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ట్రాన్స్క్రిప్ట్
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Open up with me in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 1. If you were here about a month ago on a Sunday morning, we looked together at the first eight verses of the first chapter of Philippians. Tonight, we're going to be focusing on verses 9 to 11. I'm going to go ahead and read verses 1 through 11, just to give us a little bit of the background before we jump into it. Philippians 1 verse 1, Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including 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 offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me. For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment. so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. So if you're like me, then you probably have had an experience where you sit down to pray for someone, to intercede, and you realize intercession for other people really isn't always that easy. Sometimes we sit down to pray, to intercede, to cry out to God on behalf of one another, on behalf of our family, on behalf of the world, and we find ourselves wondering, what do I pray? How do I pray? What do they need in this moment? How can I pray for them? And when that happens, a good exercise to do, a good habit to form is to go to Paul's prayers in the New Testament. If you just open up the epistles like we have here in Philippians, and read through some of Paul's prayers, you see beautiful, Christ-centered, Christ-exalting, genuine prayers for one another, for other believers. Good examples of intercession. That's exactly what we have here in verses 9 through 11. This is Paul's intercession, this is Paul's prayer, his plea to God on behalf of the Philippian church. And the first thing that he prays is for an internal reality to be there. He wants there to be an internal reality. He says, I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve the things that are excellent. So Paul's praying, I want there to be something inside of you that propels you to care for one another, that propels you to obey, that propels you to fulfill your calling as Christians. I want you to abound in love. And we know that Paul isn't saying here that the Philippians have some obvious lack of love. He's not saying, sometimes like we pray, Lord I pray for that person, please help them to love more. A lot of times what we mean by that is we imply, we're implying they haven't loved all that well up to now, and so Lord help them to love, because they're really not loving very well. That's not what Paul says here, that's not what Paul means. He recognizes in the first eight verses of this chapter that they are perhaps the most loving church that we have recorded for us in the New Testament. The Church of Philippi is known in the New Testament for generosity, for faithfulness, for consistency in their support of Paul, for their perseverance and fellowshipping with him in the gospel. So Paul has already commended the Philippian church for how well they've loved, for how well they've shared fellowship with him in particular. So when he comes now and says, I pray that your love may abound, he's praying, I want it to go even farther. I want it to excel even more than it has so far. You've done well up to this point, but I want your love to abound still more and more. If you've played baseball, if you played baseball growing up, or if you ran track maybe, maybe a hundred meter dash, You know, in baseball, you don't run to first base. If you hit a ground ball down the third baseline, you're not just running to first base, you're running through it. You want to be running faster by the time you reach first base than you are when you're halfway down the first baseline. Because the problem is, if you're just trying to run to first base, then when you're about 10 feet away, you start to slow down a little bit. You have to in order to stop on the base. So the coach, one of the first things you learn when you're seven years old in Farm League Baseball is run through the base. Keep running down the sideline. Or in track, when you are running that 100-meter dash, you don't stop when you get to the finish line. You run through it. If you have as your aim just to get to that finish line, then inevitably you're going to slow down in the last few steps before you get there. You want to run through the line, through the base. You want to be running faster 10 steps from now than you are right now. And that's the idea that Paul has here. You've done well so far, but don't let up. Don't slow down. Press on. You want to be running faster, harder tomorrow, harder next year than you are right now. Your love should abound more today than it did yesterday, more tomorrow than it has today. So Paul prays that their love may abound still more and more. And I think one of the reasons why maybe this isn't such a reality in our lives, this pursuit, this diligent desire, this earnest prayer for greater love, even though we would never confess this out loud, we never admit this, it sounds too arrogant, too prideful, but one of the reasons why we don't daily bow in desperation before God, pleading for greater love, is because subtly we think we're doing okay in that area. So we kind of compare ourselves to one another, or maybe even compare ourselves to those outside the church and think, well, compared to them, I'm at least doing as well, if not better than they are. So I'm loving okay. Obviously, the problem there is that we're setting the wrong standard for ourselves. That's one of our dangers, is we compare ourselves to one another. And because of that, we're okay with the fact that we're not loving, abounding as we should, because at least we're not doing as poorly as the next person. Christ has something to say about that in John 13 verse 34. He says, And so the standard that Christ sets for us there, this new commandment that he gives, is that the way you love one another, the depth to which you love one another, the goal that you have in your love for one another is to love as He has loved us. So our standard is not other people. Our standard is not our culture's definition of what it means to sacrificially love people. Our standard is Christ and His selfless love for us. I think there's another danger too, and I say this because I've experienced it. This danger of reaching such a point of discouragement that we feel like, you know what, I've reached my limitations of what I'm able to do. I've sought to love this person, and I've been determined to. I've heard a good sermon, and I've left determined, I'm going to love my spouse better. only to get home and after a couple days that determination fades and we're right back in the same sinful patterns with our wife or with our husband or with our children that we were just a couple days previously. And so we do that a couple times and then we kind of just throw up our hands and we say, you know what? Again, we don't say this out loud. We're too prideful to say it. But inside, there's this way of thinking that says, you know what? This is just who I am. Or maybe in terms of hospitality. I know what I'm commanded to do. I know that I'm called to be hospitable, to be gracious with my time, to be gracious with my space. I've tried it. I've opened up my home, and it's gone miserably. I've failed. I hate it. I'll never be hospitable. And so there reaches this point where we just say, that's who I am. That's my personality. I have a private personality. I can't do it. I can't be loving in that way. I can't be loving in that area. And so that's another danger, but at the same time, it's just as prideful. And what it's saying, in essence, is God is actually pretty weak. God is incapable of giving me the love that I'm required to have in order to be obedient to his word. So he's commanded me to do something, and yet he's incapable of giving me the love that I need to obey it. Paul has already expressed his confidence that God is able to grant you what you need. He is able not only to begin the work that he started in you, but he's able to carry that work all the way through to the end. In verse 6, he says, I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. So he's begun this work. You have some seeds of righteousness in you, you have some seeds of love in you. He's begun that, but he's promised that he's going to abound that seed more and more, abound that love more and more, all the way up until the day of Christ Jesus. Paul was confident of that. And so he prayed this in the confidence that in his desire for them to abound in love, there's also a God who's able to cause them to abound in that love. But love is not enough, contrary to some of our songs today and our culture's idea of what love is. It's not just doing whatever your heart desires to do. It's not just doing whatever feels right. All we need is not just love, if that's how we're gonna define love, but it needs to have knowledge and discernment accompanied with it. So that's what Paul goes on to say in verse nine. This I pray, that your love may abound still more and more specifically in real knowledge and all discernment. So when he says knowledge there, he's referring to a knowledge of God's character, God's holy and righteous character, his attributes, all that is deity. And at the same time, he's saying a knowledge of God's will. And we know that from the way that he prays a very, very similar prayer in Colossians 1. Just a couple of phrases from that prayer. In verse 9, he says, So there's knowledge of his will. And then he continues in the next verse and he says, increasing in the knowledge of God. So he prays two things for the Colossians. One, increase in the knowledge of God's will. What he means by that is just God's desire for you. What does he desire for the church? What has he commanded the church? What does his righteous character require from us? That's the knowledge of God's will. And then on the other hand, increasing in the knowledge of God, his person, his attributes, his character. And so Paul here, when he says that he longs for the Philippians to abound in love that's characterized by knowledge, that's the idea he has, is this love is joined together with the knowledge of God and the knowledge of what God requires from us, what he desires from us. You might not have struggled with this, this might not have been something, a context in which you've been in, but there are many contexts in our day which, and even a temptation in our own hearts, to draw a false dichotomy between knowledge and love, between doctrine and love. I remember a couple years ago, there was a friend of mine who brought a couple books to me, and I was grateful for the books, because they were good books, Jonathan Edwards and a couple others. And this friend said to me, man, these books are just too heady. They're getting in the way of my love for Jesus. And that's kind of the way we think. Like, this stuff is just, this is just doctrine. This just has too much knowledge and information about God. I want to know, you know, how do I experience Him? What does it look like to have an authentic experience of God? And so they're separating this love experience from true, biblical, solid doctrine. And the problem is, they're losing so much when they do that. I mean, what if I went home and sat next to my wife, and sat there with my arms crossed, and kind of looked straight in front of me, and my wife was sitting right there next to me on the couch, and she tried to talk to me, and I said, Not now, honey. I'm trying to really enjoy my love for you. I don't want to know anything about your day. I don't want to know what you want to do tomorrow. I don't want to know anything about you. I just want to sit here and enjoy you. There's something wrong with that, right? But that's sometimes how even we can draw near to God, thinking knowledge of Him is somehow separate from the experience of Him. They go hand in hand. Knowledge builds us up in love for Him. It's the very basis of love for God. It's the revelation of His character, the revelation of His redemptive acts in history through Jesus Christ, the love that He's shown through what He's done on the earth that provokes our own hearts to love Him. And that's doctrine. Doctrine isn't some cold, distant, isolated thing. It's the character, the beauty, the marvel of all that God is, and how that affects our heart and provokes us to love Him. That's true doctrine. That's real knowledge. That's what Paul is talking about here. Not only is it knowledge that we need, even love and knowledge itself aren't enough. He says discernment too. I want you to have all discernment. Love, knowledge, and discernment. And discernment is really just being able to take that doctrine, take that understanding of who God is, what He desires from us, and actually put it into practice when we love each other. And that's why it can go so easily into approving the things that are excellent in the beginning of verse 10. It's the ability to examine the situation and take what we know to be true about God and apply it in the right way to approve the right things, to choose the best option with regard to how we love one another. That's discernment. That's what happens when knowledge and discernment are joined together. It produces the best option. We approve what's best. And we all know, at least to some degree, what it's like to think, I want to love this person, I desire to love this person, I know that this person needs to be loved, but I just don't know how. I don't know what it looks like to love them. I desire to love my coworker who's just lost a loved one, but I just don't know what they need. I desire to care for my wife, to encourage her, to strengthen her, but I don't know what she needs. I desire to come alongside my husband who's suffering with depression and encourage him and love him, but I don't know what that looks like. And Paul says, that's why you need this. That's why you need this knowledge of God. joined together with discernment, spiritual discernment, the ability to take that knowledge and apply it rightly, choosing the best option, learning to love people the best way, not just doing whatever we feel like doing, but really doing what's going to do this person good. Because loving people just for the sake of loving them will make us feel good, but if we don't love them in the right way, it's kind of pointless, it doesn't do them any good. discerning love, careful love, knowledgeable love. That's what Paul desires from the Philippians. And so the question is then, how do we get that kind of love? How do we get that kind of knowledge? Paul hears praying. This is a prayer. And so we do what Paul does. We pray, we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we cry out to God, give me knowledge. Give me knowledge of yourself. It's you alone who can reveal yourself to me. It's you alone who can reveal your will to me. Give me knowledge. Give me discernment. I long to do this person good, and I don't know how. God, give me discernment. Help me to know what that looks like. We pray. We follow Paul's pattern. And secondly, we immerse ourselves in the Word of God. I hope this is by way of reminder more than anything new. We immerse ourselves in the Word of God. And you might be saying, you don't know my home situation. I have no time throughout the day to study God's Word any more than I'm already doing. Don't put that burden on me. You don't know what kind of family I have. You don't know what kind of responsibilities I have. It's true. We all have very different circumstances, very different opportunities to be in God's Word, different responsibilities that weigh on our shoulders. But I'm pretty sure that if we really desire to grow in God's Word, there's probably certain parts of our day that we could use better for that purpose. I have an app on my phone, scripture type, where I can pull it out and memorize scripture at any moment if I'm waiting for someone or waiting for a coffee at the coffee shop. Whatever it is, there's moments all throughout the day when we could pick up a good book and just skim a couple pages and just be flooding our minds with truth about who God is. So, yes, there are very different contexts in which we all are, very different opportunities, but we all can be better at immersing ourselves in God's Word, taking opportunities in addition to extended amounts of time in the Word to daily and throughout the day be filling our minds with God's truth. And lastly, in asking the question, how do I get this knowledge? How do I better love people with knowledge and discernment? A very obvious and basic step that we often overlook is just to take time to consider how to do it. Sit down and ask yourselves, all right, I know this is where my friend is right now. I know these are the different things that he's going through. All right, what does it look like? What does it look like to love him right now? What does he need? Take time to consider. Hebrews commands us to consider how to stir one another up to love and good deeds. And it's similar in this situation. Take time, sit down, ponder. How can I better love this person? What does my neighbor need? Okay, so hopefully we know our neighbors. What do they need? What's some way that I might be able to come alongside my neighbor and help him with something? and somehow lead him more and more to the knowledge of Christ. What might I do? Take time to consider what it looks like to love with knowledge and discernment. So Paul's prayer, at its most basic level, is for this internal reality, this love that's characterized by knowledge and discernment. And then, the second part of verse 10, he goes on to show his desire for there to be a tangible result of that love. He says, I want you, he says here, in order to, one second, lost my place, in order to be sincere and blameless. So there's this internal reality that Paul then desires to be worked out outwardly, tangibly, in two things, sincerity and blamelessness. So this is the tangible result of Paul's prayer in the life of the Philippians. When he says sincere, he just means genuine, to be what you say you are. comes from the word that was used to express something being examined by sunlight. So, being held up to the sun and looking for flaws. And if it was sincere, then when you held it up to the sun and looked for flaws, you wouldn't find any. It was sincere. And it's also helpful to see how that word was also translated into Latin, into the word sinceritas, which is obviously where we get the word sincere. It means without wax. If you speak Spanish, sin cera, without wax. And the idea there is that one option is that with pottery in that time, 1st, 2nd, 3rd century, Quality pottery was often a lot thinner than cheap, quickly assembled pottery. You just kind of slop pottery together, and it's thick and not very nice. It's kind of like the difference between Walmart dining sets and fine china. Like, fine china is a lot more delicate. It's thin. That's the same with pottery in the first, second, third century. Really careful pottery was really thin. It was finely put together. But the problem with that is when you went to fire it, a lot of times it cracked. And so what a seller would do after having put so much time, the potter, into forming this pot, His heart was broken because it was just cracked. He wasn't willing to lose his time or his money, and so he would cover up the cracks with wax. And then he would take that pot into the marketplace and try to sell it as if it didn't have any cracks at all. He would cover it up, the buyer would buy it, the buyer would take it home, but the problem was, once that pot heated up, or once it sat in the sunlight for a little while, that wax would start to wear off. And those cracks that the potter had hidden suddenly became visible to the buyer, and he knew he had bought a phony piece of pottery. So, to be without wax, then, is to be without those types of hidden flaws. To be genuine. To be what you look like you are. To be what you say you are. And the same concept with a sculpture, with a statue. So a sculptor would be shaping a statue into form and accidentally chip off a piece that he didn't want to, and so he would take wax and stick it onto that piece to try to cover up his error. The problem is, with a couple weeks, months, years, that wax was gone, and the flaw was obvious. Everyone knew the sculptor had messed up. The wax was gone. It was exposed for what it really was. So to be sincere is to not be hiding those kinds of flaws, to not be presenting outwardly something other than we are inwardly. And then he goes on and he says blameless. So sincere has to do with what we are. It has to do with our profession, our lives matching our profession of what we are. Blamelessness has to do with our relationships with one another. It means to not cause to stumble, to not be an offense, to not set a stumbling block before another person and cause them to sin, to not provoke them to anger, to not provoke them to do what's contrary to God's will for them, to be blameless, to be pure in our relationships with one another. Paul says, this is what you ought to be, what you claim to be, and pure in your relationships with one another. That's his desire for them. That's a tangible result of the internal reality of love. But then he goes on and he says, I want you to be this way. I'm praying that you'll be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ. The end of verse 10. Until the day of Christ. And if you have an ESV Bible, it says, for the day of Christ. literally means unto the day of Christ. In that day, when you get to the day of Christ, I want you to be sincere and blameless. So yes, it's for now. He wants them to be sincere and blameless now, but it's ultimately leading up to that great day when Christ returns. He wants them to be sincere and blameless in that day, in the day of Christ. In Romans chapter 2, Paul describes that day as the day in which the secrets of men will be judged through Jesus Christ. The secrets of men will be judged through Jesus Christ. So, remember that image of wax melting off of the pot, or wax wearing off of the statue. Flaws are hidden for a while, but over time the wax wears off, and eventually you see the pot, you see the statue for what it really is. On the day of Christ, it's not a slow process. It doesn't take hours. It doesn't take minutes. It doesn't take seconds. In a moment. All of the wax that we've built up around ourselves, all of this false persona that we try to show to others will be melted away and we'll be exposed for what we really are. The secrets of our heart. That means the things no one else sees, the things we try to cover up, the things we don't want other people to see. Those are the things that are going to be exposed in that day. The wax is going to be gone. There's no longer hiding it. Just full exposure before the pure radiance of God's holiness. And if we didn't have the gospel of Christ, if we didn't have the knowledge of Jesus and the forgiveness of sins that we have in Him, this would be the most terrifying reality. There's no way that Paul could pray this prayer with any type of joy. He says at the beginning of verse 3 that he thanks God in all of his remembrance for them, always offering prayer with joy. There's no way Paul would be able to pray this prayer with joy without the gospel of Christ. There's not any of these Philippians and none of us who would be able to stand before the throne of God that day in the radiance of his purity, his holiness, and be able to say, yes, I am what I've claimed to be. I am absolutely blameless. I am absolutely sincere. Everything that I've said about myself is true. There's no one in that day, in the day of Christ, when all the secrets of the heart are exposed, there's no one who will be able to say anything along those lines. That's the beauty of the gospel. There's one who really was blameless. There's one who really was sincere in every sense of the word. One who had no impurities about him. One who had no corruption about him. One who had no defilement about him. pure, radiant holiness in the person of Jesus Christ, crushed beneath the pure, righteous wrath of God. And because of that, because the blameless one and because the sincere one, Christ Jesus, has borne the sin, the punishment of the sin, that you and I deserve, Paul can pray something like this with joy. I pray that in the day of Christ you will be found blameless, that you will be found sincere. It's not a day of terror for us as Christians. It's not a day of fear and a sense of punishment. It's a day of security. If you're trusting in Christ, you are secure for the day of Christ. You're hidden in Him with every exposed thought. With every accusation brought against you, with every claim that you're not what you've said you are, Jesus will look over you and say, yes, the debt has been paid. That sin has been covered. That thought, that deed, that wrong motive, that wrong word. All of it has been covered by me. The price has been paid. The record of your debt has been canceled. And so it's a day of security for us because there's a blameless one, there's a sincere one who has died in our place as if he were full of blame, as if he were full of insincerity. So Paul isn't talking here then about us standing sincere and blameless before the radiant holiness of God in the sense of us gaining entrance somehow because of that sincerity or blamelessness. And he's not talking about perfect sincerity or perfect blamelessness. None of us have that. All of us are marked in differing degrees with insincerity, with blame, with guilt. But what he is saying is that in a general sense, this is going to be true of a Christian. In a general sense, you are going to be in practice what you say to be, what you claim to be as a Christian. Maybe another way to put it is you are going to be in life what you are objectively now in Christ. So you're going to live out day to day more and more in an overall sense what you are in Christ. In Christ, you are blameless, objectively. He has forgiven you. He has paid your price for your sin. You are pure, you're set apart, you're holy in the sense that we are hidden with Him and all of His radiant holiness has been granted to us. All of His righteousness is ours. In that sense, you're objectively blameless. But there's a gap still in our lives. See, we live day in and day out oftentimes like we're not blameless, like we're not set apart, like we're not pure, like we're not holy. So what this means then for us, for us to be presented in the day of Christ blameless and sincere is that the overall tone of our lives is yes, there is evidence that what you claimed to be as a Christian really was being worked out in your life. You didn't come here on Sunday mornings or Wednesday evenings or any other time where we have a meeting together and sing passionately to God and then leave this room and forget all about him until the following Sunday. You didn't claim to love God's Word and desire nothing more than Christ and His glory and then live and worship yourself and sin without any regard for Christ. There's going to be a parallel between what you claim to be as a Christian, what you are in this room, and what you are out there. And again, at times it's in seed form. At times it's just barely evident. We go through difficult days and it would hardly be noticeable that we're in Christ. Sadly, that's the reality. We have really bad days, really sinful days. But even when that's the case, there's going to be some evidence increasing in us that there is grace at work in our lives. That there is a real work of the Holy Spirit in us, making us more and more like the one to whom we belong. So Paul says, I desire that outwardly, in practice, in life, you be what you claim to be as a Christian. That's the tangible result of the internal reality. Love producing a life of righteousness, a life of sincerity, a life of blamelessness. And then third, the ultimate goal of Paul's prayer. So we've got the internal reality, tangible result, and now the ultimate goal in verse 11. He says, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. The ultimate goal underlying everything Paul prays is the glory and praise of God. That's what moves him, that's what stirs him to pray this prayer, that God would receive the praise, that God would receive the glory. When he says in verse 11, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness, he's basically just saying your righteous deeds, your righteous thoughts, your righteous attitudes, the righteousness that's actually demonstrated in your life, It's a unit. It's comprehensive. It's one, kind of like the fruit of the Spirit. It's a compilation of all of these good and holy characteristics that we find in Christ being worked out in our lives as well. So just like the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, there's this multiplicity of good fruit all joined together in what's called the fruit singular of the Spirit, this compilation, this gift that the Spirit gives to us. In the same way, that's the idea here, this compilation of righteous fruit presented as one fruit of righteousness. It's what God does in us, producing in us righteousness. And he goes on and makes clear that this righteousness doesn't come from us, it doesn't derive from something innately good in us, something innately righteousness, but he says it comes through Jesus Christ. The fruit of righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ in verse 11. I heard a theologian compare this idea to a faucet. So if you go to a faucet and you turn it on, what happens? Water comes out. Every time, unless it's not hooked up to pipes, water comes out. You turn the faucet on, water comes out. But what happens if you disconnect that faucet and you take it outside and there's no pipes connected to it and you do the same thing? What comes out of it? Nothing. There's nothing that comes out of it. That's the idea with you and me. We're united to Christ, and the reason that there's righteous fruit coming out of us is because there's that union. There's us joined to Him. You separate us from Christ, you pull us away from the source of that righteousness, and you turn us on, and there's nothing. There's no goodness, there's no righteousness, there's no good fruit. All that comes out of us is the corruption that's found inherently in our own hearts. So what Paul is saying here is that this righteousness which we've received, we've received on the basis of our fellowship with Jesus Christ, us being joined to Jesus. It's the same thing that Jesus says in John 15, I'm the true vine. Apart from me, you can do nothing. You can bear no good fruit. Nothing good comes apart from me. As Christians, the only reason there's any righteous fruit produced in our lives is because we're joined to Christ. We're united to him through faith and by his Holy Spirit, he's producing in us this fruit of righteousness. And then that brings Paul to his ultimate conclusion, this goal to which everything's been working up so far, to the glory and the praise of God. And we should say, of course, what other conclusion can you draw? If you take me away from Jesus, what do I have? I have nothing. I'm condemned to hell. There's no righteousness in me. There's nothing good in me. If you take me away from Jesus, you absolutely diminish, you disintegrate every hope that I have. Not only is that true for me as an individual, that's true for the entire church. The whole church is built on the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You separate the church for an instant from its source, from the life that it has in Jesus, and it disintegrates. It falls apart. It disappears. It ceases to exist. There is no righteousness. There is no good apart from Jesus. And if that's the case, then to whom else should we give the glory? And to whom else should we give the praise? If that's Paul's conviction, then what other conclusion could he reach? Then glory and praise be to God. Much worse, if that's true of me, how could I ever desire the glory or the praise? If I know what I am apart from Jesus Christ, then in what sense could I ever claim for myself any credit, any praise, any honor, any recognition, any reputation? If it all is from Jesus and through Jesus, then it should all be to Jesus as well, to His praise, to His glory, to the praise and the glory of God. So what motivates our praying for one another? I hope that it's love for each other. I hope that we really do desire the good of one another. I hope that we desire to pray in a way that would produce benefits eternally in one another's lives. But underlying that, I hope that there is this burden, this longing to see God receive the praise through Christ that he's due in our lives. And I know that that sometimes seems like a distant reality. Sometimes we sit down to pray and the glory of God seems like a distant concept. It doesn't seem like something that's close at hand. Of course we know that we should pray for the glory of God. We know that our prayers should be motivated supremely for the glory of Christ. But there are times when it's hard for us to really put our hands on what that looks like. What does it look like to pray for the glory of God? How do I desire that the way that Paul desires it? When we come to that recognition, when we realize the lack of desire that there is in us for the praise and the glory of God, there's really nothing else that we can do than come back to the very basics of the gospel. Remember what you have apart from Christ. Remember what you've been given apart from Christ. Remember how bankrupt you are apart from Christ. Remember that every good thing, every perfect thing has been given to you from the Father above through His Son in whom every spiritual blessing is given. Everything, everything that you have, every good thing that you have now and forever is through Jesus Christ. Remember that. Call that to mind. Make it something that's real to you. Sit down and really take time to ponder, what would I be without Jesus? Where would I be without Christ? And as we do that, as we consider the grace that we've been given in Christ, what we have as a result of His love and His mercy to us, our heart will inevitably, with time, little by little, or maybe very, very quickly, as the Spirit of God comes, be moved to desire, to long for the praise and the glory of God. Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you have given us love that you have planted in our hearts through Christ, the seed of love, the desire to love you and to love one another. And Lord, we do desire that that love would not be isolated from or independent of knowledge and discernment. God, would you please help us as a church as we try to love one another better, help us to do so in real knowledge and all discernment. And God, we do pray that our lives as that happens would be more and more marked by sincerity, that we as Christ Church, as you continue to work in us, would be in practice what we claim to be as a church. And God, we pray that this would really be to the praise and the glory of your great grace. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Abounding In Love to God's Glory
సిరీస్ Philippians
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ప్రసంగం ID | 891783492 |
వ్యవధి | 39:19 |
తేదీ | |
వర్గం | మిడ్వీక్ సర్వీస్ |
బైబిల్ టెక్స్ట్ | ఫిలిప్పీయులకు 1:9-11 |
భాష | ఇంగ్లీష్ |
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