God has no lack, everything is His, and He gives to whom He will, some more and some less, but always to those who love him, exactly what they need.

There are two women, Euodias and Syntyche, who are at odds with one another, there is a disagreement (we are not told what it was over). And this conflict between them is threatening to undermine the unity of the church.

When our Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, Scripture says that he gave gifts to men. The chief gift was the gift of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out at Pentecost, but together with that Gift, was another gift that might surprise us: Man was given the gift of church government, or what we might call church officers.

Roughly 2,000 years ago, the Christian church was just 120 people in an upper room (Acts 1:15), and today Christianity is the dominant religion of our planet, with about 2.2 billion people identifying themselves as Christians (that is 32% of the world population).

For Christ to be in the form of God means that Christ has a fully divine nature, His form/essence is divine.

Philippians 2:1-11 contains both the fundamental Christian confession, “Jesus Christ is Lord,” and also one of the most explicit declarations of Christ’s true divinity, and true humanity.

So as we walk through our passage this morning, I want to place this question before us all: Do we desire to be counted worthy to suffer for the name?

Have you ever wondered how Paul could say things like “Rejoice always, and again I say rejoice,” and actually do it? Well here in our text we come to the source, the fountain, the wellspring from which joy is constantly overflowing in the Apostle, and if we can discover this hidden source and trace it to its depths, perhaps joy can overflow in us as well.

For Paul, motivations matter, motivations are not unimportant, and having the right motivation is crucial for the one who is preaching, but all that notwithstanding, Christ being preached matters more, and in that we should rejoice.