Joy in Opposition

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

As I mentioned earlier, if you didn’t print out the sermon outline for this morning, I want you to at least have a piece of paper and something to write with as I begin the message this morning. And here’s what I want you to do. I’m going to give you about a minute to write down things in your life that you consider to be profitable or valuable. Just jot down whatever comes to mind. The list could include material possessions as well as things like your family, or your job, or your education. Go ahead and list them in the left column of your sermon outline.

Things in my life that are profitable or valuable:

[Give people about a minute to complete their list]

Now just keep that list handy as I’m going to ask you to use it again shortly.

Tension

We live in a culture where those who are disciples of Jesus are facing increasing opposition. If we hold to Biblical principles we will be called intolerant, or bigoted, or accused of hate speech. Churches all around the country, including some right here in the Tucson area, have been subject to vandalism and arson. During protests in Portland last week, people were burning Bibles. And things are much worse in many other places around the world.

So how are we to respond to that opposition in a way that makes if possible for us to live joyful lives? Fortunately for us, Paul also faced fierce opposition nearly 2,000 years ago and this morning we’re going to let him teach us how that we can have joy even when we face that kind of hostility.

Truth

Today marks the seventh message in our current series which we have titled Joy for the Journey. We’ve been learning how to live joyful lives regardless of our circumstances. Before we jump into our passage of this morning, I want to remind you that joy is not the same thing as happiness. Happiness is an emotion that is dependent on our circumstances and therefore it is always temporary because our circumstances are continually changing. Joy, on the other hand, is a choice that we make, and because it is not dependent on the conditions in which we are living, we can experience it even in the most difficult times of our lives.

With that in mind, go ahead and turn to chapter 3 of the book of Philippians and we’ll start in verse 1:

Philippians 3:1–11 ESV

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh— though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people 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 righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 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 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— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul begins here with the word “finally” and some of you are probably thinking that sounds really familiar. It’s a word that pastors tend to use a lot when they are about half way through their message. You see, we actually have Biblical support for doing that because Paul is only about half way through his letter at this point. And this won’t be the last time Paul will use that word before he does finally bring his letter to a close.

Paul then immediately gives us a command:

…rejoice in the Lord.

This is the same command that we’ve already seen several times in this letter. And the good news is that every time Paul gives that command, he doesn’t just leave us to figure out how to do that on our own. He always provides us with some very practical instruction to help us obey that command. And that is true again here.

Paul then implies that what he is going to write next is a review of what he has taught them before, but that he doesn’t mind doing that at all because it is for their benefit. I think I understand why Paul writes that. For most of us, a lot of what we learn about living as a disciple of Jesus each week is not necessarily new. Most of it we already know, but a lot of time we need someone to remind us of that because we either forget or we grow weary and fail to do what we know we should.

Before Paul reveals what he has done to maintain his joy in the face of opposition, he describes his opponents using three very unflattering terms:

dogs. Paul is not writing about the kind of cute domesticated dogs that we have as pets. In Paul’s day they were mangy, vicious, starved scavengers that dug through garbage and occasionally attacked humans. It was a term that the Jewish religious leaders often applied to Gentiles and now Paul is turning it around and using it to describe them.

evildoers. Although these false teachers prided themselves on being workers of righteousness, their religiosity was actually achieving evil because it was keeping people from finding the only true way to God.

those who mutilate the flesh. There is actually a word play here between the word “mutilate” and the one translated “circumcision” in verse 3. What they considered to be an important religious act was merely mutilating their flesh because their hearts were not right.

There is little doubt that Paul is writing here about a group known as the Judaizers. They were Jews who had come to faith in Jesus, but who were teaching that in order for the Gentiles to become disciples of Jesus, they first had to become Jews and go through the religious rite of circumcision. This issue had been settled years before in what is known as the Jerusalem Council, where the apostles and other church leaders had decided that nothing other than faith in Jesus was required to become His disciple. But these teachers were still spreading this false teaching and putting up barriers in places like Philippi where the church consisted primarily of Gentiles.

In verse 3, Paul indicates that the kind of circumcision that makes one right with God is not a matter of some ritual done in the flesh, but rather a matter of having the right heart. Paul makes this really clear in his letter to the churches in Rome:

Romans 2:29 ESV

But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

Then beginning in verse 4, Paul uses his personal life as an illustration of why trying to earn God’s favor through religious works, or as Paul describes them here, works of the flesh, is of no value whatsoever. Paul rightly claims that his credentials far surpass those of the Judaizers, but that they are of no value whatsoever when it comes to having a relationship with God.

One of the key words in this passage is “count”. It is a mathematical term that means “to make an accounting and come to a conclusion”. Paul had already made this accounting in his life a long time ago, but in his letter he shares what is basically a ledger sheet of his life. On one side of the ledger sheet are his gains and on the other side are the losses. And before meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, here is what his ledger sheet looked like:

Paul has seven assets that he accounts for in the “gain” column. And I’m going to ask you to do the same thing right now with the list that you wrote down at the beginning of the message. Go ahead and write the word “Gain” right above that list. My guess is that at least a number of the things you wrote down might actually be very similar to the things Paul included in his ledger sheet.

But once Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus and put his faith in Jesus, Jesus, along with the Holy Spirit, began to change Paul’s mindset and world view. So as he writes this letter, his ledger sheet has been completely reordered upside down and it now looks like this:

So here is what I want you to do with your list. I want you to cross out the word “gain” and replace it with the word “loss”. Then in the right hand column I want you to write the word “gain” and then write “Jesus” in that column.

Not only does Paul now consider all the things he once thought to be gains as loss, but he uses a very graphic word to describe his feelings toward those things. The ESV and several other translations render that word “rubbish”. This is the only place that particular word is used in the Bible and it literally means “dung” or “excrement”.

At this point, we are ready to develop our main idea from this passage:

When I face opposition, the path to joy is to always choose Jesus

The way that Paul was able to have joy as he faced this opposition is that he had made a conscious decision in his life that whenever he was called upon to choose between Jesus and anything else, he would always choose Jesus.

This week I ran across this definition of suffering by Pastor John Piper that I think is quite relevant for us here:

...suffering is nothing more than the taking away of bad things or good things that the world offers for our enjoyment...

I want to call your attentions for a moment to the phrase “bad things or good things”. If I were to come to you and tell you that you needed to get rid of the “rubbish” in your life, what would come to your mind? Probably your anger, or your lustful thoughts, or your bad habits or all the other sin in your life.

But none of the seven items that Paul included in his list of things that he once considered gain were “bad” things. His background, education and training were actually very beneficial to him in his ministry. But for Paul anything that he would be tempted to choose before Jesus, even the good things, he considered to be dung. Can you say the same thing about the things on your list?

If we have developed this same mindset that Paul had, then whenever someone or something comes along and takes away those things that the world offers - reputation, job, money, family, health, success, etc. - if we have already counted those things as loss and chosen Jesus, then we will still have joy regardless of that opposition.

Application

Let’s see what we can learn here from Paul about...

HOW TO ALWAYS CHOOSE JESUS

Make sure I am “in Jesus”

In verse 9 Paul writes that the reason he considers everything other than Jesus to be loss is that he wants to make sure that he is “found in him”. He then goes on to explain what that means. It means counting 100% on the righteousness of Jesus as the basis for my relationship with God and not on anything I bring to the table.

The day that Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus he made a decision to quit trusting in his Jewishness and start trusting in Jesus alone. For the first time in his life he finally understood that religion without Jesus is one of the most dangerous things in the world because it causes people to think they are right with God when they are not. And it is equally dangerous to have a “Jesus plus” faith. If you are trusting in Jesus plus your church membership or Jesus plus your financial offerings or Jesus plus your ministry, then it is really no different than trusting in any of those other things you wrote down earlier that we have determined this morning are all loss.

It’s not good enough to know about Jesus or to be near Him or to hang out with others who are part of His family. You have to be “in Him” by trusting in Him alone. And, just as we saw earlier with the kids, when we’re in Jesus, God no longer sees our sin, He sees the perfect righteousness of Jesus.

You will never have joy in your life until you know for sure that you are “in Jesus”. So today, if you can’t say that confidently, please make sure you let us know so we can help you get there.

Make the best use of my time

I am reminded here of what Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Ephesus:

Ephesians 5:16 ESV

making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

No doubt that just like Paul did, we live in days that are evil. And therefore we need to make the best use of our time. And in this passage we find two very practical ways to do this one negative and one positive.

Limit my response to the opposition

It is very notable here that while Paul does warn his readers to be aware of these false teachers, he doesn’t instruct them to fight back against them nor does Paul go out of his way to confront them directly either.

In fact, during his entire ministry we find that Paul rarely spends much of his time and energy arguing with his opponents or trying to convince them to change their ways. In most of the cities where Paul planted churches, he started with the synagogues. But when his fellow Jews failed to respond positively to the gospel, he left there and went and preached to the Gentiles. By far the large majority of his ministry involved investing in the lives of those who were also “in Jesus” and helping them to grow in their relationship with Him.

I have to believe that if he were alive today, Paul wouldn’t spend much of his time on social media arguing with the people who call themselves Christians and who are constantly posting the latest conspiracy theory. I know you’re probably familiar with at least some of them:

The coin shortage is an evil plot to force us into a cashless society where everyone has to take the “mark of the beast” to buy and sell.

Bill Gates is funding the development of a vaccine so that he can implant the “mark of the beast” into every person along with the vaccine.

The coronavirus pandemic is a plot by Dr, Fauci and a group of elites to gain wealth and power.

Let’s suppose for a moment that every single one of these theories is true, as unlikely as that seems. I can’t help but think that if all of us, including me, spent as much time reading our Bibles, praying, serving other people and sharing the gospel as we did promoting or arguing about all these theories, we would not only be much more joyful, we would actually be using our time engaging in activities that would advance the gospel and point people to Jesus.

Paul also approaches this idea of making the best use of my time from a positive perspective:

Use my time to get to know Jesus

In verse 8 Paul reveals the one thing he considers to be of “surpassing worth” :

“...knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

I know we’ve talked about this before, but there are two primary Greek words that can be translated “know”. The one Paul uses here means to “know by experience”. It is the kind of knowledge rooted in relationship. I don’t have time to go into great depth about how we develop that kind of knowledge, but my guess is that most of us probably know a lot more about how to do that than we are actually putting into practice. I will just say that knowing Jesus like that does require an investment of time just like really getting to know another person does.

The longer I live my life as a disciple of Jesus, the more I’m convinced that many disciples of Jesus, including me, have spent far too much of our time and resources fighting the opposition rather than getting to really know Jesus. And I think that is particularly true here in the United States. I can’t help but wonder how much more effective we would be in advancing the gospel if we got to know Jesus better and then spent more time loving our enemies than constantly fighting the opposition.

Die to self

Most of us don’t mind this passage much at all until we get to verse 10 and read these words:

“…share in his sufferings, becoming like him in death...”

As you might guess, the verb “share” there is a word we are familiar with. It is often translated “fellowship”, but it literally means “joint participation”. So how do we share in the sufferings of Jesus? To understand that better, let’s go back to the definition of suffering that we looked at earlier:

...suffering is nothing more than the taking away of bad things or good things that the world offers for our enjoyment...

Jesus actually suffered in that sense when He willingly gave up not just the things that the world offers for our enjoyment, but the right to all the glory that went along with Him being 100% God.

There is a sense in which we share in that kind of suffering when we willingly give up our rights to the things that the world offers for our enjoyment. Many of those might very well be some of the things you listed earlier.

I think that is what Jesus had in mind in this often quoted verse:

Luke 9:23 ESV

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Jesus’ followers understood that the reference to the cross was a call to die each day to self because that is what Jesus did for us. If we are going to follow Him, we need to do the same.

Earlier I asked all of you to write down a list of some of your assets. And as we’ve seen so far, those assets are not necessarily bad things as log as we keep them in their proper perspective. Just like some of Paul’s assets were very beneficial to him in his ministry because he had a proper view of them, many of the assets in our life can be profitable to us in our ministry as long as we keep them in their proper perspective.

I am not saying here that we can’t enjoy those assets or the blessings that God gives to us. I’m just saying that just like Jesus, we are not to grasp them so tightly that we won’t willingly give them up in order to choose Jesus when that becomes necessary.

Action

This week I want to encourage all of you to take your list and put it up somewhere this week where you will see it often. And then use that as a catalyst for spending some time in prayer asking Jesus to help you always choose Him.

Inspiration

When I face opposition, the path to joy is to always choose Jesus

For me, this may very well be the most challenging principle for me to apply personally in this entire series so far. I am far too prone to attempt to fight back against opposition rather than cling to Jesus. So it’s not really all that surprising that there have been times in my life when I’ve missed out on the joy that Jesus desires for me. But with His help, I’m going to do my best to spend a lot more of my time getting to know Jesus better and a lot less time focusing on my opposition at all. And I’m looking forward to the joy that is going to bring to my life. I pray you’ll join me on that journey.