Philippians 3:1-11

We study through books of the Bible, if you haven't heard, at the village chapel.

And if you'd like a copy, just lift up your hand and uh someone will bring a paper copy around to you if you'd like.

Oh, you already did that.

Oh.

All right.

You guys are way ahead.

When I was a kid, um our my family, we we went to New York City uh on a few occasions for vacation.

And I remember uh in particular, I just I fell in love with New York City uh at a young age, and I still love that city now.

It's um it's buzzing with creativity and energy and diversity, and it's uh it's dense and it's vast.

There's so much going on there.

And one vacation that we had when I was really young, we we were walking to Little Italy in Chinatown, or going there, I think we took the subway.

And when you go towards Little Italy in Chinatown in a similar area, you pass through Canal Street.

I don't know if you guys have ever been to Canal Street.

But Canal Street, if you can imagine, is a long street of all kinds of stalls, stores, selling uh purses and bags and watches and pens, all kinds of things like that.

When you look closely, these are all forgeries, they're all fakes.

And a lot of tourists actually go uh just to kind of get something that vaguely looks like the real deal on Canal Street, and there's people on the sidewalk yelling at you to come look at their stuff, their purses and all that.

And so the watch that you buy that's supposed to say Omega says omego or Rolux or Patek Philip or and the it doesn't last, it's it's fake, it's a forgery.

And I remember one time uh when we were there, we bought, they sold DVDs at the time.

That's how you watched movies back in the day.

And they on the sidewalk, I remember I think it was five bucks, and you could buy any of these DVDs, and one of them was Lion King, the Disney movie.

And we bought that and took it home after our vacation, put it in the DVD player, and pulled it up, and the image was really tiny on our screen.

It was kind of shaky.

You could hear people chewing on popcorn, you could hear people sipping on Coca-Cola, silhouettes popping up as they go to the restroom in the theater.

It was it was not the real deal.

Uh it was fake.

And you can still go there today on Canal Street and find that kind of stuff.

These things had a vague similarity to the real thing, but they weren't the real thing at all.

That's a silly example, but many of us have experienced in this room deep pain and suffering when a relationship that we have built our life on turns out to be a sham and things fall apart.

Or work that we've invested our life in, a company we've invested our life's work in decides that uh we're too old.

Somebody newer, less cost, can come in.

Some of us have uh leaders who fell into a moral tailspin.

Perhaps we've learned from them for many years, and it makes us question everything we learned from them.

Was it real?

Was it fake?

The subtitle of our study of the book of Philippians is The Hope of Joy.

And for Pastor Paul, the Apostle Paul, joy is serious business.

And I hope you've caught that as we've been going through this letter.

Not joy for joy's sake, but joy, why?

Because it is sourced in something real.

It's sourced in something ultimate, something sturdy.

As we've been studying the letter to the Philippians the past several weeks, the Apostle Paul's pastoral care, his love, almost like a father, really shines through, and you can hear it in the language.

Listen to a few ways that he talks to them.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, he says in verse 1 of chapter 1.

I want you to know, brothers.

I want you to hear that love, that personal connection.

I know that I will remain and continue with continue with you all for your progress, for your joy in the faith.

And in chapter 2, therefore, my beloved, he says, He's like a father.

I want that to be in the back of our mind as we're reading chapter three this morning.

He deeply loves these people, and for their sake, for their good, and for their continued growth, he reminds them of the infinite value of the treasure they have in Christ.

As we continue our study, we'll be looking at chapter three.

Like I said, there are many things that we can try to build our life on.

That's what Paul's gonna make his case against.

There are many things that we can try to build our life on, but the gospel says that there is only one thing that's sturdy enough to support a life.

There's only one sturdy source of satisfaction, of ultimate hope, the hope we just sang about.

If we build our life on anything other than Christ, that hope is meaningless.

There are a million fakes and forgeries vying for our attention and our submission, just as there were in 62 AD when this letter was written.

Our only hope in life and death is Christ.

That's what the Westminster Confession of Faith reminds us of.

Looking anywhere else other than to our risen Lord for our ultimate hope, our ultimate satisfaction and joy.

If we look anywhere else, it's poison to our souls.

It's dangerous.

It cuts at the root of true and lasting joy.

So I invite us to turn in the text, Hebrews chapter, or not Hebrews, Philippians chapter 3.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

Jim might get upset.

Philippians chapter 3, verse 1.

Philippians 3:1

Before we read, let me pray for us.

Living God, help us to hear your holy word.

And as we hear it, we pray by your Spirit you would apply it to our hearts.

That Lord Christ we might see you as the treasure that you are.

Walk out of this place with a deeper, sturdier confidence in you.

In Jesus' name, we all said.

Amen.

So Philippians 3, verse 1.

Philippians 3:1

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.

To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.

We'll stop there for a second.

It's so encouraging to be able to listen in on this ancient conversation.

That's what we have here, this letter between Pastor and his church.

And here he's transitioning the letter to a practical matter, practical matters, rather, of doctrine.

For their good, for good, for the good of that church and for the good of us today.

And he starts with what?

Joy.

Rejoice in the Lord.

The emphasis is on the Lord.

Last week in chapter two, we studied the end of chapter two, where Paul encourages them to continue growing into maturity, and he reminds them that it is God that is at work within them.

Then he shifted for a moment, if you remember, to describe the good work of his protege, Timothy, and his fellow gospel worker, Epaphroditus.

Now, Paul is moving in his letter to more basic fundamental truths of the gospel.

He says, To write the same things to you is no trouble and is safe for you.

What are these same things?

What is he repeating?

We actually don't know with certainty.

It could have been that he wrote them another letter that we don't have.

It could have been that he's referring to sermons that he taught them or discipleship that he was doing with them when he was with them.

I tend to agree with those who think he's referring to things he's already written in this letter, but regardless, he's saying what's to follow, what I'm going to talk about here, is of such vital importance to you that it bears repeating.

Why?

It's for your safety, for your protection.

You can hear that love of this pastor, almost a fatherly love, for their protection, for their safety, for their good, and for us today.

He's essentially saying, look, there are some fundamentals that we must return to.

If we lose sight, if we lose plot, lose the plot of the gospel, it's danger for our souls.

And this should be a reminder for me and for any of us who have been believers on the journey of faith for a long time that it is, we've never grown so far that we should not return to the basic truths.

That Christ died, rose again to set us free, that he is our ultimate hope, our ultimate joy, our confidence of the life to come.

I've heard Pastor Scotty Smith say this before.

We all suffer from gospel amnesia.

And that's stuck with me.

Martin Luther says it this way: He, meaning Christ, must daily be to our hearts the perfect mirror in which we behold how much God loves us and how well he does.

In his infinite goodness, as a faithful God, he has grandly cared for us and that he gave us his dear son.

Do not let this mirror and throne of grace be torn away from before your eyes.

He's saying the same thing.

Daily remind yourself of the good news.

Daily remind yourself of your identity as one who's in Christ.

So we'll continue on.

Verse 2.

He turns here to a warning.

He 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.

Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also.

So our English translations lose some of the bite of this language.

Look out is a really stern warning.

It's a big sign saying danger ahead.

Paul is saying, again, like a loving parent, watch out.

Be alert.

So what is he so concerned about?

Why?

Why is he so stark in his language?

He's concerned, again, about the purity of the gospel.

Our only hope is Christ.

Not Christ plus something else.

It's Christ.

All throughout the ministry of Paul, he's constantly battled unbelievers, Gentile unbelievers.

He's battled with Jewish unbelievers.

And Jewish believers, those who have come to know that Jesus is the Messiah.

And there was a particular sect called Judaizers that did believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but that his work on the cross was insufficient.

And so to Christ's work on the cross, we had to add the Mosaic law and physical circumcision.

And Paul is waving his arms and saying, No.

Look out for that.

This is basically, you can see three different ways that he's paralleling.

He first talks about what?

The dogs.

So these are not cuddly pets in the first century.

I have three dogs myself, I love dogs.

These were unclean.

They were dirty.

They carried dangerous diseases.

What makes this statement even more bold is that it was Gentiles who were called the pejorative term dogs.

Jews would call the Gentiles dogs, and here Paul is flipping it.

And to these Judaizers who were trying to add to the work of Christ, he calls them dogs.

This is a really strong statement, a big red warning sign against those who would try to undermine our confidence in Christ.

Then he says, the evildoers and the mutilators of the flesh.

Of course, this refers to circumcision, which under Mosaic law was an outward sign of the inclusion, of our inclusion in the people of God.

But Paul doesn't even want to use the term circumcision.

He calls them mutilators of the flesh.

This is really bold stuff.

He calls it mutilation because of how poisonous their perversion of the gospel was.

It's hard to understate how stark this whole warning section is.

UK pastor Dick Lucas says this is the boldest warning, the starkest warning, the strongest of any in the New Testament.

The one we're reading here today.

So I mentioned those three, but Paul parallels with another three things.

He parallels with three marks of what a true believer is.

So one, they worship by the Spirit.

This is an upward mark of a true believer.

We who are in Christ are no longer bound to the ceremonies and rituals of Mosaic law.

We're no longer bound to worship only in the temple.

The Spirit of God dwells within us.

Two, we glory in Christ Jesus.

This is an outward sign of a mark of a believer.

All our boasting is in Christ alone, not our heritage, not our pedigree, not our performance.

The disposition of our life, our language showcases our satisfaction in Christ.

And three, put no confidence in the flesh.

Notice he parallels it with the mutilators of the flesh.

So for believers, we put no confidence in the flesh, an inward mark.

Our confidence is not in circumcision, physically, or anything else that we bring to the table.

He's trying to make that abundantly clear.

When it comes to what I'm going to put all of my trust in, all of my hope in, what I'm going to build my life on, it's not the things of the flesh.

Charles Spurgeon said it this way: self-righteousness is a deadly thing.

It's a proud refusal of mercy and a rebellion against grace.

Have you ever heard it put that way?

If anyone claims to add to the sufficiency of what Christ has done on the cross, if we ever come and we act like we don't need forgiveness.

We are proudly refusing his mercy.

We're rebelling against his grace.

It's a dangerous place to be.

This was of such importance to Paul because a false gospel, a forgery, a fake, has no power to save.

It gives no assurance, it cannot change us, and has no grounds for joy.

So Paul continues in verse 4 to build his argument, and he's going to list his own pedigree, illustrating how vacuous it is to place confidence in anything other than Christ.

So let's read there.

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more.

If a songwriter wanted to give a list, she might say, Here are the top uh ten singles that have hit number one.

The Tennessee Titans wanted to put together a list.

I'm not sure what we're going to do.

I'm being a little fake here because I don't actually know anything about sports.

But I hear things.

And I think they're doing better.

Let's go through, let's go through seriously through the list of Paul's pedigree, because I don't want this to get lost on us.

He's putting together a really substantial list.

This is the Michael Jordan of lists here in this time.

He was circumcised on the eighth day.

This is a perfect requirement of the law found in Genesis 17.

He's actually saying, from infancy, from the very get-go, I was fulfilling the Mosaic law to perfection.

Two, of the people of Israel.

Paul here is claiming a pure heritage, a pure bloodline.

Three, of the tribe of Benjamin.

This was a special tribe, which produced the very first king of Israel, Saul, which is likely Paul's namesake before he changed his name to Paul, or his name was changed.

This tribe also maintained loyalty to Jerusalem when the kingdom divided between Judah and Israel.

Hebrew of Hebrews.

Here he's speaking of an inherited advantage of coming from Hebrew parents who were God-fearing.

It could also refer to the fact that he had a lot of education.

He spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and likely Greek.

As to the law, a Pharisee, the Pharisees get a bad rap in our day, but in their day, it was the Pharisees who held fast to the Hebrew scriptures and observed the law like no other group.

As to zeal, a persecutor of the church, he adds this to the list.

And this one had to be painful for him to mention.

He's writing to a church.

He was so committed to the purity of Israel that he was actively engaged with attempting to subvert and destroy the church of Jesus.

Until he encountered the Lord himself on the Damascus road.

And he ends with, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

And he's not saying sinless here, but instead he's reiterating again his impeccable record of following the Mosaic law and its means of atonement through the sacrificial system.

Now that he's listed his own personal achievements, let's look at what he says next.

But whatever gain I had, this list, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Indeed, I count everything as loss 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 from my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Why?

Verse 10.

He says this that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

So after Paul listed an impressive resume of personal achievements and religious pedigree, things that he had built his life on, he summarily dismisses them, calls them rubbish.

Quite literally, the word means dung.

They were a house of cards.

Why?

In order that he may gain Christ.

Oh, that my life might be marked like that.

Paul takes us to the very core of what a heart awakened to the Spirit of God by the Spirit of God looks like.

A heart that recognizes the supreme worth of knowing Christ Jesus as our Lord.

Leaning completely on him.

When Christ met Saul on the Damascus Road, if you're an accountant, you'd love this, everything that was in the prophet section, he moved to the loss section.

He's getting to the heart of what a converted, converted person, what happens when someone's converted?

A spiritually dead man walking, now he becomes alive.

Building a life on top of things he thought would impress God, now he counts them all as dung.

It's a radical shift.

Oh, that we might grab hold of this truth this morning.

It's my prayer that my heart would treasure Christ above all things, that I would have a deeper sense of confidence, I would have a sturdier hope in him today as we walk out of this room.

So whether we've heard this text for the first time today or like me, you may have memorized portions of this scripture when you're a kid and you've known it for years.

I don't want this to get lost on us.

Listen to just a few of the treasures that we have in the gospel.

We sing often of 10,000 reasons for my heart to find.

Here's just a few.

He pursued a wretch like me.

Like you.

He bore my shame and my sin, as the hymn writer said, not in part, but the whole.

I'm clothed in his righteousness alone.

He gives us new life, a new identity.

He empowers us by his spirit to live in grateful obedience.

He is the ground of source, and ground and source of true and lasting joy, not fake, not flimsy joy, but a wellspring.

His resurrection is our assurance of hope that we will rise like the saints, with the saints, and see him face to face.

He is our assurance of that.

These are just a few of the facets of the multifaceted diamond that is the gospel of Christ.

Notice that all these treasures of the gospel are by his initiative.

I didn't start any of those.

None of those start with, I bring this to the table.

It's by his work.

Oh, that should make us grateful.

If we add or subtract to the work of the cross, this is dangerous.

It's our attempting to rob God of His glory, to rob Christ of His sufficiency.

Paul is teaching the Philippian church and us through them.

Anything we lean on in confidence, other than our Savior, is rubbish.

We are invited to simply take hold of him in faith.

I hope you're doing that this morning.

What good news that is.

Two points to consider this morning.

One, I've already mentioned it, our confidence is in Christ alone.

Many of us have heard that our whole life.

Don't let familiarity rob us of this important truth.

The Apostle Paul opens this section of his letter with a stern warning to look out for those who would undermine this basic truth.

It was so important that it bore repeating that he used the strongest language that we see in the New Testament.

This is how important it is.

Now, you and I likely, we don't run into folks who are mutilators of the flesh.

We likely don't run into Judaizers, that particular sect, but we are certainly not immune, my heart is not, to the rampant temptation of every heart to place the burden of ultimate confidence, security, hope, joy on things other than Christ.

Many things, just like on the Canal Street in New York City, vie for our attention and for our allegiance, our submission.

I witnessed this in my own heart, the temptation to treasure work above all else when I was young and out of college, just out of college.

And this did damage to my body and to my relationships, severely quenching my joy in Christ.

Straining my marriage and relationships with family, ultimately, work and the excesses of success.

Placing my ultimate confidence in that gave me two things.

One, ugly pride and despair, pitiful despair on the other side.

So when things are going good, man, look what I've done.

When things are going bad, completely crumble.

That's the opposite of joy.

By the grace of God, I've seen them chip away at those areas in my heart.

I have farther to go.

That flesh that is tuned to this particular siren song, maybe you're like that this morning.

Brian Hedges says this it's not just our sins that keep us from Jesus, meaning communion with him.

Sometimes it's our virtues.

Sometimes it's the best we have to offer.

Sometimes it's the things we think actually make us good people.

And those things can keep us from Christ.

Maybe for you this morning, you're in Christ, but your joy has been choked out by these forgeries, these fakes.

You've been leaning on a relationship, perhaps.

A political party.

A career.

Athletic prowess.

A bank account.

Your position at work.

These things and these kinds of things cannot support the weight of building a life on.

Paul's list of accomplishments and pedigree was an attempt at self-salvation.

And after Christ, he called it all dung.

Even for believers who have found Christ, we are tempted to live as if our source of joy, our ultimate hope and confidence is in other things.

And by that, we practically live.

We fashion things.

We become idols or we create idols.

We practically live that way.

Idol demand much and offer very little.

So may the Spirit work in our hearts, I pray, to identify the rubbish and teach us to count it all as loss compared to knowing Christ.

Amen.

Struggling to find a local word which would translate faith and failing to find one was interrupted by someone in great trouble and needing help.

Please may I come and lean heavily upon you, he said.

Faith is leaning heavily upon Christ, not labor but cessation of labor, not doing but ceasing to do, simply leaning the whole weight of our needs upon him, and finding in him acceptance before the presence of God and a righteousness which could never be ours by our own works.

Number two, we treasure Christ above all else.

Why?

So that we might know him, so we may know the power of his resurrection.

We may become more like him.

That's what it says in the last bits of chapter ten.

Why was Paul so bold in his earlier warnings?

Why did he go to such great lengths by using his own pedigree, his own life, to illustrate this importance?

He tells us, verse 8, actually, let's read it aloud.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

Ligand Duncan has mentioned that this, in all of the New Testament letters, this is perhaps the most intimate language that Paul has used in describing his relationship to Christ.

My Lord.

Think about that Damascus Road experience.

The goal of our union with Christ through his saving work is communion with Christ, a vibrant, active relationship that fuels our joy.

Our joy is directly tied to a relationship.

Happiness is tied to circumstance.

Joy is towards a relationship.

J.I.

Packer says there's a difference between knowing God and knowing about God.

When you truly know God, you have energy to serve Him, boldness to share Him, and contentment in Him.

I pray that is my experience today.

When we're on a date with our spouse or out on the town with friends or family, our primary goal shouldn't be the restaurant or the museum or whatever you're doing.

It's actually knowing the person.

Paul counts all things as rubbish because they have, why?

No power to save.

Only knowing Christ has that.

They have no power to change us, to be conformed to his image.

They have no power to bring us into a living or life-giving relationship to God.

That's why it's so crucial.

This is what Paul calls the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

Is that personal for you today?

May we rest in that good news.

Let's pray.

Lord, wake me up.

Keep me alert to the dangers of placing confidence in anything other than you.

But Lord, also wake me up to see your surpassing worth.

May you be a treasure.

May this joy that comes from you be a wellspring.

May my life reflect the fact that I treasure you above all.

In Christ's name we all sin.

Amen.