Philippians 3:1-11; Rejoice in the Lord

I am, I think I started in Philippians with you

a number of weeks, months ago. And I am in

Philippians chapter 3 at this point with my messages. Philippians

Philippians 3 · chapter mention Philippians 3:1–11

chapter 3 verses 1 through 11. You know that Paul

is writing this from jail, most likely in Rome. Some

people think it was when he was in Ephesus. It

doesn't matter. He's in jail. He makes reference to it

several times in the book. And yet he's going to

speak about joy again right off the top. I love it.

He says, further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.

Chapter 3, verse 1. Rejoice in the Lord. Again, he

says the word joy or rejoice or some form of

the word joy 16 times. in these four chapters. It's

unbelievable how he wants to talk about joy over and

over again. In fact, you know, in chapter four is

the famous verse, rejoice in the Lord. Again, I say rejoice!

And he's like, come on people, rejoice! A few weeks ago,

my grandson, all my grandchildren were up from Nashville. I've

got three in Nashville. A 12-year-old, 10-year-old Jack, and a 4-year-old.

And we found a place in Cincinnati that All of

you should know about if you have grandchildren or children

that are young enough or even if you are young

at heart. It's called Slick City. It's right next to

Dave and Buster's up in the Tri-County Mall area. I

forget what it is. Right by 275 there. And it

is nothing but slides. Actually it has a lot more

than slides. There's a dodgeball place and a little basketball

place where you bounce and do it. But most of

it is slides. And we took our three grandkids there,

and we were going to slide too. And when we

walked in the place, Jack's eyes were like this. He

couldn't believe, because they're not these four-foot or six-foot slides

that you have on a playground. These are slide slides, right?

The things that go down. and they throw you off,

and you land on a pit. Or some of them,

you go back up and then back down again, and

you have to make sure you have your chin up

and turn face, because when you hit that thing right there, you're,

oh man, that's hard. And then there's some that go

in the circles and everything like that, and it was

a blast. It was so fun. I was trying to

keep up with my grandkids, but my wife, we're the

same age, but She's way younger than I am. And

so I took rests. And there was one time when

she was with Jack, and Jack had found a friend,

as he always does. He is all boy. He is

go from 6 o'clock in the morning. He wakes up,

and he wakes up in full mode, right? He is

on the go. Hey, what can we play now? Let's go.

Come on, come on. At 7.30 at night to 8 o'clock,

when he goes to bed, he falls asleep within about

a minute. But he's all go during the day, and

he is friendly as can be. So he found a friend,

didn't even know his name. But they're going around, and

then Deb joins them, and they're going down the slides.

And at one point, this friend says, That's your grandma?

Your grandma's awesome! Which I must agree with. She is awesome.

But anyway, he is just... I mean, he'd go down

a slide, jump out of the thing, and run to

the next one. They just took those, it's a little

pad thing that you have, you carry around, and other

people slid on it, and so it's all sweaty and yucky.

But it doesn't matter to a 10-year-old kid. We washed

up quickly when we got home. But he's running around

the whole time and just smile ear to ear. And

we asked him, Jack, are you having any fun at all? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

He loved it. It was like he was in heaven.

I think when we get to heaven, he's going to

look for the slide room somewhere. That is the joy

that Paul wants us to have. Now, I know most

of us are adult-like. Okay, so we know in our

heads we can't run around everywhere we go. Isn't everybody happy?

Isn't this wonderful? And I know that there are issues

in life. We have sicknesses. We have not only our

own sicknesses or sore bones and sore muscles, but we

have the people we care for, that we love. We

have jobs. Well, some of you have jobs. Ha, ha, ha.

We have jobs. We have bills to pay. Even I

have that being retired. We have bills to pay. We

have things to worry about, right? We take care of people.

Some of us take care of our grandkids, and that's

a blast. So we have those responsibilities, but even within

the responsibilities, even within the sicknesses, the bills to pay,

the chaos of life, the things that we see on

the news that we shouldn't watch anymore, there should be joy.

There should be joy in our hearts, but also it

ought to spread out. It ought to come out of

our faces with smiles, with light in our eyes. There

ought to be that joy. We as Christians should be

the most joyful people in the world, right? And we

all know a few of those people. I'm not talking

Pollyanna where everything's fine. We have these other things in life.

But people that share that joy all the time. Your

name is Joy, right? And I'm so glad that you...

Do that, right? Does everybody know Joy?

She is.

She's just Joy all the time. Can you imagine being

named Joy and having a face like this all the time?

That would be horrible. But more of us should have that.

I can name you five people in my church that

are joyful people. We talked about this in one of

my core groups, a group of guys. We were talking

about the the presence of joy in people's lives. And

we said, who are the joyful people in our church?

And we named five people right off the bat. It

was so easy to name those people. You know what's sad?

That all of us should be that way, right? We

should share that joy. And so how do we do that?

We're going to see that in the rest of this

passage by knowing Christ, having him live within us, such

an appreciation for him that that joy would come out.

The name says, it is no trouble for me to

write the same things to you again, and it is

a safeguard for you. Now, I don't know about you,

but these Philippians must be off their rockers. Because when

someone tells me something, when someone teaches me something, when

I've learned a lesson, I've learned it good. I don't

need to be reminded of anything in my life. Oh,

some of you, you're like the Philippians, you need to

be reminded. One of the things I do love about

our our new church that we're in now, Axis Church,

is it's a Christian church, Christian denomination, and if you

know anything about them, they share the Lord's Supper every week. Now,

Baptists sometimes get tired of it, even if it's just

once a month, it gets in the way or whatever,

but we do it every week, and it's a beautiful

thing that we do. In fact, I always thought, you know,

if I was in a country where the gospel was

not readily available or if Christians were persecuted there, and

you could only gather with people in the quiet, and

you only gathered for a few minutes every single week,

what would you do? You'd make sure you had the

Lord's Supper. Remember what Jesus did for us. It is

the symbol of our faith that we carry with us

week in and week out, whether we share it or

not every week in church. And I'm not telling you

you need to do that, but we ought to have

that in our hearts, that Jesus died for us, and

we need to be reminded of that over and over again,

just like in the Old Testament where God reminds the people,

who was it that brought you out of Egypt? Who

was it that parted the Red Sea and saved you?

Who was it that died for you in our sense

in the New Testament now? So we need to be reminded.

But not only that, I was taught patience when I

was about 25 years old. I remember the events that

were happening and I was taught patience at that point.

I was taught taught patience when I was about 32

years old again, and I had to learn it over again.

I learned patience again in my 40s, in my 50s,

and now in my 60s as well. We need to

learn things over and over again. That's why we return

to the scriptures, right? Even if you know the story

of the prodigal son, and that's where you are in

your devotional readings, you can go, oh, Luke 15, I

know that story. I don't need to read it again. No,

you need to read it again. The Spirit of God

wants to teach you something new each time you come

to Any passage. John 3.16. Read it again. He wants

to teach. That's what it says in Hebrews. The Bible is,

the Word of God is living and active.

Right?

It's not changing and growing, but it is living and

active in our lives. I know my wife pretty well.

42 years, 2 months, and about 15 days worth now.

As my wife. Knew her a couple years before that.

You know what? I'm still learning things about her. It's unbelievable.

And I still want to talk to her every day

and learn how her day was that day. I want

to learn about God this day. Not just from the

worship service, but in my own time with him. And

so return to the scriptures. Be reminded because we are

people and we forget. Then verse two and don't worry

we're not going every single verse through this but right

at the beginning we are watch out for those dogs

those evildoers those mutilators of the flesh so if you

remember whenever paul went somewhere he was preaching mainly to

gentiles he would go into the jewish areas first go

into the synagogues and preach the gospel The gospel of grace.

The gospel not based on the law. The gospel not

based on works. The gospel of complete grace. That you

don't have to do anything except for have faith in

Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection. And repent of your sins.

Which means I don't want to go that way anymore.

I'm going to turn around and go God's way now.

That's what it means. So you don't have to do anything. Anything.

But there were people that came after him. Judaizers, they

were called. They were believers in Jesus Christ, but they

felt like, you know, to have the fullness of God, really,

you need to believe in Jesus, but you should be

circumcised also. Of course, only men can have the whole

fullness of God, because women, they really don't count. But

you need to be circumcised. No. No. You don't need

to do anything. And so he calls these people dogs. Now,

we love our dogs. We had to put our dog

down just a couple months ago. One of the saddest

days of my life. Hard thing to do. We love dogs.

They're pets. But in those days, dogs were like dogs

in second and third world countries. They roamed everywhere. They

were messy and dirty and rabied. Right? And you didn't

want to have anything to do with them. Dogs. Evil doers.

Mutilators of the flesh. So what he's saying is, you

don't need to be circumcised. All you're doing is mutilating yourself.

It's horrible.

Don't fall back to Jewish ways. Even if you're a Gentile,

you don't have to do that. You don't have to

follow food requirements. You don't have to follow the land requirements.

You don't have to follow the clothing requirements. You just

need the grace of Jesus Christ in your life. So

then he says, for it is we who are the circumcision.

We who serve God by His Spirit, who boast in

Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.

So he's saying that we're the ones that are circumcised

on our hearts. Did you know even in Genesis, after

the command was given, he talks about being circumcised in

your hearts. It's amazing. All the way from the beginning,

God knew that it wasn't just the symbol that He wanted.

He wanted our hearts to be circumcised. And And Paul says,

we're the ones, we are the circumcision, who serve God

by His Spirit and who boast in Christ Jesus and

who put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself

have reason for such confidence, if someone else thinks they

have reasons to put 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 in

regard to the law, a Pharisee as for zeal, persecuting

the church as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

He's saying, look, here's my resume of my Jewishness. I

was circumcised on the eighth day. That was the law

given to Abraham when he was first circumcised, that he

was to be circumcised and then all his children and

for generations to come. Circumcised on the eighth day. Why

the eighth day? The infant mortality rate in those days

was 25% to 30%. That meant that one out of

every three to four children died. Now, infant mortality rate

today we talk about as within the first year. Most

of those children probably died within the first month and

maybe even within the first week. And so, eighth day,

after a week, this child's going to make it. We're

going to circumcise him. On the eighth day, as soon

as possible, you say, this child died. is part of

the nation of Israel, right? But not everybody could do that.

They couldn't get to the doctor or to the ceremony

in eight days. They lived out in the country somewhere.

They had other responsibilities. But Paul, the eighth day, right?

And then of the people of Israel, of the tribe

of Benjamin, you need to remember that the people of

Israel were eventually broken up to two Two different nations.

The northern nation was Israel. The southern nation was Judah.

Because the northern nation had ten tribes up there. The

southern only had Judah and Benjamin. The northern nations were

taken by Assyria and they intermarried and they sold them

into slavery and they were all scattered around the known

world at that time. You don't know if anybody says,

well I'm from the tribe of Issachar because they wouldn't

really know. Oh, I was from the tribe of Dan. Nope,

you don't know that. So they were just of Israel.

But Paul, Judah was taken into exile in Babylon and

the Babylonians let them live together and stay as the

Jewish people. They even developed synagogue worship at that time

because they didn't have the temple anymore. So the tribe

of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin could stay pure

still know who they are. They moved back then, under

the Persian rule, moved back to Jerusalem and Judea, and

they know who they are. The tribe of Judah, Jesus

knows his heritage, the tribe of Judah. And Paul knows his.

I'm not just an Israelite. I know my heritage. I'm

from the tribe of Benjamin, he says. And a Hebrew

of Hebrews, he lived and spoke the language of the Jews.

Many Jews growing up in Israel because of Roman control

learned Greek. They grew up speaking Greek. But Paul stayed

true to his Hebrew heritage and he spoke Hebrew. In

regard to the law of Pharisee, I love this one.

The Pharisees memorized at least the book of Deuteronomy. Many

of them memorized the entire Pentateuch. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

I've been working on it myself. I'll give you what

I've got. Genesis 1, 1. Genesis 1, 2. Genesis 1, 3.

Genesis 1, 4. Genesis 1, 5. I'll stop there. I've

gotten pretty far. They didn't have the verses and the chapters.

They just had the words. They memorized all of the Pentateuch.

As for zeal, he persecuted the church. You might think

you're excited about your Christian life. Well, in a Jewish life,

they wanted to be excited about being a Jew, and

so they'd go to the temple, they'd make their daily prayers,

they would have their sacrifices, and then when those Christians

came out, it was time to stake our claim. And

we're not going to be those people, and they're taking

hold of our people, and we're not going to let

them do it. And so Paul actually persecuted the church

when he was known as Saul, his actual Jewish name.

He stood by while Stephen was being stoned, if you

remember in the book of Acts. And then he persecuted

the church by jailing Christians and even killing some Christians.

And as for righteousness based on the law of faultless,

he followed all the laws as much as he could,

hundreds of laws to be followed to know what was

work on the Sabbath, what was keeping your fields right?

What was having your clothing right? What was honoring your

father and mother? All those different laws and he kept

them faultless. He built this resume of being a Jew.

We have resumes too because we think of our resume

as our work resume, right? Education, experience, certifications, whatever you have.

But we also build a resume as Christians. Even though

we know We know it's Christ in us, right? It's

Christ in us. It's his death and resurrection. But we

also have this thing in the back of our heads

because we live in a culture that teaches us to

remember all these things that we've accomplished. So we might

even claim our education and our work history. We worked

hard for the same company and we're ethical at that company.

And We have a family. We took care of our family.

I stayed true to my husband or wife. Or maybe

you didn't, and that's just one little fault along the way.

And you take care of your kids. You pay your taxes.

Don't even cheat on your taxes, right? And then we're

nice to people. We're polite. Not like some people, you know,

that cut you off in traffic. Not that I ever

worry about that anymore. I don't even think about it.

Or people that push their cart into you in the

grocery store or whatever. People that that cuss. They're everywhere.

We don't do that. And we're even faithful. Some of

us still root for the Reds because that's our home team.

Come hell or well, that's not that. That's the only

choice for the Reds, it seems. Oh, man. We are

good people. And we have this resume in our minds

that almost God is lucky to have me, right? God,

he knew that I'd be a good team member, right?

We get this in our minds that even though we're

all Christians and we come to the foot of the

cross and say, I'm a pretty good Christian. We have

this thought, this thing in our minds of how we

do things and how good we are. But Paul says,

and we should say the same thing, verse 7. But

whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for

the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything

a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ

Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ and

be found in him not having righteousness of my own

that comes from the law or from good works but

that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness that

comes from God on the basis of faith. He considers

everything else a loss. Maybe you started your own business

and built it to be a multi-million dollar business. Good

for you. That's an American thing. That's not a Christian

thing at all. Maybe You're a deacon or an elder

in the church. Maybe you've served in so many different ways,

taught Sunday school or whatever, or on committees. That's great.

A church needs that. That has nothing to do with

who you are in Christ Jesus. Maybe an outgrowth, but

not making you who you are in Christ Jesus. There

is nothing that we do, nothing that we have done,

that compares to knowing Christ Jesus. I have been in

some of the most wonderful scenarios. I've been at Promise

Keepers events. I don't know if any of you went

to those back in the day. 50,000 men in a

stadium singing holy, holy, holy and singing all kinds of

great hymns and newer songs. Just a great joy and

the speakers were fantastic. I've been on mission trips that

were unbelievably successful and fruitful. Fantastic experiences. I've been.

A pastor. You laugh at me being a pastor? I've

been a preacher. I went to seminary for heaven's sake. Nothing. Nothing. Waste. Garbage.

It says it's garbage. You know what he says there?

You know this. It's a dung pile. Okay? It's the

worst of the worst. compared to what I have in

knowing Christ Jesus. It's unfathomable how we put other things

there and kind of rely on them as a resume

when nothing in my life compares to knowing Christ, which

can't be taken away from me even if I get

put in jail. Even if sickness is around me and

my family. Even if death is coming. Even if tragedy

hits my family, especially my children or my grandchildren. I

don't know why, but in my church at Mason when

I was there, I had six senior adults by this

time in the church who had all lost children at

at some point in their lives, up to the age

of 22. So no one 40 and 50 and got cancer. Children.

I can't even think about what that would be. But

we throw all that away compared to knowing Christ. Knowing

Christ is even in that time. Knowing Christ is in

the worst, you lose a job, you're down to your

last dollar. Knowing Christ is the most important thing. And

you don't know that until you know that. I had

a professor once that said, if you can't express something

in words, you really aren't thinking it. Because we think

in words. And I agree with that up to a point.

Because we cannot tell, those of us who know Christ,

who know what I'm talking about, cannot explain it to

a non-Christian. It's like if an alien came down here

and we tried to tell them what a baseball game was.

They'd go, you've got to be kidding me. Or a

track meet. I always think of a track meet. You

mean you just keep running around in the circle. Okay.

What is that? You can't explain it to someone who

doesn't experience it. But we know, we know that knowing Christ,

even though we leave it sometimes, even though we forget

it sometimes, and we have one of those down moments

and we can't well it up within us, we know

that Christ is the answer to everything. He goes on

to even say, I want to know Christ. Second time

he said that. Yes, to know the power of his

resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in

his death, And so somehow attaining to the resurrection from

the dead. When he says that last thing, it doesn't

mean that he wonders if he's going to be in

the resurrection. He just means it's a miracle I'm going

to be in the resurrection. To somehow God is going

to raise me up because I know the power of

his resurrection and the sharing in his sufferings. The participation

in his sufferings. Do you want to know God? Because

then you want to say also, God, give it all

to me. Give me the glorious times in the 50,000 stadium.

Give me those worship services that are just fantastic. Give

me the great music that we had this morning. Give

me all that, and Lord, give me the rest. Give

me the beat down. Give me people persecuting me. Give

me running out of money. Give me sickness around me.

If that's what it takes to know you fully, I

want it all. I want the persecution so I can

know the fullness of the participation in your sufferings as well.

So what does it mean to know Christ? How do

we do this? There are spiritual disciplines that we should have, right?

We have prayer, Bible reading, memorization. We have worship. We

have fellowship, right? We have serving each other. We have

doing good, having a moral life. And those are, I

call them disciplines because when you first start out and

you don't really want to know God, you're not sure

about it, or maybe even when you're older and you've

been a Christian for a long time and you go

through one of these lulls, you depend on the disciplines.

You depend on those to bring you back to God.

And so you practice those disciplines so that then they

become disciplines what you want to do. Not that they

are the answer. They lead us to the answer, which

is knowing Christ. You can memorize the whole Bible. In fact,

I know someone, I read about someone, who memorized the

entire New Testament to prove that it has no power.

He did it. Five years later, he gave his life

to Christ. Interesting, right? Interesting. But you can, you can

memorize verse and verse and you can know some theology

and use it against Christians sometimes because some of the

things that we believe are a little bit different, right?

And so some people can do that and argue with

you and they can be smart about scripture. And some

of us can use it as proof texting to win arguments.

Some of us can use it as a, hey, I've

memorized now five verses, 10 verses, 100 verses, whatever, puff

yourself up. But the reason we read scripture is to

know God. The reason that we pray is to know God.

The reason you come to worship services to bounce things

off each other is to know God. The reason for

really helping and serving, whatever it is, outside the church,

inside the church, is to know God. Now you might

start it as a discipline, say, I know I should

do this because it's good for me. But then you

find joy in it. And you find the real reason.

I heard a preacher at youth camp once, and he said,

I don't just call Jesus my Lord and Savior. We

start out with Savior, and then you say, no, he's

got to be your Lord and Savior. Well, I love

what this guy said. He's my Lord and my Savior

and my treasure. He's the treasure in the field, right?

He is such a treasure. It's not just he's my Savior.

I need to give back to him. It's my thanksgiving

to read the Bible. It's my thanksgiving to pray to him.

He's not only my Lord, as in He is the Master,

so I need to go to Him for the answers.

I need to show Him that everything I have is

because of Him. No, He's my treasure. I want Him.

And that's what you get through serving, reading the Bible, prayer, worship,

whatever it is. You know God through those things. Don't

give up on knowing God. Stick with those disciplines so

you get to the point where Jesus is your treasure

I don't have my quiet times till night because I

am a morning person I get going at 10 o'clock

every single day I am on it No, and even then,

I'm not really on it. I have to shower. I

have to do a few things. So then my day started.

But I have my quiet time at night. I recommend

it being in the morning. I think it's better in

the morning. But at least at night, I can look

forward to it. I'm thinking through the day, oh good,

I get to read. I'm in Ecclesiastes right now. But still,

I get to read God's word tonight. And I look

forward to that. Make God your treasure. There's a song

I had a discussion with my young youth minister or

worship pastor a few weeks ago about this. It's called

Knowing You, Jesus. Some call it All I Once Held Dear.

I recommend it. It's based on this passage. And I

call it a new song because it's not in a hymnal.

So anything that's not in a hymnal these days is

a newer song. But he thinks everything contemporary is within

the last year. So... But it goes like this. The

chorus has become so dear to me.

Knowing you, Jesus. Knowing you, there is no greater thing.

You're my all, you're the best. You're my joy, my righteousness.

And I love you, Lord.

I hope you have a song that you can go

to that expresses your love for God. And maybe you're

not a singer. Maybe you have that one verse that

you've memorized. For me, it's Romans 8, 38, and 39.

For I'm convinced that there's neither death nor life, neither

angel nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor

any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else. in

all creation, that can separate me from the love of

God that's in Christ Jesus my Lord. You need to

have those for your own sake to remind you of

your love for Christ, but also for staying in Christ

and sharing your life with Him on a daily, moment-by-moment basis,

knowing Him in everything you do. Let's pray. God, thank

you so much for this time that we've had together.

I thank you for this church, this faithful group of

believers that love each other because they love you. And

they love you because you've loved them and you love

me first. What a joy it is to know you.

Not just to know about you, but to know you.

I pray that that would be our number one focus

every day. While we're paying the bills, while we're in

a meeting, while we're in a discussion with family or friends,

even while we're watching TV, enjoying a Reds game, or

watching our grandkids, the great joys of life, I pray

that you would always be in our minds, in our hearts,

in our spirits, and that we would do it all

in your name. You are so good to us. We

love you. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.