Philippians 1:7-11 - Paul's Prayer for the Church
Tom Shrader examines Paul's heartfelt prayer for the diverse Philippian church in Philippians 1:7-11. He explores how Paul's confidence in God's preserving work leads to a prayer for three things: that their love would abound in knowledge and discernment, that they would approve excellent things, and that they would be filled with the fruit of righteousness. Shrader addresses joy blockers and emphasizes that Christian growth comes through applying biblical knowledge to daily life decisions.
“My Christian life is not based on me hanging on to God, but God hanging on to me.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Philippians
Recorded: September 29, 2016
Duration: 39 min
Themes: prayer, love, discernment, knowledge, righteousness, growth, unity, joy, pastor, church member, mentor, new believer, struggling with decisions, seeking spiritual growth, dealing with diversity, applying biblical truth
Scripture: Philippians 1:4-11, John 13:35, Ephesians 2, Romans 16, 1 Kings 19, James 1, Mark 10, Philippians 2:5
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual growth, christian maturity, biblical discernment, fruit of righteousness, perseverance of saints, ecclesiology, divine preservation
Full Transcript
Here we go. Week 3 of our study of the book of Philippians. For those of you for whom this is new, this is really an approach for me, the way that I like to do Bible studies and present them. I'd love to say it's how the Spirit works, but it's how we approach and begin to study and work our way through the Word.
We left off last week having finished verse 6, or at least came close to finishing it. My goal today was to go verse 7 through verse 14, but I didn't make it. We'll cover verses 7 through 11. So let me read it, and then we'll come back and spend a chunk of time here breaking this apart.
Paul's writing to this church geographically in Philippi, to the believers there, giving some great truths. But not just to them—to us and for us as well. You get a sense of his heart. We'll try to tie it together.
Paul's Heart for the Church
Verse 7: "For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart. Since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of the grace with me. For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus."
"And this I pray." This is one of those great times—whenever you see something like that, for me it's one of those moments as you're working through where you stop and go, "Okay, what comes next is important." Our tendency, by the way, I think is to blow through that and say, "Well, he's given us real meat, he's going to pray, we'll get back to the meat." But there's some meat in this prayer.
He prays three things for them, and I would suggest for you and me as well. "So this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment." So if I'm reading through, I underline those and go, "Okay, those must be important." "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 righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God."
So there's this prayer. Let me go back and make some observations. I think we made them last week. Let me try to expand on them today.
The Diverse Unity of the Church
Verse 4—in my Bible, circled is the phrase "you all." Verse 6, "you." Verse 7, twice the phrase "you all, you all." Verse 8, "you all." Now, he's not using that phrase because he's from Dallas. He is, I think, at least for us right now, dealing with the great diversity within that church.
In that day and age, maybe not totally unlike ours, but in that day and age, everyone tended to stay with their own. James Boyce writes about this early church. He said, "This is the Christian brotherhood. Paul's greeting is an example of it. It was a new thing in Paul's day. In the first Christian century, the world was filled with barriers, just as it is now. Barriers of race, wealth, education, culture."
There was a barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles. The first, fiercely proud of their religious heritage. The other, equally proud of their intellectual attainment. There was a barrier between the Romans and the Greeks. The Romans glorified in the strength of their empire and Roman law. The Greeks viewed the Romans as upstarts and despised Roman culture as inferior to their own culture and as an imitation of it.
There were barriers between the free person and the slave. There were barriers between the patrician and the common person. All these groups of society were bound together by the chains of Roman rule—Roman, Greek, Jew, soldier, priest, slave. But there was no such thing as a brotherhood that joined them. There was no fellowship. Fellowship was found first and only among Christians.
The Remarkable Diversity in Paul's Ministry
So he's writing to this group of "you all," and he says this is a very diverse group. You see the outcropping of that. If you turn to the left, you're going to go through the book of Ephesians and Galatians, 1st and 2nd Corinthians. You'll get to the book of Romans. When you get to Romans chapter 16, Paul is closing out this letter, and as he frequently does, he says, "I want to say goodbye to you, and it's not just me, but the guys that are with me."
There's a long list there, but get a sense of this. In verse 23, he speaks of Agasius. He is the host of Him. He's living in his house. He's in prison, but he's staying in this place. They would allow him to stay there, though he'd be chained there under Roman guard. So you see that he is with him. The city treasurer is with him. As Paul's writing off this litany, starting in verse 21, he says, "Here's Timothy, who is with me. Here's another group of guys. These are my co-laborers." Verse 22: "Tetris, who writes the letter, greets you."
So here's Paul, and it's as though he's writing along, and he's saying, "Here's goodbye from these guys." And then the guy who's dictating the letter shoots his name in there too. Kind of cool. Got his name preserved forever and ever. There's this hugely diverse group.
The Mark of Discipleship
The night before He died, Jesus said to the disciples, John 13:35, "By this, all men will know that you are my disciples." Now remember that? Some of you remember the ending, and because we remember the ending, it's probably lost some of its forcefulness now. But there's a whole blank slate there.
If you went to some churches today, especially good churches, you'd say, "How's the world going to know that you're a disciple of Christ?" Most would have this list of activities. I get up early on a Thursday morning and endure 45 minutes of extraordinary teaching—so it could be that. Or I pray, or I do this.
He says, "No." Jesus said, "No, no. Here's how they're going to know: if you love one another." You see the outcropping of that all through Paul's writing. That close of the book of Romans, right here, when he's saying—
you all, this diverse group that are in Philippi. Now he comes back, look at verse 7. It is only right for me to feel this way. What way? Well, I think that refers back to verse 6.
Here you are, you are this church. There's been no communication between Paul and these people now for about four years. We're going to make sure we get that. That's one of the really hard things for us, is to put ourselves in their sandals. Because we now, I mean, I already this morning have played two games of Yahtzee with my daughter. My grandson and I have Yahtzee going all day long. Sandy sent me two notes. I have emails that are pouring in. Here's a text message. Happy Valentine's Day. We have this instantaneous stuff. They would go four years and hear rumors about Paul. But they didn't know. He didn't know what's going on in Philippi.
But he knows that they were a young church with a lot of pressure on them. A diverse group. He knows that when you take diverse groups, still believers but still human, and you put them together, there's going to be tension.
Paul's Extraordinary Confidence
I think, I feel this way. What way? I think refers back to verse 6. That I'm convinced of this very thing. That He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. He said, I have this extraordinary confidence. I have this amazing certainty. And they'll go back and tie it. Because of the doctrine that I know is true. That if I'm in a relationship with Christ today, it's because God put me in that relationship.
I'm watching a Billy Graham crusade yesterday. And an amazing guy got used in a powerful way. But he was talking about, and he used this phrase, God wants to save you tonight. God wants you into His kingdom tonight. God wants you to decide for Him tonight. So here's the way. I used to go to a church not very long where a guy said this. God's voted yes. Satan's voted no. You cast the deciding vote. Well, that's very human-centric theology.
God moves and He touches people's hearts. And if you're a Christian today, it's because God saved you. He brought you from death to life. Right? Ephesians 2. We were dead in our sins and trespasses.
What Does a Dead Man Need?
And we've talked about it before. What does a dead man need? The only one thing a dead man needs. What is it? I think I've told you, the first dead person I ever saw was my grandfather. And we were at Beardsley Funeral Home in Sheraton, Iowa. And it was a, the term seems ironic now, a converted house. It was a house that was a funeral home, a funeral parlor, lots of little rooms. And it smells like flowers, but not good flowers, bouquets of flowers. And there's dead people everywhere.
And so we walk in, I'm about 12, nervous, and we walk in and my aunt says, Dad's in here. It's creepy to me a little, but we go in and there's my grandpa in this casket. All laid out. I get the heebie-jeebies at it. Even when my father died, open casket, not my deal.
But we go out on the porch and my aunt said to my mom, didn't dad look good? And I thought, I need to replay this. My mom and my aunt are talking, they lose track of me. And I go back in and there he is. And he looked amazingly good, and on a suit, which he rarely wore, and he had his glasses on and they were square. And they even somehow cranked a little grin on him, which he didn't have much.
I'm just a young man of 12. It occurs to me that while he looks very good, he has one overriding problem that I can see. And that is he's dead. And there's only one thing a dead man needs and that's life.
God Breathes Life Into the Dead
The Bible comes along and says you were dead in your sins and trespasses. And just like my grandfather in that casket, you can't do anything about that. You can respond to the gospel, but your response to the gospel is because God's breathed life into you. You're born again and the evidence of that is that you believe.
And what Paul is saying is, he said, I have this extraordinary confidence, it's based in some fairly serious doctrine. My confidence is this, that He began that good work in you. You didn't. And so He'll continue it.
So we talk in terms, here's the term that we would use frequently. We would talk about the perseverance of the saints. And that's a term, but it could miscommunicate. A better term for us is the preservation of the saints. That my Christian life is not based on me hanging on to God, but God hanging on to me.
Paul's Heart for the Philippians
And he says, verse 7, this is right for me to feel this way. I feel this way about you because I have you in my heart. I have this special place. When we talk about heart, he's talking about here, I have this special place for you in my life. I feel this way about you. I know this is true. I have this place for you, this desire for you, since both in my imprisonment, my defense, in the confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.
He says, I feel this way about you because you are a partaker. I have this enormous affection for you. You are a partaker of all of this, including a partaker of the grace of God. You've been a recipient of God's grace.
So here's what we know. Based on the promise and the word of God, if I've come to that point in my life where I believe and confess Jesus is Lord, I acknowledge my sin, and I embrace Christ and Christ alone for my salvation, I'm as, and these are phrases we use all the time, and my fear is because we use them all the time, they lose the impact on us.
Don't Let the Familiar Become Common
I had a friend who was thinking about moving down here, and we're having breakfast one morning, and we come out, it's an early morning, we come out right about this time of day, and the sun is coming up, and we have beautiful sunsets, and beautiful sunrises, and the sun's coming up, and the clouds are there, and it's coming up over Fort Peaks, and he said, that's stunning, that's beautiful, and I remember saying to him, eh, it's like that every day. I remember
The first time I saw Arizona, we drove in the dark. I'd never been here before, and we stopped in Flagstaff at like midnight, got up the next day, walked out, and there was Mount Humphreys. We don't have hills like that in Iowa. We have Dubuque with some cliffs, but we don't have mountains like that, and I remember seeing that and thinking, this is stunning. Then driving down, there's a certain spot, there's a big turn in the road, where you go from the pine trees to just desert. I remember there was a place to pull off, and there was this vista with these hills, and I remember seeing all this for the first time. Now it's like, yeah, it's like that every day.
Here's the truth: if you know Christ as your Lord and Savior, right here, right now, you're as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. My fear is, we've heard that so many times, we go, "yeah, yeah, yeah, get on to the meat," but that's quite meaty in and of itself. He said, this is my affection, I have this deep affection for you, and from this, it gives birth to what we saw mentioned in verse four and throughout this book—this idea of joy.
Joy Blockers That Destroy Our Peace
I gave you last week four joy blockers that will be very discouraging: worry, fear, stress, and sin. I'm working through the lesson this week, and John MacArthur has a list of ten joy blockers. Let me give them to you—you don't have to write them down, but they'll be on the recording. The idea here is just sensing that God created you to have this sense of joy, this sense of peace, and those things we talked about last week—worry, fear, stress, sin—they're going to block it.
By far the most important joy blocker, he says, is a false sense of salvation. It's people who either think they're saved when they aren't, or they think they're saved but see salvation as a human effort, and they tend to become filled with rules, laws, and regulations. The temptation, the better the church with better teaching, is usually toward legalism. I'd probably use that term not as precisely as it could be, but toward rules and regulations.
We had a guy come to one of our events, and God saved Him. This guy was all tattooed up, had piercings everywhere. The first thing the church guys wanted to do, a week later they're going, "I thought he got saved." Well he did. "Well he's still got..." I said, "Well he's not going to get rid of the tattoos, and he's got these things hanging there." You understand, he's still interacting with his culture. He thinks you look goofy, just so you know that. He thinks you look abnormal. But the first thing you want to do is start to take away who he is.
The second thing is the influence of Satan and his demons. Peter writes, "Be sober of spirit, on the alert. Your adversary the devil prowls like a roaring lion, seeking to devour you." You have a real enemy who's out to destroy you.
Understanding God's Sovereignty and Prayer
Number three is an inadequate understanding of God's sovereignty. If I don't understand that God's sovereign, I'm going to be filled with worry, fear, and stress. I'm going to be worried about everything and overwhelmed in many cases by the circumstances around me.
Number four is prayerlessness. All of a sudden I break off communication with God. When my prayer life goes, almost for sure, my study goes. It's this plugging into the power and communication of God—Him communicating to me through His word, me communicating to Him through prayer.
The Challenge of Spiritual Highs and Lows
Number five: emotional lows frequently follow spiritual highs. The classic example would be Elijah, who has this battle with the prophets of Baal, and then Jezebel confronts him. The scripture tells us in 1 Kings 19 that he became afraid and arose and ran for his life to Beersheba, and he sat under a juniper tree and requested for himself that he might die.
I haven't done many retreats in the last three or four years, but the one I've done every year is the SPC men's retreat with Jamie. I'll always try to make the point that this is an incredible experience for most guys. You're in the mountains, you're away from home, you got great food, good music, half the teaching is good—don't know which half, just know half is really good—and you have this experience. Then all of a sudden you're going to leave and go to what we call the real world. You're going to come home, and while you were gone, the dishwasher exploded, one of the kids was arrested, the deal fell apart, they couldn't get hold of you. Oftentimes, after a moment like that, there's this drop off, this challenge that comes and it'll rob your joy.
I just had an illustration pop into my mind—I don't know if this is good or not on Valentine's Day—but there are those moments in a relationship that are just electric between you and your spouse. They tend to be in the earlier days of the relationship. You can go into a restaurant and just tell how long a couple's been married by how many words they speak. The fewer the words, the longer they've been married. But there's something electric and then all of a sudden you become disenchanted with the other person because you don't feel that electricity all the time. You can't live there, on those mountaintops. It's the game day experience. How do you not love college football game day?
a player, the band is playing. I say you could drop me into any stadium in the country, as long as you don't put me next to a bunch of drunks, and I'm going to have an incredible day. The band is playing, the teams are out, but you only get 12, 13, 14 of those a year. And what I need to do is master the mundane and I need to find joy in the two-a-days, not just the game day experience. So I think MacArthur points out accurately that tends to be the flow.
The sixth thing that will rob your joy is focusing on circumstances. The problems get bigger and bigger and bigger. Somebody stopped me last week, now I don't remember who it was. They were saying that there was just a study that was done at Harvard or Stanford, something that would give it credibility, theoretically. And it said 90% of the things we worry about never happen. And of the 10 that do, something like 7 out of the 10 you didn't have any control over. So out of these 100 things that you're worried about, there's only 3 you can do anything about. But I'm worried about all these things, circumstances.
Number seven that'll rob your belief is a spirit of ingratitude. I listen to my politically conservative friends who bemoan the fact that we have an entitlement attitude in the country. It feels as though we do. But the reason we do is because that is typically human. Grace really brings that out. God blesses you in some extraordinary way, you give Him a tip of the hat, and then you're done with that, and you're assuming He's going to do that to you or for you every time. If I don't understand that everything that He gives me is a gift, if all of a sudden I've got an entitlement attitude, not with Social Security, but with grace, my joy will be gone.
Let me give you a couple more real quickly. Forgetting that the Lord is not marked by innocence, but by faithlessness and sin. I forget Him. And the fact that I've forgotten Him is I begin to see faithlessness and sin creep into my life. I fail to trust Him. Two more is all of a sudden there's these uncontrolled feelings. I'm living by the flesh. I'm driven by the most visceral of desire, no discipline. And then the last thing is an unwillingness to accept forgiveness. All of a sudden I see those things in my life. My joy is gone.
Paul's Strong Conviction About the Philippians
Paul says, listen, that's not it. Here, I feel this way. I have this strong conviction because of doctrine, I have a strong conviction about you. And I say that to encourage you. I have you in my heart. There's a sense here of closeness. And here's what I know. You're a partaker of this. This is true of me. It's true of you. Don't let these things creep in. Remember, that's still the issue in there. He's anticipating the battle in their life. And he's telling them, listen, you've already won this. He started it. We know that our union with God is unbreakable. But our communion with Him can be very distant and dead.
He said, "God is my witness how I long for you with the affection of Christ Jesus." There is this desire and love. It's genuine. The idea that I want to be with you, it's longing for companionship. This diverse group filled with free man and slave and Greek and Roman and Jew and Gentile and rich and poor. This group is together. And he said, I don't want you to merely tolerate each other. I want you to long to be with others in a way that this continues to grow and abound.
The Challenge of Genuine Companionship
Sandy and I had a wonderful dinner Monday night with two young men, 24, 27, young guys, young by my standard, and talking about life. Both guys single. I met them for the first time Saturday. And I was immediately intrigued by them, attracted to them as young guys with a lot what I saw as potential. I don't know what that means, by the way. And I said, Sandy, you want to meet these guys? And plus, we're trying to get our arms around some issues of young guys and gals in the business community.
And so we're talking and we're talking about companionship. We're talking about life and single guys. And I'm talking about what's it like to be single. I lasted a month. So how is that out there? What's that like? And then what was affirmed for us was this huge gap between women 25 and 35 and men 25 and 35. And the gals have blown by the guys. It isn't even close. That has huge long-term ramifications, I think.
In its simplest form, and these guys gave zero resistance to this. In its simplest form, if these gals ever do find guys, most of them are going to have to settle for guys that aren't as smart, aren't as sharp as they are. And I'll tell you where this will break down. They got to submit to these guys. And when you're submitting to somebody, it's like when you know you're smarter than your boss, which all of you think you are, it's very hard to submit to that guy. So what's going to end up is the only way this guy is going to rule is going to be with an iron fist. Now I'm playing that out. But we're talking, we're unpacking it.
The Reality of Isolation
We're talking about the generations. And they're talking about the loneliness and isolation that's associated with it. And I know it. I'm hooked on my phone stuff. I'm on Facebook, though. I've never asked somebody to be my friend. I pride myself on that. But I've confirmed. I have something like 1,600 friends on Facebook. And so I get a stream all day of what they're doing. Went to the store. I don't find that compelling or necessary, but it's on.
But there's one gal in there. She's a single gal. And I know she wonders why she's single. And I want to say to her, read your posting. All you got to do is read this. It's raining today, and I know there'll never be a rainbow. I'm not exactly compelled to call you. And then it'll be like, I'm going hiking. Anybody want to go? Uh-uh. And we're hoping a wolf eats you. You know? I mean, it's that kind of stuff.
Well, you're not built to live in this isolation. And so we have it all around us. We have the term friends. So I have 1,600 friends. I'll bet you I don't know 1,500 of them. And of the other 100,
I know maybe name and face. So in one way, life is very intimate. And in another way, it's very isolated. That's not how you were designed to live. You were designed to live, as Paul says here, in communion with one another. To have this affection. To have this desire. You weren't designed to go alone.
I was telling the guys the other night, there's this illustration I'm watching one night on National Geographic or Discovery or something. There are these crocodiles or alligators—I never know the difference. And there are these gazelles or something that are trying to get across this river. They're gathered, and they're regrouping. Then somebody counts to three, and they just charge. I'm thinking, if I'm an alligator, I'd sit in the middle of this, and I'm just going to get one of them running into me.
That's not what they did. What the alligators would do is, as they started in, one would go to the side of the group, and he'd bump one out. That one would get isolated. Then they'd come in with two or three of these guys. Pretty soon, if the flock is moving over here, this one's out here. Once he's out there, one would grab his head, one would grab his tail. They'd spin, break them in half, and eat them.
I thought, what a perfect illustration for us. If we're traveling in a pack, we're relatively safe. But the minute you get us isolated, the minute you get us away from home, the minute you get us away from friends, I find it all the time. When we see somebody who drops out of a group, but more importantly, out of church or a small group, we'll follow up. Sometimes life circumstances have changed. But most often, there's some hurt, some weakness, something in their life. At the very time they need the group the most, they move to isolation.
Paul's Prayer for Growing Love
Paul says, listen. I've got this affection—here I am four years removed from you. I hope you have it for one another. He said here's my prayer: I pray three things, that your love may abound more and more in real knowledge and discernment.
That love—the word there is agape. It's an interesting word. It's a tough word to get our arms around. MacArthur writes this: "The Greek word agape is used so uniquely in the New Testament that ancient Greek literature sheds little light on the meaning. In the New Testament, however, love is a virtue that surpasses all the others. It's a prerequisite for all the others."
So they come to Jesus and say, "What's the great commandment, Teacher? Tell us, what is that great commandment?" He says, "Love the Lord God with all your heart, your mind, your soul—that's first and foremost. Love your neighbor as yourself." There's this idea of love. I want that love, that agape love, that selfless love. When we get to chapter 2, we're going to see the perfect illustration of that.
The Example of Christ's Humility
I'm teaching this Sunday at a church downtown. Unfortunately, I've been going places lately where they're giving me topics I don't like, but this fit in perfectly with what I wanted to do. They said, "We're working through the Gospel of Mark. Pick an attribute that you see in the life of Christ. Talk to us about it." I said, "Perfect," because I've been working on this—and that's the humility.
It's right in Mark 10 where the disciples are arguing who's going to be the greatest, and Jesus says, "Well, I'm going to turn this upside down, because whoever's going to be the first of these will be the last of these. The greatest won't be the one who's striving for greatness for the purposes of greatness. It's going to be that one who submits." It's what we look at in Philippians 2 when He says, "Have this mind in you"—verse 5—"or this attitude in yourself which is in Christ Jesus." That's the key to every relationship.
Love as a Decision, Not Just a Feeling
He said, "I want this love to grow more and more and more." It's a love that has with it volition. There's a decision to it. There's a choice. It's emotional and sentimental, but it's rational at the same time. So Valentine's Day—what a perfect day to be talking about this.
"I fell in love"—it's as though I got the flu. I got the flu, I fell in love. "Oops, I've fallen out of love. Used to love her, now I don't. We've grown apart." You know, all the standard things. You don't fall in love and grow apart. He says because love is a decision based on a choice, and "I'm going to love you"—what He's getting at here is especially even when you're unlovable.
Growing in Knowledge and Discernment
He said, "I want you to grow in love, and I want you to let that love abound more and more." And look at these two phrases: "real knowledge and all discernment." When we're talking about real knowledge, we're talking about true, infallible knowledge that we find in God's Word. He says, "I want you to grow in this. I want you to grow in this Word. I want you to know this." But not for the sake of just knowing it—it translates now to discernment. It translates to the ability to make decisions.
The word "discernment" there appears only this one time in the New Testament and refers to a high level of biblical, theological, moral, spiritual perception. I want you to be able to look at life and sort it out against this filter right here of God's Word.
It's not that I come on Sunday or Thursday morning and do this Bible study—right now Sandy's leading a Bible study on Monday, going to a Bible study on Tuesday. This morning she goes to BSF. At noon is the highlight of her week—she comes to Priority Living. I'm teasing about that. And then tonight she goes to Precepts. I'm saying, "Babe, that's a lot of Bible study." And that's good, but if it's just study for study's sake—and there's an explanation for all of those; that's not normal for her; that's where she is right now—but to say I want to make sure we aren't just studying and studying and studying and then closing.
I've got those moments almost every time I'll get in there and study and go, "Wow, that was really good." But it's not complete until the knowledge moves to discernment. If I'm reading, reading, reading and still treating Sandy in a way that's not like Christ's loving—
The church, then, all that knowledge doesn't matter. He's saying I want that knowledge to translate into every aspect of your life.
Proving What Is Excellent
Verse 10: "that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless." Here's what he's saying: I want you to be approved. That word means I want you to examine or prove. I want you to approve, discern. I want you to be able to show people that these things are correct, they're real, they're genuine. It's the ability to discover these things so that now you can live a right life.
Here, James, I don't want you to be just a hearer of the word, but I want you to be a hearer and a doer of the word. I want you to know that to be sincere—in ancient days they would make pottery, and the thicker the pottery, the cheaper it was. Fine pottery was very thin, expensive, and oftentimes in the making and the firing of it, the pottery would crack and should be at that point just disregarded.
But what they would do—some guys that may be still alive today—as they would fill those cracks with wax, paint over them, and in a dark pottery shop they would market, you know, "flawless." You'd pick it up, you couldn't see it. So what the wise purchaser would do is say, "Can I take this outside?" And they would take it outside, they'd sit it in the sun, and very quickly that wax would begin to melt. Or they could oftentimes just merely take that—let's say it's a vase—and take it and put it to the light, and you see the light come in that area where it's cracked.
So he said, "I want to be purchasing stuff that, if you will, is sun tested." And he's saying, "Here's what I want you to do: I want you to prove that this life is real and genuine, that your life is sun tested."
The Fruit of Righteousness
Having then, verse 11, "having been filled with the fruit of righteousness"—and that comes from Christ—all of a sudden your life becomes beautiful, fruitful.
What Paul's saying to the Philippians, to us, is that in our life we need to understand that our salvation is secure by Christ. He secured the salvation, He'll continue it. And His prayer—God's prayer for us—and we'll see this, by the way, as you start looking at Paul's praying, rarely does he pray for physical needs: "God bless them with a new car, God..." Not to say those things aren't important, but he said, "Here's my prayer: my prayer is that you'll grow in love. You're doing a great job, but I love you, I want you to grow more."
And that love is going to grow when I understand God and who He is, and then I begin to apply it. And you're going to prove, as people look at you, that you are the real thing—you'll be sun tested—and you'll begin to bear fruit.
Paul's Coming Testimony
Now we're through verse 11. These people have not heard from Paul in four years at least, and I'm wondering if at this point they wouldn't be saying, "What's going on with you? You're writing about us, what about you?"
Paul turns that corner next week. Look at that: "I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ..." He's going to talk about his own circumstances next week.
Let me pray. Father, that's our prayer for our life: that we would grow in our knowledge of You. We see these things—the list from last week, ten this week—of things that rob our joy. Father, that joy is a fruit of the Spirit. Help us yield to You. Make us students of the word. We study the Word of God, but for this reason: that we might know You, the God of the word, and not just for knowledge, but for discernment on what to do and then the power to do it.
God, I pray that as we leave this place, people look at us and see You. They marvel at our lives because Your fingerprints are all over it. Let them see the good works that are in us and glorify You, our Father in heaven. Father, we pray that to You in Christ's name. Amen.