Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 27 – July 1986

 

Praying For Growth In Love

 

Sermon by Rev. J. W. Westendorp on Phil. 1:9-11

Readings:     John 15:1-8, James 3:13-18

Singing:        BoW.027       The Lord’s my shining light
                        BoW.285       Lord Jesus Christ, you have come to us
                        BoW.450       O for a closer walk with God
                        BoW.106       O praise the Lord, for He is good           [1.2.7]
                        BoW.525       Now unto Him who is able to keep

 

Theme: Paul’s prayer for the Philippians to grow in love so that God will be glorified in the life of the believer.

 

Introd:            Sometimes we play “Let’s Pretend” with our boys and girls.
            Well, I want to do that with Mums and Dads... with you parents.
            Let’s pretend that I could somehow give you a wish.
            Just one wish that would most definitely come true for you as a parent.

But let’s also pretend that you are not to wish for anything for yourself.

It must be a wish for your children... one wish that will really come true for your kids.
So what are you going to wish for?
            Obviously, you wouldn’t want to waste a wish like that, would you?
            So you go away and talk it over with each other.

And you come back to me and you say:
            Look our daughter is really struggling at school.
            Her teachers have complained... and she’s not doing her homework.
            Her whole attitude to her studies is really not very good.
            My wish is that she’ll pull herself together and really get stuck into her education
.           My one wish is for a few straight A’s in her end-of-year report.

Or maybe you come back and say:
            My wife and I are really concerned about our teenage son.
            We’re disturbed that the girls he’s dating are openly anti-Christian.
            We’ve told him God’s will is for Christians to marry only in the Lord.
            But he just laughs and tells us not to be old fashioned.
            How about using my wish to sort that out? 
                        My wish is that he’ll find a nice Christian girl.

Maybe some of you would make a wish about your teenager’s work:
            Hey, my kid’s caught up in this dead end job.
            There’s no prospects.  How about a steady new job with quick promotions?
            We’d love to see our daughter really getting ahead.
            Settling down in a good and responsible position.
            My wish is for a good job for my daughter.

I can’t give you a wish for your son or daughter that will definitely come true.

I can only play “Let’s Pretend”.

But I wanted to do that to ask you as parents:
What is it about your children that weighs most heavily on your mind?
If I COULD give you a wish, what would you ask for?

You know – that’s not all that different to asking:
What is it that you ask for most often in prayer for your children?
Their education?  Their boy-friend problems?  Their job?
What do you really want most from God for your children?

In our text Paul comes to God with one wish for his spiritual children.

A wish that he expresses in prayer.
THIS is my prayer...!  This is what I’m most concerned about...
Not your work and studies, not your marriage and family or even your church.
THIS is my prayer... that your love may abound more and more...!

A)        PRAYER FOR GROWTH IN LOVE AND WHAT THAT INVOLVES. (vs 9).

a)         Paul prays that his spiritual children may grow more and more in love.

This love that Paul prays for is the love that the NT calls “Agape” love.
The love that has its source in God’s love for lost sinners.
The great love God showed in sending His Son to die for us.
            And God in His goodness allows Christians to share in that love.
            Thru His Spirit, God pours this love into our lives.

In Philippi there was a great deal of evidence of that kind of love.
It was a wonderful congregation that was willing to make sacrifices.
Paul had already given thanks to God for that.
            In vs 5 he thanks God for their partnership in the gospel.
            They had expressed their love in supporting Paul and his ministry.

But now Paul prays for this love to increase... that there will be a superabundance of this love!
This love abounding more and more has the imagery of an overflowing fountain of love.
            Paul wants God’s love to flow into them in even greater measure.
            An overwhelming outpouring of the love of God...
                        that will then overflow from them in love to their fellow Christians
                        and also to those in the wider community – a superabundance of love.

Beautiful, isn’t it... to see that this is Paul’s priority request for his spiritual children?

This is what Paul is most passionate about because he loves these people at Philippi.
This is my prayer... that your love may abound yet more and more.
            When you pray for your children can you ask for anything better than that?
            That God will pour out on them a great abundance of His love more and more.

This should also be our prayer for our congregation here... our prayer for each other.
Like in the Philippian church we can certainly see God’s love at work among us.
There is just so much to thank God for... sacrificial giving... a willingness to serve.
But, hey, we still have a few problems to work thru too:
            People who don’t get on with each other; those who are hurting or lonely.
            And there are many tensions just under the surface.
            We’re not going to resolve those things without a greater growth in God’s love.

In fact no Christian is ever perfect in the love of God here in this life.
Not the Philippians... and not us either.  We need to pray for growth in love.

b)         But now notice that Paul connects this love with KNOWLEDGE.

My prayer is that your love may abound more and more IN KNOWLEDGE...
Love and knowledge go hand in hand.  You cannot separate them.  For two reasons:

First – love and knowledge belong together because love grows thru knowledge.

You cannot love someone you don’t know.  Love cannot be based on ignorance.
How many fellows here have ever fallen in love with someone you didn’t know?
Did that ever happen to any of you ladies?
Okay: sometimes a girl really flips for a guy right from the very first moment.
Or right away a guy will say of a girl:  Wow! She’s the girl for me!
            But that’s not yet love.  At best that’s infatuation.  At worst it’s lust!
            True love only comes as you get to know that fellow... that girl.

In good marriages love is strong.  But why?
Because husband and wife make an effort to know their partner.
They work on that.  And so love grows as knowledge grows.

Secondly – we can also relate love and knowledge the other way around.
When there is love for each other then we will also want to know each other better.

Love wants to know.
Why does that fellow want to get to know that girl better? 
            Because he’s fallen in love with her.
            At first it’s a fairly shallow romantic love... infatuation.
            But now he wants that to develop into a deep and meaningful love.
            Something that will last... something on which to build a marriage.

Paul implies that love and knowledge go hand in hand.
You cannot love someone you do not know, neither can you a love a God you do not know.
So we as Christians love because we know something and we know Someone.
And the more we love our God the more we will want to get to know Him.

It’s rather surprising how much emphasis the Bible places on KNOWLEDGE.
Christianity is a religion based on knowledge.
It is not a religion where you kiss your brains goodbye and believe the most impossible things.

No, ours is a reasonable faith – it’s a faith based on knowledge.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t elements of mystery or that there isn’t also a mystical side to faith.
But it is first of all a reasonable faith based on KNOWLEDGE.  Knowledge of Jesus.
            Knowledge of His saving work... His death and resurrection are at the core of it.
            In Col. 2:3 Paul says: In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

That means that the most ignorant Christian who knows Christ
in the final analysis knows more than an unbelieving genius...
    and the cleverest scientist who doesn’t know Jesus knows less than you and I.
            Jesus Christ is the centre of all true knowledge.
So love and knowledge go hand in hand.
            Growth in the love of God goes hand in hand with increasing knowledge about God.
            And the more we know Him the more we are overwhelmed by the great love of God.

It’s tragic that today many Christians play down the importance of knowledge.
“Don’t give us doctrine!” they say, “Doctrine divides!”  So instead we emphasise experience.
Well okay – in the past we sometimes made the opposite mistake...
            The church emphasised a head knowledge that left the heart cold.
But today we are creating a generation of Christians...
            with only the shallowest understanding of the Christians faith.

Our prayer for a greater measure of love ought to go hand in hand
with a plea to God to improve our knowledge of Him and His Word.

c)         Paul adds to that yet something else.  He mentions DEPTH OF INSIGHT.

Or as some translations have it: DISCERNMENT.

My prayer is that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and all discernment.

Discernment (or insight) is the practical outworking of knowledge.
It’s one thing to have knowledge – but how do we apply that knowledge?
What do you do with that knowledge?

Discernment is: understanding.  Discernment is: knowing what to do with the knowledge we have.

In the moral realm discernment is living by that Word of God that we now know.
And again these two things – knowledge and discernment – belong together.
            You cannot even have discernment unless you have knowledge.
            Okay, knowledge without discernment IS possible.  But that’s the nature of the fool.
                        He knows heaps... but he lacks wisdom.
                        What’s the point of a head crammed full of knowledge if there is no discernment?

So our prayer for growth in love is also to be a prayer for discernment and insight.

Because you and I need to apply our knowledge in loving ways.
My prayer is that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and all discernment.

B)        THE PURPOSE OR RESULT OF THIS GROWTH IN LOVE. (vs 10/11)

a)         In our text Paul spells out the purpose of this growth in love.  There will be three specific results.

Growing in love with knowledge and discernment will show itself in three ways in the Philippian Church.

First...  This kind of growth in the Christian gives us the ability to distinguish what is best.
Quite literally Paul says: Distinguish what is different.  Or discern what is different.
  And if we ask: “Different from what?”
    Then we have to say: Different from what God has said in his Word.

IOW:    Christians have the ability to apply their knowledge and discernment.
For example, we discern moral values: we know the difference between good and evil...
Or we distinguish between what is trivial and what is important.

These things are absolutely vital.
These Christians lived in a Roman colony at the crossroad of the world.
There were many pressures.  There were pagan values all around them.
Standards totally alien to the Christians faith.
But Paul prays for a greater measure of love with all knowledge and insight.
Because only in this way will these Christians –
            caught up in the thick of life – be able to discern what is right and what is wrong.

And we need that today – more than ever: In our society moral values are being turned upside down.
People are terribly confused about what is right and what is wrong.
It’s as if we’re back in the days of the OT prophets: evil is called good and good, evil.
            Many people have little left of Christian moral values.
            Many simply act on the basis that if it feels good it must be okay.
There is an appalling lack of discernment today of what is best.  “Tolerance” is the catch-cry.
            It’s politically correct for us to be open-minded about the most outrageous things.
            The trouble is that people are so open-minded that their brains fall out.

Yet we as Christians are able to uphold Christian values.

Even as moral standards crumble and society seeks to do away with Christian values.  Why?

Because we have we have KNOWLEDGE.
Knowledge of a holy God and knowledge of His demands on us...
            that he expects holiness in the lives of His human creatures.
And on the basis of that knowledge and insight we are able to discern.
            We’re able to weigh up things in our society and then take a stand.
            To be able to say:  This is right and that is wrong.

This is why you and I are much better off praying for our children this prayer of Paul’s
rather than all our prayers for their education, or their work, or their friends.
            Because when God’s people grow in this way then one of the results is
               -        that they are also able to evaluate what is good and what is not.
               -        to make God-honouring decisions in all those other areas of life as well.
Those who abound in love with knowledge and insight discern what is good and worthwhile.
Because we evaluate what is in keeping with the Word of God and what is therefore best for us.

b)         A second result is that ultimately we may be pure and blameless until the day of Jesus’ coming.

In other words growing in love with knowledge works itself out in the moral character of the believer.
And it is going to do that both internally and externally.

The INTERNAL outworking is moral purity.
Growth in love with knowledge and discernment changes you.
It shapes and moulds your character giving you a purity that is pleasing to God.
That will enable you to face positively the day of Jesus’ coming.  It will not fear Judgment Day.

The imagery here is that the believer will be like a precious metal from which impurity is removed.
Pure metal... unmixed with any alloy!  Actually the word used here has an interesting origin.
Pure here quite literally means that something is to be judged by exposure to bright sunlight.
            So that the brightness of the sun’s light will expose any faults.
            Purity here is able to withstand that sort of test.

On the day Jesus comes again the Lord God will test all that we have done.
Only when we have lived lives of discernment out of the knowledge gained from His Word
            will our lives stand the test of the brightness of His gaze.

The EXTERNAL outworking of this is that we shall be BLAMELESS.
Perhaps blamelessness does have an inward aspect – that we don’t need to blame ourselves.
But the issue here is especially outward blamelessness.
            The idea is that of not giving offence to others... or to God.
            It is an exemplary lifestyle which others cannot fault
                        and which is a witness to the society in which we live as God’s people.
            It’s a life that is seen to be different
                        because it flows out of growing love with knowledge and discernment.

c)         The third purpose Paul mentions is that all this is to the glory and praise of God.

At this point I can imagine you saying: But that’s a huge ask: to do all this to God’s glory and praise.

Knowledge... and discernment... and pure... and blameless...!  Wow!

We’re sure going to have to do a lot of praying before we measure up to all of that.

You may even think with a sense of despair: Count me out!  This is just too hard for me to achieve.

But that is just were these verses are so wonderfully encouraging.
Paul also gives us the key for understanding how this prayer for more love is answered.
It’s not going to come about primarily by your efforts.
That would be like you trying to lift yourself off the ground by your own shoe laces.

Paul says that all of this is the fruit of righteousness that comes thru Jesus Christ.
It comes by faith in Him.
            He produces it in us as we pray for an ever greater measure of His love.
            Jesus said: No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.
                               Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

That takes us back to our very first study in Philippians – verse 1.
There we thought about our identity... who we are as Christians.
That we are saints... holy ones... saints in Christ.
You are holy as God credits you with the righteousness and holiness of His Son.

And now Paul is saying that this righteousness of Jesus bears fruit in our lives:
When love grows in knowledge and depth of insight that produces purity and blamelessness.
            But those results don’t come first of all because of our efforts.
            They are simply the fruit... the result of our identity...
                        the product of who we are in Jesus.

When purity and blamelessness are seen in our lives then that’s not because we’re so good.
But it’s because Jesus’ righteousness is working itself out in us.

And Paul says that this is why God is praised and glorified.
Because it is really all His work from beginning to end.
It is because the good work that God began in us, He is also in the process of completing.
Jesus said:
   This is to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Let’s then pray often for a growth of love with knowledge and discernment...
            so that God may be praised.

Amen.