Sermon Transcript
Philippians chapter 3. If you’ve not been with us, you could pull out the message note sheet and that will help you follow along with what we’re going to be looking at this morning. There’s a scripture passage there that we’ll be looking at, or open up your Bible or scroll there on your phone or whatever it is that helps you do that. This week I had a conversation with a person who works at Tesla. He’s an engineer at Tesla.
He was a part of this launch of the new SUV. It was launched on September the 29th. It’s a really amazing car. He said that it was a pretty crazy time, as you can imagine, the couple of weeks leading up to the launch of this car. It was rather pressured, he said, stressful, because there was a deadline in front of them.
And so they were working 7 days a week as much as they possibly could. Some of you totally understand that because you’re in a company right now where you have deadlines that you have to meet and you just do whatever it is that you have to do to meet the deadline. So it’s a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, and in some ways it’s not a real happy time, but yet it is a happy time. And of course, once the product’s out, he said to me that the next day we had a nice party, and that was a good thing. But, you know, getting there was very painful to get there.
Well, as he was talking about that and talking about, you know, how many cars that they’re putting out there now— I guess he said they’re trying to produce 5 a day right now. He said that that’s going to bump up to 50 a day, then it’ll bump up to 100 a day, then it’ll bump up to 200 a day production. And so a lot of stress is ahead of the Tesla company in that regard. But as he was talking about that, I was thinking about that in light of this passage that we’re looking at this morning, where Paul’s talking about joy in the midst of pressured situations. So you might want to think about this passage in light of the pressured situations that you find yourself in.
Maybe you’re facing a deadline or whatever it is that’s before you, or maybe it just has to do with the school pressures you’re in. It could have to do with car problems. It could have to do with kid problems. It could have to do with parent problems. It could have to do with not enough sleep— I mean, except for last night— and all the other things that it could have to do with.
We just tend to live in a very pressured culture. And so the book of Philippians deals with that reality, and in this case, the Apostle Paul is writing to a group of people that are in Philippi He’s in Rome, and he sees that possibly the circumstances that they’re faced with could suck joy out of their lives. The pressures that could come their way could suck joy out of their lives. So he begins chapter 3, verse 1 this way: Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. It’s no trouble for me to write the same things to you again.
And it’s a safeguard for you. So, as he kind of begins to turn the corner of this book, there are 4 chapters, this being the 3rd, the beginning of the 3rd chapter, he uses the word finally. So, it’s kind of like, okay, now we’re going to just begin to pull things together. And again, I want to bring to your attention this whole matter of rejoicing. There are 14 times in this book that Paul talks about rejoicing or he talks about joy.
So, he comes back to it again. And in this case, he says, it’s really no trouble for me to write some things to you again. And what these things concern evidently have to do with joy, with ongoing joy or living in a state of joy. Now, the fact of the matter is, is that there are so many pressures that we face in life. For us to live in a state of joy seems like, you know, a pipe dream, that that’s not going to actually happen, because usually when we’re under pressure there’s not a lot of joy there.
There’s not a lot of happiness. You know, it’s not a fun time, whatever you want to call it. And some of you are there right now and you’re just, you know, trying to survive. So for the Apostle Paul to then come back to this a second, a third, or whatever time it is, because we really don’t know, he could be talking here about writing these same things, he could be talking about what he’s already written, or some commentators believe he’s talking about another letter that was lost And so we really don’t have a record of what it was that he wrote about joy, but we do know this: he wants to safeguard joy for them. Now, most of us understand the word safeguard, right?
We safeguard a lot of things. That’s why some of us have malware software on our computers, because we want to safeguard our computers from a virus attack when we’re on the web. We safeguard them by putting— for instance, I have Viper on mine. I don’t know if that’s the best one or not, if that’s your company. All I’m saying is I got Viper on my computer to safeguard my computer from a virus attack.
We wear seatbelts because we want to safeguard ourselves from bad drivers. We’re not the bad drivers, so we’re just going to safeguard ourselves from the potential accident that somebody’s going to do something stupid and we’re going to be in an accident. So we wear the seatbelt to safeguard ourselves. We put children, very young children, in a crib. Why do we put them in a crib?
You know, I’m putting you in jail, that’s what I’m doing. No, it has nothing to do with the kid needs to go to jail. This has to do with when they sleep, they tend to like go all over the place. They roll around, and that’s just what kids do. Children, young children, when they sleep, they frail all over.
You’re going to see this soon, Katie. You guys are going to— Peter, see this. You got a crib, I’m sure. If you don’t, we’ll help you, okay? But anyway, you get the idea.
You got to safeguard your kids, so you put them in a crib, right? And Paul the Apostle is saying here, you’ve got to be safeguarded if your joy is going to be something that you live with. Safeguard it from what? Well, look at verse 2. Watch out, watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.
You’ve got to safeguard yourselves from those, those, those people, those, those men. And notice the terms that he uses here. I mean, these are, you know, most of us wouldn’t call people these kinds of things, but he says you got to watch out for the dogs. Now, we’re not talking about, you know, Peaches, that little poodle that you have, and Peaches is just so cute, and Peaches gets up and sits on your lap, and you pet Peaches, and you have this beautiful relationship between each other. He’s not talking about Peaches.
What he’s talking about here were dogs that were dirty and diseased, and they ran around the streets. They were scavenger dogs. They ran around the streets in packs throughout the streets, and they wrecked havoc in cities. And Paul is saying that you got to be careful of the dogs because they will suck the joy out of you. And then he says, and you got to be careful of those who do evil.
And what he has in mind here are people who teach evil and by their actions do evil. And what we’re going to see is he’s talking about the legalist. The legalist— you got to be careful with the legalist because they will rob you of joy. And then he says, and you’ve got to be careful of those who will mutilate the flesh, those who preach circumcision, those who say you must mutilate your flesh in order to have a relationship with God. Those people will rob you of your joy.
So the big picture is just simply this: there are people that were living around them that would rob those people that are living at Philippi, the Christians living in Philippi. Those people around them could potentially steal their joy away. Now let me ask you a question. You know anybody around you that could potentially steal your joy away? Well, yeah, I could think of a couple people.
You don’t name them out loud, but I’m sure we could all potentially think of some people. And what Paul wants to do is he wants to safeguard them from those people and from seeing those people steal their joy away. He contrasts those people with who we are, the new people that we are. And here he’s talking about Christ followers in verse 3 where he says, For it is we, in contrast to the legalists, to the Judaizers, for it’s we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh. We are the circumcision.
What’s he talking about there? He’s talking about a spiritual circumcision where God circumcises our hearts and he spiritually cleanses us. And he says those who come to circumcision in God through Jesus Christ, they have a whole different approach to life. They worship by the Spirit of God. They don’t worship by law.
They’re not worshiping by this building, that the building is everything. No, they’re worshiping by God’s Spirit, which means they can worship anywhere, at any place, at any time. They glory in Christ Jesus as opposed to their work. They glory in his work. And then this big one, and this is the main thing that Paul camps on here, which is the main thought we want to get a handle on as we think about other Others stealing our joy or life stealing our joy, he says, and we put no confidence in the flesh like those men.
Those men are focused on the flesh. What they’re focused on is willpower. They’re focused on— listen— achievement. They’re focused on fleshly abilities. They’re focused on their notoriety, their notoriety.
They’re focused on their self-glory. They’re focused on their religious community. They’re focused on pleasing each other. Not necessarily God. See, what he wants to do is help them see that putting confidence in the flesh is not the way to joy.
So Paul warns against that, but then— and here’s the big matter— is that he goes back and he says, but I want you to understand, that was me. I used to put confidence in the flesh. That was what my life was all about. It was all about religious achievement. So he goes on and he says, verse 4, though I myself have reasons for such confidence— I mean, I got a lot of reasons for confidence in the flesh, he says.
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I’ve got more. I’m at the top of the list on this one. Circumcised on the 8th 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 legalistic righteousness, faultless. What is this? This is a description of what we’re going to call the old Paul, all right?
The old Paul, the former Paul. The former Paul, the old Paul, was confident in the flesh, and his confidence came in 2 categories. I’ll just point this out in what you see there in verses 4 to 6, a couple of matters to just pay attention to. First category had to do with his religious pedigree, his religious pedigree. He was circumcised on the 8th day.
Any good Jew would be circumcised, so his parents had him circumcised on the 8th day. Secondly, He was born into the tribe of Benjamin. Now there are 12 tribes of Israel. The Apostle Paul was born in the tribe of Benjamin, and Benjamin was this honored tribe. So to be among the tribe of Israel was to be seen as special in the eyes of others.
In fact, one of the special things about being in the Benjamin tribe was that when there was warfare, it would be the Benjamin tribe that led everybody else into warfare. They were at the front of the line leading people in, leading the charge, so that there was a battle cry, and the battle cry was simply this, after thee, O Benjamin, which if you ask me, if you’re among the 11 tribes, that seems like, go for it, buddy. Yeah, clear the way. It’s fine with us. We’re good with that.
But actually, that was an honor. And so the Apostle Paul drops that as a part of his pedigree and his putting confidence in the flesh. Secondly, he talks about his religious achievements. And these are achievements. These are things that he did.
These are works that he did. He became a Hebrew of Hebrews. What does that mean? Well, that means that he was the guy that graduated summa cum laude, whatever, whatever. I graduated laude, how come?
But anyway, he was at the top of his class because of his strict commitment to learn the Hebrew language, to abide by the Hebrew laws, to hold the orthodox traditions and the customs. So he earned all of that. He was all about, in the flesh, earning all of that. We were out— Marisa and I were out at a soccer game yesterday, and we were watching a great club soccer game, older age. It was a lot of fun.
And this family that we were with there, their son’s on the field, and they’re talking a little bit about his schedule and stuff and the things that he’s doing. To try to become a better athlete. And right now he also works at Five Guys. He said he works at Five Guys. He’s been working at Five Guys for about 6 months.
They said that our son in 6 months’ time has never had one hamburger or one order of French fries from Five Guys, not one time. This is a high school student. That’s just like, you’re kidding me, right? Now you could take that one of two ways. One way you could say, I knew we shouldn’t eat at Five Guys.
That could— you could take it that way. I mean, there’s proof right there. Or you can say, wow, this guy really cares about what he puts into his body, and he’s very careful. And that’s the whole point from his perspective. He wants to become an athlete of athletes, a student of students, you might say.
So you get the idea what’s going on here? Paul the Apostle intentionally sought to be a Hebrew of Hebrews at the top of his class. As to law, he says, I was a Pharisee. I was legalistic elite. I was devoted to the minutiae of the law.
We’re not talking about among the Pharisees just devotion to, you know, 10 Commandments. We’re talking about a devotion to 613 commandments. And the Apostle Paul was in on that. As to zeal, he says, I was a persecutor of the church. When I saw the church, I just saw them as a threat.
They were a threat to Judaism, so it was my desire to take them out. I was committed to persecuting them and taking them out. And as for legalistic righteousness, he says, man, I was faultless. I was blameless. Can you believe this?
This is a person saying, if you looked at my life, I was perfect. There was nothing anybody could point at and say, you know, you don’t have it right there. No, I had achieved what it was that a Jewish person would want to achieve, a legalist, a Judaizer. So what was the Apostle Paul saying here? He’s saying, man, listen, I was all about putting confidence in the flesh.
I was all about achievement. I was driven to succeed, to be a Hebrew of Hebrews. And you know what? I did it. I made it happen.
A.T. Robertson, who’s a a writer, commentator, person who studies the language of the Scriptures, said this: Paul had a marvelous record, scoring 100 in Judaism. He was the star of hope for Gamaliel and the Sanhedrin. Who was Gamaliel? Well, Gamaliel was Paul’s teacher, Paul’s rabbinic teacher. He was a celebrated Pharisee.
He was a doctor of law. And he’s saying, listen, when it came to, you know, the star student in Gamaliel’s class, the rising star for the Sanhedrin— the Sanhedrin was the Jewish Supreme Court of the day, the 71-member court of the day— when it came to, you know, the potential that this guy was manifesting, Paul had it all. He had the religious accomplishments. He would have been the star of the day, the person that everybody was in awe of, that You know, they stood in awe of him. Or we could translate that into our day.
He would have been the guy that had the office full of plaques and trophies and these nice framed letters. He would have been the guy with the Oscars and the Pulitzer and the Medal of Honor and the Most Valuable Player and the Heisman and the gold medal. He would have been the guy on the COVID of Time magazine, religious zealot of the decade. That would have been Paul. People would have been talking about him.
People would have loved to have been around him. They would have had a sense of, you know, it’s Paul. Some of you may not recognize the name because you weren’t born when he was in his fame. Paul Newman. Paul Newman was recognized for his incredible acting in the ’60s.
He was a heartthrob and that time. He did Butch Cassidy, maybe you’ve heard of that movie, The Sundance Kid. Somebody said, I saw it on Nickelodeon, or whatever it is. And then did Sting, or, you know, he won some Oscars and all of that. Well, several years ago, Paul Newman was in a drugstore in Beverly Hills.
He went into the drugstore to get some ice cream. This is something that some of you didn’t know you could actually do way back. But he went into this drugstore and there was this tourist there who was touring Beverly Hills. And so she’s standing in line waiting, and she turned around, saw Paul Newman walking in and get in line right behind her, and that just, you know, kind of thing. So she got up to the counter and she ordered her ice cream and she paid for it.
She turned around and she left. Well, as she left, she realized she had forgot her ice cream. She didn’t have it. So she went back, you know, somewhat embarrassed, and looked at the counter now and those little receptacles, you know, the ice cream receptacles on top of the counter. There was no ice cream in any of the receptacle.
So she’s standing there puzzled thinking, what happened to my ice cream? And at that moment, Paul tapped her on the shoulder. He said, lady, if you’re looking for your ice cream, you put it into your purse.
Now, some of us would love to have that kind of impact on somebody, right? Just totally confuse them or whatever it is. But I think there’s within all of us this drive to be recognized, this drive to, you know, do something different, to accomplish something. And if you can just get this picture, this is the Apostle Paul. He’s driven by the flesh.
He’s driven by the desire to be somebody in somebody’s eyes. Okay, understand that. And that’s why he’s pushing so hard on this matter here with regard to the flesh. You know, that was me. And he’s trying to safeguard these people in Philippi from living a life that’s all about the flesh, because he knows that if they go that direction, their joy is going to be temporary at best.
Between verse 6 and 7, there’s a conversion experience in his story. We know that he was on the road to Damascus. He was going to persecute or kill some Christians. God interrupted him. He came to faith in Jesus Christ, and his life changed.
And in that change, his whole orientation, his whole focus in life changed. And he speaks then about this change and how it’s playing out now in his life. The remaining verses in this little text here, verses 7 and following. He says, but whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.
I consider them rubbish, 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 is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Now what you have there are 3 significant shifts. I’m just going to summarize them for you, just speak to them briefly. But this is the new Paul.
This is where Paul came after having lived all those years for himself, for the flesh. He went from— we’ll call it, first of all, he went from loss to gain. His profit— the word profit is used here, and gain is also used— his profit loss perspective changed. He had a different perspective. He has a new perspective now on that which is profit and that which is loss.
And what he tells us here is that I used to believe that what was profit was righteous works. That’s what it was. It was all connected to righteous works. It was, you know, buckling down and and doing the best that you can, but it certainly wasn’t Jesus Christ. But he says, but there’s been a change, there’s been a shift in me.
I see now that profit is found in Christ, it’s found in Jesus Christ. That’s what matters most, and it’s not found in religious works. In fact, he goes so far as to say with regard to this righteous works thing that it is rubbish to him. Do you see that? Rubbish in verse 8.
It’s rubbish. My righteous works, all that I did before, that was rubbish. The word literally means garbage. It means dung. It means manure, and I’ll let it sit there.
It’s something that you just don’t want to be around. It’s fit for the garbage dump. It’s destined for the dump. And this is Notice how Paul is summarizing this, this life that he used to live. And he says, it’s not that way with me any longer.
I’ve changed my value system. I don’t view righteous works as that which is greatest profit— which has the greatest profit. To me, the greatest profit is found in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Now, for a person to switch their career path, will say, because they see life through the eyes of Jesus. It’s just huge, isn’t it?
This is like Annika Sorenstam back in 2008 quitting the LPGA Tour. She had been on the tour for 13 years. She accumulated $22 million. She had won 72 tournaments. She was number 1 in the world in the world of golf, of ladies’ golf.
She was at the top of her game and she quit. And you know why she quit? Because she wanted to go start a family. She quit her career for children. She quit her career so that she could go start a family, and she hasn’t gone back to the tour since.
It’s— she saw before that, that the LPGA was the greatest profit for her, not a family. But then she had a shift And she said, no, it’s now family that for me is what I’m gonna be all about and not my career. That’s a huge shift. Kirk Cameron made a shift like that back in 1992 when he was on Growing Pains. Some of you maybe remember or have seen the show on Nickelodeon or whatever, but he was this childhood star.
He was this teenage heartthrob back then on Growing Pains. And during that time, the first part of his time as a famous person on that show, he was an atheist. But then he came to faith in Jesus Christ. And as a result of his faith in Jesus Christ, the last 2 years that he was on the show, he really struggled because he didn’t like the values that the show was teaching. He didn’t like the lines that he was being given, and he would push back on those.
And finally, he just walked away from it. He walked away from his fame for his faith. And that’s what Paul’s describing here. He’s talking about a place where he came in his life and he said, it used to be all about this, but you know what? Now it’s about Jesus.
And I gave up all of that, that religious works thing, for Jesus, because Jesus to me has greater profit. Which, by the way, is the second contrast that you see here. He moved from Judaism to Jesus. He moved from a religion to He moved from a religion to relationship. He was all about Judaism and righteous works, but now he’s moved to relationships.
And so I want you to notice, for instance, in verse 8, it’s all about knowing Christ Jesus. In fact, he says that is surpassing greatness. I consider everything loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus. And then he goes on, he picks up the same thought. You notice down in verse 10 Where he says, I want to know Christ.
I want to know him. The word know here is the word ginosko, and the word means to know intimately through experience. So it really describes the intimacy of a husband and wife knowing each other in marriage, that intimacy that they can share in marriage. And Paul’s describing a relationship with God where he knows him intimately. I want to know Christ intimately.
He goes on and he says, and I want to draw on Christ’s power constantly. I want to know the power of his resurrection in the challenges that I face in life and the hurdles that come my way and the struggles that come to me. I want to experience Christ’s resurrection power constantly in the midst of those, those challenges. So he says, I want to know Christ intimately. I want to draw on Christ’s resurrection power constantly.
And then he says, and I want to share in Christ’s sufferings Emotionally, I want to be not just connected to Christ on an intellectual mind level, but I want to be emotionally connected to his sufferings. And then he goes on in verse 11 and he says, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Fourth, I want to live with Christ eternally. I want to live with Christ eternally. I want to be forever with the Lord.
I want to be with the Lord’s people. So what he is saying is, this for me is no longer about religion. This is about a relationship. It’s not Judaism anymore for me. It’s about Jesus.
It’s about a relationship with Jesus. That’s a huge shift. Some of us have grown up in homes where the focus wasn’t on a relationship with Jesus, the focus was on religion. It was all about just doing the right thing, showing up, doing the right things. Like a friend that I’ve had several conversations about regarding his religion, he lives like a moral sinner all week long, or maybe an immoral, I should say, sinner all week long, but then on Saturday night he goes to a church service, and the reason he goes to this church service is to give his offering because he thinks that’s gonna make a difference in his relationship with God.
Secondly, to do confession of sin, and thirdly, to take communion. You see, for him, what this is all about is a religion. It’s not about a relationship. And for some of us, that may even be the biggest change that we need to make in our life. We’re gonna experience the joy that God wants for us It’s found in a relationship.
For some of us, to leave the religion would be a huge thing because we’re steeped in religion and our family is steeped in religion. And so for us to say no to the religion of the family would be basically a slap in the face to a mom or a dad or whatever it is, to the tradition of the family. I think about a friend of— another friend of mine who was steeped in religion. It was all about religion. And he came into a relationship with Jesus Christ and he began to grow in this relationship.
He began to, as it says here, he began to know Jesus more and more and more in intimate ways. But he got to a point where there was this choice. And the choice was, do I take Christ at his word and go all the way with what it is he’s asked me to do, or do I only go sort of partway? And the issue, I still remember it, the biggest issue for him was the whole area of baptism because as an infant he was baptized in his family, in the religion that they were a part of. He was baptized as an infant.
And so for him to now choose to be baptized in obedience to what Christ says, that he wants his children to be baptized, to go public with their faith, and not because your parents did it for you, but because you want to do it, because you want to show your love for God, you want to demonstrate your love for God through the act of baptism. And so he’s at this point: Is it going to be this religion? Do I keep protecting this religion, or am I going to go all the way in this relationship? It took him 7 years. 7 years.
But he finally went all the way and he said, yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. It’s no longer about religion, it’s about a relationship. And the Apostle Paul wants to safeguard these believers in Philippi from falling into religion because there’s no joy there. I mean, sure, there might be some temporary joy, but the kind of joy that Christ can give, the deep joy, the joy that lasts, that’s not It’s not there. It’s not found in accomplishment, religious accomplishment.
And then there’s a third shift here. It’s from the flesh to faith. It’s from what I can do from the flesh to faith. It’s from my righteous works to Christ’s righteous works. And so I’m no longer— do you see it there?
I’m no longer trusting in my works, on, you know, all the good things that I could do, and then God’s just going to let me into heaven based upon all those good things. No, I’m trusting in God. And his works. You’ll know whether or not you’ve made this change by your answer to the question, do you want to go to heaven when you die? I’ve asked that question to a lot of people.
Do you want to go to heaven when you die? And oftentimes people will say, well, absolutely I want to go to heaven. And then if you ask a follow-up question such as this, so why do you think you’ll go to heaven when you die? Oftentimes, and I would say more often than not, the answer is— and many of you know what the answer is— the answer is, Well, because I’m not that bad of a person. See, I do pretty nice things.
I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not as bad as the neighbor down there, I’ll tell you that. I’m not as bad as those other dudes on the campus. I’m better than that. Well, you see, the problem with that is, is that that’s trusting in the flesh. The Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith, faith From flesh to faith, through faith, and that not of yourselves, not of ourselves.
It’s a gift, not as a result of works, that nobody can boast, so that nobody can say to God, you know what, God, I earned this. No. And Paul has said, you know what, I realize it’s not about the flesh, it’s about faith. And in faith in Jesus Christ, God puts to my account righteousness. It’s not my righteousness, it’s his righteousness.
And because of his righteousness, I’m saved. And so Paul writes to these people and he says, listen, there are some safeguards that will keep you from falling into the religious trap, to the accomplishment trap, to the self-made religion trap. And those safeguards are found in Christ. They’re found in a shift in your value system where Christ is most profitable. The most gain you see in life is found through Jesus Christ.
They’re found not in a religion, they’re found in a relationship with Christ. And they’re found not in your flesh, they’re found in faith in Jesus Christ. Now let me just summarize that. We have 2 buckets. We have 2 buckets this morning.
Let’s call this the me bucket. All right, the me bucket. And really, this is a description of the old Paul. The former Paul. It was all about me.
It’s all— we’ve heard it this way, right? It’s all about me and my accomplishments and my works. And so we could spend our whole life, even as far as religion is concerned, by trying to earn our way to heaven. And so every time we do something good, it comes into the me bucket. Problem is, when it comes to joy, is that this joy is going to be momentary in this bucket.
This is where the Apostle Paul was, and he did not want to see the church at Philippi get stuck in this bucket. There’s a second bucket here that he obviously talks about. It’s the God bucket. And the God bucket, obviously, it was where Christ is. And one of the things that you might want to do when you go back and you look at this text, because I know that all of you after worship on Sunday morning diligently take your outlines home and you look over them again like 10 times over the next week, and you go through all the word studies and all of that.
Anyway, wishful thinking. But if you go back and you look at this text, I want you just to go back and look at the word in, in, in Christ. It started this way, rejoice in the Lord. Don’t you rejoice in your accomplishments. Now, that’s not to say that accomplishments aren’t important.
God has given us all giftedness. He’s given us talent. He’s given us brains. So he for us to accomplish through the lives that we’ve been given in the ways that would be appropriate to our calling. But the picture here isn’t accomplishment that’s about us, that it’s for me.
It’s about accomplishment that happens as we live in Christ. As we— and there you can see there’s a little soil in here. I won’t dump it on the front row, but you could see the soil in here because the Bible talks about this wonderful image of we Christ followers, if you’re a Christ follower, Letting your roots go down deep, deep, not in a shallow way, but letting your roots go down deep into Jesus Christ. You’ve heard the word abide that’s used. We’re to abide in God.
We’re to abide in Jesus Christ. And as we abide in, as we abide in Christ, there’s the joy. And it adds a whole different perspective on the pressures that we face, right? It adds a different perspective on achievement, on accomplishments, and all of that in the world that we’re living in right now. The whole focus here that Paul is trying to say to them is do not let the world— do not let the world cause you to focus on fleshly accomplishments.
Come at this through your faith. And as you come at this through your faith, you’re going to see God do what it is he wants to do through your lives. And here’s where the joy is found. In fact, as we plant ourselves in Christ, the fruit of the Spirit is love and what? Joy.
Joy. And that’s a state that God wants us to live in. You mean really? He wants me to live in the midst of my oppressors in a state of joy? Yes.
Just like he wants us to live in the state of love. The fruit of the Spirit is love. He wants us to live in the state of joy, and that state of joy is found by living in Christ. So let me give you a summary statement. The greatest gains come to those who know Christ.
That’s what he’s saying. And the more intimately we know him, the greater the gains will be in our lives, specifically here with regard to joy. So go deep into Christ. What a picture. Let’s pray.
God, thanks for time this morning to reflect on an amazing text in the midst of a world that is bent on accomplishment. Sir Lord, in many ways it’s not bent on religious accomplishment, Which was the career path that Paul was on. I mean, yes, he was a tentmaker, but his life was built on being the Hebrew of Hebrews. And we look at our lives, and for us, many of us aren’t thinking about how can I get to church another time or 3 more times or whatever it is. It’s got something to do with our school.
It’s got something to do with the sport that we’re a part of, perhaps the job that we have, the relationships that we’re in, and we’re driven. Lord, may we not be driven by our flesh, but may we be driven by our faith. And may it not be about us, may it be about you and honoring you and glorifying you. And so we pray that progress can be made in abiding in you, in rejoicing in you, in knowing you better than we know you right now. And when we’re frustrated and empty and we’ve got nothing left, let that be a reminder to us of our desperate need for your power.
And as Paul so longed to know your power, May we know it too. And as we suffer, may we be reminded that you suffered before us. It’s an opportunity to connect with you emotionally. And may the end of all of this be that we end up in heaven with you forever. And God, we pray for anybody who’s here this morning that right now is not sure that they would go to heaven.
Maybe they thought they would before today because of their religious accomplishments. But God, may they hear the true gospel, that it’s not based upon what they do, it’s based upon what you did. And in Jesus, there’s salvation for all that receive that gift of salvation by faith. So may they even today place their faith in you and receive the gift of life. And if that’s your desire, just tell God that this morning.
We’d love to help you come to Christ. If you’d like to talk to us, speak to us before you leave this morning. But you don’t even have to speak to us. The most important thing is you speak to God and you receive his gift of life that’s found in Jesus. So Father, thank you for speaking to us today.
May this time together have helped us be the people you want us to be and live more and more in love with you and others and manifest joy in this world. For we pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
