Power of the Resurrection

Introduction

What is something that you have always wanted to experience? Have you wanted to know the thrill of driving a race car, and the closet you came was the arcade games? Have you ever wanted to know what

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be remembered for hitting a home run in a crucial moment like David Friese. So you work at it and train. You go to the batting cages, and watch videos on form. All the effort is put in for months. And then during softball season with the team needing one run to push you into the playoffs, you are in line to bat. And all the hard work and all the practice pays off. In that clutch moment you hit the home run you have always wanted to hit.

The truth is your home run will never compare fully with David Friese home run in the playoffs for the cardinals. But you do know in part what he felt. You can in a real sense say you know what it is like in a clutch moment to perform.

This example could be used all over. From baking, to racing; from parenting, to parachuting. All of us can experience the success and power and accomplishment that we see in others.

This an example of what Paul is talking about in our passage this morning. Paul wants to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. It is a similar thing to wanting to know what it is like to hit a game winning playoff home run. I want to experience it, I want to be apart of it.

And the path to knowing the power of the resurrection and to knowing Christ is counter intuitive. The way to experience the power of God seems foolish to most, and as we will see those who dare follow Jesus must have faith that appears foolish to many people.

Philippians 3:7–11 ESV

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

The Loss of Everything

Paul from the outset of this passage shows us that the losing the value of our good works is surpassed by knowing Christ Jesus. In the same way Christ in 2:8 did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage, but rather humbled himself. He was humiliated the we might be lifted up.

The language here is interesting. I count everything as loss. Paul has just given an impressive list of his religious accomplishments. He tally’s up all that he has done, and when they are totaled Paul is found to be a good person according the customs and practices of the law. He is a person of integrity, power, and prestige. People looked at Paul and thought if I could be just a little bit like him, I would be on the right track.

But for Paul all those positive accomplishments we seen as negatives. He counted them as loss. They did not bring the salvation and the joy and the hope he was looking for.

Paul is not depreciating obedience. Rather, he is insisting that many Jews, including himself in his pre-Christian days, had come to think of the law in a way that God never intended. Instead of seeing the law as one of the preparations for the righteousness from God that would be secured by the coming and death of the Messiah, the law had increasingly become the basis for being “righteous” before God.

Paul goes on to describe that he had to suffer the lose of all those things. It is definitely a painful and long suffering process to loss the religious accolades, when your whole life was built on achieving certain religious goals. Paul got to the point of counting his best deeds and his prestigious lineage as dung or rubbish. Paul examined all that he had done to earn God’s love and said it was nothing more than a pile of dog droppings.

It is painful for us to identify those things that we do to try and earn God’s love and then consider them as dung.

How does one identify the religious duties we consider as capital to be used to buy God’s love. Let me give us a list of questions to consider:

When is my motivation to do things for God based on fear and insecurity?

When are the times that I feel God owes me and what have I done for God to owe me?

How do you react to God when circumstances in your life go wrong?

How do you respond when people criticize you? Do you respond in fury? Do you struggle, but realized your punishment fell on Jesus?

What is your prayer life like? When is it at it’s best? During times of need? How much time do you spend in praise of God in prayer?

How often do you look down on others for their lack of effort? Do you view others are more immoral than yourself?

Do you view Christianity as a ladder to be climbed to get to God? What is the next spiritual promotion or rung you are looking to grasp?

Each and everyone of us in this place struggle with earning God’s love. It is built in us and in our culture. We strive to earn respect, money, free time, and nice things. And all too often we view Jesus the same way. We are saved by grace, not by works. So what are the works you hold onto as blackmail to use against God so he will like you…so that he will love you?

The truth we need this morning is singularly focused. There is nothing we need but Christ.

We must count all our religious duties and deeds as rubbish in order that we might…GAIN CHRIST.

Gaining Christ

All Paul desires is to hold onto Christ. he wants Jesus. He wants to be found in Him.

I have heard it said that religion is a ladder to God. Do these five things: read your bible, share your faith, pray, attend church, be in a small group and you are on your way to earning God’s love. But listen to these verses and you will see our understanding of what God offers is not a ladder at all.

Paul counts everything as a loss in order to gain Christ and be found in him. Being found in Christ is totally different than climbing a ladder or jumping through hoops to earn the favor of God.

When a child is sick or in pain, what do they want. They want mom, they want dad. They want mom and dad to come to them and hold them to ease the hurt, get the medicine needed to make things better. No good parent sees a sick or hurt child and tells them to get better they must get up and go get the medicine, measure it out, take it, then climb back in bed and sleep. Parents who love their children know that their child wants to be found with their parents and the parents sacrifice to ensure the child is cared for. In the same way, God is a good father and we are that sick child. He does it all.

Paul goes on to describe, that he doesn’t want a righteousness of his own that comes through the law. He doesn’t want to have to earn God’s love by climbing the ladder to God. he doesn’t want a parent who makes him get the medicine and the bowl and the blanket when he is sick to feel better.

Rather, he wants a relationship with God that depends on faith. He wants the right way of living to be Christ’s life counted for him that comes from trusting.

A sick child displays great faith in a parent by crying out to mom and dad. They know that their being made well is solely dependent on mom and dad taking proper care of them and so they lean into their parents.

This is the same thing Paul is doing with faith in Christ. He is leaning into God through Jesus because there is not one thing more he could do to earn God’s love and there is not one thing less he could do to have God turn his back on him.

Verse 9 says, that Paul wants a righteousness that depends on faith given by God. Paul wants to be right with God not based on how well Paul is doing, but on how well Jesus lived, died and was resurrected.

And this is crucial for us and the readers of this letter. Your background and ethnicity and law keeping or law breaking don’t define you. They don’t give you what you need. Jesus supplies it all. That is why when Jesus calls us to trust him we trust. We step out in faith into a relationship and family that is unlike anything we have every known.

No longer is it do this to be loved. It is you are loved, be like me.

I don’t want to minimize anyone with this next example but instead show how many people suffer from a lack of love. A common issue that is thrown around carelessly is the idea that people have mommy and daddy issues. And what I have observed relates to this discussion. Often times kids are starved for relationship with their parents. And because no matter what they do it is never good enough or it is rarely acknowledged, those children grow up thinking they are not worth loving. They have acceptance issues, and love issues and will fill the void of love with anything because growing up they perceived that they were not living up to a set of expectations. We do this with God, and the reality is kids need love not for what they do, but for who their parents are. Kids need the love and acceptance of their parents simply because they are their kids. And this is what God offers in the gospel. Jesus has bought your acceptance, there is nothing keeping us from full relationship with God. All we do is accept what Jesus did and trust in his bringing us to our loving heavenly father.

I have heard it said that faith is the human response empowered by God’s grace. And I love this idea, i love because he first loved me. I trust God because God graciously has given me the faith to believe. Faith in Christ then looks away from self achievement and focuses on Christ’s achievement.

This is what drives us not to earn our father’s love, but drives us to know Him.

Knowing Him

Knowing God then is the goal of our lives. To have a relational knowledge and an experiential knowledge is what is focused on. How could God be this good to supply all I need to gain Him.

What does it mean to know Him?

How well do you know you best friend? How well do you know your neighbors? How well do you know your family?

If knowledge of God is experiential and relational then we must live life with God and discover more and more about him.

The same is true of knowing anyone. We must have a relationship with them and experience things with them. Why is it that good friends know what that friend is going to say or do before it happens? It is based on knowing that friend because of experiences within the relationship.

Paul wants to have the intimate knowledge of Jesus in the same way the you and I experience psychic like powers when we are around those we know best.

How well do we know Christ? How well did Paul know Jesus at this point near the end of his life and he still is exclaiming, I want to know Christ!

What Paul is saying is I want to know Jesus better and better.

THIS IS A TOUGH SECTION

Knowing the Power of the Resurrection

This morning being resurrection Sunday, this phrase in particular is important. Paul wants to know the power of the resurrection.

He wants to have the power of God continue to course through him. But he also wants to experience the great power of God in the second resurrection when all the dead will rise in Christ. Just as Jesus rose, all who have been adopted into God’s family will rise. Paul staring at judgment, and nearing the end of his life gets excited about resurrection and the power of God to raise us from the dead. Paul has already stated that to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Sharing in Sufferings

Paul wants to identify with Christ in his sufferings, to participate in those sufferings, to know Christ better by experiencing sufferings just as Jesus did.