scroll to 35:20 for beginning of sermon
Philippians 1:9-11
All right, our scripture reading is three short verses from Philippians chapter 1, verses 9 through 11. This is what the Apostle Paul wrote from his prison cell a couple of millenniums ago. Let me read it.
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, may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
I hope you’re excited to jump into the book of Philippians, one of my favorite books in the Bible. And so, let me just give you a little background, a little review. We’ve looked at the first eight verses.
It’s called the Joy Epistle. Here’s the apostle Paul who’s in prison, and yet he’s rejoicing. And the word joy or rejoicing is found 16 times in those four chapters.
And so, Paul is writing this thank you letter to the Philippians, and the theme is joy. In fact, the name of this series is Pure Joy. And we discovered and stated that what is pure joy? Pure joy is only found, lasting pure joy, in a relationship with God through Jesus.
That’s where pure joy is found. That’s why Paul could rejoice, not based on his circumstances, not based on whether it’s 75 degrees and sunny out or six inches of snow out. No, it’s based on that relationship with Christ.
So, we looked at the first eight verses last week. Let me just bring us up to speed. We looked at the salutation.
This letter’s from Paul and Timothy. Describes themselves as servants of Christ. He uses the word Doulos.
Means a bondservant. Means that one that doesn’t have any rights of their own. And then he’s writing to believers, to all God’s holy people in Christ.
That’s their spiritual location, their physical location at Philippi with all the overseers and the deacons. So, what happened there? Paul visited about 10 years earlier, a second missionary journey to Philippi. Lydia became the first European convert.
She was a businesswoman. Her whole household came to faith in Christ. The Philippian jailer, you know that story in Acts 16, he came to Christ and his whole household and a church developed.
And so, now as Paul writes, there’s a church that’s organized and they’ve got leadership and Paul’s writing to them. And here’s his greeting, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Last week then we looked at the next few verses and we saw the sentimental relationship between Paul and these people.
This is a love relationship between Paul, the founding pastor, and the people there at Philippi. And he makes three statements that we looked at in verses 3-8. First of all, he says, I have you in my thoughts.
Verse 3, I thank my God every time I think of you, every time I remember you. And then Paul says, I have you in my prayers. Verse 4, in all my prayers for all of you, I pray always with joy.
There’s the first-time joy is mentioned. Why? Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And so, here we are 10 years later, Paul’s in prison.
What happened? The church at Philippi took up a monetary gift, sent it with Epaphroditus to help out Paul. And Paul’s thanking them because they’ve been partners in the gospel. He’s also thankful and praying with joy.
Verse 6, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to the completion until the day of Christ. Paul’s joyful because he’s saying, God doesn’t start a task and not finish it. Unlike some of us, we have unfinished tasks.
God’s going to complete salvation. So, there’s three parts to our salvation. Justification, I have been saved.
When we put our faith in Christ and God declares us righteous in His sight. And then we could say, I am being saved. That’s sanctification, where God wants us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus and become more and more like Jesus.
Someday our salvation will be complete. That’s glorification, when God calls us home or Christ returns. And we will be like Christ because we’ll see Him as He is.
We’ll have a glorified body and a renewed mind and life will be Garden of Eden 2.0. And so, Paul’s rejoicing because God’s going to complete His work in the Philippian believers. He’ll complete His work in us. That brings us to verses 9 through 11 and Paul’s prayer.
Paul not only said, I’m praying for you, but here’s his first prayer. It’s a very short one. I’ve entitled this, Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets.
All of us make hundreds of decisions a day. I’m glad you decided to make special effort to be here this morning. And we made a decision to get up and we make decisions about what clothes to wear, what to eat and the rest of our day.
Most of our decisions aren’t earth life changing decisions, but many decisions are. There are many decisions in life that determine the pathway of our life. And I’ve discovered over the years that one bad decision in a rash, angry moment can change the course of someone’s life.
Better decisions, fewer regrets. Our life and legacy will ultimately be what the sum total of all the decisions that we make in life. And if I were to summarize Paul’s prayer that he prayed for the Philippian believers here in verses 9 through 11, this would be the summary.
Paul is praying for spiritual discernment and wisdom so, that believers will make wise decisions. Paul wants these believers to make wise decisions based on what? Spiritual wisdom and discernment. That’s what we want for all of us.
That’s what we want for our kids. That’s what we want for our grandkids to make what? Wise decisions based on God’s truth and God’s wisdom. We’ve all made decisions in life.
We look back on and we regret. You know, in golf, and I’m not a golfer because I can’t hit the ball straight, and I found out I’m getting very, very frustrated and paying a lot of money to do it, so, it doesn’t make too much sense. But in golf, if you hit a drive and it goes off to the right or off to the left and goes into the woods or goes into the high grass, you can just say, well, I’m going to take a mulligan.
That means I’m going to get another chance at my drive and we’re going to forget that one. Unfortunately, in life, there are a lot of decisions where you don’t get to take a mulligan. And so, we want to understand Paul’s prayer here.
I want spiritual discernment so, that what? You can make wise decisions, better decisions, and not have regrets in life. As I thought about this topic this week, I just started to think, well, maybe all of us have some decisions that we regret. I’ll share a couple of mine.
Diane and I were newly married. This was many, many years ago, back in 1977. We were living in Grand Rapids and we were living in student housing for the seminary students there on the campus of Cornerstone University.
And it was basically two small rooms. And when Diane first saw where we were living, I just accepted this without seeing it. It almost ended the marriage right there, but we got over that.
And I don’t know, two or three months after we were married, a couple of insurance salesmen, I don’t know if I made an appointment or they just showed up, and here I am, a young married person, and they’re like, well, now you’ve got financial responsibilities for your wife. And what’s going to happen if something happens to you? And you need to buy this insurance policy. And bottom line, make a long story short, I bought this insurance policy, which was the most expensive insurance policy you could buy.
Later on, I found out that they were selling that because they made the most commission off of that, and you don’t need that kind of insurance. And so about three or four months later, I just canceled it. Perhaps all of us have regrets of buyer’s remorse when we make a bad financial decision, oftentimes based on impulse.
What I came to do, and I’ve done this most of our married life because salesmen can put pressure on you, when I’m making a financial decision, I finally learned to say, you know what, I’m going to think about that for 24 hours, and then I’ll get back to you. And the salesman hated that, but it just helps you kind of process things. I regret buying that insurance.
I go back to 1981, graduated from Grand Rapids Seminary in June, and looking for a church assignment, and waiting for the hundreds of churches that would contact me saying, will you be our pastor? Finally, one letter came, and it was a church in Ohio. We went and visited, spent a couple, a weekend there, spent another weekend there, and church voted, and for four years, we were assistant pastor in Strongsville, Ohio. It happened to be a little bit of a difficult assignment.
I asked zero questions because I didn’t know what question to ask, and I was just eager to get into ministry. Looking back on that, and now I obviously know a lot more questions to ask, I regretted that I didn’t ask a lot of questions. Better decisions, fewer regrets.
My dad was in ministry for 60-plus years toward the end of his ministry. He wrote a paper on some of the regrets that he had in ministry. If I had to do it all over again, these are some things I would do, and I’ve got that list here.
I’ll just read one of them. This is what my dad wrote about 10 or 15 years ago. If I could go back, what would I change? Number one, he says, family time.
Although I was able to attend many of my son’s sporting events, I still regret a pattern that I fell into for many years. Because in the ministry, the to-do list is never completed. That’s just a part of ministry.
There’s always more preparation you can do. There’s always another sermon you can work on. There’s always another visit you can make.
There’s always another phone call you can make. He says, because the to-do list is never completed, when it’s time to leave the office for the day, I have this mental picture of a briefcase full of books and folders that I lugged home every night, night after night. While my wife and sons played games at the kitchen table, I was engrossed in a book or sermon outline.
I missed interaction and family time. Those nights cannot be recaptured. The only thing I can do is share my regret and then hope that others will not repeat the same mistake.
And so, there’s a regret. That family time, your kids are young only once, and you want to capitalize on that time. We’re going to look at this prayer in just a little bit, but Andy Stanley, in his book, and this is the title of his book, Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets, on this topic, shares that there are three categories of decisions that create the majority of our regrets.
They all start with the letter D. Here they are, dumb purchases. That’s that buyer’s remorse. I remember when VCRs came out, we had a friend that was eager to get into that new technology, and there were two different types of VCRs.
There’s a beta VCR, and when it first came out, and he spent $800 on a beta VCR because it was new technology and the cost was really high. Dumb purchases, doomed relationships, that’s the second one, and thirdly, destructive habits. Well, let’s look at Paul’s prayer here in Philippians chapter 1 verse 9. He makes three requests, and then there’s three results.
1. Grow in love
Here’s request number one. We’ve already read it. Verse 9, this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more.
So, where does Paul start? 1st Corinthians 13, three great virtues in the Christian faith, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is, Paul says, is love. And chapter 14 verse 1, pursue love.
And so, Paul’s prayer for these believers, that their love would abound. Now, we could ask Paul in this prayer because he doesn’t clarify this for us, I pray that your love might abound. Is he talking about that our love for God will abound? That our love for one another will abound? That our love for the unbelievers who don’t know Jesus will abound? And Paul doesn’t specify, but I would just say, yes, yes, and yes.
Because if you read through scripture, the scriptures tell us we need to grow in love. What are the two great commandments? Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Love your enemies. So, no matter what category we want to assign this to, Paul’s praying that the Philippian’s believers love would grow, more and more. And by the way, what’s the identifying mark of a Christian? Jesus told us in John 13.
By this, all men know that you are my disciples if you, what, have love one for another. And so, the defining mark that has defined us as followers of Jesus is love and loving one another. And Paul says, I pray that your love will grow, that your love will abound.
2. Grow in knowledge
Request number two, he goes on to add on to his request, this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more, first of all, in knowledge. So, my request is abounding love, that you love each other more, love God more, that you’ll grow in knowledge. And so, the more we know God, the more we know who he is, his character, and the more we know what he’s done for us, the more we should love him.
If you’ve not read J.I. Packer’s classic work, Knowing God, one of the classic works on this whole topic. The more we know somebody, the more we can love them. That’s not only true of God, but that is true of one another.
God initiated this whole love process. We love him, why? Because he first loved us. Romans 5a, God demonstrated his love toward us while we were yet sinners, what? Christ died for us.
How do we get to know God more? Well, it’s in his word. The scriptures reveal the character of God and who he is and his attributes. So, God speaks to us through his word, we speak to him through prayer.
The more we know who God is, the more we love him. That’s not only true of loving God, but it’s true of our personal relationships. The more you know someone, the more you know what’s going on in their life, the more you know perhaps their struggles or what they’re dealing with in life or even the joys of their life, the more you can encourage them, the more that you can love them.
And so, Paul says, I want you to grow in knowledge, Thursday I was at the dentist’s office, and they had a lot of cancellations that day because that was kind of a snowy day, and so the office was really quiet, and they kind of had a more relaxed atmosphere. And so, I got to get a cavity filled, and the dentist comes in and gives me the Novocain shot, and then I’m in the chair there, and the dental assistant sometimes is running back and forth, but I was like the only person there.
So, we had like 20 minutes till the numbing took effect, and so I began to chat with her and discover that she has two daughters that go to Clinton schools, a ninth grader and a sixth grader. And I said, well, our grandkids go to Clinton schools. We began to talk about that, and as time went on, we’re talking about busy schedules, and she says, well, it’s hard because I’m a single mom.
Oh, I didn’t know that. And we talk a little bit more, and she says, yeah, and she’s in her, probably in her 40s, and says, my husband died three years ago in March. I’m so sorry to hear that.
Here she is working and trying to raise two girls, and we had more conversation, and I got to know who she is and some of her struggles, and I was just able to try to encourage her. That’s how love grows. That’s why we kind of encourage you when our service is over or maybe come a little early and just kind of hang around and get to know other people because the more you know them, the more you can love them and the more you can pray for them and their needs.
3. Grow in DISCERNMENT
Paul says, I want you to grow in love. I want you to grow in knowledge. Thirdly, I want you to grow in increasing discernment, in discernment.
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 so, Paul says, I want you to grow in discernment. Some people take a verse in the New Testament in Matthew out of context, and it’s a short verse, judge not lest you be judged.
It says, no, you can’t make any judgments. You can’t judge other people. Leave that up to God.
Well, we have to make judgments all the time. That’s what this word discernment means. It’s the Greek word Anakrino, to distinguish, to separate out, by diligent search, to examine.
And so spiritual discernment means that we look at something carefully through the lens of Scripture that will help us to make what? The best choice. The old Sears catalog years and years ago had three categories, good, better, and best. And God wants for us what is best.
And in order to do that, to make those wise choices, we have to have discernment. It’s really what the whole book of Proverbs is about, especially the first 10 chapters. Let me just read to you.
Here’s the goal and the purpose of Proverbs, Proverbs 1:2-5, for gaining wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for receiving instruction in wise behavior, for doing what is right and just and fair, for giving prudence to those who are simple, knowledge and discretion to the young. Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance. All right, here’s the goal of the book of Proverbs.
And if you’re kind of looking like, well, what can I do for devotions? A chapter a day in Proverbs would be a great place to start. It’s all about wisdom. It’s all about discernment.
Proverbs chapter 3 verse 21, Solomon writes, my son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight. Preserve sound judgment and discretion. Psalm 119:125, I am your servant, the psalmist writes, give me discernment that I may understand your statutes.
So, Paul’s praying for these believers, I want you to grow in love toward God, toward one another, toward the unbelieving world. I want you to grow in knowledge, knowledge of who God is. And as you grow in knowledge of what’s going on in other people’s lives, your love will grow.
I want you to increase in discernment. And when you do that, those three requests are made, that leads us to three results, three results. Let’s look at the three requests, abounding love, increasing knowledge, growing discernment.
3 results…
Here are the results. 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 for the day of Christ.
1. a Pure and blameless life
So, here’s the first one, a pure and blameless life. ESV translates it so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. What is the day of Christ? Paul mentions it three times in the book of Philippians. The day of Christ is when our salvation is complete, that we will be pure and blameless, yes, in our standing before God, we’re pure and blameless because we’re in Christ, but at the day of Christ, there’s also going to be a final exam.
There’s also something called the Bema Seat Judgment, and Christ is going to evaluate our life. This is not for salvation. This is for rewards or loss of reward, and Paul says, I want you to be pure and blameless on that day of Christ.
When he evaluates, how have you spent your time, talent, and treasure to make a difference for God’s kingdom? And so abounding love, growing in knowledge, increasing discernment will help us to make wise decisions so that we can be pure and blameless. Not talking about perfection, but there’s a couple people in the Bible, in the Old Testament, that were described as being blameless. Daniel was one of them.
We looked at this when we studied the book of Daniel, just finished a month or so ago, Daniel chapter 6. Remember, they were looking for something, they were jealous of Daniel and his position in the government, and so they said, well, we need to find something that we can find against Daniel, because we can’t find anything against him, so let’s think about something of his religion. And so they made a law that you can’t pray to any other god other than the king or any other person of the king of the Medes and Persians, King Belshazzar, for 30 days. That’s how they got Daniel.
So, let’s find something to do with his prayer life. Job was considered blameless in Job chapter 1. Satan comes into God’s presence. God says to him, have you considered my servant Job? He’s a blameless man.
Satan says, oh, of course he loves you and he’s blameless. He’s rich and has a family and he’s got his health, start to take some of that away and see how Job does. Job was described as blameless.
By the way, it’s one of the qualifications of a pastor, 1st Timothy 3:2, that a bishop or an overseer should be blameless. Not perfect, but when you look at the totality of their life, there shouldn’t be any outstanding area that says, well, look at this, look at this, if they do make an accusation, it should be a false one. You have to have integrity in every area of your life.
2. A Fruitful life
What’s result number two of this prayer? Pure and blameless life. Secondly, a fruitful life or a productive life. Look at it in verse 11, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.
Righteousness is our standing, but it’s also before God, but it’s also a practical term of how we live. You could say and translate that, paraphrase, filled with right living that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. So filled with the fruit of righteousness.
What is spiritual fruit? The Bible uses that term a lot. John 15:5 talks about Jesus is the vine and we’re the branches and that he wants us to have a productive, fruitful life. So fruitfulness is, first of all, our character.
Galatians 5:22 and 23, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, long suffering. Nine characteristics that God wants to develop in our life. Fruitfulness is our conduct, our behavior.
Fruitfulness is converts, people that we have the privilege of sharing Jesus with and leading to Christ. Here’s one commentator that writes a paragraph about what this fruitfulness is. So what does spiritual fruit look like? Spiritual fruitfulness is seen in a change in our disposition, attitudes, affections, and actions.
Those sins which we formerly loved became loathsome to us, Romans 6:21. We begin to love others with the love of Christ. We more easily forgive. We seek to do good to everyone.
We exercise our spiritual gifts for the building up of the body of Christ. We share the good news of salvation. We’re grateful and give praise to God.
We seek to do all things for God’s glory. We confess our sins to God and pray for His continual work in us. We strive to know God and to do the things that please Him, knowing that we can bear no true fruit apart from Him.
And so Paul’s prayer, the second result is, I want you to have a fruitful life, a productive life. There’s a last result here. We look at it in verse 11, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, here it is, to the glory and praise of God.
3. A god-honoring life
So here’s the third result of abounding love, growing in knowledge, increased discernment. You’re going to have a pure and blameless life. You’re going to have a productive, fruitful life for God, and then you’re going to live a God-honoring life, to the glory and praise of God.
I don’t know if you’ve ever written out a life purpose statement. Somebody challenged me to do that 35, 40 years ago. Have you written a life purpose statement, like, what is your purpose in life? It could easily be summed up in one phrase, to know God and to make Him known is our purpose in life.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism and the first question of many is, what is the chief purpose of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s why God created us, and so Paul says, my prayer is that you would abound in love and grow in knowledge and discernment so that you can have a life that brings honor and glory and praise to God. That really should be our goal every day.
Our goal is to make God look good as we glorify Him in the way we live, in the way we talk, in our behavior. Well that’s Paul’s short prayer for the Philippians, and it’s really a prayer for all of us. It’s a great prayer that we can pray for one another, our kids, our grandkids.
Application questions
So three quick questions here, and then we’ll conclude. Three application questions, we’ve got them on the screen here. Here’s the first one, a question, and this really challenges me because I fall far short in this.
1. balanced prayer life
Do I have a balanced prayer life? What do you mean by a balanced prayer life? And I mentioned this last week, our prayer life tends to be a rehearsal of lists, and there’s nothing wrong with this. James 5:16 says, pray for one another that you might be healed, but our prayer life sometimes is predominantly just praying for the physical needs of others. We have a long list of sicknesses and illnesses, and we all have that in our own church, in our own extended family.
We have an aunt, my dad’s youngest brother’s wife, they live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we’ve been praying intensely for her for three and a half weeks, late 70s, went through open heart surgery, things did not go well, still in the hospital today, was on a ventilator for 11, 12 days and they couldn’t get her off the ventilator and she was fighting for her life. Diane and I have been praying for our Aunt Nedra every day. And we all have those family issues, the physical issues, but when I say balanced prayer life, I mean this, when you look at the prayers in the Bible, they’re praying for what? The spiritual needs of each other.
This is Paul’s praying for what? Spiritual growth and spiritual development, praying that people would know God more. What a great prayer to pray for our kids and our grandkids, that they might know God, that they might grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus and live a life that is fruitful and productive for Him. So I’m not saying don’t pray for physical needs, we should, but we also need to balance that out, praying for the spiritual needs of our family, of our church, of those that we come in contact with.
2. Love for God and others
Secondly, is my love for God and others increasing? Is my love for God and others increasing? This is Paul’s prayer, that you might abound in love more and more. And so we should be able to look back in our life a year ago, three years ago, and today we should be able to say, I love God more and I love others more than I did last year or two years ago or three years ago. Is my love for God and others increasing? That was one of the issues in the seven letters of the seven churches, especially the church at Laodicea.
And this is the words of Christ to the believers there, the church at Laodicea, and in each of those seven letters, Jesus starts out with a commendation, but then He includes a condemnation. And for the church at Laodicea, they had gotten very lukewarm about their relationship with God, and Jesus says, I wish you were either hot or cold, because lukewarm, I just want to, basically, He says, I want to vomit. You’ve lost, the church at Ephesus, you’ve lost your first love.
3. Biblical wisdom and DISCERNMENT
It’s easy to do, my love for God and others increasing. And then lastly, the third question is, am I increasing or growing in biblical wisdom and discernment? Am I growing in my knowledge of God? Am I growing in the knowledge of God’s Word? Am I growing in wise living and spiritual discernment? That’s God’s goal for all of us. So here’s this prayer, it’s what God wants to do, it starts with abounding love, it manifests itself in knowledge and discernment, resulting in the ability to make wise spiritual choices, and it results in the visible fruit of what? A righteous life that comes from a living relationship with Jesus Christ, so that God alone gets the glory.
That was Paul’s prayer for the Philippian believers, that’s my prayer for you, I trust that’s your prayer for those that you’re praying for, your kids, your grandkids, your extended family.