude our four-part series on Paul’s letter to the Philippians by looking at how we can experience lasting joy through the peace of God that truly does pass all understanding.

 Last week’s reading ended with Paul using the image of a very long race to picture the Christian life as one of constantly moving into God's future, always pressing forward.  Here, he begins his final urging to the Philippians quite differently: "Stand firm in the Lord!" Pressing forward and standing firm in one place; how are these images to be reconciled?

We are continuing to look into this marvellous letter from Paul to the Philippians, but first let’s recap where we’ve been so far.

We began with Paul rejoicing in the steadfast faith of the church he’d planted in Philippi and urging them to live their lives worthy of the gospel of Christ.  Last week, in chap. 2, Paul narrowed and tightened this focus by impressing on the Philippians to look at the very nature of Christ, the humble servant King, and to imitate Jesus in humility and service.

Today in ch.3, Paul is warning the church that if we take our eyes off tying to imitate Christ, we will start to have confidence in the flesh, and end up destroying the joy that is found in this new life imitating Christ’s humility and servanthood.

We are continuing to look at this wonderful letter of joy to the Philippians. Outside of the gospels, it would be difficult to find a more quoted passage in all of Scripture than vv.6-11 from today’s reading.  Today’s reading’s two main themes we have explored before and will continue to explore: humility and unity.

oday we are looking at our reading from Paul’s wonderful and unique letter to the Philippians. It is often called the book of joy, as the word occurs fifteen or so times in four short chapters.

Philippi is in Northeast Greece, about 100 kms south of the Bulgarian border and the church there supported and loved the apostle Paul, which is why this letter is filled with warm affection and love. (If you would like to know more about how Paul went to Philippi and what he did there, open up the book of Acts at chapter 16 and start reading.)

Many of you would have heard of the Dutch WW2 heroine Corrie Ten Boom, or read her account of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.  As well as being a family of watchmakers, the Ten Booms were devout Christians and lived in a large house above their shop. 

As the war progressed and the true nature of the Nazi’s plans for the Jews started to become apparent, Corrie and her family started to hide Jewish families in the attic of their large home to save them from being transported to what later were revealed to be death camps.

Today we look at the well-known parable of the sheep who went astray. It paints a picture so easy to understand and so beautiful to ponder. Now when Luke tells the story, it is in his chapter on the lost things; the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost or prodigal son (Luke 15). Here the focus is on the lost being found.

Matthew doesn’t use the word ‘lost’ but ‘strayed.’ So today we are looking less at the evangelistic side of this parable – how the lost are saved; but the pastoral – how those who have strayed are sought out, cared for and loved.

This week’s gospel follows directly on from last week and for the last few weeks we have been looking at how Jesus has been teaching the disciples. When Peter confessed Jesus as Messiah in the passage we heard last week, Jesus calls him blessed because only God can reveal God. The great triumphant hope of Israel has come, and yet his last words to the disciples were not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah.

Today we get to understand why they weren’t to tell anyone, because they did not yet understand what this triumphant Messiah would look like.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Peter’s confession of Christ is a major turning point in Jesus’ ministry – from here on he starts to make his way to Jerusalem and his death. So what happened here in Caesarea Philippi? Over the last month or so we have seen various ways that Jesus has been teaching and training his disciples. That, out of time in the presence of God the Father, we can be filled with the same compassion that Jesus has in order to take our part in the great outpouring of God’s perfect will. Today, the training is starting to pay off.

Today we are going to talk about something that is so easy to miss or to misunderstand, that we might not see how fundamentally important it is in our lives of faith, and the source of all the ways God blesses our parish.  We mention it often though and proclaim it in every service, ‘We are the body of Christ.’

I am talking about unity, oneness of hearts and minds, becoming and being the body of the person of Jesus Christ. The very same oneness, and unified in the same way, that Father, Son and Holy Spirt is one – that is some unity!

This morning’s gospel continues on directly from last week. The disciples have just finished cleaning up after the great and compassionate feeding by Jesus of the 5,000 as distributed by the disciples, when today’s passage begins. I’d ask you to see it as all part of the same extraordinary twenty-four-hour period in the life of Jesus and today is part two of last week, where we saw that the great purpose of the miraculous feeding was to bring glory to the Father (above all), feed the wandering and burdened lost sheep of Israel, and to teach his disciples.

Our gospel this morning begins with “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself” (Matt 14:13). What Jesus had just heard, was what had happened to John the Baptist, murdered by Herod Antipas in fulfilment of a vain promise made to his step-daughter Salome; anything she asked for was hers. With the connivance of her mother Herodias, she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter and got it (Mat 14:1-2).

I think that when Jesus heard, he would have been greatly saddened and grieved. A man who was not only a blood relation but a man whom Jesus had described as the greatest of all the prophets sent by God, had been foully murdered.

For the last three weeks, all of chapter 13 of Matthew, we have been listening to the parables of Jesus that begin: “the kingdom of heaven is like…”.  One after another they have wafted into our ears and over and over again Jesus says, "whoever has ears, let them hear” (NIV).

Today we are taking a different sort of perspective and focussing on just one parable. But firstly I think it could be helpful to go back to what was happening at the end of ch.12, just before Jesus started telling these parables, so we see who these people gathered around and about to hear all these parables are.

It can be easy to read the Old Testament and think that there are somehow two Gods; the Old Testament God of judgement who suddenly changes his spots and becomes the God of Love in the New Testament.

 This is not so, God is same yesterday, today, and forever, and today’s Psalm (from the Old Testament) is one of the great “love” passages of all the bible. Part of the nature of our Rock of Ages, who doesn’t change is to be all all-present (omnipresent), all-knowing (omniscient), and all-powerful (omnipotent).

We are now approaching the middle of Matthew’s gospel and opposition and hostility to Jesus are building. And as we heard last week, many are trying to discredit his ministry by condemning him, among many other things, as a glutton and a drunkard.

Today's gospel passage is really a tale of two passages, each a lesson in confounding expectations and contain what I think are the three most beautiful words in the New Testament, when Jesus tells the weary and burdened to ‘Come to me.”  “Come to me … for I am gentle and humble in heart’ (Matt 11:28-29).

Last week we heard in our Genesis reading that God had a deeper and better plan for Ishmael and his mother Hagar then first appeared.  At first appearance it all looked pretty grim for Abraham’s first born and his mother.

If we thought last week’s reading was grim, then on the surface, today’s reading from Genesis could seem horrific.

When God ‘sees’ us - it is our eyes that are opened. Last Sunday we heard the Lord’s wonderful promise to Abraham and Sarah that Sarah would give and give birth to a son, despite their very advanced years.  The Lord promised that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as grains of sand on the beach and the whole land of Canaan would be his inheritance. Today we enter this story before all that happened, when the promised child, Isaac is a very young boy.

Last week we looked at how it is faith alone that, through the great gift at Pentecost of the Holy Spirit, that allows the Lord to use us in the bringing about in the world, the great work of God, as commissioned by Jesus; to go and make disciples, baptising them and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded.  Our passage from Matthew begins today with the focus firmly on Jesus himself (vv. 35-36).  “He saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (v.36).

Our readings today are, I think, linked by common themes of faith and new life. We will be mainly talking about todays beautiful gospel reading, but for some context, we briefly need to begin with Genesis and Romans.

Trinity Sunday is the most difficult Sunday to preach without sounding really academic and doctrinal and theological, which I won’t do because I end up confusing myself, let alone everyone else.  I could have avoided it altogether and preached on the wonderful psalm 8 we heard this morning.  But we have been talking about the Trinity in some way or another ever since Easter, so this morning I will avoid doctrine and try to talk about the trinity in a very practical way.