FBC Morning Light – June 30, 2022

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Thursday morning to you, and here we are the last day of the month of June.

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We're ending a month today, but we're beginning a new book in our Bible reading, Philippians chapter one.

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Just think about this, tonight at the end of the day, it's going to end the first half of 2022.

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I don't know about you, but it seems like this year is just whizzing right on by. Maybe that's more a reflection of my age than it is of reality.

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Yes, we're in Philippians chapter one. When asked, when Christ was asked, what is the greatest commandment in the

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Old Testament? That was a test, that was a question to try to trip him up and to trick him.

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But he answered it, and his answer had to do with love. He says, the greatest commandment in all of the

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Bible is love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself.

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Those two great commandments summarize all of the law. Love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. So it is not coincidental that in Philippians chapter one, the

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Apostle Paul shares a prayer for the Philippian church, believers in Philippi, that focuses on love.

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This is what he says in Philippians one, verse nine, he says, this I pray, that your love may abound, that your love may abound.

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If you just put that on a bumper sticker, oh, may your love abound, or you make a meme and put it on Facebook or Twitter or something like that, then that means all kinds of things to all kinds of people, and you don't even have to be a

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Christian, and they're going to interpret that any old way they want to interpret that, and it can be a mushy, gushy kind of a thing that is kind of just open and accepting of everything, and we can go down a rabbit trail on that.

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But I just want to focus on what Paul's talking about. He says, I want your love to grow. I'm praying that your love grows and it abounds, but specifically, narrowly, he says,

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I want it to abound more and more in knowledge and in all discernment.

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I want you to grow in your love in knowledge, proper love, true, deep love is going to be rooted in accurate knowledge and understanding.

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So when we talk about the two great commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself, you're not going to love

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God as you ought to love God if you don't know the truth about God.

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If you have wrong ideas about what God is like and what God likes, you're not going to love him appropriately and accordingly.

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This is one of the little mottos that I use oftentimes here at Faith Baptist, and that is we want to know, we want to learn what

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God is like and what God likes so that we may love him accordingly and live for him appropriately.

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And sometimes I mix up those words, you know, we might love him appropriately, live for him accordingly, but the idea is that that is rooted in knowing

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God, knowing what he is like and what he likes. So he prays that your love may abound in knowledge and discernment, but then he goes on to explain even further, so that, he says, 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 Christ Jesus to the glory and praise of God.

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So you get what he's saying here, I'm praying that your love grows and abounds in knowledge and discernment, so that of all the plethora of things that you might do, the ideas that you might incorporate in your thinking, that you might approve the things that are excellent, so that you might be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ, so that your love for God will be appropriate, that your living for God will be according to a proper love for God, so that your love for your neighbor will likewise be appropriate, and the way you treat your neighbor will be according to that knowledge and discernment that comes from a proper framed love.

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This is a good prayer, not only for the Philippians, but for us, how desperately we need a love that is informed, an informed love, that we may approve things that are excellent, that our lives can be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ.

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May the Lord grant us that kind of deep and abounding love. By the way, where do we learn?

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Where do we get the knowledge that Paul is talking about, that our love may be accurate? In God's revealed word.

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There you go. Our Father and our God, grow us in love by growing us in the word, and this we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.