Philippians 1:9-11
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to the New Testament book of Philippians. Our reading
will be Philippians chapter one, verses nine through 11. Now,
if you take a few moments, maybe this afternoon or later in your
Bible reading time, read verses three through 11, you’ll understand
it’s one long sentence. We’ve broken it apart to understand
Paul’s thanksgiving and his various prayer requests. And so today
are the last couple of requests that he prays for. But our prayer
that we read is actually part of one long prayer that is verses
3 through 11. Let’s give attention to God’s
holy and inspired word, beginning at verse 9 of chapter 1 of Philippians.
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 the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ
to the glory and praise of God. Amen. Pray with me. Our great
God, we pray that this, your holy word today would so be at
work in our lives that you would make your people ready for the
coming of our Lord Jesus. Get us wedding ready as a bride
gets ready for the coming of our groom, get us ready for the
coming of our groom, the Lord Jesus. Get us ready by making
us holy. Get us ready by purifying us. Get us ready by making us more
like Jesus, our savior. And we pray that that would be
done by your word and your Holy Spirit. This we pray in the name
of Jesus. Amen. There’s an age old question
that has come before every Christian century. And that question is
this, how can Christians live faithful, Christian, God-honoring,
holy lives in the midst of a generation, a world, a culture that is crooked
and depraved? And the Bible gives us answers
to how to do that. The Bible tells us that we are
citizens of heaven. That’s what Paul will tell Philippians.
We are citizens of heaven, but we are living down here for now. We are citizens of the new Jerusalem,
but we’re having to live down here in Babylon. Now over the
centuries though, many Christian communities have tried to think
about how it is we ought to live and what we ought to do in response.
And though the scripture tells us very plainly that we have
to live here while God tarries, we are not yet home in heaven
where God desires for us to be for eternity. But we have these
conversations about what Christians ought to do. And the answer has
gone every different direction. It’s gone from just live in the
world and be like the world. It’s gone to let’s separate and
live in Christian communities where we only live with like-minded
people in like-minded neighborhoods, even selling all property and
moving in to communes, and somewhere in between where we live in the
neighborhood of a church where we worship and we go there, we
live amongst people that we know and love who serve the living
God. conversation has come up in recent years, even recent
weeks, with the publication of a new book. The book that is
out is called The Benedict Option, and it seeks to take us back
to the era where the Benedictine monks lived together in community,
and they had rituals and practices. They had rituals and practices
that kept them close to God, close to one another, and faithful
to their religion. And the premise of this book
is that we’re living in the midst of cultural rot. We’re living
in the midst of a society that hates what is good, right, and
true. And as Christians, we are getting sucked right into that.
We are being vacuumed up into culture. And so the question
and even the suggestion of this book is not just how do we live
faithful Christian lives, but the answer is somewhere in we
need to develop again community. We need to live closer together.
We need to worship more often together. We need to be together
around the things that we believe are good and right and true so
that we will not lose the faith or even the generation after
us. Now, I don’t know about you,
but I don’t want to pack up and move and live too close to some of
you. You probably don’t want to pack up and live and move
too close to me. We don’t want to cloister ourselves.
We don’t want to get into real estate together. We don’t want
to do a lot of those things. But there is some blessing and
benefit in living together, dwelling together in community. We have
that in the church. We have that together as we worship,
as we walk together, as we serve one another. But I believe there’s
a better option. And the reason I’ve entitled
this sermon the Philippian option is because the Apostle Paul tells
us his request for the Philippian church, even for us, is that
we would know how to live lives full of knowledge and discernment
to navigate the world that we live in. We want to live well
in the world that God has made and where he has put us. Now
the fact is we are living in occupied territory. We’re living
in a world that is occupied by Satan. It is occupied by the
world. It is occupied by the customs and the beliefs and the
philosophies of paganism. We are living in occupied territory
and God has told us very clearly in the Bible, you will live there
and you’ll serve me faithfully. My people have done it for centuries
and they’ve made it just fine. But we’re living in occupied
territory. We’re strangers and aliens. And one of the things
we have to understand is a man-made solution to the problem of culture
won’t fix it. Living together won’t fix it.
Living closer to church won’t fix it. What will fix it will
be the inward reality of God at work in each one of us, and
then each of us shining brightly as children of promise in this
world. You see, if you read the history
of many Christian communities, over the years they have failed.
Read about the Oneida community in New York. Read about Jim Jones
and the Kool-Aid drinkers. Read through all the history
of communal living and it doesn’t work, it fails. We end up fighting
and fussing and fuming. But think of what we ought to
do this way. We are called to live holy lives
wherever God puts us. We are to live holy lives wherever
God places us. And yes, we ought to have rhythms
to our lives. We ought to get up, we ought
to practice holiness, read our scriptures, pray. We ought to
do family life together, church life together. Yes, there are
rhythms and routines of life. There are the means of grace,
the word and sacraments and prayer and fellowship in the life of
the church. But I think Paul’s letter to
the Philippians, this prayer that we find in verses nine through
11, can help us. And remember that when Paul wrote
to the Philippians, they were living in a culture just as rotten
as ours. Maybe without the internet, maybe
without print media, maybe without some of the things that make
life a little more difficult for us. But they were living
in a pretty rotten culture, a Roman culture, a godless culture, a
culture full of other gods. And they were living in a city.
Philippi was a city that took great pride in its Roman heritage. They were proud citizens of their
nation. They worshiped many other gods.
They followed many practices, many pagan practices. And God
tells us what we often like to say very practically. We’re to bloom where we are planted. We are to be fruit producing
wherever God puts us. This last couple of weeks, we’ve
been doing a little landscaping in our yard, some of it for privacy,
some of it for safety. but most of all for beauty. And
it’s amazing how landscaping can take what is a drab, dry,
wintry looking yard and it can make it, as we say, it can make
it pop. We can make it shine. We can
make it bright and happier. And that is how we need to think
of our Christian lives before the watching world. The world
may think it’s full of color, but no, it’s wintry and drab.
It is dark and decaying and dying. But if we bloom where God plants
us, we will be bright spots in the midst of a dark world. And
so never sell yourself short and say, I can’t serve God without
being a missionary. I can’t serve God without doing
something extraordinary. Actually, no. If you are living
a faithful, holy life, in the daily places God puts you, whether
it’s the doctor’s office, the schools, the grocery store, wherever
you go to and fro during the week, God is sending you as a
little missionary into a dark and dying world. And if you shine
brightly for His glory, you will do well. But notice the three
things that the apostle prays for in verses 9 through 11. These
are three things that will help you shine brightly, three things
that will help you stand out in the world. The first we find
in verses 9 through 10, he prays that their love will be abounding. He says, 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 the fruit of righteousness
that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
He says in verse nine, it is my prayer that your love may
abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. So how will
your abounding in love, how will that help you shine brighter
in the world? How will your love abounding make you an effective
steward of the kingdom of Almighty God? Well, think about your motives. Think about your motives for
love. It doesn’t know to say just love more. Have you noticed
in our little Christianese language in our world, we say we want
to love on people. Have you heard that phrase? What
does that mean even? I want to love on people. I assume
it means we want to do kind things towards them. We want to do that.
But notice how Paul tells us that he’s praying for us. I want
your love to abound. And he doesn’t stop there. Just
be more loving. He wants our love to be an informed
love. He wants our love to be a wise
love. And he says two things about
our love. May our love abound more and more in knowledge and
discernment. Now, these are two things that
Christians desperately need to live life in the world. We need
knowledge and discernment. So our love is to be characterized
by knowledge of God, knowledge of the scriptures, knowledge
of theology, but also discernment or wisdom. John MacArthur, who
is one of the great preachers of our modern day, says that
one of the greatest problems that we have as Christians is
we lack discernment. I have a dog who, when he gets
out in the yard, he will sniff anything and he will eat anything.
And one of our jobs when we go out in the yard with him is to
make sure he doesn’t eat foreign objects because that creates
trouble, makes a trip to the vet. But sometimes Christians
are like my dog. We will eat anything. We will
think anything. We will read anything. We will
imbibe anything that the culture gives us. And the Apostle Paul
is saying, don’t do that. Let your love abound with all
knowledge and discernment. And so those are twin characteristics
that we need. We need knowledge. We need to
be deep in the scriptures and the knowledge of holy things.
But we need to be discerning people, people who test and approve
what is true. knowledge aspect is this. We
need to study the word. We need to be in the word. We
need to be knowledgeable about God and his word. It’s why we
have Christian education. It’s why we have morning and
evening service. We have weekday opportunities
for you as the church to grow in knowledge. We often think
that Christianity is a heart religion. It is. God changes
our hearts, but he is also changing our minds. It’s why the apostle
Paul says in Romans chapter 12, one and two, be transformed by
the renewal of your minds. We need to know what is good
and right and true so that we can live excellently in this
world. And so this first point or prayer that Paul makes is
that we might be abounding in love through knowledge, but also
discernment. And this word for discernment
used in the New Testament has to do with detecting what is
counterfeit. In other places, the Apostle
Paul says we should take every thought captive to make it obedient
to Christ. And what I have in mind when
I read that verse from Colossians is this, every tidbit of information,
every factoid, every book we read, every song we hear, We
need to take it captive. We need to seize it and say,
is this obedient to Christ? And what is the result that he
wants from this prayer that our love may abound with all knowledge
and discernment? Well, we find that in verse 10,
so that you may approve what is excellent. And he’s going
to go on and say something about being pure and blameless and
all the rest. But what is the goal of this prayer? It’s so
that you can navigate the world with knowledge and discernment.
And we’ll put it bluntly. This is the Brian Crott’s way
of putting it. God does not want Christians
who are dupable, Christians who are sucked into every, every
fad, every fashion, every wind of doctrine. And as the apostle
says, he does not want us to be tossed to and fro by every
wind. We want to know and we want to
be wise. And he says, in that way, our
love will abound. And so what does that look like
as a community? What would that look like for the Philippian
church? What would that look like for first ARP church here
in Burlington? Well, it means that we, out of
love for one another and love for God, we gain knowledge and
discernment. And our desire is to navigate
this world wisely and carefully and cautiously. and discriminately,
you might use that word, in a way of judging. We want to navigate
the world, not just imbibing and taking in everything that
culture offers, but we want to walk carefully and cautiously
in knowledge of the gospel, knowledge of truth, knowledge of the holy
things, and in discernment. taking every thought captive,
making it obedient for Christ. That means there will be things
that we don’t do. That means there will be cultural
things we will not participate in. That will mean there will
be things politically and culturally that we do not condone, we do
not bless, we do not participate in at all. But it means there
will be things we do. like worship, like growing the
knowledge of God through Christian education. It means we’ll fellowship
together, we’ll serve together. There will be so many things
we do. Think about your week for just a moment. Think about
your schedule this week. You’ve already got it lined out.
Some of you are lining it out today even in church, I bet,
on your little scrap sheet of paper. But you’re figuring out what
you’re going to do this week. Based on knowledge and based on wisdom,
You might ask yourself, what is good and right and true that
I ought to do to please God? That’s what the apostle is praying
for, that our love may abound in such a way that we are discerning
and that we only do what is good and excellent and right and true. You know, so much of American
religion today is sentimentality. It’s about how I feel. It’s about
how something makes me feel. And you know, friends, religion
is not about a tingly feeling. Religion is not about feeling
good about yourself. Religion or Christianity is about
God being glorified and God being most glorified by you living
a life that is filled of filled with knowledge and discernment
so that you live like a child of God in the midst of a world
that is not full of the children of Almighty God. This next little
prayer that he makes is helpful to us. He says in verse 10, he
says, so that you may approve what is excellent and be so pure
and blameless for the day of Christ. So his first prayer is
that we’d be abounding in love that’s filled with knowledge
and discernment. But his second prayer is that we would basically
be this, not be hypocrites, that we’d be pure and blameless. Now, every one of us knows we’re
not perfect. We still sin. We still break
God’s law and thought, word and deed on a daily basis. That’s
why we repent. often and confess our sins, not
only to God, but to one another. We’re not perfect, but we should
be living a life on a trajectory that is discernible. People should
be able to look at you and say, I know you’re not perfect, but
you sure live differently than others I know. You seem to be
faithful. You seem to be true to your word.
You’re religious. You leave every Sunday. You’re
in worship. Your life is faithful and consistent. Now, I know you’re not perfect,
but I can tell there’s something very different about you. You
see, people can see a transformed life. Now, in the Roman culture
into which Paul is speaking, there are two ways to determine
hypocrisy. It literally means without wax.
And so you might find an old statue in the Roman city and
where somehow in production, the nose was broken off. or a
finger was chipped or some piece of that statue was chipped, you
can’t get a whole new rock and start over. So what do you do?
You take a little wax and you mold it and shape it and fill
that hole or you replace that broken part with a piece of wax.
And so literally to be sincere or to not be a hypocrite means
to be without wax. Or think about pottery. Pottery
is hard to make. It’s hard to fashion. It’s hard
to glaze it, hard to fire it. And so when you’ve done all that
work and you’ve got a piece of pottery, a vessel for some household use,
and it’s got a little, little break in it, a little crack in
it. You can seal it. You can, you can fix it and you
can repair it. But if you were to hold it up
to the light, you might be able to see through the cracks with the
sunshine. And what is Paul praying? He’s praying that we’ll be sincere,
that we’ll be without wax, that our cracks will not be filled
only to cover an imperfection that could be deadly. You see,
a pottery vessel that has cracks in it, even if they’re concealed,
is not going to do its purpose. It will not hold liquid or serve
in the way it was meant to be served. And friends, that can
be true of us. We can show up to church with
our bow ties on straight, our suits buttoned up just right.
part our hair just right, put on our lipstick and makeup, and
we can carry our nice leather-bound Bibles and look as holy as can
be, but the reality underneath all that may be completely different. And so the apostle is praying
for the Philippian church. We pray this for ourselves, that
we will not be hypocrites, that we will be sincere, without wax,
without our holes filled and stuffed and covered over. And
the result The result of our abounding in love, the result
of our knowledge and our wisdom for navigating life in this world
is that we will not be hypocrites. We’ll be pure and blameless.
And you say, how is that possible? How is it possible to live a
pure and blameless life? Well, friends, it is not possible.
except for Christ at work in you. It is not possible except
by faith. It is not possible except by
receiving Christ and resting in him alone for your salvation
and believing that the Holy Spirit so fills you at your conversion
that by God’s word and spirit, you are able to live a faithful
life. Oh, it is a difficult world out
there. This is safe here. This is our little foxhole. We
gather in here week after week because the bullets are flying
in the world and we duck for cover in here because it’s a
tough world. And God is saying, if you’re abounding in love and
knowledge and discernment, you will live a pure and blameless
life. If God is at work in you, you’ve been washed, you’ve been
set apart and by his word and spirit, you will live a faithful
life. Now to use a different image of pottery. Remember that the apostle Paul
in second Corinthians says that we are like jars of clay. We’re
weak vessels, we’re broken vessels, we’re vessels that could shatter
easily or dry and crack. But God has put his treasures
or the gospel in jars of clay. And so he uses us, weak and wounded
and broken as we are, to be vessels of mercy and vessels
that convey the gospel to a dark and dying world. But he doesn’t
want us to be hypocrites. No, he’s not saying be perfect.
but be sincere and be godly. Well, there’s a third prayer
that he makes. We find it in verse 11. He says
that we might be filled with the fruit of righteousness that
comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of almighty
God. Remember that Jesus said to his
disciples, I am the vine and you are the branches. If you
abide in me, you will bear fruit. But if you don’t abide in me,
you won’t bear fruit and your vine is worthless and it’s only
to be thrown into the heap. and ultimately burned in the
fires of judgment. But if you are abiding in Jesus
by faith, you’ve received him, you’re resting in him alone for
your salvation, and you’re abiding in him, participating in the
life of the church, hearing the word, receiving the sacraments,
living in fellowship with other Christians, you’re doing the
basic things that help you grow by abiding in the divine Jesus,
you will be a fruit producing Christian. Now, the fruit he’s
speaking of here is not internal fruit where you’re growing in
holiness, where you’re doing the right things. Those are those
are true things. But here he is speaking of your
outward life. Your outward life should be fruit
producing by serving others, by loving others in real and
tangible ways, by by decluttering your life so that you have time
and resources and energy to serve others. It also means that if
you’re abiding in the vine, you’re going to be pruned. God will
cut on you. He will cut on you and he will
work on you as the vine dresser, sometimes in very painful ways,
but it will mean you are a better fruit producer. So God is wanting
us to be faithful. If you read Christian biographies,
biographies of Christian people throughout the centuries, you
will see that people for centuries have served in the world that
is crooked and depraved and dark and dying. Culture has not been
all that different. It’s not like we’re living in
the worst culture ever. I mean, it may be to us, but others have
lived in far worse. What God is saying is you live
there and you live there faithfully and you produce fruit. It’s why
reading Christian biographies is helpful. You’ll see that you’re
not alone in this world. You’ll see that others have lived
the life that God is asking you to live. But sometimes our lives
are just so cluttered and full of things that consume our time.
We’re so full of information from our telephones and our televisions
that we don’t have time for the knowledge and the wisdom and
discernment from Almighty God to serve Him well. Well, this is my idea of the
Philippian option, the Benedict option. It helps us think about
these things, but the Philippian option is right from the Bible.
Yes, we live in a rotten world. Yes, we ought to dwell together
in community as Christians. But we ought to live together
in a way so that God at work in us makes us abounding in love
through knowledge and discernment. He makes us sincere and fruitful. And did you notice the end of
verse 11? What is the purpose of all this? Is it so you can
get a plaque on your wall that says you were a fruitful Christian
and we wrote a Christian biography about you because you opened
an orphanage or did something great and amazing? No, look at
the end. It’s to the glory and to the
praise of God. Why has God saved you? Why has
God set you apart for holiness? Why does God give you work to
do in this world to make you fruitful? It’s to the praise
and the glory of God Almighty. Oh yes, a Christian biography
may be written of you, a plaque may hang on your wall for your
Christian service. That is all well and good, but
it must be to the end that God is glorified. And so a question
for each of us is this, do we need to do something radical
to serve God? Do we need to quit our jobs and
go to the foreign mission field? Do we need to, take a month off
work and go here or there? Do we need to try to feed all
the poor? Do we need to try to do this,
that, or the other? The answer may be somewhere in between.
God may call you to do some of those things. But you see, the
Christian life is really about your daily living. It’s really
about your knowledge and your discernment and your sincerity
and your fruitfulness in the normal, everyday rut and routine
of life. really doesn’t matter where you
live as long as the Holy Spirit of God is dwelling in you and
at work in your life. Let us pray together. Our great
God, we thank you this day for how you’re at work in each of
our lives. Oh, we’re in different places. Some of us are messier
than others. Some of us are in places of greater
purity or excellence. Lord, you’re at work in each
and every one of us, and we thank you for that. And we pray now
that you would help us to see these things, to see our call,
and that you would, through your work in us, be most glorified
by the fruit that we bear. And this we pray in the strong
name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.