Growing by Grace

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And talking to people in our church and outside our church, I realized that a lot of people are just struggling with circumstances in life. They’re feeling beaten down. They feel despair.

Maybe you’re there. Maybe you’ve recently been there. They just don’t necessarily feel hope.

And so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and praying about what do we say to that? Because deep theology is important. I will never tell you it’s not.

But sometimes we need to deal with issues of the heart in order for us to deal with issues of deep theology. And so I prayed about where do we go from here? And I felt like the Lord kept telling me Philippians.

Now there’s some deep theology in Philippians also. But really Philippians is a letter of encouragement. And from time to time we just may need to hear encouragement from God’s Word.

And so we’re going to spend a few weeks and maybe some challenge from the book of Philippians as well. but we’re going to spend the next several weeks in the book of Philippians, going through and seeing what it is that God addressed to the church at Philippi through the Apostle Paul as they were struggling at times, as they were trying to navigate the world as Christians. When I say encouragement from God’s Word, don’t take that I’m just talking about cotton candy and living your best life now, right?

We want biblical encouragement. And that’s what we’re going to look at in the book of Philippians over the next several weeks. I want to start out with a little video, though.

It’s about a 20-second video that some of you might have seen on Facebook. But this is a trick I discovered Abigail could do last Sunday night. And it does have to do with the message a little bit.

Cut your hand! Cut your hand! And she’s done.

So we were just sitting there after church last Sunday night. I think we were probably eating dinner and watching the Abigail show. And Charla said, did you know she can clap her hands?

I said, what? She said, yeah, I think that’s what she’s doing when she starts doing this. I haven’t even seen her doing this.

That’s new. So she told her, clap your hands, and she started doing that. And I thought, well, she’s growing up so fast. And Charla posted something on Instagram yesterday.

It’s been seven months already. Stop growing. It’s a little bit bittersweet.

And yet it’s really exciting to watch a baby as they learn to do things. We started noticing all of our kids were doing stuff later and later. They’d start talking later and later with each successive child.

They’d start walking later. They’d start talking later. They’d start doing all this stuff later to the point that we’ve had conversations about, are they delayed?

Is there an issue here? Abigail just came out of the womb holding her head up and sitting up. And I’ve seen stuff on social media where people say these pandemic babies are just built different.

And I’m starting to believe it. Like she’s sitting up. Anyway, I’m amazed she’s doing something different every day.

And it’s exciting to watch her grow. And if you’ve ever been around a baby, if you’ve ever had a baby, raised a baby, or grandbaby, or whatever. It’s exciting to watch them grow, to watch what they’re able to learn to do, what they can do today that they weren’t able to do yesterday.

Growth is exciting. It’s a cause for celebration. And that’s one of the things that the Apostle Paul dealt with as he wrote to the church at Philippi.

He dealt with the need for spiritual growth, but also the cause for rejoicing that it is. Paul was somebody that looked at the converts at Philippi, and when he saw them growing spiritually, Paul was excited. Paul was like a proud daddy at what they were able to do, at what they were able to understand that they couldn’t understand previously.

If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you know that spiritual growth is a process. Because we start out as believers, and there’s so much of God’s Word we don’t understand. And there are so many things that we struggle with that over time, and sometimes it’s so gradual that we don’t even realize it’s happening until we get to a point where we’re able to look back and compare, here’s where we are now, here’s where we were 10 years ago, and suddenly we can see what God has done.

We can see the growth. We can see the things we understand now that we didn’t before. We can see the struggles that we have victory over now that we didn’t before.

We can see those things. And when we recognize the spiritual growth that takes place in us, it’s a cause for celebration. It’s a cause for celebration when we witness our own spiritual growth.

But I think something we forget about all the time, or a lot of the time, is it’s important to celebrate spiritual growth when we see it happen in other people, especially in a church fellowship like this. This is part of the reason God put us together. I don’t know if you realize this.

Church is not important because God takes attendance. He doesn’t gather us up every Sunday morning so He can make sure we’re still doing what we’re supposed to do. He put us together.

This is not Sunday morning weekly inspection. He put us together because we grow better together with the encouragement and the support and the challenging that we draw from one another. Part of the purpose of the church is our spiritual growth.

And so we should, just like when a baby learns to sit up, or a child learns to run the vacuum cleaner, so we don’t have to. We rejoice in those things. We should rejoice in the spiritual growth that we witness taking place in one another.

And that’s one of the things that Paul deals with here in Philippians 1. If you would, turn with me in your Bibles there. If you’re using a device, there’s a link in your bulletin that’ll get you right there.

And it’ll also be on the screen for you here in just a second. But once you have access to Philippians chapter 1, if you’d stand with me, if you’re able to without too much trouble, as we read together from God’s Word. Philippians chapter 1, starting in verse 1, and we’re going to go through verse 11 this morning.

It says, Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Just as it is right for me to think this of you, because I have you in my heart inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, You all are partakers with me of grace.

For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ. And this I pray that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and in all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. And you may be seated. So we see in this passage that Paul lays out for us that it’s expected we’re going to grow spiritually.

In fact, it is God’s will for us to grow spiritually. And Paul records this elsewhere in 1 Thessalonians. He says, this is the will of God for you, even your sanctification.

That word sanctification is a fancy word. I’ve explained it numerous times, but I probably should explain it every time because it is a word we don’t use very often. Sanctification is just the process of us being made holy.

We are sanctified at the moment of conversion, meaning God looks at us and He sees not our sin, not our shortcomings, not our brokenness. At the moment we trust Christ as our Savior, God looks at us and sees the righteousness of Christ that’s been placed on our account. And so from that standpoint, we are declared righteous.

We are sanctified once and for all. Right then, we are as holy in a legal sense. God declares us holy and we are as holy in that sense as we are ever going to be.

But then sanctification also means that He spends the rest of our lives teaching us and training us and equipping us how to act like it. How to live out that job description He’s given us. So we’re declared holy, but then there’s this process of sanctification where He’s changing us.

And Paul said in 1 Thessalonians, as I said, that kind of sanctification, that kind of spiritual growth is God’s will for you. That’s not something you have to pray about. I mean, you can pray for it to happen.

But you know, sometimes we’ll pray about things because we don’t know if it’s God’s will or not. And say, Lord, help me understand if this is what you want for me. You don’t have to question that.

He’s already said it’s His will for you to grow. Or sometimes our spiritual growth gets a little bit stalled or a little bit plateaued, and we don’t feel like we’re growing quite as fast as we did at one point in our Christian walk. And we’re tempted to think, well, maybe this is the only point I’m ever supposed to be at.

Maybe I’m just done growing. No, it’s God’s will, your sanctification. God’s will is for you to continue growing.

Now, it’ll take place at His pace, but don’t ever think that you’ve finished growing. God’s will is for you to continue to be sanctified. So we need to understand this idea of spiritual growth.

if it’s God’s will for us to grow spiritually. What is spiritual growth? Because we talk about it a lot, but I don’t know that I’ve ever really explained it to you.

Spiritual growth is becoming more like Jesus Christ. It doesn’t just mean that I know more Scripture than I used to. It doesn’t mean just that I spend more time in prayer than I used to. We should grow in those things, but those are part of the tools that God uses toward our spiritual growth.

The spiritual growth itself is becoming more like Jesus Christ. The Bible talks about us being conformed to the image of God’s Son. That means it’s been God’s plan and God’s design for you and for me to be more like Jesus Christ. He didn’t save us just to leave us the way He found us. He saved us through no effort and goodness of our own with the intent then of making us more like Jesus Christ. That’s spiritual growth.

To become more like Jesus Christ in our actions, in our attitudes, in our motives, in our responses to things. It means growing to reflect God’s holiness more and more the way Jesus Christ did and does. Now, let me ask you a question.

Can you ever get to the point where you’ve arrived at spiritual growth and said, I’m fully grown? Is anybody there? No.

Let’s put some people on the spot real quick. I didn’t plan to do this. Has anybody here been a Christian for 50 years or more?

Okay. Anybody been a Christian for 60 years or more? okay so we’ll go uh janey you’re on the hot seat are you just like jesus thank you I knew what I knew what janey would say and I don’t say that to embarrass janey because I could ask the whole group that said I’ve been christians for they’ve been christians for 50 years or more and I’m sure they’d tell you the same thing I’ve been a christian for 30 years and I feel like I’m a whole lot more like Jesus than I used to be, but I recognize I fall a lot further short of Jesus than I used to realize.

Does that make sense? The closer I’ve gotten to Jesus, the more I recognize how far short I fall of Him. Because I’ve grown to a point where I see more Christ-like responses than I used to to things, but the more I see those, the more I recognize the ugliness that’s in my heart at other times, or a lot of times.

There’s a reason I didn’t drive the van yesterday. all right didn’t need everybody to see that side of me I let rodney drive the van to the conference he even asked me you want to drive no I’m good I’ll sit here in the back so this was paul’s prayer for the philippians that they would grow to become more like jesus christ and we understand there’s there’s never a point where we say I’ve done enough growing I’m there this is a process that’ll take us the rest of our lives but this was his prayer for them to grow to be more like jesus christ he talks about praying for them and in verse 9 he talks about the need for them to grow in love for one another. This I pray that your love may abound still more and more.

Now that word love, as we looked at several weeks ago, is not just a warm, fuzzy feeling. It’s a commitment to one another that’s willing to sacrifice for the good of the other person. And so when he’s saying, I pray that your love may abound more and more, he’s not talking about them becoming more and more emotional. He’s talking about them being more closely knit together and committed to one another.

that’s part of our spiritual growth as individuals and as a church is that we grow to love one another more and more in that way. He prays for them to grow in knowledge that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment. This idea of knowledge is pretty simple.

It’s what we understand it to mean. It’s the things you know. As we’re growing in Christ, we should know more about Him.

We should understand more of His Word. We should understand more of who He is. we should understand more of what He expects for us and from us.

That doesn’t all come immediately overnight. We grow in that knowledge. He prays in verses 9 and 10 for them to grow in discernment, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment.

Here He says in verse 10, that you may approve the things that are excellent. He wants them to grow in discernment. Discernment is a little bit different from knowledge.

There’s knowledge which is the stuff you know, discernment is knowing how to use what you know. Discernment is applying knowledge. We talk about discerning whether a teaching is true or not.

Whether a teacher is somebody you ought to listen to or not. That means we’re taking what we know of Scripture and we’re applying it to what somebody is teaching and seeing whether they line up or not. That’s discernment.

Well, we need discernment in a lot of areas in our Christian lives. This deals with their understanding of right and wrong. their ability to take what they know of God’s Word and apply it to all sorts of situations, whether it’s what’s being taught or whether it’s the choices being put in front of them about how they’re supposed to live.

We’re all faced with choices every day, whether we’re going to do things God’s way or do it our way. And discernment helps us figure out the difference. It’s where we take God’s Word and we apply it to those situations.

And let me tell you, by the way, there’s not a situation in your life that some biblical principle does not apply. You may say, well, God’s Word hasn’t given me the answers on that math test yet. No, but God’s Word applies in how you arrive at the answers on that math test, whether you go cheat, whether you look off somebody, or whether you work hard and study and do it honestly.

God’s Word speaks to every situation in our lives, but we need to know how to apply that knowledge. And so this deals with their understanding of right and wrong and their willingness. He says, I want you to approve that which is excellent.

That’s not just us sitting there making judgments about right and wrong and looking at everybody else and saying, okay, your behavior is excellent, I approve. When he says approve which is excellent, that’s not what he means. He’s talking about our lives and our choices demonstrating what is right and what is godly.

So he’s saying take that discernment and use it. Because sometimes we’re really good at discerning what’s right and wrong and then doing wrong anyway. Anybody else ever done that?

That’s a big problem. It’s a big problem for me. He says, no, I pray that you grow in discernment and approve what is excellent.

Once you’ve figured out right and wrong, do what glorifies God. So he’s praying for them to grow in that area. He prays for them to grow in integrity.

We see in verse 10 that you may be sincere and without offense. This speaks to their integrity, their witness before a watching world. People are watching us, whether we realize it or not.

It always unsettles me when I run into somebody out of context. Don’t think you can get away with things just because you’re out of town. Not that I’ve tried to get away with stuff.

But, you know, I can go weeks and weeks and go to the store and all that, and here in Lawton and not run into anybody I know. And then I’ll run into somebody from church, like in the city or Chickasha or something. Been in Dallas and run into people I’ve used to go to church with.

Had a church member tell me a story one time of going. . .

She needed whiskey for medicinal purposes, and I believe it really was for medicinal purposes. She needed whiskey for medicinal purposes. So she used to drive two counties over to go to the liquor store where nobody would recognize her until the day somebody saw her car and knew it was her and asked her about it later.

Folks, people are always watching, especially non-believers. They want to know that we really believe the things we say we believe. And let me tell you this, Christianity is true regardless of how we behave.

Because I’ve heard people say, well, I can’t believe in Jesus because look at how his followers behave. Listen, Jesus either walked out of the tomb three days later after he died or he didn’t. It has nothing to do with the choices I make.

But, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to just do whatever we want, live however we want. Part of spiritual growth is growing to make choices that glorify God so that we are a witness to people around us. Not that we prove Christianity is true, not that we prove He came out of the grave and that the historical basis of Christianity is true, but by the way we live, we demonstrate and we prove the transforming power of the Savior who came out of that grave.

Because we preach that He can transform anybody, that He can change anybody, and the world is watching to see if that’s true. It’s our responsibility to demonstrate that it is. Not that we’re perfect.

I don’t believe the world is looking at us wanting to see that we’re perfect. As a matter of fact, it seems to get on their nerves when we think we’re perfect. Probably rightly so because we’re not.

We know we’re not. But we need to demonstrate integrity, being genuine, that we are trying to follow the things that we believe. So He prayed for them to grow in integrity.

He says, be sincere. Be the same person you are all the time and without offense. Live in a way that does not deliberately offend those who are watching around you.

And so He prays for them to be filled with the fruits of righteousness in verse 11. He prays that as a result of this spiritual growth, they are going to abound in all this fruit of righteousness. The idea of fruit, bearing fruit, is that you would produce something tangible.

You know, I planted plants last year that some of them did really well. Some of them didn’t produce any fruit. And they were no good to me.

I wasn’t going to keep taking care of them. I ripped them out of the ground. Because the plants are there to produce fruit.

Folks, we are here to produce fruit. And what he prays for is that we would produce fruit of righteousness. That when people would look at the result of our lives, they would see the works of God.

Not because we’re so righteous, but because we serve a righteous God. A holy God who is transforming us to be more and more like Jesus. And as we become more and more like Jesus, His work in us will produce the fruit of righteousness.

And Paul says that kind of spiritual growth is God’s will for the believer. but we also need to understand that Jesus Christ is the basis for our spiritual growth. See, when we talk about spiritual growth, when we look at, really it’s a high bar that’s set here that we’re supposed to try to live up to.

But I don’t want you to take away from this message that I need to go out and try harder and I just need to be a better person. A lot of people are getting into hell, splitting hell wide open, trying to be better people. If we’re banking on just being good enough, we’re not going to make it.

We look at this high bar of spiritual growth and where we’re expected to go, and the natural question is, well, how do I do this? And the biblical answer is you can’t do this. I can’t do this.

None of us can do this. Our job is to do things that cooperate with the work of God. We can study our Bible, we can pray, we can serve, we can fellowship, we can evangelize, we can do all the things we’re supposed to as Christians, and we can do things that are conducive to our spiritual growth.

We can not throw up obstacles that stand in the way of our spiritual growth, but we can’t make ourselves grow spiritually by doing those things. You cannot walk out of here today and just decide to be holy. I wish it was that easy.

But I can’t just walk out of here today and make myself more like Jesus. You know what? I heard some good truth yesterday and I got fired up and so I’m going to be more like Jesus.

That should be our desire, but I can’t flip a switch and make it happen. It’s the work of God in me and in you that grows us spiritually. We cannot make ourselves grow spiritually.

Our spiritual growth is entirely dependent on Jesus. Now again, going back to what I said about cooperation, that doesn’t give us a license to go out and just live however we want. It’s fine because God’s going to grow me anyway.

No, God is looking for us to be willing. God is sovereign and He could say, poof, fine, you’re more like Jesus whether you like it or not. He could do that.

But everything I see in His Word tells me that He’s looking for us to be willing. And He works within our willingness. And He expects us to be cooperative.

Not because He needs us to be cooperative, but because His desire here is relational. He wants us to grow to be more like Jesus and to love Him and to walk with Him. And it helps if we’re on board with that. Our spiritual growth is entirely dependent on Jesus, though.

It only happens because of Jesus. Paul said the Philippians in verse 7 were partakers with him of grace. Grace is the undeserved kindness of God.

When God does not give us the things we deserve and does give us the things we don’t deserve, when God blesses us when what we deserve is his belt, that is grace. And so they were able to grow spiritually because they were partakers of grace. Paul says this grace of God, this kindness of God that you do not deserve, that I do not deserve, it has been extended to us just as it had been to Paul.

These things are the gift of God. The Bible talks about salvation as being the gift of God, something that we cannot earn or deserve. Spiritual growth that follows salvation is also the gift of God that we cannot earn or deserve.

It’s something that He does, something that He gives us, and it’s something that He gives freely through Jesus Christ. When He said in verse 11 that He longed for them to be filled with the fruits of righteousness, You notice the next thing he says, the thing that follows right after that, is that those fruits of righteousness come by Jesus Christ. They’re not there because I made the fruits of righteousness happen. They’re there because of Jesus Christ. And Paul even wrote in verse 6 to the church at Corinth, he said he was confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it. Paul said, I’m convinced of one thing.

I know one thing is going to happen. The one who began a good work in you, he is going to complete it. The good work he’s talking about in context of this passage is their sanctification.

It’s their spiritual growth. It’s this process of them becoming more like Jesus. And he says, the one who started that good work, I’m confident that he’s going to complete it.

The one who began it was God, and he began it when he saved us through Jesus Christ. And Paul says that God will bring that work to completion. God will continue working on us and our sanctification. God will continue working toward our spiritual growth.

God will continue molding and shaping and transforming us to be more and more like Jesus for the rest of our lives. God will be faithful to do that. We just need to be willing.

But it only happens because of Jesus Christ. If we walk out of this service and say, I’m just going to try harder. I just need to be a better person. How many messages have been preached that either deliberately or accidentally gave people the impression that I just need to try harder and be better.

I hope you never walk out of here thinking that. We would like to be better, but we need to recognize where it comes from. If you walk out of here thinking, I just need to try harder, I just need to be better, what you’re doing is trying to take a shortcut to spiritual growth, and you can’t get there from here.

Working at it is a shortcut to spiritual growth that doesn’t actually lead there. There is no shortcut. but God does the work and your job is to be available.

Your job is to stand back and watch Him work. Your job is to long for that work, to ask Him to pray for that work to take place. And it’s God’s job to actually do the work.

The only precondition that we need to grow spiritually is a relationship with Jesus Christ. There’s no shortcut to becoming holy by just working a little harder. There’s one way to get where God wants you to be, and that is through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. Because if we could be holy, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus Christ. If we could do something to make ourselves holy, to bring ourselves into a relationship with God, if we could do something to be reconciled to God on our own, then the cross was unnecessary and was a huge mistake.

But God doesn’t make mistakes. You and I are not holy. We’re sinners.

And I know that’s not pleasant for us to hear. We don’t like to be beaten down with that truth, but look at the world around us. Look at the brokenness all around us.

They talked about this some at the conference yesterday. Look at the bloodshed taking place all around our world, and for what? Look at our own community, at the violence and the abuse and the addiction, and we see brokenness all around us, and it results from sin.

Sin is the cause of that brokenness. And then if we’re very honest, we can look in our own hearts and we can see that our own hearts are not right with God. We are broken because of sin.

Sin is anything that disobeys God. And the Bible says we’re all guilty. I’m guilty.

You’re guilty. We don’t even have to be particularly bad people by human standards because we’re not being measured. You may say, I haven’t done that much wrong.

We’re not being measured according to human standards. We’re being measured by God’s standard of absolute sinless perfection. And any sin at all is enough for us to fall completely short of that standard.

The only way for us to be made right with God is that Jesus Christ came and took responsibility for our sins. He was nailed to the cross and shed His blood and died in our place, taking all the punishment that we deserve, paying all the penalty that we owed for our sins, so that that sin could be forgiven. And now God offers us a clean slate.

He offers us forgiveness. He offers us a relationship with Him and eternal life. if we will simply come to Him through Jesus Christ and take advantage of the forgiveness that Jesus purchased on the cross.

And only when we have that relationship with Him that Jesus paid for is the slate wiped clean. And does God begin the work of transforming us and making us holy? So you see, it all depends on Jesus Christ. And in just a few minutes, we’ll have an invitation where you can respond to the message if you feel led to do so.

And if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, it’s very simple. Just understanding that you’ve sinned against God and need a Savior. Understanding, believing that you can’t save yourself, but that Jesus died to pay for your sins and rose again to prove it and that He offers salvation and then asking God for the forgiveness that He offers.

You don’t have to prick your finger. You don’t have to sign on the dotted line. You don’t have to make a pledge.

Just believe what Jesus said and ask God for the forgiveness that He offered. But spiritual growth has to start there with a relationship with Jesus. Anything else is a shortcut to nowhere.

Finally this morning, we need to understand that spiritual growth, as I said when I started out, spiritual growth is always a cause for rejoicing. The secret, if you’re a believer, the secret we need to understand and maybe be reminded of even if we understand it, sometimes we get in difficult situations and we forget because we get so overwhelmed. The secret here we need to remember is that spiritual growth is not always easy.

It doesn’t always come amid easy circumstances. And trouble doesn’t necessarily mean you’re headed in the wrong direction. Sometimes we’ll run up against a problem and we’ll stop and think, I must be headed the wrong direction because if I was doing what God wanted me to, I wouldn’t be having trouble.

The Bible says that is fake news. Jesus said in this world you will have trouble. And spiritual growth does not always happen in the most pleasant of circumstances.

Look at Paul. Look at the Philippians and all that was going on amid all this spiritual growth. What’s going on?

Paul is in prison. He says in verse 7, he talks about his chains and talks about their love and care for him amid his chains. Paul was chained up in a Roman prison when he wrote this.

Verse 8, he talks about how much he longs to be with them, how much he longs for them. He’s isolated. And yet he’s able to re