Philippians 3 - Righteous By Faith

When you stand before God on the day of judgement what would you rather, to be Judged on how you lived your life? or to be Judged on how Jesus lived his life?
                                                  
 If you would like to give online click here https://secure.myvanco.com/YHPM

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever had one of those days when no matter what you say, it just doesn't come out right? I read about a man, I'm gonna call him John. He came across one of his old friends, Bill. John knew Bill had been taking care of his mother for years and years and years. So when John came across Bill, John simply asked about Bill's mother. So, how's your mother? Bill replied, she's gone. To which John said, Well, why didn't you go with her? Bill looked a little shocked. I mean, she is in heaven. John knew he messed up, so he tried to correct himself. Oh, I'm so sorry. Then he realized Bill may not exactly like the fact that he was saying he was sorry his mother went to heaven. So then John decided to correct himself. Oh, oh, oh, I mean, I'm so glad. That wasn't coming out quite right either. So he decided, said, Well, what I really mean is I'm surprised. You know, sometimes you just shut up and walk away. Whatever you're saying, it's not working, it's a wrong thing. Well, thankfully, mothers can still love a person who just can't seem to get their words right. At least my mom loved me on that aspect here. Today, this weekend, is at Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to the mothers. Some people are going to go out and buy cards or cups or other things for their mothers and the things that will state world's greatest mom. We may think the world of our mothers, we may think they're great, but honestly, you know what? There's only one world's greatest mom. But it's kind of a great way to praise your mother anyway. In our Bible passage today, we're looking at Philippians chapter 3, and Paul is going to boast a little bit about himself. Today I want to look at these first part of Philippians 3, see what we can learn from these verses regarding the true things we can boast in. But first, let's pray. Lord, I am so thankful for your love. I'm thankful for your blessings. I thank you, Lord, for godly mothers. I thank you, Lord, that we can come and know about you. Lord, let us lift you up and trust you in all things. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. Mothers are great, but as great as some of our moms are or were, all that greatness is absolutely nothing when compared to the greatnesses found in Christ Jesus. Paul in Philippians 3, he warned about people who thought they were great spiritual leaders, but were really false leaders, evil workers, and people who are leading people away from Jesus Christ. To follow after rules and regulations and follow people and power. And today I want to look at this passage and look at even kind of from our own viewpoint. But I'm going to start where well Paul started, starting out by reading chapter 3, verses 1 through 6, and then we're going to get into this. Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord, to write the same things again is no trouble to me, it is a safeguard for you. Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision, for we are the true circumcision who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. Although I myself might have confidence, even in the flesh, if any one else has a mind to put conscience a confidence in the flesh, I far more circumcise the eighth day of the nation 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 the righteousness which is in by the law, found blameless. Right here in these first six verses, we get to see his reasons to boast. And when I look at that, especially verses three through five, I see that Paul's pointing out if you want to have a bragging contest, we don't have a leg to stand on in comparison to Paul. He says he was circumcised on the eighth day, like good little Jewish boys were of the nation of Israel, God's chosen people, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He had the right lineage, the right pedigree if you can have one. And today, if I liken it to today's world, I would say we probably have our bragging rights because we're living in America. And we think that's pretty good. And I have to admit, I think it's a pretty great nation to live in. We have freedoms that a lot of other nations don't have. We have a peace and a safety better than most nations have. Especially when you look at all the wars and the conflicts going on today. We have an abundance of food, abundance of clothing, we have abundance of other provisions, even though prices may be rising. They may cost a lot, but we still have lots of it. I remember many years back I had a missionary friend who came back from Papua New Guinea. He'd been on the mission field for 16 years. And his wife decided to go to the store because they needed toothpaste and shampoo. She went down to the store, she went down the row for toothpaste and shampoo, she sat down on the floor and she cried. For 16 years, she had shopped in Papua New Guinea in a small village. They only had one kind of toothpaste and only one kind of shampoo. The choice was you either buy it or you don't. There was no other choice. She came back to the United States of America, she went down the toothpaste, there was over 30 different kinds of toothpaste, not counting all the different sizes and stuff like that. And then she looked over at the shampoo, there's over 50 different kinds, and not counting all the different sizes of the bottles, and she was just absolutely overwhelmed, did not know you had to make a choice, had to make a decision to pick toothpaste and shampoo. And she cried about it. We take all that for granted. We go down to the store, there's lots of different choices. We pick through them, we pick the one we like, or the one that our wives sent us down to go purchase. We make sure we get that. And you know, we just think it's all the same. We take flush toilets for granted, sanitary water, we take hot water for our showers for granted or baths, electricity, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You would not be uh you would be absolutely amazed. Today, Deborah and I, we tried to go down to Walmart down here, just close to us, to shop. Got down there, they kept having power outages. So you couldn't purchase anything. They kicked all of us out of the store, said that we can't do it. Oh, there we go. Here's everybody's phones going off. Woo-hoo! Somebody's got something going. There we go. You know, we take all of this for just granted, and we are truly a blessed people. And compared to most other people and most other nations, we are super rich. We are part of the elite of the world. And if the flesh part of life mattered, we'd have reason to boast. We live in the good old USA, we live in America. And Paul continued speaking about his reason that he would have for boasting, and he goes on that as for the law, he says, I'm a Pharisee. According to Acts 22, verse 3, he had been trained under Gamaliel, the best of the best. You might say he had a bragging right there concerning his outstanding education, just like most of us can. Even we can brag about our outstanding education. Most of us have had the opportunity to go to school. Most of us learned how to read and write. Some people had the opportunity to further their education in colleges and universities, and this is a privilege that we take for granted, which is an absolute luxury in many different countries. Even if you don't have a doctorate degree, even if you don't have a master's degree, even if you don't even have a bachelor's degree or a two-year certificate from a college or even a high school diploma or even a GED, most Americans have had far more education than what you could have gotten 150 years ago. If we wanted to boast in the flesh, we could. We live in America. We have an outstanding education. Third, Paul points, verse 6, we can brag about being successful in business. He pointed out as to zeal, drive, motivation, the ambition to excel and succeed. He was a persecutor of the church and a very successful, well-known persecutor of the church. His reputation went ahead of him wherever he went. As he traveled to Damascus, even before getting there, the Christians knew of Saul a Tarsus. They knew his mission, that he was going there intent to find Christians, arrest them, and even possibly put them to death. His line of work, the persecuting of Christians and the church, Paul was excellent. He was successful at it. When I look around in this church, I see men and women who have been and are successes in their businesses. Some have retired after years of service in their fields, some are still laboring in their occupation. And if we needed to brag in the flesh, most of us could. Most of us have been very successful even in our work. We live in America, we have outstanding education, we're successful in business, and like Paul in verse 6 points out, as to the righteousness which is by the legalities of the law, found blameless. Or as I worded it for us today in today's world, if we're getting down to just keeping the letter of the law, well at least we are seen at church. We're seen at church. We get our rear ends up and moving, we get to the church building, and so we are at least appearing to be righteous. And I feel this point has to be made because there's a lot of people who feel the key to righteousness is you make it to the church building. You make it to the church building. Now the rest of the time, once you leave, you can go do whatever you want to. But as long as you make it to the church building, you are one righteous person. And they look at that, and there's a lot of people who do that very aspect. And if all that mattered was the letter of the law and coming to church, we'd probably be doing pretty well. We could brag. We made it to church. You're here right now. Paul pointed out that if we need to brag about the flesh because he could, and probably we could too. He could brag because he was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was a of the trained as a Pharisee. He was full of zeal and persecuting the church. He was blameless according to the law. We can brag because we're living in America. We're outstanding education, successful in business, seen at church. And Paul wrote all this stuff, and he said all this stuff according to the flesh, though. It is worthless. And basically he tells us in verses seven and eight we don't need these reasons to boast because we need to actually remove the baggage. Verse 7 records Paul as saying, but whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Count them as loss. I don't know if you paid attention to your little outline there. I tried to come up with something clever. First time I ever tried to be clever, and hopefully it worked. But if you look at the first letter of each of those first points, L O S S. All those things we could brag about. Living in America, outstanding in our education, you know, these things, successful in business, seen at church. Count them as loss. Every reason we can think about for boasting in ourselves, Paul says we need to count them as loss. They're worthless. They're nothing. When everything gets to the end, when we die and we go before the Lord, his first question isn't going to be, so what nation are you from? Well, I'm from America. Oh, well, you're good. Anybody from the USA, they're coming on in. Yeah, that is not what's going to happen. He's not going to go, well, what was your education? Oh, man, you wouldn't believe it. I was trained real well. And only let the people in who can read and write and do arithmetic. His first question isn't going to be, what kind of income did you make? Were you successful? Well, yeah, I was successful. And now you get to come in. His first question isn't going to be, where did you go to church? And then only let those people in who were making it to church nine out of ten weeks. It'd be a nice way to guarantee getting into heaven if that was it, but that's not what counts. Any more than spending a night in a garage is going to make you into a car. It doesn't work. All that legalism, all those things of the flesh, is excess baggage that Paul says we need to count as lost. He even went on in the next verse, verse 8, to say, count them as rubbish. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing knowledge of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. Garbage, trash, sewage. We're not talking about the good stuff that our wives throw out when we're away from the house. We're talking about real garbage and trash. We're talking about, you know, like dirty diapers and rotten food and vomit and bodily waste and, you know, the worst of the worst of your garbage. And that's what Paul is saying about all those things of the world that we cling dearly to and we brag about. He says, that's just garbage. That's crawling in your septic tank. And some people like to brag about five-figure incomes or six-figure incomes or seven-figure incomes or even higher incomes. Like that's absolutely fantastic. But you know what? I always look at them and say, we all have that kind of uh income. Some people have those numbers in front of the decimal, some people have those numbers behind the decimal, but we all have those kind of incomes. What good is that income going to do when we die? We can't take it with us. Years ago I saw a short cartoon. It showed a man and two men, they were at an estate, and somebody had died, and they were at the estate and they were getting ready to read the will, and the one guy looks over the other and says, How much do you suppose he left behind? The other guy turns to him and said, All of it. All of it. You know, we may think that living in America is great. It is. But it's rubbish and compared to something else. Whatever you or this world is bragging about and tries to use as the basis of seeing how great a person is, Paul is writing to us, you better reevaluate your thoughts with this one thing in mind. What is the real basis of righteousness? Verses 7 through 11. I'm not going to read seven and eight again, but verse nine, and that I may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through the faith in Christ, and the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. What did Paul consider all this worldly stuff as loss and rubbish? Why? What did he trade it all away for? Verse 7, he says, For the sake of Christ. Verse 8, in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus as my Lord, that I may gain Christ. Verse 9, that I may be found in Christ, having a righteousness which is through faith in Christ. Verse 10, that I may know Christ in the power of Christ's resurrection, in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, conform to Christ's death. Hmm. I wonder, what was it that Paul saw as worth far more than all the worldly stuff? Did you catch a common theme there? Christ. Christ. And a righteousness found in him. Paul found that trying to gain righteousness by the law, by the Old Testament law system, was not working. Even though he had done everything according to the letter of the law, Hebrew of Hebrews, that he was trained to be a Pharisee, he had fantastic zeal, and found blameless by the letter of the law. On the road to Damascus, he found out he was falling extremely short of pleasing the Lord God and Jesus Christ. He found out instead of walking in a way that was pleasing to the Lord, he found out he wasn't truly righteous. What he was doing was persecuting and trying to kill Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. This righteousness he had that was based by the law was getting Paul further and further off track of pleasing God. And Paul realized he needed to change. He needed a righteousness that wasn't based upon the law system, but it was based upon Christ. And so he pointed out that it is all based upon Christ in three ways here. First of all, then it's about Christ and knowing him. Verse 8, verse 10, Paul makes this very clear. I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Again, verse 10, that I may know him. I don't know how many people you've run across, but I've only run across a few people who felt they were very good with names. Most people I come across are actually quick to admit I'm not very good at names at all. I myself, I struggle to remember people's names. I try to remember them. I try hard. I I actually used to be offended when people couldn't remember my name. I used to feel slighted. Felt like I must not be important to them. But since then I've come to realize one thing: I don't care if you do remember my name. I really don't care because my name is not important. There is only one name under heaven and on earth that is going to save us. That's the name of Jesus. And that's the name we need to know. That is the name. And I am thankful that this church has been growing. But it embarrasses me sometimes when there's people come to church and I'm going, I don't know who their name is. Yeah, I saw them. Yeah, I've seen them for the last several months. I can't remember their name. You know, it just happens. And sometimes I greet people by the wrong name. I think it was last week we had two ladies come forward to place membership, and I'm looking at them and I know their names. And I know which one's which, but for some reason I dressed one with the wrong name, the name of the other one. And I it's just one of those things. I keep trying to learn more and more names. I love our online directory, especially those of you who have let us get pictures put in there, because that helps me out a lot. I can go back through there and look at those. Oh, that's that person's name. Yeah, that's their name. And it helps me in there. But in the grand scheme of eternity, my name, Jared's name, the names of our elders and deacons, even your own name, really doesn't matter in comparison to knowing Jesus Christ. What matters is do we know Jesus is the Christ? Is Christ preached? Are we following Jesus? That is what matters. And Paul further pointed out it wasn't just enough to know Christ, but as he pointed out verse 9, that we might also have faith in Christ, or as I put it in this point, Christ and believing him. Believing Jesus Christ. There's a lot of people when they first come and visit here in Valley Christian Church, they want to know what do you guys believe? We believe the Bible. We believe the Bible. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's what all the churches say. They all say they believe in the Bible. That's not the answer they want. They tell me all churches do that. But I then try to answer them as many questions as they have about it. And that's why in our bulletins every week we put a little thing in there about what the restoration movement churches are, Christian churches are like, what we believe, independent Christian churches. We also put in there a little sample about, you know, some scriptures that talk about what we need to do to be saved. We also put a lot of scripture references in there and reasons why we believe that way. We want people to know that we believe in Jesus Christ. And that, but this is what may make Valley Christian Church stand out differently than other churches is where we believe the word of God. And we use scripture to back up everything we believe. There are many people who claim to know God and that there is a God. Some may even claim to believe in God, but there's a difference between claiming to know him and believing in him. Jesus with his disciples demonstrated this when he went to Caesarea Philippi, and Jesus asked his disciples, Matthew chapter 13, or chapter 16, verse 13, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Do you remember some of the responses? Some say you're John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. And then Jesus asked them very point-blank, but who do you say that I am? And that's when Simon Peter answered, said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. See, there's many people who claim they knew the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, but they didn't believe Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. They only viewed Jesus as another man, a good man, a good teacher, maybe a prophet, someone with good morals, someone with kindness. And Paul points out we need to move beyond just knowing about Jesus, to know Jesus, and believing in him fully, fully convinced that Jesus is the one and only way of salvation. Believing in him means that we have become completely convinced that he is the one and only true way of salvation. Amen. So Paul continued on saying, That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection of the dead. His language here is paragraph. Paralleling what Paul said happens when we are obedient to Christ in baptism. We must know Christ, we must believe in Christ. And third, our basis of righteousness is that it is worth casting all the boasting in the flesh aside, and that we would be found in Christ and be obeying him. How do we enter into the fellowship of his sufferings? Being conformed to his death so that we may attain to the resurrection of the dead. Compare that with what Paul wrote, Romans chapter 6, starting in verse 3. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with Christ through baptism into death. In other words, this fellowship of his sufferings, conformed to his death, in order that as Christ has been raised from the dead, know the power of his resurrection through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, again what did Paul writes here, conform to his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, that we may attain to the resurrection of the dead. Man, it's like he's writing the same thing that he wrote in Romans 6 over here in Colossians 3. Philippians 3. Sorry, got the wrong chapter, book. Our new basis of righteousness is no longer based on what we do, but it's based upon Christ, knowing him, knowing Jesus Christ. It's based on Christ and believing in him, it's on Christ and obeying him. It's on Christ, it's on Christ. How different is this? Well, let me ask you this. Which would you rather have when you get to heaven? That God would judge you on the things you have done, or that God would judge you by what Christ has done. Some of you, that's pretty easy. I want to be judged on what Christ has done. Yeah, yeah, I want to be. I'm too that's as easy of test as I'd ever faced. I mean, duh, if I have to be judged by my actions, I am not gonna make it into heaven. I'm lost. But if I get to be judged by Christ and his life, I mean, that's kind of like he's doing the test, but he's writing our name on the test. Isn't that nice? I'm judged by him and what he has done. I've got it made. He was sinless, he was perfect, he never messed up, he definitely got to go to heaven. It's no wonder then that Paul was willing to consider everything he could brag about in his fleshly body and according to the law. I'm counting that like rubbish, like garbage, like trash. I'm gonna count it as lost for the sake of knowing Christ, for the sake of believing in Christ, for the sake of obeying Christ, because that's our only way to be saved. We can't, by all of our righteousness, even all of our righteousness together, we can't ever be successful enough to earn heaven. All of our glorious deeds we've ever done won't make it. Our righteousness only comes by faith in Christ, knowing Him, believing Him, obeying Him. So, what are we going to do? Do you want to go before God on the basis of your good deeds? Or do you want to go to God on the basis of what Christ has done for you? That should be a no-brainer. Let's make that decision today. Lord, I am so thankful for what Christ has done. Lord, help us to really surrender to you. Let us count all the things of this world as lost, that they don't matter. What counts is knowing you. Lord, let us surrender to you. Let us live for you. Thank you for what you have done on the cross in Jesus' name. Amen.