Philippians 3:1-11
During the announcements, two
things. One is that the choir will begin rehearsals next week.
So if you’re interested in serving in the choir, that’s next Sunday,
the 20th at 5 p.m. before the evening service. And
then also, if you’re interested in singing the national anthem
at this Tuesday night’s Royals game, we rehearse one more time
tonight after evening service. And then I think we have to be
at the ballpark at 630 on Tuesday. So if you’re interested, just
let me know. Our reading from God’s Word today
is from Philippians chapter 3 verses 1 through 11. So please make
your way to Philippians chapter 3. In Philippians chapter three,
the Apostle Paul is going to begin with the word finally.
Now, many of you know that when the preacher says finally, that
means he’s going to go on a little bit longer, right? Well, in the
New Testament language, when somebody like the Apostle Paul
writes the word finally, he really means I’m not done yet. He doesn’t
mean that. He means I’m going to start a
new subject. And so remember that the Apostle
Paul has been speaking to the Philippian church and to us.
regarding how we should live as faithful Christians. We are
to use the Lord Jesus who left heaven and served us sacrificially
as an example. We saw last week that we are
to look at examples like Paul and Timothy at Paphroditus as
examples of how to live. Now today he’s gonna begin to
speak to us about the enemies that are within the Philippian
church and they are facing heresy, false teaching, Jesus plus something
else equals salvation. And so the Apostle Paul is going
to remind us over the next couple weeks what it means to be sound
in the faith. And so with that in mind let
us hear God’s Word. Philippians chapter 3 beginning at verse
1. 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 real circumcision
who worship Christ by the Spirit of God and glory in Jesus Christ
and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reason
for confidence in the flesh, 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 a loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as
a 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 share
in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any
means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Amen. This is God’s word. Pray with
me. Lord, we pray now that your holy word would be a blessing
to us, that it would strengthen us and encourage us and nurture
us in our most holy faith. And we pray that by your Holy
Spirit, in Jesus’ name, amen. Back in the month of May at our
Young at Heart luncheon, we had a guest with us from Campus Outreach
at Elon University. Campus Outreach is an evangelical
ministry that is from the Presbyterian Church in America. Our local
chapter comes out of Christ’s Covenant Presbyterian Church
down in Matthews, just south of Charlotte. And at this luncheon,
we had not only the local director, but we had one of the young men
who was just graduating from Elon and who had been influenced
by campus outreach. And so as they made their presentation
to us, one of the things they did is they showed us a video
And in this video, they took a camera and as they shoved the
camera into the faces of various young people around college campuses,
they were asked this question, what is the gospel? And as you
watched this video of all these clips of young men and women
who are supposed to be our country’s best and brightest as they’re
enrolled in our colleges and universities, you quickly begin
to realize they know nothing about the gospel or its content. They knew nothing or very little
about what it is that is contained in the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, one of the reasons we were
shown this video is to show dire are the circumstances on college
campuses, how little of the gospel there is, how dark a place is
the campus. And so the hope was that we would
be compelled, we would be inspired to support the work of gospel
ministry on our local campus. And that’s something we as a
congregation do. We give thanks to the Lord for
their ministry and our opportunity to partner. But one of the things
that we did at the end of this presentation, the young man who
was just graduating from Elon and had played football and was
influenced by the gospel, we said to him during the question
and answer time, how would you answer that question? If the
camera was in your face and you were asked, what is the gospel?
And maybe some of you remember that event when this young fella
spit out this wonderful, clear communication of what is the
gospel and how it benefits us. You might say he had a home run
or in his case as a football player, he scored a touchdown. But I want to tell you it is
all too common. It is sadly too common within
the church and outside the church that when you ask people, what
is the gospel? You generally do not get a good
answer. You generally do not hear a answer that is biblical
and that is full of gospel hope. Now, the Apostle Paul, when he’s
writing his letter to the Philippians, is warning them. He is warning
them about them losing sight of the gospel. And let me tell
you how that is possible. Just this week, our men’s study,
as we make our way through J.I. Packer’s 18 words, we landed
on the study of the devil. Now, you might say the study
of the devil is not too exciting. very informative though. And
one of the things our author said to us in our study is that
we need to understand who is the devil and what is he up to.
And not only what is he up to, what are his tactics? And one
of the things our little study on the devil said, which is very
true in this day and age, very sad, he said these words. He
said, the Bible is no longer believed. The gospel is not thoroughly
preached. And post-Christian paganism is
sweeping like wildfire through America. And the assessment,
I think, is very true. But what’s really sad is this.
The devil is often at work in the church. And he’s got it easy. Because we so quickly water down
the gospel, we so quickly forget the core essentials of what is
the gospel. What is it really about? Who
is it really about? What is contained in it? And
how is it effectual and a blessing to us as Christians? And think
about this. When you become a Christian,
Jesus kicks the devil out of the cockpit of your life. He
is no longer at the helm. He is no longer at the controls.
He is no longer in the driver’s seat and Jesus enters your life.
And what do you think it is the devil is wanting to do for the
rest of your life as a Christian? He’s wanting to switch drivers.
He wants to be back in control of you. He wants to be back in
control of your destiny. He wants to be back in control
of your spirituality. And thanks be to God that when
we come to faith in Jesus, Jesus stays and remains in control,
though it may get hairy and scary and difficult. We need to understand
that Satan is a real threat. The devil is a real threat to
the church. And sometimes, as we’re seeing in our day and time,
he works his way through the church and he waters down the
gospel in such a way that we forget all that we are in Christ
and all that we have in Jesus. And the Apostle Paul is warning
the Philippians. He’s going to warn us today about
that. And he’s going to say to us, don’t let the dogs destroy
your joy. And so he begins in verse one
of chapter three. Finally, my brothers, Rejoice
in the Lord to write the same things to you is no trouble to
me and is safe for you. And so he’s going to issue in
this first part of our study of what is the sound faith. He’s
going to issue a warning to us. We need to be on the lookout.
We need to be on the watch. We need to be ready for those
who will come in the church. and pretending they are Christians,
professing faith in Jesus, lodging themselves in the teaching function
of the church, and ensconcing themselves in the life and ministry
of a congregation. He’s going to say, watch out
for them. They will steal your joy. Now apparently the Apostle
Paul has said this to them before. He said something to them about
this very subject and he says, don’t worry about it. I don’t
mind repeating myself. You know how it is with preachers.
We can talk on and on and on, and some of you add on and on
and on even more, but we we can get repetitive. But repetition
is good when there’s a purpose, and so the apostle says it’s
no trouble for me to write this to you. to say the same thing,
to repeat myself, it’s actually safe for you. But he warns them,
look out for the joy stealers. And he calls them three very
specific names, look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers,
look out for the mutilators. Now, who is he speaking about?
What is the context in the church at Philippi that Paul is speaking
into? Well, there are what we call Judaizers present. They
are those who have some background in the Jewish faith and they
are mixing together the Jewish faith and the Jewish legal requirements
of living a faithful Jewish life. They’re mixing it with Christianity.
And Christianity on the one hand says, trust in the Lord Jesus
and in Him alone put your faith and trust for your salvation.
Judaism, on the other hand, says follow these laws, follow these
rituals, keep these practices, and your righteousness will be
yours. And so these are two different
ways of relating to Almighty God. And so he’s saying to them,
he’s He’s writing a letter that will be read in public and no
doubt these false teachers will be present when the letter is
read. They will hear what the Apostle Paul is saying to them
and about them. And so he calls these Judaizers
dogs. Now remember in the days of the
Old Covenant, who were the dogs? The dogs were not the Jewish
people. The dogs were the Gentiles. And so here is the Apostle Paul
writing a letter to a largely Gentile church saying, watch
out for the dogs. And he’s calling the Judaizers
the dogs. It’s a derogatory term. It’s
not a term of endearment. Watch out for the evil doers.
Watch out for those who do wickedness. Now, if you’re a Judaizer, in
your own opinion, in your own estimation of yourself, you say,
I do all the right things. I keep all the right laws and
observances and therefore I am a good doer, not an evildoer. And the Apostle is saying, watch
out for the dogs, they’re the outsiders, but watch out for
the evildoers, they keep you from the gospel of the Lord Jesus.
Now, we might say in the church from time to time it’s not nice
to call people names. You know, didn’t our mommies
and daddies teach us sticks and stones may make our bones, but
words can never hurt us and the words really do. And you know,
we remember all those little nursery rhyme jingles. No, it’s
not nice to call people names. But it is proper to name the
animals. And that is exactly what the
apostle is doing here. He is saying this is the problem
in the church. And this is what those people
are and what they are doing. They are dogs. They are outsiders. They are evil doers. They are
perverting the gospel. They are preventing the gospel.
And then he adds another little name to his list. He calls them mutilators. Now
in just a moment, the Apostle Paul is going to say to the Philippians,
you are of the real circumcision. So you see where he’s going with
that. These are the folks who require that when you become
a Christian, you must also be circumcised according to the
practice of the Jewish faith. And that is not the case. Remember
the first council of the church in Acts chapter 15. What did
the apostles do? They determined that faith in
Christ alone was sufficient for salvation and that circumcision
was not necessary. And so here sometime later, there
is a group saying if you want to be a real Christian, if you
want to be a spiritual Christian, if you want to be a faithful
Christian, you need this mark of circumcision placed upon you.
Now, what is the only mark? that God requires to be put upon
a new profession of faith in Christ. It’s baptism. It’s not
circumcision. It’s baptism. And so the Apostle
Paul, when he’s speaking about these joy stealers, those that
the Philippian church need to look out for, he calls them dogs,
evildoers, mutilators. He says they are taking your
joy from you by adding to the Christian faith. And so what
is the church at Philippi to do? Well, they are to recognize
these enemies, these false teachers. They are to recognize the heresy
for what it is for. You see, we are not saved by
faith in Jesus plus something else. Jesus plus something else
does not equal salvation. Jesus plus nothing equals salvation. We put our faith, our trust,
our hope in him alone for our salvation. Now we live in the
South. We live in the southern United States and we can sort
of be like the Judaizers from time to time. What is it we say
in the South? We don’t drink and smoke and
cuss and chew and go with girls that do, right? That’s our little
saying. Or sometimes we may add something like we don’t dance
or we have to home educate our children or we have to have this
many kids or we have to, you name the badge And you add that
to Jesus and you’re an extra special Christian. And that’s
all over our country. It’s all over the southern United
States. We live in the Bible Belt. We live in the area where
we have so many badges, but somehow we sometimes forget the badge
that really matters, and that’s faith in Jesus. And so just like
the Philippians had the Judaizers in their midst, sometimes as
Christians in America, we can have other Christians in our
midst who add a certain rule, a certain ritual, a certain way
of life and say this plus Christ equals faithfulness. And that
is never the case. Now let me say this positively.
Is it sometimes required of us to nurture and to shape our lives
in such a way that it helps us be more faithful as Christians.
And you know what the answer to that is? It’s yes. Sometimes
we remove ourselves from the world a little bit more than
a previous generation did. Sometimes we educate our families
a certain way. Sometimes we don’t hang out with
those who drink, smoke, or chew or go with girls that do. Sometimes
living a separate life is necessary. but it can’t save us, and it
for sure is not a mark of our salvation. And so the Apostle
Paul here in this couple verses beginning of chapter 3, he’s
going to tell us a few things that do mark us out as Christians,
that do reflect to the world who are looking in on us and
saying to us, These are what faithful Christians
look like. This is what the followers of Christ must be like. And so
there’s a couple of things. He mentions these in verse 3. He says, For we are the real
circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in
Christ Jesus, and we put no confidence in the flesh. I want to focus
for just a moment on these couple of things. The big picture he
speaks of here is that we are the circumcision, verse 3 tells
us. We are the real circumcision.
Think for just a moment about what is taking place spiritually
in the act of circumcision or baptism. God is removing from
us our old nature. He is removing from us, as the
Old Testament says, our heart of stone. And He’s giving us
a heart of flesh. Now when does that take place?
It takes place at the cross. Jesus died for you. Jesus died
for your heart of stone, and in his death he gave a great
exchange, your heart of stone for a heart of flesh. That’s
what the New Covenant in Jeremiah was speaking about. I will give
you a new heart. And so, think about that in light
of outward rituals. God has worked in you inwardly.
And no outward ritual, though some are necessary in the Christian
faith, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but no outward ritual
saves you. It’s the circumcision of your
heart by Christ Himself as He died in your place and He brought
about the forgiveness of your sins and has given you a new
heart that will beat for Him, that will follow Him and love
Him and serve Him. And so, in verse 3 of chapter
3, it says, we are the real circumcision. The Apostle Paul is saying to
the Philippians, who have a little band of false teachers, the Judaizers,
in their midst, he’s saying, if you’re in Christ Jesus by
faith, you are the real circumcision. And he’s, in a sense, saying
to these others, this circumcision you’re speaking about and that
you are requiring of on these Christian converts, It’s not
the real deal. It’s fake, as we call it. It’s
false. It is man-made. It is human-centered. And so Paul is assuring the Philippians,
you are the real circumcision in Christ. And he’s gonna give
three ways that is on display. The first way that is on display
in verse three is this, we worship by the Spirit of God. Now remember when Jesus was on
his earthly ministry, he ended up one day about midday at a
well in Samaria. Now remember the Samaritans and
the Jews did not get along. The Samaritans were the people
who entered the northern part of the land when the northern
tribes were exiled to Assyria. So the Samaritans and the Jews
did not get along. You remember the story about
the good Samaritan. Well, this Samaritan woman also
was a woman of ill repute, we might say. She worked in a trade
or an industry that was frowned upon by any normal decent person. And what did Jesus do? He sat
down and said, I need a drink. And she brought him a drink and
he said, if you want something to drink that will never cause
you to thirst again, drink from me, the living water. And then
they went on to speak about how God’s people worship in spirit
and truth. Now, what does that mean to worship in spirit and
truth? Well, contrast that with the old covenant people of Israel.
They did not worship God in spirit. No, they went to the temple.
They went to the sacrifice. They went to the altar. They
brought things. They did rituals. They followed
practices. If you read the book of Leviticus,
it was a lot of busy and bloody work. to be able to enter the
presence of God. And thanks be to God that we
now worship God in spirit and truth through the precious blood
of the Lord Jesus. And we have entrance round the
clock to God’s presence and into his worship. And so he says in
verse three, we are the real circumcision who worship by the
spirit of God. And so think about this for a
moment as you look around the landscape of the church. And
you see all kinds of people worshiping God in all kinds of ways, not
prescribed by God and his holy word. Remember, God wants to
be worshiped in the way he wants to be worshiped. And so how do
we worship God? We worship God the way he tells us to worship
him. But over time, what happens in the church? Not only does
the gospel get diluted, Jesus plus something equals gospel.
Well, that’s wrong. But we often have to find ourselves
cleaning up worship and saying this ritual, this practice, this
exercise is not commanded by God. And sometimes, you know,
we can put our faith and our hope and our trust in rituals. The apostle here is saying, no,
we worship by the Spirit of Almighty God. Verse 3 tells us, we are
the real circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God. It’s not
by rituals. Yes, we do things. It’s not by
practices. We do practice things. It’s simply
by the Spirit of Almighty God. And so whatever these false teachers
have been saying, you need to do this, that, and the other,
Paul is saying, nope, we worship by the Spirit of Christ. The
second thing he mentions is their glory. They glory in Christ Jesus. Now if you talk to most people
today, and you get in a conversation, they’re going to ask a couple
questions. One is, where did you come from? Maybe another
question is, who are your people? And what’s the third question?
Where did you go to school? See, we want to know people’s
pedigree. What’s your family? What’s your geographic origin? What’s your education? And on
and on we can go about our pedigrees. We can speak about how much money
we make, how much we’ve got saved. We can speak of what we’ve accomplished
in this life, how many things we’ve invented. We can speak
of how many children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren. All these
things which are wonderful, they’re gifts from God. And what is the
Apostle saying here? We glory in Christ. We glory
in Jesus alone knowing that it is him alone who has brought
us salvation. So we are the real circumcision
who worship by the spirit of God and we glory in Christ Jesus. We do not put our glory in things,
in pedigree, or in what can be measured on human terms. We simply
glory in Christ. Now why is it that we glory in
Jesus? Because he has come to us in our sin and misery. He has died in our place. He
has paid for our sins. He has bought us at a great price.
He has loved us with an everlasting love. He has sent his spirit
and put that spirit in us. And it is by that spirit we cry,
Abba, Father. And that did not come from our
own upbringings. It didn’t come from the wealth
of our family or the generations behind us. It did not come from
our workplace. It did not come from our education.
It did not come from our DNA and our genes. It simply came
as a free gift of God from heaven through Jesus. And so we glory
in nothing else. Notice there’s a third thing
that he speaks of. We are the real circumcision
who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus.
And we, thirdly, put no confidence in the flesh. And friends, here
is where we must understand the gospel. We must understand that
when we come to Jesus, we come with nothing but a load of sin. We come with nothing but wearing
filthy rags. We come with nothing but deserving
God’s wrath and his punishment and his curse. And so as chapter
three, verse three tells us, we put no confidence in the flesh.
And let me say this to you. If you think that you have something
in your belt or in your purse or in your pockets, that can
merit any favor with almighty God. You have not read the scriptures. You have not read the gospel.
You have not read Jesus. What is that song we sing? naked
come to thee for dress. Nothing in my hands I bring,
simply to the cross I cling. We come with nothing, we come
empty, but we leave full, full of God’s grace and mercy and
truth. We put no confidence in the flesh. Our salvation before Almighty
God is not a tipping of the scales. Hopefully, there’s more good
than bad. And, you know, dear brothers and sisters, apart from
Christ, we have nothing. Apart from Christ, we are nothing.
Apart from Christ, we are empty. Apart from Christ, we are dead.
Apart from Christ, we have hearts of stone. Apart from Christ,
We have heaped up a mountain of debt, of sin, that we can
never find atonement for apart from Jesus. And so you see why
the Apostle Paul doesn’t mind repeating himself to the Philippians.
Finally, my brothers, he says, rejoice in the Lord. It’s not
a problem for me to repeat myself. In fact, it’s safe for you. And you know, It’s safe for us
as Christians here in 2017 to hear the truth of God’s word
and to hear over and against all the voices of the world,
all the voices of the gurus and the Mr. and Mrs. Smartypants
who think they know everything and they get a TV show or a magazine
sold on the grocery store aisles. It’s good for us to hear from
God’s word where he says, if you’ve got your faith in me,
You’ve got no confidence in the flesh, but you have glory in
Christ. You worship by the Spirit of
God and you are the real circumcision over and against the world who
remains unclean. God in Christ has made you clean.
It is good for us to hear these things again and be reminded
that though the world is yelling loudly in our ears saying, this
is true, that is true, believe this, follow that. that the Word
of God is consistent and it tells us who we are and who God is
and what is required of us. And so, dear brothers and sisters,
over the next couple weeks as we look at various pieces of
Philippians chapter 3, let us remember what it means to be
sound in the faith. You know this little word, soundness,
means whole. It’s probably an orthopedic word.
If you have an unsound bone, it’s brittle, it’s broken, it’s
cracked, and it needs mending. And you know the Bible does for
us week after week as we submit ourselves to us. It takes unsound,
unwhole bodies And it fixes us and it makes
things straight and strong and ready. And dear brothers and
sisters, we want to be sound in the faith so that when the
world preaches at us, we know how to shut our ears and to stop
those voices and to say we listen to the one true voice, the voice
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray with me, if you will. Our
Lord and God, we bless you that you come to us often and you
remind us of what is good and right and true when the world,
even the church, distorts the gospel, when the devil enters
into the church and seeks to water down and to mellow out
the strength and the beauty and the glory of the gospel of the
Lord Jesus. We thank you that you come rushing back in and
by your word and spirit, by the pen of the apostle Paul, through
the voice of the preachers, you remind us of the true gospel. You remind us who we are by faith
in Jesus and you give us so many good and precious things. We
ask and pray for your help and grace and blessing as we live
life in this fallen world to remember the truth and not to
be taken captive yet again by the devil. And we pray it in
the name of Jesus. Amen. Let us respond to God’s
goodness as we sing together from our hymnals, Be Thou My
Vision, number 382. Mm-mm. One of the great ways we know
that our salvation is through the Lord Jesus is the scripture
reminds us over and over that it is God who blesses us, who
keeps us, who watches over us. Now think for just a moment at
this point in the service when we’re expecting God to bless
us, what if it were salvation by works plus Jesus? I would
have to say something to you like go and work hard and be
good. and where you fail, trust God.
But what does God say? It’s all me. And so he sends
you with his blessings so that you may do what is good. So look
up, receive it now. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace now
and forevermore. And all God’s people said, amen.