Philippians chapter 1. Now this
morning we're going to finish up a lesson we started last Sunday
morning. The passage going from verses
9 and through, let me see what was the last
verse? Oh yeah. Verse 18. But all we did was
get things set up last week. It begins with a prayer. Verses
9 through 11 are a prayer by the Apostle Paul for the people
at the church in Philippi. And after he gives that prayer,
you find out why he prayed that particular prayer. And the reason
that he prayed that prayer was because divisions were cropping
up in the church. And, you know, similar divisions
were found in the church at Corinth. There were those who said, I
am of Paul, I am of Apollos, and others said, I am of Christ.
And these divisions were, you know, they weren't just some
kind of informal thing, people were actually associating only
with the people involved in their group, and it was fracturing
the church. And in the case of the Philippians, you had different
preachers preaching from different motivations. And there should
only be one motivation, that's for sure, and we should never
preach Christ for any other motivation than to magnify him, to promote
him, to make him known to others. But there were some who were
doing it from selfish motives. Some of them did it even hoping
that, as he said, adding to my bonds,
I suppose they thought, well, this will irritate Paul. You
know, if I can advance myself and I become somewhat more famous
or more well-respected, they were all, or some of them were
angling, it would seem, to take Paul's position as the leader
of the churches. Now, what is the answer to such
thing? Well, the answer to such things
is found beginning in verse nine in the prayer that Paul Praise,
he says, verse nine, this is my prayer, that your love may
abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that
you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless
until the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness
that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. So, we have this problem of divisions
in the church. Man is prone to division. In
fact, in 1 Corinthians, we read this. This is 1 Corinthians chapter
11, verses 17 through 19. In the following directives,
I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than
good. Imagine such a thing as that.
He said, it'd have been better if everybody stayed home. In
the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church,
there are divisions among you, and to some extent, I believe
it. Then he says this, no doubt, there have to be, and our translation
says differences. They should have stuck with the
same word, divisions. Divisions among you to show which
of you have God's approval. Of course, divisions creep up
because of differences. And that's why earlier in that
epistle, Paul had said, who makes you to differ? There are differences
among the people of God. Who is it makes it that way?
Why are some more mature in the faith than others? Why do some
have a better understanding than others? Why did some come from
wealthy backgrounds and others from poor backgrounds? Why are
some educated and some uneducated? All that's the work of God. Therefore,
these divisions that we make among ourselves based upon things
we find within ourselves are utterly without foundation. The very same God that brings
us together as one body in Christ, he is the one that made those
differences. So to him, the differences don't require a division, and
it should be the same in our own mind. Division is often the
evidence of self-righteousness. And by the way, let me take note
of this. In the King James, this word division is translated heresy,
which makes sense because the Greek word is the word from which
the English word heresy is formed. But when we hear the word heresy,
we think false doctrine. And that's not necessarily what
is meant. Some divisions have arisen because
of false doctrine. But a heresy merely means a division. In churches, we call these heresies
denominations, factions. Now, sometimes the division is
legitimate. There is division between sheep and goats. Therefore,
there is a division between a true gospel and false gospel. If I had to worship in a church
that believed the gospel of Christ, but say, for example, like the
Reformed churches, they practiced infant sprinkling. That would
bother me. I would, you know, I would probably
just have to bite my tongue, at least during the worship service.
But it wouldn't mean that I couldn't worship with them. That's a thing
that's wrong, but it's not wrong at the level of this makes their
worship non-gospel worship. Now, you take me back down southeast
and set me down in one of those churches, such as I grew up in,
where they are constantly appealing to men and bragging on men and
telling people what they can do and what God can't do, I'm
sorry, I can't even stay there. That's not the same thing. makes a distinction like that.
He says in Galatians, he said, I marvel to see how quickly you're
called or departed from him who called you unto another gospel,
which is not another. Now, that's why it sounds in
English. There's two Greek words. He says,
calls you to another gospel. And he used a word there, which
would be like if you talked about Cheerios and Wheaties. Cheerios is a different kind
of cereal from Wheaties, but they're both cereal. But when
he said, called you to another gospel, which is not another,
that word translated another means something of an entirely
different category, such as, you know, grass and concrete.
I mean, it's not even in the same category of things. What
they were actually teaching in the church at Galatia was something
that was not a gospel at all. It was bad news, not good news.
So he says it's another kind of gospel. So we may, in time,
find ourselves in churches that they don't do things the way
we think it should be done. We may believe that they accent
too much of the fleshly experience of worship. that they have a
lot of dross going on, but if the gold is there, you don't
throw it out because there's dross. At any rate, Paul says
here in what we looked at last week, that in all these divisions,
the one issue is whether or not Christ is preached. The only
thing that we hold to unswervingly is the preaching of Christ. So Paul said Now this is going
back to that text in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 19. He says, there have to be divisions
among you to show which of you has God's approval. Now, this
is a sarcastic statement on Paul's part. He's saying obviously you
have to split up into little groups so that everybody will
know who is most approved by God. And there he gets at the
root of what most divisions in the church come from, and that
is self-righteousness. I suppose we could divide over
other matters, such as familiarity or having other things in common. But you know, really, those things
don't divide us as a church. When he's talking about divisions
here, he's not talking about folks that simply Say, for instance,
when they have a fellowship meal together or something like that,
you know, families tend to congregate or friends tend to congregate,
kids congregate by themselves. That's not divisions in the church.
That's not a problem. What happens is we think our
way is better than the people other way, and we won't associate
with them in worship. We won't acknowledge them as
brothers and sisters in Christ. And that, generally speaking,
arises from self-righteousness. Well, the things Paul prayed
for are a cure for this self-righteous spirit that often presents itself
in a divisive spirit. He says, and this is my prayer,
that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth
of insight. Love is the cure for everything. That is, for all human conflicts,
love is the cure. Now, that does not mean that love always presents a very pleasant
face. You know, God loves his people
at all times. He's loved them with an everlasting
love. It's from everlasting unto everlasting. And yet there are
times he turns a frowning face toward them. And why is that? Well, he's displeased with what
they've done. He's not displeased with them. He's displeased with
what they've done, and he deals with it. And in preaching the
gospel, we speak the truth in love, but that doesn't mean there
is never a rebuke or a correction in what we teach. But love, love
is the guiding principle of all proper activity. I can't think of anything in
a human conflict that cannot be solved through the principles
of love. Love is the chief among God's
commandments, and we may go so far as to say it is God's only
commandment. They asked the Lord Jesus Christ
on one occasion, what is the greatest commandment? And he
mentioned the greatest commandment is to love God with all your
heart, strength, soul, body, and then to love your neighbor
as yourself. And then he says, on these hang
all the law and prophets. So everything the law said, everything
the prophets said, all instruction in righteousness hangs upon this
command to love. The Apostle John magnifies love
so much, he says, he that does not love does not know God, for
God is love. And then the Apostle Paul, after
teaching about all the various gifts that God has given to the
church, and this is in the book of 1 Corinthians, and you know,
everybody wants to know what their gift is, and he tells them
to to strive to have the better gifts, and he puts the gift of
prophecy, which is the gift to tell the word of God. He said
that these gifts, which are helpful to the church, he said, strive
for those. Ask God to give you those. But
having explained all of that about these miraculous gifts
of God, he says, behold, I show you a more excellent way. And he starts talking about love.
And he says, if I speak with the tongues of angels and have
not love, he said, I'm just a big gong or some little tinkling
finger symbols. He said, if I speak with, or
if I have knowledge, if I know all things, the very depth of
the scriptures, and I don't have love, I'm worthless. Isn't that
something? That's how highly the scriptures
elevate the principle of love. When Paul lists the fruit of
the spirit, the very first one is love. So all of God's commandments,
all of his directives, everything is based on love. When we believe
God, we are loving him. You can't believe him without
loving him. And you can't love him without believing him. But
Paul said, if any man does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, may
he be forever cursed, or if there is a curse upon him. And that's
true. That's why, you know, this easy-believe-ism,
as it's often called, that stuff I was raised in, where faith
becomes nothing more than the decision that you make at the
end of some evangelistic sales pitch. And there is, within that
decision, no real repentance, no real regard for the depth
of one's sin, for the holiness of God, and then the wonderful
love that God demonstrated through sacrificing His Son in behalf
of sinners. Now, if you are given eyes to
understand what Jesus Christ did, what He suffered for the
sake of His people, And by God-given faith, you count yourself among
those people, you will love him. Your love may be no stronger
than Peter's, who happened to deny him three times on the night
just before his crucifixion. But you know, Peter loved the Lord Jesus despite all of
that. The Lord proved it to him. Love
to God, love to one another. We sometimes don't like one another, but that's,
like is a fleshly thing. It's not a bad thing, but we
need to not confuse it with love. We always love our children.
Some days we don't like them so much. Isn't that true? I won't
make anybody raise a hand or anything, you know. Sometimes
we always love our parents. Some days we don't like them
very much. Like comes and goes. Love is
steady. Because love does not flow from
emotion. Love flows from purpose and action. When you love someone, you desire
what's good for them, and you will do all that your wisdom
and power can do in order to promote the welfare of the object
of your love. You know, there are people who
have a very gushy, sentimental attitude towards people, and
they will quite freely and openly express their love to others,
but then they never do anything. Well, what good is that? I'm
not saying that an encouraging word can't be a loving thing.
But if someone's in need and you say, oh, I feel so bad for
you. My love for you makes me care
deeply about your troubles." And then you just walk away.
What good is that love? That's a love that exists in
words only. Love, to be love, must express
itself in action. And so we love one another. Now,
Paul didn't just say that your love may grow. He says that your
love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. Now love, you can love someone
and yet not understand what it is they need. You haven't had enough experience
in life, not enough experience in spiritual life and in training
from the scriptures to understand what's really going on. So often
what you see on the outside of a person is not what's really
going on on the inside. For instance, these divisions
that he mentions, there were those who were allowing their
flesh to rule a lot of what they were doing, and it produced fleshly
results. Their selfish ambition came forward,
their desire to be held in high esteem. But here is what mature
love can see. That man's preaching Christ.
And though there may be a lot of flesh and self crusted over
top of that love to where it's hard to see, it's there or he
wouldn't be preaching Christ. Now, I have done it and I see a lot
of people do it on Facebook. The older I get, the less I like
it, but it seems as though many people believe that it is their
ministry to figure out who's wrong. And they do so with biting
words, denunciations, and they will find the most picayunish
things. I remember, believe it or not, I remember when, oh,
this was between 30 and 40 years ago, but This issue came up,
believe it or not. Did Christ obtain redemption
or merely secure it? I suppose that I could work hard
enough to find the distinction between those two. Certainly
the outcome's gonna be the same, but they thought that was awful
important, and if you didn't come down on the right side of
that, you know, they're questioning you. That's someone, that attitude,
it's an immature attitude, it's not a love that has grown in
discernment, in knowing what is right. Paul says, may it grow
more in knowledge, and it's this kind of knowledge that comes
through contact. It's not merely something somebody
told you, it's like knowing a person. And so in a sense, he's talking
about that your love may grow in the knowledge that comes from
continual contact with the gospel and the people involved in it.
And you've been in it and seen it long enough to understand
there's dross here, but blessed be God, there's gold in here
too. You know, if somebody handed you a bucket of gold ore, imagine
how much of that is just so much worthless rock. But are you gonna
throw it away? Say, no, I'm gonna take this
down to the, I don't know what they call the guy who separates
the gold from the dross, but I guess the goldsmith. And as
much as possible, gain the benefit of the gold and eliminate the
dross. And we have to do that with our
brothers and sisters. There's lots of dross in them.
Dross in you, dross in me, dross in all of us. And if we let the
dross determine how we're going to react to someone, then we're
going to end up, well, just everybody by himself. Instead, we look
for the gold. And then it says here, it may
grow in knowledge and depth of insight. And by this, He means
to understand those principles by which we judge whether there
be gold or if it all be dross. That you understand what's really
going on. You know, I remember when I was
young, particularly my teenage years, and I was called on to
counsel at a camp for elementary school age kids. And they could
get whiny and didn't want to do anything you said. And of
course, I thought the only thing to do was to, uh, you know, respond
with, well, you're going to miss your swim time. You know, I was
ready to bring out the punishment, you know, because that's how
you get people in line. And my mom said, they're just tired.
They're just tired. And in their tiredness, they
can't work up. the energy to submit. What they need is a nap. What
they need is a word of kindness. And it often takes a long time
to learn that what you're seeing on the outside is not really
an expression of what you think it is. So that your love may
grow in that. And that would allow them, allow
us to express our love in more productive ways. Verse 10, so
that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure
and blameless until the day of Christ. Now, so that you may
be able to discern what is best or what is excellent, I think,
is what the King James says. And here we're getting right
back to that concept, to know what is valuable. what is important
and what is not. In our society today, in the
United States, the divisions, and I mean, you know, we are
a very polarized nation right now, at least if you go by what
you see in the news and stuff. And most of the time, it's not
over the big issues. They are finding picayunish things
to turn into great big things, and they are missing the most
important things. If you grow in this experiential
knowledge and your depth of insight, you'll be able to discern what
is best, what is excellent, what it is we're really going for
here, what's the thing that we ought to pursue with all our
hearts and let everything else just go by the wayside. And this
results in what? That you may be pure and blameless
until the day of Christ. Now, he doesn't mean pure and
blameless in the sight of God. because nothing that we do makes
us that way. He's talking that, he's saying
that if you will grow in your love this way, in knowledge and
depth of insight, giving you the ability to discern what's
excellent, then your actions being governed by that will be
actions that no one can find fault with. I've seen deep divisions arise
among churches that preach essentially the same thing. So much so that,
you know, it's like what was once one big group became two
groups and people from this group won't preach in the churches
of this group and vice versa. And if you're from this group
and then one of these people goes over there and preaches
in one of those churches, they get in trouble. And it was kind
of interesting. in that experience with the churches
we commonly associate with, there's only one fellow I know of that
I would say had the depth of insight and everything to understand
what was going on and do the right thing. It wasn't me. It
wasn't me. I hope over the years I've come
to understand and would now act differently. But to be able to
let the lesser things go, that those greater things may be promoted. And that makes us pure emblems.
We didn't do anything wrong. When people look back at the
problems within a church, well, they aren't going to point a
finger at you because you weren't involved. All right? Filled with the fruit
of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. The fruit of righteousness
is the same thing as the fruit of the Spirit. The righteousness
of God given to us as a gift produces fruit in us, the fruit
of love. And all of this comes to the
glory and praise of God. All right, you are dismissed
until the regular service.