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Now, how many of you guys have been to a graduation this month? Anybody? How many of you graduated this month? Some grad school. We got some graduations back here. Maybe we've got some like graduations from middle school, graduations from kindergarten, graduations. Yeah, hey, look there, some clapping. That's good. So we got some different kinds of graduations that are that have happened. Graduations are fun experiences, aren't they? You say, hey, like I've met the requirements of this. Hopefully you've met the requirements. And you walk across the stage and everybody claps for you, cheers for you, you get a diploma. You know, you go to these big schools and it's like super, super fast, but it takes forever to get everybody through. So I've been seeing all my friends post pictures of graduations, and it's always a fun experience. I remember my own graduation thinking, like, oh man, this is awesome. I finished the hard part of my life. Now it's gonna get easy. And actually, it's the opposite, right? It's like, man, I'm gonna go back to school when it was easy. Uh, and now I've got to do all these things I'm responsible for. I wasn't before. Bottom line is I was thinking about this idea of graduation, kind of crossing the line and saying, okay, I'm done with that and moving on. Let me tell you something that you never graduate from. We never graduate from the gospel. We never outgrow it. We never get to a place where we go, okay, I've got enough gospel. Now I'm mature, right? The Bible would say that we continue to grow in the gospel, we will continue to grow in the gospel until we die. That we will, until we are with Jesus and we're made perfect, which is gonna be awesome, by the way, until we leave this sinful world, until we get to that point where we no longer are battling our flesh, we're gonna continue to grow in the gospel. What do I mean by that? We're gonna continue to understand what the gospel means. Like what these bullet point doctrines that some of us have kind of filed away, what those actually mean in our everyday life. Because how you believe you are saved shapes everything you do in your daily life. It shapes how you do marriage, it shapes how you parent, it shapes how you do your work. How you believe that you achieve or receive salvation, we're talking about that today, it affects everything. And the gospel tells us how we're saved. It tells us the good news about how we can have not just eternal life, but we can have life, eternal life that starts now. We can have a different change life today, transformed life even now. We can actually become the people that God created and intended us to be. So we've been working our way through Philippians, and we're gonna talk about some of these ideas today because Paul is always, always talking about the gospel. He's always talking about the person and work of Jesus, who Jesus is, what he's done, and making sure that people don't move away from the gospel. And so I want you to open your Bible if you've got it to Philippians chapter 3. We're gonna read the first 11 verses of Philippians chapter 3. And I just want you to know that we could probably spend six years in this book of Philippians. There's so many incredible verses there. We're not gonna do that. We could also spend six weeks just on these 11 verses that are here or more, because I said there's so much there as we continue to grow in the gospel. But I want to read these first 11 verses to us, and then we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit about what this looks like in our lives practically. What we can learn this morning about the personal work of Jesus. So here we go. Finally, my brothers, which by the way, it's funny, he starts with finally, he's a classic pastor, right? Because he's not even through the book yet. He's still got two chapters left, and he says, Finally. I've never done that though. Um finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write to you again about this is no trouble for me, and is a protection for you. Watch out for dogs, watch out for evil workers, watch out for those who mutilate the flesh, for we are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God, boast in Christ Jesus, and do not put confidence in the flesh. Although I have once also had confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he has more grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, regarding the law of Pharisee, regarding zeal, persecuting the church, regarding righteousness that is that is in the law, blameless. Wow. But everything that was a gain to me I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. When it comes to salvation, it is our human nature, it is our tendency to put our confidence in ourselves. But salvation is trusting in Christ. Now, we're gonna explain what that means today, but I want you to know that we tend to put our confidence, our hope, and what we can do to save ourselves. To say it differently, we all have our own little self-salvation projects going on. Different ways that we are trying to achieve our salvation. Now, I realize there are some people across the world and maybe even in this room have different views of what salvation is, different definitions for salvation. But let's just talk about salvation again in the sense that salvation being being rescued, uh being saved, the word is in there, being saved from this life that is broken, that is messed up, that is sinful, that is, that is hopeless and helpless. Uh we we want to be saved from that. And so we tend to think that we can be saved, and some people would just simply say heaven, eternal life, be saved by our own ability, our own works, our own merits. But salvation, according to Scripture, is not based on what we do, it's based on what Christ has done. And so it's really, really important as we start today that we remember that because our natural, wayward hearts are gonna keep drifting away from this foundational truth that we do not save ourselves, but Christ has saved us. Are you with me? Okay. That being said, there's always gonna be voices that are telling us to earn our way, to try to build up our case for salvation, that we can save ourselves. There's always gonna be voices. Notice what Paul says. He says in verse 1, first, he says, Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord to write to you again about this is no trouble for me. It's a protection for you. So he says, I want to protect you from moving away from the gospel, moving away from who Christ is, what he's done, and his sufficiency to save us, right? I want to protect you. But then he goes on to say, watch out for dogs, watch out for evil workers, watch out for those who mutilate the flesh. Now, those are strong words. First off, he says, watch out for dogs. That alone is a pretty big slam, like he's calling these guys who teach a false gospel. He's telling them that they're dogs. But it's even more significant in their day than ours because here's the thing the Jewish people, these were God's chosen people, right? And they knew that they had received this covenant through Abraham from God, and so they were this God's holy, elect, chosen people, and they had this status with God because of what God had done through the Abraham and them being his descendants. So what they would do is they would actually look at the Gentiles, everyone who's not a Jew, everyone who's not an Israelite, that would be us, by the way, and they would say, they're dogs. They would use that as like those dogs over there. But interestingly enough, Paul actually is calling them dogs. Now, why is he saying that? Well, he's saying that because they have actually changed the gospel. They've gone from Jesus as sufficient to save to Jesus plus circumcision. He calls them mutilators of the flesh. So he's saying that you guys, you Judaizers, you religious Jews who think you know what is right, you've not only just said salvation has come through Jesus, you've added to this layer of circumcision. And this was going on in the church. And this is not just happening in Philippi, this happened in a lot of different places. Uh, in Galatians, if you've ever read the book of Galatians, there were things going on there where they were trying to add to the gospel and trying to make people uh practice the different uh holidays and festivals of the Jews in order to be to legitimize their salvation in Christ. So that being said, there will always be voices telling us to earn our way. And listen, here's the thing: some of you have heard these voices stand up on a platform in a church and tell you that it's Jesus plus something else. Jesus plus works, Jesus plus going to church, Jesus plus being a good person, right? However, you want to verbalize that, you've heard that. I've heard that. And I want you to know this morning, if you don't hear anything else, the only thing that saves us is Jesus alone. Okay, Jesus alone saves, not Jesus plus anything. And so these voices were telling the people of their day that they needed to add something to Jesus in order to be righteous. In fact, they they had this confidence in themselves. They had this confidence in their own ability. And Paul goes after that saying, Hey, if you if anybody can have confidence in their ability to save themselves in their own efforts, I could do that. I have confidence because I look at look at my resume. Now I think it's interesting that Paul gives his resume here because I don't know about you guys, when I hear the word righteousness, um typically what people think about with this word righteousness is they think mean that means being a good person. Right? To be righteous means a good being a good person. But that's actually not what the scripture means by being righteous. It doesn't mean just being a good person. It actually means meeting the expectations that are put on me. And this, by the way, could be in any relationship, meeting the expectations in order to be accepted in. Now, what's interesting is because in our relationship with God, what is the expectation for us to be accepted into his kingdom? Perfection. We have to be absolutely perfect. So there is a way, by the way, to be saved by complete perfection. The problem is none of us are perfect. Right? So we would know that in essence, what what I'm trying to say, I know that salvation comes through faith, but perfection is what's required. And if it was based on us, we could never do that because we are not perfect. We are not sinless. Anyone in your sinless? Okay, because we were gonna move away from you before lightning struck, right? No, seriously, we know this. We're not sinless, so we know we need someone to step in to our place. So this idea of righteousness, what it really helps me is that righteousness is all about, uh, self-righteousness in particular, is all about building our resume. Now, how many of you guys have had to do a resume recently? Now, I'm guessing when you build your resume and you don't put all the things that you're bad at on your resume. You don't say, like, I really stink at this, and I really am bad at this, and I really can't do this, and I really can't do this. But you should still hire me. Right? That's not the way it works. When you do a resume, you build the case for why they should accept you. You put your skills, you put your experience, you put your merits, your accolades, you even put a nice, pretty headshot on there. Doesn't look like you, but it's you, you know. And so you do all these things, you build your resume so that they'll accept you in. And it's not, by the way, just work. I mean, if you've if you've ever had to apply to a school, you build your resume for why they should accept you into their school. Or you build your resume for why that you know you should get this certain position. Maybe if it's in a volunteer position, but you you build your case. And it's not always formalized and put on LinkedIn, okay? Sometimes you're building your resume for friends. You build up your resume, you're basically saying, uh, this is who I am, and you're trying to put this forward so that people will like you. I mean, especially you go to a new job, a new school, a new neighborhood, a new place, and you're like trying to have get friends. And so you put your resume out there, right? You kind of build it up. Here's my merits, here's why you should like me. Here's why I should be your friend. Let me in, please, right? Nobody's that desperate, but maybe we are. But here's the thing we have this, this kind of thing, and and when we go with resumes there. Or even like for those of you that are single looking for a spouse, you create your sp your resume, right? Some of you guys have been on some online tools, you know, creating these little profiles. Building your resume, right? So you can get that Mr. Wright or Mrs. Wright to like you, to accept you, to let you in, to be righteous in their, to meet their expectations, to meet those requirements in order for them to let you in. Here's the thing: we not only have this for external purposes, we don't only have a resume for everyone else, we also have a resume we build for ourselves. You see, I think a lot of us in this room struggle with defensiveness, discouragement, and even depression because we don't even meet our own expectations. Our resume, our righteousness isn't sufficient to meet our own expectations. We won't even let ourselves in. Right? You're like, yes, should I say yes? No? Yeah. We don't even, because here's the thing, we see our righteousness is based on what we do. Right? It's what we do. And as I said, with God, we make our resume and we say, God, here it is. Here's why you should let me in. God, here's what I do. Here's who I am, here's my experiences, here's my merits. God, I've been on five mission trips. God, I am an awesome dad. I took my my daughters on daddy-daughter dates and we had an awesome conversation. I even asked them to give me feedback and tell me if I was being a good or bad dad. I prayed with them at the end of it. God, you should you should definitely consider that on my resume. God, do you know how bad I put up with a boss who was a total punk and I was really nice. I could have said, I could, I could have told him what I was thinking, but I didn't. That's my resume, God. God, I gave away way more income. I, man, God, I could have spent that on myself. I could have bought a new car, could have got a nicer house, could have got more clothes, but you know what? I gave it to help those people go on that mission trip. God, you get the point, right? We build our resume of righteousness. Now, what's interesting is that I notice that this just plays itself out in that when things are going really good in ministry and the home front, whatever it might be, I feel good about myself and I feel righteous. Puffed up. When things go bad, nosedive, right? Because it's built on me. My performance. Notice what Paul does. He's gonna give us three ways that we can build our case for righteousness. These are the three ways he built his and said he could be confident when he was a Jew, in fact, not just a Jew, but one of their leaders. Notice there's three things that he tells us he put his righteousness in, that he attempted to earn his way. First is the practices. Verse 4. He says, Although I once had confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised the eighth day. Now that doesn't mean maybe a lot to you, but what he's saying is that God, I've had the circumcision process, which you said was a sign of the covenant that God you made with your people. I had that done on the eighth day. I was legit, right? So I did the right practice. For some of us, maybe we say again, it is, hey God, I go to church like 60% of the time. God, I go, I do this, I do that, I serve the homeless. We got, do we have these practices? God, I pray every day. I pray over every meal. God, I read my Bible. Now, those things are all good things. Don't hear me saying they're bad things, but here's the thing: that's not how you get your righteousness. That's not how you build your resume so God will let you in. Are you with me? So the thing is, is that Paul says, hey, I was circumcised on the eighth day. I'm confident, I did the right thing. The right thing, I guess he really didn't do it to himself. He was eight days old, right? But notice what he goes on to say. Not only is it the practices we participate in, it's the people we identify with. He says, not only was he circumcised the eighth day, but he was of the nation of Israel. That's God's chosen holy people. He was of the tribe of Benjamin. There was only two tribes that were pure, and he was of one of them. So he's like not just an Israelite, he is a pure Jew, a pure Israelite. A Hebrew born of Hebrew. So he's racially pure, but then he's also culturally pure because he was raised in a Hebrew home. He spoke Hebrew. I mean, he this guy was legit. He had all these accolades and all these things. I mean, this this guy, Paul is phenomenal. It's like he is so intelligent, he is so, he is so uh educated, he's got all of the reasons why. He would say, oh man, if anybody can get into heaven, if anybody can get God to love them and approve of them, it's it's definitely Paul. He's got all this going for him. And notice he goes on to say, not only is it the practices we participate in, and I should say about the people we identify with, just quickly before we move on there. Um for some people in our our day to I mean, right now in 2016 in the United States, in Austin, I've heard people say, well, you know, I've asked the question, are you a Christian? Are you a Christ follower? Yeah, my family is. I grew up in church. My family's Christians. My parents are great people, therefore I'm a Christian, right? Uh I had a lady one time tell me straight up, I'm an American. What do you mean? I'm like, ma'am, I don't know if you've really looked around America lately, but I don't think that this is a Christian nation. Uh we tend to call ourselves a Christian nation, but listen, what I'm saying is that just the people you associate with don't make you a Christian, right? And so in our lives, sometimes we can build the case, our resume is built around, God, I'm friends with the pastor. That should count for something. No, that's really that, that's actually gonna go the opposite direction for you if you're my friend. So don't mention that. Um, but notice he goes on to say it's not only a practice, it's not only people, it's the performance of a set of rules. He, if that wasn't enough, that he's legit, he's racially pure, he's culturally pure, he's done the right practices of being circumcised, so he's got this indicator that he's a part of the covenant people. He goes on to say regarding the law of Pharisee, meaning that he, as a kid, he grew up in a Hebrew home. He had learned the whole first five books of the Old Testament by the time he was like six or seven years old, he had it memorized. He finished, by the time he's a like a teenager, had memorized the entire Old Testament. Anybody tried that? So he knew the whole Old Testament, right? Scripture. He memorized it, he knew it frontwards and backwards. He had argued it, he was teaching others from it. He had zeal, he persecuted the church because he saw the church as an attack on the purity of God's people, um, the holiness, this covenant. He went after them. We know that, of course, this is Paul, who was originally Saul, who was struck down on the road to Damascus, and Jesus says, Why are you persecuting me? So he had that epiphany, he had that moment when he was saved through a personal encounter with Jesus. But before that, he was completely going after it, following the law to a T, which literally meant that, like this is one of those guys who was tithing from his spice rack. Anybody tithe from your spice rack this week? Literally, he would go like that's to the degree that he's following the letter of the law and some. So righteous in of himself, at least from the works perspective. So he says, regarding zeal, persecuting the church, regarding the righteousness that is the law, blameless. Anybody else say you're blameless? I couldn't say that. He's literally saying, I was blameless. I was following the law. When it was Sabbath, I was taking Sabbath. When we were supposed to be at the temple, I was in the temple. He was doing the right things. And this is how we will tend to build our resume to say, God, I'm a good person, you should let me in. I hope you know this to be true. But the only way that we are made righteous, the only way that our resume stands up before a holy God is because God doesn't see our resume, he sees Christ. You see, righteousness is our foundational need, it's our foundational problem, and it's the greatest gift that we've ever been given. It's a foundational need because if without the righteousness of God, there is no way that we could ever be with God. There is no way that He would Ever let us in. It's a foundational problem because of that, because we are in of ourselves incapable, right? But it's also a foundational gift in that we see that Jesus has provided this righteousness for us. Notice what he says here. I want to make sure that before we jump into how we actually engage in it and receive that. Verse 7. You guys just heard me say what Paul is, right? He is legit. He's got all these bullet points on his resume. It's like stellar. In verse 7, he says this, but everything that was gained to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him, I have suffered the loss of all things and considered them filth, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Now, Paul says, all of these things that I've earned, all these things that I've done, all this confidence that I had in my own ability, it's all a loss. That's not what it's about. It's empty. In fact, he even takes it to the degree that he says, what? It is filth. Now, let me just go ahead and take your view of scripture and make sure you understand clearly. We tend to clean up the language here because we don't want these words in our Bible, but he's basically saying that all my religious activity, all my religious identity, all this work that I've done, all these good things are crap. That's the literal word. Like, right? It's like saying it's excrement. It is dung. That's what it is equivalent to. When I try to earn my way to God through my good works, it's dung. Now that should be relief in here, right? Because this is the Apostle Paul who says, man, I mean, he's a stellar, stellar man. He's a great guy, done all these great things, and his best attempt is excrement. What does that mean for us? Well, it means that even our best attempt, our greatest attempt, our best days, those days, men, man, when you get out of bed and in the from the from the time you get up until maybe lunch, and you serve your wife like so well. You really look to her interest, you care for her, you you nurture her, you listen to her, even though you're trying to think about something, you're like you're listening, you're engaged as a husband on your best day as a husband. Let's just be encouraging, right? It's dung. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't do those things. But in light of Christ and his spotless, sinless, perfect resume, that's what our lives are equivalent to. When it comes time for us to stand before Jesus, we aren't gonna go, Jesus, you should let me in because I've been a good person. God, you should let me in because I've done these good things. Because that stuff is gonna fall short. It's not sufficient, it's not capable of making us righteous, giving us the right standing that we must have to be let in. You see, most people think that Christianity is just simply saying, I'm gonna stop doing bad things, I'm gonna start doing good things. That's what they think Christianity is. They think it's a list of to-dos and to-dons. Right? They think it's just simply some rules to follow to be a good person. That's not what Christian, what being a Christian is. That's not what it means. It is a complete change of identity. We just sang about it. We're no longer a slave to fear. We are a child of God. We have become a child of God. How do we actually dump this dangerous religiosity? I thought about this section. Another way to say it is how do we actually treasure Christ? How do we actually see the beauty of who Christ is and what he has done for us? Well, the first thing is this: we need to recognize the futility of our own effort. I already read this. Paul says he sees all of his resume as a loss. And another place in scripture it says that all of our righteousness is like filthy rags. I won't explain that one this morning. But it's saying that this is pointless. In light of who Jesus is and what he has done, we realize that our effort is futile to save ourselves. But also, he goes on to say in verse 9, he says, and to be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God based on faith. You know how we receive the righteousness that we need? You know how we build our resume to get in to the kingdom of God? You know how we build our resume? We exchange our resume for Christ by faith. We receive by faith what Christ has done for us. We receive by faith his righteousness. The word scripture uses this word imputed, that God has transferred righteousness, that's Jesus' righteousness. He's met every expectation of the Father, and He gives that to us so that we can meet every expectation of the Father. Day one, not like when you've been a Christian three months, three years, 30 years. No, day one, the moment that we put our faith in Jesus, you are now declared righteous. You have met the expectations. You have met the mark. Are you with me? Is that not awesome? That the day you put your trust in Jesus, the day I put my faith in Jesus, he no longer sees all my feeble and futile attempts to get to him. He sees Christ. He sees the finished work of Jesus. He sees his perfection in my place. If that doesn't get us excited as Christians, something is severely wrong. You know why? Because we've, this is our foundational need. This is our foundational issue. Without this, we are lost, hopeless, helpless, headed for eternal destruction. But with this, we have everything in Christ. We've been made righteous. We've been brought in, we've been brought near. So we need to embrace this righteousness that we have been given in Christ by faith. Ephesians 2.8, it gets quoted a lot around here. Ephesians 2.8 says, For by grace are you saved through faith. Not by your works, so we could boast about it, but through faith. You see, here's the thing. To embrace God's righteousness, specifically Christ's righteousness in our place, means that we don't only confess and repent of our sin, but we confess and we repent of our righteousness. Let me say that again. To truly understand how beautiful the salvation is that we've received in Christ. The call is not to just simply repent and to turn away from, right? To say that's not where what I'm called to live. I'm called to live this. To repent, to turn away from that. It's not just about repenting from our sin. In fact, most of us in here know if I've lied, if I've stolen, if I've killed, if I've done something like that, I need to repent from that, right? That makes it obvious. What about this? Repenting from my good works. The attempts that I have made to earn God's approval. The attempts that I have made to turn God into the government where I pay my taxes and now you fix my roads. God, I've done this for you, now you owe me this. God, I've done this for you, now you owe me a child. Now, God, you've done, I've done this for you, now you owe me an obedient child. God, I've done this for you, now you obey me, uh you owe me a child who can get through college, right? And who could then eventually pay my bills. So we come up with all these things and we put these stipulations and we say, God, I'll do this and then you do this. God, I'll do this and then you do this. And when God doesn't do this, then we're like, okay, forget you, God. Which shows entitlement, but also we've lost sight of the righteousness we receive in Christ. See, we not only need to repent of our sin, we need to repent of our good works and attempt to actually be righteous on our own. Have I lost you? You with me? This is a big issue. This is a big deal. We receive it by faith, it's transferred to us. Our resume at that moment becomes Christ's resume. The final thing that Paul says is not only to recognize the futility of our own effort, embrace the righteousness we have received in Christ by faith, to say, I'm gonna put my trust in Christ and not in my ability to save myself. I'm gonna put my hope in Christ and what he has done and not my good works. But to three, relentlessly pursue intimacy with Jesus. Verse 10, my goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. What's your goal in life? What's my goal in life? I want to say that this is my goal in life, but there's a lot of times it's not my goal. A lot of times my goal is comfort, it's pleasure, right? It's happiness. Paul says, my goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. Paul was writing this letter from where? Prison. How does he have joy in that? Because he knows that his goal is not to have a comfort, comfortable, simple, easy life. His goal is Christ, to know him and to experience all of him. And the reason why Paul feels this way is because he has recognized his inability to save himself, but Christ's ability to save him. And so he has complete joy, complete satisfaction and contentment. Let me just tell you something today. Some of you in this room, you feel insufficient because of your performance for Christ. You feel insufficient. As a husband, you failed. Maybe in your work, you failed. Maybe in something you failed. You feel like you're not sufficient. And I want you to know today, in Christ, you are sufficient. Some of you feel like you have got all these issues going on, you've got all these struggles, you've got all these fears, you've got all these doubts, and God can't possibly love you. Can't possibly like you. In Christ, I want you to know today you are loved. He even likes you. God loves you, but not because of your performance, not because of what you did, not because of what I did, but because of what Christ has done. This isn't a lollipops and party little sermon, like we just kind of say, well, you know, great, we do whatever we want now. No, this is compelling us to live a life worthy of the calling we've received. To live a life in response to the righteousness we have received in Christ. How can we possibly be average and indifferent when we recognize what Christ has given us, what we have received in him, the righteousness that has been imputed to us, that's been transferred to us. I want to reiterate a couple things. Most people think that Christian message is to stop being irreligious and start being religious. In fact, I talk to people all the time and they're like, Yeah, I tried religion. I'm done with that. Let me say the goal is for you not to stop being irreligious and become religious. The goal is to put your trust in Christ. Religion will not save you. In fact, I think it will make you a miserable person. Because religion is built around the idea that you can build your resume and get God to accept you and love you. And that's not what the Bible teaches you, teaches us. They think a lot of times you simply stop doing the bad things and start doing the good things, like I said earlier, or that Jesus is a really good example. He's a really good model, he's a really good hero, but he's not really your savior. And some of you today, I've been here, some of you today, you're you're seeing Jesus as a great model and a great example for you, but you're not seeing him as your savior. You're not seeing him as your righteousness. And scripture would say until we put our trust in him as our righteousness, we're not saved. We're still trying to earn our way. We're still trying to perform our way into God's grace. And salvation isn't about the practices, it's not about the people we associate with, it's not about our performance. It's about Jesus' sinless, perfect life in our place. That He sacrificially, selflessly laid down at the cross. What makes you and what makes me worthy of God's presence is the righteousness given to us in Christ. It's his resume and of ours. Let's pray. God, I thank you so much this morning that you are a God of grace and mercy and goodness and kindness and love. Thank you that you are holy, that you are righteous, that you are pure, that you are completely justified in your wrath towards sin and towards our rebellion. But thank you that instead of just pouring that out on us, you poured out your wrath on Jesus in our place so that we could have life, so that we could have hope, so that we could be accepted and brought in. God, I pray for every person in this room that, and I'm and myself included, we would no longer look to our personal performance, how we follow rules or don't do bad things, to get our worth, to get our value, to get our security, to get our salvation. But to look to you, Jesus, in your sufficiency. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, thank you, thank you for what you've done. Thank you, Father, for viewing us through that lens. Help us to live a changed life in response to that. God, help us to every day lay down our lives, to live in the power of the resurrection, to live transformed because of what you've done for us, Christ, and the spirit that you've put inside of us. Praise your name. Amen. Every week we take communion here as we respond. We're going to sing a couple songs and respond to Christ and to God and who he is and what he's done and thank him for this righteousness that we've been, that we've received. My prayer is a couple things. One, if you are a Christ's follower, if you are, you know that you've put your trust in Jesus for your salvation, I would simply ask you to take a minute and ask yourself this question. Am I still depending on my performance to get God's approval? Am I still trying to do good things to get God to like me? Or am I adding things like, yes, it's Jesus, but it's also Jesus plus, I gotta be a good mom, I gotta be a good dad, I gotta be a good husband or wife, I gotta be a good person, I gotta. Are you adding things to the righteousness to try to make your case before God? Can we just be honest this morning and can we confess, repent? God help us, forgive us for that. I think the hardest part of this journey is this the pride that plagues our hearts that says, I don't do that. I don't try to justify myself. I'll just I'll lead the way. I do it. Every day I do it. And I can tell because of the way I'm crushed when things don't go well. Of the way that I'm elevated in myself when it goes right because I think somehow I've added something to my salvation. So if you're a Christ follower, may we just confess and repent, not just of our sin this morning, but of the attempts to earn God's approval through other means. If you're not a believer, if you've never put your trust in Christ, you've never seen Jesus as more than just a good teacher, a good moral man, a good guy to follow. If you've never seen him as your Savior and your Lord, my prayer is that this morning you receive that gift of salvation. Because Scripture says you can't get into the kingdom of God except through Jesus, through receiving his righteousness in your place, his right standing, his perfection in your place. So I invite you to either come find me or one of the other people that is a prayer team around the room, or uh maybe you need to go and find one of the friends who brought you and just tell them, Hey, I need to receive this gift of salvation. I need to stop trying to earn it, stop trying to work my way to God. Just receive by faith. And let that burden of all this performance just fall off.