Introduction:
Steve Brown often points out that one is a Christian or he is not. One does not become more Christian over time. Likewise, one is pregnant, and does not become more pregnant over time. You either are or you aren’t pregnant, regardless of whether you are showing.
The Bible tells us in John 1:12, "Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God -- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God."
While pregnancy comes from the union of the husband and wife, the birth of a Christian comes from the union of a forgiven sinner, made possible by receiving Christ into his or her life, and God Himself. And from the union of the forgiven sinner and God, new birth and gradual growth follows.
No matter how discouraged or depressed I am, when I hear about the birth of a baby, my spirit is lifted up. Parents, in a majority of the situations, rejoice at the birth of a child. Further rejoicing comes when the natural growth and development takes place. If, however, by age one year, the child still does not roll over or the child is not able to grab hold of a rattle, rejoicing turns into worry. If by age three, the child has not cut his first tooth or the child is not yet able to walk, rejoicing turns into worry.
In a healthy child, not only do the parents rejoice in the natural development and growth of the child, but the child rejoices in the growth she sees taking place in her own life. Esther, our daughter, can’t speak yet, but she laughs a hearty laugh each time she crawls right behind Susan or me. Esther is thinking about how wonderful it is to move around with such freedom, when seven months ago she could barely roll over. Esther is experiencing the joy of growth.
This morning, we will look at and rejoice over the Christian’s growth process as we study the prayer that Paul prays for the Philippians.
Philippians 1:9-11:
While the growth of a child can be measured in many ways, such as size, weight, shape, developmental skills, etc., the growth of a Christian can be measured in at least seven ways as noted in Paul’s prayer. Let’s take a look at them in the order Paul prayed for growth to be revealed in the Philippians.
First, we can measure the growth of a Christian by his or her love: (We see this in verse 9.) Paul is talking about agape love, the Greek word meaning "love that is not earned or deserved; charity."
John’s first short letter noted, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."
Agape love is to God as wet is to water or hot is to fire. But agape love is not something you and I can turn on or turn off. Agape love is not something we can grow by our own effort. Agape love is a by-product of knowing God, because God is love.
God came in human form instead of His awesome and majestic splendor, because God is love. God came as a child in a manger instead of a General with an army, because God is love. God came to serve rather than to be served, because God is love. God came to die on our behalf rather than to sentence us to die for our sins, because God is love.
Love does not take away freedom, so we have a choice to make. God not only forgives us but he befriends us, if we would only receive His finished work through Christ on the cross as the only solution for restoration of relationship between God and sinner.
A young man with nothing exciting to do on a lazy summer day decided to go and vandalize a church. He entered the church sanctuary and began to mark up the pews with permanent markers. Then suddenly he heard the slamming shut of the entrance doors. Before he could run away, he found himself between a wall and the center aisle with the pastor standing in the way.
That pastor took the young man into the side chapel, where a figure of the crucified Jesus Christ hung on the wall. That pastor told the boy that the only other option to having him arrested was for the boy to repeat the following sentence ten times while staring at the figure of the crucified Christ: "I don’t care that you died for me."
Then the pastor left the young man alone in the chapel to repeat the statement. The young man was rather relieved that he would not be arrested, and to humor the old pastor, he looked at the figure of the crucified Christ and began to repeat the sentence: "I don’t care that you died for me. I don’t care that you died for me. I don’t care that you died for me"
And as the young man continued to repeat, "I don’t care that you died for me," tear began to well up in his eyes, and soon he collapsed on the floor sobbing.
1 John 4:9-11 reads, "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
The first measure of Christian growth is love, and this love begins with knowing the awesome love of God demonstrated on the cross for us, and this love grows through knowledge and depth of insight, the next two measurements of Christian growth.
Second, we can measure the growth of a Christian by his or her knowledge: (We also see this in verse 9.)
The children’s song, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so," is not all there is to know from the Bible. Christians who know and only know that "God so love the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life," need to do some growing in knowledge.
While I was in college, I had a roommate who never read the Bible, but he prayed. He told me that he didn’t need to read the Bible, but his relationship with God was growing deeper everyday through prayer.
I asked him, "How in the world do you know God even listens to you?"
Don’t get me wrong, prayer is a wonderful way to grow deeper with God, but we know this because the Bible reveals this knowledge to us. Knowledge is important.
Someone mentioned to Billy Graham that the knowledge of the Living Word, that is a personal relationship with Christ, is the only important thing in the Christian life.
And Billy Graham replied, "Everything I know about the Living Word (that is Jesus Christ), I discovered from the Written Word (that is the Bible).
Knowledge without love is cold and amoral data, but love without knowledge is not love, it’s misguided emotionalism. Knowledge is important.
Someone recently told me that she wanted to be a Christian, but she simply couldn’t make the promise to God that she would go to church every Sunday. She thought that you had to be at church every Sunday in order to be a Christian, and she didn’t want to make a promise to God that she couldn’t fulfill.
I told her that one reason why you want to be at church every Sunday is so you can know what the Bible says, and the Bible never said any nonsense whereby going to church would make you a Christian anymore than going into a garage would make you a car.
That’s why more than half of you study the Bible at the Men’s Fellowship and at the Women’s Fellowship, and that’s why we study the Bible on Sunday morning. Knowledge is important. The second measure of Christian growth is knowledge, a by-product of studying the Bible or hearing the Bible taught.
Third, we can measure the growth of a Christian by his or her depth of insight: (This we also see in verse 9.) One can have knowledge without understanding or the depth of insight.
A little girl, whose cat had died the day before, didn’t want to go outside to play. Her mom, wanting to comfort her, explained, "Don’t be sad; kitty-cat is in heaven now." Her daughter with a look of confusion asked, "What in the world does God want with a dead cat?"
Knowledge tells us what; insight tells us how and why.
For instance, the Bible tells us we are to worship one God, but this one God manifests Himself in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are not simply three form or three roles, but indeed three persons, but one God.
We will not understand everything we know about God, the Bible or the Christian life, but what we can understand, we should work toward understanding.
I’ve found at least four ways of growing in my depth of insight. The first way is to discover revealed insight within the pages of the Bible. Many times the Bible will tell us what, how and why.
The second way is to reflect on or think deeply on what we know. If we slow down enough to think about what God’s word says, we can sometimes understand why He said what He said.
The third way is to pray for understanding, and God promises to give wisdom generously to all who asks.
The fourth way is to live out what I know. Paul in his letter to the Romans encouraged them to test out God’s will for their lives, so that they can discover that God’s will is good, pleasing and perfect.
For instance, you may not understand why God, who has no need of human assistance, would instruct us to give 10 percent of our income to His work or to partner with Him in the saving of human souls, but you can gain a deeper understanding as you study the Bible, take time to consider why that is, ask Him for understanding, and finally obey His instruction and observe the outcome as you give financially and share the good news of Jesus Christ.
The third measure of Christian growth is depth of insight, a by-product of engaging knowledge.
Four, we can measure the growth of a Christian by his or her discernment: (We see this in verse 10.)
Hebrews 5:12-14 reads: "In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."
What the author of Hebrews is saying is that the basic knowledge of God’s love and forgiveness is the milk for infant Christians. You should not be ashamed of having milk as your exclusive diet, but if milk is all you’re having year after year after year, you ought to worry. Growing Christians need to chew on the harder truths of the Bible that call us to mature in our discernment of what is right and wrong.
When the cashier returns your change, and you realized she gave you extra change back, what is best? The infant Christian might keep the extra change and think, "I get over-charged in this place anyway, this is God’s way of blessings me today."
But the mature Christian will quietly inform the cashier of the extra change and return the money. The solid food of the Bible is in the mature Christian, and she knows that God’s way in her life never contradicts God’s teaching of right and wrong in her Bible, that solid food.
The fourth measure of Christian growth is discerning what is best, the application of knowledge and insight from the revealed truth of the Bible.
Five, we can measure the growth of a Christian by his or her purity: (We also see this in verse 10.) Other translations may say "sincere."
Purity here means "tested by sunlight." In the days of Paul, some pottery workers would patch up cracks with wax and sell the pottery as perfect products. The way you can test if there are any cracks in the pottery is to leave it in the sunlight. The heat from the sunlight will melt the wax, and expose the crack.
The truth is, we all have cracks in our lives. The growth we look forward to is not the patching up of the cracks with quick fixes or external material things. Godless personal improvement materials and working on externals help with the presentation, but they are like Band-Aids on tumors or wax on cracked pottery, but an inside job takes time spent with God and His Word.
Paul in his second letter to the Corinthian church tells us that we are clay pots with Christ as the real treasure in us. The pot is not the treasure, Christ living in you; He’s the Treasure. Let me read a brief excerpt from 2 Corinthians 4:7-9, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."
Therefore, when the heat or pressure of life gets turned up, what is important is not whether the cracks show, but what flows out of the cracks. When the stress level rises in your life, does impatience or anger flow out of the cracks in your life, or do Christ’s love and the wisdom of the Bible flow out of your cracks?
When I worked with young people who are familiar with exams, I would remind them at the end of my messages that they will be given an exam to test what they have learned, but the exam will not be with pencil and paper. The exams will come in the form of life circumstances. A measure of your Christian growth is that you are gradually scoring higher each time you are tested by sunlight or life’s circumstances.
The fifth measure of Christian growth is purity, the response you formulate with love, knowledge, insight and discernment, as you face the test of sunlight or life’s circumstances.
Six, we can measure the growth of a Christian by his or her blamelessness until the day of Christ: (We also see this in verse 10.)
Warren Wiersbe commented, "To be blameless until the day of Christ can best be measured by answering two questions: ’Will what I do make other people stumble in their walk with God?’ And ’Will what I do cause me to be ashamed when Jesus returns for me?’"
In some sense, to grow as Christians requires that we grow as our brother’s keeper or our sister’s keeper. We begin by recognizing that what we do affects other Christians.
When I first began working with high schoolers, I made the commitment not to watch any rated R movies, because I don’t want my action to approve all rated R movies for viewing. Furthermore, I know people who enjoy a bit of wine with dinner, but they will not bring out their wine if it offends their company. That’s not being deceptive, that being blameless.
Fred Smith loves to say, "Leaders need to hold themselves to a stricter discipline than is expected of others. Those who are first in place must be first in merit." I would adapt that by saying, "Mature Christians need to hold themselves to a stricter discipline than infant Christians. Those who are more mature must be their brother’s keepers."
The sixth measure of Christian growth is blamelessness, the living out of mature Christians’ concern for younger Christians.
Seven and finally, we can measure the growth of a Christian by his or her being filling with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ: (We see this in verse 11.)
Paul is not interested in our activities and programs, because being busy is not the same as being mature. We are not the ones to cause fruit to grow in our lives anymore than farmers can push up their crops to grow out of the soil, but we have a responsibility to plant ourselves in good soil or graft ourselves onto the growing Vine.
Jesus tells us in John 15:4, "Remain in me (that is Jesus), and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me."
Remember from our first study in Philippians, we talked about the difference between a servant and a volunteer? A volunteer is someone who chooses to help; a servant is someone who responds to the Master, God. Let me expand on that. A volunteer can have much activity and even end up with the desired result, but only a servant can have the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, the desired result of God.
There are at least two fruits of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ and not through our own effort. One is the character of Christ in us. As we connect ourselves with Christ, we bear the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Anyone who has tried to possess these character traits apart from Christ has either failed or is tremendously frustrated.
The second fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ and not through our own effort is the return of a sinner to God for a right relationship. Anyone who is persuaded into a right relationship with God by our effort and apart from Christ, that person can be persuade out of a right relationship away from God by someone else.
The seventh measure of Christian growth is being filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. We began this morning observing how measured natural growth and development brings joy to the parents and to the child. We filled this message by turning our focus to how measured Christian growth brings joy to the Father, God, and to ourselves.
Conclusion:
There was a time when I didn’t know how to handle compliments. When people complimented you on your concern for other Christians, for your insight, or for the way you love others, you don’t have to change the subject. If your growth and maturity is the work of God in you, give God the credit. Say, "I thank God that I’m gradually growing." That’s the modern translation of how Paul concluded his prayer to the Philippians, "to the glory and praise of God."
