Good morning. Please turn in your copy of God's Word to the book of Philippians chapter one. Our sermon this morning will be from verses three to 11. Let's just start at verse one for a little bit of context. And remember, Paul is in prison. He's writing these words from prison. We don't know exactly which prison, but probably from Rome. Let that be a context for you when we read of his thankfulness and his joy. This is the inerrant word of God. This is Philippians chapter one, verse one. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart. For you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 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. Join me in prayer. Lord, we pray you would illumine our hearts You'd plant your word deep in our hearts. You'd write it upon our hearts, that you'd water it, that you would make it grow into full fruition, that we might be fully mature in you, lacking in nothing, equipped for every good work. We pray this in Jesus' mighty name, amen. About 11 years ago, in the summer, I was working at Ligonier Camp and Conference Center. My friend had invited me to work there, and he was on the adventure staff. I was just a counselor in the lodge. And he liked to go caving. I don't know if any of you have ever gone caving before. He was trying to get me to go with him, and he was describing to me what they called a birthing tunnel. Imagine climbing through a tunnel, and it gets more and more narrow until you're on your hands and knees, almost wiggling like a worm through this narrow passageway. and sometimes five, maybe ten feet long. Can you imagine the feeling of claustrophobia you'd have in that narrow, dark tunnelway? That thought of, maybe I'll never get out, maybe I'll get trapped here, maybe this is the end for me. He was trying to convince me to go on this trip with him. He couldn't convince me to go. But think of your faith. Have you ever grown worried or concerned, maybe I won't make it to the end? Maybe Jesus Christ won't get me all the way to his kingdom. Maybe I'm going to be trapped here in whatever is holding you down. Maybe my sin, I'm never going to escape from this sin that is besetting me. Or maybe this despair that has come over me, or grief, or whatever it is, is crowding in on you and you feel trapped. You feel like maybe you're not going to make it to the end of your Christian walk. Maybe you will be trapped in the prison of giant despair. God's word for us this morning gives us a promise. You're going to make it to the end. This morning, listen for four words of encouragement from Paul as he writes as a loving pastor to his people. in Philippi, and he's encouraging them. So as we go through the text, listen for those four words. The first word is thankfulness, a word of thankfulness, and we see that starting in verse three through verse five. Look back at the text with me. He writes, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you. Remember, where's Paul again? He's in prison. But what characterized his life in prison? Thankfulness. Thankfulness is all throughout this letter. He's writing with thankfulness and rejoicing. And why is he thankful? He says, I'm thankful every time I remember you, in all my remembrance of you. Every time he thinks of the Philippians, he's giving thanks for them. This is a true thankfulness. He's saying, I'm truly thankful for you. We'll see why as he goes on. He's not just thankful. He writes in verse 4, Do you see the word joy there? In prison, Paul is filled with thankfulness and joy. This isn't ordinary thankfulness and joy. There's a thankfulness and joy that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ that can go with you wherever you go, even in the darkest dungeon, in the darkest tunnel. It will be with you. It will never leave you. The Holy Spirit cannot be kept out by prison bars. And if you're in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can know this thankfulness and this joy. Only if you're in the Lord Jesus Christ can you know this thankfulness and this joy. And he's thankful and joyous because of them. He's truly thankful and joyous because of them. They, these Philippian Christians, are bringing him actual thankfulness and joy. We have reason, brothers and sisters, to give thanks for one another. We can bring joy and thankfulness to one another. You should expect God to use you to bring thankfulness and joy into the lives of other Christians. Because his spirit is dwelling in you and God is showing his love to others through you. He gives us even more information explaining why he's thankful in verse five. Look at verse five. Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Imagine getting a letter in the mail from someone you deeply admire, a hero. in opening up and reading it and hearing these words from someone that you respect so highly, and that person writing to you and saying, I'm thankful for you, I'm joyous for you, and you are our partner with me in my ministry, in my work. I couldn't do it without you. You're strengthening me. God is blessing me through you. And that's what Paul says. He says, because of your partnership in the gospel. Remember, Paul was called to deliver the gospel to the Gentiles. He was the apostle to the Gentiles. He wrote half the books of the New Testament. And he's writing to ordinary Christians, saying that they are partners with him in the gospel. And that's exactly what God makes us. Imagine if you went into a field and you saw a shepherd there. And the way that he shepherded his flock is he trained sheep from the flock to shepherd and care for one another, to partner together with each other. And the sheep were taking care of themselves. That's exactly what God does. He raises up sheep like you to love one another, to care for one another. We have sheep shepherds. It's an amazing picture. That's how God lifts us up and he empowers us. He makes us partners together in the gospel. And tell me, when did God first start using you for his ministry? Do you see what the text says in verse five? He says, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. He's saying to the Philippians, he's saying the very first day you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus has been using you as a partner to me, to encourage me. And this isn't just written to the Philippians, it's written to us. The Lord has been using you in ways that you can't always see for his glory and for his ministry, and he will continue to use you. He's created you in Christ Jesus for good works. He's prepared them beforehand so that you will walk in them. You have ministry and he's been ministering through you since the very first day, the very first day that he made you alive in Jesus Christ. It's not up to you, it's up to him. It's all in his hands. And if he's been doing it, he's going to continue doing it. So our first word was thankfulness. This leads us to our second word. It's a word of surety, or a word of assurance, we could say. It's in verse six. Paul writes, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. at the day of Jesus Christ. Do you hear those words? Let me read them again. I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Notice what it doesn't say. He doesn't say, I'm pretty sure that you will complete that work that you started in yourself. That's not what he says. He points out that God is the one who started the work. Did you see that? He who began a good work in you. That's referring to God. And he's saying that he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. And it reminds us, God doesn't start a project and then abandon it. He doesn't quit and part way through doing something. When he starts a work, he finishes it. So Paul's saying to them, I have seen God ministering to you, from the very first day that you were born again in him, and I'm sure of this, that he's going to continue it and he's going to finish that work in you. Brothers and sisters, you have an incredible ability to encourage one another when we can point out to one another all the ways we see God working through one another. Because that can be an encouragement to remind us God has been working through us in the past, and he's going to continue working through us until the day of Jesus Christ. Until the day we die or when Jesus Christ returns, he's going to finish his work in us. He's going to bring it to completion. You can be sure of that. Why can you be sure of it? Because it's in the hands of our sovereign savior. He will not leave you or forsake you. He won't leave you in that dark tunnel to be trapped there forever. He's going to get you through. You will see the light at the end of the tunnel. You will emerge from the darkness. Whenever darkness is clamping down on you, remember that. The Lord Jesus is with you. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. He's going to deliver you to the end. He's going to get you through whatever you're going through. And this is really encouraging to us in our struggle against sin. Because day after day, we find ourselves sinning and falling short. And we know that the penalty for sin is death. And we think, am I going to die in my sins? Brothers and sisters in Christ, you will not die in your sins. You will not die there. He's going to complete his work in you. He's going to completely sanctify you. Probably not till the day of your death unless he returns before then. But he's going to finish it. He's going to make you free from sin. He's going to set you free, make you completely holy, completely finished, completely in him. You can be sure of that. Take Paul's word of assurance and apply it to yourself. You can be sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. So we had a word of thankfulness. a word of surety or of assurance. It brings us to our third word, which we see in verses seven and eight. It's a word of affection. Let's hear what he says. Paul writes in verse seven, it is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart. For you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. If you just take out the phrases from Paul's letters that are offensive in the modern day culture, and you put them on a sheet of paper, and you give them to somebody to read, they might come away with the wrong conclusion. They might start to think that Paul's not loving, because he's not politically correct, perhaps, in today's lingo. If you dwell on those things, you'll completely miss one of the core parts of Paul's message, is this affection and this love he has for the church and for God's people. We often talk about the apostle John as the apostle of love, but Paul, his letters are filled with love. Just listen to the language he used in verse seven. He said, I hold you in my heart. Did you see that phrase? I hold you in my heart. You know what that shows for us? Think of a soldier overseas, far away from his family, with a locket around his neck, with a picture inside of it of his family, close to his heart. That's what Paul's saying. He says, I'm in prison, but I hold you in my heart. It gives me strength to think about you, to know that we are united together in Christ, that we're brothers and sisters in Christ. That's where I find strength. He says more. He says, I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. Imagine if I called up one of my friends on the phone and I said, I yearn for you with the affection of Christ Jesus. It might make them uncomfortable. That language is really powerful that he's writing with. And you have to really mean those words to say them, because people will see through you if you're showing a false or artificial affection. He writes without any reservation, though. He says he yearns for them. He longs to be near them. He's in this prison, but in his heart, he is with them in Philippi. And he, see what he says in verse seven, how I yearn for you all with the affection, not of Paul, but the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is a reminder of the gospel, because tell me, what was Paul before he was a Christian? He was a persecutor of the church, he was a murderer, he hated Christians. He hated them with every fiber of his being. But now we see him here loving them and pouring out his heart to them, longing to see them complete and mature in Jesus Christ. This is only a work of the Holy Spirit to transform a person, to take them from darkness to light, to take them from a hater of the church to a lover of the church. He's been completely transformed, and he has the affection of Christ Jesus living in him. We remember that we're united to Christ through faith. We partake of all of his blessings, and we partake of that love that he has for the church. When we're united to Christ, our heart is transformed. and renewed in Christ's own image. And we begin to love the things. that he loves. Not only do we be conformed to his image, but we're brought together with one another so that when I'm over here in prison and you're over there in Philippi, you're actually supporting me and helping me in my ministry. That's what Paul is saying to them. That's really what he was saying in verse 7, if we saw. He says, I hold you in my heart for you are all partakers of me with me of grace. He says, we're partaking of the same grace. We're far away, but we're both. taking the same grace from the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's saying, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. He says, you're strengthening me in my imprisonment through the unity that we have in Jesus Christ by the power of his spirit. You are strengthening me in my defense and confirmation of the gospel by the power of his spirit. We have real unity with one another and real affection for one another. And we can only really love one another if we have the affection of Jesus Christ dwelling in us. So if you're having trouble with the church, You're having trouble loving one another. Remember, don't try to love in your own strength. Love in the strength of Jesus Christ. The church is not perfect. The church might not always look lovable to our eyes, but when God sees the church, he sees us with all the righteousness of his son, Jesus Christ. He sees us with all the loveliness of Jesus Christ, and God teaches us to see one another that way, to love one another with the eyes of Christ, of the precious, that we're precious lambs of God. He loves us so dearly. And pray for God to cultivate that love in you. And when you're feeling weak and you're feeling, I don't have the strength to love His church, call on God to give you that love so that you can love the church the way Christ does, that His affection would dwell within you. So we had a word of thankfulness in verses three through five. We had a word of assurance or surety in verse six. Verses seven and eight, we had a word of affection. In verses nine through 11, we have our fourth word, which is a word of prayer. Look at verses nine through 11, and listen to this prayer that Paul prays. This is a great guide for us in how to pray, and how the Holy Spirit prays. Paul writes. 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. Let's look at this prayer. This is the fourth word, the word of prayer. He starts this prayer by praying for love. How often do we think to pray that our love would abound? But that's exactly how he starts. And we've just been hearing about the great love that Paul has for the church, and how it's this supernatural love that God has put in his heart. And that's how he starts his prayer for them. He says, I pray that your love may abound more and more. Oh, how we need to abound in the love of Jesus Christ. We need that love abounding within us. But not just bare love. He says that your love may abound more and more with knowledge in all discernment. Love and knowledge wed together here. It's not hard to imagine what knowledge looks like without love. We've all seen this, maybe we've all acted this way at one time or another, where we've had great knowledge and we've let it puff ourselves up, but we didn't use that knowledge for love. We used it for prideful reasons or selfish reasons. That's the opposite of the way that Paul envisions. He envisions knowledge and love going hand in hand, that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. What he's saying is that you have both love and knowledge. On the other hand, you can imagine love without knowledge. Imagine if I love my neighbor, and his car is broken, and he really needs to get to work. So I say the loving thing to do right now is to fix his car. But I don't know anything. I have no knowledge about fixing cars. I'm not going to be very helpful in that moment. other than to pray for him. And this is what he's saying here, that we need both love and knowledge. Knowledge informs love. It shows us how to love. It shows us how to love more effectively, more precisely. And we cannot have the love of Christ without also the knowledge of Christ. Those things go hand in hand. So he prays for both knowledge and love. And when we have the love of Jesus Christ dwelling in us and the knowledge of Jesus Christ dwelling in us, it informs us how to live. And it has a purpose. It's completing us. That's what we see in verse 10. He writes in verse 10, so that you may approve what is excellent. What's that mean, that you may approve what is excellent? I think it means something like this. So that when you're in a difficult situation and you're not exactly sure what to do and you have to make a decision about action, you'll be able to approve the excellent decision, to approve the righteous thing to do. Imagine you're exhausted and you come home from work and your kids really want to see you. You really want to sit on the couch. You want to take a break. But what the gospel tells us here is to approve what is excellent, to remember the love of God in your heart and the knowledge you have of how to apply that love to your children and to lay aside your own desires and to take up time with your kids. Approve what is excellent, it means applying that love and knowledge in everyday situations. To love your wife or your husband when they really need love, even if you don't feel like it. To know the love of God that has come into your life, and to apply that love in your decisions. And to be continually sanctified in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what is in mind when he writes, so to be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. In other words, God wants to fill you with love and knowledge, and we ought to pray for love and knowledge so that we can be completely sanctified in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we will never quite reach it in this life, in this world. But he's going to complete it, as we saw, and we need to aim for that. Aim to continually be growing in sanctification. You can never get to a certain point in your Christian life where you don't need to grow anymore. You'll never get there. No matter where you are right now, you need to continue to grow in Jesus Christ and continue to be sanctified so that you might be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. He goes on in verse 11, filled with the fruit of righteousness. And tell me, how does this fruit of righteousness come? What does he say? Do you see how he continues? Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, we can only grow in sanctification by dwelling in the Lord Jesus Christ, by having him dwell within us, by drawing closer and closer to him. We need his grace today as much as we did the very first day we believed in him. We ought to pray that we would be filled with his fruit. We know the fruits of the Spirit. We've heard the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, that we'd be filled with these fruits. the fruits of the Spirit, filled with the fruits of righteousness that come through Jesus Christ. And what's the point of all this? Why do we want to be filled with love and knowledge? Is it so that others will look at us and say, you're such a great Christian? No, that's not what he says. He says at the end of verse 11, to the glory and praise of God. This is how we ought to pray for one another. This is how the Spirit prays for you. This is how Paul is praying for the church, that they'd grow in love and knowledge, and that love and knowledge would be applied in them now and to the end of their Christian walk. Brothers and sisters, be filled with love and knowledge. Pray for it. Cry out for it. Whenever you're in that dark tunnel, remember these words that Paul writes to us. Remember all of the thankfulness we have in one another. That we can be thankful that we have other Christians walking alongside us, praying for us, even when we're not with them, even when they're far away from us. We have them with us, just like Paul had the Philippians with him. Remember that God has began a good work in you, and he will bring it to completion. Remember the affection that Jesus Christ has for you, how dear you are in his eyes. Remember that the Holy Spirit himself is praying for you, is with you, is speaking in groanings too deep for words, praying out, crying out on your behalf. This is true hope that we have, and it's only in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have the ability to encourage one another in Christ, and to show that love of Jesus Christ to one another, to share these same four words of encouragement with one another. Remember these things. You're going to get through whatever you're going through. He's not going to let you fall. He's going to finish the work that he began in you. Let's pray, brothers and sisters. God, we thank you for your word. Lord, we need it so dearly. We are so quick to wander away from your word. We are so quick to set up false gospels, to trust in our own words. But we need you and we need your grace today as much as we did the first day that we came to you. But we have such a great promise from you, Lord, that you will complete the work that you began in us. And we pray that we'd be filled with love and knowledge, that we could encourage one another and build each other up, that we could give each other reasons for thanksgiving and joy. We pray this all in the matchless name of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.