Abounding Love to the Glory of God.

Introduction

You can’t have too much of a good thing. Have you ever heard that saying?

The idea is that if it’s good, then more and more would be even better. But we know that’s not true right.

Going for a walk is good. Walking 6,000 miles—not so good.

Getting a 8 hours of sleep, good! Getting 187 hours of sleep not so good. (That’s almost 8 days)

Building some muscle, good. Building muscles on your muscles on your muscles. Not so good. People are afraid of you, shirts don’t fit, people stare, etc. That wasn’t very sensitive to the body building community. Now I’m going to get cancelled.

It pretty much goes that whatever good thing you can think of—too much of it has disastrous results.

There is however at least one thing that we can’t have too much of.

And our text this morning tells us what that is.

If you haven’t been with us lately we are preaching, passage by passage through the book of Philippians. So you can go ahead and turn there with me.

Let’s read out text.

Philippians 1:9–11 ESV

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Our text in God’s Word says that too much love isn’t a bad thing. God tells us in Paul’s letter to the Philippians that we are to abound in love more and more.

In fact our text gives us three defining characteristics of love in the life of the Christian. And this morning we want to see our own love born from salvation defined in these ways. So let’s jump in and find out what they are.

I. Growing Love (9)

Philippians 1:9 “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,”

We are to have a growing love.

Paul says I am praying that your love abounds—that it grows—more and more.

Friends, healthy things grow. If you plant a garden and its a good garden it grows. Healthy children grow. And Paul’s joyful prayers for the Philippians is that the love they have would not be stagnant but would be ever growing.

Have you ever been in the place where your love for God and for others feels stagnant? Maybe you’re there now.

Can you repeat something with me this morning? My love for God should grow. My love for others should grow.

Sometimes the word of God confronts us and the right response to that is to take the word of God—proclaim it as true and authoratative over our lives and start a course correction.

It’s all too easy to fall into a spiritual slump isn’t it? To just go through the motions.

If that is you this morning—and likely it is all of us in some aspect—then we’ll decide right now. I’m not going to go course correct—I’m going to desire and cultivate a growing love for God and others.

If you can get on board with that this morning, say “Amen.”

So we want to grow our love, but we want to do it right. The rest of verse 9 is really important here in knowing how to grow our love. Let’s look again.

Philippians 1:9 “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,”

Paul says I want your love to grow—to abound more and more…and then God’s word adds by what our love should grow?

What does the text say? “…with knowledge and all discernment.”

When we think of love we don’t often think of knowledge and discernment. WE think of excitement, and feelings, and big gestures. Not knowledge and discernment. But they are very important.

I grew a garden a couple of years ago and I’m terrible at growing a garden. It seems pretty straight forward but I found out there are a lot of ways you can mess up growing food.

However there is one plant that is fool proof—and that is cucumbers. Cucumbers grow themselves pretty much. The trick is knowing when to pick them.

So I’m growing cucumbers and these cucumbers are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And in my lack of knowledge I thought “the bigger the cucumber the better because then there’s more to eat! Why don’t you see these in stores! That’s just like corporate America—keeping giant cucumbers out of our grocery stores to make a buck.”

Friends, there is a reason you don’t let cucumbers go on growing too long. Do you know what happens to a cucumber left on the vine too long?

It gets sour. The nastiest thing you’ve ever placed in your mouth. It’s like crunchy soap.

I let my feelings and my heart determine what would be best in growing cucumbers instead of knowledge.

And we can make the same mistake when it comes to growing our love. We can search out flashy excitement, experiences with lots of emotions, but God’s word is clear.

If we are going to have a love that grows-that abounds more and more—then it will be coupled with knowledge and discernment.

Where do we go for knowledge and discernment?

We go to God’s Word to get knowledge and discernment. By the knowledge of God we discern what is and isn’t good in our lives.

Biblical knowledge and discernment grows our love for God and others in a healthy way. It’s like the bumpers on the lane at the bowling alley. It keeps us centered in the way that we should go.

Because here’s the reality—there are a lot of things competing for your attention—there are a lot of sources of “wisdom” that are calling to our minds.

Why? Because what we sow in our mind is what grows in our hearts. The enemy knows this—the world knows this—and God knows this.

This is why we must be a people who read their Bibles—we must be a people that beleive their Bibles—and we must be a people that change their lives based on their Bibles.

Are you going to God's Word for knowledge and discernment? Spend time in God’s word and your love for God will grow.

So here’s the application for us this morning from verse 9.

We want to pray for a love that grows and we want to cultivate that through biblical knowledge and discernment.

As we spend time in God’s Word what happens is that we get to know God more and more. The secret to love that grows more and more is to know God more and more.

Friends the reality is that many Christians are worshipping a God of their own making. They don’t know the God of the Bible because they don’t read the Bible. I’m not saying that is you, but make sure that’s not you.

Christian people—sometimes—say the craziest things about God. And it’s because they don’t know what God says about Himself.

Let us joyfully meet God in His Word that our love may grow by knowledge and discernment.

There is a resource for you on the little round tables out there. It’s an inductive Bible study method. As you read God’s Word it’ll guide you in some great questions to help you get all that you can out of God’s Word. Grab it on your way out today.

You and I want to have a love that grows not platueaus. Secondly,

II. Applied Love (10)

We need to apply this growing love.

James 1:21-22 “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

We have to be those who take our bible knowledge and our discernment and apply it to our lives. The Holy Spirit means to use the Word for our sanctification and we need to agree with him on this seeking to be changed.

Let’s look at Philippians again in verse 10, we’ll put 9 and 10 together actually.

Philippians 1:9-10 “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,”

So that—Paul says. There is a purpose to growing in love by biblical knowledge and discernment.

If our knowledge and discernment only remains in our heads and never utilizes our hands and feet then it is useless.

It’s like knowing everything you need to grow a garden—you have all the knowledge, you the know the right PH balance for the different plants and how to achieve it. You know what bugs will kill your plants and how to defend against them. And you have all the supplies you need in your shed to accomplish all your knowledge—but you never actually go out and dig in the dirt and plant the seeds.

What’s going to happpen? You’re not going to grow a garden. Your knowledge about how to garden is useless unless it is applied.

It’s actually worse than useless—it becomes a mockery of you. You have the knowledge but in your foolishness you decided to not utilize it.

Friends, biblical knowledge and discernment is useless if we do not apply it.

We don’t want to be Christians who read the word daily, hear the words of life and wisdom, and then go away doing nothing with it. If we go a little bit further in that James passage we read earlier it says...

James 1:23-24 “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.”

We are to take our love growing in biblical knowledge and discernment and utilize it. Paul says do this, so that “you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

This world gives us unlimited streams of input and tells us what is “excellent”. A woman’s right to choose abortion is excellent. Libertarian sexuality is excellent. Chasing money is excellent. And we could go on and on.

The purpose of growing in love with biblical knowledge and discernment is so that we can sift through all of this worldly input and discern what is excellent in God’s eyes—so that we can determine what God says is excellent.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want to live my life by what the world says is excellent living—they got it wrong—but let’s not be too arrogant friends, because I don’t want to live this life by what I say is excellent either—because I get it wrong.

We talked about this last week—we’re still struggling in the flesh and so our first thought—the disposition of our hearts—cannot be trusted. We must in every situation take what we think and hold it up to what we know in the Bible and discern if our thinking matches the excellent word of God.

We need to train ourseleves to do this. If your spouse makes you mad—don’t react out of pain and hurt. Think about it biblically—what would God have you do?

If your child is disrespectful—if your boss is lazy—if you have an idea about anything—hold it up to the excellent word of God and discern if your decided course of action or your natural reaction matches.

“Pastor, you make it sound like I can’t trust myself.” Friends, that is exactly what I’m saying. And I know that our prideful hearts don’t like to hear that.

Lamentations 3:40 “Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!”

Listen as you grow in your walk your heart will be more and more inclined to think the thoughts of God. But we should never expect that in this life we will have no need to discern what is and is not excellent in our own motives and life.

Our goal should be purity and blamelessness. Look at our text again.

Philippians 1:10 “so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,”

Paul says we should do this becausee we want to be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. Purity and blamelessness is our goal.

What Paul is not saying is that it is up to you to be pure and blameless before Christ returns. The clock is ticking, he’s coming and you better be over that finish line.

We are not working for perfection—perfection only comes through Christ Jesus as his perfect righteousness is imputed, given to us.

What God is saying to us through the apostle Paul is that through knowing God more and more God the Holy Spirit is applying to us what is already true in Christ.

As believer we exist in a “finished but not yet” state.

In one sense we are already “pure and blameless for the Day of Christ” and in another sense we are still being made “pure and blameless”. It sounds like a paradox—you are either pure and blameless or you are not you can’t be pure and blameless while becoming pure and blameless.

But when God promises something it is as good as done—it is as real as if it has been accomplished.

Our glorification our purity and blameless ness on the Day of Christ’s return is so certain that it is true now even though it’s not yet complete.

And this should cause us to praise God. Thank God, amen!? You’ve never had a surere promise!

So while we exist in this “finished but not yet” state you and I want to be those who are taking—our love growing in biblical knowledge and discernment and apply it not so that we can earn salvation but because we are already saved and our blameless ness is sure.

So we need a growing love, an applied love, and also...

III. Fruitful Love (11)

What happens when the people of God grow their love with devotion to God’s word and then apply that word to their lives?

Philippians 1:10-11 “so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

What happens is that you have a love that bears fruit. A love that actually results in you becoming more and more like your Lord Jesus.

Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

As we commit ourselves to God’s word and we commit ourselves to applying God’s word the Holy Spirit produces in us peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

We need to do a fruit check on ourselves regularly. Do I have these fruits in my life? Am I growing in these areas?

How do you know if you are really applying the Bible to your life? You’ll know that you are really applying God’s Word to your life when you see fruit growing in your life. If there is no fruit you might just be mentally ascenting to God’s truth without applying God’s truth.

We make this mistake all the time.

Studies have shown that when we decide to do something—even before we’ve actually done it—like making a “to-do” list—our anxiety levels are eased and our brains actually reward us with a hit of dopamine.

Practically what this means as we consider God’s Word in Philippians this morning is that you can obtain the biblical knowledge, and you can plan to apply it—and your brain will say, “Well done good and faithful servant.”

Have you experienced this? How many times have you made a plan to read God’s word Or be more evangelistic or loved your spouse more sacrificially, felt good about that plan—and then never actually acted on it?

Friends, you do it with to-do lists in your house so I know that you do it in your spiritual life too.

And we need to be careful here because just the mere act of formulating a plan will cause your brain to say, “Well done.”

But you and I want to hear, “Well done good and faithful servant” From Christ Jesus, amen?

Because we have actually applied his Words and fruit was produced in our lives.

In Luke 13 Jesus says not to be like the servant who says, “My master is long coming and so I’ll beat the other servants and get drunk because he’s far away from arriving.” Jesus says we are to be servants ready at all times for the return of the master.

Friends we have to have a love that bears fruit—that’s how we know it’s real.

In 1 Corinthians 13:1-8 Paul says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

And then look at what Paul says about love

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

Love is evident when the fruit of love is being born in our lives.

So what do we do? We fight this urge to be great collectors of biblical knowledge who apply it little.

We take every word of God—every passage read—every sermon listened to—and we ask God: How do I apply this to my life? We pray to God, “help me apply this to my life.”

And we must understand that in this pursuit of fruitfulness we cannot do it by our own power!! Look again at our text.

Philippians 1:11 “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Where does the fruit of righteousness come from? It comes through Christ with the goal being to bring glory and praise to God.

John 15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

Friends, it really is as simple as this. Make it the pursuit of your life to worship and love God and all these things will follow. If you love God you will love his word, you will desire his glory, you will desire to not only praise him with your lips but you will desire to praise him with your life in all things.

This desire to glorify God and to praise God, this abiding in Christ, beholding Him in your hearts will cause you to desire not just reading the word, but applying the word that you may bear fruit to the glory of God.

Conclusion

While you can have too much of most good things you can’t have too much of love.

God's Word instructs us to grow—to abound more and more in love. To grow in love with biblical knowledge and discernment. To apply this to our lives. And to bear fruit to the glory of God.

And friends this has everything to do with Christ. Christ is the center of all things.

This command to an abounding love is an invitation to come and see and taste that the Lord is good.

So what’s the big ask this morning? What do we do as we leave today?

The call this morning is to humble ourselves.

This pursuit of Christ—this growing and abounding in love—this discerning comes when we place ourselves in the proper place in relation to God.

We can not be a proud people and love God well. We cannot be a distracted people and grow in love.

But most of all we cannot be a self-sufficient people and abound in love.

What a strange thing the self-sufficient Christian is. The very nature of being a Christian is to acknowledge your great need for a rescue you can’t provide yourself. And then somewhere along the way the self-sufficient Christian stands up on the solid rock of Christ’s death on their behalf and say I’ve got it from here.

This morning the greatest thing we can do is fix it in our hearts that if we are to abound in our love of God we must accept and embrace our great dependence on God not just for salvation but also for all of life and godliness.

This morning before we pray will you say something after me?

God I need y ou

Let’s pray.