Joy – Part 2 – Phil. 1:9-11

The year 2020 went out screaming that it was the worst year ever on record for some of us. 2021 walked in and, at six days old, said, “Just watch this!” For me personally, Satan almost always attacks me with what I am preaching right before or right after I preach it. Last Sunday we started a sermon series on how to have joy from the book of Philippians and this past week my joy was seriously tested.

As I read the online reports and saw the pictures of what was happening in our nation’s capitol, it made me sad. It made me mad. We are all frustrated. We are confused. We want truth and it seems like it is nowhere to be found. And if your joy and peace are anchored to any politician or political party, it was a bad week for you.

For others, you may trust in God but you don’t understand how He could allow such things to happen. You lost your joy this week thinking that God is either not powerful enough to stop such things or maybe that He just doesn’t care. Either way, your joy and peace are not really in God but in your understanding of God and it was a bad week for you.

God never says that if you try hard enough you will understand Him and then you will have joy and peace. In fact, He says that His ways are above our ways and His thoughts are above our thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9) He never says to understand Him. He only says to trust Him. Romans 15:13 says, “May God fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him.” God is still on the throne. He is still sovereign. He is still just and righteous and the King of all kings, politicians, republicans, democrats, Antifa, BLM, Planned Parenthood, the Klan and is still King of your joy IF you have a personal relationship with Him through His Son Jesus.

But if you have a relationship with Him, you will have joy and do you know what will happen if you truly have joy? You will show love. You will show agape love. What is agape love? Agape love is love no matter what. No matter what happens, what you say or what you do, I choose to love you. That is agape love. It is the love God has for us and should be the love we have for Him and for other people.

As Christians and members of the bride of Christ in this church, we are encouraged by Paul the Apostle to have love and the right kind of love focused in the right way. If you say you have a relationship with Him and you say you have joy then you will show your love correctly and abundantly and with a purpose. That’s what Paul tells us in Philippians 1:9-11. Turn there in your Bibles and follow along if you would please. Notice I said “please.” That’s because I love you. 😊

As we talked about last week, Paul loved this little church in Philippi. They had supported him when no other church did and, no doubt, had supported him financially and physically as well as spiritually in prayer. That’s what people do who love each other. They support each other in every way including and most importantly in prayer. In prayer, we have all the power of God Himself but as most of you know, there is a right way to pray.

This past week, I heard a song written by a man named Jaron Lowenstein. It’s a very pretty song and maybe some of you might want it played at your wedding or your funeral. It’s called “Pray For You.” The words go like this: I haven't been to church
Since I don't remember when
Things were going great 'til they fell apart again
So I listened to the preacher as he told me what to do
He said you can't go hatin' others
Who have done wrong to you
Sometimes we get angry, but we must not condemn
Let the good Lord do his job, you just pray for them

Now, here’s the chorus: I pray your brakes go out runnin' down a hill
I pray a flower pot falls from a window sill
And knocks you in the head like I'd like to

I pray your birthday comes and nobody calls
I pray you're flyin' high when your engine stalls
I pray all your dreams never come true
Just know wherever you are, honey, I pray for you

It goes on like that for a while but you get the drift. What’s wrong with that kind of prayer? It’s not based on agape love, is it? Some of you are looking that song up right now on your phones so you can send it to your ex. Don’t do that. At least not during church. And don’t say your preacher told you about it either. All that would go against what Paul is telling us to do in Philippians 1:9-11. Let’s read that right now. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God.

Now, some of you are thinking just what Peter was thinking when he wrote in 2 Peter 3:16 that some of what Paul wrote was hard to understand. I thought the same thing the first few times I read it but I have some good commentaries and I listened to some other good preachers about this and it helped me and blessed me. Maybe you will get something out of it as we go.

Paul has just told the church in Philippi in his opening that he has joy when he thinks of them and prays for them and he tells them how to have joy so it is appropriate that he tell them how he is praying for them. I find it interesting that nowhere is it recorded that Paul ever prayed for anybody’s physical problems. I’m sure he prayed for healing and finances and for God to help people physically, but it’s not recorded. Paul doesn’t write about that. He writes about what is most important and for the Philippians, he prayed for their love and the original word he uses is agape. Do you see that in verse 9?

The first thing about their love that Paul mentions that he is praying for is that their love will abound or grow and get bigger. He wants them to have more of it. Now, do you think Paul wants them to have more love for him? Eh, could be but I don’t think that really sounds like Paul plus we know he is already just almost giddy about their love and support for him. That’s part of what gives him such joy.

Do you think Paul is praying that their love for other people outside the church would grow? That could very well be. That sounds like something Jesus would say so that may be part of it. Maybe you think Paul is saying he prays their love toward God would abound more and more. We all need that. Our love for God is something that definitely keeps us from sin. That would be a good prayer. Or maybe Paul is praying that their love grows for each other in the church. Or maybe it is all the above. I honestly don’t know how he meant it specifically and at first that bothered me.

But Paul is praying here for their love to abound. Think tsunami, tidal wave. All the love of God poured out into them and spilling over so that we can love God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves as Jesus said in Matthew 22. So, that means we just love everybody and everything and every occasion and every situation, right? Not so much. Let’s continue reading that verse.

Paul said, “that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” Knowledge and depth of insight. Those are the parameters, the boundaries of our love. If our love is a flood, these are the banks of the river that contain the flood. Without banks, the flood would be dangerous. It needs some boundaries and Paul is saying he is praying for these to be the boundaries. I heard one preacher say, “Don’t let your agape get sloppy.” But what does it mean to abound in knowledge and insight?

That word “knowledge” means more than just to know something a little bit. It means to know it better, to know it well. And where does true knowledge come from? Let me give you a hint about where knowledge comes from by telling you that I did some research (I googled it of course) and did you “know” there are at least 64 different genders? Oh yea. According to the internet (also known as the world) there are more than just boys and girls. The knowledge of the world says you might be “cisgender, binary, Gender nonconforming, graygender, intergender” and a host of others that give me a headache to read. That knowledge comes from the mind of a person or group of people and it may make sense to some people but God said in Genesis, “I made ‘em male and female.”

Scripture is the source of all true knowledge. Paul is praying they will have scriptural knowledge in their love. That is one bank of our flowing love. The other bank is depth of insight or discernment. Some translations say “judgment.” That word discernment means perception or the right application of biblical knowledge.

Let me give you an example. When you think of Mother Teresa, what do you think of? You think of love and caring and selflessness, right? Well, in 1994, Mother Teresa was the keynote speaker at the National Day of Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC. All the bigwigs were there. President Clinton sat next to Vice-President Al Gore. All kinds of political muckety-mucks were there. It was quite the occasion. Eighty-three-year-old Mother Teresa was helped up to the podium from her wheelchair and at four feet, six inches, she was not a very commanding figure…until she started talking. With great knowledge and discernment, Mother Teresa lit into the American leaders for their stance on abortion. Looking right at the president and vp, she said, “If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other?” She went on to say, “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use any violence to get what they want.” Then she looked at the cameras and pleaded with pregnant women that might be watching. She said, “Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I want it. I will care for it.”

That is a flood of love within the boundaries of knowledge and discernment just like Paul was praying for. She knew what was truth and she knew how to apply that truth. May we be more like her in that way. But if you have a little kid inside your mind like I do that is constantly asking, “Why?” well Paul answers that question in verse 10. Why did Paul pray for such things for that church and why should this church want to have knowledge and discernment in their love?

Paul says he wants us to have that so that you (we) may be able to discern what is best. To discern what is best here means to thoroughly examine the expression of our love in light of God’s Word. Let me give you a couple of illustrations to help you understand what Paul is praying for here. If you give your child a gift, you give it out of love, right? You want your kid to have good things, even fun things. Nothing wrong with that. That is an appropriate expression of your love. It is biblically based and even how God feels about you as His child. But what if your child takes that new toy and throws it as hard as he can at your face? Are you going to let him get away with that? Of course not. Sometimes a spanking is a great expression of your love because you want your child to not be a freak when he grows up, right? That can be hard to do but it is often necessary.

Now, what if you woke up in the middle of the night to glass breaking? You go downstairs and there is a masked man wandering through your living room. Do you say, “Well, I don’t know who you are but the Bible says I have to love everybody so the big screen is over there. Here’s my wallet. Try not to scratch my car when you drive it off, okay?” Of course not! In fact, Jesus said in Matthew 24, “If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.” Sometimes appropriately expressing your love means doing whatever it takes to protect your family and your life or the life of others. But that takes some amount of biblical knowledge and insight to know where to draw the line.

We need discernment to know what the Bible says and how to express our love correctly because sometimes our feelings will take us in the wrong direction. The world will almost always take us in the wrong direction. Sometimes love may be too easy to show like giving too many gifts and sometimes showing love may be hard to do. So, Paul prays that we will know and apply that knowledge correctly.

Now, wait a minute. I hear that little kid in my head asking “Why?” again so let’s go back to verse 10 and read the rest of it along with verse 11. He wants us to have wisdom and insight when showing our love so that we may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God. “Pure and blameless.” Okay, I could give you the Greek words and we could joke about that and then I could give you some illustrations of what it means to be pure and blameless but I think we all have a pretty good handle on their meanings, right? If not, you can bring it up tonight and we will talk about it then. Due to time constraints, I want to get on to some more really good stuff in this passage. Not that being pure and blameless aren’t really good. That is part of why Paul is praying for their love to grow so that they could be pure and blameless.

But look at verse 11 again and let’s see another reason and then what that leads to. It won’t take long. I promise. Again, Paul is praying that their love will grow like a tidal wave but within the banks of biblical knowledge and discernment. When that happens, they will be pure and blameless in this life and the next and when we are pure and blameless, we will also be filled with the fruit of righteousness.

When you hear of fruit in the New Testament, what do you think of? If you think of the Fruit of the Spirit, you are on the right track. The Fruit of the Spirit is the proof that God is in you and you are in God and He gives you fruit that shows your good works. And those good works are not for our glory but for His. It’s the same basic thought here. When you love people in the right way and your love is manifested in the right way, the biblical way, you will be pure and blameless and will do good works. When you love abundantly, even when it is hard to do, you will prove it with good works towards those you love and God will get the glory and you will have been obedient.

And then…and then…(but wait, there’s more!) and then when you are obedient to God, do you know what that leads to? “I got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart! Down in my heart!” Yes! Loving people that don’t love you back or can’t do anything for you ultimately brings you joy, that calm delight that allows you to go through difficulties without turning to booze or pills or anything else with bad side effects.

Do you want joy? Of course you do. But there is only one way to true joy and that is through obedience to God. That is what Paul is praying for here for this church in Philippi and what I am praying for Christ Fellowship. We have joy in our lives because of what God has done for us and so it ought to show in our love for other people. It ought to be a tsunami of love based correctly on scripture that pours out of us appropriately.

It may mean that we give gifts to little kids all over the world through our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes or it may also be an expression of love that says, “I’m done supporting any politician that approves of abortion.” God calls that murder and I will stand against it. Your expression of love may mean to stand up against the homosexual lifestyle. God calls that an abomination and so we stand against it.

All of that can be tricky to do though. You can turn people away from you and God by doing that so that is why Paul says we need discernment. But ultimately, we want to do what God tells us to do in the way He tells us to do it and when He says it needs to be done. When we do that, we are obedient to Him and He rewards us with joy. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me!

People search for joy and peace in every imaginable way. Sometimes there is temporary joy when things are going well and sometimes you can find peace when there are no battles to fight but if you want true, lasting joy and peace when the world is on fire and war is raging then you have to be obedient to God and that starts with understanding that we are all sinners as it says in Romans 3:23. Romans 6:23 goes on to say that what we deserve for that sin is eternal death in Hell separated from God and everybody else. That’s bad news.

But the good news is that God loved you so much that He sent His Son to die in your place (John 3:16) and all you have to do is truly believe that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life and no man gets to the Father but through Him (John 14:6). Ask God for forgiveness of your sins and repent of those sins and He will forgive you (1 John 1:9). Do that right now as we pray.