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The Apostle Paul was the son of a Pharisee. In fact, he may have been the grandson of a Pharisee and came from a long line of Pharisees. What we do know is this, he was considered to be a rock star among the Pharisees, but all of that gain he counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
When we understand the text. This is When We Understand The Text. My name is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Good to be along with you here as we've been studying through the book of Philippians together. Yesterday looking at Philippians chapter 3 verses 1 through 3 and in particular I want to come back to verses 2 and 3 here where Paul says, look out for the dogs.
Look out for the evildoers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Yesterday and reading these verses I mentioned that there is only one covenant people of God and it is not those who are born in the line of Abraham.
It is those who are in Christ Jesus as it says in Romans 9 6. Not everyone who is descended from Israel belongs to Israel. If you are in Christ, you belong to Israel. Not because you were descended from Abraham, but because you are in Christ Jesus.
There is no one who has this inherent favor before God because they were born in a certain bloodline. It says in Romans 3 9 that both Jews and Greeks stand guilty before God. Both are under sin. Both need Christ Jesus.
And that brings me to a point that I did not make clearly yesterday. It was a necessary theological discussion that we needed to have. That not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel and that there is only one covenant people of God, those who are in Christ Jesus.
But one thing that I didn't state clearly that I'm going to state clearly now. The nation of Israel needs the gospel. If you know somebody who is a Jew, a practicing Jew, they need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
They are not saved because they are a Jew. No one is saved because they are of the ethnic nation of Israel. They are saved because they are in Christ Jesus. That is the only way that we attain salvation.
So the nation of Israel, those that you know who are Jews, they need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. They need to know Jesus as Savior and Lord. So that was the discussion yesterday and that's something that I should have stated better.
We always need to keep in mind the gospel of Jesus Christ. For it is the power of the gospel that transforms, that saves lives. And we're going to be talking about that more today. Not putting any confidence in the flesh, not in any good work that we do, not in any status we might have because who we were born into, but only in Christ, who we're reborn into.
That is our only righteousness. Jesus is our righteousness. So before coming to the text today, why don't we go to the Lord in prayer? Our great God, as we come into your word, as we desire to know your truths and store up within our hearts, the awesomeness of your word, transforming our minds and our hearts and our thinking so that we might then take this word to other people and share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I pray that you give us your spirit so that we will have the ability to discern these words rightly and apply them in the right way and give you the glory that you deserve according to your spirit. And in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, we pray.
Amen. Philippians chapter three, we start in verse, well, I tell you what, I'm going to go back to verse three, at least because that continues the sentence into verse four. We are the circumcision, Paul says, who worship by the spirit of God and give glory in Christ Jesus, putting no confidence in the flesh, though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh.
Also, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews as to the law, a Pharisee as to zeal, a persecutor of the church as to righteousness under the law blameless.
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything is lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
So we go back to hear Paul again saying that we're the circumcision. Those who are in Christ Jesus, we are the ones who have been circumcised, not circumcised by the flesh, circumcised by the spirit, a circumcision of the heart being cut off from the world and having been called out as a holy people in Christ Jesus.
We are the circumcision, worshiping by the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus, putting no confidence in the flesh. OK, so everything that we are reading after that needs to be under that assumption, under that statement.
OK, we worship by the spirit of God and we glory in Christ Jesus, putting no confidence in the flesh. Our confidence in our salvation is not by anything that we have done. It is in what Christ has done.
I'm only stating something that we've already talked about over the course of our study of the book of Philippians. OK, so our confidence is in Christ and in nothing else. Keep that in mind as we continue on here.
Paul says, I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh. You want to talk about people who have confidence in the flesh, observers of the law, they have descended from a particular tribe. You want to talk about those people having confidence in the flesh.
I tell you what, I have more. If anyone thinks that he has reason for confidence, I have more. I was circumcised on the eighth day, according to the law. I am of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin.
There you go. You can search out my genealogy and know exactly the tribe that I come from. I am a Hebrew of Hebrews. As to the law, a Pharisee. Not only did I keep the law, I was a teacher of the law.
Beat that. As to zeal, I was a persecutor of the church. Now it's not that Paul is boasting in that. He's saying, you want to talk about a person who is zealous for the law? I thought that the church was violating the law, and so I persecuted them.
That's how much I loved it. All right. That's how much that I was into the law. My zealousness for the law turned me into a persecutor of the church. Can any of these people who have confidence in the flesh say that they were so zealous for the law that it turned them into that?
As to righteousness under the law, I was blameless. You point to any aspect of the law and say, hey, Paul, did you do this? My answer would have been, yep, and you would not have found me to be blamed for violating any aspect of the law.
I was a keeper of the law. I was a teacher of the law. In verse 7, though, here's the turn, all right? But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. All right? So you have your columns.
Here's my resume, my gain column. Here's all the stuff that I have accomplished. Here's all the stuff that you could have said that I was great for in the flesh, all the good things that I did. Over here in the loss column, I take everything that's in the gain column and move it over there.
All right? All of that that you probably would have considered gain for confidence in the flesh, I move it into the loss column. So what's in the gain column? Christ. That's what's in the gain column now.
It's Christ, a righteousness that comes not from myself and my ability to obey the law, but a righteousness that comes from God that depends on faith. That is gain. Everything else is in the loss column.
And folks, I relate to this actually rather well, because when you look back at my upbringing, I was born into a Christian home under Christian parents. I prayed to the Lord when I was four, committing my life to him and saying, God, do whatever with me that you will.
Okay? And I still remember that. I still remember praying that prayer. I was baptized. All right? I wasn't baptized until I was a teenager, but lived a pretty squeaky clean life. Everybody in school knew me to be a Christian.
Doesn't mean I was a very good one, but they knew me to be a Christian. I worked at a Christian radio station. People just knew my voice. I could go into any church within the outreach of that Christian radio signal, and they would know who I was.
And they welcomed me into that congregation, and they considered me to be a squeaky clean guy because I worked at a Christian radio station. All right? I was worse than a PK. I was an RK. I was a radio kid.
Everybody knew me as the president of the Christian radio station organization's son. I was his son. And I worked on the radio, too. And then I could go into any church, and anybody knew who I was. And they considered me to be some sort of biblical pedigree because I quoted Bible verses on the air.
And so they welcomed me into their church congregations, and people looked up to me. All right? I did not drink. I've never been drunk in my life. I never smoked a cigarette. Still have never done that.
I was abstinent. I saved myself for my wife when we got married, which is not something that is common in the world today. So you want to look back at my resume, and you want to see a person who was squeaky clean.
And man, if there is anybody who modeled a good Christian, it must have been Gabe, right? That's all that was in my gain column. But you know, folks, I'll tell you this straight up. All of that meant nothing.
It really meant nothing. My salvation was not dependent on any of it. None of that saved me. Now it's not that any of that stuff was bad, and I shouldn't have been doing any of those things. When we practice works of the faith, it verifies that our faith is authentic.
It verifies that it is genuine. Okay? So we've been justified by faith. That's Romans 5 .1. Then we put that justification into action. Now let me come back again to explaining justification. We've talked about this before, but it's a good refresher.
Okay? Again, Philippians 3 .1, rejoice in the Lord to write these same things to you as no trouble to me, and it is safe for you. Okay? So I'm repeating these things again because it's no trouble for me, and it's safe for you.
To be justified is a legal standing before God. God looks at us, and he sees us innocent of our sin because of what Christ accomplished on the cross. He paid the price. So it's not that God has expunged our sin.
It's not that he has expiated it, all right? It's like we have this blackboard with all of our sins listed on it, and he just walks over and erases it and goes, okay, there we go. You no longer have any sins.
That's not how that works. It's a legal standing. We owed a debt to God because of our sin that we could not pay, and Christ paid it for us. So because of Christ accomplishing that, because of his righteousness, we stand before God as righteous, as holy if we are in Christ Jesus.
So we've been justified. The price has been paid. And as I've heard it explained about justified, it's justified, never done it, all right? But it's also justified, done it, because it's not like God just forgot our sin.
It was paid for. As we read in Colossians 2, our record of debt was nailed to the cross in Christ Jesus, and it was Christ who paid for it. So now we stand before God justified. Now, when we are justified, we then put that justification into action, and that is sanctification, and it is the demonstration of the genuineness of having been justified.
Sanctification is that growing process, growing in holiness, growing in righteousness. We grow in the knowledge of God. We grow in our doctrine. We grow in our love for the brothers and sisters in Christ, in the body of Christ, okay?
All of this is sanctification, and we continue this for the rest of our lives, growing in the knowledge of the holiness and righteousness and glory of God and worshiping Him, and we grow in these aspects our entire life.
That is sanctification, okay? So you could say that the works that I did, all of that that would have been listed in the gain column would have been a process of sanctification, okay? And that may have been the case, but I mean to tell you that none of that stuff earned me salvation.
I did not gain any salvation because of any of that. My salvation is in Christ alone. No confidence in my works. No confidence in my righteous, squeaky-clean appearance, okay? My righteousness is in Christ alone, because let me tell you, even though that kid looked pretty squeaky-clean, all right, even though he didn't go out and party and hang out with the wrong kind of crowd or any of these other kinds of things, even though I was never caught with a cigarette and still, again, to this day, never smoked a cigarette, even though I was never drunk, even though I remained abstinent and did all of those things, none of that is what saved me.
It is Christ that saved me. Even though you could look at that squeaky-clean guy and see this display of righteousness, behind the scenes, there was another guy that was lurking. It was a guy who would manipulate others to get what it was that I wanted, and sometimes I hurt a lot of feelings.
Sometimes I was very unsympathetic to the things that I said and did and how it affected other people, and I hurt a lot of people to get what it was that I wanted. Even though I was abstinent and I did save myself for my wife when we got married, I had a porn addiction.
There was a porn addiction when I was a teenager and then again in my 20s. There was a lot of self-righteousness there. I behaved in a lot of self-righteous ways. These are all of the things that displayed for me my sin and my need for a Savior.
I was not perfect. I was just as guilty of sin as anyone else, and in fact, I knew my sins better than I knew anybody else's sins, and so there was nobody else's sin that I could be more aware of than my own.
Before God, I was the worst of sinners, needing a Savior, and that is what Christ Jesus became for me, saving me from my sin and bringing me into His righteousness, imparting His righteousness upon me, so the righteousness that I have now comes not from me.
It doesn't come from anything that I have done in my past or any great work that I have done. It is a righteousness which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
I want to gain Christ, not any sort of great reputation by doing any great works. I hope that my life is a display of Christ Jesus, and it is pointing others to Christ, not how great I am, but how great He is, because He still saved a sinner like me from the wretch that I was, from the wages of my sin, which was death.
Christ Jesus saved me from that and made me His own. It is the righteousness of Christ that I have now, not a righteousness that I've accomplished in any other way. Comedian Ken Davis, Christian comedian, do you know Ken Davis?
He tells a story about how when he was a kid and he had all these rules that were imposed on him and he had to do these things the right way if he really wanted to be a good Christian. He couldn't smoke, he couldn't drink, he couldn't go out to the theater, he couldn't do all of these other things, couldn't dance, you know, do any of this stuff, and that's what made him a good Christian.
He said, one day I was sitting on my porch and I saw my dog, I saw my dog walking by and I looked at my dog and I said, you know what? There's a dog that doesn't smoke. There's a dog that doesn't drink.
There's a dog that doesn't dance. He doesn't go out to the clubs. He doesn't go out to the theater. So my dog must be a Christian. He also doesn't hang out with dogs that do all those other things. And I know there are dogs that do those things because I've seen the paintings.
All right. You know what I'm talking about? No? Okay. If you don't know, if you haven't seen the paintings, then that joke falls flat. But anyway, but Ken Davis is looking at his dog and he's going, my dog doesn't do any of these things, any of these things that I'm told that you can't do in order to be a good Christian.
So he must be a Christian. And that was when Ken Davis realized that Christianity was something more than that. It's something more than just showing this good attitude and having these good behaviors.
Because if we think our works is what makes us righteous, boy, we're coming up short. We are not going to be able to stand before God on the day of judgment and say, Hey, I did all of this stuff, right?
Because that's self-righteousness. That would be trying to get into heaven on our own merit, saying we don't need God because I'm good enough without him. And that is the ultimate blasphemy, exalting ourselves to the position of God.
There is nothing that we can do in order to gain that righteousness. We must suffer the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that we may gain Christ. This was Jesus saying, if anyone wants to be my disciple, he must die to himself, take up his cross daily and follow after me.
And that is what Paul did. He died to himself. You talk about a guy who was transformed in Christ Jesus. He went from being this Judaizer, this law teacher, this Pharisee, this persecutor of the church and was transformed and became part of the church, a defender of the church, a person who taught the gospel so that there would be more people in the church.
He was a person who was transformed by the righteousness of Christ, gaining nothing by his own righteousness, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
There's a story told by Dr. James Dobson and his son, Ryan Dobson. Dr. Dobson told his son, Ryan, whatever it takes, get to the other side. There are going to be times in your life that you're going to stumble.
You're going to fall. Maybe you're going to feel like you are far from God. Whatever you have to do and whatever it takes, just make sure that you get to the other side. Whatever you have to sacrifice, whatever you have to die to, get rid of that to be sure that in Christ Jesus, you walk through heaven's gates one day.
And this is Paul saying, by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection of the dead. Even if I had to lose my rock star status as a Pharisee, I count that as loss so that by any means possible, I attain the resurrection from the dead, that I enter into eternity with Christ Jesus, my Lord.
It is his righteousness that is upon me, not my own. It is a righteousness that cannot come by the law because all human beings sin. We are not good enough and therefore, we stand before God condemned because of our sin.
Our right standing before the judge of the whole universe is only possible through faith in Jesus Christ. He is our righteousness. Our great God, I pray that if there is anything in our lives that we need to get rid of so that Christ would be exalted, convict us of that by the power of your spirit so that it won't be our righteousness that we are putting confidence in, in order to gain heaven because that can't help us get there.
It is only the righteousness of Christ that makes us worthy before God. So Lord, convict us of these things. Lead us to repentance. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Proverbs 29 .18 says, where there is no vision, the people perish.
This is why you need ambition for the future or you'll perish. This is why churches need to set goals or they'll perish. This is why those churches need to follow their pastor's vision or they will perish.
The Bible says so. Actually, no it doesn't. That whole verse goes like this, where there is no vision, the people perish, but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. Yeah, this verse isn't saying anything about having a goal or a dream or following the man with a plan.
It's straight up saying that you need to know what's in the Bible and follow it faithfully. Wait, what? Joyce Meyer, T .D. Jakes, Rick Warren, they all use this verse wrong? Yeah, they use a lot of verses wrong.
We can't stay on the bestseller list without telling you how you can have your best life now. A better verse to use would have been Proverbs 11 .14, which says where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in abundance of counselors, there is safety.
But that one's not as popular because it can't be twisted to talk about ambiguous visions. And in seeking the counsel of others, someone eventually is going to tell you to ignore any yahoo twisting the Bible to promote their vision.
1 Timothy 1, 6, and 7 says that such teachers have wandered away from sound doctrine into vain discussion without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make their confident assertions.
2 Peter 3, 16 says that they're ignorant and unstable, twisting the Scriptures to their own destruction. Yeah, get it? The verse they use to cast vision would be the very passage that condemns their false teaching.
We must be focused on the true Word of God when we understand the text. Our question today comes from Kelly in Iowa, and if you would like to submit a question to when we understand the text, just go to www .utt .com.
You'll see the latest broadcast there on the right side of the page, and there's an email right underneath it. Click on that email address. Best way to get us a question. I know that I've read some stuff from Twitter on occasion.
That's where I spend most of my time, at least in terms of social media. I'm hardly ever on Facebook. But anyway, I have taken some questions that way, but still the best way to get a question to us is by email.
Www .utt .com. Kelly in Iowa says, Dear what? We attend a Protestant church with a new minister who has taken to calling himself bishop. Is that okay? I thought bishops were only a Catholic thing. When I talked about this with my dad, he said that all pastors should actually be called reverends.
Are there proper titles that only pastors should be known by? Thank you, Kelly, for your email. Kelly, the word for bishop actually comes from the Greek word episcopos, which means overseer or guardian.
Yes, it is a perfectly acceptable title for even a Protestant pastor to have. Lutheran and Methodist churches are two Protestant churches that have bishops. Personally, I tend to avoid that term because of its association with many troubled belief systems.
The Roman Catholics, as you mentioned, have bishops and they believe their bishops to come in the line of apostolic succession. In other words, a Catholic bishop has the same authority as an apostle. And that's wrong.
That's heretical. I would not be skeptical of your pastor just because he calls himself a bishop. But he, like any pastor, should still be tested. All right. I mentioned that yesterday. Test even the things that I say against the word of God.
Do your pastor's core beliefs line up with sound biblical orthodoxy? Just the sound teaching, OK, when when a Protestant pastor calls themselves a bishop, I tend to think of T .D. Jakes, perhaps the most popular Protestant bishop who is a false teacher.
Does this pastor have an affinity for Jake's? And that's why and that's why he's calling himself a bishop. Perhaps that's a weakness in my flesh that my thoughts immediately go to Jake's when I hear the title of bishop.
But again, I can't emphasize this enough. Him calling himself a bishop should not be what concerns you. It's what he teaches, whether he calls himself a pastor, shepherd, overseer, elder, the president, whatever.
OK, it's what it's what he teaches. Hey, some pastors out there call themselves CEOs. All right. They're like a CEO of a ministry instead of being a shepherd, as they should. Now, Kelly, you mentioned the word reverend and that title, admittedly, is kind of old fashioned.
It it simply means one who is to be revered. OK, it's equivalent to calling someone the honorable or the venerable, which have also been names for pastors, the reverend. My mom likes to send me letters addressed to Reverend Gabe Hughes.
That's just my mom. I haven't ever requested to be called reverend. And to be honest, I never requested to be called pastor either. That was a title that took some getting used to for me. And ultimately, I came to accept I came to accept it because it's proper and children should be taught to respect their pastor as someone who is in committed service to the Lord, feeding the sheep, preparing the saints for works of ministry, as it says in Ephesians 411.
So just as you might teach your child to say, yes, ma 'am or yes, sir, you should teach them to refer to their pastor as Pastor Dave, Pastor Dan, you know, whatever. And that brings me to the actual word pastor.
It is derived from the Latin word for shepherd, and it is, in my opinion, the best distinguishing name for an overseer of the church. In First Peter five to Peter refers to those who lead the flock, a congregation.
He calls them shepherds. And then in verse four, he refers to Christ as the great shepherd. So a pastor could be considered like an under shepherd. And I think that that is a most fitting title whenever I'm writing to someone and offering them instruction, or perhaps I have to correct a false teaching that they have either adopted or are flirting with.
I will sign my letters and my emails affectionately your shepherd so that they know I am attempting to lovingly and gently guide the sheep. Some disgruntled congregants who left our church some time ago over rather selfish matters.
They used that in their criticism of me. They said that I was puffed up and arrogant because I would call myself a shepherd. But that's what pastor means. It means shepherd. I think of the shepherds conference held at Master's Seminary every year.
It is an acceptable and biblical title for a pastor to have. And honestly, at least in our culture in the US, I think it's the title a Protestant shepherd should use, not trying to be creative and calling themselves bishops or venerables or whatnot.
People recognize the title pastor. And when a man of God is using it in the right way, it brings honor to that title as well as a person committed to leading others to Jesus Christ. God, as we think about some of the things that we've talked about today and what we've read in your word, I pray that you keep us submissive to it.
But I also pray that you would keep us submissive to those who have been placed in authority over us who teach us the word of God. Help us to respect that position and what it is that they have to share with us, knowing that they are there not for their own benefit, but to glorify God and guide us in understanding your truth.
Teach us to respect those who labor for the gospel of Jesus Christ and to pray for them, that they would remain steadfast in the faith and grounded in your word, not puffed up with pride, but humble before God.
In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. Pick up his book, 40 of the Most Popular Bible Verses and What They Really Mean, either on paperback or on Amazon for your Kindle.
Order from our website when you visit www .wutt .com and be sure to drop us a line to let us know how our ministry has impacted you. Thank you for listening and please tell others about our program. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our study of Philippians, rejoicing in God's truth when we understand the text.