Is Anything Worth More Than Jesus? | Pastor Nate Capshaw

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at Celebration ORL or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.

No one likes, right?

That's why we're here today, isn't it?

Um, we're gonna continue on in our series here in a moment, but before we do that, middle school and high school students, you are dismissed.

Celebration youth leaders are in the back.

Your service.

Everyone else, we're locking the doors.

Just kidding, we would never do such a thing like that.

Philippians chapter three is where we're gonna be.

Philippians chapter three, if you have your Bibles or it's on your device.

We're in week three of our series, the first and the rest series examining the idea of stewardship, godly stewardship.

Philippians chapter three together.

We'll begin our reading in verse number one, and we'll remain standing for the word of the Lord.

Here's what it says Whatever happens, my dear brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.

The church said, Rejoice.

I never get tired of telling you things, and I do it to safeguard your faith.

Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved.

But we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised.

We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us.

We put no confidence in human effort, though.

I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could.

Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more.

Alright, pump the brakes, Paul.

I was circumcised when I was eight days old.

I'm a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a real Hebrew if there ever was one.

I was a member of the Pharisees who demanded the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.

I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church.

And as for righteousness, well, I obeyed the law without fault.

I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him.

I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law, rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.

For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith.

I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.

I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead.

This is God's word for us today.

Thanks be to God.

Title for your note-taking is Profit and Loss.

Profit and Loss.

All my accounting and finance people said amen.

Will you bow your heads and pray with me?

Heavenly Father, thank you for being our Father.

Thank you for sending your Son.

Thank you, Lord, for preserving your word where we can learn about your son, where we can learn about what it means to know him, to live with him, to be united with him.

Thank you, God.

Thank you for sending your spirit.

Thank you that your spirit guides us, directs us, teaches us, prompts us, convicts us.

Lord, that's why we're in here to worship today.

It's because of you.

We ask God that you would be with us during this time as we examine your word.

That you would be with me, Lord.

I desperately need you.

We all need you this morning.

It's in the mighty name of Jesus we pray, and the church said, Amen.

Go ahead and take your seats this morning.

Anybody happy to be here?

Yes.

Me too.

As I mentioned earlier, week three of our series, the first and the rest, discussing this idea of stewardship.

Quick question for you.

What's the most valuable thing you own?

What's the most valuable thing you own?

Maybe someone's asked you a question along these lines.

If the house were burning down and you had time to run in and grab one item, what are you getting?

What are you going in after?

A family heirloom, an old photo album, a box of keepsakes, some autograph memorabilia, your spouse, what is it?

Nah, someone said.

What are you grabbing?

Perhaps you assign value to something other than possessions.

Let the place burn down, you might say.

According to an article in Forbes, more than three and four millennials would choose to spend money on an experience or an event over buying something desirable.

Millennials want to spend their money being with others.

How cute is that.

Although, as a millennial, I can associate with the sentiment a little bit.

A lot of us, we grew up in homes with a bunch of stuff.

Garages full of everything but the car, creepy attics, stocked with Christmas decorations and cardboard boxes of nonsense.

We had more stuff than we had space.

Then comes 2008.

The market crash interrupted our normal.

Some of us may have even witnessed our parents losing jobs, losing the house, losing a certain lifestyle, losing stuff.

So naturally, as humans tend to do, we swing the pendulum to the other side.

Millennials begin to overspend on experience.

This week's paycheck, spending one night at the bar, credit cards maxed out on European vacations, fine dining on a Tuesday night with no sense of savings in sight.

It's a party like there's no tomorrow mentality.

And a lot of our hits of pop music reflected this sentiment as well.

Maybe valuable in your eyes isn't a possession or an experience.

Maybe you hold the record for being in the most MySpace top eights of all time.

Your popularity is worth more than its weight in gold.

Or maybe you can resonate with Paul a little bit.

You place high value on status, reputation, performance, prestige.

Point being, we all possess internal value scales.

We're constantly assigning worth to every facet of our lives.

There isn't a soul in this room, however, that values everything in life equally.

Our tendencies, proclivities, even our environment shape our value scales.

If you've ever been to Seattle on a sunny summer day, the appreciation for clear skies is palpable.

Meanwhile, 3,100 miles away, our attitudes towards that same star can look quite different, right?

The blazing Florida sun coupled with suffocating humidity can cause us to devalue the blinding plasma ball suspended in space.

But if one day the sun decided not to show up for work indefinitely, we'd regret cursing our hydrogen and helium friend in about eight minutes and 20 seconds.

We didn't mean it.

Writing his letter to the church at Philippi from a jail cell, Paul continuously instructs this infant church to rejoice.

And what is often referred to as the letter of joy, there are very few reasons for our ancient brothers and sisters to be joyful.

For starters, their dear friend and founding pastor Paul is in chains.

And a valued member of their congregation goes after him, where he almost loses his life in illness on the way.

It appears that certain Jews are giving this diverse Jesus community a hard time for not adhering to religious practices, namely circumcision.

Drown men being ridiculed in shame for not going under the knife seems like less than cheerful circumstance to me.

Oh, and it wouldn't be a Pauline letter without some good old-fashioned church disagreement.

Doesn't appear to be a whole lot to celebrate, but for some reason, Paul differs.

What about 2026?

What are the headlines bringing you joy these days?

Let's forget about the world at large and for a moment only focus on the American church.

Any disagreements within the body of Christ happening?

Any religious ridicule or shame directed from one church denomination to another?

Any life-threatening illnesses or disease plaguing devoted men and women of Christ?

The present-day American church probably has more in common with our ancient Macedonian predecessors than we might originally suppose.

Now, if God has ordained his written word to be preserved through the course of history, which I believe he has, and if that written word stands true to this day, which I believe it does, then that preserved, true, written word is useful and applicable to us in 21st century America.

Therefore, the question must be posed: why isn't my convenient, comfortable, safe, air-conditioned afternoon ice latte life producing sustainable joy?

Why does my credentialed academic experience leave me unsatisfied?

Why is my decorated military service unable to appease my longing for meaning and purpose?

How is it that after 30, 40 years of career advancement, I leave with a pension plan and a nagging sense of inadequacy?

Where's the self-worth that I was promised for accumulating a massive online following or the satisfaction guaranteed me in endless sexual encounters?

How has my passion in ministry turned into resentment toward the church?

Unfortunately, friends, our value scales have been corrupted.

Many of us probably heard how the emergence of sin separated us from God, which it did.

But in addition to separation, sin actually distorted perception of our Heavenly Father.

You may recall how the serpent in the Garden of Eden narrative responded when Eve said that God forbade them to eat a certain fruit because it would bring about death.

To which the serpent replied, You're not gonna die.

You're gonna be like God.

You're gonna know both good and evil.

And in Genesis chapter 3, verse 6, it says, The woman was convinced.

Genesis 3:6

She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom that it would give her.

So she took some of the fruit and ate it.

Then she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it too.

I can only imagine what's going through the mind of this woman at the moment.

This tree's so beautiful.

How could it hurt me?

Why would my father keep something so amazing from me?

Maybe he doesn't want the best for me after all.

Maybe he misspoke, maybe I misunderstood him.

As the seeds of doubt are planted in Eve's mind, the value of knowing God and honoring his word permutes into a value system based on corrupted self-actualization.

Put simply, knowing God isn't enough.

Secure identity and uncompromised joy with the everlasting Father isn't enough.

Daily walks with the one who formed your legs from the dust to the ground isn't enough.

Words of love from the mouth who spoke everything into existence just isn't enough.

Lord, I appreciate you placing us here in this beautiful garden and you know providing for all our needs, anything we could ever want.

But I'm gonna go ahead and give the talking snake and pomegranate a try.

What do you say?

It sounds ridiculous.

It sounds ridiculous, but it also sounds all too familiar, doesn't it?

Church, our value scales have been corrupted.

We've been seduced into believing that life is only worth living if we have influence, position, title, knowledge, authority, sexual gratification, that person who completes me, a three-bed, two and a half bath, two-car garage, 2.5 children, less obstacles, better systems, bigger church, more obedience, tidier morality, louder sermons.

Paul calls it garbage, which is a sanitized version of the original language that he uses, more likely excrement, refuse, dung.

The author shows us his trophy wall and then likens it to solid waste.

It could be like flushing your hard-earned degree down the toilet or equating your 21-day morning devotional strength to crap.

How in the world does the former Pharisee arrive at this conclusion?

How has his perspective shifted so much?

He was an expert.

He had all the answers.

He knew the scriptures inside out, he was feared and respected, he was even born to the right bloodline.

Why would a man of such stature consider it worthless?

It's because when the value of knowing Christ is revealed to you, the significance of everything else dissipates.

When the value of knowing that the God of the universe has revealed himself to you, everything else sort of fades away.

Paul knew the scriptures, but he didn't know Jesus.

Paul rubbed shoulders with the elites, but he didn't know Jesus.

Paul prayed and fasted and obeyed and was disciplined and devoted, but he didn't know Jesus.

Oh, he knew about Jesus.

He was well aware of the influence that this man from Galilee had had on the region.

He knew how Jesus had disrupted the status quo and threatened the authority of those in power.

He was so well acquainted with those facts that he was killing anyone professing loyalty to the so-called Son of God.

Paul knew the facts, but he didn't know Christ.

What about us?

Do we know the lingo?

Do we know the standard operating procedures of a Sunday morning?

Do we have all the default responses cataloged away, ready to submit when someone says, hey, how you doing?

Are we in with the pastor?

Running with the right crowd?

Have we memorized the worship song?

Accumulated our badges in the Bible app?

Do we know right from wrong, or do we know Christ?

Since the fall of man, human beings have made every attempt to contact the divine, from meditation to human sacrifice.

We have painstakingly searched for ways to cross the chasm between God and man.

Whether the worship of stars, cats, or golden calves, every failed attempt leaves us that much further from the Creator.

Saul, which the Jewish rendering Paul named, he tried to commune with God via his national pride and religious fervor.

His attempts to achieve and remain in relationship with God may have been valiant, but he would later realize that they were futile.

My friends, the only way in which you and I are able to know God is because he has chosen to reveal himself to us.

If it were not for his great love, we'd be hopelessly feeling our way around a dark room just trying to turn on the lights.

Thankfully, the light of light came into the earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

And he introduced himself as a newborn.

Jesus lived this life in surrender to his heavenly father by first honoring his earthly parents.

He was tending to the family business until adulthood, and when it was time to leave home and establish the kingdom of God, he submitted himself to water baptism and probably the most intense period of testing that any human being could endure.

Before preaching a sermon or performing a miracle, the Son of God demonstrated what obedience and loyalty to the Father really looked like.

He'd go on to spend the rest of his days in utter dependence and devotion to his father, preaching, teaching, healing, comforting, rebuking, conversing, crying, praying, all of this in service to others.

Instead of descending from heaven to subvert earthly Roman occupation and religious authority, the king introduces a new way to be human.

He ate with the outcast, touched the unclean, and paid attention to the poor.

Instead of demanding that his followers bow before him, he bent his knees and washed their feet.

This is how the God of the universe chose to reveal himself.

And if that wasn't enough, he was betrayed by one of his closest followers, denied by one of his closest friends, abandoned and alone, he was put on trial where he faced faults and distorted accusations.

While on trial, his very own people were given the opportunity to have a prisoner release as part of their Jewish custom, and Jesus watched as a murderer was chosen instead of him.

He was whipped to disfigurement, mocked and spat upon, sentenced to an excruciating death, the kind only reserved for the most egregious offenders.

All the while bearing my sin and your sin in his body, causing separation from him and his father for the first time.

He breathed his last between two convicted criminals, and a counterfeit crown of thorns was placed on his head.

The sign above detailing his charge.

Jesus, the King of the Jews.

This is how the God of the universe chose to reveal himself to us.

After being lowered from a cross, placed in a borrowed tomb, soldiers were assigned to the burial grounds, ensuring his followers couldn't come and steal the body to claim that Jesus' prophecy of resurrection had actually come to fruition.

But it takes a little bit more than a couple armed guards to keep the king buried.

Tombstone was rolled away, and the crucified Lord nowhere to be found.

The very people that witnessed their beloved teacher's lifeless body hanging on a tree were now frantically running to a graveyard in search of him.

No doubt, scratching their heads on a puzzled walk back home, they had to wonder where did he go?

Did the women who first reported this actually see him?

Did the Roman authority or religious leaders change their mind and confiscate the body?

Riddled with fear, they locked themselves in a room and they were afraid that they could be the next ones hung on a cross.

They had an unexpected visitor, didn't they?

Out of nowhere, standing amongst them, is Jesus.

A crucified king now raised from the dead, holding no royal scepter, no grand retaliation plan against Rome, just the scars on his hands and his feet.

Church, this is how the God of the universe chose to reveal himself.

After Jesus' ascension into heaven, God revealed himself in a new way on the day of Pentecost.

The Spirit of God was gifted to all the followers of Jesus, and a new error of the kingdom commits with the birth of the church.

As the community of faith gains traction, there are those that attempt to halt the movement, including this future writer of Philippians.

On his way to imprison more followers of the way, Saul encountered an unexpected visitor on the road to Damascus.

He was quite literally knocked off his feet when the glorified Jesus appeared before him.

His encounter with Christ leaves him blinded and disoriented.

A great first impression, right?

He's led by hand to Damascus where he would eventually regain his sight, receive the Holy Spirit, and be baptized.

However, this odd encounter actually changes the trajectory of Paul's life and in turn human history.

The self-proclaimed Hebrew of Hebrews became the newly appointed apostle to the Gentiles.

A Pharisee holding to the strictest obedience to the law shaped the doctrine of grace.

A man who prided himself on persecuting Jesus' followers was now responsible for planting upwards of 15 to 20 new churches.

Everything that Paul once considered valuable now couldn't hold a candle to the value of knowing Christ.

What about us?

Are we consumed with accumulating, acquiring, maintaining, building, climbing, constructing our earthly uh kingdoms that we've actually lost sight of what's available to us?

Which is the God who formed you in your mother's womb.

You can have a relationship with.

What else could possibly be worth more than that, church?

I'll invite the band to come up as we get ready to close and take communion together.

Alright, Nate, what does this have to do with stewardship?

Nothing really doesn't have anything.

I'm just kidding.

Has everything to do with stewardship, right?

Because when Christ has been revealed to you, there comes some realizations.

The first being that what you own, what you possess, what has been gifted, is actually meant to be repurposed for his purpose.

Maybe you're familiar with the parable of the talents, right?

The short story that Jesus tells in order to illustrate what the kingdom of God is like.

A master leaves on a journey and he entrusts some of his servants with some of his wealth.

And two of the servants decide to invest that.

They receive a return on their investment.

One decides to bury it, to hide it, to conceal it in fear that he might lose it.

The master comes back and says, Hey, what'd you guys do with what I gave you?

And the two of them, two out of the three, said, Well, we we invested it, we got a return on your investment.

Here it is, take a look.

And what does the master say?

Well done, my good and faithful servant.

The third is chastised for not using what has been given to him for the master's purposes.

What's been given to you?

What's been given to us?

What's been given to me?

A lot of times we can look at this parable as a means to understand personal financial stewardship, and of course there are principles that can be applied to that, but there may be a little bit of deeper truth here, possibly even a critique of Israel.

They were supposed to be the lights or the light to the world at the time.

They were supposed to show the rest of the world who Yahweh is, the one true God.

Sometimes they did so, sometimes not so much.

Here's the point, Church.

Whatever you have, whether it's intellect, finance, your house, whatever it is, shouldn't be concealed for fear of losing it or for fear of not being able to hold it.

It should be used for the master's purpose.

More specifically, used to point other people to Jesus and let them know that they too can know the joy of knowing Christ.

You might say, well, Nate, you just kind of spent a few minutes here talking about how Paul said that everything he had was garbage.

But you'd be hard-pressed to tell me that this man didn't use what he had learned over the years, used his expertise and used his knowledge to point back to Christ.

His expertise in the law, like I said, helped shape the doctrine of grace.

Even using his Roman citizenship as a way to influence so many others.

In light of knowing Jesus, yes, it was all garbage.

But it was repurposed for God's use.

Your knowledge, your learning, your experience.

What do you have that can be used for the kingdom of God?

Instead of elevating those things as a prize, they are repurposed for God's advantage.

It's a deeper understanding and appreciation for what He has given us, as opposed to just accumulating stuff.

Verse number 17 in Philippians 3 says this, dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine and learn from those who follow our example.

For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.

They're headed for destruction.

God is their appetite.

They brag about shameful things and they think only about this life here on earth.

But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives, and we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.

He'll take our weak and moral bodies, change them into the glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.

That's good news, church.

What do you value most?

What's your list?

I know mine.

That's a little embarrassing.

My prayer is that we would be a church patterning our lives after Paul and those like him.

That we would value our relationship with Jesus more than anything else.

I pray that God gives us what he gives us would be used for his purposes.

If we value our appetites over our Savior, may God give us the grace to reorient our lives towards him.

May we be a church full of people, constantly praying through the Spirit, God, would you reveal more and more of yourself to me?

My hope is that our church would remember our heavenly citizenship.

One that doesn't grid it out until we make it into heaven, but one that brings heaven to earth as we eagerly await the return of Christ.

Amen.

At this time we're going to take communion together.

If you don't have the elements, you can slip up a hand.

Someone would be happy to serve you.

And on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread, broke it, and blessed it, said, This is my body, which is going to be given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth, Orlando, Florida, in 2026.

We do this in remembrance of what we have in Christ.

Let's take the bread, church.

Same way he took the cup.

This is the cup of the new covenant.

It's my blood.

It's going to ratify this covenant.

It's going to remove the stain of sin from your lives.

This sacrifice changes everything.

It provides right relationship with God Almighty.

Do this in remembrance of Him.

Let's do this.

Lord, we love you.

We love you because you first loved us, God.

We wouldn't even know where to start without you making yourself known.

God, forgive us for placing our priority and emphasis and value on things that just frankly don't matter, Lord.

God, our prayer, we would understand the value of knowing you.

Lord, reveal to us what it is that we actually have.

The access that we actually have, Lord.

The forgiveness that we actually have, the mercy and grace that we actually have in Christ.

Lord, reorient our hearts to you, God.

Help us to repurpose all the earthly things, all the things that you've created us, the way in which you wired us.

Help us to repurpose that for your purposes so that other people can know you, Lord.

Use us in a way that you see fit.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at Celebration ORL or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.