Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. And if you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from the book of
Philippians, Paul's epistle to the church at Philippi, Philippians
chapter three. Now I've dealt with this chapter
several times on this program and in my preaching at our church.
It's one of my favorite chapters because it is such a very, very
good description of the issues of what it is to be a believer,
what it is to be a Christian, true Christian, what faith is,
what repentance is, what obedience is. So we're going to look at
this chapter, and I'm going to deal with it in different parts.
This will be part one. The title of the message is Every
Believer's Desire. Every Believer's Desire. Now,
when we come to what a person wants out of life, their goals
and things like that. When it comes to salvation, it's
a whole different realm of existence. Because as the Bible teaches
us that we as human beings, the human race, that we fell into
a state of sin and death, spiritual death, and ultimately physical
death, in Adam when Adam fell in the garden. Romans chapter
5 and verse 12 speaks of that as in Adam, you know talking
about Adam fall He fell into sin disobeying God following
his wife instead of following God and He brought the whole
human race into a state of sin and death the Bible there in
Romans 5 and verse 12 says that all sinned in Adam And so the
only hope of salvation is to find righteousness and life in
the Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, the scripture
tells us that before the foundation of the world, God chose a people
to save and gave them to Christ. So when we talk about our natural
state, And I quote this verse all the
time, 1 Corinthians 2.14, the natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them. They're
spiritually discerned or understood. The natural man there is all
of us by nature as we are naturally born into this world as fallen,
depraved, ignorant, not ignorant in the sense of worldly things,
but ignorant of the spiritual issues of salvation and how to
have a right relationship with God. And so by nature, as we
are naturally born, we are spiritually dead, spiritually depraved, in
unbelief. And that's why salvation has
to be by grace, not conditioned on us, but conditioned on Christ. And that's why we must be born
again by the Holy Spirit. You must be born again, Christ
said, or you cannot see the kingdom of God. You cannot enter the
kingdom of God. We've got to be given new hearts. Now the heart refers to the mind,
the affections, the will, the conscience, and the desires. And of course, even ones who
are born again by the Spirit, we still have the remaining influence
of sinful flesh. We have sinful desires, but we
also have godly desires. And these godly desires is what
I'm gonna talk about as we go through Philippians chapter three,
because they are a gift from God. We don't have those by nature,
not godly desires. Now I know by nature we can be
religious, we can want to go to heaven, we can try to work
our way into heaven, but that's not a godly desire. And so we're
talking about godly desires, every true believer's desire. And in this book of Philippians
chapter three, we're gonna see several things, but one of the
things I wanted to bring to your attention before we get into
the verses is that one of the titles for the Lord Jesus Christ
in the Old Testament is that He is referred to or described
as the desire of all nations. Now, that's not every person
in the world because every person in the world does not desire
Christ. Now they might desire salvation,
they might desire eternal life, they might desire to go to heaven,
but the Bible says Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, and here's
the important thing now, the Lord Jesus Christ, not just that
name or not some idea of Christ, but Christ as he is defined,
described, and distinguished in the book of God, the Bible.
Christ is God manifest in the flesh. He's God man, the word
made flesh. And do you desire that Christ? Because there are false Christ.
And then Christ is the one who as the surety, the substitute,
the redeemer and the preserver of his people, substituted himself
in the place of his people, God's elect, and obeyed unto death,
even the death of the cross, and Paul wrote about that in
Philippians chapter two, gave him a name which is above every
name, and he secured by his obedience unto death, by the merits of
his obedience unto death, his blood, his righteousness, that
righteousness which God has imputed to his people, by that work,
Christ secured secured finally and fully the complete salvation
of every sinner for whom he died on that cross, his sheep. Not
for every individual in the whole world. Those who preach Christ
died for everybody conditionally upon their choice. In other words,
that he died for everybody and it's made effectual by your choice.
That's not the Christ of this book. If you desire him, you're
desiring a false Christ. But the true Christ of the Bible
made the salvation of his people sure, for he shall save his people
from their sins. Do you desire that Christ? That's
what I'm talking about. Well, if God has given you eyes
to see and ears to hear, a new heart, new mind in the new birth,
he is going to be your desire. I want to come to Christ. That's my desire. And so we're
gonna talk about every true believer's desire. So let's go back to Philippians
chapter three, verse one. Paul's concluding the letter
to the Philippians. He's beginning his conclusion
here. He says, finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. And the
word rejoice there has to do with being happy. In other words,
when I come to a saving knowledge of Christ, Not only do I realize
that I'm saved by the grace of God, through the blood and righteousness
of Christ, God manifests in the flesh, but I'm happy about it.
I rejoice in it, rejoice in the Lord, always. We have a way of
salvation, and it's not by our works. If you're rejoicing in
a salvation that you've attained or are maintaining by your works,
my friend, you're rejoicing in something that's false. It's
euphoria, a false sense of joy and peace. But if you rejoice
in the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone accomplished my salvation
and secured it by His merits, His obedience, His death on the
cross. My sins are washed away by the blood of the cross. All
my sins. They're not washed away by my
tears or my desires to do better. I have a desire to do better,
but that's not what washes away my sins. That I'm the blood of
Christ. What can wash away my sins? Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. And then I stand before God righteous,
not by my works, but in the righteousness of Christ imputed. And Paul's
gonna be dealing with that when he talks about his desire to
be found in Christ. Not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith or
the faithfulness of Christ. Even our faith is a gift from
God. And it's not our faith, our believing
that saves us, it's Christ that saves us and our believing is
the gift of God that connects us spiritually to Christ. so
that when we believe on Him, we are spiritually in our hearts,
in our minds, in our affections, in our wills, in our consciences,
and in our desires, we're spiritually connected to Christ. And we find
that in that faith, the knowledge that God gives us by revelation,
who we are as sinners who cannot save ourselves, who Christ is
as the one and only Savior, who God is as both a just God and
a Savior, all of that. So he says, rejoice in the Lord. And that's a desire of every
believer. I want to rejoice, but I don't
rejoice in myself or in my works. I rejoice in Christ. He is my
Lord, my righteousness. He is my mediator. He's my advocate. And he says,
to write the same things to you, to me is indeed not grievous,
but for you it's safe. Now, Paul had written to these
Philippians as he had to other churches of these very same issues
of God's grace. And he's having to repeat it.
But he says, that's not burdensome to me. I don't mind doing that.
And he said, for me to do it, it's safe for you. It means safety. I've had people question me and
say, well, why do you have to preach the gospel every time
you preach? And I tell them, well, it's not
burdensome to me and it's safe for you and me. I need to hear
the gospel. You say, well, you've already
preached that and you don't ever leave behind the gospel. Even
when I'm talking about other issues of scripture, like the
obedience of a believer, I'm gonna show you that in this series
of messages on Every Believer's Desire. Every believer is to
work hard to glorify God in his or her life, in her thoughts,
her attitude, all those things, you see. But the issue here is
you don't do that without the gospel. If I'm talking about
obedience today, if I do that without the gospel, then all
it becomes is legalism. I tell people all the time, it's
like having a new shiny bright car that runs well, but you got
to put gas in it or it won't run at all. And that gospel is
the gas. It's what motivates us. It's
what drives us. It's what puts things in perspective
for us. When I give encouragements, exhortations,
to obey God, to live godly lives. It is the gospel of God's grace
that forms the foundation and drives the motivation for that
and sets the goal for that. When the Bible says, for example,
in Matthew 5 and verse 16, let your light shine before men that
they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
Now the good works there are what God's people do by the grace
of God, by the power of God, by the direction of God in seeking
to do right, to live godly lives. But that good work is not the
light. The light is Christ, the gospel
that reveals Christ as the Lord our righteousness. So let that
light shine. Let the gospel shine forth. And
it's through the gospel that you understand what a good work
is and what an evil work is. A person who is trying to be
saved by their works, if you shine the gospel of God's grace
on that, it exposes it as being evil deeds. John chapter 3 and
verse 19 speaks of that. It says, this is the condemnation
that light has come into the world. That's Christ. And men
love darkness and hate the light because their deeds are evil.
The light of the gospel exposes the efforts of unregenerate people
to be evil because they do not glorify God, they do not exalt
Christ, They're proud and boastful of their works. In other words,
their assurance is not because of what Christ did in His obedience
unto death and His resurrection, but their assurance is because
they think they're doing well enough. It's works-based assurance. And that's pride. It's self-righteousness. That's why it's evil. It does
not glorify God, but the gospel sets that in the light. Here
we are rejoicing in the Lord, seeking to do right, not to be
saved, not to earn our way into God's favor, but because we have
been given freely all the gifts, the blessings, the benefits of
salvation, which we don't earn and don't deserve. And so what
do we do? We praise God. I don't, when
I do a good work or whatever, I don't want to draw attention
to myself. I want you to glorify God. I want you to know, you
know, I've had people say this and I've heard him say it to
others. Well, I know you're a Christian because you give so much money
or you, you attend church every, If you're a true Christian, here's
what your answer to that is. Listen, I want to give all I
can to support the gospel. I want to be in church services
every time the doors open if I can. But that's not my salvation. That's not my righteousness before
God. That's not what gets me into
heaven. And that's not what earns rewards
for me. It's all Christ to the praise
of the glory of God's grace. That's what I want you to know.
I want the light to shine on that. And that's what that means
in Matthew 5, 16. So he says, that's not burdensome. It's not a burden for me to preach
the gospel whenever I get behind a pulpit or whether I sit here
before you on television. And it's good for us. It's good
for you to hear the gospel. And I pray that the Lord will
work in your life to sovereignly bring you to believe it and desire
it. Now he says in verse two, Philippians
3 in verse two, he says, beware of dogs, beware of evil workers,
beware of the concision. Now what is that about? Well,
one of the things that was a problem in the early churches, as Paul
and other evangelists, apostles and evangelists went throughout
the Gentile world, and the Lord rose up churches here in the
city of Philippi. And there was a church there,
but there was also a Jewish synagogue in the churches of Galatia, the
church at Corinth, all of that. One of the biggest threats to
the church were men and women called Judaizers. Now, what they
were, they were Jews who claimed to be converted to Christ. They claimed to believe in Christ,
but they desired to teach the Gentiles to go back under the
law of Moses, and especially the Gentile men. And these Judaizers
told these Gentile men, you have to be circumcised to really be
saved. I know you claim to be, and it's
all by grace, they would say, but you got to add circumstances.
It's like people today, you know, every denomination claims to
believe salvation by grace, but they don't all believe salvation
by grace. The denomination that says you're
saved by grace, but you've got to be baptized to be saved. That's
the same thing. That's a problem. That's a denial
of Christ. And so these Judaizers would
go throughout the Gentile world and find churches where there
were believers and they would try to get, they would boast
in their Judaism, we're the Jews, we're the people of God, we're
the elect. And that's not the case now at this point in time
or today. It was during the old covenant
in a physical ceremonial way, temporal way, but that's gone. And they would tell these Gentile
men that in order to really be saved, to really be righteous,
to really be right with God, you've gotta be circumcised.
Physically, cutting off the foreskin, the filth of the flesh. And Paul,
he dealt with it in Galatians this way. He told these professing
believers, he said, now if you be circumcised for that reason,
Christ will profit you nothing. And he made this statement. He
said in Galatians, this is Galatians 6, 14, he says, God forbid that
I should glory, boast, except in the cross of Christ, his person
and work. And he said, whereby the world
is crucified unto me and I unto the world. And in verse 15, he
said, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision
availeth anything, but a new creature, new creation. In other
words, he was saying there that for salvation, which is by the
grace of God in Christ, it doesn't matter whether you're a circumcised
Jew or an uncircumcised Gentile. That means nothing. And that
was an affront to the Jews, to the unbelieving Jews. Paul was
a Jew, but he became a believer. And he actually repented of ever
thinking that physical circumcision could make you right with God.
We'll see that in these next verses. But you see, the Jews,
the unbelieving Jews, basically they boasted in the fact that
they were Abraham's physical seed. Christ told them that means
nothing. Read John chapter eight and other
passages. Doesn't matter whether you're
a physical descendant of Abraham or not. What matters, are you
a spiritual descendant of Abraham? In other words, do you believe
the same gospel that Abraham believed? And Romans 4 tells
us what Abraham believed. He believed in the God who justifies
the ungodly. And he saw the blessedness of
the man to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works.
They boasted in their physical circumcision. And they sought
to get Gentile believers, the men, to be circumcised, the men
representing the whole family. And that's who he calls dogs
here, like cur dogs, like one you don't want. I saw on television
this morning, they're having the dog show up in New York. Not those kind of dogs. These
are like junkyard dogs. And he said, beware of evil workers.
Those religious Jews who claim to be Christian but desired that
the Gentile men be circumcised to be saved, they're evil workers. And so he says, beware of the
concision. Now that's a play on words, that
word concision, the word circumcision. And what he's saying there, he
says, beware of those who just want to mutilate your body. In
other words, that's all they're doing. They think they're making
you right with God. They think you've got to be a
Jew before you can be a Christian. They're just mutilating you.
And then in verse three of Philippians three, we have one of the most
concise verses that describes what a true believer is and what
a true believer desires. And he says it this way. He says,
for we are the circumcision. Now who's the we there? That's
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the true spiritual elect
of God. In Romans chapter eight, I believe
it's verse 33 or 34, I can't remember, but Paul wrote these
words. He said, for who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. And
then he goes on to say, who can condemn us? It's Christ that
died, yea rather who's risen again, seated at the right hand
of the Father, ever living to make intercession for us. And
so he says, we are the circumcision. Now in verse three, Paul is not
speaking of physical circumcision, the concision, he's speaking
of spiritual circumcision. And that's the new birth. And
if you'll look over in Romans chapter two, You'll see how Paul
describes it there where he's talking about that the salvation,
the whole passage here up to this point, Paul is showing how
it doesn't matter if you're a Jew or a Gentile, if you're circumcised
or uncircumcised, salvation's by grace through the blood and
righteousness of Christ. And in order to see that and
believe that and repent of the other, you've gotta be born again.
And here's what he says, this is Romans 2.28. And he makes
a distinction here that we all need to see to understand the
Bible. He says in Romans 2.28, for he
is not a Jew, which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision,
which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew, which is one
inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit
and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of
God." Now, first of all, the term Jew, it comes from the tribe
of Judah. You know, in the Old Testament,
all Israelites were not called Jews, only those from the tribe
of Judah. But that word has come to refer
to anybody who claims to be a physical descendant of Abraham on that
side through Isaac. But Paul is talking about one
who is a spiritual Jew here. And that word Jew that comes
from Judah, it means praise God. Now, a physical Jew who's seeking
salvation by their works and has confidence in their physical
circumcision, they're not praising God. They think they are, but
they're in idolatry. But a spiritual Jew is one who
truly praises God for His grace in and by the Lord Jesus Christ.
And it's a circumcision of the heart. And what is that circumcision
of the heart? It's the cutting away spiritually
of the filth of the flesh, which refers to repentance, faith in
Christ, and repentance of dead works. And so if you're a believer,
if you've been born again by the Spirit, if you've been circumcised
in heart and ears, Stephen preached that in Acts chapter seven. If
you've been circumcised in heart and ears, then my friend, you
rejoice in Christ. Look at verse three back in Philippians
three. For we are the circumcision which
worship God in the Spirit. We worship the true and living
God. from the heart, sincerely, and as were guided by the Holy
Spirit in his word, and rejoice in Christ Jesus. Now that word
rejoice here in verse three is a different Greek word from the
word rejoice in verse one. In verse one, the word rejoice
is be happy. In verse three, it is boast or
have confidence. We have confidence in Christ
Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. The filth of the
flesh has been cut away. That's faith in Christ and repentance
of dead works. That's every true believer's
desire. I want Christ. I want to believe
and trust him for all my salvation. And I want to put away all that
which by nature I rejoiced in. Now we'll continue this next
week and I hope you'll join us then. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, Write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia 3-1-7-0-7. Contact us
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today and may the Lord be with you.