Philippians- What Really Matters

We're into week four of our series as we've been working through the book of Philippians. And if you've missed any of the previous weeks, this is only a fairly short series, only six weeks, it's only a short letter. And so we've got the six weeks. We. One of the things I'd really encourage you to do is to set aside some time, particularly if you've missed some of these messages, to listen to them all, to listen to them.

Whether or not you do it from start to finish in the one sitting, that might be a bit much, but maybe it's on your morning commute because what you'll get is a really good picture of the entirety of the letter or the entirety of the passage. If you're looking for a 35 week series, go onto our website and find the series we did in Acts. And that'll probably look after your morning commutes for a whole year. But we're into chapter three this morning, so if you've got your Bibles there with you, you can turn there. And one of the things that we will note in chapter three is that the tone shifts.

We've seen in the first couple of chapters some great encouragement, some really good stuff from Paul about his encouragement for the church at Philippi, particularly for their gospel partnership, their generosity to him. But then we get to the start of chapter three and you'll probably notice a noticeable shift in the tone of what Paul writes to them. Because Paul writes to them a warning. It's a serious warning, it's an urgent warning. And he writes to them, communicating that the biggest danger to our faith is not something.

Something out there in the world like we often think it is. It's not people who, you know, are anti Christians or anti God. The biggest danger to our faith is actually what's in our hearts. And we're gonna see that this morning as he writes this warning. And so we're gonna open up verse one of Philippians chapter three together.

And as we do that, let me pray. Oh, God, we come to your word now, and we ask that you would speak to us today. Lord, give us soft hearts, give us malleable minds that are ready and willing to be shaped and conformed to your ways and to your truth. And so we ask that you'd speak to us through your Holy Spirit today. Amen.

Amen. So verse one says this. Whatever happens, my dear brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. I never get tired of telling you these things, and I do it to safeguard your faith. Now, I don't know what version you've got there.

Some of the versions, Paul starts verse one of chapter three with finally. And I actually love that I almost changed to a different version this morning just to get that. Because Paul is only halfway through and his letter, and he goes, finally. It's like the pastor who, you know, me, probably, who, you know, just gets through the introduction. And I say as we wrap up.

And you know that when the pastor says, as we wrap up, there's still like, they're full flight, they've still got 20 minutes to go. And Paul, that's a biblical thing. Now, you've seen it there, right? Paul says finally. But actually we have it here translated, whatever happens.

And the Greek is kind of like, furthermore, he's moving on to the next idea. But we could spend our whole message just in verse one today, I reckon, because in verse one, Paul says, whatever comes next, whatever happens, whatever happens to me, whatever happens to you. Keep on rejoicing in the Lord. Now, this has been a theme of his letter. Maybe at the start of this series, if I had have said to you, what's the one main thing you know about Philippians?

A lot of people would say it's a letter about joy. It's the pervasive attitude that comes through it. Paul writes again and again and calls the church of Philippi to joy. Now, what he makes really clear to us is that joy is not a personality trait. I think some of us, maybe those of us who are a bit more solemn, think I just don't have a joyful personality.

But Paul actually says that joy is the steady attitude of the person who is maturing in Christ. Now, in verse one here, Paul makes the reason for this call to joy or to rejoicing even clearer because he says that if you rejoice in the Lord, no matter the circumstances, it safeguards your faith. And I think this is a really important point. And maybe if it's the only thing that you capture today, that's okay. Because Paul sees that rejoicing is not a little optional extra.

It's not something that you should do as a Christian. When life is going well, you can rejoice a little bit and then get back to your normal pattern. Paul actually says that rejoicing in the Lord is a safeguard. It's a protective factor in the life of the Christian. The Christian who is rejoicing in the Lord is protected against spiritual dangers.

Now, a few weeks ago, Cindy and I took our kids tempin bowling. Cindy loves tempin bowling. I don't really like ten pin bowling. When I was trying to work out why I don't really like it, I think it was because as a teenager I'd done really well. I'd gone tenpin bowling.

Thought I was pretty special. I just so happened to mention to my grandmother my score. I said, I think I got like 120 or something. I thought this was amazing. And she said, oh, that's good for you.

And I said, oh, you used to bowl a bit, didn't you? And I think her highest score was like 280 or something, or mid-280s. And so my grandmother, my elderly grandmother is saying, oh, good for you. I think it's that moment that I decided I don't like bowling.

But one of the things that is really cool is the bumpers. Now I don't get 120 with the bumpers. I should just clear that up. But the bumpers are a really good invention. And we had two kids who wanted to use them and one kid who insisted on not using the bumpers.

And for the first couple of frames, they did really poorly. Between lining it up, between the weight of the ball, between the balance of the, like, the release, all of that stuff is really hard. And they were really not enjoying themselves. And then all of a sudden they put their bumpers up and their enjoyment increased dramatically. They started actually knocking over pins.

They thought that this was a really fun thing to do. Now that was the image I got. When Paul says, rejoicing in the Lord is safeguarding your faith, it's safeguarding your faith. It's like the bumper's coming up. Because what he knows is that in the Christian life, disappointment will come.

There'll be suffering, there'll be times where you feel criticized, there'll be conflict. We're not immune to any of those things because it's part of living in a broken world. But Paul knows the thing that will keep the believers at Philippi and you and me on track is if we rejoice in the Lord. It's like those bumpers in the gutters there of the bowling lane. It's what pushes you back, bounces you back into the lane if you continue to rejoice in what Jesus has done for you and who he is.

And what I'd encourage you this morning is that if rejoicing is your rhythm, it's nearly impossible for bitterness and discouragement to take root in your life. If rejoicing in the Lord is your rhythm, it means that when you experience disappointment or discouragement because that will happen, that when we rejoice, we lift our eyes to Jesus and it strengthens our faith. And Paul says that to them in verse one. Because in verse two, he writes to them about a dangerous thought threat to their joy. And he says this.

Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say, you must be circumcised to be saved. So suddenly, Paul gives the believers a bit of an explanation for why he's been calling them to joy. And it's clear that perhaps word has reached him, probably through Epaphroditus, who brought the gift and is now taking the letter back to Philippi, that there are people amongst the church who are trying to draw the Christians away from their joy and the freedom that they've found in Christ. Now, those people that Paul is writing about are not people outside of the church. It's actually people within the church community.

He's writing about a group called the Judaizers. And the Judaizers were a group within the church who were Jewish members of the church. And what they were trying to convince the believers, the Gentile believers, was that if you really wanted to be saved, if you really wanted to be right with God, you needed to accept Christ, but you also needed to find the confidence of your salvation in the Old Testament law, that you needed to become Jewish and follow Christ. And if you did both of those things, that you'd be right with God. And what Paul knows is that this group present a really grave threat to the believers there.

And so he gives three warnings. He starts by calling them dogs. Now, when Cindy and I traveled to the Philippines, one of the things that amazes me is, is that if you go to a shopping center, there'll be people there with their dogs in prams. There'll be people there with dogs wearing nappies. I'm not joking.

They take them around the shopping centers and they take them with them wherever they go. But Paul's not talking about these domesticated, well groomed pets. At the time of his writing, dogs were feral. They roamed the street. They were.

They were dirty, flea infested, full of disease. And so you can imagine how confronting it would be for these Judaizers who were sitting there in the congregation at Philippi, who pride themselves in the way that they look, in the fact that they are righteous and they are clean and they are neat. And all of a sudden, the Apostle Paul says, watch out for those dogs. And then he says, they think they do good works, but what they actually do is Evil because they're distorting the Gospel. They think the works they are doing are making them right with God.

But Paul is saying you're actually adding burdens to people that Jesus never placed on them. You're making salvation about human merit and, and human effort, not about the gospel of grace. And then he says, you know how they tell you that circumcision, this custom of the old law is what makes you one of God's people and you need to do that to be right with God. He's saying they're not practicing something sacred before God, they're actually just mutilating the flesh.

It's pretty serious, isn't it? Like the rejoicing, joyful Paul is now the serious urgent warning Paul. And then he gives them the heart of the gospel that they received through Jesus. In verse three he says this. For we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised.

We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort. You see, Paul's given them three warnings and now he gives them three reminders about the focus of what Paul says are true believers. And he says a true believer firstly focuses on the work of the Spirit in salvation. Secondly, a true believer relies on what Jesus did right rather than the Old Testament law.

And then third, they don't put their hope in their own works, but on the person and work of Christ. That for Paul is the measure. He says they don't focus on their own works, they focus on the work of Christ. And then he says this in verse four. He goes on to say, though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could.

Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more. I was circumcised when I was 8 days old. I am a pure blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a real Hebrew if there ever was one. I was a member of the Pharisees who demanded the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church.

And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault. Now I wonder if you can picture the Judaizers sitting there in the Philippian Church. I can kind of imagine that even that day as they've come to hear this letter from the Apostle Paul, they've come in excited. And as they've come in they've been chatting and saying to the non Jewish Christians, hey, don't forget what I was talking to you about last week. Don't forget what I said to you, that, you know, if you really want to be right with God, then you need to become a Jew.

If you want to be as righteous as we are, if you want to be as good as we are, if you want to be as favored by God as we are, you need to follow the law. You need to follow the old customs. And here they are with Paul. He has them in his sights. He says to them, if you think that you can be confident in, in your own efforts, if you think that your background makes you right with God, check out mine.

If you wanna have that competition, check out my spiritual resume because it's unmatchable. Paul's ticked every box. He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day. In other words, right from birth. He was brought up according to the law.

He says, I'm a pure blooded citizen of Israel. He's not a gentile convert or Satan, someone on the fringes of God's covenant people. He's right there in the center. Then he says, more than that, I'm from the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin was a significant tribe.

They stayed loyal to God. They gave Israel its first king. And he says, more than that, I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews. What he means by this is that at a time when the Greek and the Roman culture were pulling many Jewish people away from, from their roots, his family had held firm. They kept the language, they'd kept the customs, they'd kept their heritage.

Now that's great for Paul, but none of those things did he choose for himself. That was how he was born. But then he goes on to the things he did choose for himself. He says, as for the law, I became a Pharisee. Now we talk a lot about the Pharisees because they come up a lot in the Gospels.

They are, you know, speaking against Jesus. And Jesus challenges them quite a bit. But the Pharisees were the spiritual elite amongst the Jews. This was the group that really held fast to holding the law. They were like really serious about their faith.

And there wasn't that many of them. There was only probably around 6,000 of them. And Paul says, I was one of those. And then he says, concerning zeal, I wasn't half hearted. I was so desperate to hold to the law to protect God that I went around putting down Christians, hunting them down because they were going to challenge God's covenant people.

And then he says, as for righteousness concerning the law, I was faultless. Now it's not a deluded Paul thinking that he was sinless. It simply means that on all the outward requirements of keeping the law, Paul says, I kept them all. I've done it. He's saying, if anyone has reason to be confident in their background, in their spiritual record, in their righteousness against the law, it was me.

It was me. I trump you all. But then he says something that I think would have shocked them even more, because in verse seven, he says this. I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

For his sake, I've discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law. Rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith. And so, after listing all the reasons he could have confidence in his own righteousness, Paul demonstrates a remarkable exchange.

He uses accounting language here. Now, I know very little about accounting language, but he says, I moved the things that I considered as assets, the things that I thought were in the plus column of my spiritual life, of my righteousness. I moved them into the loss of column. I moved them into a lost column. You see, when he'd met Jesus on the road to Damascus, it completely changed what he considered to be valuable.

From that moment, everything that he had once considered as important, everything he's built his life around, now looked completely different in the light of grace. And I love the fact that he says here that the value of knowing Jesus is infinite. Now, I don't know much about accounting, but here's what I do get. If something's of infinite value, then nothing. It doesn't matter how many things you have, they don't come close to comparing.

And that's what's happened to Paul. He discovered that knowing Jesus, not just knowing about Jesus, but actually walking with Jesus, being found in Christ, was worth way more than anything he inherited or anything he could achieve. And just in case we missed how serious this is, Paul says, for this sake, I have discarded everything else, considering it as garbage that I might gain Christ. Now, the word used here in the Greek says to us that the garbage is actually a bit of a soft translation, because what Paul actually says, the word he used was rotting waste or dung. He's literally said that his previous gains, his previous attempts at righteousness are repulsive.

They're repulsive if he tries to cling to them. But for the sake of righteousness. It's like he's saying not only do they not help me, they actually get in the way.

Now I want us to see the distinction here because he's not saying that the law or his background were wrong in and of themselves. He's saying that if you trust those things to make you right with God, you've missed the whole point. Because it's not Jesus plus your achievements or Jesus plus your righteousness, or Jesus plus your heritage, or Jesus plus your history. It's Jesus only. And I actually think that that's hugely freeing.

It should bring with it joy, but it's also massively challenging. Because what Paul has said is I had to give away, I had to remove all, all of my own attempts at self made righteousness so that I could gain Christ. He saw that he had to let it all go. Every title, every achievement, every bit of pride he had to let go to have Christ. Now what Paul describes here and what he's describing in verse nine is a really important theological perspective, theological truth.

It's called justification through faith. And what it means is that we're made right with God not because of anything we've done, but simply by trusting in what Jesus has done for us. Now I know lots of us have come to the Christian faith through various backgrounds and some out of different faith traditions, but that's a key concept that we need to get, is that we're made right with God because of what Jesus has done, not because of what we've done. And then Paul finishes with these two verses. He says, I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.

I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I'll experience the resurrection from the dead. Now it sounds like a bit of a weird way to finish. This section obviously goes on writing the letter and we'll look at that in the coming weeks. But be reasonable to say, how can the living know the mighty power that raised Christ from the dead? And this is what Paul is saying.

He's actually said it over in Ephesians as well, where he says that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is at work within those who believe. He's not talking about an abstract idea or a nice thought. He's saying, I want resurrection power to shape the way that I live. I want it to shape the way I respond to hardship. I want it to be how I keep going when I'm weary, how I overcome sin, how I live with Boldness and joy.

And it's this complete acknowledgement that you can't live in your own strength, that your good works are nothing more than dung or rotting garbage. He's saying, I want to know the power not of my own works, but the power of the risen Christ in my life. But he says something even stranger. He says, I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, that I might experience, one way or another, the resurrection from the dead. Like, Paul knew suffering.

So this isn't just an abstract idea. He knew suffering. And I reckon if suffering was a competition, he'd win that one too. Like, he doesn't just win the righteousness competition, he wins the suffering competition as well. Because he'd given it all up to follow Jesus.

He'd been beaten, he'd been abandoned, he'd been betrayed, he'd been arrested, he'd been shipwrecked. And now he's in prison awaiting likely death. And even then he says, I want to suffer with Christ. Now, we might hear that and we think, paul, what's wrong with you? Like, do you have.

Like, are you chasing suffering? Do you enjoy suffering? And I'm confident he didn't enjoy it, just like you and me don't enjoy it. But what he's saying is that if suffering draws me closer to Jesus, then I'm willing. Because what he knew was that suffering with Christ or suffering for Christ, he discovered something about Jesus that you can't discover anywhere else.

There's a kind of closeness that comes with Christ when you walk the same road that Jesus walked. And this is Paul's hope in it all is a resurrection. See, he's not just embracing suffering for the sake of suffering. He knows that every step, every trial, every moment of fellowship with Christ leads him closer to that final day when he'll rise with Jesus in glory. And so that brings us to the end of this section, so I can actually say honestly, finally, finally, as we close, I have one idea for you today.

Over in Matthew 13, in the midst of all of these parables, there's a parable that's only two lines long, and it says this. The kingdom of heaven is like a great merchant who's looking for fine pearls. He finds one of great value. And so he sold everything he owned and bought it. Now, occasionally, we'll be out driving, and my kids will say to me, they'll see a fancy car and they'll say, hey, can we afford that?

And I'll say, yes. And they'll be like, this is amazing. And then I'LL say, we would have to sell our house and everything we owned. And then we could live in that car and you couldn't go to that school. And you know, here are all the.

We couldn't eat, but we would have the car. We would have the car. It's crazy, isn't it? Like, and I think when you Express that, even 8 year olds go, oh, yeah, okay, that doesn't really work out. But that's what this parable is saying that the kingdom of heaven is like this merchant who sees a pearl and he sells everything he has.

And so at the end of it, he's got a pearl and nothing else. Like, it doesn't make sense. He has no food to eat, he has no clothes, he doesn't have a home. But Paul is here talking about this same great exchange. You see, as he's writing to the church of Philippi and as he's reflecting, he lays it all out.

He says the things that once seemed important to me. My background, my role as a Pharisee, the wealth and the status I had, my. My self righteousness through keeping the law, everything that I'd accumulated back then, when I came to know Jesus, I swapped them all for the kingdom of God.

And now he writes this letter to them. He's in prison. He knows death isn't fun. He knows that his earthly ministry is winding to a close. He's walked through so much suffering with more suffering ahead of him.

And it's like Paul's looking back over his life and what does he say?

The thing that he says, having counted the cost, having stacked up the losses versus the gain, he says it was worth, was worth it. Trading all of those things to know Christ, trading everything that made me who I am in terms of my own righteousness and my place in society, all of those things, I traded them in to be made right with God because of what Jesus had done, I gave all of them up for the kingdom of God. And now the much older, older Paul looks back over his life and he says it was worth, was worth it. And I think what he would say to us today is if you give up everything that you're holding to that you think makes you right with God, if you give up everything that is getting in between you and the kingdom of God, whether it's the decisions that you're holding onto, whether it's the way you've structured your life, whether it's the things that you value in front of Jesus, Paul would say to you, if you give them up for knowing Christ, and being found in him. When you get to the end of your life, you'll be able to say the same.

You'll look back over your life and you'll say, it was worth it. And so that's my encouragement to you today, Church, is to think, what are the things that are in front of my life? What am I organizing my life around? What have I made my righteousness in? What is the most important thing for me that I think I have to do because I want to do it?

What's getting in the way of walking with Jesus? Whatever those obstacle or hurdles are, my encouragement to you today would say swap them for the kingdom of God, because it is worth it. Let's pray.

Oh God, we come to you now and we ask that you would reveal to us whether there are things in our lives that are standing in the way of no, in Christ, Lord, whether there are things that we are holding onto for our own righteousness, Lord, whether there are maybe even on the other side. We think that we can never be right with you because of the things that we've done. Lord, we thank you that we find in Christ all that's needed for being right with you. And so, Lord, I pray that you would help us to have our balance sheet the right way, that we would put everything else in that lost column and straight it in for knowing you and knowing in that that you give us life, that there is a freedom, that there is a liberty that is found in knowing you and that there is a joy in it. We ask God that you would help us, that you would guide us through your Holy Spirit, that you transform us.

We pray in Jesus name. Amen.