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October 26, 2003 |
"Philippians"
Knowing Him, Knowing Joy |
Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Joy in Powerful Prayer"
Philippians 1: 3-11
| I.
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I want you to think about someone this morning. Call to mind a person or group
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of people you can identify who were God's partners in bringing the Gospel and Jesus into your life.
Who did God partner with to bring you the Truth?
These are your John the Baptists, the forerunners of His gospel in your life.
Think about those God used.
Now just take a moment and give thanks to God for them.
Paul begins this passage with bursting thanks! It is a reminder to us. Never let the chains in life keep you from thanks! If you feel chained to your job, to the sink, to a situation, to an illness -- don't stop thanking God! Thanks lifts our eyes from our situations to the Sovereign God!
While Karen and I were in North Carolina, Seminary Professor Steve Seamands told about something that happened to him during his first year of teaching. It was October and he had all his books and papers spread over the kitchen table late at night trying to prepare for his 8 am theology class the next morning. Nothing would come. The material would not organize. He was frustrated with his lack of progress. Frustrated that God was not meeting him there. Frustrated that he was so late in preparation. Finally in exasperation he stood up and walked out onto the back porch of his home. He said the sky was crystal clear. He looked up and gasped at the splendor he saw there. Billions of stars blazed out of the black velvet sky. He said in an instant he heard the voice of the Lord speaking to his heart, "Do you really think that even though I can create such splendor as this that I cannot handle your little class tomorrow morning?" Looking up Steve just began to thank Him and praise Him. When he walked back into that kitchen, nothing had changed, there were his papers, his pencils, his books, but everything had changed, for the heart had changed.
Paul says he is giving thanks -- in the whole of his remembrance of his time with them in Philippi from riverbank to jail cell to freedom. And also he is praying with joy because they have been his partners in sharing the Gospel -- They had supported him with their prayers and their finances during that whole journey in Philippi until the most recent gift they had sent with Epaphroditus with whom Paul is sending this letter back to them. Paul writes in the end of the letter "I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent" (4:18).
Paul is not only giving thanks but is confident, or has come to a "settled conclusion," that this partnership through them in his ministry will continue for it is God who began this work and God who will bring it to completion.
"He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it."
Turn to someone next to you and tell them: "Be encouraged! God who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it."
| | II.
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After giving thanks, and expressing his own love for them, Paul is praying
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that their love may abound more and more.
Paul is not praying for romantic, sentimental love, nor friendship love to grow, but instead that the Love of God in their lives abound. He uses that word "agape" -- the sacrificial, self-giving Love of God-- (1 John 4:16)
Produced in the heart of the yielded believer by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5)
Given for the benefit of the one who is loved (John 3:16)
Such love "never gives up, cares more for others than for self; doesn't want what it doesn't have; doesn't strut; doesn't have a swelled head; doesn't force itself on others; isn't always 'me first'; doesn't fly off the handle; doesn't keep score of the sins of others; doesn't revel when others grovel; takes pleasure in the flowering of truth; puts up with anything; trust God always; looks for the best; never looks back, but keeps going to the end; such love never fails.(The Message, 1Cor 13).
A. Anybody think you could use more of that love in your lives?
Sometimes I find God speaking to me of my heart's needs in the simplest of situations.
Friday morning I was walking our dog and she did not want to walk with me. She pulled on the leash, she could not "leave it" she would not "watch me" she would not stay "with me". Nope, she had her own agenda and it was not mine. Now some days I can work with her no problem. But Friday, there were some stresses pressing on my heart already, so I did not want to deal with the dog. I got so frustrated and all the lack of love in my heart was revealed. The qualities of 1 Corinthians were lacking.
Paul was praying that God's love would abound not just more, but more and more. He was not praying just for a trickle but a flood. Paul knew If there were more of God's love in God's people, society would be shocked. Jesus had said: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another" (John 13:35).
"If hatred was attacked by love, and antagonism was countered by love, and people started giving instead of grabbing, reaching outward rather than growing inward, building bridges instead of barriers, our world would wonder what happened." (Bound for Joy, by S Briscoe, Regel books, c'77, p 5, ubp).
So that is why Paul is praying in this manner.
B. Paul says he is praying that their love abound more and more "in knowledge and depth of insight" or "in all judgment" or "discernment" or "understanding" as some other translations say. So, this is not a mushy love.
This is not a love that says: "anything you want to do is fine, I'll just look the other way." No.
God's love flows between the riverbanks of experiential knowledge on the one side. Paul is praying that the believers there would be experiencing God's love for themselves. That they would know the love they share. That it would not just a theoretical thing, but experienced.
And then on the other bank is judgment or discernment. That is God's love with 20/20 vision. Romantic love may be blind, but not God's love. God's love sees and corrects. Picture parents who let their children rule the home, where "anything goes," where there are no limits. Those children are not being given a gift by those parents. Like the teacher I spoke with at the elementary school this week lamenting the state of children's minds. "Do you see that their inabilities have anything to do with the amount of TV watched?" I asked.
"I do," she said. In fact at her previous school she had done an experiment. In a class of 30 children and she had verbally listed four things they needed to know. Then she asked who could repeat those four things. About half the students raised their hands, but those she called upon, couldn't do it. So hands began to go down. Just two hands remained in the air. These two girls both could repeat the four things in the same order she had just listed them. She asked them, "Could you tell me how much TV you watch?" And the girls answered that both their families did not allow them to watch any TV.
She told me: "TV affects the brain's transmitters. Children that watch much TV or play video games are statistically poorer students (I am certain someone will have an exception)." This teacher lamented how little she can do to assist children to learn when they are raised in environments with few "no's" -- where there are not limits on how much nor on what they watch. And so many students in addition to a lack of parenting, come from homes filled with hurts and injuries.
Godly love has values, sets boundaries, says "no" and "yes".
Eugene Peterson in The Message put it: "You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent."
C. The purpose of Paul's prayer is so that the Philippian Christians may discern what is best. The word means to approve after testing. Paul wants them to be able to make those moral decisions in the finer points of Christian conduct . Choosing the best from the good, the God thing from the excellent things, God's path from any old way. He prays this so that God's love will prepare their lives to be pure, unmixed, unsullied and they will be found blameless at the Day of Christ overflowing with the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
We are going to take a minute to just practice praying this for the person next to us, and have the person pray for us.
Heavenly Father, I ask that your love would flourish in _____________'s life. May she/he love much and well. Teach her/him to love sincerely and intelligently. Let him/her live a lover's life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of You. Father, do this, I ask, in Jesus' Name. Amen.
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