Love Abounding in Knowledge

Okay, so last week we did Philippians 1, 6 through 8. 6, 7, and 8. And today we're going to jump into Philippians 1, 9 through 11. So the next three verses is what we'll tackle here. Alright, so we're going to pick up again, like I was saying, with Philippians 1, 9-11, and I'll do the review. Again, we'll just quickly run through the last 8 verses, get us a running start into verse 9 and 10 and 11. We've titled this particular lesson, Love, Abounding in Knowledge. So, as you might guess, we're going to tackle some neat topics and it should dovetail very nicely with what we did last week. Let's go ahead and start the review here.

Just to get a running start with the larger context of Philippians, Paul's prison epistle, here we said that he addressed the following, that first of all, one point of the letter was to reassure the Philippians about the important role of Epaphroditus.

Second, we said that he's expressing thanks for the Philippians' love gift to Paul in prison. We also see him expressing thanks in many other ways. I put up chapter 4, 10 through 14, but he's expressing thanks in prayer and relationship insights, even in the verses that we're looking at now. So thankfulness is something that's really a big issue in this particular letter. He also announces Timothy's approaching visit. So those are some of the specifics, but in a larger context, we said this is much like a thank you note. written to the saints in Philippi, and that they had been involved in giving and supporting him in his ministry, and he wanted to make sure that they were aware of his thankfulness about that.

And so others have referred to this as a letter of friendship and moral exhortation, and I think all of those things would be the case as well. And one last thought about the epistle is that there's a consistently positive and personal note to it. unlike a lot of the other letters that Paul wrote to correct a doctrine or to warn against some of the challenges that churches were facing.

Here it's very personal. It's got the reflection of just a joyful spirit. And so Philippians has been an interesting study so far for me. And I think that this is definitely one of the overriding themes that we see there. So, that's the larger context. I said, let's just look at the immediate outline, not considering all the other parts of the book that Roger and Bob will teach, but let's do that.

We've got the salutation. For some reason, my numbering got off there, but the salutation, verses 1 through 2, the prologue, which consisted of the Thanksgiving prayer and a progress report that he was going to deal with, verses 12 through 26. And for us today, we actually are right here. Last week we covered the Thanksgiving part, and there's still a note of Thanksgiving in terms of what he's dealing with in these verses 9 through 11. But today, it's going to talk a little bit more about what these believers possess, both the here and now, as well as what they can gain in the future by virtue of Paul's praying for them. So we're going to touch on some really neat topics today, but prayer is going to be the real center of these verses. So that's the immediate outline. Let's just review the last eight verses very quickly.

Verse 1, Paul talks about this being a personal, or we see that this is a personal letter from Paul, and there's not any reference to apostolic authority needed. He's talking to friends, and these friends knew who he was. received his ministry some 10 years prior, even though he was some 800 miles away now, 10 years later, there's still that personal connection that he has with them, very personal. And he talks about himself as a bondservant, and so he studied the concept of a bondservant, and what that was, and we also saw that in verse 1, that there was a plurality of leaders in this particular church. And that was a unique feature that may not be present in, or is not present in all the other letters that Paul wrote. was here in Philippi.

So we've got a mature church, mature in the sense of leadership, and mature as we continue to delve into the book, we see that these guys were mature in their support of what Paul was doing. Verse 2, we saw the greeting, and he points to the truth that before there can be any genuine peace, there must be a personal response to God's grace. And so when I think of the greeting, Grace and peace, it falls in line with Paul's overriding teachings of the gospel of grace leading to a peace. I actually like the term, and I think that maybe we do well to think in terms of that greeting. We often say in Christ, or things like that, but grace and peace from a believing perspective is a Pauline way of thinking. I've had email signatures mention that way, grace and peace, and I always think, how formal, but also how telling and even biblical in a sense. Anyway, we saw that greeting there and that the source of the grace and peace was through God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. So that was verse 2.

Is this helpful, by the way? I find that for me, almost every single week, just reviewing at least some of the overview, reminding myself where we were in the past, is really helpful for me understanding the present verses. And so, I know, and I'd love to get feedback from you guys, I know that I take even the first 10 minutes before I even get into the nuts and bolts of the lesson, but Are you finding this approach to be helpful to you? Yeah? Okay. If you don't, just come see me afterwards. I don't want you to be recorded on the lesson. Debug the system. Here, here. Want to say hello live?

Verse three, the Philippians must have been filled with joy to hear Paul, who was in, like we said, Roman chains, imprisonment, 800 miles away, that his interest in them was still based on that relationship of love, that choice of love that he had for them, and that hadn't changed. No matter what the circumstances and the distance and the time, those were not things that changed the relationship with his fellow believers. I think that's interesting. Time, circumstances, and distance doesn't change how we interact with one another because we have something that's different than any other kind of friendship that exists.

Can you guess what that is? Paul talks about it quite a bit. Does an unbeliever have love for a friend that's in a different circumstance, hundreds of miles away, and hadn't seen them in a long time? I mean, can they love in their own way? Sure. But how can we connect with believers that we haven't seen for 10 years, that are 800 miles away, and we're in a totally different circumstance than they are? And in this case, imprisonment. What is that unique connection that the believer has? It's the Holy Spirit in our lives. Okay, the Holy Spirit. And what's interesting, and I won't be annoying this way, but come on, answer the question. Where was I intending you to?

Prayer. If you think about it, we have this connection that we can actually pray and something can happen positively in the life of that believer who is far away. And that's what Paul's actually going to talk about today. There's this connection, no matter time, circumstance, or distance, that they can actually engage in a change of events or a positive outcome in a believer's life, no matter what the case surrounding them in terms of circumstances, time, and distance. That's pretty cool. And we're actually going to look at a little bit of the doctrine of prayer today and how the connection as believers, we have a real privilege in being able to connect in a way with our friends that others don't have. And that's pretty neat. I was listening to McCauley, not in this series, other than this series. Chester McCauley. He was pointing out, he did a series on prayer, which is pretty good.

It's like 17 or 20 lessons, but in that he points out that prayer, the New Testament, is almost always for believers. It's not so much for unbelievers, it's always in terms of believers. So we're praying for our fellow believers in the faith, not so much for unbelievers. It never happens, but the primary focus of scripture is to pray for other believers.

Isn't that interesting? I thought that kind of connected to what you just said. Yeah, you think about the unbeliever that you might be praying for, Possibly, based on what Roger's saying, a more biblical approach to praying for that unbeliever is to pray for the believers in their life. That they would have an opportunity to make known a clear gospel to them. Pretty interesting way of thinking about it. I don't know if it fits you or not, but I think of Timothy where the Lord exhorts us to pray for our leaders.

We're going to talk a little bit more about prayer. So that's a good ramp up in that way. Let's just try to get through this little review here. As far as verse 4, we said that Paul's concept of praying without ceasing, that's who he was. Can I learn something from that? Absolutely.

I'll be the first to say that That maturity in a Christian walk is reflected much in the way that we pray. Not that we need to know how each of us prays, or how often, and where, and when. But in your own life, you can kind of do the litmus test of yourself in terms of, you know, prayer is that conversation, that deep conversation that you have. And it can be informal, formal, whatever the case, but it's a bit of a litmus test as to how you're growing in the Word and how you're applying mentally what you're learning. And goodness, I think for myself, there's a lot of growth there. And these verses have spoken quite a lot to me in that way. But nonetheless, with regards to Paul, he prayed often for them.

Verse 5, he was moved by their participation in the gospel, and here he uses the word koinonia, meaning fellowship, and koinonia is actually a pretty significant theme. I didn't mention it as being an overriding theme, but it is mentioned in many, or at least in three different ways in the Book of Philippians.

We said first there's the the concept of having fellowship with Christ that Paul refers to in verse 29 of this chapter. Second, we see a fellowship with one another that takes place in chapter 2, 1 through 11. And then third, there's the fellowship with Paul, so that personal fellowship that he had with these believers, the unity of the faith that we might refer to as. We looked at that in John's letters, first, second, and third John. and verse 6.

We talked about that last week. A statement of confidence. Verse 6 was a statement of confidence in the Lord's ability to energize the work of partnership in Paul's ministry that has been started in Philippi all the way to the time of the Lord's coming. And we said we took a little bit of a different spin on that verse and we also looked at other verses that might be used. Nancy mentioned Romans 5 and the first verses of that chapter as ones that might be better in terms of supporting the growing concept of sanctification in a believer's life. But in this particular verse, we touched on the idea that this had to do with not God's work in the believer, but rather their good work in supporting Paul's ministry. And we made a critical point with this. While every single use of the term good work or good deed, good works or good deeds in Paul's letters always has to do with not God's work in the believer, but their work in the world. Where does the person have the motivation and ability to perform that work? Are they sourced in the Lord? Is every good work sourced in the Lord? It's true. And we know that from other passages.

That there is no good deeds that are done outside of a relationship with the Lord and then a fellowship of trust. That identification with Him. So, while good works are seen by believers, and these are good works that have to do with supporting Paul's ministry, these are the Philippians' good works that are referred to in verse 6. We said, however, they come from a relationship and a positional understanding of who they are in Christ. That's what overflowed. That's why they were doing this support of the missionary, Paul. Because they trusted the Lord, and that led to a good deed. And these are good works that we saw in verse 6. And so if you weren't a part of that lesson, check out last week.

We took it a little different spin on that perspective. Any follow-up thoughts to that? Oh man, I nailed it. Was it that, was it just that? Good, right, whatever. Vern was very helpful in that. And Vern was actually helpful in helping me clarify another verse that we're looking at today. So I'm again so thankful for teachers supporting that. Hopefully clear perspective on some of these verses.

Verse seven, Paul had an emotional connection with these people. They were one of heart for the message of the gospel, partakers of grace with him. And then verse eight, Paul repeats how deeply he felt unity and love for these Philippians because of their common relationship in Christ.

So here, let's get the picture. Paul, riding from prison, very uncomfortable place. In his mind, in his mental space, he was so excited to hear what was going on and excited to have these believers back in Philippi, supporting him and enabling him to share the gospel in chains, in Rome, in prison. But yeah, in his mind space, he was in a very happy train of thought. You know, I mean, going through what he was going through, he was extremely excited to have the support of his fellow believers back in Philippi.

And he had things to say, but much of it had to do with how he prayed for them. How's Paul spending his time when he's getting, you know, getting beat down by the pressures of what he was dealing with? He was praying for them. And he was remembering his fondness for them. And so the context of this is a group of Philippians receiving a letter from a guy they know that's going through a bunch of just difficult stuff. But what's Paul's focus? Why did he say that he was thankful for them?

And what does he mention specifically? The gospel. He was gospel-centered. He was centered in sharing that message no matter where he went, and he was centered in thanking them for enabling him to do that and taking that part. And so we have a gospel-centered thankfulness and a gospel-centered ministry and partnership that's going on right here.

So as we run into these next verses, that's what I want us to be thinking of. So today's passage, verses 9 through 11, If we can, someone, feel free to just read off the board here, and we'll read these next two verses. And this I pray that your love may abound with you 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 of God. Some interesting verses. Let's just do a little bit of our own observation before I take you down my path. Verse 9. What's the major topic? I like to think of picking out the major words and just pick out two major words or concepts that you see in each of the verses. So verse 9, what are some of the major words that we need to think about?

Possibly. Love. Okay, love. Knowledge and discernment. Okay. Pray. Okay. So we're going to hit those. What about verse 10? Questions. What is this idea of proving things that are excellent, sincere and blameless? And here we've got this mention of day of Christ again. So we need to figure out what are they approving and what things? What are the things that he is talking about that are excellent and so forth? Verse 11. filled, ooh, that's a good one, filled with the fruit of righteousness. Again, the source being through Jesus Christ to his praise and glory, that is God's.

So I just do that so that as we move through this, you kind of have an idea of what you would want to see us cover in these verses as we look verse by verse through them. Verse nine. So look at the first part of this. I actually camped out on the word pray a little bit just because there's a lot going on in terms of prayer. And we we've covered a little bit, Bob covered a little bit of that, but I wanted to just cover it maybe additionally here. But Paul had already been praying for them. We saw that in verses three through four that Bob went through there.

But now he prayed so that his readers would know in detail something. So he's being general, a little bit more general in previous prayers. Now he's praying for something very, very specific. And he was asking God to do in their lives something 800 miles away, 10 years from seeing them, and he's asking something very specific.

Paul's hope was that they continue to grow in an intelligent and a discerning love. So, we've got a couple questions. Listen, obviously we know that Paul was praying something specific to them, and so I'm going to pull it out and start trying to deal with a little bit of application for us too.

First question is, what is prayer to the Christian? What is it? Conversation with God. And what topics can it cover? Anything and everything. And what is a privilege of prayer that... I mean, there are other people that pray to other gods. What makes Christian prayer different? Relationship. What's that? It's a relationship. Okay, it's personal.

That's a good point. Prayer and other belief systems is very impersonal. It's almost like you are begging for something to take place, and if you're dealing with a fatalistic God, then you can't even beg. I think it hinges on our access to God and being able to call him Papa. That's a relationship Right. Even more so. So, not only personal, but extremely personal. Family-level personal. Right.

Does prayer matter to what God is doing in the world? Holly Hills. When the verse comes to mind, the effectual fervent prayer, I just may not be able to match. I think Peter. I'm using my memory. I picked out different verses. I only know the ones I picked out and put on this PowerPoint. Please. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, that's a very good verse. Can somebody tell us where that is? It's here I believe, but I don't have any. not to get us on a sidetrack, but that's a very appropriate verse.

Does, based on what we're saying here, does prayer matter what God's doing in the world? Does it affect what God is doing? Can your prayers affect God? You should know, and I'm not putting you in a place to make you feel uncomfortable, but if you have to think about that question, it means your prayer life has always taken a certain spin. Well, the thing is, if we pray filled with the the intimate knowledge of the Lord. We know his will already. So we're praying along his lines. We're asking him to do what we know he wants to do anyway. And so that does affect us.

Let's take some thoughts on prayer. Here is a short four-point doctrine on prayer. And I'll put some supporting verses and we won't go into all of them. But I will go ahead and introduce you to some of the things that I've thought of in light of prayer. Prayer should avoid fatalism.

Do we have a fatalistic God? By fatalism, I mean someone that is like Allah. What will be, will be. I walk out in the middle of the street, and if I get killed, it is the will of Allah. It is a done deal. I cannot change, I cannot do anything to change the fatalistic view of my God. Does God work in terms of fatalism?

Do we see in scripture, James 4.2 was the one, why don't we look up James 4.2? Or someone, at least read it. You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain. Is this right? Yeah, it's at the end. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and twirl. You do not have, because you do not ask. And so there is a plea there made by James to ask and receive.

You mentioned another verse. It's interesting that actually in the Old Testament you see a time when God specifically was in Daniel. God was silent in terms of a lot of the signs and the interaction with Israel because there was an enslavery there and he was in an alien land. dealing with an alien group of people to himself and so you see Daniel appealing to God very often throughout the book and Daniel's prayer someone will look up Daniel 9 15 through 19 and just read that one I've got to be careful about time here but I want us to kind of get an idea of how Daniel thought about prayer.

And now, O Lord, our God, who hast brought thy people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, hast made a name for thyself. As it is this day, we have sinned, we have been wicked. O Lord, in accordance with all thy righteous acts, let now thine anger and thy wrath turn away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain. For because of our sins, and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people have become a reproach to all those around us.

So now, our God, listen to the prayer of thy servant and to his supplications. For thy sake, O Lord, let thy face shine on thy desolate sanctuary. O my God, incline thine ear, and hear, open thy eyes, and see the desolation of the city which is called by thy name. For we are not presenting our supplications before thee on account of any merit of our own, but on account of thy great compassion. O Lord, hear! O God, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action for thine own sake. O my God, do not delay, because thy city and thy people are called by thy name.

Now, Daniel lives under a different age, but nonetheless, it was still personal, very personal to him. He did not necessarily have the indwelling Holy Spirit, although the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was known to come upon a man and then to go. There's still a personal relationship and prayer relationship that we can learn from Daniel, but it's energized even more so in terms of the New Testament because we have the mind of Christ now. We have the positional understanding of all the blessings that we possess in Christ, and so we can claim even more in our prayer than Daniel could. But Daniel knew a lot about God.

In light of his situation, did Daniel believe that God was fatalistic? Would he have ever said those things if he believed that God was fatalistic? No. And I think that in our day, unfortunately Calvinism has brought on a large amount of fatalism into the perspective of prayer.

And it removes this whole opportunity to go to God and make requests based on being in fellowship with Him. And we've talked about it in 1 John, and at least in this class, about the prayers. When we pray in God's will, He hears those prayers. But the idea is there that you don't sit and say, whatever God's going to do, you're going to do. Whatever you're going to do, God do. God gives us the opportunity in prayer to ask Him.

And in this case, Paul wanted to ask for discernment for these believers, that they would grow in knowledge. And that's specifically what he was asking for them. Do we know that that is a desire of God? Is it possible that the Philippians would not grow in knowledge and discernment? Even though that is the will of God that we grow in knowledge and discernment, there was a possibility that the Philippians didn't. So while Paul knew the possibility that it wouldn't happen, he knew God's will was that they grow in the love and the knowledge and discernment of being able to understand certain things.

And so, I believe that prayer... Go ahead. Just a question. Does fatalism come from this idea, if the Lord wills? I think that if the Lord wills, it's a contextual statement. For some people it means it has what I might call a Calvinistic fatalism to it. For others, I think that it is a statement of comfort in that, Lord, I'm wanting what you want more than what I want. I'm asking these things, but I want your will ultimately to be carried out here.

We don't know his will. We don't know his will in every instance, that's right. But it doesn't mean... I don't know that it's always necessary for us to end our thoughts in that way. But that would be fatalism. I don't think that, again it's a contextual thing, what do you mean by, you know, I'm going to present this to you but ultimately it's going to be your will so I'm really kind of wasting my time just kind of clocking my time in the prayer room so that I'm at least doing what I'm supposed to, but I don't really believe that what I'm saying is going to change your will. And when I say change your will, we believe that not necessarily that we're changing God's will towards something, but our prayers are having a positive effect on what God's doing in the life of other believers.

That's a level of sovereignty that goes beyond fatalism. And I prescribe to sovereignty that is not fatalistic. It is far beyond that and allows personal and the attitude of volition to interact with himself. And it's a definition of sovereignty that's far more It's less human and more biblical, I believe.

It allows us to come before God and ask based on a knowledge and a discernment of the scriptures. But in an early age, are your prayers going to be very effective as a young believer? Are they going to be very effective? Are you going to be able to pray in the will of what you know God is desiring? You're not going to know the Word very well.

And so your prayers are going to be very simplistic in that you're asking for the things that you need. coming to God for your felt needs as opposed to the greater needs of maybe what's surrounding you. You're oftentimes praying in terms of your own circumstances rather than the circumstances of others. And you grow in maturity as you learn in the Word of God, your prayer becomes more and more informed, and in so doing becomes more in line with the will of God, and in so doing becomes more effective in the lives of other believers.

And I think that's what we see obviously from Paul, who's an apostle, who has a familiarity with God's Word far beyond any of us, as far as that goes. But for the sake of time, I know that we could jump off into prayer and sovereignty, but I do not believe that God is a fatalistic sovereignty. And there are those belief systems out there, but that there is a personal responsibility that we have, and that prayer is one of the privilege is that God gives us as volitional creations. And I choose to understand sovereignty on a much larger scale of how He interacts in a way that is not like a robotic, fatalistic, pre-defining every single action so that we never ever get up and get out of bed and walk and pray and ask.

That's just not the biblical New Testament believing life that I see. in this context, then we come to the Lord with boldness, don't we? We can come to the Lord in boldness, that's right. And the more that you are familiar with what His Word says about yourself and about others, the more bold you can be. Because you literally have that mind of Christ and you have an ability to discern. And that's what Paul wanted for these believers, is to grow in that level of discernment and knowledge.

And we've got to get back to it or we're never going to get there. Let's just look at a few other things that you can study through the week on your own and maybe sharpen your understanding of prayer. Prayer should be built upon God's immutability. What do we mean by immutability, real quickly? He doesn't change. He keeps His word. If God changed and He didn't keep His word, would prayer be of any use? That's different for us, guys, because Allah is not known to be immutable. He can change his mind.

You can go through Allah's fatalistic law, be 100% destined for the pits of hell from their perspective, turn around and blow yourself up and get a one-way ticket to heaven with Allah. You have a special place with him. What did you just do? You got to sweep everything under the rug, no justice, sweep everything under the rug, and change Allah's perspective of everything you've done in an instance by blowing yourself up and basically carrying out the jihad. And that's a big deal. That's a difference in terms of the way God works and Allah works. And we can look at all the other perspectives too, but we need to camp out on the fact that God's immutability is an extremely valuable doctrine for us as believers.

He doesn't change. He doesn't change his mind. And he's just in how he carries these things out. So his immutable nature is mentioned in some of these passages, but that's one of the things that we can go to the throne room with boldness, because we know he doesn't change, because he said he doesn't. So there's a boldness in that too.

What about... Oops, I went back. I didn't go back. I thought I'd already... I gotta go bullet by bullet again. Prayer should be thoroughly grace-oriented. And this doctrine came out of some study through that Restoration period where Daniel was in exile and then the Restoration. And so I believe that that's really where a lot of the initial tenets of prayer are seen is through this period. And so I've got a Bible framework course that I've gone through in the past. If you guys have ever heard of Charlie Clough and his Bible framework, he does a series that goes from the beginning of the Bible all the way to the end and develops the major 22 doctrines of the faith and this is where we identified that prayer really became not just noticed but heavily introduced into Israel and in such a way you could start to develop a clearer doctrine out of it and it grows on into the New Testament but that's where I got these thoughts So, anyway, the last one here being prayer should have its ultimate objective as the glory of God.

That's where I think maybe the statement is not, you know, Lord in your will, maybe it should be Lord to your glory, to your praise. You know, which is His will, but we can ask, and as long as we ask with knowledge and discernment, we can be sure that he hears us, we can't be sure that he's going to answer us the way that we want him to, but ultimately we can be sure that he'll glorify himself through it. Isn't that what Daniel was praying? He was. He really wanted the Lord to be glorified by restoring his people.

Well, it was based on, you have magnified your name, wasn't it? I'm not trying to put words in his mouth, but that's what I heard Roger read, you know, you have made a name for yourself. Yeah, it's really interesting how even Moses prays along the lines of, you know, your name's on the line here with these people down here that are defiling you. You know, you said this and you said this and here's your promises. Again, praying in the will of God because this is what you said. If God could change his mind, then you could never say that to the Lord. But the Lord allows for this kind of interaction and personal recalling what he said and for his name and his glory. And he responds. He responds to the prayer in that way. So I've taken a word and really kind of carved it out. But let's let's try to do the best we can with the time that we have.

Paul's prayer to God was that the Philippians Spirit-produced love, that word there is the agape love, God's kind of love. And if you went through 1 John, you saw me kind of differentiate between the Lord's kind of love, or God's kind of love, and the world's kind of love. This is specifically agape, in that he's praying that the Philippian spirit-produced love for other believers would abound, and that word literally has the idea of running over, like a cup just being filled up and spilling out all over the place. So a question to you, what is love tied to here in this verse? Knowledge and discernment. Is this sentimental love? No, it's tied to a desire for growth in another person's life. And specifically, like you said, in knowledge and discernment.

Why do you think Paul wanted these believers to grow in knowledge and discernment. I mean, they were already pretty mature folks, weren't they? I think there's always that desire for the leaders or those who maybe establish a group of believers to continually grow in knowledge and discernment. Will you ever reach the end of it? No. So is this a particular prayer request that could be adopted by us, especially in a context of mature believers?

Would it be appropriate to say that we as teachers want people to experience their knowledge, not just to know it? And that is a really good point, because what these words have to bear in the original language there, Epinosus, is a genuine spiritual knowledge that is applied through the condition of a believer. So, you can know your position, but you cannot necessarily know it conditionally. I mean, that's where we start. We spend years and years and years defining the position, but there comes a time when all of a sudden you believe it, and then you get to experience the knowledge of that in your life. And that is a whole different level of knowledge and discernment, and that's what's going on here. that God can give depth and insight into his ways and enable Christians to love both himself and others more through what we might refer to as a positional knowledge first and then that positional knowledge being experienced conditionally.

There are some warnings in Hebrew about falling away from that knowledge and going back. Good point. There are dangers. Maybe even with the mature believer, there's the dangers. The more you move into peripheral thinking and step away from the solid teaching of God's Word, the more danger you run of actually losing knowledge and discernment. I know a lot of believers that are really reading a lot of books, and they're staying really active, but they're not sharp, and maybe that's where we need to pray for them.

So and so, give him the desire to learn knowledge and discernment from your word, and not knowledge and discernment from this teacher. Because at the end of the day, that's where we find that. And so the word insight here, we use the word discernment, is actually the only time that this particular word is used here. So it's interesting in that way. A couple verses came to my mind. There's a relationship here.

Verne uses the term truthing in love, that love and truth never are left out on their own to exist. You don't have love overriding truth and truth overriding love. And Rogers brought up the point in past lessons that truth and love is literally found in the person of Jesus Christ and you can't separate him into either of those, that they are united in a person.

And the idea of truthing and love in Ephesians 4.15 is such a unique perspective, I believe, for a church to have as they study the Word of God and they begin to interact with one another, is that we don't love at the expense of truth and we don't truth at the expense of love.

It's a combination that's bound in a person in the Lord Jesus. We also see truth and love mentioned in 2 John 3 and his greeting there. And then 2 Corinthians 8-7 actually deals with all the very, and I'll read it to you, it says, but just as you abound, we see that word, abound in everything, in faith and utterance and knowledge and in all earnestness and in the love we inspired in you, see that you abound in the gracious work also. And so this idea of abounding and growing and overflowing and discernment and knowledge and love and the work of the believer, the good deeds that we refer to, are all abounding out of this knowledge and this understanding that came from the apostles' writing at the time. So just a couple verses as I looked at the words and found similarities in other locations in the scripture. A couple things there.

So, Philippians 1.9, the second part. I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and in all discernment. So let's move on into the part of verse 10. So that you may approve the things that are excellent.

So there's a purpose for the approval. I mean, there's a purpose, rather, for the growing in the knowledge. It's not to just exist and be able to write a book to teach a class on, oh, here's what I learned. The purpose of the knowledge and discernment was to be able to approve. It had real world applications.

You need to be able to know how to approve the things that you're dealing with and know whether or not they are excellent. So I say here that approve means to test something so as to prove it. It's used in some very early literature to refer to a physician who passed his examinations. He's been approved. He's passed the tests thoroughly and has moved on.

But what do you think here that Paul means by things that are excellent? I'm going to I'm going to we've got 10 minutes. But when Hal was teaching James, he differentiated Don Quimanzo and Don Quimanzo's test It's not a test to condemn. Right. Yeah. And in fact, just to play off of that even further, and I did not know that. So thanks for pointing that out. The word excellent here is literally the things that differ. So it ties in with what you're saying is you're not looking to condemn. You're looking to find out what the differences are. So by accident we're saying, what are the differences?

And I think that Christian thinking, by and large, the kind of thing that Paul is praying for, Philippians' knowledge and discernment, were designed to be able to test things so as to understand how they differ from one another. This is very careful mental Christian processing. We're taking premises and we're going back to the framework of the Word of God and we're wrapping our understanding and worldview around the statement or the issue or the circumstance and we're almost enveloping it with a biblical perspective and a biblical worldview instead of just running off and believing something because someone says it. Instead of running off or just allowing something to be put out there in a context without sitting there and utilizing the spirit-filled processing that goes on in the believers who's in fellowship and thinking things through from a biblical worldview. We're called to think things through and to test them and find out what the difference is.

And I brought out at the Christmas service the idea of blessed, this concept of blessed. I just bring that up again because yes, there's definitely a New Testament blessing and as New Testament believers we know where that is. But it's always thrown out there. One of the ways that knowledge and discernment as a believer, you might hear those words and discern it differently. and understand that when I think of blessing, I don't think of it the way my unbelieving friend might say it, or even my believing friend might mean it. I'm discerning that, yeah, I hear what you're saying, we're blessed, but man, far more than you could ever imagine. Let me take you to the book of Ephesians and show you how far we really are blessed.

That's where knowledge and discernment takes something and moves it on to a more biblical perspective of it. And that's what we're doing here. We're trying to take the worldview of the scriptures and we're trying to wrap it around our perspective as we have the mind of Christ. And that's what Paul's wanting for them to grow in that. So it's pretty cool. I think Paul is praying that they would grow in knowledge and discernment so as to test the finer points of Christian conduct.

Do we need to do that with a young believer? We do, and we need to be careful in how we do it, and we need to understand that they may not be able to discern this themselves yet because they haven't experienced the result of something like this prayer would help them grow in understanding of. It takes time to build discernment. But not only does it take time, you can't just wait for it. You can't just grow older and get it. You might be able to get the hard knocks of life's discernment, what we term common sense, but you don't get common biblical sense by waiting and getting older. You get common biblical sense by doing what? Beholding the Lord Jesus Christ through his word. That's exactly right. And that's why we're here. It's pretty cool. So let's move on to the second part of verse 10 and bear with me as I run through this very quickly.

The result of this discernment and testing the things that are excellent or the things that differ, the finer points, is that they might be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ. What's the day of Christ? We already defined this in the previous verse. Return of the Lord for his own, not necessarily his second return, but the rapture we would refer to. And just to quote Wiest on this, and this is very wordy, but he's very wordy because he's bringing the whole perspective of the Greek into it, but I really like this as it summarizes what we've said so far. Thus, a spirit produced love in the heart and life of the saint, which has been confined like a river within the limiting banks of a full experiential knowledge, and a sensitive moral and ethical tact is the thing that sharpens the moral and spiritual perceptions for the discernment of the finer qualities of Christian conduct.

This will result in the saint being sincere and without offense until the day of Christ, which later expression refers to the rapture of the church. A lot of words there, but that's kind of like the whole punch of what was being said there in the verses that we looked at.

So, the question is, how much is it of an interest to you to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ? And how much of a desire is it for us as believers to be sincere and blameless? Do we want to be known as a body of believers that's sincere? Do we want to be known as a body of believers that are blameless?

Not perfect. Totally recalling the wonderful grace of the Lord as we are all saved by. But nonetheless, blameless, he says. Why? Well, we know positionally we are blameless. And the more that our condition lines up with our position, we find ourselves in a blameless state. Why?

Because of the knowledge and discernment that we're growing in. I think the knowledge and discernment of how we interact with other believers also leads to a sincerity. When they understand that you have a grasp of the Word, and it's real, it's experiential in your own life, and you're helping them think through something, and you're doing it in a gracious way, there's a sincerity there that is unlike any other. Because I know people that are sincerely wrong. You know what I mean?

But here Paul's talking about a sincerity that's based on a knowledge and discernment and a love that's unique to the believer and the mature believer at that. So how do we want to define ourselves being more sincere? The previous verses explain that growth of knowledge and discernment and its application and that's neat. That's what Paul wanted for these believers.

Then we get to verse 11, and I don't know how long it's going to take me. It's going to take me and my word for this one. unoffending versus... Without offense. Yeah, that's how I've got it translated. And it's literally not cut against or not stumbled against. Or some additional thoughts about it. But yeah, it's not something that people are stumbling over you with. You're not offending them there.

God's Word might offend them, but your conduct and your discernment and your presentation is not stumbling them up. Although we know that God's Word can be the stumbling block and often is. And the sincerity that is in there Sincerity in the truth doesn't stumble. Verse 11, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ. So let me just tell you real quickly and then you can come corner me after.

All the commentaries that I looked at here had this being a conditional growing filling. and fruit-bearing. And they related it to Galatians continually. Even Macaulay had this as being, as the Holy Spirit controls you, the fruits are grown and shown in your life, and God receives the glory. However, and this is where I called Verna and said, these guys, I'm not quite feeling that this is what the Greek is saying. Actually the phrase, having been filled with, is a single word in the Greek, that is a perfect verb tense meaning that the filling happened in the past which produced the state of being for the Philippians at the time Paul wrote.

So the exact same word is actually used here in Colossians 2.10, and in him you have been made complete. Completely done.

So the interesting thing is that verse 9 and verse 10 are things that Paul is praying for future growth in the life of a believer, but here's the foundation of the whole thing. is that you've been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through where?

Where is it sourced? Jesus Christ. That's right. So this verse is actually a positional verse about having already been filled with and clothed with the perfect righteousness of Christ and all the fruits that are Christ's fruits are already positionally yours. Very, very cool. I hear him all the way going, glug, glug, glug. Oh, he's half full.

So this verse is saying that when the Philippians trusted Christ for salvation, they were completely filled with the fruit of righteousness. They had a righteous standing before God, resulting from being clothed in Christ's righteousness. The source of this fruit comes through Jesus Christ.

This is a positional verse which should have a future conditional effect that will be evident to others, others around us. Meaning, when we look at, now if I, it's just like verse six that we looked at last week. It's not to say that what we may have been using verse 6 to say in the past is not doctrinally true. We would have to say that it was interpretationally wrong. We can still say that God is going to perfect us until the day of Christ Jesus. We can still say that.

It's just that that's not what verse 6 is talking about, that sanctificational growth. And we can also say that we're filled with righteousness and we can bear fruit by virtue of Galatians 5, 22 and 23. We know the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, so forth.

But that's not what this verse is saying. And so this is where we're building on the finer finer details of the Christian faith. We're trying to build discernment. And yes, that's what the Bible does say, but that's not what it's saying here. And so we're just trying to be discerning so as to be careful, be sincere, be blameless with how we present what we're learning.

Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is that it is an application that what God has begun in us, He's going to complete. That we can take from this example of the Philippians. he's going to complete too. And we know that that that is the case. But that's an application, not an entry. Right.

Yeah, and we have to say that we couldn't say that it was necessarily full-out sanctification all the way to glorification. It had a specific work in mind, and that was the support. But we also know that, in many other cases, the application of God completing what He started in us, He's going to conform us. What's God doing in life for the believer? Conforming, transforming, eventually glorifying.

Good. Thanks for the thoughts, guys. Sorry I ran over a little bit. And sorry to have to skid through verses 10 and 11. Hopefully you got some gold nuggets there and the Lord's working to discern in your mind what's going on. Let's pray. Father, we're so thankful for that Spirit-produced love that you give us and how that love can interact with other believers through the privilege of prayer.

And Lord, we're thankful that you're not a fatalist. You're sovereign in ways that are unique to you as the Creator alone. And Lord, while we understand some of it, we don't fully grasp all the different ways that you work. Your ways are not our ways, we are your creatures.

And we look to you as our creator, our maker, and we are so thankful that you don't change, and that you keep your word, and that we can come to you in a personal way. in prayer and find ourselves in a grace environment. And Lord, we thank you that you've produced knowledge and discernment through the study of your word and that we can find ourselves to be sincere and blameless even until you return for us. And I just thank you for the growth and the interaction that we've had together this morning. I just pray for a good rest of the day. Thank you so much for your love and for your grace. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.