Philippians 1.3-11 Praying with Paul: Prayer’s Chief End is Excellent Love

The Chief End of Prayer is Excellent Love

Philippians 1.3-11

Overcoming Hurdles & Excuses

Introduction

In junior high and high school, I became effective at creating excuses for getting out of things I didn’t really want to do. I skipped many days of school because I wasn’t “feeling well.” Come to find out, different people have different understandings of what qualifies as a proper excuse. While teaching in the classroom, I heard some extremely creative excuses. It was funny to watch students try on various kinds of excuses to see which ones would fly. “You never gave me that assignment.” Actually, everyone got the assignment. “You never told us that it was due!” It’s posted online, on your printed schedule, and in your parent’s email. “You never told us!” “I had other assignments due!” “I was on vacation.” “This class assigns way too much work!”

We all make excuses, but as we grow in maturity, we ought, more and more to take responsibility for ourselves. This past week, I slept through an important meeting. But, by God’s grace, I didn’t lie about it. I told the truth. I simply slept through. It’s an embarrassing truth! But the truth, no less.

One thing you are inadvertently learning in life is that you can manipulate language to control other people’s perceptions of who you are or what is happening in your life. But here’s the problem, when we make excuses to God for not praying, he sees straight through to the heart of the problem, and he won’t allow us to live in a state of self-deception.

Tonight, we are closing a series of sermons entitled “Praying with Paul.” The goal of this Summer series is that we learn how Paul prayed for the churches and for his friends in order to follow Paul as Paul followed Christ. To shape our lives around the power of the Gospel so that our prayers reflect the privilege of our sonship. To stand before God dressed in the righteous robes of Christ and to command the attention of almighty God. Over the Summer so far, we learned 8 things about prayer:

1. Matthew 6.5-15: Prayer is the Gospel-privilege of talking to our Father
2. 2 Thessalonians 1.3-12: Prayer is the present framing of future glory
3. 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13: Prayer increases our joy and our love for his people.
4. Colossians 1.9-14: Prayer is the Gospel-fight to challenge people to walk with God.
5. Ephesians 3.14-21: Prayer strengthens people to understand that we are weaker than we thought and that God is stronger than we could ever hope[1]
6. Ephesians 1.15-23 Prayer is for knowing God truly.
7. Ephesians 3.13-21 (Abner) Prayer is the way we realize our union with Christ.
8. Romans 15.14-33 (Aaron) Prayer mobilizes ministry and mission at home and abroad
9. Philippians 1.3-11: The chief end of prayer is excellent love.

We’ve come at prayer from 9 different angles, with 9 different views, and our hope is that you are 9 times stronger in your prayer life than when we started.

So, my question by way of introduction tonight is this: do you believe that these statements are true? Do you believe that God is this powerful through the vehicle of prayer to change you and your world? Do you participate in prayer with an obligatory boredom, staring off in the distance wondering when it will be over, or do you passionately engage in prayer like your life depends on it? You see, we assume that you are coming here because you are hungry. That you hunger and “Thirst” for righteousness. We assume that you want to learn to pray, that you want to grow in your relationship and fellowship with God. So you gather. If you believe all these things about prayer, you will pray. You will gather with God’s people. You will participate in the local church. If you don’t believe these things about prayer, and about the Gospel, this exercise will seem like meaningless waste. So, what do you believe?

Over the past Summer, as we have continually come back to prayer as the subject of our study, I have seen what a poverty-stricken prayer life I have. I have been able to see how broken my communion with God really is. How intermittent, distracted, and wandering my prayers often are. Although this summer series has been like water to my soul, it has also been deeply convicting and unnerving for me. I thought I was in better shape than I am. The word of God has exposed me, my heart, and my mind in new ways.

So, quite simply: if you believe that prayer is all the things we’ve said, how’s is your prayer life? How have you changed this Summer?

Exegetical Introduction

Tonight, we are going to look at Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Likely, Paul is writing under house arrest around the year AD 62 as he awaits trial in Rome. If you remember or know Paul’s life at all, you know that ministry for him was not sitting at coffee shops having heart-to-heart conversations with students. By this point, Paul had personally experienced just about all kinds of human suffering available. He records in 2 Corinthians 11,

“…with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. ²⁴ Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; ²⁶ on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; ²⁷ in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. ²⁸ And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. (2 Cor. 11)

Paul wrote his letters not from the comfort of his armchair, drinking tea and listening to classical music. He wrote from a place of deep personal suffering and anguish. He wrote on the brink of death. He wrote from the shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ looming over him. If there are people who know anything about prayer, it is people that have suffered great loss, seen great trial, and known great pain. If your prayer life is dry as a goat head, it is possible that you have not gone through any valleys yet. If your life is mainly a surface level jokes and a drifting attentiveness to the next Youtube video, you will not pray.

Tonight, we’re talking about hurdles and excuses to prayer. And, I want us to start by thinking of what keeps you from prayer. The reason why we start here is because whatever keeps you from prayer is really what’s keeping you from God.

Main Question/Tension:

If you remember our series on Romans, you might remember that Paul argues in Romans 7 that Christians are composed of two selves that are always in conflict against one another: the old man and the new man. Sin is not only transgressing a law, but it is something that lives in us like bacteria or a virus that makes us sick. Sin dwells in us like an infection, like an infestation of termites in a home. Paul summarizes this idea as the “flesh.” This is the self that runs from the prayer closet. This is the self that hates church, community, and conviction of sin. This is the self that resents getting up early, spending time in God’s word, and what we’re doing right now, and guess what? Each of us are fighting the flesh with differing degrees of victory even as I speak.

Paul says that there is another self, produced by the Gospel that is united to Christ. The old self has been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer the old self that lives, but Christ who lives and reigns in a person (Gal. 2:20). This is what it means to have your identity “In Christ.” While it goes on being very difficult to follow Christ, to walk in discipleship, and to love God’s word, this new way of living creates and sustains a new kind of person in you: the kind of person that loves God and loves others.

So, our main question tonight is this: how do we overcome hurdles and excuses for not praying? The answer is by applying the Gospel. We live in accordance not with the flesh, but in the new way of the Spirit. Let me show you what I mean.

Outline:

1. Prayer Happens in the Context of Gratitude for True Friendship (Phil. 1.3-5).
2. Prayer Happens as Result of Intense Affection (Phil. 1.6-8)
3. The Chief End of Prayer is Excellent Love (Phil. 1.9-11)

Main Point:

The Chief End of Prayer is Excellent Love:

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, we come to you tonight knowing, believing, and trusting that your plans, purposes, and will are good for us and glorifying to you. While our flesh wants nothing to do with you, to see you as distant and ineffective in your work, our spirit knows and understands that you have ordained all of our circumstances according to your sovereign will. Help us to see this!

Jesus, thank you for being the perfect Son, and our substitutionary, atoning sacrificial lamb so that we might exchange our filth for your spotlessness. I pray that we would see you as you are tonight!

Holy Spirit, we invite you to do your work, to sanctify your church, to create in us new affections and loves in place of old and dead ones. I pray that you would light a fire in our hearts for the glory of God, and the good of your people. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Prayer Happens in the Context of Gratitude for True Friendship (Phil. 1.3-5)

First, Paul says,

³ I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, ⁴ always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, ⁵ because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

The fledgling, growing, but likely small church by our standards, contains within it some of Paul’s most cherished friendships. What is distinct and unique about Paul’s relationship with the Philippians is their reciprocity and their generosity. They have taken initiative to make sure that Paul’s needs are met. From the very beginning, they did what Paul would not let the Corinthians do: pay him for his service. Unlike the Corinthian church, Paul’s payment for his work would not create a stumbling block for the Philippians. They were mature enough to see that Paul had needs, and it was their obligation to help.

But, Paul is overjoyed in his prayers for the Philippians not only because they cover some of his bills. The word “partnership” in verse five goes far beyond business partnership to speak of true friendship. From the very beginning, the Philippian church have been good friends to Paul.

Now, we must stop and reflect on this: take a careful look at your friends. What is at the center of those friendships? Are you the center? What do you have in common? Why are your friends drawn into relationship with you? What pulls other people in about you? Or, to reverse the direction, what makes you want to be friends with someone else? What compels you or propels you toward friendship?

If you’re anything like me, this text is convicting not only because I have been prayerless, but because I have fallen woefully short in my friendships! Could it be that the same hurdles and excuses that we make for not having friends are the same hurdles and excuses that we make to God for not going to prayer?

1. If you’re too busy for your friends, you will be too busy for prayer.
2. If you’re too shy to make friends, is that why you are too shy to pray in public?
3. If you’re afraid to preach to the gospel to others, could it be because your friends are not proclaiming the gospel to you?
4. If you’re joyless or depressed, is it because you’ve never put yourself out there in relationship with other people?
5. If you’re not growing in your faith, might it be because you have not pursued relationships with a gospel focus to them?

I am dreadfully afraid that this generation would never be able to write a truthful sentence like the one that Paul writes. From the first day, Paul had gospel-partners in the Philippian church.

But, we must remember that friendships are not an end in themselves. Friendships happen along the way. Paul had a friendship with the Philippians because he had a relationship with Jesus, who told Paul to go to Macedonia. And Paul did not go alone, he went with his friends. While in Philippi he preached to some women, exorcized a demon from a slave girl, and was thrown in jail for it. Then, while singing songs with his friend Silas in jail, there was an earthquake. Rather than running for their lives, Paul and his friend stuck around, which led to an opportunity to preach to the Jailer, who was about to kill himself. He was converted, and eventually Paul and his friends were asked to leave the city. Do you see who Paul made friends with? A former demon-possessed woman, a suicidal jailer and his family, and then some other “brothers” (Acts 16.40).

If I were you, I would stop making friends based on self-interest, resumes, and prospects for college and career. I would stop making friends that only encourage and bolster your ambition, and start making friends who share in Gospel partnership with you. Start making friends who put the gospel at the center of what they do.

If you can’t find friends like this, who are already mature in their walk with God, you must make friends like this. Preach the Gospel, pray for people, encourage them, build them up in love, and see if you can’t write a sentence like Paul does in Phil. 1.

So then, prayer happens in the context of true friendship. These friendships are not surface acquaintances, but deep attachments. It is in these friendships that you can both express your deepest needs and provide your greatest service. This is because of the level of shared affection, which leads to the next point:

Prayer Happens as a Result of Intense Affection

Paul writes,

⁶ And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. ⁷ It is right for me to feel this way about you all, 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. ⁸ For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

You have probably heard someone say, “Love isn’t a feeling. It’s a choice!” This pushes back on a culture obsessed with feelings and emotions and is motivated solely based on felt needs. Why did you do that? “I don’t know, I felt like it” shoulder shrug. So, preachers and teachers (and parents) are compelled to do what preachers and teachers often do: build false dichotomies to rebalance unhealthy ways of thinking. But, they are still false dichotomies, or two things that are set opposite one another that are really meant to be united.

Notice in verse 6 Paul says, “I am sure of this…” He says, “I am certain, I have been persuaded, I have concluded based on thoughtful reason” that “…he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.” In the next sentence, he says that he is justified then, to feel the way he does. Thinking comes before feeling, but it does not contradict it. It is not as if you think or feel, but you think and feel. Paul has clear, observable reasons for his feelings. But, he has feelings! I don’t know how you could say “I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus” in a monotone. Even saying “the affection of Christ Jesus” does not do justice to what Paul is expressing here. He is saying that he loves them from his guts. It makes Paul’s stomach turn to think about how much he loves the Philippians.

Now, again we must stop and reflect on what this means for us. Could it be that you fail to pray because you do not feel the burning passion of God for you? Paul burns with the same affection for the Philippians that is held in the Person of Jesus Christ. Just as Paul holds the Philippians in his heart, Jesus holds you, if you are in Christ, in his own heart. He longs to see you. If he had three hours to spare, he would spend it with you. He yearns for you. He loves you. And he knows you. Do you see how this frees you from your ongoing struggle to accomplish enough to get other people to love you? Do you see how this cures your loneliness and your self-centeredness? Do you see how this allows you to befriend other people?

We’re looking at these aspects of this text in order to get a glimpse into how Paul thinks and feels as he begins to pray. We can conclude easily that Paul comes to pray with passion, trust, and intense affection for the people he is praying for. Why is it then that we don’t pray this way?

The Chief End of Prayer is Excellent Love

I am going to argue that the reason we fail to pray in this way, is because we have not experienced the excellence of God’s love for us. And therefore, we do not see prayer as the vehicle aimed at the target of love. We do not know what it feels like to be truly loved or prayed for and so that we are rendered unable to truly love and to pray. And our prayerlessness is the measure of our lack of love. Let’s look at what Paul says,

⁹ And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, ¹⁰ so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, ¹¹ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

This sentence may come across to us at first as very unclear. So, let’s break it down a bit.

First, Paul prays for the increase and flourishing of love among the Philippians that comes with knowledge and discernment. Believe it or not, the thing you want more than anything in the world is to love and be loved. Love motivates us to seek relationship. Paul assumes that it takes both knowledge and discernment, or wisdom to know how to love another person and to make love increase. And, we all want love to increase, don’t we? But, God doesn’t magically drop his affections into us when we become Christians, we must learn to love other people, and this requires patient, diligent effort, ever-present watchfulness in our love. Loving others is a complex and difficult endeavor because people are both as complex and oftentimes difficult as we are.

Many of you have probably experienced trying to love someone and realizing that what you did out of “love” wasn’t very effective. Though it might come across as love to you, it might not come across as love to someone else. Maybe you are growing up in a home that prizes sarcastic slams as a way of exchanging loving jabs. While this might work among guys who are competitively humorous, when you offer your “love” to someone who doesn’t understand sarcasm, it comes across as prideful and rude, disintegrating the relationship. Or, maybe you are growing up in a home that is exceptionally serious. While other people go to Wahooz and seem to have a great time with the family, you’re used to exchanging love through discussion around the table about the most pressing issues in culture. Then, you get put in environments where fun is the key love language and you hide up against the wall. Or, maybe you’re growing up in a home that is simply unloving. Harsh criticism, emotional manipulation, or comparison rules the day. You are suffering through the growing up years with the anxious oversight of struggling parents. Or, maybe you are growing up in a home where love is communicated through achievements. The more you achieve, the more attention and affection you get from your parents and siblings. Whatever the case may be, or wherever you are coming from, it takes knowledge and discernment to love another person well. It takes wisdom. Lack of wisdom and knowledge produces less than excellent love. Therefore, we can safely conclude that love is not merely a feeling that you experience, but feelings that follow reasonable thought.

Secondly, Paul argues that an increase in love will increase your ability to “approve what is excellent,” and increase the likelihood that you will be “pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” Paul prays for this because it is God that has “filled [you] with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory of God.” In other words, Paul prays for an increase in love as the Philippians learn to appropriate the Gospel in their hearts. God produces the fruit of the gospel in our hearts, and with that fruit, we nourish and encourage other people in knowledgeable and wise ways.

So, why does God want us to approve what is excellent? Over the past few decades, there has been a celebration within Christianity of what I’ll call “messy love.” People argue that true love accepts and overlooks ongoing offenses, disfunctions, and problems. One well known contemporary band puts it like this,

I like that you’re broken
Broken like me
Maybe that makes me a fool
I like that you’re lonely
Lonely like me
I could be lonely with you

I think that Christians have often bought into this idea of love. It’s broken, messy, and it approves the brokenness and mess inside of another person. In fact, when we look at other people, it is the fact that we share brokenness that attracts us. While I think that Paul was loving toward the Philippians, I don’t think it was a mess-approving love. When God looks at us, though he sees us to the bottom and he sees the mess that we have created in ourselves, he feels compassion, not approval. He approves of his Son, Jesus Christ, perfectly righteous and just, but he loves sinners and has compassion on them on the basis of Jesus’ perfect life and his death on the cross on our behalf. He does not leave us in our brokenness, though he loves us through it. God would not say, and Paul didn’t say to the demon-oppressed slave girl in Acts 16.

“I like that you’re demon-oppressed

Demon-oppressed like me

Maybe that makes me a fool…”

No, Paul was “greatly annoyed” by this (Acts 16.18), and after hearing her go on and on for few days, saying the same things, he calls the spirit of divination out of her.

God would not say and Paul didn’t say to the Philippian Jailer,

“I like that you’re suicidal

Suicidal like me

Maybe that makes me a fool…”

No, he says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16.31).

Approving what is excellent, and by implication, disapproving of what is not excellent is not a sign of judgmentalism or bigotry, but it is a sign of love. Many of you are being encouraged to simply ignore what is excellent for the sake of love, but Paul argues that these two must go together. If love is going to increase among us, we must pursue excellence-approving love. That means that we must see how God loves.

Gospel Application

We’ll close tonight and this series with a reminder that our call to pray is really a call to love. One writer puts it this way, “…the most effective way to influence another is to pray for him, and if a word of rebuke or correction has to be spoken let it be prayed over first, and then spoken in love”[2] The most effective way to love another person, to influence your school, to love you parents and siblings, to encourage your friends and grandparents is through prayer. If this is true, we have a profound motivation to begin to pray for the people that we say we love.

But, this motivation can only be sustained as we recognize that what Hebrews 7 says, that because Jesus is our perpetual priest, our continual representative before God, we have someone who “…lives to make intercession” (Hebrews 7:25) for us. In other words, Jesus is currently having a conversation with God the Father on your behalf. He is speaking, relating, praying, and interceding for you. This means that we love, or we pray because God first loved us, and even prayed for us in Christ (1 John 4:19).

The famous reformer Martin Luther allegedly said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”[3] That is the impulse of the Gospel. It’s possible that you have not been busy enough to see your need for prayer. Maybe you feel busy with school, homework, and sports, but your busyness, if it is God-glorifying will push you toward deeper communion with God, not away from it. Let’s pray.

 

Small Group Questions

1. Are your best friendships Gospel-centered friendships? If not, what are they centered on?
2. What are your best excuses for avoiding prayer?
3. What’s the connection between prayer and love?
4. What’s the relationship between our friendships and our prayer lives?
5. As you enter the school year, why do you think you will either be more likely to pray or less likely to pray?
6. What is the problem in this passage that is uniquely solved by the Gospel? (Conflict/Resolution)
7. How could you take this passage into your prayer life with God?
8. Make a list of 3-5 people that really need you to pray for them this week. Plan a time to pray!
9. What would it look like for you to grow into excellent love?
10. How do you or how have you settled for less than excellent love from others or for others?

[1] This makes slight reference to Tim Keller’s definition of the Gospel.

[2] Martin, Philippians, 65.

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/35269-i-have-so-much-to-do-that-i-shall-spend Accessed 8_21_19.

**Much of what is written here is inspired by or taken from a book by D.A. Carson entitled Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation. Find it here: Amazon Listing