Righteousness through faith

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Welcome!

Special called members meeting next Sunday. It will be short 5-10 minutes. We are going to vote on moving forward with the new sign.

Our parking lot will be sealed this Thursday and then stripped on Friday, so please no traffic from Thursday on until Sunday.

INTRODUCTION:

What is man’s greatest need? You’ll find an endless amount answers to this question from the world. Everyone has their own idea about what people need the most, but the only answer that really matters is what the Bible has to say about this subject.

Regardless of what people say, man’s greatest need has nothing to do with temporary matters which human beings place so much priority. Man’s greatest need has to do with eternal matters.

I think most everyone here would agree with that since just being here at least demonstrates recognition of that!

Man’s greatest need is to be righteous. I don’t mean to be upright and doing morally right things (though there is nothing wrong with that). I mean righteous as in right with God. The kind of righteousness that we are going to talk about today gives us the ability to stand before God as if we have never sinned. It is a status, a covering, and place in which we stand where we are truly accepted by God.

Context

Paul addresses the subject of righteousness in Philippians chapter 3 and also how it can be applied to human beings through faith.

I love preaching on the subject of faith because it is the means by which people are saved. If there is no faith, there will be no salvation. And by far the most important day in your life and my life is the day we began walking by faith.

The issue Paul was addressing: a different way to achieve righteousness

Philippians 3:1–3 NASB95

Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and 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,

Explanation:

First he says, “The need to write the same things again is no trouble”

Sometime back I was getting ready for service, going over the songs, the slides, etc. and someone saw my sermon title and made this comment: “oh, another sermon on faith”. Like oh boy, we have to listen to this again

Now anybody that has listened to me very much knows I preach right through books of the Bible. So “another sermon on faith” was really just the Bible repeating the subject of faith again

Why does Scripture repeat things? If God forgetful and these authors so elementary that they just keep saying the same things over and over?

Paul was well aware that he repeated things, but he does so BECAUSE IT IS A SAFEGUARD FRO YOU. In other words it is for our benefit that the Bible brings up the same topics again and again.

Sometimes we need to hear it again! Sometimes we need to hear it 10 times preached 10 different ways for it to really penetrate our hearts!

When you read a subject again and again in the Bible, do not be annoyed, but really open up your ears and hearts. God is saying to us through repetition, LISTEN UP! THIS IS IMPORTANT! DO NOT MISS THIS!

“Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision”

I think it is worth mentioning how much we tend to water down things in Scripture. How offended would the church be today if Paul stood up to the congregation and said beware of the dogs, and evil workers out there?

Who was Paul calling ‘dogs’ and ‘evil workers’? Men who were preaching a false gospel. People who were teaching others that there is another way to be righteous before God.

These were Judaizers, who were just Jewish people who were teaching a form of legalism such as, “your not really saved unless you also keep the rituals in the Law of Moses.

One of those rituals? Circumcision. In the OT God’s people were to be circumcised as the physical identifying mark of belonging to Yahweh.

Evidently, they were teaching these new Christians that this physical mark must still be present for them to be Christian which is why Paul says, ‘beware of the false circumcision’ (lit mutilators of the flesh).

Bridge:

I have not heard of many people today who teach that you must be circumcised to be right with God. But the spirit of legalism is alive today! And in that there is a certain level of confidence in religious rituals that those rituals practiced will take you to heaven! People today who teach others if you will just do this and you will just do that, then you will be saved. Anyone who claims there is another pathway to righteousness rather than faith in Jesus Christ preaches a false gospel!

The man of works

There was a man I had witnessed to a few years ago. I Had known him for many years. He Started out as a protestant who confessed by faith alone, but kept falling into sin so at some point he converted to Roman Catholicism who believe faith plus works.

I Could not for the life of me, with all the verses in the Bible convince him that his religious works cannot save him.

Paul warns us three times in this passage: beware, beware, beware

Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of legalists who teach or live their lives according to a false gospel, who teach a false way of salvation!

What is the false way?

(v 3) It is to put confidence in the flesh. That is to think that religious acts (whatever they may be) are sufficient enough to make us a Christian.

Examples:

There might be people who go to church or have gone to church their whole lives and they believe that physical act of going to church makes them a Christian.

There are people who believe or have been taught that if they just get confirmed by a religious leader then that will get them a ticket to heaven.

Or that one must be baptized before they can be saved, because in that baptism their sins are washed away (which would be the closest thing to circumcision today in that sense)

Another one and I think the most dangerous that is alive and well in the church today is the sinners prayer. People who have been pressured into saying the sinners prayer as if that was the requirement that one must “do” to be saved and go to heaven.

I took an evangelism class in seminary and that professor sent us all out on an evangelistic mission for a grade. That mission required us to share the gospel with a certain number of people. Nothing at all wrong with that.

But before he sent us out, he really pushed us getting people to say a sinners prayer. Explained that some are so close to saying it, and they need that extra push to say those words.

Do you know what that is? That is confidence in some kind of fleshly act in order to gain salvation.

I am not saying that if you came to faith through a sinners prayer you are lost. I am saying that if your confidence is in that prayer, and not in the Lord Jesus Christ then you are in trouble!

Along with this lie, when people question whether or not their faith is real, they always go back to that prayer! But no prayer can save us! It is faith in Jesus that saves us!

Beware of people who teach a false way to righteousness!

It does not matter if they are preachers or friends, or family, or the most godly looking people in the world!

Your soul is on the line! Your children’s souls are on the line!

Nothing we can do in the flesh can save us. No amount of performance. No amount of striving for holiness. No cleaning ourselves up and going to heaven. No repeating magical words will get us into heaven. None of that will work.

And if anyone thinks they can do religious things and be accepted by God, then just listen to Paul’s story:

Philippians 3:4–6 NASB95

although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised 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 the Law, found blameless.

Explanation:

“If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more”

In other words if anyone would like to compare a list of who is more qualified to go to heaven, Paul lays out his list to us so we can compare:

In fact each of us should just take a second and bring to our minds what is it that convinces us that we are right with God and going to heaven. If you were standing before God today, and God said to you, write me a list and tell me why why you belong here, what would you write?

Our list may sound something like this:

I know I should be in heaven because I have been baptized into the church.

I know I’m going to heaven because I said that prayer that the pastor told me to say when I was a child, or I was a teenager, or when I was an adult, and I meant it with all of my heart.

I know I’m going to heaven because I am a faithful church member and have been my whole life. My parents took me, and now I take my family.

I know I belong here because I tithe, I serve, I attend regularly, I take the Lord’s Supper and have not been struck down yet! I even share my faith with other people and tell them Jesus is the only way.

Listen to Paul’s list

“circumcised on the 8th day”: (according to the Law) That would be equivalent to our baptism. We get baptized because that is what jesus commanded one do when they follow Him.

“of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews”: This is a way of saying that he has genealogical lines that connect him to God’s chosen people. He was not just God’s people by choice, but also by blood. That would be like us saying our family is Christian so we are Christian too.

“A Pharisee”: that is a calling to a an extremely high level of morality and observance to the law. The Pharisees would make all of us look like filthy sinners.

“Zeal”: that means he was intense about his religion. He was no ordinary church goer, he had passion, he had a fire that burned inside of him and was very zealous for the things of God. He would go so far as to kill people who disagreed with it

How does our list match up to Paul’s list?

Philippians 3:7–8 NASB95

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,

“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ”

What things were gain to Paul?

All those in his list. All the effort Paul had put into trying to earn his righteousness.

His faithfulness

His background

His ancestry

His status

His morality

When Paul came to know Jesus Christ on that Damascus road, He learned what real righteousness was and that it could never be achieved by the works of man!

Everything he did in his flesh before encountering Jesus was just filthy rags. His self-earned righteousness was worthless!

And you know that a man who gave that much to ritual must have thought that in comparison to most people, he would be at the top of God’s list! That God would say to him one day, “wow, bravo Paul, you really outdid yourself. Paul you are a very righteous man! Only to later see that his way of pursuing God was worthless.

Do you see that word “counted”? (v 7) Paul says, “But whatever things were gain to me, I have COUNTED as loss”

That word means to consider. It means to engage in an intellectual process.

When Paul came to know Jesus, He did not trust Jesus and then close his eyes and pretend that everything made sense.

When Paul became a Christian his mind was opened up to understand the things of God, the righteousness of God like he had never known them before.

All Paul had really known is what the natural man can understand. And that is that if we do good, God will accept us. But when his eyes were opened, he understood what real righteousness was, and that no matter what he did he would never be able to hit that mark.

Application:

Paul’s story must become our story too. At some point in every believer’s life they come they have the same experience. The confusion and lack of understanding become Crystal Clear. All attempts to be righteous or right with God by religious practices are worthless and will only send us to hell.

Has that happened to you? Has that encounter with Christ happened and afterwords you can say I can now see that all my attempts were foolish and worthless. The only way I could ever be right with God is if God would make me righteous.

The question then is, how do we receive the righteousness of Jesus?

Righteousness cannot be achieved…it can only be received

Philippians 3:9–11 NASB95

and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, 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.

Explanation:

“Not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ”

What is righteousness?

It does not mean to do good righteous deeds. That is the kind of righteousness Paul was pursuing, but it will do him no good in the grand scheme of things.

The righteousness that Paul is talking about is a right standing before God. It is to stand before God as if we have never sinned.

How we can have that righteousness? “Through faith in Christ…”

That righteousness that comes from God can only come to us through faith! It cannot be earned. It cannot be replicated. It cannot be achieved on one’s merits.

The channel by which God applies the righteousness of Jesus to our account is through faith in Christ.

Faith is all the gospel requires for us to be saved!

This is the simplicity of salvation. There is no going through years of theological courses to learn all that one needs to know to be faithful to Jesus. There is no certain bloodline that you must be born of to have it. You do not have to be baptized to go to heaven, you do not have to say a sinners prayer, you do not even have to be in church!

Application:

A Works based righteousness is when people are trying to be obedient to achieve righteousness. This is what Paul had tried to do. He by following the Law and spent his life trying to become righteous by being obedient.

But obedience does not make us righteous! We can only be righteous through faith. What happens when we put our faith in Jesus is God gives us His righteousness which causes us to become joyfully obedient.

All the gospel requires is faith in Christ.

What is faith in Christ?

Faith also means to believe. In scripture the words are used interchangeably, both meaning the same thing. But faith also involves trust.

How do these come together?

Well it is impossible to trust someone if we do not Believe them. Just imagine reading the Bible and reading all these things that God says and then not really believe them. But if you believe what God says, then you are on the right track to doing it.

That means we believe what God says about heaven and hell

We believe what God says about the sinful nature of man

We believe what God says about Jesus Christ

We believe what God says about judgement

We believe what God says about His trustworthiness

Secondly, faith means to trust. Even if you do Believe what God says, you must trust Him in order to obey Him. That is what we read, we believe, and we do what He says because we trust Him that it is for our good and He is trustworthy.

CONCLUSION:

Do you know that the religious person is the hardest person to reach with the gospel?

People who have a church background, who know about Christianity, who come and participate in just enough to look like others, but have never been changed on the inside.

Then there are those who come who know nothing about Christianity. They’re lost and they know it. I think there is much greater chance of reaching those with the gospel than there is reaching the others.

To reach a religious person like the apostle Paul you’ve got to first overcome all the false ideas he has come to believe his whole life, before he can begin to see the true gospel. For the person who knows they are without Christ, there’s nothing to overcome. Just a blank slate that needs forgiveness.

Maybe you’re here this morning and you’ve never genuinely began to trust in Jesus alone for your salvation. Maybe you’re scared, maybe you think it cannot be done, maybe you have trust issues. I get all that.

Come to Jesus today. Not the church, not the preacher, not the ritual, come to Jesus, give him your life by faith, and you will receive the righteousness of God!

~PRAYER~