Let’s start with Philippians 1:9.

”And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent.”

Did you know that if the love that we have isn't growing in knowledge and in discernment, you'll never be able to know what is excellent and what is not?

In Jeremiah 15:19, God says:

“If you'll repent and return and if you'll learn to separate the precious from the worthless, you will be my spokespersons.”

But we have to be able to approve what is excellent and approve or disprove that which is not. But until our love is a growing vibrant love, you'll never have that ability to make those distinctions, and you'll be duped into a lower quality of love that will never sustain a family or a future.

For some people, they have to make some mistakes.  I did, anyway, thinking love was one thing and not another, trying to build on a love that wasn't sustainable and wasn't buildable, but no one taught me.  I never knew.  All I knew was the definitions that the world gave to this word "love," and it wasn't the meaning that was buildable, so I went through a lot of past shake ups and a lot of errors until I found out what love really was.  For some people it takes a while.

(A video is played about a former homosexual man named Donald)

Donald was molested in the ninth grade and got into drugs and led a homosexual lifestyle. After much struggle, he turned to God and the church. Through God’s love he no longer has homosexual feelings and is a leader in the church. If you want to change and be healed you have to make a choice.

Phil. 1:9 says:  “And this I pray, that your love will abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.”

He says, I pray that your love will abound still more and more.  You know what that says?

1.  OUR LOVES HAS TO GROW UP.

You see, saying that my love in the beginning was nice, it might have been filled with emotion, might have been filled with zeal, but it's still immature yet.  It's got to abound still more and more.  If you don't, as wonderful and as romantic as it seems, it will not be able to sustain life. But Paul says in the book of 1 Cor. 13, “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I saw as a child, I reasoned as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Then he defines love:  “Love is patient and kind, does not take into account a wrong suffered, hopes for the best, believes for the best.”

This kind of love never fails.

Now, the question is have we attained that love yet?  What kind of love is that?  What are some of the symptoms?  What are some of the distinctive marks on that? I remember when I first dated Anna, my heart, you know, I'd look at her, and my heart would beat rapidly.  It would beat incessantly.  My blood pressure would go up, you know.  And this next anniversary Anna

and I will be married 40 years.  But if my heart when I look at her beats rapidly now and my blood pressure goes up, I just know I'm having a heart attack, you know.  But I don't love her less; I actually love her more now.  You see, because my love has abounded more and more.  Now, some of the zeal and romance may not be sparkling there, but it's a love that has to grow.  It's a love that has to mature.  Otherwise, we won't make it through the valleys.

In the same fashion, 1 Thess. 3:12 says: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another.”

There are just so many qualities of love.  You say, well, Wayne, does everything have to be in its highest quality?  Oh, no.  You just need to know if you're going to have a certain kind of love and what's going to be built on it, like your future, it had better be the highest.

Well, what about the love I had for my girlfriend?  Most guys have more hormones than we have brains.  Did you know that on the average, men fall in love four times a day?  You know, it's like we have so many different qualities of what we call love. Sometimes we don't need the highest quality all the time, but I want you to be able to define it.

You take a look at all of these kinds of things, and in fact, in the word "love," you can buy inexpensive love, or if you want love to be of its highest quality, then you need to build that because therein lies the future of our families that will go in to generation to generation.  You don't want a low quality of love, although it's still called love.

And the danger of it today is people will be wholesaling the word "love," and we think it's a good quality and it isn't, but it's the same word.  That's why the Bible said your love will abound more and more so that you'll be able to approve the things that are excellent, so that you know that's not the kind of love that God's teaching. That is a cheap love, and yet it's being wholesale as the way that we'll sustain our future.  It is not.  And if your love doesn't grow, you won't understand that at all.

TWO QUALITIES OF LOVE:

a) HIGHER QUALITY: A LOVE THAT IS KNOWLEDGEABLE & DISCERNING.

b) POOR QUALITY: LOVE THAT LACKS KNOWLEDGE & DISCERNMENT

Paul says to let your love grow in all knowledge and all discernment.  If that's true, then there is a love that is possible to have that lacks discernment and lacks knowledge.  It's an unknowledgeable love.  And if both of them are sold as the same, we're in trouble.  Our families are in trouble.  Our futures are in trouble.  And that's why today we want to make sure that we understand the qualities of different loves, and you don't want to settle for anything less.

Most of the love that goes around is a pretty selfish love.  I call that cat love.  You've heard me talk about that where a cat comes on your leg and it goes meow, meow, and it rubs its back on your leg and you say, Man, that cat loves me.  That cat doesn't love you.  That cat is loving itself off of you.  A selfish love.  We see that all the time.

What about a higher quality love?

2. IT TRADES IN WHAT’S ALLOWED TO GET WHAT’S EXCELLENT.

God's love will be willing to trade in what's allowed in order to

gain what is excellent. Remember Phil. 1:9 says, “… so that you may prove what is excellent…”

As you abound yet more and more in your love so that you might approve what is excellent.  If your love isn't growing, you will settle for what's allowable, but you'll miss what is excellent because you won't be able to approve what is excellent.  And the love that you are going to require to sustain your future has to be a quality of the highest grade.  It has to be the best love.  It has to be a love of excellence.  Settling for anything else will be devastating. Remember this:  Heaven will not give you what you think you should have or even deserve.  Heaven will give you what you settle for. If you settle for less, that's what you get. And that's why God's true love is a love that says, I'm trading in what's allowable in order to gain what is excellent.

This kind of love we find in 1 Cor. 13:7:“[Love] …believes the best in all; there is no limit to her hope” (1 Cor. 13:7 ISV).

Love's quality is incredibly important, and you need to be able to discern the highest quality of love in a friendship.  If it's a low quality of love between two men, it could lapse into something

sexual and lustful.  It's a low quality of love vulnerable to being corruptible.

A medium quality of love is okay, but when you don't do what I ask you to or if you do something wrong - that's it, we're done.  It's not strong enough to issue forgiveness.

You bring up a higher quality of love, and it doesn't matter what happens.  I choose to love you, and I'm going to walk with you into hell, even though you make a mistake because I may one day too, and I'm going to be able to then believe that you'll walk me into hell. And I'm committed to hear from you and be accountable to what you have to say, and you'll do the same with me.

There is a lifelong commitment in a marriage, in a friendship, people in church.  Most times the love even between Christian people is not a high quality love.  It's vulnerable to the lowest quality or even a medium quality where we just amputate one another when things don't go right.  Very few understand the highest quality of love that can sustain a family, a future, a church.

Very interesting word this word "sincere." It's from the Greek word heile krino.  Heile krino. The word helios actually means sun, and krino is the word to judge or to be tested.  Heile krino is the word sincere. It actually means sun tested.

A. SINCERE: SUN TESTED.

And the Bible says the quality of love that will sustain our families and our churches has to be “sun tested”, has to be love that's not filled in with paraffin.

God's love is a love that's sincere without wax, and sometimes God is going to expose those cracks, but he doesn't fill it in with paraffin.  He covers it over with His blood, and that transforms you into another vessel.  He doesn't just fill it in and cosmetically change you.  He changes you by His blood, and there's a transformation and you're a new person in Christ as you saw in the video with Don.

But this high quality of love not only gives you a brand new vessel so that you can be sun tested, but also blameless.

B. BLAMELESS: NOT EASY TO DEFEAT.

In Phil. 1:10 it says, “… in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ...”

The word "blameless" means that you you're not easily defeated. You're pushed, you're shoved, you're shaken but you don't stumble. And that's the kind of love that can sustain life's traumas, when someone gets sick and you stay committed, not easily defeated.

The greatest of all examples of not being easily defeated is David's 30 mighty men

The Bible said that, “These were among the mighty men who helped him in war. They were equipped with bows, using both the right hand as well as the left to sling stones and to shoot arrows from the bow” (1 Chron. 12:1-2).

You know what that means?  Those people called David's mighty men were not easily defeated.  But sometimes our love is so easily defeated, so our love must grow and abound yet still more and more so that you can approve the things that are excellent. Others will see the Son of God through your love.

That's why he says husbands, love your wives just like Christ loves the church.  In other words, when they see me loving my wife Anna, they can see right through it and say, You know, I see Jesus the way he loves. It’s just like you, sun tested and not easily defeated, because we're going to go through a lot of stuff, but we need love that lasts until the end.

Jesus loved us with that kind of love.  That's what changed our lives. It wasn't a low quality love.  It was the highest love that heaven could afford, and that's the gift that he gave to you and to me.

If you've never received that love of God, then I want to ask you to do that today.  All you need to do is just say, “Lord, that's me.  I don't understand all there is to understand about you, but I know that you so loved the world - that you gave your only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.”

That's God's kind of love. You won't find it anywhere else. So if you've never said yes to Jesus, do so today.

Questions:

1.   Why should our love be constantly growing?

2.   Do you know how to distinguish between the different qualities of love?

3.   Why does our love need to grow up?

4.   Why is the highest quality of love so important?

5.   Why is it important to not be easily defeated?