Everything As Nothing

This morning we're gonna be talking about really protecting.

Um, when we look at this concept of love, love has a natural or a purposeful element of it uh to protect.

And sometimes in the Christian life, uh that can get messy, right?

That can be confusing at times because we are called to love all people, right?

Uh the Bible, the gospel compels us uh to love all people, love the Lord God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

But there's a reality in this world because of sin and wickedness, that people at times and in certain modes present themselves as an unjust aggressor against others.

Now, what do you do in that situation?

You're called to love both people, right?

And the Bible, uh, the gospel compels us to do such things.

But in the case of an unjust aggressor, love demands that we protect those who are being victims of that.

The innocent, right?

Those who are experiencing the affliction because of this other individual.

Think about it like in your home.

If you're a husband or a father and somebody breaks into your home at night, what's happening there?

You're called to love the person who broke into your home, and you're called to love your wife and children.

But in that situation, one is presenting themselves as an unjust aggressor, and the others are victims of their aggression.

Love demands that we protect even if it costs the life of the one who is coming after them.

Love demands that we protect.

This is a critical reality for us to understand within the church because us, especially as biblical, uh as we understand biblical masculinity, we see three identifying characteristics of biblical masculinity that we pastor, that we provide, and that we protect.

And the apostle Paul is no uh uh a foreign person to this concept of protecting the church.

And he goes at uh great lengths to be able to provide this protection for the people that God has called him to love.

So in this letter of Philippians, we've had this tone, right?

This tone of rejoicing in the Lord, uh seeing what God is doing in and through his people, how the gospel has formed them into a people where they can humbly serve and love and be in unity with one another, right?

All of these things that have happened to the church in Philippi, Paul's celebrating, Paul's reminding them of, but then all of a sudden, right here in chapter 3, the tone is gonna shift.

And and Papa Paul is gonna step into love to protect against unjust aggressors who are coming in to threaten the health, spiritual well-being of the church at Philippi.

As we dive into the text and we look at verses 1 through 2, what we see is this be on guard to protect the church.

Be on guard to protect the church.

Uh in this letter, uh in this section of the letter, Paul begins to close out the everything that he's communicating to the church of Philippi.

So he says, finally, right?

And what we're gonna discover as we go through the whole book of Philippians is that this closing out is pretty extensive, right?

It's almost as if Paul was like, hey, I'm gonna close this thing out.

Oh yeah, but then I forgot.

Oh, also I want to remind you of this too, right?

He kind of extends it out through a couple of chapters.

But he's starting to close out the letter, and in so doing, he gives two charges right off the bat in chapter three.

So he says, Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.

That's charge one.

Rejoice in the Lord.

And this isn't, again, this is this has been a kind of central theme of the letter altogether.

That they should be a people who are rejoicing in the Lord, in the work that God has been doing in and through them, and the transformation power that they've been experiencing through the Spirit.

Rejoice in the Lord.

Whether you face trials or persecution or suffering, your life should be marked by rejoicing in everything that Christ has been doing through you.

And so there's a charge number one, rejoice.

But then there's a second charge that Paul gives, and he gives it three different times.

Look out.

Beware, be on guard, protect yourself from.

You see, he prefaces this charge to beware with some sense of notion or semblance that he's communicated to this before.

He he says in his in his opening verse, to write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.

You see, he's he's saying, look, I've kind of warned you about this before, I've communicated this before, but I'm gonna say it again because my goal is to protect you because I love you.

And you need to be on guard for things that are coming in, unjust aggressors who are coming in that are threatening the safety and health of the church.

You see, this is a primary aspect of what love does.

Love protects.

But what is Paul writing to protect them from?

Through these three descriptive words or terms, he's really talking about one group of people.

So you could be tempted to read this as look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh, and see them as three distinct types of people.

But they're not.

They're all one type of people that Paul is using three descriptives to be able to explain who he's talking about.

And he's talking about a group called the Judaizers.

Who here has heard of the term or the people Judaizers?

Anyone?

Yeah, some of us?

Okay, so who are the Judaizers?

Good question.

Um glad you asked.

What they are is a group of Gentile Christians.

So again, they were Gentiles, pagan worshipers.

They had been converted through the hearing of the gospel, but they had been persuaded by Jewish people around them that to receive the fullness of salvation, to truly be one of God's covenant people, you had to also adhere to, embrace, and function in the law of God.

Right?

So it wasn't sufficient to simply receive righteousness by grace through faith in Christ Jesus.

It was necessary to supplement that with obedience to the Torah.

And so this is who Paul's talking about.

Gentile Christians who have embraced a worldview or an ideology that to truly be saved and counted as one of God's covenant people, you had to add to the work of Christ through obedience to the Torah.

You see, they placed salvific significance on observance of the law.

They insisted on circumcision, Sabbath keeping, dietary restrictions, all of this in order to belong to God's people and to truly be saved.

And Paul, each descriptive word that he uses: dogs, evildoers, those who mutilate the flesh, it's a little bit of a wordplay, right?

It's a little bit of a wordplay that we're gonna dive into to unpack what is Paul using this language for?

What's he trying to communicate to the church?

So when we go into the very first descriptive term as look out for the dogs, why would Paul refer to someone as a dog or a group of people as a dog?

Well, the Jewish people had a pretty long extensive history and tradition of referring to other people groups as dogs.

In fact, the Samaritan people were distinctly a group that the Jews often referred to as dogs, less than who they were as God's covenant people.

You see, the Samaritans had intermarried in previous generations.

They had married with foreign nations, and that did two things.

One is it created an impure bloodline of foreign nations mixed with those of the people of Israel.

But more than that, more than just, you know, inter-ethnic marriage, what happened was it perverted or it alterated the worship of Yahweh.

You see, we are introduced to this story of Jesus talking with a Samaritan woman at a well.

And she poses one primary question to him.

You say that we should worship God in the temple.

My people, the Samaritans, say we should worship God on the mountain.

Which is it?

You see, right there we're brought into the reality that the choices that they have made by intermarrying and adopting foreign nations around them had altered or jeopardized the authenticity of the worship of God.

And this was an abomination to the Jewish people.

They hated the Samaritans, so much so that there's actually a historical prayer that they would recite pretty frequently that ends in this way.

It would say this, and do not remember the Samaritans in the resurrection.

That's a brutal prayer.

I've prayed some brutal prayers.

I have not prayed that prayer.

Here's what dogs referred to.

Well, anytime the Jewish people would use the language of dogs, it would refer to a people whose impurity kept them from the resurrection.

Any people whose impurity kept them from the resurrection.

We see another story in the life and ministry of Jesus.

He meets this woman who's a Canaanite woman.

And he goes to her and says, Will you heal my daughter who is sick?

And they have this really quick exchange with one another.

We see it in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 15.

Matthew 15 · chapter mention

It says this, and he answers, speaking of Jesus, it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

She said, Yes, Lord, yeah, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

Jesus said, Look at the great faith of this woman, and then he heals her daughter.

But Jesus is referring to her in that exchange as a dog.

And if we understand what the language they're using, what they're trying to communicate in there is any people group whose impurity would keep them from the resurrection.

Okay?

And so this language of dogs was adopted by the Judaizers and placed upon Christians who refuse to embrace Jewish customs.

So when Paul's saying, look out for the dogs, what he's doing is he's throwing a term that would have been placed upon them because the Judaizers would have seen their impurity as people who would not observe or adhere to the Torah to receive righteousness, they would have viewed them as people who were not worthy of the resurrection.

Paul's going to throw that language right back at them, and he says, look out for the dogs, those who will not receive the resurrection.

He then says, look out for the evildoers.

You see, the Judaizers prided themselves on being workers of the law.

For them to obtain righteousness by grace through faith was insufficient.

And the fullness of righteousness must be obtained through working the law.

And Paul had some interactions with these types of people previously.

In fact, one of the most prominent letters where Paul addresses Judaizers is in his letter to the church at Galatia.

So if you read Galatians, Paul just goes to town on these people, right?

But here he's still engaging with them because they're impacting or jeopardizing the health of the church of which he's called to minister to.

And he says in Galatians chapter 2, just kind of show you how he's dealt with them before, Galatians chapter 2, 16, he says, Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention Galatians 2 · chapter mention

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to what?

Be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

Paul is calling them evildoers.

Why?

Because they are trying to be justified by works of the law.

They are presenting the righteousness of Christ which justifies us before God the Father as insufficient, and they're preaching a false gospel that is meant to call away these Christians and Philippi unto themselves.

Remember Paul's charge initially in the letter?

Do not have any selfish ambition among you.

We define selfish ambition as one who tries to draw followers away unto themselves.

The Judaizers are this type of people that are trying to present a different gospel that says it's not just grace, it's not just the imputation of righteousness by faith, but it is the obtaining of righteousness through works by adhering to the law, the Torah.

And so Paul says, these men are not workers of the law, they're evildoers.

And then he finally says, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.

The Judaizers didn't just demand an observance of the law for righteousness, but demanded circumcision of the flesh also.

Paul fought gospel battles against those who would dare preach that right standing with God would come through any means of human effort.

Constantly in his letters, he's going to war with anyone who would present such notions that the righteousness that is received, that is counted to us by grace through faith and the finished work of Jesus was in any way insufficient.

He would go and protect them at all costs.

And we see in this way in Galatians.

You want to see a minister of the gospel get heated and just throw out, throw down with his opponents?

Galatians chapter 5, verses 11 through 12 is one of the most epic realities of this from Paul.

Galatians 5:11–12

He says this, but if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, what am I still being persecuted?

In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed.

I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves.

What's Paul saying there?

These brothers think that they're obtaining righteousness and justification through a little snipping of the flesh.

Hey, if they really thought that that's how they obtained righteousness and justification, they should just go ahead and cut the whole thing off.

That's what he's saying.

Paul is throwing down.

Because he will not have the health of the church jeopardized, and he will protect them against unjust aggressors through a deep and relentless love that he has for these people.

His language may seem harsh, but it was full of love for the church who he was in chains for.

Circumcision was always a physical mark that communicated a spiritual reality.

Much like baptism.

Baptism is a physical mark on believers that communicates a spiritual reality, that we have been saved by the grace of Jesus, that we have been identified with him through the baptism of the Spirit and belong to him in his body.

Circumcision is the same.

So we're about to walk through a systematic theology of circumcision, right?

Circumcisology.

That's not a word.

And if you had to study that in seminary, I feel bad for you.

But um uh we're gonna look at what how is Paul coming to this conclusion?

Let's start with the thesis.

In Romans 2, 28 through 29, Paul says this for no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical.

But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the Spirit, not by the letter.

His praise is not from man but from God.

So Paul's thesis statement in Romans 2 is that look, you have misunderstood circumcision this whole time.

It has nothing to do with the marking of the flesh, but it is a spiritual reality that communicates the marking of the heart.

Genesis 15, we kind of see the uh the the introduction of this thought and this concept.

Speaking of Father Abraham, Genesis 15 says, and he, Abraham, believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

So, how was righteousness accredited to the soul account of Abraham?

By faith.

Not by works, but by faith.

Because Abraham believed God in his promises.

God accounted to his soul right standing before him through that faith.

Then in Genesis 17, so two chapters later, in a pretty good amount of time between the two events, we read this in 1711.

You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

Pay attention to this, right?

Keep that up on the screen for a minute.

What happened first?

Faith happened first.

It counted, that faith had righteousness accounted to the soul of Abraham.

Then God said to Abraham, Now I want you to mark that reality.

I want you to physically reflect that reality in your flesh through circumcision.

What's circumcision pointing to?

It's pointing back to the event that had already happened, that there was a covenant made between Abraham and God.

So which came first, right?

Faith.

Faith came first, and righteousness was counted to Abraham through that faith.

Circumcision was a marking.

Deuteronomy 30, chapter 30, verse 6 says this, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, that you may live.

Here's the purpose of the circumcision of the heart.

It is to enable us to joyfully be obedient to what God has called us to as his people.

You see, there's a difference between these two things.

There's a difference between obedience to the law to obtain righteousness and a joyful obedience to the law to reflect the righteousness that has been given to you.

The law is not dismissed or removed, it is not thrown out, it is kept intact.

And for us as Christians who are circumcised of the heart, we joyfully respond in obedience, not to earn or obtain the righteousness of which we seek after, but because we have been freely given it by faith in Christ Jesus.

Circumcision of the heart enables us to joyfully be obedient, to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself.

Jeremiah 9, 25 through 26, we see the consequence of a life lived in fleshly circumcision, but not heart circumcision.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh.

Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Amon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.

So why was God bringing punishment and judgment upon his people?

Even though they bore the mark in their body, they did not have the mark in their heart.

And they were doing the law, they were being obedient.

Obedient to the Torah to try and earn a righteousness that could only be given to them by faith.

And so there's a difference between religion and earning that righteousness through obedience and gospel, where we live out that obedience in joyous response to the righteousness that He has freely given us.

Paul brings it home in Romans 4, 11 through 12.

He received the sign of circumcision, speaking of Abraham, as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.

And to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

So on what basis does Paul have such a claim to make that we are the circumcision?

It is from Genesis to Revelation, the reality in truth, that it was always supposed to be a physical reflection of an inward spiritual reality.

And what matters is not that you bear it in your body, but that you bear it in your soul, in your heart.

To love God, to be able to love Him because He has given you a wound in your spirit.

What we have to work to understand is that there is and has always been a grave difference between inward faith that is counted to us as righteousness and external works that tries to obtain righteousness.

One leads to the boasting of God, the other leads to the boasting of the flesh.

One leads to salvation, and the other leads to condemnation.

And so if the spiritual reality was always to have physical markings, what is that of the New Testament church?

Well, Paul doesn't leave us absent of understanding or being able to assess or judge has someone received the circumcision of the heart?

He gives three primary markings of those type of people.

The first one is that they worship God by the Spirit.

Number one, it is those who worship God by the Spirit who have been circumcised of the heart.

Jesus actually answers the woman at the well this way.

After she posed this great question, well, which one's right?

Do we worship at the temple or do we worship on the mountain?

He says to her, look, there's coming a time where you will neither worship in the temple or on the mountain, but you will worship in spirit and in truth.

Jesus is helping this Samaritan woman understand that when Jesus comes, when the power of the Spirit comes and circumcises the heart, that it won't matter where you live, it won't matter your geographic location.

What will matter is that you worship him in the Spirit.

He says, not only do they worship by the Spirit of God, but they glory in Christ Jesus.

They don't glory in the works of their own flesh.

They don't glory in their obedience to obtain righteousness.

They glory in Christ Jesus, boast in his work of redemption in us.

Righteousness that's been acquired by his perfect life in obedient sacrifice and freely given to us by grace through faith.

And then lastly, so so worship by the Spirit of God, glory in Christ Jesus.

Thirdly, they put no confidence in the flesh.

They put no confidence in the flesh, working of the law to acquire the righteousness that the very law demands.

They put no confidence in the flesh to be able to do that.

So a person who's been circumcised of heart has these attributes, that they worship God in spirit, that they glory in Christ Jesus, and that they put no confidence in their flesh.

And then Paul goes on to say, if we were ever to put confidence in our flesh, I would have every reason to.

And he just gives this pedigree of righteousness that he has lived out in his life.

He says this.

So he says, hey, even as a baby, I was obeying the law.

Right?

Eighth day, circumcised.

What else?

I was of the people of Israel.

Identified from birth with the covenant people of God.

He wasn't some person who was converted into Judaism.

He wasn't converted into the family of God.

He was by birth, right?

A member of the covenant family of God, of the tribe of Benjamin.

Right?

Talking about this great patriarch of which he descended from.

Benjamin was the only tribe of all the twelve that was actually born in the promised land.

Not only that, but Benjamin himself, from his line came the first king of Israel.

Saul would rise up out of the line of Benjamin and become the first king of Israel, who Paul had his namesake after.

If we remember back to before his conversion on the Damascus Road, he was Saul of Tarsus who persecuted the church.

And then he became Paul after he had met Christ there.

Not only that, he was a Hebrew of Hebrews.

So this was a specific group of Israelites that had not conformed to the society and culture around them.

What had happened is because they found themselves in Greek society, many Jewish people adopted speaking the language of Greek, and they would actually worship and pray in Greek also.

There's this book called The Septuagint, and it is the Torah in Greek.

And Paul says, no, no, no, I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews.

What's he saying there?

I have maintained the language of Hebrew, and I worship and pray in Hebrew.

I have not allowed the surrounding culture to influence the who I am as a child of God.

He says, as to the law, I was a Pharisee.

The Pharisees developed a tradition of strict interpretation of the Mosaic Law.

The Pharisees were so zealous and so strict about the law of the Torah that they were very well known for adding oral tradition on top of the law.

So it wasn't just that, hey, here's the 613 laws of the Torah of which you must uh adhere to.

It was, hey, those aren't really good enough.

We're gonna add all of these other things on top of them through this oral tradition.

And it got down to, we even see in the New Testament the Gospels of Jesus, like how to wash your pots, right?

Like they would be livid that dudes just let pots soak.

I don't know why every man has to let the dish soak, but that's how I do dishes.

I let it soak, cleans itself, and then somehow it gets put away.

I don't know how, but it is magic.

Uh praise the Lord.

Um but they that that wouldn't suffice for them, right?

They had to add oral tradition on top of the law because they were so uh zealous and so strict on its adherence.

But he says, as to right as it as to zeal, a persecutor of the church.

According to Acts, this persecution involved imprisonment, intimidation, including the threat of murder, and attempts to extract blasphemy through torture.

This was all acts of Paul that he had done in his zeal to persecute the church.

And then finally, he says, as to the law, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Here's something that I want us to understand.

There is a righteousness that the law gives us.

Paul says, I was blameless to it.

He doesn't say he was sinless.

He says, according to the standards of the law and the righteousness that it offers me, I was blameless.

There are righteousness, there are aspects of righteousness that are being offered to us through other means.

We have to understand that the reality of those things is that they are insufficient, that they don't accomplish the salvation of which we seek.

They don't accomplish the right standing before God of which we are trying to work after.

Paul understood this.

He said, Hey, according to the righteousness that the law gives me, I was blameless.

Paul had a righteousness that the law afforded him.

But what he discovered was that it was insufficient to ever give to him what he truly needed, to be right standing before God.

He needed a righteousness not from the law, but from Christ Himself.

What is in contention here is the nature of righteousness.

A righteousness from God, which is counted to us by faith, and a righteousness from the law, which is merited to us by works.

So finally, in verses 7 through 11, we see not self-righteousness, but Christ's righteousness.

Not self-righteousness, but Christ's righteousness.

What's he saying?

Everything that I tried to obtain righteousness through, through obedience to the law, through zealous persecution, through radical adherence, through this Pharisaic school of thought, everything that I tried, my birthright, everything.

I count it all as lost for what?

For the surpassing worth, value, treasure of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

What's wrong?

The righteousness which comes from the law, its end is absent of Christ.

At the end of self-righteousness is emptiness.

But at the end of Christ's righteousness, oh, it's him.

It's himself.

This, this is what Paul longed for.

To gain Christ, to know Christ, to be found in Christ.

Everything that he had counted as merit, as worth, as value, he was willing to throw it all away for the surpassing beauty and glory of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

And Paul goes on to say that I wasn't just willing to throw it away, I was willing to count it all as rubbish.

Now, most preachers and theologians nerd out here because their parents didn't allow them to cuss when they were little, and they're like, oh, this is the cuss word in the Bible.

Yes, rubbish does mean dung in a very extensive way that we could say Paul was cussing at these dudes.

But as you understand the text, as you understand the whole reality of what Paul's trying to communicate, there's a better translation for this word rubbish.

And it means the things that you throw out for the dogs to devour.

The scraps of the table that you throw out for the dogs.

Look at what Paul said.

You call us dogs?

No, no, no.

Look out for the real dogs.

The real dogs who try to obtain the righteousness that Christ freely gives to us by grace through faith through their own working of the flesh.

These evildoers, these mutilators of the flesh.

Paul says, if they have any reason to boast, I had every reason to boast.

Ten times more than they did.

But you know what?

Once I found Jesus, all of that working, all of that striving, all of that effort, I would rather just throw it out for them to devour.

For the dogs to come and eat up.

That's how much Paul sees his own works of the flesh as repulsive, worthless.

He says, let them eat it up.

Let them devour it.

It will provide nothing for them.

You see, the righteousness accomplished through the law simply just draws us to ourselves.

But the righteousness that comes by faith draws us intimately to Jesus.

In relation to God's grace and Jesus Christ, self-righteousness and human merit are not just worthless, but repulsive.

And Paul says, I would rather throw all of that away so that I might know Christ in the power of his resurrection, in his sufferings, and to be identified with him in his death.

Paul realized that to know Christ was infinitely more valuable and worthy, and it was to know him in every single way possible.

You see, many of us, we just want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.

We want the blessing.

We want the power.

We want the life abundantly.

We want the good stuff.

But the gospel holistically calls us to not just know Christ and the power of his resurrection, but in his suffering and to be identified in his death also.

Carl Barth, a theologian in Germany during World War II, says this about this passage of Philippians.

He says, to have a share in Easter Sunday means to have a share in Good Friday.

There is no crown without a cross.

There is no resurrection without sacrifice.

And for Paul to know Christ in every aspect of himself was so gloriously surpassing in value and worth.

What's Paul's end hope?

I love this because Paul brings his whole argument full circle.

You want to talk about a genius theologian and writer, right?

He brings the whole thing full circle at the end.

He says his end hope is that he would obtain the resurrection.

Think about everything he just laid out.

Dogs are those whose impurity kept them from the resurrection.

They have been called dogs because they did not seek to obtain righteousness through adherence to the law.

Paul says, no, we're not dogs, they're the dogs.

And then he lays out the argument for why that's to be the case.

Then he says, everything I ever could have achieved in my own life, I throw it out for them to devour.

The street dogs in the back alley of my home.

Why?

So that I can, because this is how you obtain the resurrection, not through your own works of the flesh, but through Christ's finished work on the cross.

A dog who strived to be found in right standing with God through the working of the law and their own merits would fail to ever actually see that which they longed for, the resurrection.

But to be a child of God who has been made one through the adoption power of the gospel in Christ Jesus is how we might eternally and fully know our salvation by receiving the resurrection.

You see, that we kind of lose sight of that in Christianity.

The gospel doesn't stop with just this soul going to heaven and being with Jesus.

No, it is the resurrection of our flesh into glorious, imperishable, uncontaminated flesh of which we will eternally live with Jesus.

Jesus isn't just some disembodied soul up in heaven waiting to come back.

No, he is glorious flesh that has been resurrected from the dead, who physically and literally sits at the right hand of the Father, and in his return, all those who are asleep in him, their bodies will rise also, and that we might enter into glory with him forever.

Yes, to be absent from the flesh is to be present with the Lord, but we're still waiting something even more glorious.

What is that?

It's the resurrection of your own body that you might live with him in splendor and glory and majesty forever.

Jesus wasn't shy or bashful or timid about using such language as a dog.

And he clearly identifies and separates the difference between those who have inherited the resurrection from the dead and those who would be kept from it.

In Revelation chapter 22, verses 12 through 16, our Lord speaks these words.

Revelation 22:12–16

Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

Blessed are those who wash their robes, so they may have the right to the tree of life, and that they may enter the city by the gates.

Outside are the dogs, sorcerers, sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices deception, falsehood.

I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches.

I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.

At Jesus' return, one of the most loving things that he will do for his church is separate us from the dogs.

Not because we have strived and worked and calloused our hands at achieving righteousness through our own obedience, but because by grace through faith he has counted his righteousness to us.

Why are we not dogs eating the scraps that fall off from the table?

Because grace has made us children, sons and daughters.

And that that alone, we have no ability to boast in the flesh.

But we have every reason to boast in Christ Jesus alone.

So our main idea this morning, that's just the intro.

No, I'm gonna cut it short, but uh everything is counted as nothing for the sake of gaining.

Everything is counted as nothing for the sake of gaining.

All that we could hope to merit, right standing before God, is thrown out in the knowledge of Jesus.

No matter how you want to perceive yourself, no matter how what rubric you want to put your life choices and actions through to come out on the other side as good or righteous, it is all nothing in the knowledge of gaining Christ.

And we do this to ourselves, right?

We we try to assess how good are we?

Oh, they're good people.

God wouldn't send a good person to hell.

What good, good.

We use this language because if we're honest with ourselves, we have this life rubric of which we put ourselves through to try and understand how do we affect the scales of cosmic uh justice, right?

Are we gonna tip them in our favor?

Are they gonna be tipped out of our favor?

But it it all we're doing is we're trying to put confidence in the flesh.

We're trying to put confidence in the size of our bank accounts, we're trying to put confidence in the title our education has earned.

We're trying to put confidence in the choices we made with our families and where we live and how we've kept our nose clean and we've voted Republican.

We've done all these things, right?

Shouldn't this make us good people?

Do you understand that we are feasting on the very things that's been thrown out for the dogs to devour?

We should only put confidence and boasting in Christ alone.

There's nothing in this world that can earn for you what Jesus has freely given to you by grace through faith.

But many of us, we don't understand this, and we try to earn righteousness, and I think in a couple different ways.

Some of us we strive to earn the righteousness of the world.

We strive to earn the righteousness of the world.

Just as Paul clearly communicated that he had obtained the righteousness which the law provides for him, but he found it emphatically insufficient and unable to fully give him the salvation of which he needed.

There is a righteousness that is presented to us by the world that says, Come and take it.

Come and adhere to our dogma.

Come and be obedient to our standards.

Come and repent before us, and we will give you our righteousness.

It is full of all kinds of merits and badges and identities of which we can say we have gotten there.

But the problem is, as soon as we say we have earned the righteousness of the world, the goalposts move on us, and we have to repent and keep chasing them down so that we might re-earn them in our efforts.

You might adopt certain language today, but it's going to change tomorrow.

You might have uh had different ideology this week, but next week it's gonna change and shift on you again.

You you might say the right thing on your Twitter account, but then all of a sudden someone's gonna say, Well, that wasn't good enough because while you were sleeping, things changed.

And so now you need to.

Repent and keep chasing down this righteousness that we're dangling in front of you like a carrot, tempting you to keep coming our way, and we're pursuing destruction and devastation at breakneck speeds because they are unable to give us the very thing they promise us.

And the church is guilty of following its lead.

We have changed, we have altered, we have outright perverted the gospel of Jesus, and we have declared it to be insufficient to give us the righteousness we need, and we need to add to it the works of this world.

And it's atrocious.

And the church has to protect the sheep from such condemning and damning heresies.

Douglas Kruger was writing a preface in the book Social Justice Goes to Church, and he has these words for us to hear.

The great injunction to the church was to preach the gospel to the world while not being of the world.

Social justice neatly reverses this trend, preaching the ways of the world into the church.

That is not only its only critical reversal, though.

The gospel is about freedom from guilt and sin and bondage.

Social justice seeks above all to apportion guilt and sin and bondage, enslaving entire demographics and requiring that they kneel before man in attrition.

This is what the world is offering you.

You want a righteousness?

We have one that we'll give to you, but it's not going to come easy.

The goalposts of it are always going to be moving.

You're always going to have to be trying to chase it down.

And there are fundamental realities about your being that will prohibit you from ever fully achieving it.

Whether that be your ethnicity, your gender, your sexual orientation, whatever it might be, the best you can hope for is to land in your place of intersectionality, embrace it as insufficient in and of itself, and hope that they will show you mercy.

Many of us, though, we strive to earn the righteousness of our works.

We are men and women who are uncircumcised in the heart, but try to live out a circumcision of our flesh.

We try to do all the right things, make the right decisions, keep our nose clean, and make sure that we don't get into too much of a mess.

But we're not doing it from a heart that's been radically transformed, that's been wounded by the hand of our Maker, so that we know we belong to Him.

We're doing it out of a heart that feels like it has to obtain right standing with God through every effort we can muster.

And so we go to church, we sit on deacon boards, we read the Bible, we do all the right things, right?

We vote down the right side of the ticket, we make sure that our policies align with economic advantage and all these other things, and we think we're good.

But we have to have transformed hearts, not obedient lives.

Obedient lives must flow from transformed hearts as a reflection of a reality that Christ has done in us, not to try and create a different, alternate reality than our sin creates in our nature.

The beauty of the gospel, though, is that Jesus obtained the righteousness we needed so that we might obtain the new life we desire.

I'm wrapping up.

There's an assumption in this statement.

The assumption is the life we desire is actually discovered in a new life in Christ.

Look at what Paul says.

This is the life I thought I desired.

To be an Israel, a child of Israel, to be a Pharisee of Pharisee, to be a Hebrew.

This is the life I thought I desired.

I thought was going to get me everything I ever hoped for or imagined.

But when he found Christ, the desire, the life desire that was in him shifted to what?

Know Christ alone.

To glory in him, to be found in him, to gain him.

Because at the end of all of our existence, the fullness of joy and pleasure is in Christ.

That we have him, because it is in him that God is able to do far more abundantly than we could ever think or imagine.

The life that we never knew we wanted to live is found rooted in knowing him.

And so he changes our desires.

And by the power of the Spirit, we no longer seek to live the life we once thought we wanted.

We now are translated into the kingdom of light, and he shows us a better way.

A life that chases him down to know him, to love him, to gain him.

My hope for us, sacred mission, is that we would be a people who count everything as loss to gain him.

Our bank accounts, our right standing in society, our titles that our academics have accomplished for us, some of our relationships and culture, everything.

That we would count it as loss for the sake of knowing him, of gaining him.

Because we should treat everything as nothing.

Because in him we've gained everything.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.