Rev. David Holwick Book of Philippians series
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
February 15, 1998
Philippians 1:7-11
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I. Who is in your heart?
A. Philippians is an affectionate, personal letter.
1) Paul has their church his heart.
2) They reciprocated.
a) They share grace (concern for evangelism?) with him.
1> Defending and confirmed refer to both aspects of
his preaching - apologetics and outreach.
2> (Perhaps a legal allusion to his trial.)
b) They stood by him even when it seemed like he wasn't
"producing."
B. Bowels of Jesus.
1) Paul sums up his feelings by using a special word.
2) "Bowels" (KJV) equals organs in chest.
a) Not intestines, but closer to gall bladder.
b) When Carol Noyes doubled over in pain this week, she
may have mistook it for her feelings of love for
Mark.
C. Paul's prayer.
1) When is the last time you prayed for someone like this?
II. Christian love is not supposed to be one way street.
A. Paul wants them to love him back.
1) Phileo - brotherly love. [overdone comparison?]
2) Eros - soap opera love.
3) Agape - spiritual love. Definitive use is by Christians.
a) Agape is word used here.
b) This kind of love is a fruit of the Spirit.
1> All other virtues flow from it.
B. Abounding love.
1) Pile of words points to heavy emphasis.
a) Our love should have no limits and overflow naturally.
b) Christian love is based on what Jesus did for us.
1> Very heavy price.
2) Doesn't shut people out.
a) We can restrict our love to people we like, or
who like us.
b) This isn't agape love.
C. God's love includes all people.
1) Abounding love probably includes the idea of a less
restrictive love.
2) Church must be good at this, because I often hear that
the church is full of kooks.
This is unfair.
We are not full of kooks.
We just have more than our fair share.
When I became a Christian in high school, my Christian
friends tended to be on the weird side.
They wore plaid shirts with striped pants, and their pants
legs stopped two inches above their shoes,
that kind of thing.
We didn't really fit in with the "cool" people.
Critics may have had fun with us, but their jokes were
actually compliments.
God's love is wide enough to take in anybody.
It is not restricted to a select few, like society would
have it.
D. How wide is your love?
1) When is last time you did a loving thing for someone
outside your normal circle?
III. Knowledgeable love.
A. Love isn't mindless.
1) Society is enamored with love, but shallow.
2) Much sentimentality, hormones.
B. Don't allow your heart to rule your head.
1) Think about your relationships, how to improve them.
2) Then do something about it.
IV. Love of deep insight.
A. How much insight do you have concerning your heart?
1) Real love starts out shallow, grows deeper.
2) (example of marriages)
B. Love may be blind, but agape has 20/20 vision.
1) We've all seen kids who were spoiled.
a) Parents couldn't say no.
b) They are afraid their love will be doubted if
they don't give their brats everything.
2) The kids end up with no values.
a) They can't tell the difference between what they
want and what they need.
1> The love of parents must be according to
knowledge and insight.
2> Love that always says "yes" is not necessarily
agape love.
A> It may be immature love, or love that is too
selfish to risk unpopularity.
3) Tension for parents.
a) Too many rules and restrictions imprison kids.
b) But no rules are just as bad.
1> "Tough Love" movement. Heb 12:6
2> God loves like this - both blessings and punishments.
V. Discernment and purity.
A. Discern what is best.
1) Two options:
a) Choose good over evil.
b) Choose good over merely adequate.
1> "Everything permissible, but not everything is
beneficial." 1 Cor 10:23
2) Sincere - "without wax."
a) Roman pottery makers and con jobs with wax.
b) Integrity that can stand up to scrutiny.
B. Morality matters.
1) Love must go beyond good intentions.
a) Same phrase used in Romans 2:18, in reference to a Jew.
He has been instructed in the Law.
b) However, his life is inconsistent.
2) Remember that morality cannot stand by itself.
It needs to be leavened with God's grace.
Philip Yancey's father died of polio a month after his first
birthday, and so he grew up fatherless.
Out of kindness, one man in their church took Philip and his
brother under his wing.
Big Harold, they called him.
He sat patiently in playgrounds as they spun on the
merry-go-round.
When they grew older, he taught them to play chess and helped
them build a soap-box racer.
They had no idea that a lot of people in the church thought
him strange.
Eventually Big Harold left their church.
It was too liberal, he decided.
Some of the women there wore lipstick and makeup.
He was obsessed about morality and politics.
The United States, he believed, would soon fall under the
judgment of God because of its permissiveness.
He quoted Communist leaders who talked about the West rotting
from the inside out, like an overripe fruit.
Harold believed in conspiracies and gave Yancey literature
from the John Birch society.
Big Harold hated black people.
He often talked about how dumb and lazy they were, and told
stories about good-for-nothing blacks who worked around him.
He saw integration of the races as a Communist plot.
The final straw came when Atlanta ordered busing of schoolkids.
Harold decided to move - to another country.
Yancey thought he was kidding, but Big Harold got literature
on places like Rhodesia, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand.
He wanted a white-dominated country, but also a moral one.
In his eyes, that ruled out Australia, because they had topless
beaches and drank a lot of beer.
One day, Big Harold announced he was moving to South Africa.
Back then, no one could imagine the whites losing power there.
No matter how much the world condemned them, they stood their
ground.
Big Harold liked that.
It was also a very religious country, and outlawed abortion,
interracial marriage and Playboy magazine.
Yancey and his brother gave a tearful farewell as Big Harold,
his wife and two small children got on the airplane.
They had no jobs, no friends, not even a place to live in South
Africa, but they knew as white people they would be welcomed
with open arms.
Big Harold was faithful in writing letters.
He became a preacher in a small church and used the back of
his sermon notes for the paper.
He used so many Bible verses that often they couldn't tell
which side was which.
Big Harold railed against Communism and false religions,
against the immorality of today's young people,
against churches and people who did not agree with him
in every detail.
He wrote that South Africa had no feminism or gay rights.
The government should be an agent of God, he wrote, and stand
up for what is right against the forces of darkness.
Even when he wrote about his family he had a cranky, judgmental
tone.
His children never seemed to please him.
In the 1990's, when it became conceivable that whites and blacks
would share power in South Africa, his letters darkened more.
With some misgivings, Philip Yancey decided to visit Big Harold
in 1993.
In 25 years he had only gotten judgment and disapproval from
Harold, especially for the books Yancey had written.
One was titled, "Disappointment With God."
Harold wrote back a three page letter condemning it.
He never read the book - the title was horrible enough.
Thus began the most bizarre day in Philip Yancey's life.
As he got off the plane he was met by Harold's wife and son.
The son let it drop that he met his fiance at a methadone
clinic for recovering drug addicts.
Some facts had never made it into Big Harold's letters.
When they got to the house, one obvious question was on their
minds.
Where was Harold?
"Oh, we were going to tell you but didn't have a chance.
You see, Dad's in jail."
"He was hoping to be out by now, but his release got delayed."
Inside the house he eventually got the whole story.
Harold had preached fire and brimstone on Sunday and railed
against the decline of morals to everyone who would listen.
But at the same time, out of the small house Yancey was now
sitting in, he had been running a pornography ring.
He brought in illegal foreign publications, clipped out photos,
and sent them to famous women in South Africa with
suggestive notes.
One of them called the police, who traced the typewriter back
to Harold.
A SWAT team had surrounded the house.
They searched and found his private stash of pornography.
They hauled him off to jail, handcuffed.
Television news trucks parked outside and a helicopter hovered
over the scene.
The story hit the evening news: "Preacher arrested on morals
charge."
Yancey got to see Big Harold later that day.
He seemed ghostlike, with a look of overwhelming sadness.
He had nowhere to hide.
He admitted he was afraid because he heard what happened to
sex offenders in prison.
They talked for a few hours, mostly about friends back in the
States, then hugged each other and walked away.
Philip Yancey knew they probably would never see each other
again.
The Yanceys returned to America in shock.
The next few letters from Harold had a humbler tone.
When he got out, though, he began to harden again.
Harold bullied his way back into his church and started sending
out more pronouncements on the woeful morals of the world.
There is not the slightest sign of humility in his letters.
Saddest of all, Yancey has never detected any sign of grace.
Big Harold was well-schooled in morality.
For him, the world was divided neatly into the pure and the
impure.
And he kept drawing the circle tighter and tighter until
finally he could trust no one but himself.
Then he could not trust himself.
#4255
VI. Bringing glory to God.
A. Our righteousness ultimately comes from God alone.
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
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