A Prayer for the Church
Topical • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 12 viewsNotes
Transcript
Intro
Funny story about praying for others?
The Apostle Paul was known as a man of prayer who was constantly praying for others
You see it time and time again in his letters in the NT that he was always praying for the church
This morning, we are going to study one of those prayers that is just a few short verses, but has so much good stuff in it for us to apply to our own walks
Lesson - Philippians 1:9-11
A real quick background on this letter before we dive in too deep
The epistle (letter) to the Philippian church was written by the Apostle Paul in ~61 AD as he was sitting under house arrest waiting to see Caesar (You can read about it in Acts 28)
Paul was in Jerusalem a bit before this and the religious leaders tried to get this big crowd at the temple to come after Paul, probably wanting to kill him, but the Romans stepped in to keep the peace
They put Paul on a series of trials to figure out what was going on - he caused this huge riot in Jerusalem so they wanted to get to the bottom of it and prevent an uprising - and through that process Paul ends up appealing his case to Caesar (a right of Roman citizens)
So they put Paul on a boat to Rome, and after a shipwreck on the island of Malta, they finally get there, and Paul just sits in prison for about 2 years
One of the things he did with his time was to write letters to different churches
Paul had started the church in the city of Philippi ~11 years before this point on his second missionary journey (Acts 16)
The church had heard that he was in prison, so they sent him a gift to encourage him
Epaphroditus, a leader in the church, had brought it, and Paul was sending him back with this letter
So here at the beginning, Paul is expressing his thankfulness for the church and gives this prayer
I know Pastor Eric and I are so thankful for this body, our fellowship here at CCF
God has brought so many wonderful people to this church and we are just so thankful for all of you and for the work that God is doing in and through your lives
In the section we are reading this morning, Paul prayed several different things for this church. The first is that this church’s love would grow more and more
The original Greek word for love here of course is agape which is a selfless, sacrificial, others first kind of love - the love that Jesus displayed during His earthly ministry and has towards us
As Christians, we should always be growing in love
Real, genuine Christ-like love is not natural, it is something we have to grow in. We need God to change our hearts to be able to display this kind of love
And if you’re thinking that you do pretty good in this area and that you are a naturally loving person, all I have to ask is what happens when someone doesn’t yield in the roundabout and nearly hits your car? How loving are you towards them?
We’re not, by nature, outward or others focused. We are sinfully selfish by nature, so we need God to grow us in this area more and more.
God calls us in so many places to have love for one another
John 13:34-35
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Romans 13:8-10
8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Matthew 22: 36-39
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
1 John 4:20-21
20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? 21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
In all these instances, we are talking about agape love.
In fact, Paul would give one of the greatest descriptions of what true Christlike love looks like in the next chapter in this book
Philippians 2:3-8
3 Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. 4 Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
That’s the model of us - Jesus
Holman NT Commentary puts it this way - “Love is a primary characteristic of Christlikeness”
So we’re called to have Christlike agape love in our lives, and we need to grow in it b/c it isn’t natural and we need God’s Holy Spirit to work that into our lives. But this love also has to grow in “knowledge” and “discernment”
Knowledge = How God wants us to love
We won’t know what that Christlike love is if we’re not studying the life and words of Christ in His word
Discernment = good judgement, having insight into a situation
We see discernment as the Bible describes it allows you to determine the right course, distinguish good from evil or right from wrong, distinguish between holy and not, understand the significance of events, and pointing out false teaching in the church
Discernment comes from one of 3 places -
God’s Word, and especially from a transformed mind due to God’s word
It’s a spiritual gift listed in 1 Corinthians given by God
From prayer & asking for discernment or wisdom for a situation
Knowledge and discernment together foster mature love
Love without knowledge would be clueless. You’d have no idea on what it actually looked like and how to show it towards others.
Love without discernment would be naive. It would be too accepting of sin and not be true Christlike love b/c it wouldn’t care if the other person grew and became more like Jesus
Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for not having discernment in love (1 Cor 5:1-7)
They had a weird situation where some guy in the church had hooked up with his father’s new wife, and they were openly celebrating their love of this situation and how accepting and loving of a church they were.
Paul tells them they were wrong b/c they had love w/o discernment. They needed to rebuke that man and get him pointed back in the right direction that the Lord wanted.
Back here in Philippians, Paul wanted them to grow in love for 3 reasons: so they could approve excellent things, so they could be sincere, and so they could be without offense
The first is to approve excellent things
The Bible Knowledge Commentary says that the Greek word for “approve,” dokimazō (doki-mazo) here gives the idea of testing metals or coins to see whether they met standard
In my full time job as a civil engineer working in construction, we use a pretty rigorous testing program to ensure the materials that we are receiving meet a minimum design standard.
So for concrete, we need it to have a minimum strength to handle the loads we put on it. And rather than just ask the supply company, “Do you think that’ll work?” or even instead of just looking at the paperwork, we take samples and perform destructive testing.
We’ll cast a cylinder out of the same concrete that we’re pouring for a bridge or a road, and after it cures, we’ll put it in a breaker machine that measures how much force is applied before it crumbles.
And as long as it hits that minimum standard that the design engineer said it had to hit, we’re good. But if it doesn’t, we have to remove the concrete that was poured on the job site and start again.
One time, we poured a bridge abutment - that’s the wall that the girders (beams) that hold up the bridge sit on - and it didn’t meet the minimum strength. So we had the rip out the entire bridge abutment and start again - no fun at all.
But there was a good reason behind doing that work. If we had left it in, the bridge would have been significantly weaker than anticipated, and at a much higher risk for failure which would endanger lives.
As Christians, we need to be approving excellent things - comparing what we are doing, the choices we are making, the relationships we’re pursuing, all the stuff the world and our culture is throwing at us, to the correct standard.
God’s word is the standard to what we are comparing everything too
And we can’t just go, “eh, it feels like this is okay” or “my friends/family says its fine, I don’t need to seek out God’s word”
We need destructive testing! We need to really chew it over, pray over it, take it to the Lord and His Word to see if it’s worth pursuing or continuing in
As we grow in our love for God, it helps us to see what is real and what is not, what is excellent for our walks and what harms us
Many commentators say that this phrase carries the idea of approving the things which are superior or the things which really matter (another way of thinking of the term “excellent things”)
I really like that perspective on it. We are comparing the things/actions/decisions in our lives to God’s word to see if they really matter or not
The second reason the Philippian church, and we need to grow in love is so they and we can be “sincere”
The Greek word for “sincere” is ĕilikrinēs (illikrine-es) - lit. means, “found pure when held in the sun”
Greeks made vases & pots (cultured)
Rome destroyed them
Rome realized value of pots and they became antiques
Some sellers would find pieces and put them together with wax and could get really good at it to where it seemed like nothing happened to the pot
Hold up to sun and see lines
Wax melted on hot days
Vendors who sold true merchandise would put notice on shop that they were sincere
God wants us to be sincere! To be real in our walks
It can be so easy to play the Christian game sometimes.
We can fool others here on Sundays, we can fool our friends, even our spouses. But we can’t fool God. He is the light that we get held up to, and He wants us to be real, to be genuine, to be sincere in our walks.
He wants our hearts. And as we grow in our love for Him and our love for others, we become more willing to be sincere with Him and with others, because we know that’s what’s best for our walks.
Finally Paul tells us to grow in love so we can be “without offense”
Not sinless (we all are sinners!)
But we should be striving to live more and more like Jesus, walking in integrity and holiness
Remember our verses back in Romans 13 - love is how we fulfill the law, or live without sin
Romans 13:8-10
8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
When we are growing in Christlike love, we are not going to be going around sinning against others. Again, we’ll never be perfect, and as we talked about before, this whole concept of Christlike agape love is not natural and we have to allow God to work on our hearts so we can grow in this area to have more love, but as we do you’ll notice that you can be less worried about keeping the letter of God’s law and living in legalism b/c love fulfills God’s law
So as we are doing these things, as we are growing more and more in Christlike love with knowledge and discernment, as we are approving the excellent things, living sincere, and living without offense, Paul tells us that we will be filled with fruit!
Fruit is the results, the works, the byproduct of us growing in this area. Paul calls it here specifically the fruits of righteousness
We will not be able to produce that kind of fruit w/o Jesus
John 15:4-5
4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
We need to stay connected to the Vine.
We can’t grow in love w/o Him working in our hearts, and we can’t produce fruit w/o being connected to Him as the source of words and actions and heart towards others.
What is the key indicator that this fruit is of God and not counterfeit?
Robert Lightner, in the Bible Knowledge Commentary, said that, “Such fruit magnifies God, not self.”
Tell story of teaching evangelism in youth group and when talking about testimonies - Corey’s statement about we are pointing people to Jesus, not us
It’s the same with our fruit, it should all point to Jesus. We’re not doing this so people see how awesome or how holy or good or righteous we are, we do it so people see our Savior more clearly
How long do we do this for? Until the day of Christ (vs. 10)
Ralph Martin, in his commentary of the book of Philippians, pointed out that St. Augustine once said that, “the only thing which really unites people is a common desire for the same ends.”
That’s what we see in the church - a unification that is based on the same end goal - living this out until the day of the Lord
And a church that is growing in God’s love together, in knowledge and discernment, is going to live out the same goal to point all things to Jesus and to see Jesus made known and lifted high in this community.
So CCF, my prayer for you is Philippians 1:9-11
Pray & close