Philippians: What is Jesus Worth? (Phil 2:19-3:11)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

You can learn more about us and find contact info at newsongportperry.ca.

The second lesson is from Philippians chapter 2, starting in the 19th verse.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you.

For I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare, for they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.

But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel.

I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me, and I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will come also.

I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need, for he has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill.

Indeed, he was ill, near to death.

But God had mercy on him, and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.

I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious.

So receive him in the Lord with all joy and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me.

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.

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

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.

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

Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

But whatever gain I had, 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 of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings and become like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

The word of the Lord.

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

Let's pray.

Holy Spirit, would you illumine the eyes of our hearts to behold our Savior Jesus once again?

To see him in his splendor, to see him in his surpassing worth.

Draw our hearts nearer to him.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Are you listening?

He says.

Really listening.

God's kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field for years and then accidentally found by a trespasser.

The finder is ecstatic.

What a find! And proceeds to sell everything he owns to raise money and buy that field.

Or God's kingdom is like a jewel merchant on the hunt for exquisite pearls, finding one that is flawless, he immediately sells everything and buys it.

We probably recognize Eugene Peterson's rendering of two of Jesus' images for the kingdom of God, that of hidden treasure buried in a field, rightfully belonging to the person who owns the field, and that of an exquisite, a flawless pearl worth far more than all of the treasure it takes to buy it.

Jesus is giving us an image of how precious the kingdom of God is, the surpassing worth of the kingdom and its king.

The truth is we don't need to be Christians to have a pearl of great price, do we?

We each of us have something in our lives that makes life meaningful, something for us that is of surpassing worth to everything else, that endues life with meaning and purpose, that makes sense of everything else.

I was looking at a Pew research study earlier.

This was conducted in 2021, and 17,000 Americans of different backgrounds were asked the question, what makes life meaningful?

And here's the top five answers.

I bet you we could guess most of them.

38% responded by saying family and children.

25% said occupation and career makes life meaningful.

19% said material well-being.

18% friends and community.

And 17% said physical and mental health.

Now you'll notice a couple of things about this, these top five answers.

One is they're all good things, aren't they?

No one has ranked arson or bank robbery in the top five things that make life meaningful, right?

These are all good things that I'm sure that we all count as meaningful.

They endue our lives with meaning.

But the other thing we'll notice, and you know, maybe it's surprising, at least to us who are gathered at church on Sunday, I suppose, is oddly enough, faith and spirituality are kind of absent, aren't they?

Maybe that surprises us, maybe it doesn't.

Spirituality, faith, and religion rank second to last in this list at 2%.

Just above faith is retirement, and just below is pets.

As someone who has four pets at home, I guess I get that to some degree, but you know what?

It's an interesting thing to consider, isn't it?

Maybe we're surprised by that because to our understanding, spirituality, faith, religion, this is trying to make sense not only of this thing we do on Sunday morning, it's trying to make sense of all of life.

It's trying to make sense of those top five things that were listed.

It's trying to understand life and its proper priority and ordering, how we relate rightly to God, our Creator, how we relate rightly to life and to death and understand eternity.

These are things of ultimate concern, aren't they?

At least they tend to concern us.

And they have everything to uh, every sort of impact on the thing, the good things that we've listed at the top of the list.

But maybe for some who aren't surprised by this, it's because spirituality, faith, religion feels like it's a million miles away.

And it makes very little difference to real life as it's lived in the day-to-day, as parents and fathers deal with their children in occupation and career and the material well-being of life.

Maybe spirituality doesn't seem to make that much of a difference.

See, I think if we were to ask the apostle Paul, what makes life meaningful?

What has worth that surpasses everything else?

I think he'd respond to us in the way that he does to the Philippian church in chapter 3, verse 8.

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

And for me, that's a very interesting answer.

Not because Paul is giving the nice Sunday school answer that we should expect him to give, but because he actually means it.

We know that he's writing this letter to the Philippian church from prison.

He is in prison for his proclamation of the gospel.

Paul has said, for me to die, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Paul is willing to put everything on the line for Jesus.

For Paul, Jesus is worth it.

He's worth everything.

And that's a pretty remarkable thing to say.

What is it, we want to ask, that makes Jesus worth it for Paul?

That's a dangerous question to ask, isn't it?

Because maybe we have to reflect for our own lives what makes Jesus worth it.

Paul has, I think, two things to say to us in our passage here in chapter three.

Jesus frees us from self-righteous striving, and Jesus pledges us his resurrection life.

He frees us from self-righteous striving and pledges, he promises us his resurrection life.

And what's true for Paul can be true for us here at New Song in 2023.

Christ wants to give us his righteousness freely to those of us who receive him by faith.

And that means that the Christian faith is far less about what we're doing than what we're receiving.

Let's explore what Paul has to say.

What makes Jesus worth it?

He frees us from self-righteous striving.

Let's look at chapter.

We've looked at in our passage today, the end of chapter two and the beginning of chapter three.

I want to start at the beginning of chapter three here and then work backwards a little bit.

Chapter 3, verse 2.

Jesus frees us from self-righteous striving.

Paul begins with a warning, verses 2 and 3.

Look out for the dogs, Paul says.

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.

Okay, clear as mud?

We don't really talk like that these days, do we?

I mean, this should remind us that Paul is writing a letter at a specific time to a specific people.

There is truth for us here today, but if we're going to sift that out, we need to understand the context in which Paul is writing here.

Paul is writing a warning to distinguish for the Philippians to distinguish between the true people of God and those who trust in their own performance to earn it before God.

He says, look out for those who mutilate the flesh, and follows that up by saying, We are the circumcision.

Paul is talking about those who trust in performing Old Testament, Old Covenant commandments to earn a righteous status, to relate themselves rightly to God.

I'm going to do all the right things that God's asked me to do, and that's going to earn me a right status before God.

And all of that is sort of signified by this outward sign of circumcision.

Circumcision sort of says, yeah, the law, that's my way of life.

That's my way of earning it before God.

And so Paul is warning for those who would subscribe to this way of living.

I am going to perform all of the good things to earn God's approval.

Paul says, that's not what the true people of God do.

He says instead, we are the circumcision, which is a pretty remarkable thing to say because in all of his letters, Paul writes against those who say you need to be circumcised to be counted among God's people.

He's not saying you ought to be circumcised.

He's saying, we, God's new covenant people in Christ, know the fulfillment of this old covenant.

We know the truth, the fullness to which the old covenant has pointed.

We know the fullness of God's yes in Christ.

So we can say we know God's fulfillment.

We are the true circumcision because we worship by the Spirit of God and we glory in Christ Jesus.

In other words, our faith is far less about what we do to earn God's approval.

Our faith is a reflection of what God has done for us by the Spirit in Christ.

Do you see the difference?

One says, if I do all of these things properly, then I get God's approval.

The other says, because God so loved the world, he gave us his only begotten Son.

And we live in response to the great mercy and love that He's shown us in Christ.

That's why Paul says we put no confidence in the flesh.

We put no confidence in our ability to perform the good works we think will earn it before God.

Our every confidence looks outward to Christ, who has earned that on our behalf.

We look outward, not inward.

And we might say, well, Paul, maybe you're just saying that because you've got no reason to consider yourself worthy before God.

Maybe, Paul, you understand that, you know, all of your actions you just fail every time, you're not keeping the covenant.

Maybe for you, Paul, that makes sense, but for us, that's uh, you know, we we can we can do what God wants, right?

Paul wants to say verses four and six, that he's got every reason to trust in his ability to perform what the old covenant expected.

He's giving us something of his righteousness, self-righteousness CV.

If anyone has a reason for confidence in the flesh, um, pardon me, I myself have every reason for confidence in the flesh.

If anyone thinks they've got reason for confidence, I've got more.

One, circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Which is to say, I've kept the letter of the law so precisely you can't find fault with my with my outward performance.

For Paul, he understands himself to have checked every single box that a first century Palestinian Jew would expect to earn God's approval.

This doesn't make much sense to us, does it?

We look at this list, and probably none of us would think, none of us would rank these things among the things that would earn God's approval, would we?

We've got our own list, though, don't we?

We've got our own moral list.

We've got the good works that we perform, the helping the people across the street type of things, or or maybe we know what it is to grow up in church, or we've been around the church for long enough.

We've got sort of a spiritual list in our minds.

You know, baptized at my first opportunity, went to Christian summer camp every summer, right?

Maybe uh I went on X number of short-term mission trips.

We've got our list of all of the things we've done that we present before God and present perhaps before others to say, see, I've really legitimately earned God's approval.

Look at all of the good things I've done.

This can go one of two ways.

Either, like Paul, we can get an inflated sense of self-righteousness.

We can look at the things we've done and put our confidence in the flesh, as it were, and what we've performed, and say, see, God must be so happy with me.

But really, what that is is a looking inward.

It's a self-interested sort of self-satisfaction that inflates our ego and distances us from the great love and mercy shown to us in Christ.

Ultimately, it's us saying to Jesus, you know, I'd rather trust in my ability to perform than in what you've done to me or done for me.

But it also cuts the other way.

For those who look at the list or the assumed list of what it takes to earn it before God, whatever that might be, we might look at the list and be the sort of personality to say, I don't feel like I'm crushing it.

I feel like I'm being crushed by it.

I look at the list and I think I can never perform all of the things that God expects, all of the things that would earn his approval.

I feel like I fail every time.

I feel like I come up so short, or even if I do something that's good, my heart is so distant from a good motivation.

I help someone across the street, but then I think, gosh, I looked good doing that.

Right?

It can cut both ways.

It can inflate our egos, or it can completely disintegrate or deflate them.

But what both of these have in common with one another is self-righteousness in the middle.

Because you'll notice what both responses do is they look inward to ourselves for our confidence before God.

It's going to be my performance, whether I feel like I'm crushing it or being crushed by it, it will be my performance that earns my approval before God.

You catch the self-righteousness there in the middle.

Paul says there is a more beautiful way still.

Paul would say, I used to think like this.

But now, he says, verse 7, whatever gain I had, whatever I would have counted in the plus column, I now count as loss.

Why?

I count it as loss for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Because of what Christ has done on my behalf, I am no longer bound to self-righteous striving.

Whether I feel like I'm crushing it or being crushed by it, my right relation before God is not contingent on how I've performed, it's contingent on what Christ has done on my behalf.

So the Christian faith is not one of looking inward for confidence and assurance, it's one of looking outward for confidence and assurance before God.

Pastor Tim Keller wrote something that I'm just still thinking about to this day.

It's a brilliant observation.

He says, the irreligious don't repent at all.

Pardon me, the irreligious don't repent at all, and the religious repent of sins.

But Christians who understand the gospel also repent of their self-righteousness, of trusting in their goodness and moral efforts.

In other words, what we share in common with all other religions is we repent of sin.

That's true, we fall short of the standard and we turn away and we turn towards God and ask for his mercy and forgiveness.

But Christians also repent of that proclivity we have to put our confidence in our ability to earn it before God.

No other religion asks us to do that.

No other religion prompts us to trust in the mercy of God more than our own performance.

Do you catch the difference here?

Paul says this makes a world of difference.

It frees us from self-righteous striving before God and now pledges to us a share in Christ's resurrection life.

Christianity is not just another vision for our moral striving to please God.

Instead, what God has done by his Spirit in Christ calls us to himself.

And he wants to share with us all of the benefits that he has won for us in Christ.

What we believe is far more about what God has done for us than what he requires of us.

Which is why Paul can say in verse 8 indeed, I count everything as a loss, because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

I don't think he's saying all of these things are worthless, as though I never want to see my family again.

That doesn't give any worth or meaning to my life.

I think what he's saying is this that when you look at Christ and what Christ has done for us, everything else seems to fall into correct ordering, it fall into a correct priority in life.

Everything else seems to be illuminated by Christ's preeminent, surpassing worthiness.

When Christ is number one, everything else has a way of taking.

So, what Paul might have trusted in previously, he now sees pales in comparison to what Christ has won for him.

He sees knowing Christ, gaining Christ, being found in Christ as the greatest, most worthy thing he can imagine in his life.

It's not self-righteousness trusting in his own self, but that which comes, the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, that Paul trusts in.

We're related to God not on the basis of our performance, Paul would say, but on the basis of Christ's own righteousness.

Bishop Tom Wright has this to say.

Our belief that the crucified and risen Jesus is, our belief is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Messiah, the Lord of the world, and our loyalty to him are the signs and badge that we have a credit balance consisting simply of him over and against all the debts that we could ever have from anywhere else.

In other words, when Jesus is credited to our account, all other debts are canceled.

Jesus is the soul of surpassing worth to everything else, the pearl of great price for Paul, because it's precisely the righteousness that Christ has earned through his perfect obedience, through paying the penalty on the cross, that is counted to our account when we are spiritually united to him in faith.

And the Christian life is a life lived in union, spiritual union with Christ by the Spirit.

That's why Paul can say that he shares with Christ, both in his sufferings, but also in his resurrection as well.

Paul says all of this is in order to or heading towards that I may know him in the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead.

So you'll notice that Paul understands if I share in his sufferings, if I share in his sufferings presently, then I have a hope of sharing in his resurrection on the last day.

Sufferings in a weird way become a sense of assurance for the Christian that God will answer this too.

That God will raise us as he raised Christ on the last day.

And somehow, strangely, we saw this in our study in 1 Peter, our sufferings are mystically joined to Christ's cross.

We're not cast into them our own, on our own, but we enter into them with Christ.

So we only know Christ's true worth when we come to acknowledge our true need of Him.

The Christian life becomes a life of constantly looking outward, not inward, to find confidence and assurance before God.

Church reformer John Calvin puts it this way: as long as Christ remains outside of us and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for our salvation for the human race remains useless and of no value for us.

But Calvin would say the opposite is true.

If Christ is ours, by putting our trust in him, by pledging our loyalty, our allegiance to him, by grasping him by faith, then suddenly everything that he has won in his death and in his resurrection gets credited to our account.

His active righteousness, his obedience to the law gets credited to our account, no matter how far we've fallen short.

Our confidence comes not through our performance, but through Christ's own righteousness.

And friends, that should give us confidence on our worst day to approach our Heavenly Father, who looks at us and doesn't see a groveling worm that ought to know better.

He looks at us and sees the image of his son.

He looks at us and sees the righteousness that his son has earned for us on the cross and through his resurrection.

And the Spirit cries, Abba Father, to remind us that we are truly his own.

Do you see how different a vision for the Christian life this is?

Do you see for Paul the importance of trusting not in our own self-righteousness, our earning it before God, but instead placing Christ as the surpassing worth in all of this?

Suddenly, all of the Christian life follows from this.

If Christ is preeminent, our life is free from self-righteousness.

And we have a confidence that we will share in Christ's resurrection just as we share presently in his sufferings.

Christ is of surpassing worth.

So rest assured, look to Christ.

When you feel condemned, look to Christ.

When you feel prideful or superior, look to Christ.

Be reminded of his surpassing worth, of his great mercy and love for you.

And then when we attribute Christ with all surpassing worth in our lives, it begins to shape us, begins to shape our priorities, begins to shape the way we live life, the way we interact with family, the way we interact with our occupation, our material wealth, suddenly these things are endued with new and richer meaning, all because we see Christ at the center of it all.

So what's our pearl of great price, saints?

What makes life meaningful?

Can we say with Paul that we count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord?

We're going to come to the Lord's table and we're going to hear the words, This is my body broken for you, and my blood shed for you.

You are worth it to our Lord Jesus.

And he for us is our surpassing worth.

This is the Christian hope.

We are freed from endless self-righteous striving, and we are pledged his resurrection life.

So come to him, saints.

By faith, he invites you to come.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

Newsong Church's mission and ministry is 100% funded by the generous gifts of those worshiping and journeying with us.

If you'd like to offer a gift towards Newsong's ministry, please visit newsongportperry.ca giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.