Sermon Tone Analysis

“Where is the love?” Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack sang in an unforgettable hit from 1972.

Their breakup ballad could now double as an odd anthem for American culture.

Sadly, it seems like America's art and entertainment industry has rejected romance and sexual intimacy, and "love” has all but vanished from pop culture.

In 2014, the Journal of Advertising Research published a study documenting an odd decline in references to love throughout popular music.

The word had fallen below phrases such as “good time” and other sexually and racially vulgar words or phrases are topping hits of the 2000s.

Music critic John Blake took notice seven years ago of how R&B—a genre that once gave the world Al Green and Aretha Franklin—no longer produced or broadcasted songs of romantic passion.

Film isn't much better.

Esquire recently reported that “moviegoers are tired of romance on the silver screen.”

A writer for The Washington Post declares that “the rom-com [or romantic comedy] is dead.

Good.”

Both articles attribute the lack of interest in love among the movie going public to shifts that now render the “clichés” of the boy-meets-girl movie “offensive.”

It has become almost cliché to read “cutting edge” critics deconstruct popular love stories like Say Anything, reimagining them as predatory tales about sexual harassment.

Never mind that the largest audiences for these films were always and will likely remain women.

In our culture today.

We are bored with love.

It seems we are done singing about looking for love in all the wrong places.

Done with singing love takes time to heal.

Done with singing I hate myself for loving you.

Done with singing love hurts, love stinks, and love bites.

Done with singing I said I loved you but I lied.

There is so much misunderstanding about what love is… what true genuine divinely defined love is.

So much wrong about it and so much wrong for so long that it seems that our culture has just given up on it.

But no matter what our culture has done, as Christians, we cannot give up on love.

And in light of our passage today, love is not the end, but a means to an end that we need to be praying for.

We need to abound in love so that… so that what?

Let’s find out.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.

The Most Excellent

The Righteousness

The Gospel

The first thing we will look at today is how important love is not as and end of itself, but how the most excellent will lead to the excellent.

Second, we should explore Paul’s second reason why he prays that we abound in love… righteousness.

Finally, Paul brings his prayer to the final pinnacle: The Day of Christ the Lord

Thesis: Though sin and the pattern of this world has, in many ways, given up on love, but the most excellent way must abound more and more by the power of the Spirit to bring us blameless and righteous on the day of Christ by His grace, sacrifice, and because He so loved us.

I.

The Most Excellent

- Paul prays for what is excellent.

A. What is interesting initially about what Paul prays for is not that he prays for them to increase in love, but that he prays that their love will increase “so that...” Interesting, Paul does not pray love to be the end but prays that love will be a means to an end.

Philippians 1:9-11

B. When we take a look at this… First, Paul assumes that if the Philippians are going to discern and approve what is best, their love will have to “abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.”

But to discern and approve what is excellent or best, the people need to be characterized by what the scriptures call an abounding love.

C. Why does Paul describe Christian love in this way?

Love that “abounds more and more” is plain, but what about love that “abounds more and more in knowledge and depth of insight”?

One commentator put it this way… “Perhaps we will get at Paul’s point rather quickly if we replace the phrase with the opposite qualities.

Paul does not pray that their love might “abound more and more in ignorance and insensitivity” or in “stupidity and ham-fistedness” or in “cheap sentimentality and myopic nostalgia.”

He prays, rather, that their love might “abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.”

The ever-increasing love for which Paul prays is to be discriminating.

It is to be constrained by “knowledge” and “depth of insight.”

Carson, D. A.. Praying with Paul (p. 105).

Baker Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

D. So you see in our world today love has to be constrained by knowledge and depth of insight.

That is a huge reason why we are losing love in our culture today.

Tons of confusion as to what love is.

Songs has been out since the seventy’s about wanting to know what love is.

Many in the world have a convoluted view of love today.

But love is incredible when we got it right.

Some might say that oh that knowledge and insight stuff would only stifle the passion of love.

But what the Spirit wants us to see is that truth, knowledge, insight bring about purity and value to love.

This is the kind of love Paul prays will increase more and more and if it does we will be able to approve what is best.

E. Now lets look at what is best, what is excellent.

Diaphero.

Some think here either...“things that differ” or “superior things.”

But with a closer look they don’t seems as far apart as they might seem.

Think about this… there really are times in life when we need to make a decision and telling the difference between right and wrong is pretty straight forward.

But what we need sometimes is the extraordinary ability to see how things differ so that we can conclude what is the best possible choice or the superior thing.

This is what Paul means about being able to choose what is best or what is excellent.

Carson, D. A.. Praying with Paul (p. 105).

Baker Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

F. Now the context of all of this is in the context of discipleship.

So now lets bring it all together.

What is it that Paul prays for?

These excellent things are nothing less than all the elements characteristic of maturing Christian discipleship, and we cannot discern and approve them unless our love abounds more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.

Carson, D. A.. Praying with Paul (p. 107).

Baker Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

Carson, D. A.. Praying with Paul (p. 106).

Baker Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

G.

So you see Paul wants their hearts and minds to become genuinely Christian, for otherwise they will not discern and approve what is best.

Carson, D. A.. Praying with Paul (p. 106).

Baker Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

H. What do you do with your time?

How many hours a week do you spend with your children?

Have you spent any time in the past two months witnessing to someone about the gospel?

How much time have you spent watching television or in other forms of personal relaxation?

Are you committed, in your use of time, to what is best?

What have you read in the past six months?

If you have found time for newspapers or news magazines, a couple of whodunits, a novel or two or perhaps a trade journal, have you also found time for reading a commentary or some other Christian literature that will help you better understand the Bible or improve your spiritual discipline or broaden your horizons?

Are you committed, in your reading habits, to what is best?

How are your relationships within your family?

Do you pause now and then and reflectively think through what you can do to strengthen ties with your spouse and with your children?

Do you make time for personal prayer?

For prayer meetings?

Have you taken steps to improve in this regard?

How do you decide what to do with your money?

Do you give a set percentage, say, ten percent, of your income to the Lord’s work, however begrudgingly, and then regard the rest of your income as your own?