Well, good evening, Cornerstone, and again, welcome to our Wednesday night Bible study.

My name is Andy, and I'm on staff here at the church, and Gary has asked me to fill in for him while he is speaking at a pastor's conference.

He'll be back next Wednesday and continue in the book of judges.

But for tonight, we're going to look in the New Testament at a letter that Paul wrote to a Greek

church in Philippi. So we know in Philippians chapter 4, this was a Greek city. Paul wrote this

around 61 AD. We know, and we can read about that this was not a synagogue in Israel that Paul was writing

this letter to.

This was to Gentiles.

And so he wrote this letter.

You can read about it in the book of Acts.

The church in Philippi started because of a woman named Lydia.

She became a follower of Jesus Christ.

She told her family, they believed, and they all all were baptized and Paul starts this church in Philippi and now he's writing a letter to them.

Now to give some context, I just want to give you about four years before Paul wrote this letter.

We learned that Paul went into Jerusalem to worship for the Feast of Pentecost.

So he went into the temple, he was dragged out of the temple, he was beaten by Jewish leaders

who hated him because he was telling people about Jesus.

Before they were able to hang him, the Roman guard saved his life, pulled him aside. Paul told them he was a

Roman citizen, and so the Romans protected him. They sent him away at night to Cesarea, which is

north of Jerusalem. They had to send him away at night because there were 40 Jewish leaders that

vowed not to eat or drink until they had Paul killed.

So people wanted this man killed.

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