If You Had One Prayer

Well, let me ask you a couple of questions this morning. I want you to think seriously about how you would answer these questions. Number one, what do you want most for your life? What do you want most for your life? Number two, what do you want most for your children? As you think about that, think about the first thing that comes to your mind, I wonder if the first thing that popped in your mind was if I'm thinking about myself or if I'm thinking about my children, what I want is a good job, provide a good life for my family, good retirement, good health, maybe all of that would include a nice home, a nice car. In other words, a good life. Let me ask the question this way. If you had one prayer, what would you pray? If God would have suddenly say to you, you've got one prayer to pray, that's it, that's the only prayer you will be allowed to pray before you leave this earth. One prayer, what would you pray for your children? What would you ask for? Would you ask for things like, I hope they will enjoy good health, I hope they'll find good jobs, I hope they'll provide well for their family, I hope they'll have some of the nice things in life. You see, I think that maybe our answers to those kinds of questions would reveal a mindset that is more molded by the culture around us than it is by biblical priorities. There is a prayer in the Bible, Paul prays for the Philippians. Philippians chapter 1 verses 9 through 11, we're making our way through the book of Philippians on Sunday mornings and we come to these three verses which describe Paul's prayer for the Philippian church. This is what Paul is concerned about for this church, it's what God is concerned about for the Philippians and because this is given to us by inspiration in the Holy Word of God. This is what God is concerned about for you and for me. And I am convinced that if we had one prayer, if our prayer would be something that would really honor God, it would sound something like this. It would be a prayer for character, for that kind of life which would glorify God, regardless of whether that life is lived in wealth or in poverty with or without the things that normally we think of in the Western world as making up the good life. That's not the issue with God and it shouldn't be with us. God wants to see Godly character in our lives. What does that look like? What would that prayer look like if it were a God honoring prayer? Well, there are four things that Paul prays for this church. He's told them back in verse 4 that he prays for them. We saw that a couple of weeks ago. Paul said in all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy. He prayed consistently for this church. But verse 9 through 11, tell us what he prayed for. This gives us the content of his prayer. And there are four things he wanted for this church. Four things God wants for us. Four things that should form the last prayer we would ever pray if we only had one prayer to pray. If we only had one thing to ask of God, it should be this. Number one, a growing love, a growing love. Look at it there in verse 9. And this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. His prayer, first of all, is for love for them, for them to experience love. Now, what is he talking about when he uses the word love? What's he talking about when he says love? Love is so trivialized in our culture today. It is so cheapened by the way we see it portrayed on television in the movies. Love is so cheapened today, kind of like the bumper sticker that was spotted in Nashville, Tennessee, which said, do you believe in love at first sight or should I drive by again? See, love is so cheap and love is so trivialized in our culture today. What did Paul mean by that word? Well, interestingly enough, Paul could have chosen from three or four words available to him in the language he was writing in, the Greek language. There are three or four words that we would translate love, all of which have a little different meaning to them. Paul could have chosen the word erotic, which we get our word erotic from, which means a physical kind of love, a sensual or sexual kind of love. That's not the word Paul uses here. Paul could have used the word philato, which means a friendly kind of love, brotherly love. Phila delphia is the city of brotherly love, comes from that word philato. The idea of a family or friend kind of bond, that kind of love. That's not the word Paul uses here. The word he uses is agape, and that tells us, number one, that this love is a selfless love, because this word is a word that communicated a kind of love that is willing to sacrifice for the good of another person, a love that is willing to give, a love that shows itself in action for the good of another person. Now, when Paul talks about love here, and he says that your love may abound more and more, I believe he's talking about love for others. He could mean love for God, the same word is used of our love for God, but in the context he seems to be talking about love for others. Paul uses this word three other times in the book of Philippians. Philippians 116, chapter 2, verse 1, chapter 2, verse 2. And in those cases, it's quite clear he's talking about love for other people. He quite commonly addresses other churches about this concept of loving one another with a selfless love. For instance, look at what he said to the Galatians in Galatians chapter 5 and verse 13, you, my brothers, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather serve one another in love. It's clear he's talking about loving one another, and even more clear in first Thessalonians, chapter 3 and verse 12, where he says something very similar to the Thessalonians that he says here at the Philippians. He says, may the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. So it would be consistent with what Paul says in other places and even in the book of Philippians that he's talking about love for one another. So when he says, I want your love to abound more and more in knowledge and insight. He's talking about our love for each other, a love for each other that is seen in the willingness to sacrifice for the good of another person. This word is also the word that's used of God's love for us. John 3, 16, the Bible says, as you're well aware, this familiar verse, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. Okay, the evidence of God's love is not mushy feelings. The evidence of God's love is a willingness to give, sacrificial, his one and only son, his son for us to die. That's the evidence of his love. And the Bible expresses this love of Christ also for us in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 25 when it says, husband's love your wives, same word agape, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. So God's love for us is seen in giving sacrificial, Jesus' love for us is seen in giving sacrificial of his life on the cross to die for our sins, to shed his blood so that we could be saved. And so when Paul says, I want your love for one another to abound, he's talking about a willingness to give, not just ooey gooey feelings for one another, but a willingness to give, to sacrifice, to pour out our lives for each other. That's the chief characteristic of this kind of love. And so this kind of love will do anything to help one another to give of yourself for the good of another, even if it means that you would sacrifice for someone else. This is not the kind of love that just says I love you and doesn't back it up with action. Napoleon, who was the great French general and dictator once gave his wife and Queen, Josephine, a crown that was embedded with 800 diamonds and emeralds. It was the talk of the world when words spread about this, everybody gasped and disbelieved at this astounding gift except for one person, Josephine, because she knew that although Napoleon would lavish her with gifts like that, he had never really given himself to her. As evidenced in the fact that shortly after he gave her this crown, he divorced her for another woman. That was not real love because it did not give of itself. There was nothing sacrificial there. It was just trinkets to please. That's not the kind of love we should have for one another. It sacrifices it gives for the good of another person. Some of you will remember back in 1994, the horrifying story that came out of Chicago of a mother dropping her child from a high level of a apartment building in Chicago and that child plunged to its death. After that little child had died and that incident happened, the psychologist was interviewing and trying to work with that little boy's brother. In the course of trying to work with this little boy found out that as soon as he had seen what had happened, he ran out of the apartment and ran down the steps and the psychologist said, what were you thinking, trying to pull out of him? What his thoughts were, thinking maybe some deep emotional struggle was going on and may need to be dealt with and the little boy simply said, I wanted to get out of sight as fast as I could and catch him before he hit the ground. Now that's absolutely impossible. We know that's illogical that he would ever be able to do that but the kind of love we're talking about here is not logical. The kind of love we're talking about is the kind of love that will give, that will do anything, that will sacrifice for the good of another person. It's not just love that has spoken, it's love that gives, it's love that shows itself and so it is a selfless love. The Bible says this kind of love is the greatest characteristic you can develop in your life. 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13. And now these three remain faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love. You think of those three great characteristics that Paul repeats over and over again in his epistles, faith, hope and love, the greatest is love. Why? Because faith will one day pass away and become sight in the presence of Christ. Hope will someday be realized when we see Christ, when no longer need the hope of heaven because we'll be there but love remains. Love remains the greatest of the three. It's the greatest, greatest characteristic that you can have. It is also according to Jesus' words, the greatest commandment that we can obey. Jesus was one time asked in Matthew 22, what's the greatest of the commandments? Listen to his response. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul with all your mind. This is the first and the greatest commandment. The second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus went on to say that all the law and the prophets are summarized in those two commands which have to do with love. Love for God, love for others, the kind of love that loves as yourself, that is willing to give of yourself. So it's the greatest commandment. It's the greatest characteristic. It's the greatest commandment and it is the greatest convincing testimony that we are God's children. Look at what Jesus said in John chapter 13 and verse 35. He said, by this, all men will know that you're my disciples if you love one another. Okay, the kind of love that Paul's commanding in verse nine of our text this morning is the kind of love we're seeing described in these other passages where Jesus said it is the greatest convinced, convicting testimony to other people that you're my children. Jesus did not say all men will know that you're my disciples. If you carry a certain translation of the Bible or if you just listen to a certain kind of Christian music and not other kind of Christian music, he did not say they will be able to see that you're my children by high-powers, pious you look or how you dress. Now those things can be important characteristics but they will know who we are because of our love for one another. What this world desperately needs to see is people who are willing to love each other with no genus, no self involved, willing to give completely of yourself for the good of someone else. Chuck Colson reminds us of that kind of love in action. It was that kind of love that he saw that really broke his heart and brought him to the Savior. You may remember Chuck Colson being the hatchet man in President Nixon's administration and the Watergate affair and when Colson was tried and convicted and sent to prison, there were some men who knew Colson who were trying to witness to him. One of those was a man by the name of Al Kueh. Al Kueh was the sixth most important person in his political party in the House of Representatives. He was well known, well-respected, he was a Christian, he loved the Lord and he had been working with Chuck Colson to try to reach him and went into Christ. And one day in visiting with Chuck Colson in prison he said, I have appealed to the President to allow me to serve the rest of your term. You've got some family issues that you need to deal with back home and I'm asking to release you and let me serve the rest of your term. And he wasn't just saying that. He meant it. He had actually appealed to the President. Could this be done? Could you allow this to happen? And Colson said it broke my heart. He said I'd never seen that kind of love. Here was a man who was well-respected. He would lose his place in the House of Representatives. He'd be separated from his family but he was willing to do that for me. I had never seen love like that. I had never seen a Christian who really backed up what he said by putting his life on the line. He said it broke my heart and it's what really softened me toward the gospel. Years later Chuck Colson was telling that to a lady who was interviewing him for a television program that they were focusing on Colson's life. And he said as he told that story, the woman who was interviewing broke out in tears and tears ran her down her face, massacred going all over the place and she said stop, stop the cameras. She excused herself and patched herself up, painted herself up again and came back into the room and said okay let's film that sequence over again. And so they started again. She composed herself, got herself together and when he started to tell the story again she burst into tears again. You see she had grown up in a Christian family and she had wandered far away from the Lord and it was that story of the love of a believer willing to sacrifice everything for another person, for one to come to Christ that broke and softened her heart and she came back to the Lord as she talked with Chuck Colson that day in that studio. You see Jesus said the greatest convincing testimony that you can give this world is love, agape love, sacrificial love that is not selfless has no agendas is simply willing to sacrifice for the good of another person. That's the kind of love we need for one another as believers. Love that is not putting ourselves first or doing what it does so that we will benefit from it but love that simply lays its life on the line for one another. That's the kind of love God wants us to have. The greatest characteristic you can have but it should not only be a sacrificial love, a selfless love it should also be an abounding love as Paul says there in verse 9. This is my prayer that your love may abound more and more. The kind of love he's talking about we've examined. It's agape love, self-sacrificing love but it should be an abounding love as well. It's not that they lacked love, it's not that they didn't have any love but Paul said there's room to grow and your love as wonderful as it is and as great as it is can be deeper, it can be more fervent, it can be more consistent and there's not a person in this room including myself that can say I love everyone else as I should. I know I don't, there's a lot of room to grow in my life and I think probably there would be with yours too that there's room to grow that our love needs to be abounding. Paul says I know you've got love for each other, it's a very warm church, loving church and they've demonstrated that love to him as they've given to him but he says I want it to grow more and more abound more and more so our love should always be growing for one another. So not only is it a selfless love it and abounding love it also is a directed love. Notice what he says in verse 9 and this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more and notice he qualifies it in these two ways in knowledge and depth of insight. Now here's something else that often gets confused when people talk about love, when people talk about love especially in the Christian world loving one another a lot of people think that means we just love everything and we give to everything that you know every appeal that's made everything that comes down the pike and everyone is wonderful and everything is great we're just we just love each other you know. No, no, Paul says there are a couple of things that ought to direct that love, focus that love, make sure that it's headed in the right direction. One of those is that we should love more and more in knowledge. Our love is to be directed, channeled, focused based on knowledge. Now what kind of knowledge is he talking about? I believe he's talking about the knowledge of the word of God. We're not talking about love in the sense of some kind of emotional pull that is dictated by circumstances. We're talking about love that is consistent with what the Spirit of God reveals in the word of God which means the more we know of this book, the more we know of the Bible, the more we grow in our knowledge of God's word, the more we grow in our knowledge of the kinds of things that God loves and the kind of things he hates. You see God doesn't love everything, God loves everyone, he doesn't love everything. God doesn't love sin, God doesn't love false teaching, somebody tampers with his word, somebody tampers with the deity of Christ, somebody tampers with the way of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ alone. God doesn't love that, God hates that. And you see the more we understand his word, the more our love is directed so that we're not just saying, well everything's okay, everybody's okay, no, no, not everybody that claims to be a preacher or a teacher is teaching the truth. See of the word of God. And so we need to make sure that our love is directed, it's focused, it's channeled through the channel of knowledge that we have a clear knowledge of the word of God and we love the things he loves and we hate the things he hates, which means that we should love everybody but we should not love everything. We should not love sin and we should not support sin or false teaching in any way. So our love is to be directed by knowledge. Secondly, it's to be directed by insight, he says, I want you to grow more and more, a bound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. The word insight, it's a very interesting word. It's the word that we might even translate tact. Now tact is having a good feel for a situation, what should be done, what should be said, how it should be done, how it should be said. And so in the context here, talking about our love for one another, what he's saying is your love should be directed by knowledge, first of all, but also by a keen insight into what is best to say, how is best to communicate love, when a person needs affirmation, when they need encouragement, when they need to be built up, how do we express that to them, how do we show them love, what words do we use. Those kinds of things are the depth of insight that he's talking about. So we should be sensitive to the needs of others and to what should be said, how it should be said in order to communicate the love of Christ to them. Love is not just, you know, slap happy everybody on the back, everything and everybody's okay. That's not the kind of love the Bible talks about. Our love should be directed by knowledge and it should also be directed by insight as to when it is needed, how it should be expressed. So Paul says, what I pray for you, Philippians, what I want for you, and God says what I want for you is a growing love, a love that is selfless, that's a bounding that is directed properly, focused correctly, biblically, but that's not all. God says something else he wants for us. In verse 10, he says, I want for you, and Paul says, I pray for you, good discernment, good discernment. Look at it in verse 10. Here's the second request, so that you may be able to discern what is best. Interesting choice of words, that you may be able to discern what is best. Let's take apart a couple of those key words. The word discern is a word which means to test something, to recognize its worth and then put your approval on it. That's what the word literally means. You test various options or challenges or decisions that are in front of you. You test them out, you weigh them out, you figure out which is best and you put your approval on that. He wants us to have that kind of discernment in life, and he wants us to be able to make choices in life that are best, not just good, best. Now every Christian who knows anything about the Bible ought to have, and I'm choosing my words very carefully here, ought to have a pretty easy time choosing between good and evil, between right and wrong. Sometimes we flounder in those choices because we do not have a good grasp of the Bible, the Word of God, what God expects of us, what he says is wrong, what he says is right. But every Christian who knows anything about the Bible should be growing in your ability to discern what's bad, what's good, and I'm going to choose the good over the bad. But that's not the choice Paul's talking about in this verse. As he's talking about growing Christians, Christians are becoming more Christ like what God really wants for us. He's saying, I want you to have the discernment, the ability to test out different views or options or factors in your decision and choose between what's good and what's best. In other words, what is most important? What is most essential? What is most productive for eternity? What makes the most eternal difference in your life? Choose that. There may be some other good things that you let go. It's kind of like what the writer of Hebrews said. When he said, let us then laying aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets us. Let us run the race with patience, endurance, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Notice he says, in order to run this race well, we have to put aside sin, that's obvious, that's bad, but we also need to sometimes put away weights. Now, weights are things that may not be bad and ended up themselves, but they may be weighing us down, holding us back from what's best in our lives. You see, even in entertainment choices and with every choice we make in life, we need to make sure that we're choosing what is best, what would be most productive for eternity. As I said, even in entertainment choices, things like that weigh out the options and choose what is best. A lot of us, as believers, fritter away a lot of time on worldly things, things that are not going to help us any spiritually, that are just going to drag us down, or even sometimes good things that really don't help us any spiritually. There are times in life when we must make decisions between things that are good and things that are best. I think I've told you the story about in Desert Storm, back in 1991, I believe it was, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the first President Bush sent troops over to take care of that issue. One of those leaders was Colonel William Post, who was leading a group of troops in Kuwait, and he received an urgent of facts from headquarters saying that there are 400 cases of jelly that are not accounted for in your records. And Colonel Post said, well, that's an important thing, it's a good thing, so he sent a private to look for the 400 cases of jelly. He couldn't find it. So a second second facts came, kind of quickly sounded even more urgent. You know, it's getting near the end of the month, we have to have a proper accounting for these things. Let us know you need to give us information now. Every effort must be taken to account for this jelly, and the Colonel just disregarded it. Well, the third facts came right on the heels of that, which said either you find the jelly or else, and the Colonel quickly dropped what he was doing, wrote out a factual quick, and said, I can either kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, or I can find 400 cases of jelly. Which do you want me to do? And he put the issue where it needed to be put. What's more important here? Carrying out this military maneuver or accounting for 400 cases of jelly. 400 cases of jelly may be good, but it's not best. Every day of our lives, we make decisions about what we're going to do, and a lot of us stay in the realm of trying to choose between good and bad, and we think we're doing okay because we're choosing mostly good, but we're not choosing best. Did you know that studies show that productivity in the workplace is down because workers spend too much time surfing the web, forwarding mass emails, and idle chit chat in other people's offices, rather than doing their work? That ought never to be true of a Christian. That's a choice between what's good and what's best. Now, there may not be anything wrong with those emails, or man, there may not be anything wrong with idle chit chat necessarily, but it's not what you're being paid to do. And as a Christian, your testimony is at stake for giving an honest day's work for what your employer's paying you for. And so choose best, not just what's good, choose best, in entertainment choices, and all the rest. Some of us are settling for maybe that which is good, but we're spending way too much time in front of the television, or watching movies, or doing other things, other activities that may be good in and of themselves, but they're beginning to become so controlling that they are awake in our lives, and they're keeping us out of church, and they're keeping us away from the things of God, and they're keeping us from pursuing that which is best in life. So we've got to make some choices, and Paul's praying for the discernment to make choices about what's best in life. What counts most for eternity? Now I've pounded that nail pretty hard, so I want to give a little bit of balance here. Please don't misunderstand me, don't become legalistic or driven with this. I am not saying that every moment you are awake has to be filled with some kind of spiritual or ministry activity, or you're not choosing the best things in life, and your Christianity is suspect. I'm not saying that. I think we need to remember that God even told his people in the Old Testament, take three weeks out of the year, take a bunch of food with you, go to Jerusalem, worship, but just have a great time. Feast, eat with your family, enjoy yourself together. Three weeks out of the year, he told them to do that. He told them to take one day a week and rest. Not do any work, rest. And so there's a balance here of how to make best choices. It's not that every moment needs to be filled with reading your Bible and praying and witnessing to somebody, or you're not doing anything good, or best. No, it's not that. To have a well-rounded balanced life, it means that we include those other things as well. In fact, those at times may be the best choices to make you more productive and more effective in living for Christ, more healthy, and living for Him and so forth. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to sit down with a good book and enjoy that book. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just spend some time enjoying your family. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to sit down and watch a West Virginia ballgame. You see, that's choosing the best over the good. If you just choose good, you watch Virginia Tech. If you choose best, you're... No, I'm just teasing, just joking. Just joking there. That's the kind of comment that we'll get both A-mins and O-mys. So just joking. But you see, there are choices like that all the time in life. Choose what is best, not just what's good, not just what I can get by with. This is not evil, so it's okay. But as growing Christians, we need to increasingly have the kind of discernment that says, I will focus my time and energy on things that will count most for eternity and will not be weights that just kind of hold me down and keep me from growing in Christ. Paul prays for us and he wants for us good discernment. Thirdly, verse 10, he wants for us genuine lives, genuine lives. Verse 10 again says, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ. Pure and blameless until the day of Christ. What he's talking about there is living a genuine life. No hypocrisy, but living genuine, godly lives, genuine lives. Now the first word there uses two words. He says, I want you to be pure and I want you to be blameless until the day of Christ, the day when Jesus comes back to take us home to heaven, we'll be with him. Until that time, we are to be pure and blameless. The word pure has to do with our living, our genuine life toward God, has to do with our relationship toward God. Now let's examine that word pure and understand exactly what Paul's talking about here. It's a Greek word that means literally to be tested by light and revealed to be genuine and it has to do with character relationship with God that we are unmixed, that there is no mixture of sin, but we are pure in our walk with God. If you have a King James version, you'll have the word sincere there. Now back when the King James was translated, 400 years ago or so, the word sincere meant basically what our word pure does today. It meant unmixed. Today, when we hear the word sincere, we think of somebody who just says good intentions. You know, and that really is not the meaning of the word here. Paul is not saying be sincere in the sense that just do whatever you do with good intentions, you know, doesn't matter what it is. Now, the word sincere back in 1611 was a good word to communicate this idea of purity. In fact, it came from two Latin words, sinne, sera. You see, in those days, back in Roman days and Greek days, if pottery cracked in the firing process, if they've got a little crack in the pottery, they would fill it with wax and then they would glaze over it like the rest of the pot or whatever and they would sell it. Nobody knew the difference. So some vendors began to say, I want people to know that my pottery is good. It's good quality. It's excellent. It's unmixed. It's pure. And so they began to market sinne sera without wax. And if you doubted that claim, you could take that piece of pottery and you could hold it up to the light of the sun. And oftentimes, the light of the sun would reveal beyond that wax a crack in the pottery. And so you would know whether or not you got a crack pot or not or a good pot. And so there were vendors who would say, I don't want people to know, I don't sell crack pots, I sell good pots. And so sinne sera without wax. In other words, this is genuine. This is the real thing. It's not harmed or cracked in any way. And that's exactly what Paul is talking about. Our lives ought to be in reality as they appear to others. In other words, your walk with God should be sincere whether or not anybody sees it. Whether or not anybody can hold you up to the light and examine you. And if they are able to do that through the light of God's Word, they would see that there are no cracks that you are without guile, as Jesus said to Nathaniel in John 1. You are without any inner deceit or hidden sin. You are genuine in your life toward God. We ought to be honest, pure, not hypocrites, not putting on a show, a glaze to cover up the cracks underneath. What we are in private with God ought to be what we are everywhere else. It ought to be real, ought to be genuine. That's exactly what Paul is communicating with this word pure. Someone saw Robert Redford walk through, actor, Robert Redford, walk through a lobby in a hotel one day. It was a woman who saw him and she ran after him, caught up with him about the time he got to the elevator. And as he was getting on the elevator, she said, are you the real Robert Redford? And as the elevator doors closed, he said, only when I am alone. You think about that answer for a minute. Only when I am alone. Am I the real John King? Only when I am alone? Or am I real when I am up here or when I am with others? When I am with my family, when I am ministering to other people, is what you see, what you get then, the same as what God sees, alone with him. That's what Paul is talking about. Pure, unmixed, no hypocrisy. Back in 1996, probably the best college quarterback was enrolling in his senior year at University of Florida. His name was Danny Wurfel. He was an All-American that year. And before the season started, he had been named to the All-American team by Playboy magazine. They always choose an All-American football team before the season ever starts, a preseason All-American football team. And Danny Wurfel turned down the award, would not show up for the presentation, gave a public statement that he would not accept it, would not recognize it. And here's what he said. He said, I don't want to be identified in any way with that magazine. There are too many immoral, evil connotations with that magazine. I just don't want to be identified with it in any way. I don't want to even want to receive a reward from them. And here's the reason why Danny Wurfel was an outspoken Christian, had a great testimony for Christ. He was a member of a good Bible-believing church in Gainesville, while he was all the way through college. He spoke in true love, weight, conferences, and other youth conferences. And he wanted to make sure that no one could damage his testimony by saying he was in any way affiliated publicly with something like that. So he would not even receive a reward from them, even though it was just a name, a name award, you know, show up at a presentation. I want to, don't want to endorse that kind of thing at all, he said. Now there's a person who at least as far as we know, and I don't know his life, like God would know his life and heart, as far as we know, tried to live a consistent, unhypocritical, genuine life before God. Pure life before God. But Paul says, my prayer for you is not only that you be genuine in your relationship with God, I want you to be genuine also toward man. Not just toward God, but toward man. He says that you may be pure and blameless, blameless until the day of Christ. The word blameless is a word that's used only one other time in the New Testament. It's a word that can be used a couple different ways, but it's only used one other time in the New Testament. It can mean if you have a King James Version, you have the word without offense. And sometimes this Greek word can be used in the active sense of causing someone else to stumble or to offend them. That's the way it's used, for instance, in 1 Corinthians 1032. It's only other use in the New Testament. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks, or the Church of God. So it can mean living such a way that you don't cause other people to stumble, but it can also mean in a more passive sense, don't live in such a way that causes yourself to stumble, that you are not stumbling yourself. That's the idea here in Philippians 1. And so the reason the NIV chose the word blameless is because of that concept. It's the concept of living a blameless life. Not only do I not want to live in a way that would cause someone else to stumble in to sin, I want to live a blameless life before others that will not bring reproach upon my testimony, that will not create a stumbling for me, either both are true. And the Bible says that we should live in such a way that we are not living hypocritically, hypocrisy, putting on a sham, a front, a glaze over the cracks in front of other people. It hurts other people that it also hurts you. It hurts your testimony. When people find out who you really are, what you really like, it hurts your testimony. And so Paul says, my prayer for you is that you will be blameless. Your walk with God will be pure. Your walk with others will be blameless. Your testimony will be clear and pure and blameless in front of other people. So Paul says, my prayer for you, a growing love, good discernment, genuine lives, no hypocrisy. But he says one other thing, I'd like to pray for you and I want for you. And that is godly conduct, look at verse 11. Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. Now remember this is a prayer, he said in verse 9, this is my prayer for you, I want you to be filled with the fruit of righteousness. Okay, now that's what godliness is. The fruit of righteousness, there's a very wonderful word picture or metaphor here, the fruit of righteousness. He uses the word fruit because fruit is that which is produced by the indwelling energy of a living organism. That's a kind of a technical definition of fruit. But you get the picture, don't you? Fruit is that which is produced by the indwelling energy or life of an organism. How do you get apples from the store? Yeah, yeah. But where do apples come from? They come from apple trees, right? There is an indwelling life within that tree that automatically produces fruit. An apple tree produces apples. How do you get oranges? Off an orange tree, right? There's an indwelling life and energy in that tree which produces fruit. So what he's saying here is the fruit of a true believer, one through whom the life of Christ is living, one through whom the Holy Spirit is working. There's an inner life here that is real. You have new life, you're born again, you're regenerated. The normal, the normal fruit of that will be righteousness. If you have the life of Jesus Christ in you, it will produce fruit and that fruit will be righteousness. In other words, right living, godly living, Christ-like actions. Paul's prayer is that they be filled with that, that their whole life be characterized by Christ-like living. Now, that's what godliness is. How does godliness develop? Well, how godliness develops is in the next phrase, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. Okay, it is the inner life of Jesus Christ in us. He does it through us. He's the one that produces the fruit. In fact, Jesus himself said, I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit and he will abide with you forever. In fact, he will indwell you. He told his disciples. And the indwelling life and control of the Holy Spirit in us produces fruit. The Bible even tells us what that fruit is going to look like. What kind of righteous acts will be true in our lives if we are under the control of the Holy Spirit? You're familiar with it, aren't you? A lot of you are Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23. Tell us the fruit of the Holy Spirit's life and energy through us. The fruit of the Spirit is, and he lists nine qualities of character, all of which could be considered righteousness. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, generalist, self-control. Those nine character qualities are a summary of righteousness. That's righteous living. That's Christ-like living right there in a brief description, nine character qualities. Now there are other passages that give other character qualities and so forth, but these nine are fruit. They're the fruit of the indwelling life of the Holy Spirit in us that produces Christ-like character. And as you live each day, and you ask the Holy Spirit to be in complete control of your life, which means you're going to be very sensitive about sin, you're going to confess sin, you're going to be yielding yourself to whatever the Spirit of God wants, and to the Word of God, and obedience to Him. All of those things are involved in the filling of the Spirit, the control of the Spirit, when you are under His control, this kind of fruit is going to come out of your life. Just like an apple is going to come out of an apple tree, and an orange is going to come out of an orange tree. If there is indwelling the life there that is controlling your behavior, that's what it's going to look like. That's what your life's going to impolice is. I'm praying that your whole life will be filled with that kind of fruit, the fruit which is righteousness, and it comes through Christ through his indwelling life, and then here is the importance of godliness. Why is godliness important? Into the verse, to the glory and praise of god. Godliness is important so that we glorify god, and we praise him, and we cause others to praise him. You know what it really means to glorify god? We can't do anything that adds to his glory, which is kind of the word that summarizes all of his magnificence, his majesty, all of his attributes. We can't do anything to add to that. When the Bible talks about us glorifying god, it's talking about taking that which is true of god and making it visible in this world. You see, we're like a reflecting mirror that takes what is god and what he's doing in our lives, and we reflect it through our character, through the fruit of righteousness, and other people see what god is like, that glorifies god. It shows him to other people. That's how we glorify him. Glorify him is not just praising him. Glorifying him is showing what he's like to other people in your life. That's what it means to glorify god. And when we do that, that brings praise to god. That causes us to praise him. When we see other people affected for righteousness, it causes other people to praise him as well. You know what Jesus said in Matthew 5? Let other people see your good works, and they will glorify your father, which is in heaven. See, they will be led to praise him as well, and then reflect his glory as they become more like Christ themselves. So the result of this and why it's so important is it enables us to represent god well in this world and to really praise him with our lives. The fruit of righteousness, godly conduct enables us to do that. Now, think about it for a moment. Back off of this passage, and let's get the big picture again. This is what Paul wanted for the Philippians. This is what he prayed for. A growing love, good discernment, genuine lives, godly conduct. That's what he prayed for. That's what he wanted for these people. That's what god wants for you. So I would suggest the best thing you can pray for yourself and for your children. God, help us to have a growing love. A love that is willing to give sacrificially, not selflessly, not with personal agendas, not for what we'll get out of it, but to be like you in giving sacrificially for the good of other people, other people, our family, other believers, the lost. Help us to have that kind of growing love, Lord. And then, Lord, help us to have good discernment, help us to make the choices in life that count most for eternity, so that we're living in a way that has the most significant impact for eternity we can have. And we're not just trying to figure out how to stay away from evil, but we're trying to figure out how to do the best in life, Lord, help us to have that kind of character. And then, Lord, help me and help my children to live genuine lives, to be pure before you and to be blameless before others, to live unhypocritically, genuinely, godly. And then, Lord, please help us to exhibit your righteousness, godly conduct to other people, so that we will really glorify you and reflect you well in this world, and so that others will be caused to praise you. I would suggest that's the best prayer you can pray for yourself and for your kids. The good may be good life, good health, good job, all those things. That may be good. It's not the best. It's not the best. The best is to have the kind of character that will please God, that will honor him and that will cause your life to count the most for eternity. Pray that, pray that for yourself and for your family. Let's pray together. Father, we would pray that even now for us, as we focus upon what your word has revealed to us this morning, we want to be people of growing love for each other and for you. Father, we want to be people who make best choices in life, have good discernment how to make our lives count the most for eternity. Lord, we desire to be people whose lives are genuine. Deliver us from our tendency which is born in us to live hypocritically, to put on a show for people and not to really be godly ourselves. Pray, Father, for genuine lives, and I pray that we will exhibit the fruit of our lives which is righteousness, Christ-like character. I pray that for me, Lord, I pray for a growing awareness and ability to live that way and I pray that for each one listening to me this morning. I pray that we will truly hear your word and become more like you in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.