Deep Joy: The Message of Philippians #7: "The Joy of a Real Righteousness" (Phil 3:1-11)

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For now,
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I want to turn our thoughts to our message for this afternoon. If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, take them and turn with me to the letter of Philippians.
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Letter of Philippians, and chapter number two, Philippians, chapter number three actually.
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Chapter three, we are actually at the halfway point of our study this summer through the letter to the
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Philippians. So Philippians chapter three, Philippians chapter three, and we're going to be in verses one through 11 this afternoon.
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Philippians three, one through 11. If you have one of the red hardback Bibles that we give away, that should be on page 1041.
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Page 1041, Philippians chapter three, and verses one through 11.
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Philippians three, one through 11, and as is our custom here at Redeemer, if you're able to do so, can
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I invite you to stand with me at this moment one more time? We do this to symbolize our respect and reverence for the
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Word of God, and so we like to reflect that even in the posture of our bodies in this moment. So Philippians chapter three, beginning in verse one, and reading through to verse 11.
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Philippians three, one to 11, brothers and sisters, these are God's precious words.
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In addition, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write to you again about this is no trouble for me, and as a safeguard for you.
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Watch out for the dogs. Watch out for the evil workers. Watch out for those who mutilate the flesh.
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For we are the circumcision, the ones who worship by the Spirit of God. Boast in Christ Jesus, and do not put confidence in the flesh, although I have reasons for confidence in the flesh.
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If anyone thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcise the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a
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Hebrew born of Hebrews, regarding the law, a Pharisee, regarding zeal, persecuting the church, regarding the righteousness that is in the law, blameless.
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But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that,
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I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing
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Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him, I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain
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Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own through the law, but one that is through faith in Christ.
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The righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
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The gospel is the flower phase, but the word of our God will abide forever. Join with me as I pray, ask for the Spirit's help, and we launch into this message.
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Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you that in your goodness you give us six days to labor and to do all that we need to do.
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And then you give us this day that we may pause and worship and rest and find all that we need for our weary souls.
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And we thank you that one of the great blessings of this day is that we get to gather and to hear you speak to us through your word.
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And so Father, I ask that as we open up the scriptures, your Spirit would cause these words to come alive, that they would speak to our hearts, that your
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Spirit would do the work of taking what we hear, pressing it deeper into our hearts and souls so that we may live for you.
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And Father, as we pray for ourselves, we pray for Grace Church of Central Point, pray for their interim pastor at the moment,
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Pastor Howard, as they seek a permanent pastor there. Pray that you would provide the man for them who would shepherd them and teach them the word of God and equip them for the work of the ministry.
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Pray for their ministry there in Central Point, that they would know your blessing. And we pray for that even now as we open up your word here.
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For we ask you in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. Please be seated.
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Eddie, would you mind passing my phone for me, please? This afternoon,
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I want to speak to you from the theme, the joy of a real righteousness.
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The joy of a real righteousness. The joy of a real righteousness.
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Well, as I said just a few seconds ago, we've come to actually the midpoint in our summer journey through Paul's letter to the
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Philippians. We come to chapter three, which is the midpoint of the book, and the series is actually 12 weeks.
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So we are exactly in the middle as we come to this message.
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And you'll remember that I said that this book is one of Paul's most structured. It doesn't look like it from the surface, but Paul has a progression of thought that he's trying to achieve as he works his way through this letter.
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Each chapter of this short letter, only four chapters in our English Bibles, each chapter focuses on some aspect of the pursuit of joy.
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That's why we've titled this series, Deep Joy. Each chapter focuses on some aspect of the pursuit of joy.
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For a moment, I want to trace this out with you just so you can see the lie of the land where we've gone and where we are still headed in our treatment of this letter.
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So in chapter one, if you think about the big picture of Philippians, chapter one, you could entitle joy through the single mind.
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There should be a slide up on screen that has this listed. Joy through the single mind, the mind that is focused primarily on the gospel.
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If we lose sight of the fact that Christians are first and foremost gospel people, we end up being divided and end up having minds that are all over the place.
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But if we keep in mind that we are people of a single mind, we are single issue people, gospel people, that transforms the way in which we view all of life.
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And so chapter one deals with this issue of the single mind. We saw that there are three aspects to what a single mind looks like.
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It's a mind that's focused on gospel partnership, gospel advance, and gospel progress.
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Well, that led us into chapter two. If joy is found through the single mind, Paul also wants us to understand that joy is found through the servant's mind, through the servant's mind.
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And so in chapter two, we have really three big examples that Paul gives us. Chapter two, verses one through 11, after he lays out what humility is, he gives us the example of the
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Lord Jesus, the ultimate humble person. And then in verses 19 to 30 that we looked at last week, we saw some more examples.
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We saw Paul, we saw Timothy, and we saw Epaphroditus. And we saw that joy is found not just in being single issue people, but in being servant -hearted people.
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People whose minds are focused on serving others instead of serving self.
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Well, where we're headed in the next six weeks is chapters three and four. And in chapter three, we'll see that joy comes through the spiritual mind.
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Through the spiritual mind. What do I mean by that? Very simply, the mind that is focused on Christ and Christ alone.
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So joy comes through the spiritual mind. And then we'll see in chapter four, we see that joy comes through the secure mind.
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Paul is going to lay out three great provisions that God has given us as his people to keep our minds secure.
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So again, if you're thinking of Philippines and its big picture, think of four S's. Single, servant, spiritual, and secure.
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That's the big picture of this letter. And as we come into this third chapter, I really can't improve on what the late great
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Warren Waisby said in his commentary, Be Joyful. He said that what Paul is describing in these verses is the spiritual mind.
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In chapter three, verse 18 and 19, he describes professed Christians who mind earthly things.
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But then in 320, he describes the believer with the spiritual mind who minds heavenly things.
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In the same sense as Philippi was a Roman colony, a Rome away from Rome.
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In the same sense, the people of God are a colony of heaven on earth. Our citizenship is in heaven, and we look at earth from heaven's point of view.
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This is the spiritual mind. As you're going to see as we look at chapter three over the next three weeks,
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Lord willing, some of Paul's most focused teaching on the nature of the Christian life in all of his writings come to us in these verses.
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And again, remember why Paul is writing all of this. He's writing all of this so that the
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Philippians and by extension, all of God's people who read this letter, that all of us would find true, deep joy.
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Remember what we define joy as we started this series, this supernatural delight in the people, plans, purposes, and pursuits of God.
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Well, if we're going to be those kinds of people with that kind of focus, then what Paul has to say to us here is pretty invaluable.
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One more thing by way of introduction, and then we'll finally dive in. Chapter three can be broken down. Let me give you a roadmap of where we're going in the next three weeks.
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If we look at chapter three at a glance, what does the spiritual mind look like? Well, for Paul, three things.
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Number one, the spiritual mind has a new set of values. It has a new set of values.
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It values Christ's righteousness over our own.
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So the spiritual mind has a new set of values. It values Christ's righteousness over our own.
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But the spiritual mind also has a new vigor. It has a new power behind it.
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And the vigor of the spiritual mind is that it pursues Christ's purposes over our own.
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So a new set of values, Christ's righteousness over our own. A new vigor, excuse me, which is
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Christ's purposes over our own. And finally, the spiritual mind has a new vision.
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Has a new vision. It values Christ's identity over our own.
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And so as we look at chapter three, we're going to, of course, be focused on the first of these. That the spiritual mind has a new set of values.
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There is something that has shifted for the person who has passed from a carnal, unconverted mind to a spiritual and converted mind.
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To help us understand this, Paul is going to do something which I think is pretty genius. He's going to walk us through his own testimony.
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And in walking us through his testimony, who he was, what God had done, and what had changed since, we're going to learn something about the new set of values that Paul had come to adopt.
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And that in reality, if you're a Christian, you've come to adopt those same values as well.
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If I can ask one question, I'll be really sensual to our message this afternoon. It's this, what is, according to the
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Bible, not according to church culture, not according to what the culture out there says, according to the
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Bible, this book that we say is the word of God, according to the Bible, what should be the defining value of the
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Christian's life? What should be the thing that makes the Christian who they are?
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What is the defining value of the Christian's life? Again, not according to church culture, not according to what the culture out there says, but according to this book we say is the word of God.
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What is the defining value of the Christian's life? I put it to you, and this is my big idea for this message.
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I put it to you that the believer is defined by and rejoices in the righteousness found only in Christ, received by faith alone.
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That's the defining value for the Christian. We are defined by and thus rejoice in the righteousness found only in Christ, received by faith alone.
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That's what makes the Christian who they are. For the Christian, that is the value that defines everything else, that we have come to receive the righteousness found only in Christ, received by faith alone.
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For the rest of our time, I want to consider a contrast between two kinds of righteousness that come to us in this passage.
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It's very simple, a contrast between two kinds of righteousness. And I want you to consider how you should respond to each of those kinds of righteousness.
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So a contrast between two kinds of righteousness and how we should respond. If the believer, if go back to our big idea, if the believer is defined by and rejoices in the righteousness found only in Christ, received by faith alone, if that is true, then that means point number one, you need to reject a righteousness of your own making.
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You need to reject a righteousness, and I put that in air quotes, righteousness of your own making.
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Paul starts with the before Christ part of his story, if you will, in verses one through six.
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And as he begins, he reminds you why he's writing what he's writing. This whole letter that we are reading, he reminds us the purpose of it when you come to chapter three, verse one.
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So look at verse one with me in your Bibles, Philippians three, one. In addition, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the
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Lord. Everything he has said so far has been about, as I said, the genuine pursuit of deep joy.
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All that Paul has wanted to say up to this point, even with some of the more challenging things he has said, all of this has been for the purpose of deepening the
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Philippians joy in the Lord. In fact, you can make a case that that's really the heart of all gospel ministry.
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That all gospel ministry boils down to wanting to deepen the joy of those we serve in the
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Lord. If you're taking notes, 2 Corinthians 1, 24, Paul says it like this.
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After describing the nature of the ministry of the apostles, he says, I do not mean that we lord it over your faith.
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True gospel ministry is not about, ooh, how can I, you know, take over people's faith?
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How can I make people work harder in their faith? That's not the part of genuine gospel ministry.
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Paul says, no, I don't mean that we lord it over your faith, but that we are workers with you.
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If you're the Bible marking type, you might wanna underline these three words in your Bibles. For your joy, because you stand firm in your faith.
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Everything for Paul, his writing, his speaking, his traveling was all because there were depths of joy.
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He longed for those he ministered to to understand. And since that was the case, as he says, again, look at verse one,
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Philippians 3, 1. To write to you again about this is no trouble for me and is a safeguard for you.
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It was no problem for Paul to repeat and say the same things again and again. Why? Because it served to protect their joy.
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That's why he says it's a safeguard for you. See, my brothers and sisters, the gospel is the ultimate means of finding and cultivating true joy.
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The gospel is the ultimate source of security for God's people. And so we can never tire of coming back to the things of the gospel again and again and again.
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And because that is true, because the gospel provides the means of finding and cultivating true joy, because the gospel is the ultimate source of security for God's people, since that is true, that's why
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Paul gets cautious about certain people. And you get the sense Paul doesn't have to name them because the
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Philippians knew who they were. So look at chapter three, verse two. He says, watch out for the dogs.
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Watch out for the evil workers. Watch out for those who mutilate the flesh.
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Three descriptions that Paul gives of a particular group of people that again were known to the Philippians.
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And I think we can figure out who he's speaking about just by paying attention to the descriptions he gives. So he calls them, first of all, he says, watch out for the dogs.
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Now, in our day and age, dogs are house pets and people, I don't really understand it, I'm a cat person myself, but those who like dogs generally view dogs as pets.
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Not so much in the ancient world. In the ancient world, dogs were a problem. They were pests. They were like,
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I haven't seen them since I moved to Medford, but coming from London, we have a fox problem. Foxes are everywhere.
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And they're the kinds of foxes that they're not scared of humans anymore. It's like you'll be driving around, like they'll just stand in the middle of the street and they're not going anywhere.
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Like it's me or you, but I'm not moving. There were those kinds of, dogs were like that in the ancient world.
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People didn't have dogs as pets, by and large. Dogs kind of went around as pests and scavengers.
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And Paul compares fool's teachers to dogs in the sense that they prowl around looking for the weak, the gullible, the insecure and the unstable.
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He says, watch out for these people who are traveling around and their sole purpose as they travel around is basically to scavenge, to find something or someone they can feast on.
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In that sense, they're no different than their father, the devil. Remember what first Peter says, first Peter 5, eight, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, like a prowling lion prowls around seeking whom he can devour.
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But fool's teachers are no different. So Paul says, beware of the dogs. He calls them evil workers.
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Now, it doesn't mean that they were doing explicitly bad things from a moral sense. That's not what
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Paul necessarily means. No doubt, some of these teachers he's talking about, particularly when you work out who they are, they were probably really nice, moral people.
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You know, they helped old ladies cross the street. You know, they, you know, did stuff around people's houses.
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They were more, no doubt, really, really nice. They probably, and I would argue more than likely, even used the name of Jesus.
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But regardless of how nice they are, regardless of how sincere they are, regardless of whether they use the name of Jesus, fool's teachers,
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Paul would have us to understand are evil. Why are they evil? Because they are preaching a message other than the message that God himself has given.
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They are not doing that which is good in God's eyes. That makes them evil. There is no neutrality here. And so he says, not only are they dogs, they are evil workers.
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Finally, he says that they are mutilators of the flesh. And this is where we start to work out who he's talking about.
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There is only one group in all of the New Testament that Paul refers to in relation to mutilating the flesh.
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Galatians 5, 12. I wish that those who are disturbing you might themselves be mutilated.
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He was talking in Galatians. In fact, we preached through Galatians here at Redeemer a few years ago. He was talking about a group called the
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Judaizers. If you have no idea who they are, the Judaizers were a group that said, yes, you should believe in Jesus.
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Absolutely, Jesus is the Messiah. But in addition to faith in Jesus, you need to keep the law of Moses to be saved.
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It wasn't get rid of Jesus and keep the law. I think that's a misunderstanding of their message. No, it was believe in Jesus plus obey the law of Moses, especially the command that God gave for those who would come into the covenant, circumcision.
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And as you read the lessons to the Galatians, you'll discover Galatians is Paul's least nice letter of all of them because he has little patience for this message.
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In fact, a couple of passages, Galatians 5, 1 through 6, Paul says, for freedom
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Christ set us free, stand firm again and don't submit to a yoke of slavery. Take note,
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I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourself circumcised,
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Christ will not benefit you at all. Is Paul's beef with the act of circumcision?
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Well, no, it's not because he tells us in Galatians 6, 15, for both circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing.
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What matters instead is a new creation. Paul's problem wasn't circumcision. It was when circumcision was tied to salvation.
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Again, think about this. Paul is a good Jewish man. He was more than likely circumcised.
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He was a Pharisee, which means he probably had done circumcisions at some point. That's not his issue.
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His issue is not the physical act. It's when this act of circumcision is tied to salvation.
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Paul says, you might as well view this thing. By the way, God is the one who gave the command of circumcision, don't miss that. You might as well call it a mutilation because that's what it is.
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And yes, Paul is not particularly nice, kind, or Christian in the way he speaks here.
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But let's be honest. Is there a kind way to speak about a false gospel? Even in the letter about joy,
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Paul essentially says, I have no time for this message and I have no pleasantries for it either. You see, beloved, when it comes to the gospel, we need to be clear in our rejection of those who preach a false message.
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Why? A false gospel will produce, catch this, a false gospel will produce a false righteousness and a false righteousness will rob you of true joy every time.
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And so Paul says, you have to watch out for these ones. In fact, our
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English translations pick up on this nicely. He repeats the word for watch out three times. Make sure you hear me on this.
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Keep your guard up because they are coming. In contrast to this false gospel,
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Paul reminds the Philippians of who they were and what they already had.
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So look at verse three. So after he says, watch out for the dogs, watch out for the evil workers, watch out for those who mutilate the flesh.
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Verse three, for we, as opposed to them, we are the circumcision.
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This gets missing on English translation, but the words for circumcision and mutilation are not that far apart.
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It's literally just one prefix. You just swap them out. It's the word to cut and the word before it, the prefix is to swapped.
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In fact, the King James Version picks up on this. It uses circumcision here in verse three. And in verse two, they just translate it as the concision.
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The people who just go cutting things versus the circumcision. Paul says, we are the circumcision.
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And note again, just as he had three descriptors for these false teachers, he has three descriptions for the Christian. He says, we are the circumcision.
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Number one, the ones who worship by the spirit of God. Number two, who boast in Christ Jesus.
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And number three, who put no confidence in the flesh. In contrast to what we could call the mutilation,
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Paul says, no, we are not them. We are the circumcision. We are the true people of God.
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And what Paul says, Romans chapter two, 28 and 29, where he says that a Jew is not a Jew who's one outwardly as true circumcision is not something visible in the flesh.
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Romans 2, 29. On the contrary, a person who is a Jew is one who is a
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Jew inwardly and circumcision is of the heart by the spirit. Don't have time to get into all of that.
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I preached a message a while ago from Genesis 17. It's available on our website and our church app. But Paul's point is very simple.
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We are those who are the true people of God. And what did the true people of God do? Number one, we are those who worship by the spirits of God.
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The term for worship here is not the general term for worship is the term that was used for worship in the temple. That we offer true priestly worship in a way that these false teachers never could.
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He also says that we are the ones who boast in Christ Jesus. That our ground for joy is not some ritual that we have done, but it's in the
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Lord Jesus who did everything for us. And then he says that we are those who put no confidence in the flesh.
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And it's a bit of a play on words here. He means this word flesh in two senses. We are not those who put confidence in our ability, flesh versus the spirit.
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But he also means we don't put confidence in any ritual done to the flesh. Whichever way you slice this, he says, no, we are those who have renounced confidence in anything we can do, whether it's our innate ability or even a ritual that we have had performed to us.
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We do not find confidence there. I've mentioned this a few times in this series, but I want to come back to this again.
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Beloved, a Christian is before a Christian does. A Christian is a
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Christian because of what God has done in Christ, not because they did something. And can
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I put it to you that any system that places emphasis on what we must do rather than what
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Christ has done is not offering the salvation that Christ came to bring. It's not offering that salvation.
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And more importantly, it's not offering the righteousness that comes from him. And if anyone had experience with trying to generate their own righteousness, with trying to pursue their own righteousness, if anyone knew anything about that, it was
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Paul. Do you catch what Paul says there? Verse four, he says, we don't put confidence in the flesh.
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Verse four, although I have reasons for confidence in the flesh.
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If there was anybody who had reason to boast in their own ability, Paul says, yeah, I'd love to see you come up against me.
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That's how he says it. If anyone else thinks he has confidence, grounds for confidence in the flesh. Verse four, I have more.
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And in verses five and six, he lays out the resume. And it's pretty impressive. So he says that he was circumcised the eighth day,
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Genesis 17. That's when God commanded circumcision to be done. Not day seven, not day nine, day eight. So circumcised on the exact day
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God commanded. He's an Israelite. He's from the right nation. He's from the tribe of Benjamin, the smallest of the tribes.
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And one of the only other tribe apart from Judah that stayed loyal to true worship and had the kingdom of Judah in the
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South. He says he's a Hebrew born of Hebrews, a
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Pharisee, one of the strictest sects in Judaism, the separated ones. He says that he was so zealous that, you know it's in verse six, regarding zeal persecuting the church.
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Paul didn't just dislike Christians, he actively persecuted them. He didn't just sit down and say, well,
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I can't stand those Christians. I'm not really willing to do anything about it. We have to give Paul credit. Paul actually was willing to do something about his dislike of Christians.
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To sum it all up, when it came to the law, he was blameless. Dotted eyes and cross teased right down the line.
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I mean, can we just pause for a moment and say with a resume like that, Paul sounds pretty legit. He sounds like somebody who actually knows what he's talking about.
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He's the guy that no doubt, if we saw him on the street, we'd say, wow, he's really serious about his faith. With a resume like that,
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Paul sounded pretty legit. And yet he was lost. Can I pause for a moment?
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Isn't it easy for us to think that outwardly nice and moral people are okay? Even when they profess some sort of faith in Christ or even especially, let me put it that way.
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Sure, I mean, why would I question the salvation of this person? They go to church, they're delightful, they're moral. But when you sit down with them,
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I've had this same thing happen to me year on year on year. As I sit down with people and you get to know their story, when you begin to realize that, oh, this person is very religious, but they don't know the gospel at all.
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They've been socialized to understand religion, but they've not actually experienced the transforming power of the gospel.
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I've lost count of how many people I've met who outwardly met all the requirements, but you just started not even to push.
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You just started to ask some basic questions and it becomes apparent that they were as lost as a ship in the
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Bermuda Triangle. They have a righteousness of their own making. And the sad thing is, it will never do a thing for them because they don't have the righteousness that comes from God until they reject that righteousness of their own making and place their faith in Christ, it will, like Paul said about circumcision, it will profit them nothing.
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And let's be honest, we read this. None of us could say in ourselves, we have the righteousness that stacks up to Paul's. But do you get the sense that Paul doesn't say this to brag because he almost gives you the sense there's nothing really to brag about.
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Actually, it's not a sense. Paul does entirely reject the righteousness that he had made for himself.
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And if you are clinging to your own righteousness here today, can I beg you to let go of it because it will not profit you in any way that truly counts.
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And so we need to reject the righteousness of our own making. And instead, point number two, we need to receive the righteousness of Christ alone.
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We need to receive the righteousness of Christ alone. As you come to verses seven to 11, something shifted for Paul.
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Actually, this is where we need the rest of scripture to help us out. Galatians chapter two, he tells us his own story.
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Something has shifted for Paul. Paul describes it as a revelation. And that's what it was.
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Paul was made to understand that whatever righteousness that he had manufactured, it was useless.
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So the way he says in verse seven, Philippians three, seven. He says, but everything that was a gain to me,
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I have considered to be a loss. Those two words, gain and loss are actually pretty important to everything
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Paul's gonna say in verses seven to 11. You might be surprised to know that these terms had their origin in the world of ancient accounting.
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They were the ancient equivalents of what we would today call assets and liabilities. I took one economics class in school and really didn't pay attention because I had no interest in economics.
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So I had to look this up this week. Economists in the room, accountants in the room, if I'm wrong, please come tell me after the sermon.
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From the way I understood this, looking up this week, assets put money, one website described it like this.
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I literally typed in economics for dummies because when it comes to the subject, that's what I am. Assets put money in your pocket, liabilities take it out.
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Is that a fair summary? My father -in -law says, kinda, we'll take it. Paul says that everything
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I thought was a gain, everything that I thought helped me, that gave me value, I've considered to actually take value.
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I consider it to be a loss. The term consider is an interesting one.
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It carries this idea of having an opinion of something. He says, I've come to the opinion that whatever
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I thought was a gain, whatever I thought added value to me, actually was taking it away. Paul came to a place where he viewed his impressive resume as nothing but liabilities.
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They weren't helping him in the least. Sure, at one point he thought he was gaining something, but something had shifted where he realized, no,
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I'm not. And we have to ask the question, what would make that kind of change? What would make a man of deep religious conviction and deep passion and deep fervor turn his back on all of it?
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What on earth did Paul find that would radically change his outlook on pretty much everything? Well, we don't have to guess.
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He tells us, end of verse seven. He says, everything that I thought was a gain to me, I've considered to be a loss because of Christ.
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All the law -keeping, all the external obedience, even his ethnic clout, all the things that once gave him identity, all of it he considers to be worthless when it's stacked next to Christ.
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Being good wasn't good enough, not when you put it up to Jesus and his work. Years ago,
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I got to hear an evangelist, Jeremy Brooks from the UK, one of the best evangelistic sermons I've ever heard.
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He said, well, some people will talk to me and they'll say, I'm a really good person. Doesn't that count for something?
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And his response was to say, good person. I'll never forget the line.
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It just, I can hear him, Evangelical and Reform Church in Hackney, hometown
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I grew up in, Sunday evening, him in that pulpit saying, good enough for you, good enough for God, you're not even good enough for you.
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You know, think about it. Think about this for a moment. How many times have you said, I'm going to do something? I'm going to clean myself up.
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I'm going to make some change and then given enough time, you failed at it. Some of you have heard my joke about new year's resolutions.
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The best way to keep them is not make them. The reality is none of us are good enough, but that's the beauty of the gospel, isn't it?
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No, the beauty of the gospel is you don't have to be good enough for you and you definitely can't be good enough for God. That's why
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Jesus is more than enough. He is good enough for God and that's all the good you will ever need.
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And Paul goes deeper into this in verses eight through 11. So verse eight, he says, more than that, I also consider everything to be a loss.
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Paul didn't just think that his past wasn't worth anything. Nothing past or present had worth outside of Christ.
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I have to pause and just simply ask, is that how you view Christ if you're sitting here today? Can you honestly say from your heart that before I came to Christ, I had nothing.
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And now that I'm in Christ, I have nothing. I've gotten into a habit of late where every time
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I sermon prep, I will read a sermon from my historical hero, Charles Spurgeon, or as I've called him since I was a teenager,
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Uncle Charlie. I think he'd appreciate the nickname if he were alive today.
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And a message that he preached on this text, it was called spiritual account keeping. Spurgeon said this, and there should actually be a quote up on screen.
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He says, here I want you to notice that Paul does not say that he counted all things loss for Christianity or for the church or for the
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Orthodox faith. There would have been truth in such a statement, but the center of the truth lies here.
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He counted these things loss for Christ. That is for the
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Lord Jesus Christ himself. He thought of that divine one, blessed be his name, that brother of our souls who was born at Bethlehem, the kinsman, the redeemer
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Christ, the living, loving, bleeding, dying, buried, risen, risen, excuse me, ascended, glorified
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Christ. This was the person, the glorious person whom he placed on the other side of the balance sheet.
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I grew up, we had this category of songs, called them gospel songs. They weren't quite hymns, and they weren't quite basic choruses.
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They were kind of in the middle. One of them has the opening lines, Jesus is all the world to me, my life, my joy, my all.
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He is my strength from day to day. Without him, I would fall. Can we say that?
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Paul could, and in fact, look at the way he describes it in verse eight. He says in verse eight, more than that,
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I consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing
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Christ Jesus, my Lord. Because of him, because of Christ Jesus, my
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Lord, I have suffered the loss of all things. And Paul's not complaining, by the way, when he says that.
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He's making it clear, no, this is what I've, I've come to a place where I view everything as a loss. And consider them as done.
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So much debate, is Paul using foul language here or not? I don't think that's really the issue. I don't think he is. I think his point is very simple.
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Everything that he once thought gave him value, he viewed as animal refuse compared to Christ.
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He's being hyperbolic. And why does he view it this way?
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End of verse eight, so that I may gain Christ. So that I can receive my value from him.
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And here's what gets interesting, in verses nine through 11, he's gonna lay out three benefits of knowing and having
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Christ. Three benefits, and they map perfectly to the full work of our salvation that God does in Christ.
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First of all, he says that we receive a righteousness that we could not earn. We receive a righteousness that we could not earn, verse nine.
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This maps onto what the Bible teaches about our justification. That our justification is not on the basis of our works, but on the basis of what
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Christ has done for us. So look at verse nine, what does he say? Because of him,
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I've suffered the loss of all things and consider them as done so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ.
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Once Paul was chasing a righteousness of his own making, but now he enjoyed a righteousness that wasn't his.
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A righteousness that he describes it is based on faith. It's like our fathers in the faith described justification.
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They said that it's an act of God's free grace to sinners in which he pardons all their sins. He accepts and accounts their persons righteous in his sight, not for anything done in them or done by them, which sounds exactly like what
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Paul says here. He says, they said, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ by God, crediting it to them and received by faith alone.
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Paul could rejoice because he had received a righteousness that he couldn't earn. And that's what every
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Christian has. You are righteous, not because you are a good person. You will see in a moment, any good that you do comes because you have received a righteousness that is not your own.
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So Paul could rejoice in a righteousness that we couldn't earn. But Paul also points us to secondly, a righteousness that reorders our priorities.
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A righteousness that reorders, excuse me, our priorities. So look at verse 10.
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Paul says, my goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death.
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Simple technical point here for a moment. Our English Bibles kind of smooth over the grammar of this. Some of them do. Literally Paul is continuing on the thought.
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He's still talking about the benefits of being found in Christ. So if you've got a new American standard here, your
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Bible actually does a very good job of this. It just says the word that I may know him. It's continuing on the thought.
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Christ gives us his righteousness and what happens as a result of that is that the goal of our lives, the purpose of our lives becomes a deeper knowledge of him.
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So Paul says that I may know him, a knowledge of his person. And I may know the power of his resurrection.
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I take that to be a reference to the Holy Spirit, the one who raised Jesus from the dead. But he also says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.
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What does he mean by this? Not in the sense of redeeming people. Jesus' work of redemption, the sufferings that he endured for your salvation, only he can do.
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Praise God, none of us are going to be asked to try and redeem anybody by our sufferings because you can't do it.
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So what does Paul mean when he says the fellowship of his sufferings? So think about what we've said about fellowship already in this series.
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That fellowship really is a partnership. It's a sharing in. You can't share in the exact sufferings of Christ but all
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Christians are called to share in the type of suffering that he suffered. Do you catch the difference when
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I say that? That though none of us are dying for the sins of the world, bearing the righteous curse of God, none of us are suffering in that sense.
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We are suffering in a sense as Christians, as justified people in an unjust world.
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That we are righteous people because of Christ suffering in an unrighteous world. And Paul says, I want to know him as I partner in those kinds of sufferings.
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That's why I've said before, and I'll say it again, the sort of modern approach to Christianity which basically says we want to avoid all suffering as much as possible doesn't actually fit the
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Christianity of the New Testament. It doesn't fit the Christianity of Christ who said that if a man will follow after me, let him take up his cross, deny himself and follow me.
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When you took up a cross in the ancient world, I think it was John McCarthy who said this once, you weren't going for a picnic.
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You were going to die. And I'm not saying that every Christian will end up being killed by us. I'm not saying that at all.
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But it does mean that we recognize that it may take us there. And so Paul says,
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I want to know him in the fellowship, in the partnership of his sufferings.
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Christ's righteousness had transformed Paul into a man of singular priorities.
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It's like J .I. Packard said, if you haven't read Knowing God, which is his classic work, you really need to.
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I will give you a copy if you haven't read it. In Knowing God, page 34, he says this, once you become aware that the main business you are here for is to know
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God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord. Not that life becomes easy, but the reality is it gives perspective to everything else.
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You recognize I am here to know him and to know him more. And again, remember why
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Paul is writing all of this. Paul is writing all of this to encourage. Remember he told us back in chapter three, verse one, he's writing all of this to encourage deeper joy in Christ.
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Which makes sense because actually, there is no deeper joy without deeper knowledge of Christ.
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You all know me, I'll take any excuse to talk about discipleship. I'm actually going to not do that this time because I want to be a little more brief today.
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But I simply leave you with this question. Paul comes off in verse 10 as a man of singular focus.
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And we're going to see this again in our next message. And so I simply ask, is this the level of focus that you and I and all of us as a body here have when it comes to knowing, loving, and serving
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Christ? Are we willing to reorder our priorities, our use of time, talent, and treasure to better know him and to ensure that others can come to know him?
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We have a righteousness that we couldn't earn. We have a righteousness that reorders our priorities finally. We have a righteousness that prepares us for an uncertain future.
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We have a righteousness that prepares us for an uncertain future. This maps onto the fact that we will be saved one day, that we will experience what the smart minds call glorification, this moment where we will pass into full and perfect glory.
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Verse 11 might sound a little bit weird when you first hear it. I'm going to read it again. My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
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Is Paul saying he's not sure if he's going to be resurrected? Is Paul saying, eh, it might happen, it might not?
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I don't know. Is that Paul's sense? I mean, there are, just this week, as I was preparing this, there are some commentators who do think that, that Paul is demonstrating humility by saying,
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I'm not even going to presume that I'm going to be resurrected. The problem is that doesn't make sense with so many other places where Paul talks with confidence about his salvation.
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So no, that doesn't work. Again, this is where understanding the background of the
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Bible becomes very important. The early church, when you read the letters of the early church, there was this very clear expectation that in their lifetime,
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Jesus could return. Not that he would return. They didn't know this for certain, but there's an expectation on their part that Jesus could come back in our lifetimes.
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Which by the way, can I pause and say that's a healthy mindset to have and don't listen to any so -called Christian preacher who tells you that's not a healthy lifestyle to have.
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I could say more, but I want to be done in the next five minutes, so I won't. Paul didn't know whether Jesus would return in his lifetime or whether he would fall asleep in death before then.
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Paul didn't know the circumstances by which he would enter into glory. Notice Paul doesn't say that he doesn't know if he'll see the
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Lord. We've seen that already in chapter one. He's pretty certain he's going to. He just doesn't know how that's going to happen. Is Jesus going to come back or am
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I going to die and be resurrected when he does? Not sure. Paul didn't know the circumstances, but Paul did know that he was headed towards glory.
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So even if the circumstances were uncertain, the destination was definitely sure after all.
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Come back to our big point in this message. He had the righteousness that came from Christ. He had
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Christ. And so Paul could have assurance that even if he didn't know the particular circumstances, he didn't know all the details.
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He knew where he was going. I never forget years ago, evangelist that I heard as a kid had an excellent phrase to describe this.
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He said, I can't tell you what heaven will look like. I don't tell you how, I can't tell you all the metaphysics of how you get there.
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He says, but I do have the zip code. He said, the zip code to heaven is a man named Jesus. Heaven knows that zip code.
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And that's the reality for the Christian that even when we don't know where the future is headed, even when we don't know how things will pan out, even when we don't know all of that, the
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Christian has a righteousness that is not their own. And as a result of that, whether they are alive for Jesus to come back or they go into the grave, the spirit goes back to God who gave it, the body awaits the resurrection when soul and body will be reunited again.
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Regardless of how that happens, the Christian can have assurance. And that's what I want to leave you with as I finish this afternoon.
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The reality that the righteousness that we have received is a righteousness that is good for the past, for the present, and for the future.
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And so if you're here today and you don't know the Lord Jesus, or you're watching this later and you don't know the Lord Jesus, can I put it to you that you need to reject any and all attempts to make your own righteousness.
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It won't work. As one preacher I heard years ago put it, repent of your self -righteousness and receive the righteousness that only the
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Saviour can give. And Father, we thank you for that righteousness. We thank you that we have received a perfect spotless record, a record that we could never have earned, that we can never keep, that only the
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Lord Jesus could have given to us and could have won for us. Father, help us that we would reject any and all attempts to develop a righteousness of our own, even after we've come to know you.
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Help us to daily rest in and rejoice in the righteousness that you have so graciously given to us.
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Father, help us that we would be a people whose priorities are reordered by the reality of the righteousness we have.
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And above all, above all, we pray that you would make us a people of singular focus, a people who are willing to give up everything for the knowledge of Christ and for seeing others come to that same knowledge.