Well, we are gonna continue on in our passage in Philippians and in our series in Philippians, and last week we started into the prayer of Paul for these Philippians, and we're gonna continue that prayer. So I'm gonna ask you if you'd please stand with me as we go in Philippians chapter one, and we'll be in just three verses today, verses nine, 10, and 11, but some very important, very kind of packed verses as we look at the prayer of Paul here. And so I'll go ahead and read the verses and say as we do weekly, this is the word of the Lord. If we could just say together, thanks be to God afterward, that would be an encouragement to verbally affirm that we love God, we're so thankful for his word. So this is God's word as read from Philippians, starting in chapter one, verse nine. 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. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. We can go ahead and have a seat. When you pray, and when we pray, we just finished a time of prayer, what are your prayers normally asking for? What do you normally ask for in prayer? It's not uncommon that we pray before meals. Thank God for providing this meal, what a blessing it is to us. May it nourish us. We pray when people are sick, right? We just prayed for that. We pray when God does good things in our life to bless us. We say thank you. We pray if we're worried or concerned about things. Lord, help us in this situation. Or we pray when people are traveling, we pray for traveling mercies, right? Lord, bless them. All those things are good and right, and we should continue to do them. But in today's passage, we're going to see a prayer of Paul. And it's very important that we are to learn from this prayer of Paul. In fact, there are many prayers in the scriptures Psalms are filled with prayers. There are prayers both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And people have, you know, wondered, I mean, prayer is one of those areas that not everybody feels like they're just crushing it in, right? Like, prayer, I got that thing down. Well, sometimes we need to know not only what prayer is, but how to pray. And this is a wonderful example in Paul's letter to the Philippians on giving us an insight into what is it that Paul, the Apostle Paul, prays about. When he's praying specifically for the church members of the Church of Philippi, What is he praying for them? This is what we call intercession. When you pray, when you intercede on somebody's behalf, what does it look like? How are we supposed to pray for other people? Well, we have some clear examples of Paul here praying for them. And so let me ask this question as we kind of get into our passage for this morning. What is it, what are we to learn about prayer from this particular prayer, from the Paul's opening prayer to the Philippians? What are we supposed to learn? I think we'll learn what prayer is, but really how to pray and what are some of the things we should be praying for. Let's look at our first point. What are we to learn? If you're taking notes, if it's helpful, you can write these down. Otherwise, here's the first of third points for this morning. What are we to learn? It's that believers are to pray for what? That we grow in abounding love. We are to pray as believers that we would grow. Christians, believers, church members, would grow specifically in one thing. What does Paul start off his prayer with? I pray that you would abound in love. He says, verse nine, it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more. He doesn't pray for safety. He doesn't pray for success. He doesn't pray for health or wealth or prosperity. He says, I pray that you guys would continue to grow in love, that you would be characterized by your love. An important thing. Lord, we pray that we would be loving lovers, that our lives, when you look at our life, when you look at Disciple Church, when you look at our families, when you look at the people here, they would say those people love. They love well. Love is an important topic. It's something we all want. It's something we all talk about and wish for and want to experience. Love is a good thing, but love is also one of those things that we kind of can twist and make a wrong understanding of what love is. In fact, how many of you heard the term love is love and trying to define love differently than what God would define love as? You know, love is such a powerful thing. It's the expression of devotion and commitment to the point where you actually then do serve and sacrifice for somebody's good, right? We, as humans, so often twist God's good things and make them into wrong things. This is what Satan and the sinful nature does in humans. Well, Paul wants these Christians, and he wants us, and the Lord wants us to be loving, filled with love, and not just love, but abounding love more and more, growing love more and more. That love would be the main thing that we're characterized by, and that we would not stop growing in it. Let me remind us, if we just go back to verse 3 of chapter 1, just look a few verses, what is it that Paul is already gushing over? He loves these Philippians, and what does he say about them? Let me remind you, verse 3 and on. It says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, every time I think of you guys, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy. Why? because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. What is Paul saying? I want you to grow in your abounding love, love, love, love, that you just grow in your love. Well, what does he already say that they are engaged in? He loves them and they love the gospel. They love being partners in the gospel. What happened? Christ, through the ministry of Paul in the Philippi area there, Preaches the gospel, and what happens? Lydia, the first convert, she gets saved. She was on the riverside with a bunch of other women who were praying on the Sabbath day. And what happens? It wasn't a Macedonian man. It wasn't a synagogue that he found. He found a prayer group. And so he preaches the gospel to those women, and Lydia gets saved. And what happens immediately after Lydia gets saved? She partners in the gospel by saying, if you find it worthy, come to my house. come use what I have, use the resources that I have, so that this gospel can be used in other places, that more people can hear. Why? How do we know that's true? Because she went to her household and she said, as far as we can tell, I don't know exactly what she said, but it might have been something like, This is my household. You all listen to him." He's going to tell you something that you need to know. Listen. And what did Paul do? He preached the gospel, and they believed this good news that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, and that he'll forgive you of your sins, and you don't have to be stuck and mired. We really are enemies of God right now, and many of us don't know it. But Christ revealed himself to show that we can have peace with God if we have faith in him alone, confess our sins, humble ourselves, repent, Christ will receive us into his family. And so what happened? They believed and they were baptized with Lydia, her and her whole household. The Philippians loved Paul, they loved gospel, they loved God, they loved ministry, These are the things that they loved, and Paul is already gushing about it, saying, this is great. I want you to keep going. It's not. I want you to just love anything and everything. Love sports and love politics and love whatever. It's not wrong to have an affinity or a desire or a liking of created things. We're supposed to do things to the glory of God. Amen. We're supposed to enjoy the good created gifts that God has given us. But what is it that we can discern very clearly is to be the object of our love. is to be God and the gospel, God and his people. Those are what we're to be, that's what to be loving. But what does he say in verse seven? It is right for me to feel this way about you. about you all because I hold you in my heart. What is Paul? He loves them so dearly. For you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment, remember Paul is writing this joyful letter from prison, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. It's right for me to love you and have dear affection for you. Why? Because you are partaking in this gospel ministry with me. You are sending people to bless me while I'm in prison and you are sharing with me and encouraging me and giving me money and giving me supplies while I'm in prison. You're praying for me and you are showing, you are the confirmation of the gospel. You are the fruit that shows that the gospel message is true. Look at your changed lives, right? So what is he praying for? Praying that your love for God, love for the gospel, love for his church would just grow. would grow deeper, wider, more devoted. This makes sense that love is not, quote, love is love, is not helpful. We need to think love more specifically biblically. What is love? Actually, if we look at what the Bible says about love, you can legitimately say that love is law. Love is following God's moral law. Let me read in Matthew 22, 37 through 39, it says, and when he was trying to be tested, he said to them, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is actually the two greatest commandments which are summarizing the ten commandments. The first table of the law is the first four commandments of the ten are about how to love God rightly. We just went over the fourth commandment today in our catechism reading time. That that is, how do you love God? Well, it's by obeying these specific commandments. By not having other gods before him, he is the only one and true God. By worshiping him rightly according to the way that he commands, not according to the way that the world worships him. We're not to make carved images or idols. We're not to try to make images of God in any way and worship him in ways that he hasn't commanded, the second command. Third command, we are supposed to live in a way that we are honoring him His word, his works, his name, that's what taking God's name in vain means, is when you're not living with God and not giving him the due and the honor that he deserves, which is why our catechism says that the third commandment is that when you are to give reverence to God's name, his word, and his works. If you are devaluing God, that means that means you don't revere him, you don't respect him. If you're devaluing his word, if you're not giving it the right authority in your life, you're actually defaming God's name. If you are a Christian and claiming to be in God, but not living a holy life, but living life filled with sin, and you are unrepentant and have no conviction about it, then you're defaming God's name because God's name is on you. And you're lowering God's name by not keeping even your own life holy. And if you're not honoring the Sabbath, if we're profaning the Sabbath, then we are trampling all over the God-given day that he has made for us to be able to be together with him, to be in his presence. That's not honoring to him. What does Paul say? I pray that you would abound more and more in love. Love for God, the first four commandments of the 10 commandments. But not only that, love for neighbor, the last six. John 15 says this really clearly. There's a connection between love and law. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments. and abide in his love. Romans 13 talks about the second table of the law about loving our neighbor. It says this, owe no one anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, sound familiar? You should not steal, you should not covet. I mean, he's talking about the second table of the law. He says, and any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. When people say, I love you, when people say, oh, I wanna feel more loved, Are they talking about, oh, I really wish God's commands were being followed right now? I submit to you, that's exactly what God calls us to do. When we think about love, we should think about law. We should think about what would God call me to do? How would God, and not only do, what would God call me to feel? Look at commandment number 10, do not covet. Do not covet. That's an internal matter. Coveting is a matter of the heart. Coveting is me going, I want that. Coveting has to do with your desires. So it's not just what you do externally, it's what you feel and want internally. You are to want the right things and to do the right things. This is love. So we talked about the, during the prayer time with Liberty Life Center, the most loving thing we can do to those families who are abortion-minded, the most loving thing we can do is to call out the sixth commandment and say, thou shall not murder. Thou shall not murder. It's so loving to tell people God's law. And yet we live in a world, both Christian and non-Christian, this has infected the church. The church has been infected with an allergy towards God's commandments. Don't talk to me about God's law. Talk to me about feelings. Talk to me about how much you like me. Talk to me about affections. Those are good things. Paul says, I long for you. My affections are genuine for you. But these are godly, law-informed affections, not my own affections of my own thinking. So what are we to do when we are to pray for love? We are to pray for love through the lens of law and say the Ten Commandments is the most loving thing. Why? Because the Ten Commandments are based on God himself. God is not a liar. God is a truth teller. God is not a stealer. He has all things. He gives all things. He doesn't take. He has it all. God doesn't have any sort of wrong belief or desire. Everything he does is righteous, right? He doesn't hate life. He gives life. He sustains life. It's only because of sin that death has come into. It's only because of sin that the sickness and corruption has happened. God is life in and of himself, so he is to preserve life and sustain life. God is for authority. Honor your father and mother, that's all human authority. He is the highest authority. Is his love gonna be one that is devoid of authority? No, authority is a good thing when given by God and living within its prescribed arrangements, prescribed sphere. How do we pray for one another? Do we just pray for people's physical safety, or do we pray that they would grow in their knowledge of the love of God, which is expressed in the law of God? An important thing for us. John 13 verse 34 says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this, people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. God's love for us is expressed in Jesus Christ. Look at this, Jesus perfectly served God's law while he was on earth for us. How do we know that Christ loved us? Because he didn't sin against God's law, and therefore, because he was a perfect, sinless, spotless lamb, his love is shown in him being a substitute for our wickedness. Even Christ's love is connected to him fulfilling the law of God. That's what we're supposed to do. That's what we're called to do. We're called to love by fulfilling the law, which is really looking to Christ and how he fulfilled the law. We're not looking to do this in our own strength. We're not looking to do this for our own sake. We're looking to do this because this is what Christ has done, and we look to him first. In fact, maybe you've heard of the virtues, the Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love. 1 Corinthians 13, we'll go over this passage during our midweek Bible study when we get to it. Verse 13 says, so now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love. The greatest thing that we can do as humans and as Christians is love. Love God, love neighbor, love the gospel, love the local church, love the truth, And that love looks like law. It looks like honoring God according to his commandments, serving people according to the Ten Commandments. Let me ask you, does abounding more and more in love rightly describe your love for God and your love for fellow neighbor? Is that a description that would be true of you? Are you a Christian who is growing, abounding? Is your love meter just going up Is it rising? Because that would be the type of prayer requests, the type of desire that we should have for each other, that our church and the individual members of it are all growing in their love. They're growing in their love and their devotion and their commitment and their service and their sacrifice for God, for his gospel, for his church, for their neighbors. Are you growing in love? Do you love God's word? Do you love God's commandments? Do you look to his word? Are you reading his word? Seeing what they are and understanding how the commandments work in everyday life. Again, in order for us to love, we have to understand that we cannot love in our own strength. We cannot love for our own sake. This is not a call to go do religious works on our own. No, this is a call to look to Jesus, see His love for us, and have that affect us so much that out of gratitude and out of a desire to please our God and Father, we would love as well. Let me read in 1 John 4. It says, starting verse eight, anyone who does not love does not know God. You can't even love rightly unless you have a relationship with God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest. It was made known among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. God didn't just send Jesus so that it wouldn't have an effect. He sent Jesus so that we would live the same way Christ would. We'd live through him. And in this love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us, it always starts with God loving us first. and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins to satisfy God's wrath that we rightly deserve. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Where are you gonna continue to grow in love? How is that gonna take place? It's by looking to Christ in the gospel. The only way we can grow in love is if we look to Christ. We are not going to grow in love in our own strength. We're not gonna, we're not gonna, We're not gonna be people who can just discipline ourselves into a external kind of love. It must come from the heart. It must come from a changed heart who looks at Jesus in the gospel and says, that's what love is. Thank you, Jesus, for loving me first. So we learn. What are we to learn here? It's that we are to love, that our love must be abounding. Let's look at another thing that we're to learn from this prayer from Paul to the Philippians. The first is about a growing and abounding love. The second is this, is that believers are called to have a developed discernment and a persevering purity. Believers are called to have a developed discernment and a persevering purity. Let's see this starting at the end of verse 9 and verse 10. It says, I pray that you would abound more and more in love. And then what kind of love? A love that is with knowledge and all discernment. It's going back to that same thing. It's not a subjective love on our own terms. It's an objective love that is rooted in the knowledge of God, rooted in discernment, meaning rooted in a process by which I can rightly understand things and then live them out. That's what a developed discernment means. When it says, I want you to grow in love, but a love that has knowledge and all discernment. not a love that goes off the rails, a love that is right on track with what God understands love to be and how God would have you love in any given situation. But it's not just being really good at figuring things out according to the word. That's something we should do. We, Christians, should study God's word. We should read God's word. We should memorize God's words. We should sing God's word, pray God's word, recite God's word, all of those things. We need his word. That's how we discern spiritually. But it's not meant to just be knowledge. It's meant to be knowledge for practice. Look what it says, so that you may approve what is excellent, so that you can know what is the best possible situation any given time, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. The reason why we seek knowledge and discernment, Christianity is a very intellectual group. It needs to be because God made us to use our brains. He gave us brains to be able to engage with. So if we are not using our minds, we are not honoring the Lord with your mind, all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That includes every part of the human being. So it must include this knowledge piece, this discernment piece, this thoughtfulness piece. We must engage our mental faculties, but not simply to have that knowledge. We are to engage those faculties so that we can use that knowledge to have our being be changed by Christ and have the purity come out of us. Meaning, oh, Christ wants me to love my neighbor this particular way, let me love that way. Let me obey that way. Let me want the right things, at the right time, in the right way. That's what we're called to do, to be pure and blameless. Notice this, if you remember, you were with us before. Last time we talked about how doctrine is actually very important. and that you can and should encourage each other with doctrine, and how Paul has done that in the past. He said, I'm so confident of this, that he who began a good work in you in the past, I'm presently confident that he who began a good work in you will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ, that your future is really good, you have a very positive future, because God is going to complete this good work in you. Well, what does he do? He points to the future. He points to eschatology. He points to Christ is coming back. And when he comes back, it's gonna be awesome, right? It's gonna be great. And so he goes, hey, you're supposed to be learning now, growing now in knowledge and discernment now so that your life could be getting more pure, more pure, more blameless, not having anything that would be a reproach against you, against you, your family, the church, Christ. No, blameless, so that when Christ comes back, like for the day of Christ, that's when he comes back, you will be found ready. I want you, church, to grow in love, not just personal, froofy love, a love of knowledge, love that has discernment, so that your lives are getting more and more holy, more and more blameless. And when Christ comes back, he's gonna be so pleased with his church. his beautiful bride ready for him. They're not wasting their time. They're engaged in the work of preaching the gospel, of loving their neighbors, of raising godly children, of having a salt and light presence in this world. They're loving their unsaved neighbors, their unsaved family members. They're holding up against persecution and against ridicule because they wanna honor things like the Sabbath. Their families don't understand why they don't want to do birthday parties on Sunday. Because they're seeking to honor the Lord. They're seeking to do the things that would be pleasing to the Lord. And so they get ridiculed, they get labeled as extremists, or they get labeled as legalists, instead of saying, no, honor the Lord. This is what is pleasing to the Lord, doing his commands. Loving God and loving neighbor. And so our discernment is to be developed, and our purity is to be persevering all the way until the end, all the way until Christ comes back. You know, this particular prayer is very similar to one that we see in Colossians chapter one, one of my favorite prayers. It's so similar. It says, one verse nine, actually the same verse as nine, It says, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and discernment. People ask the question, what is God's will for my life? Every single Christian should be really good at discerning God's will. Why? Because God's will is what He wants and what is pleasing. Therefore, we need to know the word of God so that we can discern God's will. And so I'm praying that you would know God's will. But not just to know God's will, just to have big heads. It's so that you can walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, so that you can not only know God's will, but do God's will, right? Fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. When you discern God's will, You look at God's law, you look at the principles found in Scripture, you look at the priorities about how we should be in the church and with our families, and how we should have the right understanding of what work is and not an over-inflated part of work or an under-inflated. We're not moving towards idleness, but we're not moving towards idolatry of workaholism. Same thing with family. When we have the right understanding of our physical family, It's not an idolatry of family, but it's not where we're not taking the responsibilities of our family. When you have the discernment that comes from the Word of God, and you live that out, God is so pleased. He's so pleased. Why? Because He's seeing us live out the life that His Son lived out. When He sees us, He sees His Son, and He loves His Son. He loves His Son, and He loves us who are in His Son. And so He's so patient and kind to us. So we are to engage our intellectual faculties to understand what the word says. We're to read and study. Romans 12, a well-known passage, says, do not be conformed to this world. Don't think like this world, don't act like this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Right? Your mind must be renewed in the way of the Spirit so that by testing you may discern what the will of God. What is the will of God? What is good and acceptable and perfect? not just our minds, but also our deeds. Verse 10 again of Colossians, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work. That's the pure works that are not tainted by sin or not done in sin. They're done to the hope and the devotion of the Lord. 1 Peter 2 talks of this. It says, put away all malice. and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander." What is he talking about? He's talking about the Ten Commandments. He said, don't be angry, don't lie, don't put on a show like you're a hypocrite. He's just saying don't, he's talking about the Ten Commandments are embedded in there. Have you ever seen that? Like newborn infants, long, what does that mean? Have the right desire, don't covet the wrong thing, want the right thing. Number 10, number one, don't be an idolater. It says, long for the pure spiritual milk that you may grow up in salvation. 2 Peter 11, or to 11 and 12. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles, meaning this is not our forever home. We as Christians are pilgrims. We are travelers on the way to heaven. Now, this life that we live on this earth is a, right now, Christ is not ruling on the earth physically. He's ruling this earth spiritually. He's in heaven. He's seated at the right hand of God. He is no less king now than he will be forever. He is king. But in his time of what he has for the ages, he has not brought every single power and rule to be completely under the subjection of Christ. And at the end, the separation, that will take place when he comes back. That'll be the final work of Christ's kingly rulership. Right now, he's ruling through us as we live out the gospel and as we preach the gospel. You know that we, the church, are the visible kingdom of God. When you look at the church, when you look at Christians, and when you look at Christians acting not just individually, but as a church, as churches, you are seeing the kingdom of God on earth. We are the ones who want to live according to the rule of God. We are the ones, not because we're cool, not because we're great, because Christ did that in us. Christ gave us his spirit, Christ forgave us. And so it's only, we're just borrowing his life, we're borrowing his love, we're borrowing his obedience, his power, his spirit. And so what are we to do? We are to remember this is not our home as it is. Now, by the way, this earth will be our home forever, but it'll be a new heavens and a new earth. So we are gonna live on earth forever, but it's not gonna be this earth that still has sin in it, still has sinners in it. In the end, I mean, this is why evangelism is so important, because there will be a day when sinners will no longer be able to repent. There will be a day when Christ comes back and it's too late. It's too late to say, Lord, forgive me, help me, I need forgiveness. There'll be a point where he'll say, okay, I'm back. Time to separate the sheep from the goats, the children of God from the children of Satan. This is why we must do the work of the kingdom is preaching. We must tell the good news. You don't have to be slayed by God for your sin. You can be saved by God, by his son. Amen? This is what we're called to do. And in the meantime, what do we do? We live out the kingdom by having a holy life that supports that message. Look, my life has been saved. My life has been changed by the Son. Jesus Christ, yours can be too. Believe in him, receive him. You don't have to stay stuck and admired in your sin. You don't have to be at odds with everyone all the time. You can have peace from your heart. Why? Because God has given you that peace in Christ. So you can live a life that is free from the slavery that so many of us have been stuck in for so much of our lives. Be free in Christ, he offers that to you in the gospel. And so we live these pure lives as a way to show the effects of the gospel. So let me ask you, is your discernment developing? Do you know how to discern God's will in all circumstances? Do you have principles, priorities? Do you have teachings? Do you have frameworks? Do you have doctrines? Do you have wisdom in a way that you can rightly discern God's will? With the scriptures in hand, with prayer and with his church, you could figure anything out you need. Are you developing your discernment so that you can be a healthy, A mature, stable, growing Christian that God is very much using. You're not in the dark about things. No, no, no. You know where to get light. You know how to use that light of the scriptures. and is your purity persevering to the end? Because you can develop, because you can have discernment and know what is pleasing to God, is that changing your life so that you're becoming more and more like Christ? And is that a going, is that gonna last? It's true, we go up and down, and last couple weeks we talked about this wonderful doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Even though our lives go up and down in our holiness, Christ will get us to the end, praise the Lord for that, amen. But are we, we'll go over this section later in the letter, are we working out our salvation with fear and trembling? Because it is God who is willing and working in us, in our salvation. Are we partnering with God to live this life out? Are we grabbing what God says as our life and actually seeking to bring it unto the submission of Christ and his word? Is your discernment developing and is your purity persevering? Let me read this passage from Hebrews. It talks about how the mature grow in discernment. It says, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need to be taught the word of God again. God's oracles, His prophecies, His speech. He says, you need milk, not solid food. Some people need to relearn the basics of Christianity. God is God. We are not. His law is what we follow, not our own. It's just the basics. And it says, you need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. You don't know how to read your scriptures. You don't know how to rightly interpret it or rightly discern from it since he's a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. This is one of the main reasons why we as a church developed years ago this class on discerning God's will. I'm sure some of you have been through it. If you've been with us long enough, you've been through that class. But I would encourage you, if you do not have a godly framework, a biblical framework of how to discern things from scripture, let me encourage you based on these passages. God has more for you. He has truth for you. He has clarity for you. He has spiritual confidence for you. He has maturity for you. If you would submit yourself to learning how to discern God's will. It's not some mystery. It's just a practice of regularly going to the scriptures and rightly ordering things. Seeing it in the right order. Okay, what is the first thing that I need to take into account? Second thing I need to take into account? Okay, what are my priorities? How does God lay out the family and the church and work? And how does God want me to think about this or that? There's all kinds of clear commands and wisdom found in scripture through principles and practices. That's why we need to know our scriptures. I would encourage you. God has more for you. If you want more information on that, let me know. We offer the biblical counseling, or if we want to offer that class again to get more people involved in it, we could do that. but biblical discernment is really important so that we can be honoring God with our lives. Well, let's look at this last point for this morning. Only three verses, but they're packed full of stuff here. Paul is praying that they would abound more and more in love, love of God and love of neighbor, love for gospel, love for the church. Not only that, that they would be able to do that love based on discernment and that would have a result of purity until Christ comes back. And let's look at our third thing. It's this, it's that believers have their righteousness from Christ. and their righteousness is to the praise and glory of God. Believers' righteousness, this is the righteous deeds that they live out, the salvation that produces righteous deeds, that is all from Christ. I mean, this has been called a gospel-centered letter, the book of Philippians, because it's constantly pushing us to the truth of the gospel, constantly saying, Christ is everything. Look to Christ, because of Christ, in Christ. Christ is our example. We're gonna get into chapter two. And once we get into chapter two, I'm gonna game over. The whole rest of the letter is Christ is our example. Look to Christ. Christ is our example. Look to Christ. Look at the gospel. You will have clarity if you look at the gospel. Well, he's doing the same thing here in this prayer. Verse 11, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. Our righteousness is not from ourself, it is from Christ. And what is that righteousness? It's not so that we could get praise. It's not so that we can earn anything or deserve anything. It's so that God would be praised. It's so that God's name would be lifted up as high, so that we would do what we're doing here. pointing out God's goodness and saying, I love it. God is the best. Worshiping is saying, worth, I'm giving God worth. You are valuable. You are wonderful. You are everything. That's what we do. Our lives should be lives of worship, giving God the praise for all of his goodness in and through Christ to us. See that? And so, let's just look at some of these underlying doctrines of the righteousness found. The first is that we are saved by righteousness of Christ, and so not our own doing. But that has an effect on us. It says, filled with the fruit of righteousness. What is the fruit of righteousness? Fruit of righteousness is those good deeds that are found to be righteous in Christ. Meaning because we're in Christ, excuse me, we now can live out good works. Did you know that we could not do spiritually good works before we were saved? That is what the Bible clearly says. That no one is good, no one does good. And we have to make a distinction here. There is such thing as natural good. There's good, like it's good to feed people. It's good to make sure that gates work and are not broken. It's good to make sure that the planes are running on time. You know, that's a natural sort of good that non-Christians have access to. Oh, it's good to make chairs that work. It's good to have food that doesn't kill you. It's good, right? Those are good things, but they're natural good, and they could never deal with the issues of eternality, the soul. They're temporal. lower levels of good. Now, it's good to have natural good, right? We don't want to be sitting on spikes instead of a comfy chair. There's natural good that, praise the Lord, that's common to all people. But the type of goodness that we're talking about, is the goodness that shows off God's goodness and the beauty of Jesus Christ. The type of goodness that can save our souls. Making a good chair or running a plane on time or saying thank you is not anything that'll save your soul. But seeing Jesus Christ and his righteousness and his goodness before God, that can save your soul. And so, because we have our righteousness and our goodness in Christ, that should affect how we live everything else. Romans 6 talks about this. It says, let not sin, we used to be filled with sin, now we're looking to get rid of sin. It says, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey its passions. Don't let sin now. You're to be filled with the fruit of righteousness, not with the fruit of sin. If you're a Christian, if you believe in Christ alone for your salvation, you now are called to righteousness. Therefore, we are not only to be doing good things, we are to be getting rid of the bad things, right? We're to be killing sin, and we're to be living in the truth of righteousness. Romans 8 verse 9 says, you, however, are not in the flesh, but are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Meaning, if you really truly are a Christian, then you are a Christian, and anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ, so you have to be a true Christian in order to be in the Spirit. But if Christ is in you, Although the body is dead, the physical body, because of sin, it's true, our physical bodies are wasting away. They are on a process of decay and death. It's true, we're living this, if you're a Christian, this dual reality of both dying in the flesh and at the same time living in the Spirit. We're living two different planes here. But the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Because of Christ's righteousness, we will live forever. Our souls and our spirits will live forever, and not just our souls and our spirits, our bodies will live forever, too, when they get cleansed when Jesus comes back. This is why we need to know eschatology, because we need to know that when Christ comes back, the resurrection of the body is gonna take place, meaning it's not just gonna be a spiritual salvation. Right now, Jesus came in, did a physical work, right, on the cross and with his life, but he gave us a spiritual salvation. He started the work spiritually. But when he comes back, he's gonna come back physically as a physical king to reign on a physical earth, and it'll be more than spiritual. It'll be physical as well. That includes giving our bodies back. All the people who died in Christ since Christ has gone, and even in the Old Testament, all those who actually were true believers, they're gonna get their bodies back. But guess what? It's not gonna be the old stained, broken bodies. It's gonna be a new type of body. It's gonna be a wonderful, eternal type of body. And so we live in this in-between stage, where our body is wasting away now, but our spirits are growing. Going back to Romans 6, it says, do not present your members, the members of your body, to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. No, no, don't live like a sinner anymore, but present yourself to God. as those who have been brought from death to life, your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 1 Corinthians 13, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. just three verses, and it's packed full of wonderful, glorious truth. I want you to grow in love. I want you to be growing and growing and growing in your love for God, your love for neighbor, your love for the church, your love for the gospel, your love for evangelism, your love for partnership, your love for doing whatever it takes for partnering with me, Paul, while I'm in prison. You love so much that you do not mind getting persecuted. You do not mind suffering. Why? Because you love God more than your own body. You're willing to do that. To the glory of God. Whatever we do, we do to the glory of God. And so that's what he says there. To the praise and to the glory of God, verse 11. To the praise and the glory of God. And so we say with Paul and all the other saints, I love this benediction that Paul gives Timothy in chapter one, verse 17, he says, to the king. of all the ages to Christ, to God. The immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever, amen. Our lives are all about the glory of God, the glory of Christ, the one who is seated in heaven right now. Our lives are about him. Our lives are about making him look good, pointing out his work, pointing out his righteousness, living by his strength, calling on his spirit, living in his church, preaching His gospel. It's all about Him. If you are in Christ, then your whole life is about Christ. And so, what do we pray for? We pray that you would grow in love, that you would have a developed discernment, that you would grow in your purity, knowing that Christ is coming back, and when he comes back, oh, your whole life will be to the glory and to the praise of God. May we all look to Christ as we see his beauty and his goodness. Would you bow with me? Oh Christ, you're so wonderful, you're so beautiful. We're so thankful that you did all the work on our behalf. We're so thankful that we don't have to do these things in our own strength, that we can and we'll partner with you through the power of your spirit. Lord, we don't have to make stuff up. You've already given it to us in your word. We don't have to be aimlessly wandering around not knowing what to do. No, you've called us to discern your will through your scriptures. Lord, we don't have to be stuck in sin. We could be free from sin and now we can be slaves to righteousness and to goodness. So Lord, thank you for doing all of that so that we could join you in this wonderful project of your glory. So Lord, please glorify yourself in us individually. Glorify yourself in our families. glorify yourself in this church, Lord. May we be a church that brings glory to your name. Lord, glorify yourself in all the churches everywhere, knowing that even where there's persecution and difficulty, Lord, your name is more important than our physical. Lord, blessing. We are blessed in you. It's in your name we pray, amen.