Does shallow living haunt you?
Do you ever contemplate your relationship with God, knowing there is more?
Do you ever look at the kind of friend you are and the kind of friends you have and it seems like these relationships are about as deep and clear as a mud-puddle?
If you want to move past the famine of faking it and into the abundance of authenticity there is a letter you need to read and digest; it’s called Philippians. This is a letter about lasting relationships, meaningful ministry, and knowing God deeply. If that strikes a hunger deep within you, join us as we explore “A LIFE OF MORE!”
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Buddy Hoffman
Series: Philippians: The ‘What Ifs’ of Faith
September 15, 2013
What If We Interceded for Others?
Philippians 1:1-11
If you don’t have a Bible with you this morning, slip up your hand. We want to put a Bible in your hand. You already have the notes, and you notice there are some blanks on those notes. Some of you are very meticulous. If we miss a blank, it bothers you all week. If you have your handout sheet right there, I’m going to give you all the blanks right now. Wouldn’t you like that? All the blanks I’m going to give you right this very minute. Then the next few minutes, we’ll explain them to you.
Open that Bible to the book of Philippians. Take your notes over there, and you’ll notice the title there is What If We Interceded in Prayer for One Another? Now if you grew up in church, you know there’s church language, there are church phrases that we know kind of as insider words like interceded. You don’t go at work and say, “I’ll intercede for you.” You go, “What do you mean you’re going to intercede for me? What is it? Are you going to talk to the boss? Are you going to call somebody or something?”
Like if you go to church and someone says, “I’d like to share something with you,” that doesn’t mean they’re going to like break their candy in half and give some of it to you. Usually, if they said, “I’d like to share something with you,” they want some money or something. There’s a burden there.
But intercede means that we pray for other people. What’s an interesting thought is that Jesus himself intercedes for us, that he ever lives to make intercession for us. That’s an amazing thought to me that Jesus intercedes for us. This is What If We Interceded for Others? What should we pray for other people?
Have you ever like just talked to one of your friends or you looked at your children or you knelt beside the bed of one of your children or your children are grown and they call and say, “Would you pray for me?” and you wonder what you should pray? Well, here in Philippians, we have really a model, a form, a format on what we should pray for one another, what you should be praying for your wife, what you should praying for your husband, what you should be praying for those who you love. Then we’ll come back and explain a little bit. But they all start with more.
It’s more love, more wisdom, more substance, more authenticity, and more fruit. We’ll look at that out of the passage. That’s not just some ideas I had. These emerge out of this passage. So it’s more love, more wisdom, more substance, more authenticity, and more fruit.
Now if you’re like me and you’re taking notes, you’re trying to jot all those down and you might have missed one, if you missed one out of that and you just jumped to the next one, turn around to the person next to you and say, “What was number three?” and you can find that out. We’ll come through here and we’ll cover them.
But it starts off with a general introduction and identification of who the book is written from. Now last week, we introduced you to those people. They’re in Acts 16. There’s Lydia. She was a fashion design kind of person we would think of today. There’s the girl who was demon possessed that Paul cast a demon out of. Then there was the jailer who was about to commit suicide. That was the church in Philippi.
It was a place that was very, very dear to Paul’s heart. As far as we know, it was the only church that throughout his ministry, throughout Paul’s travels continued to support him. In a very real way, Philippians is a very densely packed letter giving them information and really talking about how much he loves them and some things he has heard that needs to be corrected and really thanking them…you’re going to run into this word…for your partnership in the gospel.
That word partnership is koinonia. It’s a word they used in the early church for like fellowship. If you attend church, again, we have these phrases we use. We have, “Well, after church tonight we’re going to have a fellowship.” Well, that means there are going to be casseroles and some kind of pudding there.
How many of you have gone to church fellowships? Yep. Now see, that’s not really what the fellowship was. It’s a relationship. It’s something that draws the people together that is really bigger than they are. It’s more important than they are individually, that collectively their commitment to the gospel. That’s the word that is translated there. If you have been at Grace for awhile, you know that word gospel is euaggelion. It’s the kingdom. It’s the movement of the kingdom. It’s the teaching of the kingdom. It’s the announcement of the kingdom.
There is coming a day, and we sang earlier the Lord’s Prayer, that, “Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Now wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing? Do you think there’s any cancer in God’s kingdom? Do you think there’s any divorce or murder or animosity or anger or any of those things in God’s kingdom? No. No.
There’s coming a day that that kingdom is going to come down out of heaven, and God’s righteousness and the knowledge of God is going to cover the earth as the water covers the seas. Amen? That’s going to be such an exciting day. If you don’t have that anticipation for it, the reason you probably don’t is because you haven’t thought about it enough and you haven’t just really marinated in that idea.
Sometimes I look at this world and it seems so messy. My heart just goes out and I say, “Lord, your kingdom come.” Do you realize there’s going to be a day that the last child who will ever starve it’s going to be over? The last person who’s going to be abused and murdered and all of those kinds of things. Those things will be done. That’s what his kingdom is going to be like. You’re going to get your last phone call that so-and-so, your friend, has died, or this terrible thing has happened.
He is announcing this kingdom, the King and the kingdom. He says, “You have been in this koinonia of the euaggelion, this gospel coalition that you have been partnered with.” He says, “I want you to know I pray for you all the time. Every time I think of you, I think of you with joy. I think of you with just happiness. There’s this whole idea that it brings up these wonderful memories of our experience together.”
Paul was anything but a shallow person. Paul was a deeply complex person. Do you ever get tired of shallowness, of people being so concerned and worked up over things ultimately that don’t matter at all?
I remember when I was in high school my senior year, I had this friend. His name was Paul. Man, I don’t know any other way to say this about Paul, but Paul really knew God. Do you know what I mean? I mean, he really knew God. He wasn’t a weirdo. He played sports and he did normal things, but boy, when you were in his group and he prayed, there was a gravitas. He read his Bible not because he thought if he didn’t read his Bible God wouldn’t bless him; he read his Bible because he really wanted to know God.
I remember talking to one of my friends, and I said, “We, me and you, and our group of people, do you know what we talk about? Cars. Girls.” That’s not completely shallow. Girls are complex. “Who’s going to win the football game next week?” Nothing’s wrong with any of that. But you do realize that whoever won this weekend, 10 million years into eternity nobody is going to remember. I mean, it’s nice to be excited about it and cheer for your team.
There’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but if your entire life is consumed with that kind of shallowness, and you look at your relationship with God, and really it’s shallow, and you look at your relationship with other people, and those relationships are all shallow, and you look into your center of being, and you think, “Man, that’s shallow,” and if you want to move past that famine of faking it into the abundance of authenticity, it comes with relationships…real, authentic relationships.
Let’s look at the passage there. Philippians 1: “This letter is from Paul and Timothy.” (Philippians 1:1) It’s interesting. I don’t have time to dig into it, but this is cross-generational discipleship. Paul places him right alongside of him. Paul is not into this imposing authority. Paul doesn’t go even in talking about his apostleship here. He calls them both servants, slaves of Christ Jesus.
“I am writing to all of God’s holy people…” (Philippians 1:1). If you have an older translation (I like it better), it actually just says, “I’m writing to all of God’s saints.” Now you might have a tendency to think, “Well, that must be somebody else.” No, the reality is if you are in Christ, you are a saint.
Now I know that probably doesn’t come off your tongue very easy. Like I am Saint Buddy. I might not have like any kind of chain. I don’t know what mine would look like that would hang, a Saint Buddy cross, or whatever. But the reality is every single person who is in Jesus Christ is holy. We are holy in Jesus Christ. We have been purified and set apart. That’s what the word literally means.
“…in Philippi who belong to Christ Jesus…” That is a frequent phrase Paul uses. I think it’s over 40 times in his letters. Then he says, “…including the elders and deacons [bishops and the deacons].” (Philippians 1:1) There are two things there that are just worth mentioning. The word deacon just literally means servant. That’s what it means.
So if you serve in the church with the saints, even if you’ve never been on any “deacon board,” you are a deacon. You’re a deacon. You’re a servant. Sometimes people argue about, “Can women be deacons?” Well, most churches, a lot of the service that is done is done by women. If nothing in the church got done that wasn’t done by women not much would get done.
There are the elders, the bishops. That word bishop there literally means to see over. They oversee. There are a group of people there that oversee. Their job is the big picture. That’s really important that you have somebody and you have a group of people who are not just into the car show.
It’s good that some people are into the car part, and it’s important that people are into the ministry you are engaged in. You should feel very passionately about it, but you need to recognize that there has to actually be some people who step back and they look over how the big picture works. Who those people are and the attitude they have is incredibly important.
He says, “May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.” (Philippians 1:2) Those two words are always in the same order in all of Paul’s letters…grace and peace. Do you know why? Because you can’t have peace without grace. The way to come to a place of peace…it’s a different Greek word here, but it’d be the Hebrew equivalent of the word shalom…the way to come to that place of wholeness is really coming through that gateway of grace.
I’m going to say this as a rhetorical question, okay? Do you know what that means? That means you don’t have to answer. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t. How many of you grew up in churches that were sort of legalistic? No, I want to see your hand. Okay, look around, because I know how this is. You who didn’t grow up in legalistic environments are dead. You think you’re the only ones who grew up in these kinds of environments.
There are different kinds of legalism. It’s not even always a list of legalism. It really is the attitude that God is always mad at you. That when you think about God, you don’t think about God smiling; you think about God as saying, “Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.”
I remember going to this church camp one time and they brought in one of those guilt-specialists. Man, we were in there. When you’re 13, you’re guilty of everything. Everything you’re capable of being guilty of you’re guilty. So, man, he started nailing everything. His job for camp was that everybody was going to make a commitment of some sort before camp was over. Now my commitment was I wasn’t making a commitment. Even if it hit me and I made a commitment, I was keeping it silent. I was not going to give in to the merchant of guilt.
If you’ve never read the book The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning… How many of you have read that book? I’m going to tell you something. It’ll bless your heart. It really will set you free if you’ve been raised in that kind of just guilt environment. You do recognize that when Jesus died on the cross for your sins, he died for them all. They’re all gone. You realize if you have come into the kingdom, there’s actually nothing you could do to be more righteous. Nothing. There’s just nothing.
You say, “Well, what if I give more money?” I would love to tell you it’ll make you more righteous, but in God’s eyes, he sees you through Jesus. He has paid for it all. Now I know, for instance, I’ve had pastors tell me, “Well, if you preach that kind of just over grace ideas, people will just live any way they want to live.” Not if they understand grace.
People will always do more for love than they will do for law. Amen? Now I know this is true. Do you know how I know this is true? Because we have accountants to make sure we don’t overpay our taxes. We pay people money to make sure we don’t pay one more dime than necessary to pay our taxes.
But when you go to the grocery store, and you’re like pushing down the aisle… Jody keeps me out of the grocery store, particularly Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. You go into those stores, and you think, “Man, the kids would like this,” and you just start loading stuff in. “I want some of that.” You don’t go, “Okay, this ice cream is really ice milk and they won’t know the difference, so I’m just getting that.” No, you don’t! You want to see the smile on their faces. Why is that? It’s love.
But there’s grace, and then there’s peace. If you understand you have been graced… Let me just throw this out to you. Graced people grace people. That’s what they do. If you understand you live in unadulterated, ridiculous, crazy grace… I mean, you think about how Jesus treated Peter. Peter denied Jesus three times, and then he left him in charge of the organization! You go, “Wait a minute! Peter can’t do this. He doesn’t have the courage.” Yes. “Peter, feed my sheep.” All right.
Graced people grace people. Hurt people hurt people. If you find yourself with this unattached kind of anger and bitterness and it just seems to just pop out of nowhere this anger, you’re really not going to find that answer in psychology. The only way you’re going to find that answer is in the absolute grace of God. Understanding that you have been forgiven or more than forgiven, that righteousness of God has been imputed into your account…
I mean, when we started Grace Fellowship, one of the single things I was absolutely adamant about, the name of the church was going to be called Grace because people everywhere needs grace. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me they’ve been driving down Ronald Reagan on their way home from work having a terrible day, they looked over and they saw that word Grace, and they’ve said (I mean, I’ve heard these very words so many times), “I could use some of that.” They’ve said, “I’m going to go there because I need grace.”
Guess what? We all need grace. If you want peace, the doorway, the way to get through to that is grace. All right, let’s look. Did I tell you that the word saints there has nothing to do with New Orleans? That’s important.
Verse 6: Notice that one. That’s really important. He says, “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. So it is right that I should feel as I do about all of you, for you have a special place in my heart.
You share with me the special favor of God, both in my imprisonment and in defending and confirming the truth of the Good News [the euaggelion, the gospel, the kingdom news]. God knows how much I love you and long for you with the tender compassion of Christ Jesus.” Okay, here’s where the prayer starts. “I pray…” Look at this. “…that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.” (Philippians 1:6-9)
1. More love. He prays they will love well, that they will love extravagantly. Matthew 22:35-40 says, “One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?’
Jesus replied, ‘”You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.'” (Matthew 22:35-40)
He just gave him the Cliff Notes of the commandments. You can’t remember all of the commandments? Here you go. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. Every night when we lie down at night, we ought to talk to God and we ought to say, “God, did I love you well today? Did I love you today?”
When you sit down and talk to your children and you say to your children, “Mom and dad have tried to teach you lots of things. What do you think is the most important thing we have tried to teach you?” Now if they look at you and they say, “Well, I think the most important thing you’ve tried to teach me is to be good,” you’ve just raised a legalist! You have! Now is being good important? Say yes, okay? You’re in church. You know the answer to this.
Being good is important. Being kind is important and all the rest. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness. That kindness comes out of love. The most important thing we can teach our children is to love God. Love God with all our heart. Everything in us. That we have this passion for God.
You say, “Well, I don’t. I have this kind of apathy about God.” That would worry me. It really would worry me. If you find yourself with this apathy toward God, the most important thing you can do is just say, “God, I have apathy and I confess it as sin. You give me the breath that I have to breathe. You give me the relationships I have, the ability to even think, the ability to walk, to ability to even move about, the place that I was born, the opportunities I have.”
We need to cultivate that love of God. We need to just be people who are just brimming over with a love and a passion for our Creator. Now the second thing he says is that you love your neighbor. If we don’t love other people and if we don’t love God, we are not followers of Jesus Christ no matter what we say, no matter how many things we know about the Bible.
John 3:16: This is what motivated God. God loved the world. In John 13:34, he says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)
First Corinthians 13:13, that whole section on love: “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) “We love each other because he loved us first. If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?” (1 John 4:19-20)
If love isn’t there, the Lord isn’t there. “Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law.” (Romans 13:8)
2. More wisdom. The second thing is he says, “I pray not only that you will be characterized by this bubbling over of love of God and a love for one another, but you will have more wisdom.” As he prays for them, he says, “…that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.” (Philippians 1:9)
That knowledge and understanding means we will have right information, that we will have a moral compass, and not only will we know what to do, we’ll know the right way to do it. The place you go to really get understanding in terms of things that are laid out is the book of Proverbs. Read the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 1:20 says, “Wisdom calls aloud outside; she raises her voice in the open squares. She cries out in the chief concourses, at the openings of the gates in the city she speaks her words…” (Proverbs 1:20-21)
James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5) We need wisdom. We need wisdom about how to live with others, how to run our business, how to operate ourselves financially. If you will read the book of Proverbs, it will just save you tons and tons and tons of heartbreak. About the kinds of alliances you should put together. The kinds of priorities you should have in your life, that we should have in our lives.
3. More substance. Verse 10 says, “For I want you to understand what really matters…” (Philippians 1:10) The things that really matter. That we’ll know and pursue life, the things that are just actually really important, that we’ll be able to differentiate what’s not really that important and what really is important.
4. More authenticity. The fourth thing we should be praying is really for authenticity, for real, genuine authenticity. What he says here is, “For I want you to understand what really matters so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.” The words pure and blameless come from this root word sincere lives. That’s the older translation. But the sincere literally means without wax.
What would happen in those days as people would make like a piece of pottery and if it wasn’t properly cured, there’d be like a hairline fracture in it. They would take some wax if they were not an honest dealer, and they would fill it with wax. So if you’d just take that pot and you scooped up water, it would hold water. But if you poured something hot into that pot, that wax would melt, and then the pot would be exposed for what it really is.
Who we are isn’t exposed until some difficulty comes into our lives. Here’s what he says. I want you to have the kind of life that no matter what comes into your life you’ll be sincere. There’ll be integrity in your life.
I’ve used this illustration before, but I think it’s extremely important. If you go to a football game and you go find coffee, have you ever come back from the concession stand with hot coffee and people are all around you and they’re bumping you? You’re looking at your coffee and you’re also trying to be nice, and they’re bumping you.
Sometimes in church, I’ll go back and I’ll get coffee, and the people who work in the coffee place back there… I always say, “Give me about an inch worth of coffee.” Do you know why I do that? Because I know I’m going to be bumped, and I think I can take care of an inch. But if you were to fill it to the brim, I would never get from there to there. I might not even get up the steps.
Now here’s what you need to remember. Why does coffee spill out of a coffee cup? Not just because you’re bumped. The reason coffee spills out of a coffee cup is because it has coffee in it. Okay? So when you’re having a hard time and something bumps your coffee and something spills out of your cup, well, the reason it came out of your cup is because that’s what was in your cup. Amen?
There was a young guy I was discipling. It has been a long time ago now. We were going downtown. As we were about to make a turn, a car turned right in front of us, and he let out this string of words that I’m sure he didn’t plan to use in our discipling time. Okay? At first he said to me, “Oh, I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I just thought we were going to die.”
If you think you’re going to die, that’s not the words you should use. Practice the Lord’s Prayer, okay? I said, “I’ve heard those words before.” He goes, “I am just so sorry. I have no idea why they just came out of me.” I said, “Well, it’s because they were in you and what’s in you comes out of you.”
So what he’s praying here, and he says, “Let’s pray for ourselves. Let’s pray for our children. Let’s pray for our disciples. Let’s pray for our church. Let’s pray that we will live lives that are authentic.” That it’s not going to be like we can come over here on Sunday morning and we can praise and we can worship and we can say things and they’re not really what is the essence of our spiritual DNA.
5. More fruit. He says, “May you always be filled…” Literally, that word that is used there, filled, means bubbling over. Just you will be filled “…with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God.” (Philippians 1:11)
He says, “I pray that your life will just be fruitful. That it’ll be filled with the fruits of righteousness. It’ll be filled with the fruits of people coming to faith.” I have jotted down there John 15, which is about that whole thing of fruit. He says, “If you’ll abide in me, you’ll bring forth fruit.” Then he talks about much fruit and abiding fruit. I mean, we want to be fruitful people. We want people to look at our lives and see life.
Jody and I were walking by the flower pots right in the front of the door. They’re pitiful. I mean, you look at those. Something happened to whatever was planted there. Like somebody must’ve (not me) poured coffee in them or something because they’re like dying. They’re just withering up. Maybe it’s because the fall. Maybe it’s the change of the seasons or whatever else.
If you find yourself just withering inside and you wonder, “What can I do about it?” the only thing you can do about it is sink your roots deep into Jesus. You don’t want fake fruit. You don’t want that plastic fruit. We used to have a rule at our house that you couldn’t have anything but plastic flowers because everything died.
There’s something just unmistakable about real fruit, real flowers, real life. When a church has sunk its roots deep down into Jesus, it’s not like you have to make it happen. You don’t see the farmer going out among the corn and trying to talk the stalks into giving him corn. He doesn’t walk around out there and say, “Listen, guys, your job is corn, and I want some. I put you in this ground and you’d better put out. I need corn.”
You don’t see an apple farmer walking around in his apple orchard going, “Hey guys, I need apples. You’d better get to work on those apples.” No. Do you know what they do? They just cultivate. That cultivation produces that fruit. It’s natural. It’s not like a factory where you had to stamp it all out and work it all out. It’s just the natural result of having your roots deep into Jesus.
So what are we supposed to be praying for people? What’s Paul praying for people? He was praying that love would abound, that the entire congregation, that people from different socioeconomic levels of life and coming from different backgrounds and different experiences that they would love one another. If we don’t love one another, we ought to just shut this place down. I mean, really. If we’re not going to model loving one another…
Sometimes I hear people say, “Well, it’s kind of hard to love one another.” Let me ask you something. Do you think it was a little hard for Jesus to go to the cross? Yes! Understand how you’ve been loved and we will love.
More wisdom. That we will be wise people. Our children will be wise. More substance. That we will really have that deep reality of life. That we won’t be worried so much about our image. We’ll be worried about who we really are. Deeper authenticity and more fruit.
Do you think if were this kind of people and we raised these kinds of kids we would really have to worry about evangelism that much? Do you know what I think? People would line up and people at the schools and the grocery stores and the neighborhoods would go, “Man, I want that kind of life. I want that kind of life.” Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for you. Thank you for what kind of an amazing God you are. Lord, we ask you as we pray that we will not be consumed with the little things sometimes that don’t matter, but we’ll be consumed with that which consumes you.
We’re going to take a few minutes to worship. If you’re here this morning and you just need prayer, there’s a prayer team right over here on my right. We’d love to pray with you. We’re going to receive the offering this morning. We’d love for you to be partners with us in the euaggelion, partners in the kingdom advance. But let’s take a few minutes and maybe just look at that passage and pray through for some of your kids or maybe your wife or your husband or maybe even for yourself.
Lord, thank you so much for what kind of a God you are. You’re so good that you’ve loved us. Lord, you create within us this difference that is not of our making, that we are participants in this divine nature. We thank you for that. In your name we pray, amen.