Real Prayers for Real LifePart 8 of 9
Paul – One another (Philippians 1)
Transcript
Skip the transcript0:01 good afternoon, everyone. I haven't been to this service for a good long time, so it's good to see that you're all still here. And to change that first line from good morning everyone to good morning afternoon is great. So I want to frame our talk this morning by painting a bit of a picture which some of you might be familiar with at the moment and others have been in the past or will be in the future. I want to talk about house viewings. So Chloe, my wife, and I are kind of half in the market for a house at the moment. And it's not really a great fun place to be.
0:42 About once a week, you log on to Homes NI, thinking maybe there's something hiding on there that wasn't on Property Pal yesterday. And you set your filters and the all-important upper price limit. You hit search. You settle in for a bit of a scroll, and then you immediately go back to the upper price limit and put it up another 50,000 pounds, because I don't know why, but every single house in the country seems to have gone up by about that much in the last year. So now finally, there's a few there. So again, you settle in for a browse, and you spot a half decent one that's just about in budget, and your first thought is, well, I wonder what's wrong with that one. Basically, all the rest, though, that you've seen are like that as well. So this might be worth a wee look at.
1:32 So you go and book a viewing, and you bring along with you two people to that viewing. Your father-in-law, because, well, he's the one that will be doing more than half the work if you do ever buy it. And your daughter, because you told her that you wanted to, and she's already decided you're buying it, so she's got some decoration planning to do. Over the next half hour, as you mill around the house, you're met with two very different assessments of the same place. On the one hand, your father-in-law goes full surveyor mode. He has discovered damp in the gable wall, the roof has just five winters left in it, the boiler needs to be replaced, and everything in every room is beige, so he's going to need to repaint all that as well. But your daughter, she tells a very different story. She comes through the front door, runs up the stairs, claims the back bedroom as her own, decides where the bed's going, where the Sylvanians are going for when her friends are coming over, and the hook that your father-in-law has just labeled as a defect, well, she's pretending to hang her school bag on it and deciding what color the shoe rack that's going to sit under it is going to be.
2:42 Two people looking at the same house on the same day and seeing two very different things. And neither of them is really wrong, are they? The difference between what they see comes down to which direction they are looking at the house from. And I think as we explore this passage this morning in Philippians, this little picture can help us to understand some of what Paul says. Why he is able to see what he sees as he speaks. So let's just read the text together. Philippians chapter 1, verses 3 down to 11. The first 8 verses are kind of building up to the prayer and then the prayer itself is verses 9, 10 and 11.
3:29 Verse 3 says, I thank my God for every remembrance of you, always in every one of my prayers for all of you praying with joy, for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this. that the one who began the good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think about you all this way because I hold you in my heart. For all of you are my partners in God's grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the tender affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer. that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
4:34 Okay, so having read through that, you'll see in the screen the plan I hope to take through these verses. First of all we're going to take a look backwards and we'll see what Paul remembers when he thinks about the Philippians. Then we'll consider what he sees about them in the present and after that what he is confident God is going to do with them in the future. Once we've looked at these three directions we'll come back to the prayer itself in verses 9 to 11 and finally finish by thinking what does this all mean for us. So let's begin with what Paul remembers. And what he remembers in this at first glance can maybe seem to us as a wee bit of a rose-tinted version of the past. It's very positive, isn't it? But I think the rest of the letter helps us to see that that's not what he is doing.
5:32 He's not revising things as they're not actually. Paul knows these people. He was there when the church began. He watched as God opened Lydia's heart while she prayed beside the river. He was there when the jailer and his family came to faith. And as he spent time among these people, he came to know real human beings. People with stories and personalities, with strengths and weaknesses. People who were different from you and I in terms of when they lived and where they lived.
6:08 but not different at their core. Normal humans going about normal lives. And ever since those days, these people have remained Paul's friends and partners. They had shared in his work. They have supported him. They have continued to identify themselves with the good news that Paul traveled around the Roman Empire announcing. So every time that Paul thinks about these people, he wants them to know that he gives thanks to God for them. Every time they cross his mind, he is thankful.
6:49 That's quite something, isn't it? Because Paul is not naive about these people. You only have to read through the rest of the letter to know that he sees them for what they are. He knows how frustrating human beings can be. In a couple of chapters, he's going to have to address real problems in this very church. He's aware of the lure of selfish ambition. He knows that he needs to remind them that they need to resist the temptation to grumble. And as he writes this very part that we're reading, in his mind are two women who have fallen out and a church who are not mature enough to be able to sort it out from within and need somebody to help from the outside.
7:30 But when Paul remembers these things, the chord we hear playing most clearly through these words is thankfulness. Let's read what he says again. I thank my God for every remembrance of you, always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. The most important thing that Paul sees in these people's story is not really based on what they have done at all. Rather, it is what God has been doing among them by binding Paul and them together in partnership, or as another translation puts it, in common life, shared life sourced in the gospel. From the first day until now, grace he sees has been at work in the Philippians. First of all, enabling them both to become family through Christ, through salvation, and then continuing that family relationship with him from up close when he was there and then from a distance when he was forced to leave. And I really want us to pay attention this morning to what it is that Paul chooses to remember about these people's past.
8:49 Because one of the things that we are all tempted to do when we think about other people, and I'm sure you'll recognize this in your own life, is to take one thing about them from their past as true, something they've done to you or you've seen them done elsewhere, and to allow it to become the only thing that is true about them when you think about them. And when we're the ones picking what it is that we define people by, well, it's always almost the negative thoughts, isn't it? Olivia, she's the person who let me down in 1993 and I have never forgotten it. Or Peter, oh yeah, I knew him when he was 14. He is a melter. When was the last time I saw him? Well, it was over a decade ago, but that's like he's still that way now. I'm sure you'll recognize this kind of an impulse in yourself.
9:46 to lock other people, other Christians into the box of their past. And eventually, even if God has changed that person, our evaluation and description of them has not changed. It cannot change. And so, when we meet them today, we look at them through a memory from 5 years, 10 years, 20 years ago. something they did, something they said, some version of them which may have been completely accurate at the time, but now becomes a pair of goggles that we see them through every time we view them. But this is not how Paul analyzes or remembers people. Paul knows the history of the Philippians. He knows them as real people.
10:36 They're real family and family know each other so that they know where the negatives lie in each other's lives. And he could have chosen to write this letter from the beginning by telling them the truth about a snag list that really exists, beginning praying that God would work through the damp in their life or begin installing a new roof right from the very start. But instead we see that He's not allowing his thoughts of them to be focused only on what they're not. Rather, when he looks back over their story, up to this day, he can see another story running alongside the messy ups and downs of real life. God has been there with them through it all, both Paul and the Philippians. From the first day And then God's grace has been at work with them every day since. This positive evaluation is as much a reality as the negative assessment would have been. And it's much more productive as we'll see later.
11:45 So then now Paul moves from what he remembers about them in the past to what he can see in the present. Paul's not writing this letter from a comfortable position. He's in prison. And he's aware that the Philippians have had to make a choice as a result of the situation he finds himself in. For them, there has been an easy path and a hard path laid before them. The easy path would have been to simply and quietly distance themselves from Paul. Because as you know, even from our world today and the way that things are, being closely associated with someone who is controversial someone who's socially outcast, someone who's not part of the in crowd, if you associate with them, it negatively impacts your own reputation. For them, it was costly to be associated with a maverick preacher that the empire has declared as dangerous with a message that they want nobody else to hear, and so they put him in prison because they need to do that to keep peace in society.
12:55 And so the Philippians could have quietly stepped backwards, stopped supporting Paul, just let the relationship fade quietly, said nothing, but just let it go. But they don't do that. They take the harder path. They continue to identify with Paul. They support him to their own cost. And later we discover that they even send somebody from their church to go to be with him, making sure that their imprisoned friend knows that he has not been abandoned or forgotten and that they want to be associated with him. And by doing this, there were consequences for themselves. By going to Paul, they were telling anyone who was paying attention that they too endorsed the message that this dangerous preacher was preaching.
13:46 The message that Jesus, the crucified Messiah, is Lord. that God has raised him from the dead, and that he will one day return to stake his claim over the whole of the Roman Empire, over the whole of the universe. And that he will be Lord where many others back then and even now would much prefer to be Lords themselves, would like not to have that in the future. As verse 7 says, it is right for me to think this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart. For all of you are my partners in God's grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. Paul looks at this somewhat ordinary and yet in context, very costly act of loyalty and says in effect, I know what this is I'm seeing. There's more happening here than you might realize. This is grace in you.
14:45 This is God's work. And this is where I think Paul teaches us something really important about love that I want us to pay attention to this morning. When we pray in love for those that are in our earthly families or those who are in our church families, we need to remember this. Love does not require us to see less about a person. Instead, it requires us to see more. Love does not force us to call wrong things right or irritating things wonderful or damaging things harmless. And later in the letter, Paul can identify some of those negative things as well. They're there.
15:26 He sees them. They're not flattering, but they're real. But for him and for us, Christian love learns to see the whole person through the lens of what grace has done, what grace is doing, and what God has promised yet to do. And that last part is what makes all of this possible. Because when we see the final direction that Paul looks at these people, we see why the positive things that he said in these other verses aren't just some kind of glossy, cheesy, optimistic, photoshopped version of the house. Instead, that they're true. Verse 6 says, I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will begin it or will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. This verse is the main reason Paul can speak about these unfinished people with warmth and confidence like he does.
16:33 Because his confidence is not ultimately in them. It's not in how they are now or how they've been in the past. He's not doing the self-help or motivational speech to them. I've known you for years. You're generally good people. You sent me a really nice gift, and so I'm pretty sure it's all going to turn out all right. Instead, Paul says, God is the one who is actively engaged in making something of you in the present. And he will continue in his work.
17:05 until it's completed, until that day when the Lord returns and establishes His world of justice, of redemption, of universal glory everywhere. On that day you will be done. You will be completed. And so Paul's confidence is in God. God is the one who called the Philippians to himself. He made them a people, a family that Paul is a member of. He began changing them and he is committed to bringing them to their proper finished end. God does not begin work in a person and then halfway through the renovation job, pull back a bit of wallpaper and say, I wasn't expecting that.
17:53 I guess I'm out. Somebody else is going to have to deal with this bit. He knows exactly what the work is required in us before he begins the work. He sees the size of it, the severity of the task, and still he begins. And what he begins, he finishes. It is because of the covenant that he has made with us when we were still enemies, what he offered to us when we had nothing to offer him, that Paul is able to look at the Philippian Christians from their future backwards. He sees who they are now. He doesn't not see their current reality.
18:40 But he also with holy imagination sees where God is taking them. overlaid on that current reality. He's like that child standing in the bedroom. She's not denying the hole in the wall. She can see the grubby carpet and the rusty hook, but she sees something else as well. In the future, she sees the bed, the bluey mat, the newly painted wall, and her school bag hanging from the hook. And think for a moment just why it is that she can have such confidence as she looks at this mess that it's going to be the way she sees it. It's because she knows somebody else is going to do the work.
19:23 Her dad, or maybe more likely, her granda, they'll get it done for sure. And for the Philippians, Paul says, God is the one who will get it done for sure. God gave them grace in the past. God is at work among them in the present and God is nowhere near done with them yet. And that confidence then shapes the prayer that Paul prays in verses 9 to 11. We'll have a look at that now. Because notice something very important about this prayer. Paul doesn't pray as if there's nothing good existing in the Philippians yet.
20:02 He takes what is already there and asks God to turn it right up. This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more. There's already love there. Paul has spent several verses describing evidence of it. Their love has maintained friendship to their own cost as he sits in prison. But Paul can see what exists today without mistaking it for the finished product. They are very far yet from loving in a way that loves God with every part of their being and loves their neighbors as themselves. They're not even close to that yet.
20:46 So he asks God for more of what is already there, more love. And then notice the direction that he wants that love to grow in. He says that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight. And that's really important, I think, for what we're talking about this morning. Because maybe when you look at this prayer, you imagine that love must require us to be less perceptive, to ignore the faults, the paper over the damp and not actually deal with it. But that's not Paul's prayer either. He wants their love to be more knowledgeable, more perceptive, better able to see how things really are. with the end result to help them determine what really matters.
21:37 In other words, mature love learns how to give the right weight to everything it sees. Yes, that person may have a flaw. Love sees that. It does not erase it. Yes, they may have failed badly in one area. Love sees that too. It does not gloss over it. But they may also have, by God's grace, changed.
22:04 Love notices the change, seeing that they are not what they were back then. And even if they haven't changed yet, love asks us to read their life backwards, to overlay their current reality and see what they will one day be. Love calls us to look again at those that we've written off, those that we hold the snag list in front of every time we look at them and look at it and not at them. And it asks us to stop looking at that and to turn and see what's really there. Paul invites us to ask, of everything that is true about this person, what is it that really matters? What does God see when he sees this person? Now before I move on, I want to slow down for a little moment and offer one qualification that doesn't really arise from this passage, but I felt it was important to talk about in what I'm saying. Because I don't want what I'm saying here about love to be heard in a way that Paul would never intend.
23:09 Not all wrongs are equal. There is a difference between irritating habits, failures, and weaknesses that we're going to encounter in the everyday of our lives, relationships between ordinary people, and behavior which seriously harms another person. Abuse, manipulation, coercion, ongoing destructive behavior cannot simply be folded into a sermon about overlooking each other's faults. In situations like this, seeing the whole person does not mean restoring trust before someone has shown themselves trustworthy. It does not mean taking down boundaries which exist to protect you. Where serious wrong has been done, the way it lies first with the person who caused it, to repent, to change behavior, and to accept whatever consequences are appropriate. And on top of that, repentant people, where possible, will seek first to repair the damage they have caused. To use the picture we've been using in this talk, Paul never tells someone to move into or stay in a house where there is a gas leak.
24:22 Because, well, don't worry about that. Just look at the other things. If the gas is leaking, 1 Corinthians and 2 Peter would say you deal with that leak. And you get out of the situation if that's what safety requires. But having made that distinction between severe harm and day-to-day human weakness, we can come back to what Paul is saying and dealing with here in Philippians. Because Paul can see what is wrong with these people without deciding that what's wrong with them is everything that they are. When Paul looks at Iodia and Syntyche fighting with each other and the church not being grown up enough yet to deal with it without outside help, Paul doesn't gloss over that reality. But as he sees the weakness of the present, he keeps looking further ahead to what God plans for them in the future.
25:17 Paul can see with certainty that when the day of Christ comes, Iodia and Syntyche and every believer in Philippi and every believer in Glen Abbey will be nothing less than pure and blameless. They and we will be filled with the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. That's the finished house. And Paul right now is looking at people who are nowhere near that description yet. Pure and blameless, not yet. A complete harvest of righteousness, nope, it's just about growing at the moment. But that is where God has contracted to take them, through Jesus Christ. Paul's prayer is enormous because Paul's view of God and what he can accomplish in these people is enormous.
26:07 For messy, incomplete and generally unimpressive people, Paul can see the grace of God at work in them and little acts of friendship towards him. And Paul then can ask for love that keeps growing, knowledge that keeps deepening, discernment that gets more astute, a life increasingly full of what is right. all the way a little more every day until Christ returns. This then gives me the main takeaway. I want you to go with this passage. Christian love learns to see the whole person truthfully. What God has done, what grace is doing, and what God has promised yet to do. It never asks us to see less.
26:55 but it enables us to look at the person's life backwards, evaluating who they were and who they are in light of who they will be. And if we learn to see people this way, it changes the environment for all of us. Think about it. You might have experienced this. If someone knows the basic assessment of your life is you're a disaster and you're going to always be a disaster, How easy is it for you to grow? Every failure, and there'll be many, just confirms for them that verdict. Every attempt to change is viewed suspiciously because, well, I know what they're really like.
27:42 But Paul creates a very different environment for the Philippians. He says there are things that need to change. I'm not going to deny that. But underneath those corrections is this settled confidence, God is working in you. And I expect to see the evidence of that over time. That's such a different way of being known by each other, to be known as a Christian. And it's a very different way to pray about other people. So as we come to land this now, rather than working through some detailed application, I thought we would slow down for a few minutes and pray together about what we've been exploring here.
28:25 This is a series on prayer, isn't it? So let's do some praying. As we do so, the band are going to come up and play quietly in the background just so that we don't have the deafening silence. And if you're comfortable doing it while they appear, You can close your eyes or look down at the floor or up at the screen where a few prompts are going to appear. Whatever is most comfortable for you. And I just want you to let another Christian come to mind. Choose somebody that's a little bit difficult or irritating. Somewhere where there is history who hasn't grown the way that you would like.
29:11 And with that person in mind, the first thing I want you to do is just spend some time telling God what you see on the snag list. What do you see when you look at them? If you're angry with them about something in the past, tell them why. If they're just annoying or grating you for some reason and you don't even know why that is, tell them that as well. Just be honest with God about how you see that person right now. I'll give you a few seconds to do so. And now, with that person in your mind and your way of seeing them spoken before God, ask yourself this question in His presence. Has one part of this person's story become the whole story in my mind?
30:23 And just pray this very simple prayer. God, help me to see the whole person. God, help me to see what grace has done in their life already. Let me see what grace is doing right now that I haven't allowed myself to notice yet. Let me see what in your hands grace may yet do in this life, and if not in this life, that you will certainly do by the next. Just sit with that for a few moments. So now I want us to do exactly what Paul does with this person that you're thinking about and slowly pray this prayer for them. I'm not asking you to feel anything dramatic here.
31:26 Just put their name into Paul's words. Let him pray for them with you. Father, may this person's love overflow more and more. Give them knowledge and full insight. Help them to see things as they really are. Help them to recognize what really matters. Where there is something in their life that needs to change, change that. Where there's something good already growing, make more of that.
32:14 Produce in them the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. And the good work that you have begun in them, bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. And finally then, before we finish, let's turn the prayer back on ourselves. Father, give me the kind of love Paul prays for here. Love with knowledge, love with insight, love that knows what really matters. Where my view of someone has become distorted, correct me. Where I have excused something that is genuinely wrong, give me clarity. Where I need wisdom, give me wisdom.
33:08 Where I have harmed someone, Help me to make that right. And where I have taken one true thing about another person and made it the whole truth about them, loosen my grip on that decision. Help me to see the whole person as you see them. Let me see what grace has done in them, what grace is doing in them, and what you have promised yet to do in them, in me. and in all of your people. And now just open your eyes if they're still closed. I want to finish by saying together the promise that gave Paul such confidence as he looked at these unfinished people.
34:08 It's going to come up his words on the screen. I'll say the first ones, and then I invite you to join me in saying the second part. The one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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About this talk
The speaker reflects on the experience of house viewings to illustrate how perspective shapes perception, then explores Philippians 1:3-11. Paul remembers the Philippians with thankfulness, acknowledging their partnership in the gospel despite their imperfections. He observes their present faithfulness, especially their support during his imprisonment, and expresses confidence in God's ongoing work to complete their transformation by the day of Jesus Christ. The prayer focuses on love growing with knowledge and insight, encouraging mature love that sees people truthfully, including their faults and potential. The speaker distinguishes between everyday faults and serious harm, emphasizing the need for repentance and boundaries in the latter. The main takeaway is that Christian love sees the whole person through the lens of God's grace past, present, and future, fostering an environment conducive to growth and transformation.
Bible passages
- Philippians 1:3–11 (main passage)
