Philippians 2:1–11 | Complete Joy
October 26, 2026
These are the sermon notes I used while preaching at Glennville Methodist Church on Sunday, October 25th, 2026. They are not a complete manuscript or transcript, so some illustrations, explanations, and transitions may differ from what was shared during worship. These notes have been lightly edited for grammar, spelling, and formatting with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). The sermon content, theological reflections, and illustrations are my own.
Opening Prayer
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
Introduction
Today, we have made new cards of our memory verse from Philippians 1:6 in the NLT. Why don’t we read this together?
And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.
We have been going through Philippians. While I do not want to entirely cover the first three sermons of this very practical letter, I do want to remind you of a few things:
- Paul is writing to this church not from his seminary office, palace, or study, but from prison.
- Even though this letter was not written to us—it was written to the Philippians—it was written for us. Not to us, but for us. For what we face today in 2026.
- If you have your Bibles, you can gain a cool insight you cannot see on the screen. Paul is going to freestyle rap, or sing, or say a poem about God. The first five verses are prose, and then we have the Christ Poem or Christ Hymn, which is a famous and somewhat unique part of this passage.
Scripture Reading: Philippians 2:1–11
Hear these words from the spiritual master Paul:
Philippians 2:1–5
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Philippians 2:6–11 — The Christ Hymn
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
May God add his blessing to the reading of his Word.
What Would Make Your Joy Complete?
What would make your joy complete if you were in jail?
- A bodyguard?
- A cake with a file in it?
- A get-out-of-jail-free card?
- What about knowing people were getting along outside of prison?
What an odd thing to say would make your joy complete… unless Christianity is true.
Jesus and Paul show us we can have complete joy even in hardship. But how?
1. Joy in Humility
Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher. His philosophy was that humility was embarrassing (Bird and Gupta 70). Yet Jesus shows us it is our way.
Paul says in Philippians 2:3–4:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
The Trap of Comparison
- Did I tell you I have a podcast? You can subscribe to my weekly email, YouTube, daviddonnan.com, and the SGA GMC conference email.
- I preached at Harmony Revival, and tonight I am going out to Hopewell.
- One of my questions is, “Who else is preaching?” Because I am nosy… but also, I want to compare.
- Well, I am better than him. I won’t scream as much as this person. Maybe I’m not as good as them… but I ran a marathon!
- We are so much more than those who share our fields with us. We are so much more than the likes we get on social media. We are so much more than whether anyone gets to see our work.
The truth is, this is all a trap to keep our eyes off Jesus and make us worried about ourselves.
Every moment we spend worrying about comparing our grandkids instead of loving them, seeing how we stack up at work against our colleagues, or wondering if enough people notice us…
This keeps us from flourishing as humans.
We can have joy in humility. Real joy is putting our lives in Jesus’ hands and having him realign our lives.
Jesus Shows Us What It Means to Serve
Jesus says:
Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. — Matthew 20:28
2. Christ Shows Us the Way
Who is Christ? This is the beauty of the Christ Poem.
- He was with God.
- He was God.
- He models this humility.
Practicing the Way
- Practicing the Way retreat.
- We are apprentices.
- They would follow the teacher.
- They would leave their families.
- It was a process of following them every day.
Christ shows us this way again.
3. Christ Invites Us into the Journey
- Church is where we meet him.
- The journey is done in community. It is easier to be humble in isolation.
- We are called to invite others on this journey.
- SGA GMC Certified Lay Ministry training: People taking their next steps on the journey.
Conclusion
Church, let’s let Christ make us humble, and let’s take our next steps.
Thanks be to God.
Closing Prayer
Philippians 1:1-11 Work to be Done
October 4, 2026
These are my notes used for my sermon. If you watch what actually you was preached you notice some/a lot of variance. There still may be some devotional of information value.
There’s this famous saying of Jesus in the Gospel. It is from Matthew 11
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Here is the thing… this can be hard to believe. I have had several days where I would look at my to-do list, calendar, worry, or circumstances and think, “This does not look like it is going to be a light day, week, or season.”
Maybe you have been there?
So how can this be true? How can the Christian life really feel light? Well I think Paul answers that in our introduction to Philippians.
Today, we begin our journey through the Philippians. I want to encourage you to take the card in your bulletin and memorize this passage (Also, a note, the card is the New Living Translation not the NIV for our eagle eye viewers).
In this series we will spend more time on the background and characters here. For today, Philippians was written by the Apostle Paul, a leader and martyr of the church. Some say Paul is the most important person in regard to the spread of Christianity after Christ.
Paul is not writing to the Philippians from his podcast studio, a nice ivory tower study, or from a fancy mansion. Paul is writing from prison.
Hear these words from Philippians chapter 1, verse 1 through 11.
1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
May God add his blessing to the reading of his word.
How many of you feel a little overwhelmed sometimes? I think calling this letter to Philippians is good… but maybe better: Paul’s letter to the overwhelmed, the anxious, maybe even joyless.
Many scholars actually say this letter is about joy even in spite of the hardship faced by the local church.
Well we all have hardship today. Whether it is feeling overwhelmed, the stress of trying to get everything done, the struggles of health and aging.
What Paul has just said here though can help us. He tells us what we can do… nothing… well not exactly nothing.
Let’s look at verse 6 again: being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Notice who is going to do the work, who will carry it on to completion: Is it the preacher? Is it the seminary presidents? Is it political leaders? What about Sunday school teachers?
Paul is confident that “he” who began the good work… or as the NLT makes clear “God” will carry it on to completion.
This is what it means to be Holy, we are trusting in God’s work, his grace not our own strength.
This past week Brandy won the Donnan family reunion 5k… now we have some real speedsters in our family. But the 5k was not based on speed. It was based on guessing your finish time then running without a watch and whoever was closest was the winner.
You had to run in faith and see where you ended up.
In a similar way, we do this with our spiritual life. We set out to run our race but we also know there is a part we just do not know. A part we can just not quite know the timing of. Yet, we will see at the end where we ended up.
So how do we actually do this? We can’t throw away our phones and watches every day.
Well we do it together. I saw one of the coolest formations at the Pinewood middle school game on Thursday. Towards the end of the game Phillip (names of youth changed for privacy) was in at running back and Willie was the QB. For a moment it was just the Glennville Methodist backfield. The GMC package. Two Methodists together moving forward.
Church, there is work to be done… but we do not do it alone. We do it beside each other. And most importantly we do it trusting in God.
The work that he began in you… he knows about it. God has not forgotten about it. Christ just didn’t die on the cross and forget about you. The Holy Spirit just didn’t forget about comforting you in your loss.
No, the one who began this good work is still working. Let us trust in God to do this and keep our eyes open to how He is doing this.
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Amen.
