Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <silence>
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Well, welcome. It's, it's your first time here. I hope that you've had a chance to say hi to somebody, and please, uh, come up afterwards. I'd love to meet you afterwards if, um, if it's your first time here especially, or if we haven't met, my name is Dean Annon and I'm the discipleship pastor here, so I'd love to meet you afterwards. Well, last week we finished our section on Leviticus in Priests, and that was chapters eight, chapters nine chapters 10 in our series on Leviticus. And what we did, and what we saw was that our God is holy and our God is holy. And we say that all the time because he is holy, holy, holy. And yet he loves us so much sinful people that he has made and done everything possible to dwell with us. And so he's given us, we saw high priests for mediation, the covering of our sins through blood sacrifice, all of that.
Speaker 1 00:00:57 And we also know that Jesus Christ is our high priest, the one and final and perfect sacrifice. So we saw all of that, talked about that during our Leviticus and Priest series so far. We're gonna take a little break and then come back to Leviticus a little later. We're gonna take a break for four weeks and talk about discernment, four weeks on discernment. And why discernment? Well, our elders, they get together regularly, as you know, do about the business of the church. But they are prayer warriors. They pray for us all the time. And one of the things they do is they ask questions, and they ask questions like this, what does village Church really need moving forward? And discernment came up. But isn't that, maybe to some of you a little bit obvious, we need discernment? Of course, we need discernment. Wherever we turn today, our intellectual understandings, truth things we think we even know, our faith is sometimes literally just being tested, isn't it?
Speaker 1 00:01:51 Maybe twisted at every turn. That's what it feels like. You know, our, our, our churches can be stained, can be stained by, by old lies, sometimes that have maybe new names or, or maybe different faces or new angles. And it's like these lies seem to be seeping all over the place and even seeping in sometimes like a cracked sewage pipe. Sorry for that analogy, <laugh>. But it's, if we're not la, if we're lazy as a church, if we don't do the work that we need to do, we can be twisted. Also, why else? The sermon? Because in our culture today, there's an all you can eat buffet.
Speaker 1 00:02:29 I know that looks good, but there's more <laugh> around us. There are a lot of opinions out there today, and there's a lot more out there for us to choose from, to stuff our faces with, frankly. And some of these things are good, and they, they are good, but a lot of these things just aren't. If you look underneath or if you look what's in the ingredients, you're gonna see things that are poisonous. You're gonna see things that are, are toxic. And not everything on your plate is good. So don't put all those things on your plate. You know, apostle Paul, he wrote to the church at Thessalonika, and he said this, and I'm gonna read starting at, at verse 16, but you'll have one Thessalonians 5 21 up there. Rejoice always the apostle Paul says, pray without ceasing, give thanks. In all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Speaker 1 00:03:16 Do not quench the spirit. And then he says, do not despise prophecies. Now, in verse 21, he says this, but test everything. Hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil. And then he writes the church at Roman. He says this, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God that is good, what is good and acceptable and perfect. You see those words, test and discern. Don't just accept what's being said. Churches. These were good churches, by the way. These were good churches, healthy churches, and we were being commanded. And the apostle Paul is commanding them these healthy churches, and they're being told to do this, to test and to validate what is true. That's what they're being, they're being, uh, told to do.
Speaker 1 00:04:07 And to learn what is pleasing to the Lord and to examine everything at whole fast to what is good. And they're being reminded then that some things are true and some things are not true. We need the sermon just like they needed it. We need the sermon today too. So what I'll be doing is picking through that passage we just saw read a little bit ago, Philippians versus one, or sorry, Philippians one, verses nine through 11. That'll be our, our primary passage today. And the apostle Paul here is showing us that discernment is a key to love and a Christian maturity. And in the following weeks, we're gonna pick apart discernment and keep going on with three more sermons. One is on how to discern God's will, another will be discerning our heart motives, and finally, discerning demonic spirits. So our big idea today is this sermon unlocks a believer's growth in love and character.
Speaker 1 00:05:11 We're gonna see abounding love in this passage, abounding love. Paul's gonna talk about that. We're gonna see, uh, growth of Christian character, all of this because, or as a result of discernment. And so we're gonna see a link between knowledge, between genuine spiritual truth and discernment. This discernment into God's ways. And this is what allows our love to grow. It's as if, uh, Christians love and character are unlocked through discernment. And so let me read then all three verses. Once again, Philippians one, nine through 11 says this, and it is my prayer. The apostle Paul here is praying for the church at Philippi, 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.
Speaker 1 00:06:13 So with that, I'm take a few minutes before we get to that passage and into that passage and just talk for a little while about discernment. Hopefully that's gonna help us as we get into this, uh, little series here. I wanna set up, uh, in a moment there'll be a basic definition, but for right now, I just wanna seed some things in our brain help us navigate in Proverbs, when it talks about discernment, it talks about it this way. It, it, it conveys the idea of the capacity to truly understand something beyond the superficial level. Also, in proverbs, when it, when it talks or conveys the idea of discernment, it talks about this, this gaining genuine perceptiveness. And if we move into the New Testament and start talking about this word discernment, there's these helpful words. That's what I call 'em, helpful words that come through in the New Testament as we talk about discernment.
Speaker 1 00:07:04 And we'll put that on the screen. And it's words like this, distinguish, separate, examine, test, discriminate, and determine by diligent research. It's these kind of helpful words that help us understand what, um, what discernment is. But if you look at those words, I get tired reading them <laugh>, there's a lot there. There's a lot there. Maybe when you're looking at it, you're thinking, boy, that takes a lot, a lot of work. You remember, uh, some of you have already been through high school, some of you haven't maybe been to high school yet, but in high school or maybe for some of you it was college. You remember these things.
Speaker 1 00:07:45 Remember what these note cards, I dunno if they're still used at all today. <laugh> note cards. I remember when I was in high school and they did this to us in college too. God bless them. We, we did research papers. And when we did research papers, many times for my teachers, what they made us do is we would have to do sometimes be 50 and a hundred note cards first before we even began writing. Anybody else have to do anything like that? Where you had to come up with no cards, no cards, no cards. What did we put on 'em? We put fact after fact after fact. Main points, main points, sub points, some points, more facts than footnotes and footnotes and footnotes till it was coming outta your ear. It was a lot of work, wasn't it? And sometimes you'd have a stack, depending on what the research paper was, you have a stack this big.
Speaker 1 00:08:24 I remember sometimes I had close to about a hundred of these things and I had teachers that would actually grade your note cards. Ah, it's crazy, but <laugh> a lot of work. But when you did the work and then began writing your research paper, it was more smooth. It went forward. And hopefully you got back a good grade and it was worth it. It was so worth it. And God wants us to work. That's what the sermon is. It's work. Because when we do, we're gonna find the truth of God. We're gonna find joy in the blessings of knowing him. And that's the sermon. It takes work to find his truth and all those benefits that go with it. And it's beautiful. The word of God says this in Hebrews four 12, I'll just read it for you. For the word of God is living inactive, sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing to the division of the soul and of spirit of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Speaker 1 00:09:23 Lemme give a basic definition now for what we'll use and we'll be, we'll be tweaking this a little bit probably in the weeks to come. But discernment is the ability to test and to rightly determine what's happening under the surface. In other words, what is right? But it takes work. We gotta go deep. We gotta look deep. It's beyond, I mentioned before, beyond the superficial level. That's what sermon is. It's the ability to see something for what it really is. But it's also the ability to determine right from wrong, good, from evil, and even nuance. There's this idea of nuancing truth, to understand what is really there, what God would have for us. By nuancing, I mean nuancing. And because things aren't always as black and white as we seem. The sermon answers this question. And this might be, this might be easier for some folks, it's easier for me.
Speaker 1 00:10:17 What is really going on? Every question. I mean, sorry. Every Christian should be asking this question, what's really going on? I know the world sometimes can be confusing. There's so many things that seem like a little off and the reason things, yeah. Yeah, that's not supposed to be us. Okay? Just so <laugh>, I'm clear here. That's not what Christians do. Things seem to be a little off sometimes in our culture because they probably are, you know, as, as a Christian, we don't stick our heads in the sand. We look into things like science, politics, education, cultural things, the Bible and what it says. And we try to understand what's being taught out there. Why? Because we're not about that. How can we love a world if we're doing that? How can we love this world? Our passage in Philippians mentions these words. These are some big key words for us today.
Speaker 1 00:11:09 Knowledge and all discernment. You know, knowledge is knowing what something is. Discernment I talked about that already is knowing what's, what's, what's good, right? Or bad after we do the work. Wisdom is the application of this knowledge. And sermon shows our character. And I have an illustration, it's probably not the greatest one, but maybe you can think of one better. It says, knowledge, I should say, starts this way. Knowledge says that traffic light is red, but sermon comes along and says, I have determined that lights are good. And it's an appropriate measure to obey because after you've taken time to think it through the basic facts, you see that you and I, we really need something outside of ourselves to help regulate our speeds and to stop and to not create chaos and accident after accident after we've nuanced it. So the sermon has a lot of words, right? <laugh>, sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. But then wisdom comes along and says, stop that light is red.
Speaker 1 00:12:09 That's a simple example. I know it's very simple in the real world, sometimes it's a little more tough and takes more work. A discerning mind demonstrates wisdom that goes beyond what's seen and beyond what we hear. One last thing on discernment, and then we'll get to our passage. So there's a question when we talk about spiritual things and going deep in the truth and things of the spiritual realm, the question is this, can someone who doesn't know Christ as their Lord and Savior have this kind of discernment that I'm talking about? Now, generally, I would answer no, I'll tell you why in a moment based on scripture. But then when we specifically think about it, we know that the Holy Spirit can do what the Holy Spirit will do, and the Holy Spirit will give what he determines to give to people, uh, to move forward to even know Him.
Speaker 1 00:13:03 I would say, to know the God of the Bible. So I just suppose there's a limited degree, but let me just back up a little bit here and stand on a little safer ground for a minute. I'm gonna look at what the Apostle Paul says when it comes to this. I'm gonna lean on one Corinthians two 14 and we'll put it up there for you. It says this, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for their folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The natural person here is still someone who's, who's still hasn't yet received Christ as their savior, someone who hasn't trusted yet in Christ for salvation. And so what the apostle Paul is getting at is that the spirit of God is needed to know and deeply discern this knowledge and this truth that we're talking about.
Speaker 1 00:13:54 It's like this. It's like you're in a deep, deep, dark force and maybe you're, and you're lost. You've been dropped in, and you have no reference point. You have no idea where you are, and you don't have the knowledge, you don't have the tools to get out. It's too deep, it's too dark. And maybe you're there today, maybe spiritually, maybe you're there today. Maybe you feel what I'm talking about this map that you and I need is the word of God. The compass is the Holy Spirit, which always points us the right way out no matter what. And we need both. It takes the Holy Spirit. You know, the theologians call this illumination and illumination is just the Holy Spirit under helping us understand the Bible. Why? Well, because the Bible is God's revelation. It's, it's God's breathed ideas to us specifically. And so we need the spirit of God to help us go deep and to understand we need the map, the Bible.
Speaker 1 00:14:51 We need the compass, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit always points us true north, true north. Every time when we use that compass, it's the spirit of God. And even if we're off by a few degrees, you might know this, if you've ever done, done this, if you're off by a few degrees and a compass, you're gonna be a long way off from where you intended to go. The Holy Spirit is given to all people who believe in Jesus for salvation. All people who've asked Jesus specifically for forgiveness of their sins and believe in his death, his resurrection, the spirit of God comes at that moment of salvation. And so when we are in dwelt with the Holy Spirit, we have the tools, we have to map the word of of God, and we have the compass to point us the right way every time. And this is what it takes to begin that journey, to go deep, to understand the truth of God, his truth, and to be able to discern.
Speaker 1 00:15:49 But to really grow in love and character and Christian maturity, we need a sermon. So let me put that big idea up there again, discernment unlocks a believer's growth, a love and in character. So Philippians, chapter one, there we are, Philippians chapter, chapter one. I wanna talk just a moment about Philippians chapter one. If you haven't been in Philippians, maybe, maybe ever. This is Paul writing to the church at Philippi. It was, the church was doing well, it was great. This is a very personal and pastoral letter for Paul. He loves these people. I mean, you could see that even at the beginning. In in chapter one, verse three, he says he's thankful. In verse four, he says, he's filled with joy or joyful, regardless of the fact. If you're skimming forward there, look at verse seven in chapter one of Philippians <laugh>, he's in prison.
Speaker 1 00:16:40 And Paul wrote several of these letters from prison. But why then Paul? Paul, are you crazy? No, Paul's not crazy. Paul's happy. Why is he happy? In verse five, it says, we'll put it on the screen because of your, so this is the apostle Paul talking to the Church of Flip by because of your church partnership in the gospel from the first until day until now. So this entire letter sits under this one fact. And the one fact that he's so overjoyed that they, the church of lit by are partners with him in the gospel at the 10,000 foot level. This is what makes him so, so happy. And he's thanking God in verse three. He's thanking God for it, for this partnership in the gospel. But then we get to verse nine, and in verse nine, he's praying for them a little more context, adding verse six, now to the mix, verse six, it says, this is Paul writing still to the church.
Speaker 1 00:17:38 I am sure of this. He's talking about them. That he who began a good work in you, meaning God will bring it to completion at the day of Christ, at the day of Jesus Christ. Paul knows God is working in them, in the Philippian church to grow them. That's the point. Paul knows God will grow them. That's what it means when it says good work in you and bring it to completion. When will God's uh work be finished here when Christ comes again? That's what it means when it says at the day of Christ Jesus. So the apostle Paul is a hundred percent sure. He's just sure that the church will flip by. They're going to grow in that good work because two reasons. One, the sovereignty of God. He knows God is in charge and the Holy Spirit is in those believers. And the Holy Spirit will grow them, will sanctify them, is the Bible word for it will be, they will be sanctified. But there's something else here. It's not just that the church is required to work, there is human responsibility involved here. We must cooperate with God in this sanctification process, not sitting on our hands. Christians are never called to sit on our hands. We're called to get out, to work, to do, and we practice. That's an important word today. We practice intelligent and discerning love.
Speaker 1 00:19:00 It's an ongoing process, this spiritual growth. It's an ongoing process. It doesn't stop. It always keeps moving forward for these virtues that Paul's gonna talk about and did talk about in these passages or this passage. Today, we're gonna see that it takes practicing discernment. Those are two words I like to put together, practicing discernment, because it's something we do, we practice. It's not a one time deal. We keep doing it. So what's the emphasis in practicing discernment in chapter one verses nine through 11. It's growing love. Verse nine says this,
Speaker 1 00:19:38 And it's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. And so if the Philippians love abounded, meaning like a cup, that's what this, these words here mean. Like, uh, this imagery is like a cup overflowing or like, uh, river banks overflowing. If it's that kind of love church that you have, then you'll be on your way to Christian maturity. It's this growing love not stagnant. And this more and more, uh, in the original language is more still more and more. It means it doesn't stop. It's unceasing. It goes on and on. And this is the starting place for Paul's prayer. And that's love that love's that, that Greek term. If you've been in the Bible for a while, or maybe you've been in church for a while, maybe most of your life, you know that, that Greek word agape love, you've probably heard of that before and before.
Speaker 1 00:20:29 It's that sacrificial love. It's that, that beautiful selfless love for the others'. Good. That's the love here that, that Paul is using. We see this in Christ. He's our model. We see it on the cross his life, what he has done for us in every single way. He's not talking about brotherly love. He's not talking to a sisterly love, though all that's good. He's not talking about a sentimental feeling. Agape love is moral, selfless, sacrificial, faithful. It's a committed act of the will that benefits someone else. Think of it as a doing love. You're doing what's good for others, not for ourselves. What's good for others. That's agape love. That's the kind of love he's talking about here. It doesn't preclude feelings. I mean, they're, they're there, right? Uh, agape love does good for, for others, even when those other people don't care about you, you're, you're still doing good to them. God's agape love is unmerited. It's gracious, it's beautiful. It benefits others. The Apostle John writes this, and I'll just read it for you. This is in one John, uh, three 16 says this, this is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1 00:21:49 Agape love can describe our love for other people, but it also can describe our love for God to Pastor John Piper. He, he wrote this once, uh, what makes a person is what they love. And the closest fellowship is when we love the same thing. You'll see friendships from, uh, form over basketball, teams fishing, other common interests, but nothing he says compares to Jesus Christ and the gospel. What's the point here? The point here is that we are only as close to one another as to the measure of what we love and if we love the same thing. And so the question is, do we love God? And I mean, do we love the God of the Bible? Do we love the gospel? Do we love his gospel? The Bible's gospel, the truth, loving a God that is not in the Bible, loving a God different from the Bible, loving truth that is not of God only separates us as a church.
Speaker 1 00:22:53 So the apostle Paul here is really happy because this church was partnering with him in the gospel, in the truth of the gospel and in this universe, the greatest possible fellowship we could ever have is being partners together in the gospel based on the gospel and his love. But it takes love. It takes love, it takes love for God and love for others to do that. So I'm gonna do something a little different. We're gonna put this passage back on the screen here in a moment. And for this abounding love, this is a prayer, right? Abounding love of the church to happen. What I'm gonna do is look at and paraphrase these three verses backwards because Paul wants this love to explode it. We're gonna see discerning what is best based on truth. We're gonna see the pure and blameless that comes when we do that. Then the church will grow spiritually and we're gonna see this love, that love will abound. Lemme look at it backwards then starting in verse 11, at the very end it says this,
Speaker 1 00:24:02 Paul reminds them, uh, that this is all for what it says, the glory and the praise of God. That's what this is for His glory, his praise through what? Through Jesus, so that they can be filled with this fruit of righteousness. You see that which is for God's glory. But how does that come? How do we get that? Well, it comes as we prepare ourselves. It says, for Christ's return, the second coming, because he's coming back, don't forget that church. He's coming back. So we're to prepare ourselves where they are. It says in this verse, pure and blameless, prepare yourselves to be pure and blameless for Christ's return. But what's the path to get there, Paul? We keep working backwards in this verse. Verse 10, the church needs to do some work. There's that word again. We need to do some work. The work of what, approving what is excellent. And that what that really means is to test, to determine what is best. That's what those words mean. In other words, an intelligent appraisal of reality, which is the sermon. Then back in verse nine, then this, this prayer Paul has for their love to abound. It says, more and more will be the reality and the gospel will continue to go out. Alright? So the sermon here is a, is a key for Paul. I said that before and but there's this critical phrase with knowledge and all discernment. Let's focus on that. So in verse nine,
Speaker 1 00:25:28 We have the proper environment for love to grow. In verse nine, we have the qualifiers that are needed that I just mentioned for love to grow. And we have the fertilizer, if that helps you a little bit. <laugh>, we have the fertilizer for love to grow and their knowledge and discernment. This is what we need. Mature Christian Love is an intelligent love. It's a test love. It takes digging deeper. It takes going beneath the surface to see what's right, what's wrong. All the above. Knowledge and discernment, as Paul says, it's not based on feelings. Um, but there are feelings, right? We have feelings. It doesn't originate from feelings, but it's cheered on by feelings for sure.
Speaker 1 00:26:15 The agape love that I'm talking about is this kind of love that's historically accurate. It's based on the Bible, it's led by the spirit of God, and it is the true truth. Agape love comes from this genuine spiritual knowledge based in the word of God, the experience, discernment, as I mentioned, some of your translations, if you read the Bible, might say these words, depth of insight. But this is what it takes to really love God and love others the way he intends. Alright, let me give a, uh, a thought on loving without discernment. This is a negative example.
Speaker 1 00:26:55 Loving and serving a lie will destroy you. It'll destroy relationships. It will help nobody, and it will hurt your soul every single time it play. It's played out in so many different ways. Maybe practically, maybe you're loving a, a, a boyfriend that does not love you, maybe wants to hurt you. Maybe there's a, a substance, an addiction that has you for some reason your soul's attached or maybe you even love it. That's, there's nothing there unhealthy at every turn. As Christians, we have to be careful. We have to be careful to not carelessly throw our love around or to attach ourselves or just serve something like agape loves something that that can't either love you back or is based on a lie. Instead, what we're being told in this passage is to love what Christ loves, what is true and what is right. On the positive side though, you know, if if you wanna love someone, then you get to know them, right?
Speaker 1 00:28:00 Get to know them. And ignorant love is no love at all. I didn't wanna say this, but I just wanna pick on. Husbands like me for a minute. <laugh>, we need to know our wives to love them. We need to ask questions. We need to get beneath the surface and love them. If you have a good friend and you want to love them, whoever your good friend is, you get to know them. That's how you love them. And then show them agape love. So if you're pursuing love, we go deep in God's word to understand that, to know him, to know others, and discern there's the most basic elements. I'm gonna put it this way on a slide for you. The most basic elements I can think of is love. According to this passage, our knowledge and sermon. If we take away either one of those, our love will not grow.
Speaker 1 00:28:47 Remember this, um, discernment unlocks a believers growth in love and character. All right, verse nine and 10. Verse 10 and 11, move a little quicker here. Verse 10 and 11, the results of a growing love. You'll see where it says, so that you may approve what is excellent. In verse 10, approve is about this idea of testing by trial. And what is excellent means, what is best? So what we're doing here is we're we're testing by trial. What is best? Because love has constraints. I've just been, I've been mentioning that to us, right? There's some constraints around around love here. We just don't go do and serve anything and say that's love or that's good. Uh, Christians, we don't approve of what's immoral, what's evil, what's wrong. But Christians love this idea of approving what is excellent. We scrutinize notice. I never said we're unkind.
Speaker 1 00:29:45 Notice I I didn't say we beat people over the head with bibles, right? We love people. The kindness and most gentleness people in this world should be, I would hope Christians, but why do I say all this? Why do I talk about these constraints of what we can love? What we shouldn't love is because we're tempted. And I'm saying this about myself, and it's probably true for some of you that we become tempted in this culture, tempted to, to go along with maybe, uh, to tolerate and, and more than that, maybe give thumbs up to things and, and maybe it happens at Thanksgiving time. Maybe it happens in your own family. We get that right? We should never be argumentative. We should not be unkind at any time. But sometimes we're tempted to just go along. But God doesn't want that for us. In Revelation chapter two, Jesus makes us really clear, he's addressing this issue.
Speaker 1 00:30:39 There's a church, uh, th is the name of the church. And he writes this in Revelation chapter two, verse 19. He starts out, this is great. It sounds like this church is doing great. Jesus says this, I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance. This sounds great, and that your latter works exceed the first. Okay, sounds so good. But then we get to verse 20 and verse 20 says, this is Jesus speaking. Remember, but I have this against you. This is the church at TTY that you tolerate. That woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrifice to idol. Now, Jezebel probably wasn't her real name here, it was a real woman at this time in this church, but it was probably referring back to Jezebel from the Old Testament who was, uh, who was leading people into adultery, adultery, and idolatry and all of that.
Speaker 1 00:31:33 But the big problem here is that thy Tyra was tolerating sin, the false teaching and the immoral behavior. And God hates that, loves people, but hates this. It says, if Jesus was saying this to that church, church, you're loving in many ways, but your tolerance is not love. No tolerance isn't love. It's actually unfaithfulness to God. So based on our knowledge and discernment, we approve what is best. But if we do that, what happens? Paul's gonna talk about more here of what happens. Well, according to verse 10, there's more here. What happens is our characters changed. We start growing up in our faith, we become, it says pure and blameless for the day of Christ. And the day of Christ means for when Jesus is coming back. That's all that means. And are you ready for Christ's return? I was talking to my wife last night about that question. Am I ready for Christ's return? And it's funny because I have this little dialogue in my own mind as if I'm talking to God and say, God, can I give you one more day? There's a couple things I need to do. Usually it's about relationships I wanna work on or mend or maybe some sin I haven't confessed yet or whatever it is. <laugh>, I know that sounds wrong for a pastor to say that <laugh> Jesus, can you just wait, but are you ready?
Speaker 1 00:32:55 It's not enough to be saved. As Christians, we're saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. We're saved by faith in him, not by works, of course not. It's enough to be saved and to go to heaven, to be with him forever because he has covered all our sins. But we're not there yet. We're here on Earth. So it's not enough. We have something to do. What is it we have to do? We have to grow up. Christ is calling us. The apostle Paul is calling us to grow up in our love that'll bound more and more so that when our character is changed, when our character is changed in some way by God, when we love, like Christ's loved, when we live this pure and blameless life that that Paul is talking about, not pretending we're better than anybody else, but following Jesus in all ways and kindness, gentleness and goodness and agape love.
Speaker 1 00:33:49 And like in verse 11, when it says that we're filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, then you and I have something, we have a testimony. That's what we have. We have a testimony that people will see it in our eyes. They'll see it and hear it in our voices. They'll see it by what we do. We have a testimony. And that testimony then by us growing up in pure and blamelessness, we have a testimony to the world, to the truth of the gospel. <affirmative>, that's what he wants. That's a prayer, right? In verse nine, we saw that that your love may abound more and more. And this discernment, this testing and growth that goes beneath the surface to understand the real reality, what's really there? What is right? This is critical. This sermon is so critical for our love to abound. This truth-based love.
Speaker 1 00:34:40 Paul's praying for the church. This is a prayer for us. And he's teaching the church. And this is a church, a teaching for me and a teaching for us. And so in our church, if you're new here today, at the end of our sermons, we often say, so what? And by that we mean by that we mean so. So what God can you do in my life through this? What might this mean? I've been praying this week that you all, and I would take something from this. And maybe you already know what that is. Let me give us three. So what's number one is ask God for discernment today. You know, in the Bible it talks about asking for wisdom, right? That's true. But did you know that we can ask for discernment? I mean, king Solomon did. His responsibilities were huge. He knew he couldn't take on King Solomon from the Old Testament.
Speaker 1 00:35:28 He just couldn't take on the nation and everything he had to do. So he asked specifically for discernment. And I'll just read this. It's in one Kings three, nine. If you're taking notes, give your servant, this is Solomon talking. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people that I might discern between good and evil for who was able to govern this. Your great people. In Proverbs chapter two, we'll put this on the screen. There's this word insight in this passage. But insight here is the ability to discriminate, which is really our same idea as, uh, we've been talking about with discernment. Proverbs two, three says this, yes, if you call out, but call out. There is an idea of crying out. This isn't just a request, this is an idea of from the gut. God, I need this so bad. It says yes. If you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver, in other words, is it valuable to us? And search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
Speaker 1 00:36:35 Second. So what? Exercise? The muscle of discernment through learning the word of God, testing all things in practice. And so it's a, it's a muscle, it's a practice. It's something we do over and over again. It's not a one time thing. So we look at the Bible, we study the Bible, we ask questions about the Bible. We ask questions about doctrine. We go study doctrine. Maybe you need a systematic theology book, something like that. There's fun <laugh>, some of you. I I, I love it. 'cause I feel like when I'm reading systematic theology, I actually feel like I'm hearing from God and it just jazzes me every time. I hope you don't think I'm weird. I love it because sometimes I get confused. That's why I love it. And then I think, wait a minute, maybe there is something here that God does want me to know that is understandable, that I need to go a little deeper. And then I start asking questions. So we ask questions, we get confused and we ask more questions, and we read some more and ask God to grow our muscle of discernment through practice. Third, so what? Use that discernment then after you've practiced it to love others the way Christ loved the church.
Speaker 1 00:37:50 This makes me sad sometimes because sermon is not a weapon. Sometimes you find people that go deeply into the word or deeply into knowing truth. And then yet it seems like sometimes we weaponize it. We lift ourselves up into this lofty place from a place there only at that vantage point you can look down on people. That's not what discernment is. We don't weaponize discernment ever. Instead, we look to understand the things of God deeply, deeply, so that we can love sacrificially and then invite people into the family of God through love and gentleness and the truth. Paul says this in one Corinthians nine. He says, I have made myself, this is Paul. Remember, this is a, this is Apostle Paul, right? But look what he says. I have made myself a servant to all that. I might win more of them. I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessings.
Speaker 1 00:38:48 This is sacrificial love. When it says here servant to all, that's agape love. That's agape love. This passage talks about serving. If you read, the rest of it talks about serving all people from all tribes, all nations. And this is the gospel loving people so they know the gospel. So more people will be saved. Let's pray. God thank you because this feels like a lot of work. And maybe it is, but it is right and it is good God to know the knowledge of truth, to know God, who you are deeper to know what is wrong, what is right. These things, God, we don't wanna weaponize them, but we wanna love people rightly to the best way possible, God, because of your truth. So God, give us what we need today to just grow up and to grow more in our faith. Amen.
