Philippians 1:1-11 – Philippians

Philippians 1, 1 through to eleven.

Paul and Timothy, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.

Grace be unto you, and peace from our God, from God our Father, and from Lord Jesus Christ.

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, all making request with joy.

For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which had begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

Ye all are partakers of my grace, for God is my record.

How greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that ye may approve things that are excellent, that ye may be sincere and without offense to the day of Christ.

Being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God.

Amen.

Really it's a joy to be back with you all.

Uh, we're starting this series in the book of Philippians, uh, that will last for about the next seven uh or eight weeks.

Take us up to Advent, and then we'll have a Christmas series, and then we'll get back into John, uh, which we've been uh been doing for a while.

Uh some of you will remember, remember that, and we'll finish that up on the way up to Easter.

Emotions are a complicated thing, aren't they?

Uh I sometimes describe our our inner life.

Uh there's the life that you um present to people, there's the facade that we all put on, and that's inevitable, uh, I think for for everyone.

But our inner life uh is often quite complicated.

It's uh a little bit like a box of Christmas tree lights.

You get them out of the attic in about a month's time uh or so, and you look at them and you'd put them away really neatly.

You'd wind them really carefully around something that would keep them nice and neat.

And some gremlin has been up there during the year, just kind of pulling them apart, and they're all tangled and knotted again.

You think, how did that happen?

Well, that's your emotional life.

Your emotional life is complicated.

Uh, you're not quite sure how you should express yourself from time to time.

Uh people divide uh these days, divide emotions into positive emotions and negative emotions.

Uh, so positive emotions are emotions like like happiness and joy and delight.

Those are positive ones.

Uh, negative emotions are uh are guilt and shame, uh grief.

And so people are encouraged to maximize positive emotion and minimize negative emotion.

I want I just want less negative negativity in my life.

People say things like that.

Uh but perhaps a better way to think about it is not dividing them in terms of positive and negative, but that all emotions uh are appropriate when expressed in the right context.

Uh you know, be uh you shouldn't, welcome guys, uh you shouldn't feel uh delight at someone's death.

You would be a psychopath.

Uh, then that would be weird for you, wouldn't it?

Uh equally, uh, it would uh be appropriate for you to feel uh a sense of guilt if indeed you hurt someone, because that that causes you to uh to make recompense, to say that you're sorry.

It's not that there's there's good emotions and bad emotions, it's that emotions used in the right sort of context and with appropriate measure are what uh make emotions good.

Uh what's more, uh our emotions don't always uh come in sequence one after the other.

Sometimes they all come at once.

They're they're complex and varied, and we feel divided, and different things are happening all at the same time.

Emotions can be contagious.

Uh our joy and delight can infect other people.

That's why we go to comedy shows, right?

Because when we're all it's it's better to be sitting in Vicker Street than to be watching a Netflix special because when you're in Vicker Street, you're with a couple hundred other people who are laughing and you're like, oh, I didn't find that quite funny.

But everybody else is laughing, ah, yeah, it's infectious, okay?

Um, but they can also mutate.

Somebody might have joy at a success, and that can create a new bitterness and resentment.

That it's not uh a simple one-to-one.

Emotions are very complicated things.

Obviously, if you think, okay, well, name an emotion now, well, probably the most obvious one that uh perhaps comes to your mind is that of love.

Uh it is pursued by most, if not all, of us, and it's one of the most confusing ones.

Paul's letter to the Philippians is full of love.

It oozes love, it is filled with emotion, it is saturated and exudes joy and delight and affection for these Christians.

And that might sound a bit strange to you because if you're not familiar with uh the scriptures, with the Bible, with Christianity, one of the kind of caricatures of this guy called Paul is that he's quite stoic and detached.

Uh, he's not very uh not very kind of warm-hearted.

Uh, he can be a bit harsh to people.

That's the caricatured version of what Paul is like.

But that's not the Paul that we meet here in the book of Philippians.

In fact, it's not really the Paul that we meet at all uh in the scriptures.

It's also the same in uh in his second letter to the Corinthians.

Paul has no fear at laying his heart bare.

And over the next seven weeks, he's gonna lay his heart bare in love and joy and delight for these Philippian Christians.

Uh, it's one thing to have a thick skin, it's quite another to have a hard heart.

Paul had a very thick skin.

Uh, it was hard to uh to get him down.

In fact, he's writing this letter from prison in Rome.

He's currently chained to some Roman soldier.

He's had his freedom taken away, and he has been treated by many as the scum of the earth.

You read the uh the book of Acts, and there is just riot after riot, and not in a good way, right?

Uh riot and stoning uh of Paul.

He is a scumbag in the first century, and yet it has stolen none of his joy, none of his love, none of his affection for these Christians.

Paul in this letter, and Paul particularly this morning, is showing us not just right thinking, but right feeling of how we as Christians can begin to organize the uh the box of Christmas tree lights that is our emotional life and to feel right feels for one another, to emote correctly.

You see, Christianity isn't just about learning a bunch of stuff.

You learn the uh the doctrines and the prescriptions.

And look, if you've been at City for any length of time, you know that I I love a good I love a good doctrinal discussion uh as much, if not probably more, than most of the next men.

Um that's uh that's kind of my jam.

But uh you would uh you would lose sight of something that is crucial about Christianity if you think it's just all about the head.

In fact, the Christianity is uh primarily about the heart and making sure that, and bringing about heart change by the power of God the Holy Spirit.

And here Paul is expressing uh his love for the Christians from a heart that has been changed, that despite his circumstances, despite his imprisonment and the fact that he has had his liberty taken away and is treated as the scum of the earth, he is tender-hearted towards these young believers.

And in writing to them and us looking at it this morning, he shows us what it's like to feel like Jesus, to feel the way Jesus feels for people, to feel Christ's stirred emotions for one another.

And so my my hope, my prayer for you this morning is not so much that you come away thinking, I've l I've learned stuff about this letter.

I now have more information in my brain, though that will certainly be a component of it.

But my prayer this morning is you go away feeling rightly towards your brothers and sisters, feeling rightly towards Rob and Kyle and the churches that we partner with across the world.

We don't just want you to think right.

The gospel wants you to feel right, to have Christ-stirred emotions for one another.

Because when our emotions are stirred for one another, it'll change how we act towards one another and it'll change how we act in the world.

I'm gonna draw out five things from these uh 11 verses that help us to see how it is that Paul is feeling towards these uh Philippian Christians.

Uh if you're used to three-point sermons, I'm sorry.

Uh it's a five-pointer.

Well, do a time check now and we'll see, we'll see how we go.

Point number one, love's focus.

It's not Paul's focus.

We're gonna look at his love.

What's love's focus?

Love's focus is there in verse three.

Paul writes, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.

Paul in prison overflows with thankfulness to God for them.

Love's focus is on the other.

Love's focus is on the other.

It'd be very easy, I think, for Paul to begin the letter going.

Uh, it's like it's one phone call, you know, from the jail cell.

He's like, hey guys, don't have much time in prison, uh, send bail money.

Uh, yours, Paul.

He doesn't.

He doesn't ask, he doesn't ask them to pray for him.

He says, Do you know what, guys?

I just I love you guys so much.

Love's focus is on the other.

It's been a decade since Paul had uh had visited them and he still prays for them.

Do you still pray for people that you knew a decade ago?

I feel quite convicted about that, because I'm not sure that I do.

What's more, like I said, he's in prison and yet he says, I can't, I just can't stop thinking about ye.

I can't stop thanking God for ye.

Why?

Because love's focus is on the other.

Here's just the first glimpse of something that's going to be unpacked in the letter.

That love, right, is always focused on the other.

That's actually at the very core of the Christian message.

Maybe you're here this morning and you're not a Christian and you want to know what the gospel is about.

The gospel is about other person-centered love.

Our God, the God that Christians believe in, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you'll have heard us talking about uh him in those sorts of terms in this service, is an eternal community of perfect other person-centered love.

The Father loves the Son eternally, the Son loves the Father, the Spirit loves the Father and the Son perfectly, eternally.

They are a perfect community of love.

And all of creation is an overflow of that and an invitation into that.

Jesus, uh, in coming to earth, as we will celebrate at uh Christmas time, is motivated by his love for us, his love for humanity.

His love was focused on the other.

And when he went uh to the cross at the end of his perfect life and died upon the cross, he did that not for himself, but in love for the other.

He did that for us, for you and me.

Love is uh right, love is focused on the other.

That's what the gospel creates in our hearts.

Sin is where we become self-loving and we get twisted in on ourselves, uh, as St.

Augustine said.

But what the gospel does is it unwinds us that we can see uh God and our neighbor.

And that's how Jesus summarizes the law, right?

He says, uh, if you want to follow God, if you want to know what it's like to live a life for God, you love God, you love others.

Here Paul expresses that because he's not thinking about himself, I thank God for you.

My affections are placed on you, Philippian Christians.

Love's focus is on the other.

And that's so good, actually, isn't it?

If you think about it just a little bit more, if you just push it a little bit further, because you remember Paul's circumstance, he's in a season of suffering, he's in a season of trial, he's in prison.

How quickly suffering and hardship puts the blinkers on our life so that we struggle to see anything beyond ourselves.

There's something really good, actually, and healthy in those seasons of difficulty of lifting our heads, of having our heads lifted, to see what God is doing in other people and to thank God for it and to compel our hearts to love outside of ourselves.

It's one of the things that suffering wants to do.

Suffering wants to close us down and make us morbid and introspective.

That's not to minimize the pain and the grief that suffering and painful circumstances bring about.

But one of the ways that God helps us in those seasons is by giving us a vision of something wider than ourselves, of what he's doing in the world.

Love's focus is on the other.

Secondly, love's delight.

Love's delight is there in uh verses four and five.

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

Paul's thanksgiving for the Philippian Christians is uh is not perfunctory.

It's not fine, it's not a God bless the Philippians.

Amen.

It's not like that.

Uh, it's not a mere liturgical kind of going through the motions.

No, every prayer we read in verse 4, every prayer that he makes, he makes with what?

With joy, with delight.

It is motivated by one thing, it's motivated by joy.

Joy in the book of Philippians is arguably the mega theme of the whole book.

The whole book wants us to come away rejoicing.

It underpins all of Paul's writing here because it underpins the Christian's emotional life.

Joy, you need to know, is not happiness.

Joy comes when your life is found not in your circumstances, but in Christ.

If you derive your life, your significance, your value, your meaning, your identity from a circumstance, that is the person you love, or the career that you in or you're in, or the friends that you have, or the wealth that you possess, then you will be happy for a time.

But what happens when those things are lost and they will go?

Happiness is fleeting.

Happiness is uh is is a takeaway box emotion.

Uh it's disposable, you throw it away, it's chip paper.

It comes for a time and then it goes, and it's great when it's there, and I'm not disparaged.

If happiness visits your door, God bless you.

But if in you but if your life, your value, your worth, your identity is not located in a circumstance, but in Christ, then happiness can come and go.

Grief can visit your house, and you can still have the source of your greatest good and your deepest delight.

Paul, at the very start of the letter, locates himself and the Philippian Christians as being in Christ.

It's repeated a number of times.

Let me read this greeting to you again.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all of the saints who are where in Philippi in Philippi?

No, who are in Christ Jesus.

What is their location?

They are in Christ Jesus.

They happen to be at Philippi.

Philippi is their address, but they are in Christ Jesus.

That is the source of their life, that's where they are located.

And that's true of every Christian believer.

You are in Christ Jesus.

Your life is secure, safe with him.

You are in him, united to him by faith.

And so is Paul with the overseers and deacons.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul is reminding the Philippian Christians that their identity, their value, their worth and significance does not come from the circumstances around them, particularly as they begin to face persecution in the Roman Empire, but it comes from Jesus.

It is located in Christ.

And he's saying, if your life is in Christ, you can have joy.

Everything in your life can be motivated by joy.

Happiness can come and go, but joy can underpin your entire emotional being.

And so Paul can write from prison and say that all of his prayers are motivated by joy.

Because he's not looking at his circumstance, he's looking at the gospel.

He's looking at Jesus, he's looking at who he is in Christ and the fact that these believers are also connected to him in Jesus.

It's why he can say in 2 Corinthians that he is sorrowful but always rejoicing.

That you can actually be in a season of grief and trial, that you can have sorrow in your life and still have joy.

That's one of the paradoxes of what it means to be a Christian.

Because what truly matters in our life is not located here in this world.

It's not located in a circumstance.

It's kept for heaven, it's kept in heaven for us.

Unperishing, unspoiled, unfaded.

We have an eternal hope.

And so Paul can have joy in prison because of who he is in Jesus.

He can have joy in prison in the same way that he did when he was in prison in Philippi, as you saw over the last couple of weeks.

And so he can still sing for joy in prison, and it was that song that made the prison walls shake and loosed his fetters, and his bonds came off.

And what is the reason that Paul gives for this joy?

So notice the text, it's really good if you actually have the text open.

Maybe you can get it up on your phone because we're we're looking at connections here.

Uh, we're reading from the English Standard Version.

So you just, if you go into Bible Gateway, you go Philippians 1, ESV, put that in.

So you're looking along.

Um, so look at verse 4.

Always in every prayer of mine for you, making my prayer with what?

With joy.

That's what's motivating him.

Now he gives the reason, verse 5, because see that how that links to verse 4?

Because of what?

Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, because of your partnership in the gospel.

Uh other translations will have the word fellowship.

Fellowship is a word that's been hollowed out if you've ever grown up in the church.

Fellowship's what happens when you have a cup of tea at the back.

Uh that's not what he means by fellowship.

Oh, it's the fellowship time.

Do you want to come around for some fellowship, some cake or something?

Uh no, that's not what Paul is thanking God for, though we do thank God for cake.

Amen?

Amen.

Absolutely.

But that is not what Paul's talking about.

No, no, partnership in the gospel that is driving his joy is the knowledge that the Philippians share, believe in the same Jesus that he does.

That they are partaking in the same glorious, rich reality that he has come to know.

He is trusting in Jesus, and so are they.

And from when?

From the very first day.

And that's remarkably encouraging for Paul, isn't it?

Because this guy had come from Jerusalem on one of his missionary journeys.

He had spoken this new message that they had never heard before about a savior of the world, the person of Jesus Christ, and what he had done for them.

And now this guy ends up in prison.

Wouldn't you, as a young Christian, go, oh, hold on.

Was he like embezzling?

Or was there is there something wrong?

Why is he in prison?

And yet actually, they still have confidence.

Not so much in Paul, but in the message that Paul preached.

They're still partnering with him, even though the world regards him as scum of the earth.

And so he thanks God.

Partnership is that they are connected inseparably, irreversibly, eternally, because they all belong to the same Lord Jesus.

What is the partnership that connects us with churches like Gospel Life Church?

It's not so much that we're part of Acts 29, as wonderful as that is, and we are passionate about the Acts 29 network.

But it's because we share in the same Jesus.

It's because we follow the same Lord.

We are trusting the same Jesus for our salvation.

We are connected eternally, irreversibly, inseparably to one another because we're connected to the same Jesus.

That's why it's such a joy to be able to travel the world and visit brothers and sisters because we all share that.

That's why it's a joy to have Rob and Kyle with us this morning, to feel that joy of being together because we know that we are all partakers in the same gospel, saved by the same Jesus.

And we participate in the same mission.

That's what Paul alludes to in uh verse 7.

It is right for me to feel this way about you, he says, because I hold you in my heart, for you all partakers of me, of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

Paul derives joy because he knows that they are standing with him, that they are joining him in the same mission of making Jesus known.

Why does your heart swell when you are watching a movie and there's a battle scene and you hear the sounds of the horns of the cavalry?

Why does your heart swell?

People grow weary of my Lord of the Rings reference, so I'm not gonna say that this is the Roherem on Pellinor Fields.

I'm not gonna say that.

So don't be thinking that sort of way because people just roll their eyes when I make Lord of the Rings reference.

So don't be thinking of like Gandalf talking to the Witch King, and then you hear that and you're like, yes, here come the Roherim.

So don't think about that.

Think of another movie that works for you.

That's just where I go, but don't go there.

Uh, because again, people get bored of my Lord of the Rings references.

Sorry, Nicole.

Uh she's just kind of groaning.

I'm back.

Why does your heart because you're like, oh, they're not alone.

You got other people standing with them.

We partner with churches globally with Acts 29 and locally with Irish Church missions.

You had David preaching here, uh, the director of Irish Church Missions while I was away.

We partner with those brothers and sisters across the world.

We partner with Gospel Life Church because we need to be reminded that we're not alone in the battle, that we're not alone as we seek to make Jesus known.

That actually every Sunday when we gather, we can think, gosh, there are there are brothers and sisters all across the world who love us, who are praying for us, who long to see our witness increase.

And they derive joy from seeing our witness and we from theirs.

Paul's desire, love's delight is that other people are trusting Jesus and sharing in the same mission.

Third, love's hope.

I have to try and pick up the pace.

Look at this.

Love's hope.

Love's hope is there in verse 6, and I am sure of this, I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus.

Paul has seen God at work in their lives, and so it is right then that he is given this confident assurance that the same God who began this work of salvation will keep these Christians to the end.

What a tremendously tender-hearted thing to comfort someone with.

When someone is faltering and failing, when I fear my faith will fail, he will hold me fast.

When the tempter would prevail, he will hold me fast.

How often do we go through seasons where it feels like uh we cling with feeble fingers to the ledge of God's great grace, and yet it is not He, it is not us who hold on to Him, but He who holds on to us.

And to assure one another of this, that just as we saw and see God at work in your life, He'll bring that to completion.

It is not the strength with which you hold on to Jesus, but the eternal grasp that he has on you.

Salvation is not a matter of working for God to accept you.

None of us can earn God's favor.

That is why they are partakers of grace.

That is God's undeserved, unmerited kindness.

None of us can earn God's favor, none of us can maintain our favor.

Salvation is begun and ended in God.

And because it's begun and ended in God, Paul can speak with such great confident hope.

We think of hope in terms of frivolous.

I hope it won't rain later.

Yeah, good luck.

Um, but that's not what the Bible means by hope.

Hope is a confident assurance.

It says, I'm sure of this.

I have this confidence that just as God saved you that decade ago when I was in Philippi, but he brought you to trust his son, he will see that work done.

He will bring you to that final day.

Yeah, the line won't be straight.

It's not a linear linear progression all the way to heaven.

Sometimes you find yourself in deep troughs in that graph.

But the Lord who began a good work in you will bring you home.

He will see it done.

Folks, if you're trusting in Jesus, the reality is that if you could lose your salvation, you would have done so already.

The Lord Jesus keeps all those who are his.

And so Paul can write with such great hope.

Can I encourage you that as you meet with one another in our community groups, or maybe you you pull a prayer triplet or a prayer square together, as you go through those seasons of doubt and questioning and struggling and wrestling, can I encourage you that in those times to uh to be given that sort of tender-hearted reassurance and affection that as you're trusting, he will keep you to the end.

Keep on persevering.

You could be like those uh those friends who carry the paralyzed man to Jesus.

See, he couldn't get there himself.

It's like, borrow some of my strength for a time, borrow some of my faith.

Come walk with me.

That's the kind of tender-hearted affection that Paul wants us, I think, to have for one another.

Fourth, Paul, love's longing.

Love's longing.

It is right for me to feel, verse seven, uh, to feel this way about you because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Just look at that language.

How can you come away and think that Paul is cold and unemotional and stoic and hard-hearted?

I hold you in my heart, I yearn for you.

With what?

What an audacious thing to say.

With all of the affection of Christ Jesus.

I love you the way Jesus loves you.

His love, his desire is shaped and molded by Jesus' desire.

We'll get more into the details of his uh of his prayer in the final point in just a in just a moment.

But let's just note this desire.

True gospel love, true joy is in seeing others grow and mature in the faith, in the gospel.

And note as well, not just the depth of Paul's affection, but the breadth of Paul's affection.

He feels about them all.

Did you notice that little word?

Verse 8, for God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

You know, one of the things that's going on in Philippi the Paul address right at the very end is that there's a disagreement in the church.

That there's there's kind of two ladies and they have kind of two factions.

And so at the end, he says, Look, could could those two ladies agree in the Lord?

Could they come together?

He doesn't pick sides.

I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

He doesn't perpetuate division, he yearns for them all from Lydia, the wealthy Jewish businesswoman who you uh will have seen two weeks ago, to the Gentile Roman soldier who turned to Jesus rather than taking his own life.

Such is the inclusivity of Paul's love, because it is the inclusivity of the gospel.

Jesus died with arms open wide to embrace all kinds of people.

So James Montgomery Boyce, a Christian theologian in the 20th century, uh, wrote this.

He said, It's not enough to tolerate other Christians.

You must enjoy their company.

You must learn from them.

Furthermore, this fellowship must be one that is constantly expanding to include other Christians, even those whom you have never met, but with whom you are united forever in the Lord.

It's one of the great joys of uh of seeing city church and seeing city church uh grow as more people join, as people join from different backgrounds, and we want to welcome people from all over the world, from all different cultures and stories and walks of life.

I don't know what brought you here this morning.

Maybe a friend dragged you along and you're still wondering why you're here, but you're welcome, and I want to want you to know that we love you and we love you because Jesus loves you.

That's the affection that we want to have stirred for you and for one another.

That's love's longing.

It is the yearning and desire and love that Jesus has himself.

Finally, love's prayer.

Verses 9 to 11 could be a whole sermon in themselves, but we want to be done by Christmas.

So we're we're we're wrapping this, we're wrapping this in.

Love's prayer.

Can I commend to you, if you want to kind of think more deeply about uh Paul's prayers, you could read a book by a guy called D.A.

Carson called A Call to Spiritual Reformation that walks very slowly through Paul's prayers, uh call to spiritual reformation.

Um, but love's prayer is this.

Paul has told us that he prays.

Verse 3, I thank my God and all my remembrance of you in every prayer.

Uh he's told us how he prays, he prays with joy.

He's told us why he prays, because of their partnership in the gospel.

And now he tells us what he prays for them.

And what does he pray?

He prays that they would abound in love.

That just as he is expressing his love for them, his prayer is that they would grow more and more in their love.

And is it love for God or is it love for others?

Well, it's kept deliberately vague, isn't it?

Verse 9, and this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more.

It's not given an object.

It's not given an object because it's supposed to encompass both.

Christian maturity can be summarized in as a deepening love for God and for others.

But this love, as you'll see, is not just mere sentimentality.

You think kind of Valentine's Day, Hallmark card, that sort of thing.

That's not what Paul's talking about.

That's why he says, I want your love to abound more and more with what?

With knowledge and all discernment.

You see, genuine love for one another has a precision to it.

It knows people, it knows their personalities, their circumstances, what they enjoy and what they don't.

If you loved me uh and uh and wanted to express your love for me by bringing me an heirloom tomato salad, I would conclude that you don't know me because tomatoes are rotten and from the pit.

I don't know why you'd eat them.

You'd need to know me.

No, now you do.

You'd need to know me.

Love has a precision to it.

You need to know that my birthday is the first of July.

Love has a specificity.

He doesn't pray vague prayers, but prayers that are made to measure, tailored by a knowledge that is given by God, wisdom from above.

And what is the direction of those prayers?

The direction of those prayers is again, this is the connection word, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless on the day of Christ Jesus.

So I pray that you'll increase in love for one another in specific and grounded ways that have the result of you Christians becoming more holy, more like Jesus, until the day that you see him face to face.

That's his prayer.

People don't by nature always do what is best for themselves.

Paul prays that they would know what is excellent.

We don't always know what is right for us to do.

And so Paul prays that they would know what is good, what builds godliness, righteousness, purity, and blamelessness in your life.

If you're in a crossroads and you're wondering, well, what do I do?

Well, part of Paul's wisdom here is pray that you would do the thing that causes you to grow in Christ-likeness more.

If you look at both of your options and go, well, either one will do it, and say, Well, pick one.

Like, toss a coin.

You do the thing that increases righteousness, blamelessness, purity in your life.

So we must ask ourselves, do I pursue what is excellent or do I pursue what bolsters my self-image?

Am I motivated by what is best or by what is easiest?

Do I live for my own glory or for the glory and praise of God?

As Paul concludes in verse 11.

Paul's desire is that the believers would know and experience a deeper measure of the righteousness that comes from Jesus.

That is, it doesn't come from ourselves.

That's what the gospel offers us.

The gospel says that you have no righteousness of your own.

That we are guilty because of our sin by nature and choice, and yet Jesus comes and he clothes us in his perfect righteousness and he makes us innocent.

That's what you are invited to participate in this morning.

That's what you're invited to place your faith in this morning.

And the cause, the result of that is that your life will begin to exude joy and delight for God and for others.

This is what transforms our hearts.

This is what transformed hearts look like.

It thickens our skin because it means that no matter what circumstances, nothing can take away our joy, but it also softens our hearts to feel like Jesus, to feel how he felt for one another.

I pray that that will be true of each of us this morning.