Good morning. If someone said to you today, "Tell me, what proof is there in your life that you are a Christian?" Would you start telling them about the good things that you do for others, or would you start talking about a relationship you have with one called Jesus Christ. Where is our hope for our salvation grounded today? We will examine this as we continue our study in Philippians chapter 3 this morning.
Philippians is Paul’s letter of joy, but occasionally he will digress and a little of his passion shows through. Paul loves the Philippians, they are headed in the right direction, but there are possible distractions on the horizon for the Philippian church.
Let’s go ahead and get into our text for this morning. It is Philippians 3:1-11. Here in Philippians 3:1-11 it says, “1”
In verse 1 Paul tells them to rejoice again as he does throughout this entire book. God does not mind repeating himself again and again, because it is a safety mechanism for our own behalf. He tells us things to practice, and God also warns us again and again of things that will destroy us.
Have any of you ever forgot something that proved to be disastrous. Perhaps an anniversary or a birthday guys. It is something that we all deal with. In fact, I even heard a story about the smartest dog ever. As a butcher is shooing a dog from his shop, he sees $10 and a note in his mouth, reading: "10 lamb chops, please." Amazed, he takes the money, puts a bag of chops in the dog’s mouth, and quickly closes the shop.
He follows the dog and watches him wait for a green light, look both ways, and trot across the road to a bus stop. The dog checks the timetable and sits on the bench. When a bus arrives, he walks around to the front and looks at the number, then boards the bus. The butcher follows, dumbstruck. As the bus travels out into the suburbs, the dog takes in the scenery. After awhile he stands on his back paws to push the "stop" button, then the butcher follows him off.
The dog runs up to a house and drops his bag on the stoop. He goes back down the path, takes a big run, and throws himself -Wham!- against the door. He does this again and again. No answer. So he jumps on a wall, walks around the garden, beats his head against a window, jumps off, and waits at the front door. A big guy opens it and starts cursing and pummeling the dog. The butcher runs up and screams at the guy: "What in the world are you doing? This dog’s a genius!" The owner responds, "This dog’s no genius. It’s the second time this week he’s forgotten his key!"
You know how easy it can be to forget something. So here, Paul is telling them again, because it’s so important. It needs to be said, multiple times.
Now-he goes on—watch out for those dogs. Mutilators of the flesh—they taught that circumcision was necessary. They felt that it was necessary to do something in order to get saved.
Let’s look at verse 2. The word watch out here, is a very strong one. Some translations use the words "beware of " or "take heed". One of the things you need to understand here is that our view of dog and their view of a dog were two different things. The Jews considered the dog to be the most despised, shameless and miserable of creatures. The Jews considered all Gentiles to be dogs. There were a group of Jews called the Judaizers who came into the church and accepted Christ, but insisted one had to be circumcised in order to be saved.
They believed that you had to follow the rules of the Old Testament in order to have a real relationship with Christ. they were also putting a lot of extra rules on the new Christians that they were making up. In a way they were trying to them to follow the Jewish laws before becoming a Christian. They were traveling from church to church, churches that Paul himself had planted, and have begun telling all these Gentile converts, that they are required to become Jews before they can become Christians. Paul thinks this is bad; for several reasons. First, Jesus never required anyone to become a Jew before they could follow him. Jesus in Luke 7 encounters a Roman centurion, whose faith is stronger than any of the Jews Jesus had met. Jesus says, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” So Paul knows converts don’t have to become Jews before becoming Christians. Second, in order to become a Jew, the males had to be circumcised. Ask any guy these days, they’ll tell you that this is a bit of a deterrent. Christians have never been in the business of keeping people away from Christ, rather it is our joy and our job to bring people to Christ, and to let Him change them, let Him deal with them.
These people who considered others to be dogs, are being called dogs themselves because of the viciousness they were doing to the body of Christ. Paul saw this group like the packs of dogs which prowled the Eastern cities without a home and without an owner, and attacking those who passed by. Today circumcision is not an issue for the Church but it was in the first century. This group was saying, the proof that one was saved was not that he or she had a relationship with Jesus Christ, but that he or she had been circumcised and had a number of other good works that the law had set up. This relationship thing was of secondary importance.
Today we here a whole range of what one must do in order to be saved. There is one must speak in tongues, one must be baptized, one must tithe, one must just try to live a good life, one must just believe in God somewhere, one must join this particular church or one must do such and such and so on. It is so easy and so tempting to want to be able to point to a number of things we do and don’t do in order to show that we are saved. But that’s not where its at. We can do all the right things, go to all the right places, and volunteer at all the right functions and still be lost and spend eternity in hell. Our hope cannot be in doing, but rather in knowing who Jesus is.
The Judaizers wanted to say, that the cutting of the skin was a key factor. Paul says no, the only cutting that truly matters is a cutting of our hearts.
That’s what keeps us from building a relationship with Jesus Christ. The cutting of the heart is a lifelong process. We know that we are growing in our relationship to Christ, when we discover there is a lot more sin in our lives than we ever imagined before. Anyone growing in Christ, is constantly coming to the conclusion, God, I’m worse than I ever thought I was and I really need you to help me out.
You can see Paul gets pretty heated about this. He doesn’t want the Philippians to be distracted from following God. Paul has seen the division and the confusion these people have caused in new churches, especially the church he planted in Galatia. Paul is so fed up with these people that he calls them “dogs”. Today we have dogs as pets, and so the impact of this insult is lost on us. Being called a dog was a huge insult to the Jews. Dogs were dirty animals, and as we looked at already they were looked down upon. To be called a dog was not a compliment by any stretch of the imagination. It was one of the worst things to be called a dog.
Paul wants the Philippians to know what really matters in this life. Whether someone is circumcised or not really doesn’t matter. They don’t need another hoop to jump through, especially one that doesn’t matter. Think of the tragedy if a person walked away from faith, away from following God because they were not wanting to get circumcised. It is a tragedy to send people away from Jesus because they don’t follow the rules that humans have set up.
Now let’s look at verse 3. Here in verse 3 the word is saying there are three marks of a Christian who is growing spiritually. The first mark is, the person worships by the Spirit of God, which means the person is empowered by the Spirit and lives and serves through the Spirit of God.
The second mark of a Christian growing spiritually is that the person glories in Christ Jesus. Jesus’ death on the cross alone is the person’s only ground for salvation, and he or she does not boasts of personal works.
The third mark of a Christian growing spiritually in Christ is that he or she puts no confidence in the flesh. The flesh, means our own abilities and achievements. It covers who we are, what we have, and where we come from. Sometimes we think we’re somebody because we have the things that the world considers important such as money, power, education, profession, or even good looks.
Paul goes on to say that he has all the right to put confidence in the flesh in verse 4. He starts in verse 5, first of all I was circumcised on the eighth day. In other words I was a child of the covenant promise that God had made, and I was circumcised on the exact day that the word of God said to do it. Next, I was of the people of Israel. In other words, I was born of the right people. I wasn’t an alien or foreigner who came and converted to Judaism. I have been what I am all my life. Not only that, I came from the tribe of Benjamin. In other words, I’m from the tribe that God chose the first king of Israel.
He says he was a Hebrew of Hebrews. Both of his parents were Jews, he spoke the Jewish language, practiced the Jewish customs, and carried out the Jewish manner of life. He says in regard to the law a Pharisee. Pharisees were the most educated of the educated. So he was defiantly qualified to be confident in the flesh.
Now these attributes in verses 5-6 probably don’t mean much to us today. But they meant a lot in that time. If he wanted to have put confidence in his ability to make it into heaven on his own he had what it took to try it. He had religion, race, descent, education, high moral values, and blameless outward righteousness. But when Paul discovered the reality of a relationship with Jesus was possible, his assessment of the value of these things in his life underwent a radical change.
Sometimes we get so focused on the outside, the exteriors, and the accomplishments, the LOOK AT ME FACTOR. However in Matthew 6:1-4 it says, “2”
Jesus warns against the look at me factor.
As we come to verse 7 of Philippians it says, “1”
Paul is saying, all these things that I thought were so important in life, and these things that I thought gave me an advantage with God not only do I consider them a loss, but I realize now that they were actually a danger. Paul is not saying, that I’m giving up these things to follow Jesus.
He’s saying, these things would have sent me to hell, had it not been for Jesus. There is nothing in our life that is a plus, that we give up to follow Jesus. When people say, I gave up my career to follow Jesus, or I gave up a good job to follow Jesus, or I gave up my fiancée to follow Jesus, they do not understand what Jesus offers. When we hold on to something instead of letting it go and following Jesus, the truth is, we are not holding on to anything. That thing has seized control of us and has become our god.
What would you think of a person in this condition. A rich woman was on an ocean liner that had struck on iceberg. The ocean liner was doomed and was rapidly sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The rich woman on the liner had the option of going back to the cabin to get her jewels and going down with the ocean liner, or getting in the lifeboat and saving her life. She decided to get into the lifeboat. From that moment on the woman spoke of how she gave up her jewels just to get in the lifeboat. That is how most Christians talk about their relationship to Christ. I gave up this to follow Christ. When you discover what Christ does for a person’s life and eternal salvation, you realize, nothing you have given up even comes close to the value of what you have gained.
All that stuff was now worthless to Paul. All the stuff we brag about is all worthless. In the long run, if we define ourselves by what we collect, what we have, the job that we do or did, all that is worthless.
All the stuff that our society tells us makes us valuable doesn’t. Having a great car doesn’t make you valuable, it doesn’t make you righteous in God’s eyes. Owning something doesn’t bring meaning or worth. Being a direct descendent of the King of England doesn’t mean anything in the long run, in the eternal run. Everything external is worthless in the long run. All the things that define us, if we aren’t followers of Jesus are a diversion from the really important parts of life.
You see having a personal relationship with Jesus brings the most valuable possessions you can ever have. I had this story in one of my folders and Debbie actually reminded me of it not too long ago. It was about “PRINT OFF”
You see Paul takes it further in verse 8 when he says, “1”
Notice it wasn’t just when Paul got saved that he considered everything a loss. It became a lasting attitude and a way of life. Nothing was excluded. Anything that hindered him in developing and maintaining a relationship with Jesus Christ was considered a loss and a minus factor in his life. Some of the things that we once considered a blessing, have now become a loss in our lives, because they now keep us from developing a relationship with Christ. One thing that I hate is when I see Christians, who are not real strong in their faith, start jobs that work on Sunday. One by one, they drop out of the church and out of their relationship to Jesus Christ. The devil tells them, you can still be a Christian and not go to church and to bible study.
You take a coal out of a burning fire, and it will burn at first by itself. And before too long all the color and the heat fades away.
Jesus does not call us to do things. He calls us to come to Him, that we might become more like Him. Good works do not save us, nor do they change us. But building our relationship with Jesus Christ causes both processes to take place. Paul says nothing compares to knowing Jesus Christ as his Lord. Jesus is someone personal to Paul and Jesus wants to be someone personal to each of us. When Paul became a Christian, he lost the esteem of his colleagues, he was no longer the ideal role model, and he was no longer among the privileged few of society. But he says, as far as all that stuff is concerned, I consider them to be rubbish, worthless, and undesirable in order that I might gain Christ.
Paul is saying, if I had to chose between having nothing and having Christ or having everything without Christ, I would gladly choose to have nothing with Christ. Paul’s goal for his life begins in verse 9 and goes through verse 11 when it says, “1”
These 11 verses are basically Paul’s testimony. He has talked about his former life, and how it compares to his life now that he knows Christ. Often it seems like people who have lived part of their life without knowing the grace of Jesus appreciate Him more. It is Paul’s hope for the people of Philippi and for us today to realize this and to look to Christ, and not to our own accomplishments.
Jesus is not looking at how many good works and good things we are doing.
At the end of his life Paul knew that knowing Christ is everything. Paul wants to know Jesus more and more. Paul wants to share in the sufferings of Jesus. Paul wants to know Jesus completely, because Paul loves Jesus. There is a reward for knowing and loving Jesus, his presence in our lives both here and on into eternity. The ultimate hope of the Christian is that our lives matter, that God knows us and loves us. We believe this life is not all there is, but there is something better beyond this temporary time.
There is no resurrection from the dead for people who try to earn their salvation. Our sins still cling to us, and God cannot tolerate them. There is no balancing out the good and the bad, and hoping that we come out on the good side, and thus are let into Heaven. There is only Jesus, and Him crucified, waiting for us to ask Him into our hearts, to take away our sins, to clean us up and to make us new. There is no boasting before God about all the great things we did. There is only perfection or imperfection. There is only righteousness or unrighteousness. We cannot do anything to make us perfect, other than asking Jesus to perfect us. That’s the only way.
How about you? What is your joy in? Do you desire to know Christ more? Are you focusing on him, or yourself? It can be very easy to get caught up in the LOOK AT ME FACTOR. Instead, we should be looking at Christ.
Let’s pray
Invitation |
