WE ARE THE CIRCUMCISION

Recap

Good morning. my name is Pastor Tim Rauser.

I am one of the Associates here and I oversee the youth ministry.

If you are joining us for the first time, we are going through the book of Philippians for the month of June.

Last week, we looked at chapter 2 and we came away with a challenge, to Look vigilantly at others needs around us… to empty our own agendas and serve… and be the light that the world needs to see

How did we do? Look Empty Light

It’s funny, I had a couple of occassions those next days follwoing Sunday morning last week to practice Look Empty and Light… and both times it wasn’t easy for me.

My neighbor wanted me to help her figure out her lawn mower so she could mow

And I did it. But the struggle for me was that it was during my mowing, and it was getting late and bugs were out, and I didn’t want to be inconvienced.

That’s always a struggle I think. It takes time, and it interupts OUR agenda.

Praise God for that interuption. Could you image L E L ‘ing only when it didn’t interupt our agendas?

It’s when we step out in obedience in those interuptions that the world notices

Intro

Our text this morning is Philippians Chapter 3 and I think to start, I would like us to read the whole chapter toegther,

So if you dont’ already have a Bible, you can sneak to the back and grab one, or maybe hold up your hand and one of our ushers can bring you one

As we read, I want you to consider the question, When you think of who you are, what defines that? Or even who defines that?

On a day like today, I could answer, I’m a Dad. And a pretty awesome one according to whats written on the cards I get each year

AS we look into chapter 3, it will become evident on who Paul is encourageing the church to be

READ PHIL 3

We are the Circumcision

In my prep this week, I really resonated with the entire chapter

There are some pretty cool and familar verses

But for me, I kept coming back to verse 3, and as I re-read the chapter, I felt that verse 3 summed up the rest of the passage

‘We are the Circumcision’

Such a profound phrase, and if you say it enough times, you can kinda get past the actual action of it and into the deeper meaning that Paul wants us to understand

In our time together I want to understand this profound statement by unpacking the 3 descriptions of who we are that follow

READ V. 3

Paul says the word FOR… the verse prior verse encourages the believers to watch out for danger, FOR we are the circumcision

And he says WE, meaning the believers of Philippi, other believers scatter throughout the world, himself.

We… he then describes ‘we’… who worship in the Spirit of God, who boast in Christ, who put no confidence in the flesh

And we will see from those 3 statements how the rest of the text fits into them

The word for Circumcision in the Greek is Peritome and for the sake of how many times I will say the word, we will just use the Greek word

Peritome was an outward symbol of the Covenant that God made with Abraham in Gen 17

By this act, Abraham, and eventually the nation of Israel, would have a symbol to show that they were set apart for God.

Fast forward to the new testament.... concerning the church, which is the new Israel (Gal 6:16) and is comprised of both Jews and Gentiles

peritome is less about the outward act and more about the inward act. THe work that Christ does on the hearts of believers

Like Paul says in Colossians 2:11 “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,”

So, to that he says We are the peritome

Paul is saying, we are the ligetimate believers.

And this is how you can tell who are the ligetimate believers...

We are the ones who...

Worship by the Spirit

Boast in Christ

Put no confidence in the flesh

Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

WHO WORSHIP BY SPIRIT OF GOD

We are the peritome who Worship by the Spirit of God

In the context of the letter, there was not only physical dangers around them, as we saw in Phil 1:30, there was also faith danger

In verse 2 Paul talks about the dogs, which is really a reference to the Judaizers who were Jews that tried to impose the Jewish laws and customs on to gentiles.

Paul calls them evil workers, and that is what they were… they weren’t for Jesus at all, doing works to earn favor with God

And one of the works was to mutilate the flesh

Interesting that Paul doesn’t call it peritome but KATATOME, mutilate, which would have been similar to the “pegan practices” in Leviticus 21:5. He’s kinda making fun… like they don’t even know what their doing

One might ask, was peritome so bad? what’s the big deal if they did it or not?

Well, the way they pushed it was a big deal… they still believed that to be regenerate or born again you needed to have peritome. And so they would push their false teachings on the church

As it says in 2 Corinthians 11:15, They were… disguising “themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.”

To this Paul warns them to “watch out”

There is that same vigilant watchlufness as we talked about last week in Phil 2:4.

Only this time its to vigilantly look out for these Judaizers so you don’t led astray

Paul encourages the church… we are those who worship by the Spirit of God

The word Worship is the same as Serve.

I like what Paul says in Galatians 5:1-6

Galatians 5:1–6 CSB

For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace. For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.

Its through faith, by the Holy Spirit that we worship/serve God. And this is an outpouring of a circumcised heart.

We see in John 4:24, Jesus is speaking to the Samaratian woman. “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.””

WHO BOAST IN CHRIST JESUS

We are the Peritome who boast in Christ Jesus.

It’s hard to boast in something, unless you know it well

Like me saying I love the new season of madalorine. You should definitly watch it tonight

Truth is, I’ve seen a few episodes from season 1 but after that I really have no clue.

Is it still good. Is the content good?

It’s equally hard to boast about something that you knew well many years ago

Story: I feel like I do this too often these days.

When headed to the skatepark with my kids I usually find myself thinking back to when I was just out of High school. Man, me and my cousin crushed it with our inline bladeing

And upon arriving at the skatepark, I will probably say something like, this is my jam. I used to do it a ton.

Truth is, after years of not doing it, I find I don’t know it as well as I used to, or even can I preform as well as I used to

It’s hard to boast in something that we don’t know, or are not practiced up on

THis is the same when it comes to our faith… we may have had some highlights back in the day at Bible Camp, or that short term missions trip, but after years of not really digging into our faith, we find that we don’t KNOW God like we thought we did

To this Paul shares his goal as an encouragement to the church in Philippi

READ verse 10-11

THis is Paul’s Boast. The only thing he considers worthy to boast about.

To know Jesus deeply, and like we read in the verses prior to this, knowing him deeper involved forsaking the world

Paul didn’t want to just know things about Jesus. History. Facts. He wanted to know Jesus by experiencing Him, and that meant 2 things

That meant knowing the Power of Jesus’ resurrection.

By the Holy Spirit, GOd raised Jesus from the dead. His resureccted life bought life for all who believe in Him.

That Power conquered sin and death, and liberated the believer

Paul experienced that power in Acts 9 on the road to DEmascus. And he wanted to know it more.

I’m sure the church in Philippi, upon reading this letter, would have felt that same desire to know the Power of the resurrecction… the power to change lives, like Lydia and the jailer, and epaphroditus, some of the key people in the church

To know the power of the resurrection is to acknowledge that rising from death to newness of life, like it says in Romans 6.

I love that we saw the played out in our baptisms this morning.

Knowing Jesus deeper also meant knowing the fellowship of Christ’s suffering

We should unpack this a bit

FEllowship comes from believers having the same mind of Christ, sharing life together, worshiping together, serving together.

And Jesus’ Sufferings are the trials that he experienced… the abandonment. the mocking. the sorrow. even death on a cross

So for Paul to say that he wants to know the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, he is saying that in order to know CHrist more, he wants to share in the sufferings of Christ.

we know that the journey of a believer always leads to the cross

its at the cross, that the believer dies to the old man and lives again by the power of the Holy Spirit

Now, for the church in Philippi, Paul is not saying, go ahead and throw yourself out into the worst opposition and suffer for Jesus

But rather, when you suffer, when you experience trails, and we know they were experienceing trials… to that he says to suffer with Christ. When a believer shares in the sufferings of Christ, they are strengthened in their faith, they grow in their relationship with God and the world notices.

And Paul has experienced that and desires more of it.

I see the word share as an active word that the believer would initiate.

And there is so much in this whole letter about standing firm in the the faith, contending together, pressing forward

Jesus says in Matt 16:25 “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

WHO PUT NO CONFIDENCE IN THE FLESH

We are the peritome who put no confidence in the flesh

At the beginning of this chapter Paul talks about the dogs, who as we said earlier were the Judaizers.

These were people who put confidence in peritome. They were pushing salvation by works with the gentiles

Paul’s response to that was in v.4-6... if anyone can have confedence in the flesh, he certainly has reason to

And he lists all of his credentials, but in comparison to knowing Jesus, it pales

Paul uses the word ‘consider’ which is the same word in chapter 2, when writing about Jesus not considering equality with God

it means to lead or go ahead of.

In verse 7 & 8 as Paul uses it, he is actively going ahead of all of his grounds for boasting in himself.

here we see this theme of reaching forward to what is ahead. pressing on towards the goal, v.14

that Goal again is not looking back on all he was… not any achievments or credentials. not all the church plants he did.

All of those things are rubish, dung, garbage. they mean nothing

His goal is to KNOW HIM

Our Goal

Story: In my office, I have 3 plaques on my wall, all stating my accomplishments and credentials

I have another credential waiting to be put up somewhere, I just printed off another certificate from some training, and I am working on a Masters degree. I have a few things that I can look at daily and say, this is me.

But there is a real danger in life to define who you are by the things of this world, isn’t there?

The cars we’ve rebuilt. The buildings we’ve constructed. The papers we’ve written. The fortnite emotes we’ve unlocked. Even the kids we’ve created and are proud of.

Sometimes we get stuck there, thinking that’s us, that’s what defines us and we forget that we are the peritome. the legitamate believers

All of that stuff doesn’t matter. It all pales in comparriosn to KNOWING Christ. It really does.

I love how Paul wraps up this chapter with a focus on the eternal. In verse 20 he says that our citizenship in in heaven

Puts things into perspective thinking about what we should be living for.

And even as a bit of a book end to verse 1 where he says ‘REJOICE’… rejoice in who you are. You are a citizen of heaven & You are the circumsion