Philippians #2: Verses 6-11 Ordinate Affections -- Audio

We're in Philippians.

Last week we did kind of an introduction.

We got through about five verses.

This week we're going to try to get through about five more.

We'll see what happens.

So if you want to grab a Bible, there are Bibles in front of you.

Open that up.

We will kind of get into it today.

Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is going to remind us

And this is throughout Philippians.

Today we'll see it kind of throughout Philippians.

So he's going to remind us and he's going to teach us what the Christ-following life is about, what we're doing, what we're going for, what's happening to us, what we're achieving in the Christ life, and what drives that life.

What is it that drives the Christ life?

The life of a Christian is about becoming holy.

Becoming holy.

It's about sanctification.

It's about being set apart from the brokenness of the world.

And what you'll find when you get saved, you become a Christ follower, and you start to follow Christ, you'll find that as time passes, you are less and less in the world, of the world, like the world, and more and more desiring to be home.

Less and less does this become your home.

More and more does the heavenly home call to you.

Not this sort of like, I want to die and go to heaven because everything will be free or something.

Everything will be.

No, it's not even like that.

It's like my spirit calls out to be with the Lord.

My spirit is telling me, I am just a pilgrim here.

And I'm for something else.

So as you become more and more connected to Christ, more and more, you will feel like you're just traveling through here on this earth.

It's about seeing more and more clearly the Holy Spirit.

The good, the eternal, and the timeless, and the beautiful, and the glorious.

Things that we tend to miss when we're pagans and we weren't following the Lord and we were doing our own thing.

Man, we barely would ever scratch the surface of those kinds of things.

We didn't understand the good, the excellent, the holy.

But as you become a Christ follower, more and more you see those things.

And in doing so, as we see those things which are excellent, we can know God more and more in his awesome splendor.

The king of kings, the suffering servant savior, right?

The creator of everything.

We get to understand who he is in deeper and deeper ways.

And that's part of what it means to walk with him.

As you pray, hopefully each morning, that he will help you to walk with him.

That's what he's going to do.

He's going to continue to draw you towards those things.

Walking in Christ to the glory of God.

And he's changing you in that way.

Changing you that your affections are going somewhere else.

That is part of what's happening.

So when you become a Christian, you understand, hey, I'm saved from my sin.

And as you grow as a Christian, you need to understand this part, what is happening to you.

And then you have to understand what is making that happen, because we're not capable of changing ourselves in these ways any more than we are capable of saving ourselves.

Neither one are you capable of doing.

It takes the Lord.

And when we get to chapter two, which isn't going to happen today, don't get excited.

But when we get to chapter two, Lord willing, eventually, we'll get to this verse.

It says, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure.

It is God who works in you both to will, right, to desire, to decide to do things and to do.

So there is a thing happening as a Christ follower where God is changing your will and giving you the power to do the things that are godly in an ungodly world.

So that's what's happening to you, and you need to understand that that's what's happening, and that God is the one doing the work.

Because if you thought, okay, that's what's supposed to happen, I become more holy and sanctified, and I understand the good and the beautiful and the excellent and the glory of God.

And then you go, I'm not good at that.

I can't figure that all out.

Good news is, it's him who works in you.

The bar is very high for a Christ follower.

He's saying, be holy as I'm holy.

Talk about a high bar.

But he's the one who lifts us up.

High bar, he lifts us up.

I don't know if you guys have seen this.

I saw this on YouTube.

They have these things now.

They're like bionic legs.

Has anyone seen these?

You can strap it on and it goes and you put it on your legs so that if you go running or hiking or mountain biking...

This guy is wearing a sling because he doesn't know how to ride a bike.

I got some training wheels.

You're going to be okay.

Or mountain biking, whatever it is, right?

You strap these things on you and they're like electric.

They got like batteries in them and they make it so that you can, they help you do the thing, right?

So you're running, but these things are really running for you.

And I'll be honest.

I'm like, okay, thousand bucks.

And it's not to go running or hiking.

I just want them to get to the car.

I just don't want to have to move my legs if I don't have to.

You know what I'm saying?

But no, they have these things, right?

And so you're wanting to go there and they're doing the work.

It's much more than that, the way the Lord does it.

But it's God who does the work.

We're to walk in the spirit of God and he will change and transform us.

When we look at Romans 12, 1 and 2, and if you've been here long, you've seen these verses a number of times.

You've probably heard, I think Glenn has done a sermon just on these verses.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you, here's what you do.

Present your bodies a living sacrifice.

That's what you do.

So this is not work, it's submission.

Submission.

You don't do any of the work.

You submit, present your bodies to living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

Well, how are they holy and acceptable?

Because Jesus gave you his righteousness, so he's even created the fact that you can do this.

But as a Christ follower, you can, because he's made you holy and acceptable, you can present your body to him.

In other words, the body, the flesh, that wants to do all the stuff, right?

Wants to sow to the world.

You present and you go, nope, I'm not going to do that.

Crucified with Christ, we submit our flesh to him.

God, you tell me what to do.

You show me how to live.

And then you give me the strength to do it.

And it says, which is your reasonable service.

We'll come back to that in a second.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good

an acceptable and perfect will of God.

We're going to get into, if we can, I hope we'll have time, but we're going to get into what's happening here when he's talking to, in this case the Romans, but the Philippians or whatever, about the good, the acceptable, the perfect.

They understand something about that that we're going to talk about in a second, but that's what you are to do.

He's going to change you.

He's going to transform you.

renewing your mind so that you literally think and will and desire differently so that you can understand and prove the good, the acceptable, the perfect.

We'll see the word today, the excellent.

Okay, that's what's happening.

You go, God, you do it.

I'm submitted to you.

And then he does all this for you.

You have to understand that our job is,

is simply to sow to the Spirit rather than the flesh.

We talked about this one with the Galatians.

And then he empowers us to do that, and then he gives the harvest.

God gives the yield, the increase.

This is the pattern for a Christian.

We submit, he does all the work, we receive the benefit.

That's how God works.

If you have parents or you had parents who understand their role, and not all of you did.

Some of you had parents that didn't understand their role and made lots of mistakes.

I'm sorry that that happened.

But if you did have parents that understood their role, then when you were young, your only job as a kid was to submit yourself to their authority, and they did everything else.

They took care of you, right?

When you were a child, hopefully,

You had a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear, food to eat.

But you didn't earn the money for those things.

You didn't cook the food.

You didn't buy your bed.

You didn't pay the rent.

Unless there's like some child actor star in here somewhere.

Sometimes that happens.

But you didn't do any of that, right?

And the reasonable thing for the child of a parent who's providing everything, the reasonable way for a child to think about that is to be grateful, right?

And to follow the rules of the house and to trust their parents, to love their parents, to grow close to them because they're being taken care of.

In the same way as children of God, you are taken care of.

God takes care of his children.

What's the reasonable thing for God's children to do?

To love God, to trust him, to follow and obey all that he commands.

That's our job.

To present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable.

To say, I don't want the things of the world.

I don't want the things of the flesh.

I want you.

That's the reasonable thing that you do when he is the glorious king of kings who created you and saved you.

And says, I'll take care of you.

I'll take care of everything.

And I know what's best for you.

Kids often don't believe their parents know what's best for them.

Because I'm telling you, I could have stayed up until 2 a.m.

and watched that movie.

Back in those days, the movie came on when the movie came on.

So you just had to watch it or you never saw it again.

And then we had VCR.

It was a whole thing, trying to program one of those.

All those people are in NASA that could do that at that time.

Anyway, you submit and your parents take care of you.

You submit and God takes care of you.

But not all children are reasonable.

You've probably seen this.

There are bratty, spoiled children of human parents, and there are bratty, spoiled children of God.

There are bratty, spoiled children of God.

Children who complain and rebel and kick and cry and scream because they want something that God says they ought not to have.

I've been one of these bratty, spoiled children of God from time to time, not thinking at all about what's the reasonable way for me to be with God, but I want this thing, and God says that's not for you or that's not right now or whatever, and I'm, you know, in my spirit, I'm just a, you know, this guy right here.

It's not reasonable.

Some children of God get jealous of what other children of God have.

If you were a kid, you had siblings.

One of your siblings got something, and you're like, they ain't getting me that.

And I was a middle child, so they barely knew I existed.

I don't think that my dad learned my name until I was like 9 or 10 years old.

I had the older sister, and I had the cute little brother.

And I was the middle child.

I'll go back to the basement, Dad.

That was me, okay?

I'm kidding, he named me after himself, so he definitely remembered my name.

But that's probably why, because he thought he'd forget it.

Our life in Christ is to become holy and to understand that obedience is all that is asked.

And if we will serve him, he will transform us.

He will change our affections.

Let's pick up where we were last week and sort of continue in the book of Philippians.

So last week we read, the last thing we read was Philippians 1, 3 through 5.

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making requests for you all with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

And we talked a lot about that.

We want to be those kind of people that those who serve us and minister to us and minister alongside us and with us just have joy in their heart when they think about us.

We move on and he says this about them.

Being confident of this very thing.

That he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

This word here, confident.

This word, if you look up the strong definition of the Greek word, it's confident, it's persuaded.

You may even have that in your translation if you're using a different translation.

Trust, obey, have confidence, believe, be confident.

What he's saying is, I'm persuaded.

Everything I've seen and everything God has revealed to me tells me that he who has begun a work in you will be faithful to complete it.

Some of us are excited about that.

We have a promise from God.

Paul himself is persuaded, he's confident, he believes that it will happen.

I believe that it will happen because it's what the scripture says and God does what he says he'll do.

So I'm into it.

But I also know that in changing me, in transforming me, there's pain.

So I want it, but like, can we go slow?

Right?

Right?

You're a kid and you're like playing sports or whatever.

And they're, you know, let's run, you know, lines or whatever.

It's like, can we just do two?

They're like, no, you'll do them until you throw up.

That's how we're going to do this.

And then tomorrow it'll be easier.

It's like, no, it's never easier, by the way, just so you know, coach.

Never got easier.

I hated it every time.

But they're going to push you.

And God, in the same way, he's going to change you.

It's going to push up against you.

It's going to hurt.

But he's going to complete what he started.

And you will be so joyful when he completes that work in the day of Jesus Christ.

Completes it.

Again, the Greek word.

Performs it.

Perfects it.

Accomplishes it.

Finishes it.

Makes it.

Does it.

He's going to do it.

It's going to happen.

If you are a Christ follower, this is what's happening.

It's going to complete until the day of Jesus Christ.

On that day, that day is going to be a good day.

And on that day, you will be complete on the day of Jesus Christ.

When you meet him, you're going to be complete.

The thing that hopefully you want that I want desperately is just to hear, well done, good and faithful servant.

And I'll know that anything that was well done was done from him, not from me.

But part of that is submitting myself to him and having him do that.

Presenting my body so that he can transform me.

If you can constantly don't present your body to him, that's a living sacrifice.

In other words, you go, no, I'm going to continue to use my body to do what I want to do.

The transformation is going to be real, real painful.

Right?

And it's not going to work in the same kind of way.

You're not going to see the same kind of rewards.

You're not going to live in the spirit and have the joy that you have to have.

But if you present your body to him and say, look, I'll do what you say, boy, the growth can be so amazing.

When I look back at myself some years back, I would probably punch myself right in the nose.

I mean, I'm disgusted in some ways by who I was and amazed by who God has made me, how God has changed me.

It's a blessing.

It's a blessing.

So what do we need to do?

Well, what do the Philippians do?

The Philippian church.

Well, we just read this.

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, making requests for you all with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

So what were these people like who he's saying?

I know you're going to get there.

They were the kind of people who had fellowship, partnership in the gospel.

That's what they did.

That's the kind of people they were.

They were partners of the proclamation of the gospel.

The first thing that many Christ followers want to do when they get saved is to proclaim the gospel.

To other people.

Oftentimes the best evangelists are new believers.

Because they're so excited about what's happened to them.

And then over time, what do we say?

You'll get over it.

We don't.

Hopefully you haven't said that to somebody.

But it is somewhat true that we sort of, we can get into a pattern where we're just, when's the last time we talked about Jesus to anybody?

Right?

Well, they were doing it.

They were partners in the gospel.

And some of it's you talking to other people.

But your circle is only so large.

You only have so many friends outside the church and so on.

But you're partners in the proclamation of the gospel because you show up.

You serve.

You give.

You go on mission trips with us.

You do whatever it is.

You're partners in the proclamation of the gospel.

You want to see the gospel proclaimed.

That's how they were.

And Paul's like, yeah, and I'm sure God's going to finish that work.

more and more and more for you.

They want to proclaim the gospel, partner in the proclamation of the gospel.

And then he says this, this is verse seven.

Just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you are all partakers with me of grace.

The defense and the confirmation of the gospel.

Two things, apologia, defense, apologetics.

So when we do things like the, what do we call it, skeptic series, those kinds of things, where we answer the questions.

that the world levels against scripture, against God, against truth, and we go, okay, well, we'll take those things seriously, and we'll answer those questions.

That's the defense of the gospel, the apologia.

That's where we go, no, no, no, it does make sense, and we will speak to your, quote, unquote, reasoned objections with reasonable answers.

But then there's the confirmation, the confirmation of the gospel.

The confirmation of the gospel is our testimony that yes, it is real.

Yes, I have been saved.

Apologetics can be powerful and they can be useful.

A person who's struggling, going, hey, I just don't know how I can believe because X, Y, or Z. And you go, hey, let me explain to you why X, Y, or Z isn't a problem.

That can be powerful.

But nothing is more powerful than saying to somebody, Jesus Christ saved me.

I was dead in my sins and my trespasses and he saved me.

I was going to hell and I will be with him forever and I know that it's true.

My heart testifies to it and I testify to you.

The confirmation of the gospel.

It's real.

It's powerful.

And they were both in his chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, they were all partakers with him of grace.

And he gives more grace.

for you to be able to do both of those things.

We try to teach at this church, at least as much as for each person, everyone's different in how much they're called to this and how much of this they get an opportunity to do, but we try to teach the apology or the apologetics part, and I do think that's important.

But the confirmation part, that's in you already.

That's in you already when you speak to people.

You can say, he saved me.

Nope, I'm not perfect yet.

But I press on toward the goal to win the prize, which God has called me heaven-ward in Christ Jesus, right?

I am moving forward, and he is changing me.

And you may think, well, it doesn't look like it's done much for you.

You go, well, look, you should have seen me two years ago.

You know?

I just got out of prison.

So, you know, whatever.

I mean, I don't know.

Some of you look like that might be the case.

I don't know.

It's just... The confirmation.

The only other place where this word, confirmation, is used, the Greek word for confirmation is used, is in a verse in Hebrews 6.16.

It says, For men verily swear by the greater and an oath for confirmation.

An oath for confirmation is what?

It's testimony.

I'm confirming to you that Jesus is the son of God.

And I do confirm it to you.

I confirm it.

I know it.

When I go to sleep at night and I'm praying before I go to sleep, I know it.

I'm not talking to myself.

I'm not crazy like that.

All kinds of other ways I got problems, but that's not one of them.

I am speaking to the Lord of the universe, the creator of heaven and earth.

It's real.

I confirm it.

You can confirm it.

And that's how we are partakers together in the gospel.

All right.

Oh, let's not go there yet.

So testify.

And here's the thing.

Most people will testify if they get a new car or a new job.

They go on a nice vacation.

Some people, from what I have seen in social media, will testify anything.

Anything.

Whatever today, I got up this morning.

Like, right?

Some people will testify about anything, but very few people are out there testifying, confirming the gospel as they should.

There's nothing that's more powerful.

You can talk all day.

You can argue with people all day.

about, oh, is this, you know, political issues and the Christian view on that, or apologetics issues.

No, we believe the Bible says this and that's right.

But they cannot naysay you when you say, Jesus Christ saved me.

It's true, it's real, and he can do it for you.

They can't say you're wrong about that.

They can think that, well, that person's just crazy.

And you just, you know, the way you live can prove that's not true.

They cannot do anything against that testimony because it's a personal testimony.

So if you're willing to tell people these other things, why not be willing to tell them about the greatest free gift ever given, the costliest gift costing our Lord his life, ever given, that was given to you and to me because of the love of the consuming fire of God.

I got a new Kia.

Okay.

I got saved from hell.

by Jesus Christ.

Pretty good stuff.

For God is my witness.

So we have the word confirmation here, and then we have the idea of witness here again.

How greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.

Once again, here we just see his heart for these people, these Philippians.

Paul had obviously an incredible experience

in what the Lord had him do with this church and being part of its beginning and teaching them.

He was moved personally, emotionally.

He said, God will witness to me.

I love you guys.

I long for you.

With the affection of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes I'll get, because we haven't been to Honduras in a couple years.

We haven't been back for different reasons.

And sometimes I'll get texts and messages from some of those guys.

And they're kind of like this, right?

They're just like, when are you guys coming back?

We miss you guys.

Like, when's Acts Church coming?

We miss Acts Church.

Because we've developed these relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ there where we long for each other.

We desire to be with each other.

I can again testify that this is part of real Christ following and being in community.

And because we can travel and move and things like that, God called me from Tennessee, where I was living at the time, back to here.

I have people in Tennessee who I long for.

I've been thinking quite a bit about, man, I really want to get back there.

I have things to do here, so that's not going to work right this second, but I want to get back there because I long for them.

One of the benefits of going on a mission trip, if you kind of spend all your time here, is that you will end up with some folks who you greatly long for.

And it's a blessing in Christ.

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment.

Your love may abound still more and more.

There's some connection here between love, knowledge, and discernment.

Remember the first and greatest commandment.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

If you're doing those things, somehow that helps you to abound

In knowledge and in discernment.

What's discernment?

From the outline of biblical usage, perception, not only by the senses but by the intellect, cognition, discernment, of moral discernment and ethical matters.

Being able to know the good from the evil, the good from the bad.

Discernment.

Believe it or not, the world will not teach you this.

The world will not teach you discernment.

The world does not have good discernment.

Even broken churches have lost all discernment.

And you can see that.

I mean, you can go on Google and see what some of these churches are pushing and believing.

But you, if you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, then you're gonna love the scripture and you're gonna stick to what God says because you love him, not just yourself, and you love your neighbor.

And as you do that more and more, you're gonna have more knowledge and you're gonna have more discernment.

To know what is good and what is not.

And this kind of leads us in to this.

And this is so good.

Stay with me.

That you may approve the things that are excellent.

That you may approve the things that are excellent.

Now, I was talking to Tiffany yesterday about how that's just a line that like, it means what it says.

And you can just kind of like, oh, I'll prove the things that are excellent.

But there is so much more going on here.

Let me give you a little background.

The Philippians, Philip, who it's named after, King Philip II of Macedon, he named Philippi, Philippi, because he thought he was all that.

This is the father of Alexander the Great, who you've probably heard of, Philip II of Macedon.

This is in Greece.

This is in Macedonia.

This is in an area that for the past 400 years has been just inundated and the cultural zeitgeist, the way they think, the way they do, has been by these Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

In fact, Philip of Macedon, Philip II, whose son was Alexander the Great, actually had Aristotle come up

from Athens and teach Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Great was a student of Aristotle.

And these Greek philosophers had put into the water, if you will, the way that these folks thought.

They thought about philosophy.

They thought about how to think well, okay?

When Paul goes to Athens, we see that in Athens, everybody in Athens is just looking for any new thing.

They're sitting there at the Areopagus or Mars Hill, and they just want to hear for new people.

They're like giving each other speeches on philosophy.

That's what they're doing.

They're into it.

And one of the things they would have all understood, starting with Plato, or with Socrates and Plato and into Aristotle, is the idea of the good, the excellent.

And that the good man or the good woman understands the excellent.

The Philippians for sure would have understood what Paul was saying here.

All that stuff that the Greek philosophers are talking about, if you will love God...

then you will abound in knowledge and discernment.

That discernment, being able to approve the things that are excellent and implied in that, is to disapprove of the things that are not.

Here's what C.S.

Lewis says.

This is going to help us a little bit.

And just kind of follow me with this as I read, okay?

C.S.

Lewis writes this in The Abolition of Man.

St.

Augustine, if you're wondering who St.

Augustine is, he's 1100s.

He was a monk.

He wrote the Summa Theologica, a very big book.

Don't recommend that you try to read it.

I've never read it.

I've read parts of it on law.

But it's crazy difficult.

He was real smart.

He was real smart.

Interestingly, he had a mystical experience at one point where the Lord kind of dealt with him.

And then he said, this is the guy who literally wrote the Summa, the highest.

Theological book.

And he said, everything's strong.

Everything's strong.

Now that I've actually had this experience with the Lord, that's everything that is real in him is so much more powerful than anything that we think about.

But anyway, that's St.

Augustine and St.

Augustine actually worked a lot with Aristotle and his thinking.

and worked with the scripture and showed how those things can be, how people who understand the Aristotle thing can understand the parts that he got right about what is true.

St.

Augustine defines virtue, virtue being moral goodness, ethical goodness, as ordo amoris.

You don't need to write that down.

ordinate condition of the affections.

That sounds like a lot, but just please stay with me because this is really important.

In which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love, which is appropriate to it.

Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought to

When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ordinate affections or just sentiments will easily find the first principles and ethics.

But to the corrupt man, they will never be visible at all, and he can make no progress in that science.

I'm going to stop there for a second.

There's more of this, but I want to break down what I just said.

Ordinary affections, ordered affections.

Catholics actually do better than we do at this.

They do worse at a lot of other things, but they do better, we do, because they breed Aquinas, at understanding this concept.

This concept that is from the Lord, but that even the pagan philosophers could understand at some level.

That the good man, the good woman, has their affections, their desires, ordered to the good.

And that the way to train up a child is to help them understand the difference between good and bad from the earliest of ages so that as they grow up, because your affections being ordered, writers, actually before reason.

Follow me here for a second.

Reasoning comes after understanding certain things.

When your affections are inside you.

They're the way that you think.

They're your desires.

I don't reason about ice cream.

I just like it.

Okay?

When I see ice cream, I go, hmm, what's up?

You know?

Thinking that maybe you and me sit down for a little while.

Eat a little bit.

Maybe the whole thing, throw away the lid.

We're going to be good, right?

So ice cream, I have affection for.

Now, is it an ordered affection?

Let's not talk about that.

The point is, is that that's not a reason thing.

I'm not like, should I like ice cream?

Well, it has these calories.

No, I don't think that.

John thinks that.

That's the way he thinks about food.

I don't think that way about food.

I just think, does it taste good?

Which is why I look like this and he looks like he does, okay?

But it's an affection thing.

If your affections are ordered correctly, you will understand the good and the bad.

And then when you start to understand reason, oh, it all comes together so well.

And we do this with our children.

We try to teach them that's not good, that is good.

Have your affections.

Teach them how to understand beauty.

Teach them how to understand good.

Because if you don't, what did I just read?

It said...

that the corrupt man will never, to the corrupt man there, will never be visible at all, and he can make no progress in that science.

That science being ethics, morality, righteousness.

We would, as Christians, we call that righteousness.

Holiness.

The person who is not taught to have their affections ordered correctly will become a devil, essentially.

They will become a morally corrupt person.

And if you wonder about this,

let me just tell you my experience.

Because, as you know, I'm an attorney, and when I was a younger attorney, I used to do a lot of juvenile law work.

So I would represent sometimes parents, sometimes kids, as a gardener's item.

And I can tell you that I have seen where if a child is taught all the wrong things when they're young by their parents, they cannot figure out what's right and wrong.

And as they grow older, I've seen, I had a young man that I represented for many years.

And I basically watched him over the years become essentially an animal in the system.

Because I only see him once a year, right?

I see him very, because check in with the court or whatever.

So I didn't have a big influence in this kid's life.

But his parents, who were a disaster, did.

And the system did.

And he was never taught to order his affections towards the good.

In fact, the opposite was true.

And so when he got old enough to reason, he couldn't reason about ethics.

So he just did whatever he wanted at that moment.

When, I want to bring you back to this.

When Paul writes, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that's what he's talking about.

That your discernment would grow because you love and have knowledge, that you would be able to approve the things that are excellent.

Your job is to go out and be able to call what is good, good.

To call what is bad, good, and to never call what is good, bad, or what is bad, good.

That is what God does in you.

So that when we see, and I don't like using this example because it unfairly brings out one sort of sin as if it's the big sin, which it's not, it's a sin.

But our world seems to be really focused on it right now.

But let's take like say transgenderism, okay?

Which is a mental illness people struggle with.

But what's happened is we've said, no, this thing is good.

This is who you are.

This is good.

What that says is that as a society, or at least those who are saying that, is their affections are so disordered that they're willing to call evil, bad, good.

Something that is actually something that is broken, this person, they need healing from.

Instead of giving healing, they're saying, no, lean into the brokenness.

And they're calling the evil good.

This is what the Holy Spirit is teaching us here.

You need to get to where you can approve the things that are excellent and call out the things that are not because we're a light to the world.

And so our job is to say, we love those people way too much to watch them destroy themselves because you've told them that this thing is good and we know that it's going to destroy them.

And not only is it going to destroy them, it's going to destroy the very idea of the excellence of male and female that God has created.

That if you have your affections ordered correctly, you understand how beautiful and wonderful and glorious the female is, the male is.

Each one just an expression of the image and likeness of God.

And when we go, they mean nothing to

We say God's creation is nothing important.

We know better.

That is disordered.

That's a disordered affection.

Thank you.

We ought not to have our affections disordered in this way.

In fact, if we will love, love God and love our neighbor,

We will get to the point where we have discernment that we may approve the things that are excellent.

And so Paul, I believe that the Holy Spirit knows exactly what he's doing and that when he's talking to the Philippian church in Macedonia in Greece that has been literally named after the guy that's the father of Alexander the Great who's taught by Aristotle.

I mean, this all makes sense.

It all comes together.

I'm going to quickly read you the rest of this quote.

Catch what you can of it.

If you didn't catch it all, watch the thing later and get it.

But here's the thing.

Plato before him, before Aristotle, had said the same.

The little human animal will not at first have the right responses.

It must be trained to feel, again, ordinate affections, feelings, to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.

In the Republic, that's Plato's book, the well-nurtured youth is one who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly, even from his earliest years, and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it.

so that he becomes a man of gentle heart.

All this before he is of an age to reason, so that when reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands and welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.

Saying, look, if you will teach ordinate affections, ordered affections, so that people like, desire, feel for the good good.

For instance, if we could, and we try to do this,

If we could train every woman, young woman in our church, to understand the glory of womanhood and who they are as God has made them, they're unlikely to feel pulled by the absolute lies and nonsense of the world about who they are.

If we teach men to feel, for a reason, okay?

I can explain to you why it's true.

But to feel, to understand at the level of affection what it means to be a man made by God in the image and likeness of God and all the glory that comes with manhood and how you correspond to womanhood and whatever.

We would have strong men and women

who saw the good and desired it.

And then when we, as we grow in Christ and our reason is improved, we can explain all why.

It will all make sense because our affections were already ordered correctly.

This is what he's talking about.

There's a lot in this sentence.

And in order to fully understand the Scripture, sometimes we've got to understand the history and the philosophy and the science and the psychology and whatever.

And I want you to have that full understanding when you read that, hey, if you'll love, your knowledge and your discernment will grow, and then you will be able to approve the things that are excellent.

So I want to ask you today, what did you learn about in church?

Say, ordinate affections.

Okay?

They'll be like, I don't want to go there.

Um...

That sounds really weird.

So maybe don't say that.

Say we made a finger painting.

That's what people seem to want.

All right.

We got to pray.