Let's take our Bibles and turn to the book of Philippians, the epistle of Paul to the Philippians. Philippians chapter 1. By Philippians chapter 1, I'll read the first 11 verses. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, always in every prayer of mine for you, all making the prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you because I hold you in my heart. For you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 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." This is Paul's prayer for the continual spiritual growth and progress of the saints at Philippi. Just as people are expected to grow from infancy to childhood to teenage years to adult, so Christians are expected to do the same. We are to grow. And this matter of Christian growth is seen throughout the New Testament. Paul In Ephesians chapter 4 verses 13 through 15 concerning the Ephesians, he prays that they no longer be children, but may grow up in all things into Christ. Peter also emphasizes this in 2 Peter 3.18, grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, there are a couple of things you need to say about, first of all, just general concerning Christian growth. there's always going to be degrees, different degrees and durations of growth. Depending upon what stage you are in that growth, whether you are an immature tree or a mature tree, your growth is going to be different one from another. Some will grow faster. Some will bear more fruit than others. Like Jesus in the parable, you know, they go out to sow and And some reap thirtyfold, some sixty, some one hundred, depending upon the gifts whereby the Spirit has gifted you, how much fruit you will bear. It will vary. And secondly, no one ever reaches perfection. No one ever reaches the point where the Don't need to grow more. We all will continue to grow as the text tells us until the day of Jesus Christ. God will complete us only at that day. But all Christians grow. And there's five areas of spiritual progress and growth for which Paul prays specifically for the Philippians. And these should be on our minds when we pray for one another and the growth of our fellow believers. Each one lays the foundation for the next. And Paul begins with love, which is the bond of perfection, as he writes later on in Colossians 3, and how he emphasizes in 1 Corinthians 13. We are to grow in love. Again, verse 9. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. Love is a command given to us by Jesus Christ. It's that which differentiates us from everybody else in the world. People will know you when they see your love for one another. And love is so important that without love, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, it doesn't matter how much you know, how much you give, or how much you minister. Without love, you're nothing. That's how important this matter of love is. But what is love? I'm not going to go into it. Most of you should know that there's several Greek words for love. This is the word agape. This is the highest form of love. It's not a friendly kind of love. It's the highest form. It's the noblest kind of love. Actually, it's an intellectual kind of love, a love that you determine. It's a love that is determined to be given. You can understand the meaning a little bit more when you look at its characteristics. Agape love is sacrificial love. It's a self-sacrificing kind of love. Ephesians 5, 25, Christ loved the church. How? He gave himself up for it. That's a sacrifice that he made for those whom he loved. John 3, 16, we all know, for God so loved the world that he what? gave his only begotten son. It involves a sacrifice. First John 4.10, he loved us and sent his son as the propitiation for our sins. And then John follows that godly, the divine display of love with an admonition to us in the very next verse in verse 11. Beloved, if God so loved us, We also ought to love one another. In other words, just like God just loved us by sending his son as a propitiation, sacrificing ourselves for the good of others. But love is not only sacrificial, it's active. Agape love is not a sentimental love. This love is not an emotion. It's not a feeling. Now, agape love is not without feeling and emotion, but it's not the main quality. Love, agape love, is a series of actions. It's not a static attitude. It's what you do, not what you feel. At Philippi, Love showed itself from the very beginning when the church, at the first convert, Paul went down to the riverbank and there he preached the gospel to a bunch of ladies down there. And God opened the heart of one, Lydia, and when he opened her heart to hear the gospel, to receive the gospel, to be saved. And immediately after, soon as she believed, she insisted that Paul and his companions be her house guests. And she put them up and fed them and took care of them. Love in action. As soon as the jailer in Philippi believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and was saved, he released Paul and Silas' feet from the stocks and bathed their wounds and took them to his home. There we have love in action. When this little church here in Philippi heard of Paul's needs of being incarcerated. In fact, they remember he's under house arrest, but he's still responsible for his own food. And so they send gifts. And not just once. It was, as Paul talks about here in the beginning verses, it was over and over again. They demonstrated their love for the Apostle Paul, for all that he had done for them, and they were giving back. It was an action, and it was sacrificial. Love is more than feeling compassion toward others, it is showing compassion to others. It's denying yourself and giving of your time and resources to actually be there for others and to help them. It's sacrificial. It's active. And it's volitional. Love is a willful act. It happens on purpose. Agape is not a reaction to something beautiful, something pleasing, and then you show compassion. It's an act of the will. It's a choice that you make. And notice how Paul describes this love further in the text. He says, or I mean, how he admonishes us concerning this love. He says, verse 9, it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more. That's the progress of love. Abound more and more. Love must never stay the same. As much as the Philippians already had loved and demonstrated their love, Paul says it must abound. That word abound means to overflow, to expand. And that verb is in the present tense, which is a tense in the Greek of continuation. Your love, he says, should never stop. It should always be progressing. Isn't that how God's love is toward us? And if we're to love others the same way God loves us, ours is to be continual. His is continual. And then Paul says, it's to abound more. Isn't that what abounding is? More and more and more? But then he says, no, I want you to really get this. It should abound more. As Jesus multiplied the fish and the loaves, there should always be 12 baskets remaining of our love for others. And that word more is a greater degree, more willing, more readily, abounding more readily. And then he repeats it more and more. So we have abounding and present tense continual abounding all the time, and doing it more, and doing it even more. Remember in the New Testament, when you see this duplication of words, it always adds emphasis. Remember Jesus, truly, truly, or verily, verily, I say unto you, when he doubles that, that means you've got to sit up and take notice. This is very important. And that's the same, that's what's going on here, was Paul writes this. Your love should abound more and more. I don't know how to say it any more emphatically, Paul says. This is what you must do and must continue to do. Just as God's love super abounds to us. So our love to others is to super abound toward them. An active volitional self-sacrifice for them. In Ephesians 2.4, God's love is called a great love. And how does he love us in that passage? He made us alive together with Christ. He saved us. And then he seats us in heavenly places with Christ. Philippians 1 verse 6 that we've already read. He'll continue this work until the day of Jesus Christ. It continues abounding more and more and more toward us until the end of the age. And it's that kind of emphasis that we need to have on our love for others. Demonstrating it to them. It's a love that super abounds. And if God so loved us, What were we? Sinners. Filthy, right? So his love toward us wasn't a love because he was attracted to us. It wasn't a love because we were so beautiful and, oh, I got to have you in my family. No. He loved us on purpose, just like he talks of his love for Israel in Deuteronomy 7, verses 6 through 8. I loved you because I loved you. It's his will, and that's, so it's not a matter of reacting to someone, oh, someone was kind to me, I'll be kind back. It's be kind no matter what that person does or says. And that's pretty much behind love your enemies. He's not for me, and I'm to show him love. We must never be content with our growth of love. And then notice the sphere of love in the text, verse nine, that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. This particular word for knowledge occurs 20 times in the New Testament. It always refers to the knowledge of the things of God. It's a religious, spiritual, theological knowledge. Paul's point is simple. Our love grows in proportion to our knowledge. Without knowledge of salvation and what all God has done for us, there's no progress to maturity. If you don't know the Lord, how can you love Him rightly? If you don't know exactly what He is, how can you love Him rightly? And the more we know of Him, the more we love Him. In other words, Paul sees every growing Christian as a student. learning God's truth. To become a Christian, one must know the truth. And to continue as a Christian, we must study the breadth and depth of the truth. Spiritual ignorance must be avoided. Don't be satisfied with where you are. Continue, progress. Ignorance is a root of stunted growth. And then Paul links knowing the truth with applying the truth with the word discernment. We must not only know what the scripture teaches, we must know how that truth affects daily life. You see, biblical knowing is not merely an exercise of our brains. It must be worked out in obedience. And this applies so well to Christian loving. Love needs divine illumination in order to know what to love. And it needs discernment to know how to love. And that knowledge, that knowledgeable love, then leads to the second thing, the second request Paul has for the Philippian believers. And that's so that they may approve what is excellent, verse 10. That's what it says, so that you may approve what is excellent. Now that word prove means to put to the test or examine for genuineness. It's used in the scripture for testing money, whether it's genuine or counterfeit. You remember the old westerns, you know, you throw your put two bits down for a drink or whatever and they pick it up and they're testing the genuineness. Is this just lead painted or is this gold? That's what's involved here. It's a testing to prove for genuineness. It's also used in the scriptures for testing if an animal is fit for sacrifice. It means to verify, to prove or determine something as genuine or worthy. and then make your choice based on the evidence. And we must always try to choose what is excellent, what is most valuable, that's what the word means, worthwhile, vital, the thing that really matters. It's essential for us to not be satisfied with mediocrity or the status quo. Paul wants us to pursue what is best, And for us to approve excellence requires knowledge again. We must engage our minds. Christianity, as we've said over and over here, is a religion of the mind. Thinking, counting, reckoning, these are all thinking words. That's what Christianity is about. Knowing truth and applying truth to life situations. proving them what is best. And for us to approve excellence, we must engage our minds. Many Christians live in reaction to circumstances rather than acting according to knowledge. If you want to pursue biblical excellence, you've got to get beyond reacting to moods and emotions. and let your scripturally renewed mind take control. As Paul writes in Romans 12 too, be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove, test, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Paul doesn't speak of traumatic once for all decisions and that's good enough. He describes patient progression. as we examine issues in the light of God's word and steadily follow God's will that we learn from it. Now as we grow in love and as we approve what is excellent, we will then thirdly maintain integrity. Verse 10, so that you may prove what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. That word so, or you might have, or actually the first, the that at the beginning, it's a purpose clause. This is the result of the first two. Love leads to a pursuit of excellence which generates personal integrity. Now that word pure in the Latin is sincera. We get our word sincere. In the Latin, it means without wax. In the Greek, it's a compound word made up of a verb and a preposition. Or, I mean, a noun and a preposition. Let me put it this way. Two words. Let me put it this way, okay? Two words. Sunlight plus to judge. So it's sun-tested. To understand it, picture the ancient pottery trade. You throw a slab of clay on the wheel, and it goes around. And we were down in Gatlinburg a couple of years ago, and we were stopped at these potteries. And they were working that clay. It's just so amazing how they can take this lump and produce something beautiful. Well, in the ancient days, then you'd bring your pottery to the marketplace. And there you set it out, hoping people would buy your goods. Well, sometimes, because of impurity in the clay, cracks appeared as the clay dried. But we've invested so much time and money into that, dishonest potters would fill the cracks with wax and then paint over it and put it up as the real thing. And if you happen to be a non-discriminatory shopper, you just buy it sight unseen, and you take it home. And the first time you put hot liquid in there, it leaks all out. The wax melts. But if you're a discriminating shopper, you'll take that piece of pottery, and you'll hold it up to the sunlight. And that sun will shine through, and you'll see that there's a crack. And so honest potters would put on their on their pottery, their works of pottery, sincera, without wax. And that's how our lives are to be, without wax. We should, others should see what we really are. We should not put a sham out, a picture out in front of everybody, we're not on the inside. Our lives must be sincera, sun-tested, tested by God's word. There needs to be a genuineness about us. Allow God's word to reveal your flaws. Let me tell you, you have flaws. I have flaws. We all have flaws. So let the sun of God's word, the light of God's word, reveal those flaws to you. As you continue to read and study, it'll reveal your flaws. And then fix the problem. Don't try to gloss over it with churchianity or religious activity. Such hypocrisy will never hold the warmth of God's love. Romans 12, 9 says, let love be without hypocrisy. Isn't this what Jesus condemned the Pharisees for over and over again? For their religious hypocrisy? They play-acted at piety. They play-acted at service. They looked holy. They looked devout on the outside, but they were full of selfishness on the inside. In other words, they had painted over their flaws. And isn't this what Jesus said in Matthew when he taught, woe unto you Pharisees, scribes, and didn't he call them painted sepulchres? Whitewashed sepulchres? They had just glossed over all the flaws, they look beautiful on the outside, but they're full of corruption on the inside. Christians need to be personally free from pretense and sham, and live in accordance with the word of God always. Never compromise on truth in order to be accepted by the world. Maintain your integrity until the day of Christ. So it never stops. It must be maintained. Now, if we are growing in love, we will pursue excellence, which will produce integrity, which will cause the pursuit of good works. Verse 11. filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. Filled with the fruits of righteousness. Now this, notice first of all the extent of our pursuit of good works. Filled, that word there means to fill full, to fill to the point of overflowing. pretty much the same thing what love is supposed to do in verse 9 it's translated in scripture to complete to reach the end to finish in other words what you have accomplished already must continue and be brought to fruition season after season after season and notice the object of our pursuit fruits of righteousness now this is not the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering. That's different. He might say that it could be included in there, but it's not what he's talking about here. The fruits of righteousness here are the fruits of our new lifestyle. When we believe in Christ Jesus, we become new creatures. And we have to act. Our lifestyle is to be different than it was before. And that's what he says. Old things are passed away. All things have become new. Good works are the external proof of genuine repentance. That's what Jesus says in Matthew 3.8. It's the outer manifestation of our true nature inside. As Jesus said in Matthew 7.20, by their fruits you will know them. By our outward activity. Proverbs 11 verse 30 and Romans 1 verse 13 say that our harvesting of souls is, to whom we've witnessed, is bearing good fruit. Romans 15, 28 and 2 Corinthians 9, 10, it refers to financial help given to others, to other believers. The Christian who is saved by grace must demonstrate what has happened in his life. And so he will fight against sin as a good soldier. He will run an honest race, whether that race takes him into the neighborhood, into the workplace, into your recreational lives, your family life. You will run an honest race as an athlete, being morally disciplined to win the prize. And you will spread the gospel seed as a hardworking farmer so that others may hear and enjoy the Christ that you love. The Christian has an objective, a deadline to meet, a Lord to please. And as we pursue these goals, we're not to do it for our own benefit, but rather, as Paul ends the section, verse 11, to the glory and praise of God. Everything that precedes this aspect of Christian living flows into it. Our love, our pursuit of excellence, Our purity, our righteousness all flows into the glory and praise of Christ because he is the source of it all. The Father is in us producing this, verse six, I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Yet the Son also produces these things in our lives. Verse 11 says, we are filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. And our response to what we have accomplished, our love, our purity, our good works, our response to all that happening in our lives is not to pat ourselves on the back. Good boy, good girl. You're doing what you're supposed to do. Yeah, you are. But no, to God alone be the glory, praise to him. Because you wouldn't have done those things had not God and Christ been working in you to do them, and the Holy Spirit along with them. This is how every Christian must grow. These are the goals that we must pursue. But don't forget, this is how Paul continually interceded for the believers at Philippi. It is for this spiritual growth that we must pursue, but that we must also pray for one another to progress and to grow. Don't be so general in your prayers for other believers. Bless Mark, bless Chris, bless Debbie, bless Donna. Don't be so general. Be specific. Lord, help them grow in their Christian life. Help them to love more. Help them in their daily life as they go from place to place, to walk as Jesus walked. to do well, to know that no filthy communication come out of their mouths, that they'll help them, the places that they'll go, there'll be a testimony. Pray specifically that they will grow in their Christian life, and so therefore bear more fruit, and your prayers on their behalf will be fruit on your behalf as well. Pray that they may grow in their spiritual walk with Christ. Isn't that what you hope they're praying for you to do? We should do the same. We should all grow as Christians, and we should pray that our fellow believers grow the same way. Pursue Christian growth. Don't be stagnant. Continue to progress. Let's pray. Our dear Heavenly Father, we pray that you'll help us this day to because we know it's You working in us, but help us to be submissive to the work of the Holy Spirit and Your grace in our lives, working in us to do what we ought to do, to study Your Word so we know what to do, and then to apply those things in our lives, to love, to give, to serve, to help, to aid, to show compassion, Produce good works so that others may glorify God, as Jesus says. They may see our good works and glorify our Father which is in heaven. This is our aim, that you may be glorified. And we know that that is not accomplished if we are stagnant, if we're satisfied with status quo. Help us to be filled full of your spirit. so that we may give of ourselves to serve others, to help others in their Christian walk and their Christian growth. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.