From Rags to Riches

Introduction

What do you treasure in this world? For many of us we treasure our family and close relationships. We treasure time and doing things that we enjoy doing. I know many friends who treasure going on trips and seeing different parts of the world. I know others who treasure staying at home and playing games and enjoying time with family. We all have things that we enjoy doing in our lives and praise God for these hobbies! The question that we have to ask ourselves when it comes to these hobbies and things that we treasure is do they have lasting value? Relationships with others certainly do. Playing the latest video or board game? Probably not! The apostle Paul tells us in all caps this evening that all of these things must come after knowing Jesus Christ. Knowing Jesus comes first and it is the ultimate thing that matters!

There’s a song in the Blue hymnal that talks about this entitled Knowing You:

“All I once held dear, built my life upon All this world reveres, and wars to own All I once thought gain I have counted loss Spent and worthless now, compared to this

Knowing You, Jesus Knowing You There is no greater thing

You’re my all, you’re the best, you’re my joy my righteousness and I love you Lord”

What matters most of all is not what your hobby is. It’s not how often you get to travel or visit family. What matters most of all is if you know Jesus Christ or if you don’t! Our passage tonight talks about this exact thing in Philippians 3 as Paul looks at his past and the things that used to define his life and how they pale in comparison to knowing Jesus and serving Him.

Philippians 3:1–11 NASB95

1 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. 2 Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; 3 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, 4 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: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. 7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 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, 9 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, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

False Hope (1-6)

Paul starts in verse 1 by saying to rejoice in the Lord. This has been one of the themes in Philippians from start to finish, have joy in the Lord! Paul’s audience as commentators note have a temptation, as do the people in Hebrews, of believing in Jesus Christ and practicing legalism or trying to justify yourself by your own works. Paul is telling them to rejoice not in their works, but to rejoice in the Lord and what He has done for them. Paul says that he is writing the same things to them in order to be a safeguard. Whenever Paul went from town to town in his early missionary journeys, what would he preach? The Gospel of Jesus Christ. What was Paul telling this church in Philippi in this letter? He’s continuing to tell them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Why? Because that is what matters most of all - it is the greatest news and the thing that we all must respond to! Paul notes that it is not a problem to tell them more about the Gospel, why? Because it’s a safeguard. Why is preaching the Gospel a safeguard? Because it is truth and protects us from being led astray by false teachers and legalism.

One of the things that we talked about a couple of Wednesday nights ago was about our message and our methods. Our message as a church will always be the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. That will never change! However, our methods can and will change sometimes. With every method and every thing that we do as a church, though, we must teach and make much of the Gospel. We must never tire of repeating the Gospel because it protects others.

In verses 2-6 we see Paul mention some people to be aware of and some false hopes that some people have.

There were some people in this era who were “Judaizers” who were willing to accept Jesus as the Messiah but they wanted to keep on doing the Jewish works of old and some even said that in order for someone to be a follower of Jesus, they had to be circumcised! We think that this is crazy news because salvation is offered to every nation, tribe and tongue regardless of if someone is circumcised or not! However in Acts 15 we see this group make this argument

Acts 15:1 NASB95

1 Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

This was shot down in the Jerusalem Council later in Acts 15 by leaders like Paul, Peter, James and Barnabas because they said that salvation is not accomplished by works of the law (circumcision) but rather by faith in Jesus Christ. Paul calls some of these false teachers “dogs” which doesn’t seem very nice. Used to the gentiles were considered dogs because they were unclean compared to the Jews, but Paul is reversing this term here in Philippians 3:2 and saying that the Jewish teachers who say that you have to be circumcised to be saved are in fact dogs! They are evildoers and he implores these believers to be aware of the false circumcision. False teachers are nothing new in our world - we talk about them a lot. There are people who promote a health and wealth Gospel where Jesus only wants you to be happy, rich and successful. There are others who say that you can be just like Jesus because He was a man like you and I, there was nothing divine about Jesus. Others are a little more crafty and say things like “you’re good enough just as you are.” The common thread in all of these messages is that you don’t need the Jesus of the Bible. Many people today preach a Jesus not found in Scripture.

Paul says in verse 3 that “we are the true circumcision who worship in the Spirit of God” - Paul was a circumcised Jew and most of the people in Philippi were uncircumcised Gentiles, yet he says here that those who trust in Jesus Christ and worship Him are the true people of God!

Galatians 6 talks about this

Galatians 6:15 NIV

15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.

What do these false teachers want us to do? They want us to buy into the lie that our works save us or that there are some people who cannot be saved unless they do a particular work. This is not the Gospel. The Gospel is not Jesus plus circumcision. The Gospel is Jesus Christ and Him alone. This is the good news!

Paul says to put zero confidence in the flesh, but if anyone were to have confidence in the flesh it would be him because he was blameless before the law and a Pharisee of Pharisees. He was all that in a bag of potato chips and then some! Yet, Paul says not to have confidence in our flesh and works. The sad part is that there are some Christian teachers who teach the opposite of this. They teach to have confidence in yourself - be true to who you are, follow your heart, live your best life now. Where is the root of these messages? It’s in ourselves rather than in the covenant keeping God. Being a Christian isn’t about boasting in ourselves, it’s about boasting in Jesus Christ and what He has done - this is what our church should be known for more than anything else! How can we do a better job of boasting in Jesus during the world we find ourselves in today? How can you boast more in Jesus Christ today?

To quote Tony Merida, many people put their confidence in spiritual rituals like being baptized as an infant or attending religious meetings. These experience aren’t grounds for spiritual confidence. Paul went through these rituals and considered it no advantage! Salvation is about becoming a new creation in Christ, not about going through a ritual. A born again Christian puts no confidence in our works because we all fall short. Look down to verse 9 real quick, it says that righteousness comes from God on the basis of faith. This is the difference between Christianity and every other works based religion out there. It’s not about works based righteousness or earning our own way - it’s about imputed righteousness. Receiving Christ’s righteousness as our own as Paul talks about in Romans 5. We can’t keep the law on our own - I am not good enough on my own, you are not good enough on your own. We don’t need another chance, we need a new system! Thankfully, Jesus Christ paid it in full. We must place our trust in Him, not in anyone else and certainly not in our own works as false teachers try to convince people to do. This leads to false hope.

Gospel Hope (7-11)

The final section of verses talks about true, Gospel-centered hope! Think about Paul’s testimony, the book of Acts chronicles this account as Paul was a man who hated Christians and persecuted them. He was present at the stoning of Stephen and was behind the death of many Christians! Yet, the same Christ whom he persecuted would become His savior and Lord! Paul suffered the loss of all his accomplishments, his past friends, his security, job and home, yet what did he gain? He gained freedom and salvation in Jesus Christ and he says in verse 8 that it is not even a contest between the two. Sometimes in life whenever we face a big choice we write out a list of pro’s and con’s. If I do this action then here are some of the positive reactions and here are some of the negative ones. Whenever we do this, sometimes the negative things outweigh the positive ones. Whenever this happens we usually will not do the action in question. However Paul notes that the negatives do not outweigh the positives, in fact all things are to be counted as loss when compared to knowing Jesus Christ. Nothing else can compete with that! Do you have that kind of mentality and outlook today when it comes to Jesus? Church we should!

Paul concludes verse 8 by saying that he counts all these other things as rubbish or you could say poop, even as strong as dog crap. This sounds harsh because Paul was a noble person before. He did a lot of good, positive things, but he wants to create a stark contrast and he does so by using this word. Life is worthless without Jesus Christ. It’s rubbish! Think of Matthew 16:26 where Jesus asks the question, “What will it profit a man to gain the world yet lose his soul?”

The final 3 verses (9-11) talk about salvation and Gospel hope as Christians.

Justification (9): As humans we find ourselves facing a dilemma. Only righteous people go to heaven and Romans 3 declares that no one is righteous! What is the solution? To do more good works or to find another source of righteousness? We must find another source! We require outside help here. Romans 3:21-26 talks about this righteousness being imputed on our account because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Works-based righteousness is rubbish - we require God’s righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5 helps us see this idea in a clear way

2 Corinthians 5:21 NASB95

21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

We talked about this verse Wednesday night. He (God) made Him who knew no sin (Jesus) to become sin on our behalf. Why? So that we could become the righteousness of God in Him. We have forgiveness of sin and we are accepted by God because we receive Christ’s righteousness! This is the greatest news of all! How do we possess this? By works of the law? No. By faith in Jesus Christ.

2 important things in verse 9. First, justification comes from God. We can’t earn it. It is grace that we could never deserve. Second, it is through faith in Christ. It doesn’t depend on your church attendance, intelligence or background. It depends on Christ’s work on the cross. This is what it means to be a Christian - to believe in and to know Jesus Christ. Paul was blameless before the law yet he knew that he still fell short and needed Christs righteousness - we need it also! Think of the line of Isaac Watts’ song When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, “

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

The very best works that we can muster up fall woefully short. Thank you God for grace!

Sanctification (10): Verse 10 notes that Paul knows Christ but he wants to know Him more! We must never stop seeking to know more about God and about Scripture - does this mean that we “deconstruct” our faith as some have done and fallen away? No. But we must never reach the place where we think that we know enough and we don’t need to study any more! JI Packer puts it well when he says, “Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord”

What matters most in life? Knowing God and making Him known to others. Paul wants to know the power of the resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.

Many people want to know the first part. They want to talk about the resurrection and the power that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us as Paul talks about in Ephesians 1. This is hopeful and gives us strength in difficult times of life. The second part, though, is where many people like to stop and move on to verse 11. What does it mean to know the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death? We don’t like talking about suffering and death! Part of orthodox Christianity is having a proper understanding of suffering. Suffering is not a bad thing in the sense that God is mad with you and that you’ve done something wrong to warrant the suffering. It’s not karma! Rather, sometimes suffering happens and it is a time where we grow in our faith. Sometimes standing up for God means that you will suffer! Think of the fiery furnace in Daniel 3. If we take the prosperity Gospel approach to this chapter we would say that being a godly person would mean that we are happy, healthy and wealthy because we’ve done our job… Yet that’s not the story of Daniel 3. These 3 Hebrew men were tossed into a furnace of fire and they should have died - yet they stayed faithful to God in-spite of the consequence. Suffering isn’t a bad thing that we should be afraid of. Suffering isn’t something to be enjoyed, either, but it is something that we go through and we take joy in because our savior suffered and we will suffer too. It’s ok!

Glorification (11): Our final verse talks about our future glory and being raised from the dead. This is an already/not yet reality. We taste a small bite of the glory to come because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us and we have the joy of worshiping and encouraging one another. In doing these things we experience a taste of this glory but we will not experience the fullness of it until we reach our eternal destination. We look forward to this time of future glory when we are raised and we meet our savior face to face! This is the true Gospel hope.

Conclusion

Paul knew a whole lot about the Old Testament and he knew a whole lot about Jesus Christ. He knew more than most people who have walked this earth, yet Paul never remained stagnant and he certainly didn’t prioritize other things before sharing the Gospel message with others. Paul suffered throughout his ministry and eventually he was killed in Rome as a martyr. Even though he was imprisoned, beaten, whipped, shipwrecked and eventually killed, he rejoiced in suffering because he had a true Gospel hope and he looked forward to his glorification and meeting his Lord face to face.

Let us be like Paul today and let’s strive to share the Gospel with others. Let’s share the love of Jesus with those around us regardless of the cost. Let’s have assurance of our salvation because Jesus paid it all and let us live a transformed life as a result. Don’t just stay in the kiddy pool, dive on in to the deep end and grow in your relationship with the one, true, living God who is still in the business of saving sinners and washing us white as snow!