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Skip Heitzig: But Paul does this in most all of his letters. He has a little section at the front where he says, "Here's my prayer request for you." And it's worth studying the prayers of the Bible. It's worth studying the prayers of Paul because Bible prayers and the prayers of the Apostle Paul were right to the heart. They weren't extraneous. They weren't superfluous. They were heartfelt and they were to the heart for the most important stuff.

So he prays for them. First, he prays for their love, that their love might abound. Now, he acknowledges they already have love. That's the fruit of the spirit. These are saved people. But he prays that their love would abound, that is overflow still more and more.

Now, do you remember what we read when we were in Romans chapter five? I don't expect you to remember every verse we've covered, but I'll bring it to your mind. You'll go, "Oh, I know that verse." It says, "For the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts." Remember that verse? The love of God has been shed abroad or poured out in our hearts. And the idea is copiously poured out.

So the love of God has been poured out in our hearts and so he's praying that that love might abound more and more. Now, follow my thinking. If the love of God is poured out into our hearts by God into your heart, it means you have a capacity to love.

You have a new capacity to love. You can never have the excuse, "I just don't love him anymore. I just don't love her anymore." You have an unlimited capacity to love. The love of God is poured out in our hearts. So if the love of God is poured into you and God is unlimited in his love toward you, then you have a capacity to show unending love whether you think you can or not, whether you feel like it or not, you can. Paul acknowledges that and says, "I know you have love, but I hope it overflows, it abounds more and more."

But notice this, "in knowledge and in all discernment." Now, before I get to that, let me just share something with you that was a personal experience. I've told some of you about this, but it's been so long I need to remind those of you who didn't know this. But years ago, when Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq—anybody alive at that time? Okay. So when Saddam Hussein was in Iraq, I traveled there when he was the dictator.

And I brought with me like 20,000 Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes that you had collected, that we had collected, that got processed through Operation Christmas Child. I took them from Jordan across the desert into Iraq. We stopped at the borders, we brought these trucks with us, all these presents. It took a long time and was hard to get there to give to the children during that very difficult time when we were at war with them.

I met with the Minister of Religious Affairs and a few military generals who we had a meeting together and I was with a team, it wasn't just me. But they made a statement on public Iraqi television that is worth telling you about. They said, "Up until now, because of your position in the West against us in Iraq, we've always believed that the West," he said the Christian West, "hated us. But by this gesture of giving gifts to our children out of the blue, undeserved, a gift just poured into our country," he said, "we now understand that you Christians love us."

Now, it was a decision to go there. It wasn't like, "I just have this feeling in my heart toward Iraq." It's like God commanded us, let's do this. Let's just show God's love and see what happens and wow, it made a great impact as that ministry continues to do.

So I pray, my first prayer is that your love would abound more and more, but in knowledge and discernment. Now, here's how I want you to think about this. Think of love as a river flowing. All this water's flowing. If water flows without embankments and goes everywhere, it's called a flood. So think of the left bank of the river as knowledge. That's the left bank knowledge. The right bank discernment.

So Paul says, "I want your love to flow and abound and gush out more and more within the confines of knowledge and discernment." You see, love is more than just emotion gushing out. Love, God's love, is responsible love. Now, any parent knows this. When I was being raised, my parents would sometimes give me gifts and sometimes they would give me spanks.

When they gave me gifts, I knew they loved me. When they spanked me, I thought they didn't love me. But did they? They did love me. They loved me so much they didn't want me to grow up like an idiot and irresponsibly, so they disciplined me. So love is sometimes expressed in different ways, but it's still love.

And so love to be responsible needs the bank of biblical knowledge and discernment, making a difference, distinguishing. So think of love being responsible. Jesus sometimes said, "Blessed are you" to people. At other times he would say, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" But in both cases, Jesus was incarnate love speaking. Filled with love, different expression of love. Love can't just be willy-nilly flooding out emotionally. It has to be confined by knowledge and discernment. That brings balance.

So I'm praying that your love would gush out, would abound more and more because it's poured into you and can pour out of you, but within the embankments of knowledge and discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent and that you may be sincere and without offense until the day of Jesus Christ. That's a prayer that I have for myself. I don't want to be an offense to the gospel or to the cause of Christ. Lord, keep my life from being an offense to Jesus. I want to make Jesus more famous, not less famous, not infamous.

And so he says that you will approve the things that are excellent. That's part of the expression of love. That you may be sincere. Sincere is an interesting word. It means sun-tested. Sun-tested. Now, let me explain that. The English word sincere comes from the Latin word, two Latin words, *sine cera*, which literally means "without wax."

Without wax. It is believed that the word originated from an ancient practice of statue making and porcelain making in the ancient world. So if you ever go to a museum in ancient Rome, one thing you notice is those people had lots of statues. Humans, emperors, horses. And so there were artisans always carving something out of marble.

And do you know how long it would take to make one statue, typically a human-sized statue? It would take a sculptor working every day for one solid year to make one of those thousands upon thousands of statues. It took Michelangelo to make the larger statue David, took him a little over two years working every single day on that project.

So I don't know if you've ever had much experience with taking a hammer and chisel and carving a nose or an ear or a face out of stone. But I imagine that it's quite difficult and laborious. And what happens if you're carving an ear and you slip and you bust the earlobe off? Well, I guess you have a couple of choices. You scrap it and you start all over or what they would do, a practice was developed in the ancient world where they figured out a way to get marble dust mixed with wax and fill in the area that was blemished, either in plates, bowls, earthenware, or in marble statues.

And so artisans would sell their wares and they would tag it *sine cera*, without wax, sun-tested. Because let's say a wife makes a beautiful statue in honor of her husband's birthday, invites the neighborhood over. The statue's outside, glistening in the morning sun. But then the morning sun turns into the noontime sun and the afternoon sun. Now it's quite hot and you're looking at that ear and the ear starts shifting, changing, drooping. And you go, "Oh my goodness, that's not a real marble ear. That's wax. It's fake." The sun has tested it. It's not *sine cera*. It's filled with *sera*, filled with wax.

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Now, if you're looking for a way to go deeper in your Bible study, here's a great way to do just that.

Skip Heitzig: Learning your Bible matters. I'm committed to teaching God's word and I want you to understand the depth of scripture for yourself. That's why I want to invite you to join me in a 90-day through the entire Bible reading challenge using the YouVersion Bible app. We call it Jesus People Grow. So for 90 days, we're going to read together God's word. We're going to learn it, receive it, and we're going to let it shape us so that we can also be faithful in sharing good teaching with others. So join me. Let's learn our Bibles and grow in the word of God.

So the idea of sincere means honest, without hypocrisy, true blue. That your life would be sincere, not phoney, not fake, the real deal. Being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the glory and the praise of God. A life that is real, a life that produces righteous fruit will bring glory to God. That's the Christian life. That's what his prayer is for this group that he loves.

Verse 12, "But I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel, so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard and to the rest that my chains are in Christ. And most of the brethren in the Lord have become confident by my chains and are much more bold to speak the word without fear."

Now, I told you at the beginning that Paul never planned to go to Philippi, right? You remember that? He did, however, plan to go to Rome. He even wrote to the Romans and said, "Pray that by the will of God, I'm on my way to Jerusalem, but pray that I won't get hassled there. Pray that I'll be able to go freely because I plan to visit you in Rome shortly thereafter." That's what he planned. That's not what happened.

What happened is, again, his life took a different turn. What happened is he gets arrested, falsely accused, spends two years in Caesarea, trial after trial after trial, appeals to Caesar, makes it to Rome, spends two more years there. He's confined. Now, if you're a preacher and your whole goal is to get as many people as you can to listen to the message you have to proclaim, once you're incarcerated, you think it's over. "My plans have just been shipwrecked. The gospel is now hindered."

But he says, "Brethren, I want to tell you what happened and I want you to understand that what happened to me, my arrest, my incarceration, the things which have happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel." You go, "Really? The furtherance of the gospel? How could the gospel be furthered if you, as a preacher getting as many people as you can to hear your message, can't go and preach your message? You are now confined."

Well, he explains, "so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard." The palace guard he's referring to are the elite guards of Caesar Nero called the Praetorian Guards. He was under house arrest. Soldiers were chained to him for a few hours at a time. A soldier would be chained to Paul, then another soldier would take his place, then another soldier. That's how he lived for two years.

"I want you to know the things that have happened have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel so that it's become evident to the whole palace guard and to all the rest that my chains are in Christ." Can you imagine anybody being chained to Paul the Apostle? Can you imagine what they're going to hear from Paul the Apostle? Do you think they're going to hear the gospel within the first one or two sessions being chained to the guy? Paul would just beeline it right to the gospel every time I think he had a conversation.

So these poor soldiers didn't have a chance. They're being chained to the guy who's the mouthpiece of the gospel everywhere he goes. And I'm guessing that the church at Rome, because there is a church in Rome and it is growing and they have faith in God and they're praying for their city. Maybe some of their prayers when they got together—can you imagine a prayer like this? "Lord, we just pray that you would even reach Caesar's household. Somehow, reach into the Praetorian elite guards and get the gospel there. I don't know how you could do that, but Lord, you are God and you can make a way where there is no way." Some prayer like that.

Lo and behold, Paul gets arrested, thrown in that prison, chained to Praetorian guards. Eventually, we find out at the end of the book of Philippians, many of them had come to Christ and wanted Paul to send greetings to the church in Philippi on their behalf. They were changed men. And so the gospel isn't being hindered, it's being furthered. And not only is it being furthered by him sharing in that household setting to the guards and to anybody in Rome who came to visit him he could share and disseminate the truth, but also the letters that he would write.

So Paul didn't see this as, "This is really a bummer, man. I need to be out. I need to be free." He knows the gospel's not bound. "I might be bound, the gospel's not bound." And he'll say that. Our message is not bound. Only I am bound. But because I am bound, I'm bound to these soldiers and some of these soldiers are receiving Christ. So I love this, "the furtherance of the gospel, so that it's become evident to the whole palace guard and to the rest that my chains are in Christ."

Now, let me speak to you who feel like you're chained to something or someone or some circumstance. You think, "Man, I'm a housewife. I'm chained to my responsibilities. I'm always doing stuff for my kids all the time, my husband, my kids. I don't have the freedom. I didn't go to school for this. I didn't really think this would be this hard." You might just feel confined.

Understandable to feel that way. But let me encourage you and point to an example. Her name was Susanna Wesley. She had 19 children. I don't even know how she did that, but she had 19 children. And two of those children were John and Charles Wesley who shook the British Isles with the gospel and it started in that confined place as she shared the gospel with them.

Others of you might be confined by a medical situation, an ailment, an illness. You feel so confined, you're an invalid. You might be hearing this message in some kind of a facility, some kind of a home. Charlotte Elliott, as an invalid, wrote some of the best hymns we still sing to this day. They're expressions of deep gratitude and faith in God in the worst of times. So no matter what situation of confinement you find yourself in, think of it this way: "These things that have happened have happened to me for the furtherance of the gospel."

Paul is in prison. And he's not the only one. Martin Luther is going to be later on put in the Wartburg jail. And aren't we glad he was thrown in jail because when he was in jail he was able to translate the entire New Testament into German? Or John Bunyan, aren't we glad he was in the Bedford jail to write and give us the wonderful book *Pilgrim's Progress*?

The things that have happened to me have happened for the furtherance of the gospel. My chains are in Christ. In other words, I'm bound to Christ, not to a soldier. I'm here because this is where he wants me. Christ wants me. I'm bound to him. And verse 14, we have time to close with this, so we finished half the chapter almost. "And most of the brethren in the Lord have become confident by my chains and are much more bold to speak the word without fear."

What does he mean? The Christians in Rome, it was getting very difficult to be a Christian in Rome. There's persecution that is arising. You get arrested for being a Christian. You get thrown in jail for being a Christian. You get beaten and killed and maimed for being a Christian. And the persecutions were on the rise. And because of that, many believers were afraid to speak.

But then Paul comes along and he's in their city in jail and he is writing letters and speaking to the Praetorian Guard and the Christians hear about that. And they have thoughts like, "If Paul can preach while he's in prison, then certainly I can preach being out of prison. I can reach my family and my neighbors and my community. I'm not going to shut my mouth if Paul even in prison facing possible death is sharing his faith, I'm going to be more bold to share my faith." He became an encouragement to them. That's the idea of "the brethren in the Lord have become confident in my chains and are much more bold to speak the word without fear."

So that's another plus, another reason he is thrown in jail, is to encourage believers who are out of jail to not be fearful but to be bold and to be vocal. Now, unfortunately, some Christians in the church weren't all on board and taking Paul as a good example. In fact, there are some Christians that were actually opposed to Paul the Apostle. We're going to learn about them next week as we continue.

Guest (Female): We're so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before you go, here's a reminder. When you give fifty dollars or more this month, we'll send you *City in Shambles*, Pastor Skip's complete study through Nehemiah on CD and digital download as our thanks. These messages offer practical biblical insight for anyone burdened by the brokenness they see in the world around them, helping you respond with faith, prayer, and hope instead of fear or despair. Your support helps keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, connecting more people to God's word. You can give today at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888. See you next time.