"5-For-5"

Hi, this is John Anthony, Lead Master of Evolved Church, and this is the Evolved Church podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Would you help me welcome Josh, Heidi, Bennett, Marissa, and Dave to the platform?

They're going to come up.

Yeah.

Make some noise.

It's all good.

You can get rowdy in church.

I give you permission.

And we're doing something today for the very first time that we are most certainly going to be doing again, called Five for Five.

And I've asked these five individuals.

This is Josh, say hello, Josh.

This is Heidi.

Say, what's up, Heidi?

This is Bennett.

Everybody say, yo, Bennett.

And this is Merced, everybody say.

Fantastic.

And this is Dave, everybody just say.

Yeah, that's about right.

I love it.

And what I've asked them to do is each of them to teach for five minutes today on the same passage of scripture from Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 through 14, as Josh uh eloquently illuminated to me these seven verses.

Philippians 3:7–14

One could preach on these seven verses by themselves for days because there's so much good stuff in here.

But what I wanted to see is if seven five different people read the same verses and hear from God, because I just know that God loves to speak to us through through his written word, through this collection of letters from centuries past, what would five individuals collectively say?

So a few weeks ago they they sent me their notes and I read through them and and I was actually so moved.

And then last week we ran through the content, and I'm so excited for you to hear what God's put on their hearts today.

And here's how it's gonna work.

I'm gonna go sit down in the front row, and on that little table there, I've got cue cards, a green one, a yellow one, and a red one.

I'm actually gonna be timing them because I've given them five minutes, and I mean business.

So at four minutes, don't be disarmed, you're gonna see me hold up a green card so that they know that they're at their four-minute mark.

And at four minutes and thirty seconds, I'm gonna hold up a yellow card for them.

And then when they hit the five minute mark, I'm gonna hold up red.

And if if I sense they're winding down, I'm I'm maybe I believe in grace.

Um if I sense they're winding down, but if they're like not, I'm just gonna stand up and start clapping.

And I'm gonna invite you to stand up and clap with me, and then they're gonna pass off the mic to the next person.

It's gonna be a lot of fun.

And and you don't have to just sit there quietly.

I want you, as a matter of fact, what let's just practice real quick.

Could you just move forward to the edge of your seat?

Okay, yeah, just like you're leaning in.

Yeah, just like you're like, this is good stuff.

Everybody on right on the edge of your seat.

And if you hear something today that encourages you, you can be like, come on, that was good.

Like you can just draw from um every bit of uh Hollywood Southern Baptist, like stateside church just coming to your if I hear of somebody like if you start throwing handkerchiefs, though, I'm gonna get a little concerned because that's that's not really the how Canadians roll.

But uh I want to read to you from this incredible um letter.

Uh Paul in the first century wrote um a letter to the church at Philippi in the Bible.

It's it's a book called Philippians, but it's a letter, and in the third chapter of that letter, verse 7, here's what it says Yet, all of the accomplishments that I once took credit for, I've now forsaken them, and I regard it all as nothing compared to the delight of experiencing Jesus Christ as my Lord.

To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap.

It's all like a pile of manure to me now, so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embrace him as Lord in all of his greatness.

Goes on to say, My passion is to be consumed with him and not clinging to my own righteousness based in keeping the written law.

My righteousness will be his based on the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, the very righteousness that comes from God.

And I continually long to know the wonders of Jesus more fully and to experience the overflowing power of his resurrection working in me.

I will be one with him in his sufferings, and I will be one with him in his death.

Only then will I be able to experience complete oneness with him in his resurrection from the realm of death.

I admit that I haven't yet acquired the absolute fullness that I'm pursuing, but I run with passion into his abundance so that I may reach the purpose that Jesus Christ has called me to fulfill and wants me to discover.

I don't depend on my own strength to accomplish this.

However, I do have one compelling focus.

I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead.

I run straight for the divine invitation of reaching the heavenly goal and gaining the victory prize through the anointing of Jesus.

Philippians 3, verse 7 through 14.

Philippians 3:7–14

Give it up for our first five for five.

Uh Josh is going to start us off.

Come on, Josh.

In the uh passage John O just read, Paul is writing the Philippian church, and he's actually correcting them and guiding them in the good news of the gospel.

And Paul starts with reminding the church that in his old life he thought he could justify himself before God based off of his own works and his own ability to perform and be good.

And now he's comparing his new life before God, where he realizes that he can only be justified by dependence and trust in him.

See, in Paul's old life, he obeyed God meticulously.

He perfectly obeyed the Ten Commandments and even the Mosaic law, which was given to the Jews by God, and it consisted of over 600 individual rules.

But Paul, like many of the Jews, had forgot something about his relationship with God.

See, the Jews were only ever justified because of their trust and faithfulness.

You see, justification is transactional, but if you don't have the right currency, the transaction is void.

Paul says, but whatever gain I had, I count as a loss for the sake of Christ.

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

In other words, he's saying, all that work that I did performing before God and trying to earn justification on my own, and it amounted to nothing.

And I realized that I was trying to place my trust in my own ability rather than God's, and I was no longer justified.

You see, the issue is that man's relationship with God was never based on a currency that we can provide.

Because all humanity is guilty before God because we've all sinned.

As a result, we cannot justify ourselves no matter how hard we try.

You see, just one sin is enough to tip the scale.

No matter how much good work we do, we can simply not earn our own justification.

So Paul's currency, like yours and mine, it's void.

It has no monetary value.

We need an outside, untainted source to provide a currency that has any value.

And this is only available when we completely trust, depend, and rely on God.

So why did God give us the law if obeying it has no value?

We see the law was never given to be obeyed perfectly, but it was given to reveal our need for a savior and our need for reliance on God.

You see, the farther we are from God, the more God can extend his grace towards us.

The way Paul says it, I like the way Paul says it, he says, where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.

And when Paul finally gets this revelation, he realizes who Jesus was and why he needed him.

And he understood that obedience without trust was of no value.

In Romans, Paul says it like this true trust and faith brings about obedience, or the obedience of faith, Paul will say.

You see, this was always the plan with God, and it was always how his people were to be saved from sin.

In Genesis 15, 6 it says, Abraham believed the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

See, years before the Jew were even the Jews were even given a law, they were always justified by faith.

So how do we apply this text today?

Well, for those in the room that have already submitted to Jesus, let this be a reminder that you are to continually trust and depend on God for everything.

Completely and continually lean on Him.

And for those of you in the room that are still wondering what Christianity is all about, this message is a window into the good news of Jesus.

When you realize that you don't have the ability to overcome sin on your own, and you're weighed down by the guilt and the grief and shame, no matter how high the odds seem to be stacked against you, there's a savior that can lift every burden from you, and his name is Jesus.

All you have to do is stop trusting in yourself and transfer your trust to the Savior.

When you do this, Jesus will give you a new status before God, and it'll be called justified.

Thank you.

So good, so good.

You turn it off?

No, it's on.

Is it on?

Wow, okay.

Hello, everybody.

Evolve found.

Um so right when I got this passage, I opened it in my Bible and I just laughed because it was underlined and starred in brackets, and I was like, don't remember ever doing that.

So obviously it was important to me at some point, and then again, when John gave it to me.

Um I like that Josh kind of touched on the context of it.

Paul's writing to the Philippians.

Um he's just kind of warning us to watch out for the religious kind of busybodies that are telling us to um like you have to do all the right things in order to be saved, but actually our confidence should not come from our acts, but from our relationship with God.

Um and if anybody can boast about that, Paul can because he was raised Hebrew, circumcised, and all that Jewish stuff, right?

So the word righteousness just really stuck out to me.

Um I was kind of irritated when I read this passage because I think the word sorry um uh the word righteousness, like it just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like people who are holier than thou and who have it all together, and I just wanted to address that if anybody else kind of feels that way.

Um the definition of it is the quality of being morally right or justifiable.

So when Paul talks about it as doing all the right things, that kind of makes sense to us.

But of course, it's backwards in the Bible.

Jesus is like, no, it's about knowing me.

Um the second important kind of part I took from the righteousness, uh, Paul says this back to back.

I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law, meaning basically no matter how many boxes you check on your magical list of things to get you closer to God, that doesn't really exist.

It's about knowing him.

Um and that's supernatural for us to feel that way.

So that's not a bad thing if you feel that way.

That's like our nature, but it's actually the opposite.

It's if that's not fueled by faith, it's not really real or it's worthless.

Um he says God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith.

Wow.

So when we find ourselves entirely in who God is and who he made us to be, we f and we fully surrender to him, we're transformed inside from faith alone.

So if the acts we do are not justified or not fueled by faith, then they don't mean anything.

Um the second part of the passage is kind of pressing on towards the goal.

It's the same in all the translations I read, just pressing towards the goal, pressing on.

Um after Paul's book talking about righteousness, and he breaks kind of that heart down, he just comes back and says, I don't want you to think that I have it all together just because I'm saying this.

Um he says, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it.

I am not an expert.

Um earlier I said that we're to consider everything that we once deemed valuable as a loss, meaning the things we thought were getting closest to God are actually worthless if not fueled by faith.

Um I Googled the definition of loss and found that a synonym of loss is forgetting.

Um I think we're used to hearing this kind of forgive and forget type mantra, but let's just like stop and think about that.

We're supposed to forget what is behind us and look forwards.

We don't like walk around like this, like just walking forwards with our heads behind us.

Um that's ridiculous.

Like the last definition of today I went further and defined forgetting.

Um means to put out of our mind, to cease to think about.

Um complete failure to remember.

Like God literally removes that part of you for you to move forward.

He was like paving the way for our future.

It's not like oh I gotta think about that sometimes, and then we keep going, like it's like gone, like remove, like forgetting.

So in summary, the way to getting to be right with God is dependent on your relationship with him and not the things you do.

Not the boxes that you're checking.

So it's not a bad thing that you're reading the Bible and like all that like Christian stuff.

But if that's not fueled by wanting a relationship with him, by knowing him, by having faith in him, but by like trusting him, it just doesn't mean anything, it's just empty.

So like let's just focus on knowing him and by wanting him, and then that all that stuff will come.

Um I don't know about you guys, but I'm actually really thankful for this that like my salvation and my salvation is not like dependent on what I've done.

So that's good.

I'm glad that like God's like, just believe in me and trust me, and then all these natural things will follow.

If you want God, you don't want to read the Bible, you don't want to go to church, and like that's just beautiful.

God's plan for our life is way better than the one that we have planned.

Like, there's a reason he said it's not about the things you do because he wants a relationship with us.

Like following rules is not a relationship, it's just like Josh used the word like transaction, but like it's not it's not that, it's just love him and like the good things we'll follow.

When I say the word nostalgia, what comes to your mind?

Is it maybe a song that you hear on the radio that makes you think of a song from maybe the 70s, 80s, or 90s for some of us, or maybe later if you're even younger.

Or maybe it's a TV show that reminds you of Saturday morning cartoons.

Or for others, it's that stretch of highway that reminds you of the seven-hour drive to the lake with your family, sitting in the backseat of your parents' vehicle, arguing over whose turn it was to play Game Boy, or fighting over Legroom, because that's what it is for me.

Now, if there's one thing all of these have in common, it's this.

They are wistful memories.

Now, memories on their own aren't a bad thing, but they do have the ability to also be dangerous.

And as I focus today on Philippians 3, verse 12 to 14, I believe we can look at how it's important to be in the present while looking forward at what is next for our lives.

Philippians 3:12–14

You know, Paul wrote this about 30 years after he had become a Christian, and in that time, he had achieved a lot of things.

He had accomplishments, he had done a lot for Christ, but in that time he had also realized that he had done none of it on its own and he needed to continue to pursue Christ and continue to move forward.

So let's just start off by reading Philippians 3, verse 12.

Philippians 3:12

It says this I admit that I haven't yet acquired the absolute fullness that I'm pursuing, but I run with passion into his abundance so that I may reach the purpose that Jesus Christ had called me to fulfill and wants me to discover.

Now, some people have referred to Paul as a spiritual giant, but that that's just that's almost like too much credit to him on his own, because it's all about what Jesus has done in his life.

And he realized that he had not accomplished everything yet.

He realized that he needed to continue to look forward and continue to see what's next.

Another thing we need to realize is there's no such thing as a super Christian.

I mean, super Christian on its own, you look at someone that's done a ton of things, you're like, man, I just want to be like that person.

But the truth is, we all have access to the same power, the power that comes through the name of Jesus.

It doesn't matter what stage of your faith journey you're in, it doesn't matter the skills that you have.

We're all talented and we've all been gifted.

But when we try to do it on our own with our just our gifts without Jesus, you know, it might be okay for a while, but it's not sustainable.

We all have Jesus and the power that comes through Jesus, and we all have talents, but we need to use them.

Now just look at the Edmonton Oilers right now.

We are gifted with one of the most talented players to ever play the game of hockey.

And yet, even with all economic david's skill, he still can't lead us to the Stanley Cup on his own.

He may have statistical success for a short time, and you know, you look at his season and he has had success.

But until the management decides to surround him with proper talent and other things as a part of the thing, Edmonton is not going to see another Stanley Cup.

The truth hurts.

Let's move on to verse 13 and 14.

I don't depend on my own strength to accomplish this.

However, I do have one compelling focus.

I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead.

I run straight for the divine invitation of reaching the heavenly goal and gaining the victory prize through the anointing of Jesus.

When we hold on to the past, it can tend to anchor us down and sometimes prevent us from what God has for a future.

This can be both the good things and the terrible experiences in our life.

Looking back on memories can be can be good at a time, but they also can just prevent us from moving forward.

We need to be constantly pursuing Christ and pursuing just what's next in our life, striving for greatness.

I don't know how many football fans we have in the room, but if I say the name Tom Brady, people probably yeah, I feel the same way, but people probably know who he is.

He has won many Super Bowl championships, and you'd think that after maybe three or four, he would have gone into another season thinking, I've already done it.

I've won, I've won a few, I can just coast the rest of my career.

I don't have to put in the work, I don't have to go there.

But that's not the case.

He has won six championships now, and that's because every season he goes into it striving for greatness, expecting to win.

And I think we can look at our spiritual journey the same way.

Joy can come from past experiences, past accomplishments, but until we realize that ultimate joy comes from the completion of God's work in our life, we're not gonna have true joy.

I know in my own life, it's when I'm exactly where I need to be, being obedient to Christ, that I feel true joy.

Despite being tired or exhausted sometimes, being obedient is what brings joy to me.

And as I leave today, I just want you guys to remember this align your sight with God's sight for your life, pursue Christ, always try to just grow, always try to be obedient so that you can be an example of God's love to others.

All right.

So when Jono first sent um this passage, and as I was reading through and kind of doing what everyone has done, I wanted to read all of Philippians to like feel it and get the context.

But one thing that kept coming to my mind was this question.

And the question is, how do we really know Jesus?

Like what does that what does that even mean?

I will start here.

It starts with acknowledging what he has done on the cross for us, knowing that on my own, I'm no good, but because of him, because of the sacrifice he made, all of a sudden I'm a little good.

Okay, because that's what Jesus does.

He redeems us, he makes us whole.

And so from there, it was like, okay, so that's like the stepping stone.

That's like the first thing we need to kind of accomplish.

But what then?

I would like to propose to us today that to know Jesus is to realize and begin to fully understand how he sees us.

Let's look at the greatest commandment.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Something I think we kind of I think we shorten that.

We go, okay, yeah, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor, but then when it comes to loving ourselves, all for the sake of false humility, we go, if you only knew.

Right?

Like it's like when people like say something nice to you and you're like, in your head, you're thinking of all the things you did wrong this week.

You're like, if you only knew.

Um, but that's not how God works.

For God so loved all the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

For God so loved all the world, not because God loved Canada, not because God loved the first people in these first two rows, because God loves all of us.

And that means even as we are like in our mess, in that place of like regardless, if you only knew.

us regardless.

To know Jesus is to know who we are.

To know Jesus is to know whose we are.

I I've just been, as I've been going through this, just continually floor, like just, oh my goodness, at this thought of like God's chosen us.

In Ephesians 1 verse 4, it literally says, for he chose us.

Ephesians 1:4

He's chosen you to be a representative of him, of his love, of his grace.

And all of a sudden when we start to like realize who we are in him, I know for me, all of a sudden those people who really annoyed me don't annoy me as much.

Am I right?

Like come on like all of a sudden when we begin to see ourselves as God sees us, we then can start to see our neighbor as God sees him.

We are chosen kids of the King of Kings.

His thoughts literally outnumber the grains of sand and the stars in the sky.

And I used to kind of compartmentalize those two things but actually I think it's both of them together.

And it's like okay God curly hair cool hazel eyes okay maybe a couple other things but your thoughts for me outnumber the grains of sand as I was just going over this I just couldn't escape the weight the beautiful weight of the love of God.

We're so easy to talk about it.

We're easy to sing about it for I'm a child of God.

But do we believe it?

To know Jesus is to know who we are and whose we are because we are his and nothing nothing can take that away because he he loves you in the regardless of and he will use you regardless of I don't know about you wow how incredible to know he's chosen us.

So if you live here today with anything may you walk out of here knowing how loved how seen how known how incredible you are not because of who you are but because of whose you are you are a child of God men women alike it does it doesn't matter age whatever where you're from you are a child of God and I don't know about you but that really gets me going that really excites me.

We're loved guys it's it's it's beautiful and it's awesome to know Jesus is to know that we are his we have been chosen and nothing can change that.

So I'm clearly the oldest of the panel today.

And with that I can look back on my life I can on things and make observations and one of the things that I've noticed is I don't know if you've seen that sometimes the way that we use a word can change or it can evolve as time goes on.

Did you see what I did there?

I used the word evolve.

So I'm not saying anybody's keeping score but if I they were nailed it anyway so what can happen sometimes if you look across culture is the way we use a word and we understand it changes.

And one of the movies that you might be aware of that best captured this was an amazing film from 1995 called Clueless starring Alicia Silverstone and a bunch of other names that none of us remember.

And who Paul Rudd yes a young Paul Rudd that's right so what they did in this movie is they took the word like which initially had meant to be used as a word of comparison or a word to show that I appreciate something and they just inserted it in every single sentence.

If you didn't know what to say like you would just put it into a sentence and they changed how we saw this word used within our culture.

Now if I look at you know my kids who are also getting older the way they use it and understand it is completely different than how it was first presented to us.

Now this will happen in our culture and it's happened before in other cultures and one of them was the Hebrew culture.

Now this doesn't mean that the word they necessarily change their meanings to God but they can change their meanings to people like us.

And one of the words that that's happened to is the word righteousness.

Like totally it's happened to the word righteousness.

Okay?

People have talked about uh up here and they're right that when Paul talks about it in verse nine he says not having my own righteousness which is from the law but that which comes by faith in Jesus Christ.

The righteousness that comes from God by faith.

Josh aptly pointed out that what had happened is that Abraham understood that it was a relationship and then there are these these suggestions, these rules that came about and slowly like really slowly people they started thinking that righteousness had to do with a bunch of these do's and don'ts when it was really just about knowing the one who said it.

And so what ends up happening is righteousness partially is us just being right postured with God and they lost it.

And so in this passage what Paul's good doing is looking back on those 30 years like Bennett had talked about he's saying hey I've seen it we've lost our way God always meant it to be this this one thing know my son and out of that move toward me and toward others.

He knew they were going to be people that said yeah but you know what?

Is that really it?

Just that one thing?

And he says yeah it's just that one thing yeah but God couldn't you give me you know the 600 or 800 or you know the Mosaic law and then the ones that the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the scribed like I want all of those actually because that way if I succeed I did it on my own.

And my chest can get bigger I can walk prouder but also on the other hand if I fail I can point back to you God and I can say you know what it was always too hard.

You made it too hard for me.

And so what he's saying here is no that's not it my child it's just one thing.

I want you to just know me.

I want you to know my son, believe that he did what he said he did and start moving in that to reach out to others.

It doesn't matter if you're too rich or too poor if you're too humble if your genes aren't torn enough if you don't have enough ties or too many self-guilt right there.

If you don't like coffee enough that stuff doesn't matter what I want you to know is that you're right with me as you know my son and you start acting on that immediately.

Church that's what he's still asking us today.

Amen?

Amen that's all I got for you Johnno come on back up here.

Bring us home would you stand and give these guys another round of applause yeah I don't know if you're aware of this but it actually takes a lot of courage to get up in front of people with a mic in your hand and and uh what I love about the truth that all of them shared today that when God looks at us each one of us here in this room he doesn't look at us through the lens of of our past he doesn't look at us through the lens of what we currently do or do not do what we currently say or do not say our own sense of failure or regret from the rearview mirror our own sense of fear and dread for what's to come God doesn't look at us through any of those lenses.

He always looks at us through the lens of Jesus.

When I was growing up my parents used to listen to a lot of Christian y music and there was this song called Rose Tinted Glasses that my parents used to play.

And I I couldn't tell you any of the lyrics or who sang that song I just remember the premise being that when God looks at his kids when he looks at you his unique one of a kind handcrafted son or daughter he looks at you through Jesus.

He looks at you through what Jesus paid for in full that transaction has been completed and there was nothing lacking and as I was up early this morning just praying for today I couldn't help but get the sense that in my own life in my own adulthood of learning to trust and follow Jesus I've had moments where I've thought if if only I could be this way or if only I could do this better maybe God would love me more.

And maybe you've had similar moments in your own journey where you're like man I'm not Christian enough what the heck is that what does that even mean apparently after today it means nothing.

It means that you as you are in this moment are in right standing with God because of what Jesus paid for in full can we just close our eyes and and and bow our heads I want to just pray as we end this time together thank you God thank you that there isn't anything that we uh have to or need to or or even can do to get you to love us more.

To get you to to be more fond of us to get you to place more value in our lives every human being in this room every person was handcrafted knit together for a life of significant purpose and was past tense was brought into right standing with you God the Father through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Some of us believe that and maybe we struggle in the tension of believing that some of us have never heard that before and really want to believe that wherever we're at in that spectrum of believing that Jesus paid it all or wanting to believe that we could dare to have a relationship with Jesus and be in right standing with you, God.

What I invite your presence and your spirit in this space to do in our lives today is to open up the eyes of our hearts and open up the eyes of our understanding to fully lean into the truth that you love us because you love us because you love us because you love us because you love us and we are yours fully intimately 100% yours where we have erred where we've missed the mark where we've tried to earn something that we could never earn forgive us God where we've been blind to seeing what Jesus actually accomplished in full how Jesus made us right with you God let that just settle in our hearts with a sense of awe and wonder not having to figure it all out but just choosing to live and respond and to act on that truth that Jesus paid it all.

Church in the quiet of this momentum I acknowledge that in this room are people who at one point made a decision to follow Jesus and you've been you've been figuring that out ever since but also in this room are people who have even questioned the existence of God have wondered about the place of church in this world that we live in.

Have never fully investigated the claim that Jesus walked among us in the first century and lived a life of significance a life that was radical that turned the then known world upside down that he died a horrific Roman crucifixion death and then miraculously was raised to life and that people saw it with their own eyes and their lives were utterly changed based on what they saw.

That's why we believe what we believe and if we've believed a lie that if only I could be this way or say these things or do this enough that maybe God will see me.

God that's a terrible lie that we just leave at the door today.

And with eyes wide open that we would see ourselves the way that you see us.

We would learn to love ourselves the way that you love us so that in turn we can love you and love others and live the life that you've designed us to live each and every day.

Not one of perfection but one of righteous grace living in who you are thank you so much for listening to today's message if you're ever in the Edmonton area apply for a visit and if you need any more information visit evolved.com