Have you ever loved something
so much that if you were asked to love
it more, you would think it impossible? Maybe not something, but maybe
someone. Or maybe your love that's greatest in your life is for
a memory, or a theory, or for a philosophy. But the point in examining our
love for today, I want you to ask yourself, what would it be
like if the love that you have greatest in life were commanded
to be more abounding? What would it look like? In Philippians 1, we've been
looking at Paul writing to this group of believers in whom he
is certain that the work of God is evident, mainly for the manifestation
of their concern for Him in chains and their partnership in the
gospel ministry. And he is so certain of God's
work in them that it gives him an overwhelming joy And it establishes
in his heart that his suffering is for their sake and for their
good. And in praying for them, he praises
God for them. So as we see Paul here, what
he's going to say now in verses 9 through 11 is he begins to
pray for them. He prays for them very briefly
in his writing. Now I want you to understand
something about written prayers. Paul is a masterful prayer. He prays for nearly everyone
in writing. We see other prayers, especially
the letter to the Ephesians. We see Paul's prayer. He prays
that they may be filled with all the fullness of God. We see
the prayers of Paul here to the Philippians. And what it should
show us is that if Paul would take time to pen his prayers
for the sake of his readers, how much more so has Paul truly
prayed for them in person, in his flesh, in his heart, in the
Spirit of God? And then someone might ask, but
why even write the prayer down? Well, ultimately because God,
the Holy Spirit, directed Paul through the pen to write it down.
but then also what good comes from seeing Paul's prayer. Number
one, it's a model. We see that prayer is necessary. Prayer is effectual. Prayers
are to be prayed. How would we know what Paul prayed
like or how Paul prayed if he had not written? Secondly, we
can see in how someone prays for someone else. their true
desire. We can see that they want God
to do something for the benefit and for the good and for the
sake of someone else. And a lot of times our prayers, because
of the world that we live in, our praying is predominantly
dealing with the suffering that goes on in our lives. We pray
for God to help in the suffering, to ease the suffering, to give
us wisdom in the suffering, for His will to be done in our suffering.
But at the same time, we must also be praying as Paul prayed,
who rejoiced in his suffering. It's not that we don't pray for
that, but we also, in addition to praying for people in their
suffering, we pray that God's purpose in their suffering would
bring praise to Him. And we pray that even in those
things that we know that God is working in them and it's evident
and everyone can see it, we pray that God would do more of that
work in an abundant way. As you'll see. Paul says here,
let me read starting in verse 1 through the end of verse 11.
to Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus, to all the saints
in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and the deacons.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer
of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your
partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And
I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will
bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. It is right
for me to feel this way about you. Because I hold you in my
heart, for you are partakers with me of grace, both in my
imprisonment and in the defense and in the confirmation of the
gospel. For God is my witness, how I
yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my
prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge
and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent
and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ filled
with all the fruit of righteousness that comes through Christ Jesus
to the glory and to the praise of God. Let me pray. God, that is overwhelming to
my soul. To hear how You speak to us through
Paul. The truth of Your redemption
of a people who are most rebellious and of a certainty of Your completion
of the work that You've caused in them by Your grace and mercy
through Jesus Christ who has surely purchased them. with His
life. Lord, plant this word in our
heart that it may take root in such a way that it chokes our
flesh to death. And we live fully in Christ. In His name we pray. Amen. What do we say? So you see all
this leading up to Paul praying in this introduction. What he
is praying for them is perplexing to me. Think about it. Paul is praising God for their
overwhelming love for him and their partner in the gospel.
And Paul prays that their love may grow more. Do you see the
problem? Because in my flesh, in my human
thinking, I'm thinking, well, Paul's praying for them to love
more, maybe because they didn't love. That's not the case. It's
not the case, as we see over John's apocalypse, where Jesus
writes and says, you've forsaken your first love. You've got your
doctrine right, He says, to the church of Ephesus, no
doubt. But you forgot Me. That's not the case here for
the Philippians. There is no rebuke. There is
no condemnation. There is no questioning of their
motives. There's no correction of their
actions. There's no trying to corral their
attitudes into the likeness of Christ. But yet Paul prays for
that. The theme of Paul's writing here
and that his slavery for the sake of Christ, for the sake
of the Philippians, And in so, the church there at Philippi
and all the saints and all the deacons and all the shepherds,
they also are slaves to Christ. The outcome of such slavery is
an overwhelming, God-witnessing affection for each other. Did
you hear that? This is review. the evidence
and the fruit of being a slave of Jesus Christ, which means
you have been purchased by Christ and you belong to Him. He is
yours and you no longer have a will and a way of your own.
You no longer have rights or entitlements to the world because
that is hell. But you have the rights and the
entitlement of a son or a daughter of a king who created it all.
You are a piece of property that has been bought and exalted to
sit at the right hand of God with your purchaser. It's not just something we just
sort of sneeze at and move on. And Paul is saying that this
love for each other is so evident that he says in his mouth, on
his pen, God is the witness of my affection for you. And now Paul prays, and it is
my prayer that your love may abound more and more. I'm excited about that. I'm pleased
and filled because of that. And the love of the Philippian
church for Paul is clear. And Paul, in his attention to
praying for them, does so that it may be clearly seen that he
thinks they need more. So why does he pray such a thing?
And to what end? To what end? First, notice the emphatic, and
it is my prayer, Paul says, that your love abound. It is my prayer. Paul puts an
emphasis on his prayer. He doesn't just do it by way
of command or exhortation. He doesn't just say, your love
should abound. It's not like He says over, have
this mind among you which is yours in Jesus. He could say
that almost in a didactic way, a command. You will have this
mind because it is yours in Christ, those who are in Christ. So the
antithesis of sometimes when Paul writes, when he declares
something, we understand that if he's declaring it, it's not
true for me, then it's not of me, so therefore that which gives
that evident in my life must not be there, namely salvation. So here, Paul doesn't do that. He prays to God. He's already
said, I praise God in all ways and all times in my remembrance
of you. See, he's thinking about God's
work in Philippi, where he was arrested and beaten and charged
and arrested. The chains fell off because he
and Silas worshipped God. And salvation came to the Philippian
people because of it. Paul's remembering them, and
he prays for them, and now he is telling them, I am praying
for you this way. Paul puts an emphasis on prayer
first and foremost above anything else. The doxology of his introduction,
grace and peace through Jesus Christ and our Lord and the Father,
of Jesus Christ, our Father who is the One who cares for us,
who is the One who looks for us, the One who has found us
and secured us through His Son Jesus. This is where grace comes
from. This is how grace is going to
get to you. And this is how grace is going
to stay with you. That you hear the words that
I have to say, Paul says in his writing. Now, I'm going to pray
for you because prayer is more important than the pen. You're thinking, wait a minute,
you're downplaying the Word of God. No, I'm not. I'm downplaying,
downplaying prayer. What? When we do not give prayer
its proper gravity, we are wasting our time even in the Word. What's more important, that I
preach to you correctly or that I pray that God open your ears
to hear what is preached? If I do not expect God to work
in you, He will not work in you if I am not praying for Him to
work in you. God purposes prayer for the sake
of His will to be done in the lives of His people. God urges
us in our spirit to pray so that He is seen as the answerer of
prayer. And Paul puts an emphasis on
prayer, and in some way he's saying prayer is the most vital
and most effective thing I can do for you. As I teach you, the
prayer that I pray for you will be effective in the teaching.
God will surely hear my prayer and I am certain that He will
continue to do the work that I am praying for Him to continue
to do in you until Christ comes back for us. You see that? Paul prays. that the love of
the Philippians may abound more and more." Now, the word abound
there is in itself highly expressive as an abundance. Think about
it. Abounding. We don't want to go
home and see water abounding over a toilet. No, that's bad. We don't want to go home and
see our house abounding in flames. Flames are just abounding. We
want to contain fire. We want toilet water in the bowl.
We want dogs in the pen. Children locked in a closet. I better delete that. We want things that are not supposed
to be overwhelmingly abounding. We want them in their proper
place. Paul says, I pray that your love would abound. I want you to get the point.
In other words, Paul is saying, I want the love that you have
inside of you for me and for your Lord, I want that love to
be so evident that it overflows that you trip on it and fall
in it. I want it to be so evident that it is encompassing in everything
that you do and that's enough. The word abound says it, but
then He says more and more. Why? To hyperbolically express
the undying need for their love to grow deeper and greater. that just because the Philippians
are madly in love with Christ today, and madly in love with
Paul, and madly in love with the ministry of the Gospel, and
madly in love with their supply of His needs, and madly in love
for prayer for Paul, madly in love for His release, that Paul's
saying you need to have a deeper love and a greater love that
overflows greater than it's overflowing now, that fills not just you,
but the world around you, that it may drown in the expression
of the love that is Christ's in you. There it is. And it's impossible. Because I don't know about you,
but I'm like, I can't do that. And no matter how much love we
have for someone, and how abundant it might be,
and how abounding it might be, when they aggravate us, or even
they not the cause. Maybe something else aggravates
us and then they get in our way of our frustration. Well, I want
to be pitied and somebody's there trying to bless me and I love
them but now they're in the way of my anger rant. Now they're
in the way of my pity party. And I've blown up black balloons
and popped them all so I can enjoy myself and they're in the
way. We don't love them as we should
in our heart. do it. And Paul's saying be careful. There's a reason that he brings
the abundance of love over and over and over again in the context
of this writing. Because there is no way humanly
possible that any human being who has lived or is living or
will ever live that will ever have any way comparable to the
love that Christ had that overwhelmingly and abundantly was poured out
for us. What do we need to see in that?
We need to see two things quickly in this particular passage, this
particular phrase. The love of God is more needed
when it's present than ever before. And the love of the saints must
continually abound, lest it die or fizzle. three things in. It's impossible
for us to make our love abound. We cannot choose this day to
love greatly. And that's trouble. Because Paul
is saying that I pray your love would abound more and more. You
have love, church. I love you, and your love for
me is evident. You have love, and I'm praising
God for that, but I'm praying to God that you'd have more than
you have. Not that what you have is waning,
but what you have is waning. Even in its abundance, it must
be more. You must give of yourself more.
You must pray more. You must sacrifice more. You
must die more. You must surrender more. You
must be a better slave today than you were yesterday. Your
love should abound more and more and more and more and more. And I'm not telling you to do
it. I'm praying that God would do
it because He began it and I'm certain that He'll finish it.
He's already said that. This is the core. The love of
God's people for each other is the core fruit of the Gospel. Listen to me. I've never been
part of a church that sat around in a members' meeting or a Bible
study or fellowship around a table or after service at the back. I've never been among a people
Well, longer than that, but near two decades in the ministry that
I've heard a group of people going, we are just such an unloving
group of people. I've never been part of that.
I've never sat around and somebody said, you know, we're the hateful
Baptist church. We got all the right doctrine,
but we cannot stand people. I wish they'd stay away. Now
some of us might have thought it every now and then, briefly,
maybe even said it jokingly, but I've never seen a group of
Christians gathering together with the indictment of themselves
as unloving. Have you? Matter of fact, it's
the opposite way. People purvey church by this
mean. Oh, you should fellowship with
us, we're loving. And you know what? For most of us who have
been part of a local fellowship, what have we experienced? We've
experienced the love of the church. We've also experienced the wickedness
of a church. And the hurt and the pain. I
mean, you know what? When I start remembering all
my ministry experiences, those are the top 20. The knife in
my door. When the sign says, get out.
The phone calls threatening children. Going on vacation with your family
and coming back and deacons have taken over the church and fired
everybody. These are the things that I remember.
It's not the awesome brother who prayed for us or the sister
who met our needs. That's not what pops up first,
is it? It's not the abounding love. It's the turmoil, the pain,
the suffering, the frustration, the wickedness, the evil. All
the problems. Church splits. Fighting over
the chairs. Fighting over the air. Fighting
over the music. Fighting over this. Fighting over that. Why
you got a paper out there by John Piper? I don't know. Why you read your children about
the Pied Piper? Well, if you loved Jesus a lot,
you wouldn't wear sneakers in the pulpit. Well, if you'd wash
my feet, you'd probably get to heaven. You see how I can go
back and to? But that wasn't the church of
Philippi. They weren't fighting. There wasn't derision and frustration
and anger happening in Philippi amongst the people of God. Matter
of fact, they were running for their lives. And not running,
but being careful. The core of all things is our
love for each other. The core evidence. even as great
as our love for Christ is our love for each other. Now see,
a lot of people, when I say that, they get their heretical calculator
and they start calculating those types of soundbites. And they
go, hmm, see, He's putting our love for each other above the
glory of God and His love. Jesus did that. So if you don't
like it, curse Him. When the Jews, when the Pharisees
questioned Jesus, trying to catch Him in blasphemy, and they asked
Him this question, what is the greatest of all the laws of the
prophets? And Jesus says, to love, we're
going to steal away Paul, with all more abundance, more and
more and more. Love the Lord, your God, Yahweh,
with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength,
and some translations, with all your soul. What's left? Nothing. And then he pauses ever
so carefully and divinely says, but, and, and, not but, of equal
placement, of equal standing. The greatest is the love of the
Lord with all that you are abundantly. You know what that means? That's how we give up our liberties
for the sake of weaker, ignorant brothers and sisters. That's how we don't eat meat
that offends people. That's why we don't wear certain
clothes that may cause people to get aggravated with our faith.
We don't do it because we love God more than clothes and food
and pleasure and rights and liberties and all of the above. But on equal standing, as of
equal importance, not shifting one centimeter up or down in
any level, love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus then qualifies
it by taking every one of the 600, almost 15 laws that are
written in the Old Testament. And He says that every law of
the prophets that was ever written from creation to now hinges on
these two, which are equal in existence and authority. Because
if you love the Lord your God with all your heart abundantly
more and more, the evidence of that love for God will be evident
in your love for His people to your death, church. You see,
this is incredible and this is impossible. It indicts me to
the core of my pinky toe that says, weeweewee, all the way
home. Oh God, I love, but how can I
love more? How can I do more? How can I
pray more? How can I read more? How can I teach more? How can
I? What can I do? Thank God that God gave Paul
this letter so that we can see. The core of the gospel and the life
of the people of God is an overwhelming, sacrificial, spontaneous, supernatural
affection. But it's not alone. In some gatherings that I've
been a part of, oh, let's don't preach. Let's don't do Bible
study. Let's just sing. I'm not going
to put water on that. I love to sing praises to God.
I love it. Maybe we'll have a After Sermon
Sing one Sunday, for those who want to stay, we'll just sing
for an hour. And if we can't play it, we'll sing it Acapulco
style. Acapella. Or we'll just hum it. We'll go watermelon, watermelon,
and you can sing it. But love and zeal and passion
by itself is dangerous. just as knowledge and wisdom
and truth without love is dangerous. That's what Paul says next. He
says, I pray, it is my prayer that your love may abound more
and more with You see, what's the width there? The width combines
with the love. So I pray that your love would
abound more and more. And along with that love would
be knowledge that would abound more and more. And along with
that knowledge would come all discernment. There's a sermon there, apart
from what I'm saying today. And we're going to pick up three
more in this text. All discernment. So there's love
abounding that goes with knowledge. Abounding that goes with discernment. Abounding. And what we see here is we've
got like, we see that we've already made reference to in the Apocalypse
of John. I have this one thing against
you. That you have forsaken. your
first love. Jesus says this. Listen to Revelation
2. To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write the words of
Him who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks
among the seven golden lampstands. Jesus speaking. I know your works. I know your labor and your patient
endurance. See, this is commendation. Listen
to these words. I know your patient, your toil
and your patient and how you cannot bear with those who are
evil. These are good, good stuff. But you have tested those who
call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them
to be false. And Paul is saying over to Philippians,
you partner with me in my imprisonment and you partner with me in my
contending for and declaring the gospel. This is contending
for the gospel. That's wrong. We don't want that
in here. All of you who heard that, that's wrong. This is a
bad teaching. Jesus is saying, you have found these false teachers
out. You have held fast with much suffering and endurance.
You have worked hard. He says, I know you are enduring
patiently and you are bearing up for My namesake and you have
not grown weary. They're still tenacious in this
passion and in this action. But I have this against you. I have this against you. You have
abandoned The love you had at first. What is at first when
the gospel came to you at first? Folks, the constitution of the
church of Jesus Christ is the letter to the Ephesians. Paul certainly prayed this prayer bow my knees before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according
to the riches of His glory, He may grant you to be strengthened
with power in your inner being through His Spirit, so that Christ
may dwell in your hearts richly through faith, that you, being
rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend
with all the saints what is the breadth, and the length, and
the height, and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that
surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness
of God." This is the people that Paul prayed that prayer for.
Jesus now says, You filled yourself with all the knowledge of God
and you are full of truth and you are full of zeal and your
gospel is right. But I have this against you.
You have abandoned your love for me and your love for your
brethren. You know how this looked in Ephesus
at this time? Not only did they not tolerate
false teaching, they tolerated weak Christians. They did not
tolerate, not only did they not tolerate false teaching, they
did not tolerate weak Christians. How do you know? Man, you're
some magical genius. Because the point of the teaching
of the gospel is that those who love truth, Jesus is truth, they
know Him and those who know Him know each other in a loving way. So for Jesus to say, you've forsaken
me. If they've forsaken the true
love of Jesus, they've certainly forsaken the true love of the
weaker church members. Or for each other. Because what
was their love? Their love was the knowledge.
Their love was standing for the truth. Their love was activism.
Instead of worship. And he says, Remember therefore
from where you have fallen, the love you had at first, remember
where that was. You've fallen from that. You
fell from that first love. Remember from where you've fallen.
Remember where it was. And Jesus says, now repent. You see where you are now? Remember
where you're supposed to be? Go back there. Turn around and go that way.
Stop going this way. And do the works that you did
at first. What were they? I think Jesus
is referring to the same works He talks about in John 6. This
is the work of God that you believe all of a sudden. Put your faith
in me and trust in me and love me and love my people and do
the work of an evangelist and do the work of a minister, do
the work of a missionary. Stand for truth, contend for
the faith that was once for all given to the saints and love
me and love each other. If you do not, I will come to
you and I will take your lamp from its place unless you repent. Love isn't by itself, church. Because when love is by itself,
it is a fleshly affection, which I say is a fleshly deception. And the way I think love looks
is not the way the Bible says love looks. How in the world are we to tell
God what love is? when He has clearly shown it
and told us. We don't. We do that which God
has done in us because God is doing the work in us. And our
love that we think is most important is not alone in its importance. With love abounding more and
more with knowledge and all discernment. You see that? Let's unpack it
for a minute. With knowledge, we think of things. Sometimes we think, well, that's
learning stuff. That's just getting facts from
the Bible. No, it's not. For those of you who come to
our Tuesday night teaching, you know that I often overemphasize. I don't have a habit of doing
that, but I often overemphasize the reality that if we are in
an academic pursuit of spiritual things, we're not spiritual in
that pursuit. That if we're looking to know
cool facts about the Bible, even if our motives are pure, I want
to give an answer for that. What does the Bible say about
X? What is this supposed to mean? I want to know. I want this.
I want this cheat sheet in my brain that gives me the right
answers. That becomes an academic pursuit and we forget to worship. If we learn about something as
mysterious as the hypostatic union, which is God becoming
humanity from a wound that He created, born of a virgin, being
birthed, growing up, and as He was an embryo, God was fully
in the womb of Mary. The whole fullness of God, always,
at all times, in Jesus Christ. And yet, He was also fully human. That's called the hypostatic
union. And I could sit down, and in the next hour, I could
give you a small little course on an introduction to the hypostatic
union as a theological principle, and you would have a good handle
on it. You would go, I never even knew that's what it was
called. I never knew that that's what this was. I didn't know Jesus had
dual natures as one person. And you walk out of there feeling
pretty cool, feeling pretty confident, gain a little bit of knowledge.
The question then is, so what that you know that? What difference
does it make? And some people are in that camp.
That ain't important. Well, the Bible teaches it. It's
important. But to what end? So what? Why do we need to know those
things? Because Paul's going to deal with it in his letter
to the Philippians. He's going to talk about Christ having the
nature of a slave and still being God, fully divine. The Colossians
really get it, don't they? It's like he mail bombs on a
home run. You want to see something crazy?
Boom! Jesus is God and created everything. They're like, whoa,
come on. While He was on the earth, He
was fully God, and He was fully man, and He's still fully God,
and He's still fully man. But if when you see those things
in your mind, academically, it doesn't produce an affection
that produces an action in your life that has no power. It has no power. So when we say
with knowledge, we are seeking the knowledge of Christ so that
we might worship Him, so that we might obey Him. We are seeking
to understand the things of Scripture so that we might, to the praise
of His glorious grace, live our lives. And so love then, true love that
is in Christ, actually drives a heart and a love for truth. And this is the formula that
Paul is praying. I pray that your love may abound, and as
your love abounds, with it, knowledge abounds. And with knowledge of
the truth, with your understanding of the text of Scripture by the
Holy Spirit, with the fullness of love that's abounding, all
of a sudden, discernment will develop in you. Why do we need discernment? We
need to be able to discriminate between right and wrong. between
a worldview that's fleshly, what we call carnal, and a worldview
that's biblical. I don't care how old the Bible
is and what it teaches on certain things and it doesn't apply like
a screen over our culture. The culture is always contradictive
to the Christ. Always. The world and everything
in it hates everything Christ is. And when it's culturally
taboo to hate Christ, you make a new one. How do you do that? We learn
what we learn to fit our love. We gather teachers to satisfy
our points of view on an issue, on a culture, on a politic. We create a false Christ. To
which Paul would say to the Galatians, who had all the right knowledge,
who had absolutely incredible understanding of the Gospel,
that when the Judaizers came into town, Just in case they
were right, they adopted circumcision. As necessary. And Paul says,
if you want to cut it, cut it all off. Emasculate yourselves. And if you want to go that far,
let me tell you what you've done. You've bought not the gospel
plus, you've bought no gospel, and you're condemned to an eternal
hell if you don't stop believing that gospel. In practice. It's a scary reality. So that's
why we need love that drives the search for knowledge, and
truth that drives the ability to have discernment, to discriminate.
To discriminate what? What is excellent? That we might
approve it? See, we've got to preach about
discernment and these things. Not just within the argument
of this point, but out of the argument of this point. And so
we're discerning. It means we have insight. We
have an understanding. We're able to see. We're able
to be wise. It's just sort of like when you
open up something in the refrigerator. That's discernment. Elementary, innate, fleshly discernment. If it smells dead and rotted,
it probably is, unless it's food from The Philippines. How much more important is knowing
truth from error and living according to the truth rather than the
error than the food we eat? We need to see. We need to be
wise. And so in order for you to have knowledge and discernment,
Paul says, your love must be raised up. Your love must overflow
in your mind as well as your heart. What's most effective in your
life, church, when you are suffering, or when you are confused, or
when you are threatened, or when you are tempted, is not somebody
coming alongside you and rubbing your shoulder and saying, it's
okay, attaboy. but someone coming alongside
you, and they may or may not rub your shoulder, but they will
say, it's okay, because God's Word says this. That's it. Or somebody is falling
in their faith, and they're getting excited about this false teaching
that they heard, and they're running excited, and they're
zeal for this new book that came out, like Andy Stanley and his
church in Atlanta. I hate to call names, but it
came to my mind and I want to share it with you. He promoted via
social media, maybe you dropped out of church in middle school.
Jesus has changed much since then. Join us Easter Sunday. I mean, I'm thinking tactical
maneuvers, man. I mean, no. No, He hasn't changed
at all. But He has in our minds. and
He has in our world, and they will continue to create new Christs
of who John said that are the Antichrist. There are a lot of
preachers today at this hour on the East Coast who are Antichrist. And if we aren't careful, we
could be just like them. If our love fails, we're no different. You have to have discernment
in your mind. And it comes from an overabundance
of love that pushes you to see the truth. So Paul prays. And then he has these two little
words, so that. So I pray that God may cause
your love to grow more and more and abound more and more with
knowledge and all discernment in all things. Being discernful,
discernment, being wise, having discernment in all things. about
what you eat, wear, think, say, consider, plan, purpose, preach,
teach, share, post on Facebook, write to your neighbor, do about
your problems, in all things have discernment so that, so
that the outcome of this, it's not just so we can be loving,
wise and careful. That's not the point. God did
not save us in Christ Jesus and suffer Christ to suffer death
for our behalf, on our behalf, so that we could just know it
all, judge it rightly, and be funny fuzzy and warm in love
with each other. We have love for each other because
God first loved us. We have love that abounds more
and more because God's work in us is continuing and He will
continue to work it out. We have love that comes with
knowledge and our love for the Christ comes with a love for
the knowledge of the Scripture and we learn and we grow because
knowing Christ is eternal life, John 17. And knowing Christ is
not academic, although love is in the mind through knowledge,
it gives us the outcome, the effect of knowledge with love,
which is discernment. We can tell right from wrong.
We can carefully weigh everything that we hear and see and filter
it through the things that God has given us by His Holy Spirit
through His Word. So that the product of all of
this, so that you may approve what is excellent. I want to preach on that text
by itself. But in short, what is it that
is excellent? Things that are good, righteous,
pure, holy, best? What is best? This might be right
or good for me, but is it best for my God and my walk and my
neighbor and the sinners down the street and my testimony? Is it wise? Is it satisfying
in Christ? Is it glorifying? Is it truth? Does it produce the right action?
Does it produce the right thinking? Are these things excellent? And
if they're excellent, we love and know and discern what is
excellent so we might approve of them. Which in turn gives
us the idea that we disapprove of other things, right? We disapprove of that which is
not good, and we approve of that which is good. So this idea that
the church doesn't have a dog in the hunt of saying what's
right and wrong is foolishness. When the world stands up and
says, this is what we do, we're the world, and we go, yeah, do
whatever. We're not even obeying the simple
tenet of Jesus Christ to say, go command all people to what?
Obey me! God's first command to Adam was
what? Do what I say. Be holy. Don't eat there. You've got the
whole world and it produces food for you with no effort on your
part. You just eat it. Go pick it. Don't eat that one fruit from
those two trees or you'll die. And all they could think about
were those two trees. And Jesus says, go make disciples
by teaching them to obey. You know what that means? The
Gospel starts with the lost world by saying, are you right with
God? Do you obey God? Are you holy
and pure and good? If I have one, I have ten people
tell me every week that they're a good person. And I have a year and a half
old back there. She's not a good person. She's a sinner. Don't believe
me? She knows what she can and can't
do. And when she looks at the little blue button that controls
the power to our little internet console there in case the power
goes out, it shines so big and blue and it's like, push me baby.
It's big. Why make that glow? Shut the
light off. Can't stand it. First time, it
was cute. Second time, it was annoying.
Third time, no. She knows not to push it, but
what will happen when she gets near it? She's playing, talking
about her own business, reading her Jesus books, and she looks
over there, and there's that blue button. And she looks at the blue button,
and she's got that little grin, and she looks at me. Don't tell me she's not thinking,
I want to push that button, but my daddy will pop my hand. And
she learned a word that she says better than anything else. No,
no. We train the dogs with the same
commands. No, no. She knows she's wrong. And my heart bleeds that God
in His mercy would save her soul. The only way she'll be saved
is if she hears the gospel. That's the only way you're going
to be saved if you hear the gospel and you repent of wanting to push
that delightful button and obey God. And it's not your obedience that
saves you, it's your faith because Christ obeyed God. That's what
Paul argues here. But we must approve what is good,
not stand by and let the bad go. When we let it go unchecked,
we approve what is not excellent. When we do not say to our neighbor,
your adultery is wicked, and it spits in the face of God,
and they say, well, I'm not even a Christian. I'm a so and so,
I'm an atheist. Oh, I'm sorry. You do what you
believe then. That's not the way it works.
But the Bible says all mouths will be shut. No one is without
excuse. No, not one. For the wrath of
God is coming upon the unrighteousness of all humanity. There is not
one blue button that was pushed by a baby. Not one curse word
that hasn't been ripped off by some guy pulling out in front
of you. Not some thief who stole a toy or a piece of bubble gum
from the 7-Eleven. There's not one sin in this world
that will not go punished. God will bring recompense on
every wicked thought, every selfish pity, every sign of depression,
every single aggravated idea, every lust, every theft. He will bring judgment on every
bit of it. The difference is, if you are
in Christ, all the judgment of God against you is put on Jesus. And if you're not in Christ,
you continue to live and sin. Jesus was raised from the dead,
so we're not a slave to our sinly flesh anymore. Though we sin,
we're not a slave. We're a slave to righteousness.
We can't sit around and say, well, God's not through working
on me. He doesn't work out the things in you. He works in Himself
in you. So the way our sin diminishes
and our flesh gets put to death is because the righteousness
of Christ is filled in us and all the fullness of God continues
to abound in us. So we can't say, well, God's
still squeezing that out. If He's not squeezing it out,
He's not putting Himself in. And if we sit here without Christ
filling our lives and continually pressing in us righteousness,
we are not of Christ. We must discern what is excellent
so we can approve what is good, church. And it's not only just
those things that we know are sinful, but the things that we
should be doing that we do not do, as James would say. Those things that we are commanded
to do, like share the gospel, pray for our enemies, love ISIS,
love homosexuals, pray for them. Not get in our little soapbox
like our righteousness and our heterosexuality and our good
Christian morals are better than theirs. They're not. Nicodemus, I bet there ain't
a person in the sound of my voice, including the one speaking, who
would ever walk the line the way Nicodemus walked the line
as a zealot of the law of God and the holiness of God. And
Nicodemus was told by Jesus that all that you are is a love of
darkness. And the works that you do is a work of darkness. You worship, you study, you're
preaching, you're teaching your prayer. It's all right, it's
all true, and it's all mine, Jesus said, but it's darkness.
You have no light in you because you love the darkness. We must approve what is excellent.
That even goes with what we do as a people, what we do in our
ministries. Is this excellent? Is it wrong?
Not necessarily. Is it excellent? Is it good? Is it what God has
called us to? so that you may approve what
is excellent, so that you may be pure and blameless for the
day of Christ." Now let me show you what that means. We think
it means if we approve what's good, then we'll stand with a
good record before Jesus. And He's like, well done. Do
you know that well done is not about us? The well done points the praise
to God, doesn't it? Paul says, for by grace you've
been saved through faith. And this faith is not of your
own doing, but is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.
For you were created as God's workmanship or Christ's workmanship. Christ created you in His finished
work to do good works. which God created for you to
walk in before you were. That's Ephesians 2, 8, 9 and
10. So that we may approve what is
excellent. We see this, it's good, I do
this, I follow Christ, this is good, I have discernment. This
is not good, I won't do this, so I will follow Christ and abstain
from that. This is true. I agree with this. Amen. It is right. It is good. I support that. I approve that.
This is false teaching. That's dangerous. I must speak
out against that. With what? Patience and humility.
That's 1 Peter. So you may be pure and blameless
for the day of Christ Jesus. Not a record. but the record
of sins against you was nailed to the flesh of Christ on the
cross. And if you are in Christ, the discernment is there, approval
of what is good is there, because there's a discernment there,
because there's a knowledge of truth there, because there's
a love for Christ and His people there, because Christ has created
you. That is what's called the new
birth. That's what Paul is outlining here in Philippians chapter 1.
It's being called born again. Are you born again? Are you a
new creation? Are you still hanging on to the
little lifeless limb of hope that you're doing all you can
to please God? You'll be pure and blameless
for the day of Christ because He has love that is abounding
for you, and you and I have love abounding for each other, which
in turn gives us a love for wisdom and truth which in turn gives
us discernment, which in turn helps us approve what is good,
which in turn helps us live out that which is good in obedience
to our Lord, inclusive of the ministry that we do. So then, where do you see this
in an example in Scripture? In John's gospel, Peter, I love
Peter. He's such a funny guy. I like
to pick at Peter, don't you? Old Peter, he's so zealous and
he gets in the way and chops off ears. Let's go, let's get
the sword. Let's go, let's take victory.
Let's go, come on Jesus, let's go. Thomas is like, yeah, I'm
coming, we'll die together. That's their hearts. And Peter's so confident. Nobody's
going to arrest you as long as I'm around. Nobody's going to
bother you as long as I'm around. There's 5,000 people you just
told to eat your body, but I got your back. As a fool, I love picking at
Peter. And then I realize as I'm laughing
at Peter, man, I just like him in a lot of ways. Aren't we?
We're just like him, not necessarily that we got Christ back, but
we think we have Christ. We think we're standing there.
We think we're standing in righteousness because we got it under control.
We've got our faith in line. We've got our Bible study in
line. We've got our church attendance in line. We've got our doctrine in line. Everything's
good. We're good, man. We're great. Are we abounding in love? Are
we abounding in knowledge? Are we abounding in discernment?
Are we abounding in approval of what is excellent? Are we
abounding in the living out those things? Why do you think we gather? So
that these things will be true in our lives. Not so we'll learn
them. Well, isn't that nice? Peter is, he's the poster child. Everybody leaves. Jesus turns
to the twelve and says, hey, are y'all gonna go? Peter, nobody
else could talk. Peter always spoke. always spoke. He was always right there. And
I want to imagine that as Jesus took John off the inner circle,
those three, Peter was a part of that, and I want to imagine
when Jesus always sort of called for John to come over and walk
with him and talk privately, Peter was over the corner, like
three steps behind or something. What's he saying? And I mean,
afterward, I'm sure he aggravated John to death. I mean, can you
imagine? We know they grumbled and thought.
We see in John 4 where Jesus went and talked to the Samaritan
woman. And it says there, John wrote
it. He wrote it. It says we were marveling that he was talking
to a Samaritan woman. But they weren't going to rebuke
Jesus for crying out loud. He was their rabbi. You don't
do that. You don't tell daddy he's wrong
in the middle of a sentence in front of everybody. But they wrote it. They were
honest about their feelings. So I can imagine when John was alone and Peter,
and he's like, hey man, what are you talking about? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Did
he tell you about this? Yeah. Oh, man. Did you have something
else? What's going on? I'm saying that
maybe there's a little jealousy there. Because Peter's a zealot.
He loved Jesus. He had the right heart of truth,
did he not? Are you going to leave? And Peter
just speaks up. We're not going anywhere. We are. To whom shall
we go? You have the words of eternal
life. Jesus asked Peter. He says, they say that I'm this
and that and this. Who do you say? Speaking to the
twelve. Who do y'all say? You need to
understand you is plural most of the time in the Bible. Who
do y'all say I am? Peter, we. Nobody else can even
have a turn. Peter's like, we say that you
are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Blessed are you,
Simon Barjona, for man has not revealed these things to you,
but my Father in heaven has given you this understanding. Your
doctrine is pristine. You've got that right, Jesus,
and I'll never forsake you. Yes, you will. You're going to
deny me three times before the sun comes up. Not going to happen. I'll show you. I'm not even going
to deny. Not only am I not going to deny
you, I'm going to chop up some ears when they come take you
in that garden. Why did Jesus heal him? To show
the gravity of the necessity of them to let peace reign when
it comes to the gospel. That's why you don't kill people
you're missionaries to when they put a spear through you. Shoot
them in the air, scare them off. If you don't know the story of
Jim Elliot, you need to read it. And then what happens? Peter
denies him. And Jesus restores him. What does Jesus do to restore
Peter? Hey, Peter, tell me what you think you know about me.
Am I really the Christ? What does that mean to you? You
got the hypostatic union down? Let me hear it. Matter of fact,
let me hear you do a gospel presentation. Let me make sure you're ready.
Don't even get me started on that. Well, you didn't ask him
any of that, did you? He didn't even say, why did you
run away? Why did you deny me? Are you scared you don't love
me? No, he asked him, do you love me? And Peter, with his head hanged
down, you know I love you, Lord. Jesus says, do you love me, Peter?
Yes, I love you. You know, you know. Reminds me
of Ezekiel. You know, Lord. You know I love you. He denied him three times and
Jesus restored him three times. Do you love me, Peter? You know
that I love you. Then your love for me is all
you need to feed my sheep. Go feed my sheep. You got the
doctrines. You can't feed squat if you don't
love me. And he died a martyr's death because he had a love for
Jesus. feed my sheep the truth that
you know with an overflowing and abundant love for their soul."
It's not about, would you get this information down? It's about,
God, would you put this in so that it would produce fruit a
thousandfold? And he continues as he closes
this chapter out, or this section out, so that we approve what
is excellent and so be pure. Approving what is excellent creates
the purity and the blameless for the day of Christ Jesus because
God gave us a heart that is His, a mind that is Christ's, as we'll
see in weeks to come. Filled, you could also be understood
that you may be filled with the fruit of righteousness,
he's still praying, that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory
and the praise of God. Now, how are we going to have
the righteousness proving that we have the righteousness,
and the love, and the discernment, and the wisdom, and the knowledge.
How are we going to prove it? How are we going to see it? How
are we going to know it through Christ? It's really that simple. You put an hour on this, why
don't you just tell us that? Because just as Paul builds the
argument to that point, so must we read the Bible in that way. We are righteous not because
we are righteous. We are righteous because we have
a righteousness that is not ours. Filled with the fruit of righteousness,
that means filled with the fullness of holiness, through Christ,
that comes through Christ. Not just from Christ, but through
Christ. It comes through the work of
Christ's atoning sacrifice. It comes through the work of
Christ's continued obedience. It comes through the work of
Christ's resurrection from the dead. Our righteousness, the
works that we produce, the knowledge that we gain, the love that is
poured out of us is not our love, but is Christ's love in us. It's
not our righteousness, but Christ's righteousness in us. It's not
our work, but Christ's work in us. It's not our ministry, but
Christ's ministry in us. It is not anything of ours to
seize and take and claim, except that it is Christ alone. We sing that song often. We've
got it on our wall as one of the pillars of our faith as Baptists. What does it mean? That's what
it means. There is no effective righteousness
except Jesus Christ's righteousness. He began the good work in you.
And He is pressing into you His life. which presses out of us
the dead man that walks. Why? Why do we care? If we're saved, why do we care? I have a very long thesis on
this idea. It's not just here, it's in every
New Testament letter. God saved His people through
Christ Jesus, by grace, through faith, in order that He may receive
all that is due Him in praise and honor and glory. Now and forever. We live in every aspect of our
lives desiring to please and honor and praise and bring honor
and praise to our God. That's it. And we do our best and it's not
good enough. But Christ's best is perfect. And only with the righteousness
of Christ imputed to us, injected, intermolded, are we able to stand
just before God and are we as an object and an individual and
an expression able to give God praise. Now look at that. We're
thinking this, aren't we? Oh, we praise You, Father. That's
part of it. But just by the fact that we
exist in purity is a praise to God. hear it, to the praise, and Paul lays
that out easy in Ephesians. Three, the manifold of the purpose
of the church in order to display the manifold wisdom of God to
the powers and the principalities of the heavenly places. The enemies
of God, namely Satan and all of the fallen angels, Lucifer
and all of the fallen angels, are witnesses to the praise and
the glory and the righteousness of God because we sit here saved. That's it. That's the point. So we live this life not for
us, but for Him. The local church must move in
this direction inwardly and outwardly so that there is a gaze from
heaven downwardly and a praise from earth upwardly that is preparation
for what we are as eternal beings. Is your love a bounty? Because God's love for you is. Believe that. Believe the gospel
of Jesus and be saved from the just wrath of God. There is no
other way. There's no words you can say.
There's no aisle you can walk. There's no prayer that you can
pray that secures your salvation. Only the work of Jesus Christ
and your faith in Him fully. Not one time, but forever. That's why Paul uses, in the
day of Christ, in His return, you'll be found blameless and
spotless. Because you trust in Him. Temptation comes your way,
and you trust in the gospel. Desire comes your way that's
not excellent, And you go, I think that's going to make me happy,
but I'm going to trust in the gospel. That's what living faith is all
about. So with that, my prayer for you,
church, is that you would truly cherish Christ. Let's pray. I thank you so much, Father. for your overwhelming and abundant
love for us. As Christ left glory to become
a human, to live in a world that hated Him, to die at the hands
of sinners so that He might suffer so that
we would not. Father, I cannot bring a point
home and I cannot in my flesh help
anyone see. But I trust, Lord, that as the
gospel is clearly sent to the ears of all who hear it, that
You would plant it and produce it as life. Your Word does all that it was
intended to do. God save our children. Save our
neighbors, save our enemies, save our. Communities. And father, we thank you for
continuing to hold us in salvation. Because of your undying love.
In Jesus name, amen.