Let's look here at Philippians
chapter 3. As I dug into this chapter again,
there quickly developed an outline of four points. Each of these
four points that I saw from these verses basically led to one thing,
and that's salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm thankful for
that because that is our subject. That should be the subject of
every message, how the Lord saves sinners. It's a faithful saying
and worthy of all acceptation. that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners. And I'm interested in that topic.
I'm interested in that subject. So let's begin here in verse
eight, very familiar passage of scripture. And I'll give you
the first point. The first of the four in our
text, we see that in order to be saved and in order to have
eternal life, we must possess Christ. In verse eight, Paul
writes, yea, doubtless, meaning there was no doubt in his mind.
He said, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. You see, Paul was glad. He was happy. He was thankful
to be rid of all the things that he had before mentioned along
with everything else that gave him any confidence in his flesh. anything and everything that
stands in our way, competing with you and I knowing Christ,
it just has to go. Paul explains why in the remainder
of verse eight, and he says, for whom, speaking of Christ,
I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but
dung. Now you know what dung is, is
manure, worthless. He said, I count all these things
that I've lost to be dung. that I may win Christ. For us
to win Christ is to possess Christ. If you win the lottery, that
money is yours after you pay Uncle Sam his part, but those
winnings are your possession. So how do we win Christ? Well,
first notice here in verse eight, that to win Christ has something
to do with obtaining knowledge of Him. And it's excellent knowledge,
Paul says. To win Christ and to have Christ
is to know Christ first and foremost. And it's to realize that everything
concerning any confidence at all in the flesh is but done. It's just worthless that we may
win Christ. It was for this knowledge of
Christ that Paul counted and considered everything else of
no value whatsoever. Look up at verse four. Paul said,
if anyone should have any confidence in their flesh, it's me. I'm
going to paraphrase a little. If anyone should or would have
a reason to trust and glory in their flesh, he said, I'm more.
Verse five, he said, I was circumcised the eighth day. I was of the
stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. I was a Hebrew of
the Hebrews. My mother was a Hebrew, my father
was a Hebrew. He said, as far as the law is
concerned, as touching the law, I was a Pharisee. No one knew
the law and kept the law like I did, Paul was saying. Verse
six, he said, oh, you want to talk about being zealous? He
said, you want to talk about having a zeal for God? He said,
concerning zeal, I persecuted the church. I threw Christians
in prison for worshiping Christ. He said, as touching the law,
he said, I was blameless. He crossed every T, he dotted
every I. He was a moral man. Verse seven, he said, but what
things were gained to me, fleshly and worldly speaking? He said,
those I counted lost for Christ. Why, Paul, why do you count them
lost? So that I may win Christ. Salvation is to win Christ. Salvation is to possess Christ. Christ in you is the hope of
glory. Now, Paul in his letter to the
Ephesians, and we went through that a week or two ago, he tells
us over and over and over again how that possessing Christ is
salvation. You don't have to turn there.
Let me just give these to you. Ephesians 1, verse three, he
said, we're blessed with all spiritual blessings and heavenly
places where? In Christ. Verse four, he said,
we were chosen in Him, being Christ, before the foundation
of the world. And verse six, he said, we're
accepted in the Beloved, the Beloved being the Lord Jesus.
In verse 7, he said, in whom? Again, being Christ, we have
redemption, we have salvation, salvations of the Lord. It's
all through this book. In verse 8, he said, all wisdom,
all knowledge and prudence is abounded to us in Christ. Nowhere else. Verse 9, in Christ
God has made known unto us the mystery of his will. Now that's
knowledge, friends, and knowing Christ, we know the mystery of
God's will, for Christ is the one by whom we are saved. Verse
11, he said, in whom in Christ we have obtained an inheritance,
and God who works all things according to his good pleasure
he has predestinated us. He's predetermined us to be saved
by His grace. How do we possess Christ? How
do we win Christ? Only by His grace. To the praise
of the glory of His grace. He said in verse 6 there in Ephesians
1. The Lord Jesus asked this question
in Matthew chapter 16. He said, for what is a man profited
if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what
shall a man give in exchange for his soul? And then here in
our text in Philippians chapter 3, Paul declares to us that the
losing of the world and all the things that this world has to
offer is actually to win and possess Christ. Paul said that
I may win Christ and be found in Him." Now notice that he didn't
say that you should win Christ and be found in Him, even though
you and I should. You see, that's a desire that
each of us must have for ourselves. That's a desire that every child
of God will have, that I may win Christ and be found in Him. Oh, I so wish that I could believe
for my unbelieving children. Don't you? I so wish that I could
believe for my unbelieving friends, but I can't. But I will say that
I cannot preach repentance to the lost if I've never experienced
repentance for myself. And I can't preach the forgiveness
of my sin if my sin has not been forgiven. I can't preach Christ
to you if I don't know Him. I can't preach faith in Christ
to lost sinners if I myself have never believed. I must possess
Christ for myself, and so must you, in order to be redeemed.
Now, we know that salvation is not in religion, and salvation
is not in the church, and salvation is not in theology, how much
you know. Salvation is not knowing the
doctrines of grace or the five points of Calvinism. Salvation
is in Christ. If I don't possess Christ, I
don't possess salvation. If I don't possess Christ, then
I don't have forgiveness. And it's just that simple. So
we see that it's just a necessity to possess the Lord Jesus, to
have Him as our Lord and Savior. Then the second thing that we
must possess in order to be saved and redeemed is perfect righteousness. Paul said that I may win Christ,
that I may possess Christ. And then in verse nine, he adds,
and be found in him. Now look at what he says here.
And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, not having
my own holiness, but the righteousness of Christ. And again, Paul tells
us how we are to obtain this perfect righteousness that we
must possess. Is it by our doing? Is it by
keeping the law? Is this perfect righteousness
obtained by something good done by us? No, no, no. That's self-righteousness. Paul
said, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law. Salvation
does not come by works of righteousness that we've done, but salvation
comes according to God's mercy. And that's how salvation comes.
According to His mercy, He saved us by the washing of regeneration
and renewing of the Holy Ghost, Titus 3, 5. There is no righteousness
which comes by the law. We can't keep the law perfectly
in order to obtain perfect righteousness, but here's the good news, Christ
did. And if you possess Him, then
you possess perfect righteousness. When we possess Him, then we
obtain His perfect righteousness, which is through, Paul here says
in verse nine, through the faith of Christ, through His faithfulness,
the very righteousness of God, which is of God by faith. Now, Paul was interested in possessing
this perfect righteousness, and every enlightened child of God
is. It's the only thing that a holy
God will accept. It must be what to be accepted. It must be perfect to be accepted. And I cannot provide what God
will accept. And neither can you. But I have
good news for you. Christ can. The Pharisees, they
stood on the corners of the streets in Jerusalem and they prayed
long prayers to impress their ears. They read and they quoted
the scriptures. They were experts on the law
of God, but they didn't know the holy God of the law. They
were pure moralist. They were holier than thou. One
day they brought a woman who was caught in the very act of
adultery and they cast her at the Lord Jesus' feet. They claimed
Abraham to be their father. They claimed to sit in Moses'
seat. They would say things like Moses
said this, and Moses said that, and Moses claimed, and Moses
commanded. They said, we know that God spoke
unto Moses, but as this fella, this man, this disgusting man
of Nazareth, of Galilee, we don't know from where he came. Moses
said, this woman taken in this adulterous act should be stoned. But what do you say, Mr. Jesus?
And this they said, tempting him, the scripture says, that
they might accuse him. And the Lord Jesus said, let
him without sin among you cast the first stone in her. And the
Lord stooped down and he rolled on the ground and they being
convicted went out one by one. Now concerning these religious
hypocrites, Christ our Lord said this. He said that, except your
righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,
you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of God. You see,
dear friends, there's a self-righteousness that's obtained by self And there
is a perfect righteousness obtained by Christ. And if I possess Christ,
I have his perfect righteousness. Which do you have? Which do you
have? We are to examine ourselves.
to see if we be in the faith. And there's only one righteousness
that will save us, and that's the righteousness which is of
God by faith, that perfect righteousness that Christ has wrought for us. I'm interested in that righteousness,
aren't you? Paul said, I don't frustrate
the grace of God. If righteousness come by the
law, then Christ is dead in vain. This perfect righteousness comes
in and by and through him. Paul said, I know that in me,
that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. Absolutely no good
thing. Has God revealed that to you?
So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. Romans 8a. A fig leaf apron won't
do. You see, it's sewed together
by the work of man's own hand. It just won't do. It cannot do
for the fig leaf of man's imagined righteousness is separated from
the vine. And being without the vine, this
fig leaf covering is without life and it's going to soon dry
up and dry out and wither away because it's dead. There's no
vine still attached to it. You see, to have this perfect
righteousness, blood must be shed. And that's what God showed
us there in the garden when He covered Adam and Eve with those
skins. Blood was shed and it provided
the covering of a spotless land. And when God sees the blood of
Christ, our Passover land, He will pass over the sinner. That's
why I must have Christ. And I must have His perfect righteousness. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no forgiveness of sin. No forgiveness, no pardon, and
no redemption. Paul desired to win Christ and
be found in Him. So do I, so do I. And he said, not having mine
own righteousness, which is of the law, but having that perfect
righteousness, which is through the faith or the faithfulness
of Christ, that righteousness, which is of God by faith. And Paul desired to be as holy
as God is holy. Do you know why? Because you
have to be in order to be saved. You have to be as holy as God. Now, how are we going to do that?
Well, I'm endeavoring to tell you, we must possess Christ in
his perfect righteousness. Without this perfect holiness,
no man, no woman shall see the Lord, Hebrews 12, 14. And then
the third thing that we must possess in order to be saved,
in order to be redeemed, is to partake in Christ's resurrected
life. Now look at verse 10. Paul said
that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship
of His sufferings being made conformable unto His death. Verse 11, if by any means I might
attain "'until the resurrection of the dead.'" Now, what does
that mean? What does that mean? I've read
that for years, had no idea what it meant. What is the power of
his resurrection? What does attaining unto the
resurrection of the dead, what does that mean? Well, it means
that Paul, along with every true believer, wants the security. They want that rest that can
only be found in Christ. Now, listen to me on this. This
is so important. If I can, by my own works, save
myself, then I can, by my own works, lose my salvation. If I can obtain eternal life
by a good work that I do, then I can most certainly lose my
salvation by an evil work that I do. That's the way the old
covenant works. God said, you do, and I shall. And God said, you don't do, and
I shall not do. It was a conditional covenant.
But we're not under the old covenant of works. We're under the covenant
of grace. and what security and what rest
is found in the resurrected life of Christ? How so, you might
ask. Well, Christ's resurrection,
Christ rising from the dead, is the proof that God is satisfied
and that God has accepted His work of righteousness by the
fulfilling of the law that He accomplished, by the satisfying
of holy justice, which He satisfied, Christ being innocent perfectly
fulfilled the law and justice of God. And only one who is innocent,
holy, perfect, and righteous could fulfill the demands of
God's holy law and justice. The innocent one, the Lord Jesus
Christ was condemned and he paid the wages of sin, which was debt. The wages of sin is debt. And
by Christ dying in the believer's room instead, you and I, the
guilty sinner that we are, we're pardoned and we're made free
from the law of sin and death. That's what Romans 8, 2 says.
And that's why Christ rose from the dead. Death had no claim
on him. The grave had no right to hold
him. Why? Because he's perfect. He
kept the law perfectly. And an innocent man must go free. God's justice demands it. All
the sin of all the elect throughout all time was executed on Christ
in wrath and judgment and condemnation and holy justice. And for the
first time ever, the wrath and the judgment and the justice
of God didn't consume the sacrifice. No, the sacrifice, Christ consumed
and exhausted the wrath and judgment and justice of God. And Christ
rose from the dead. And the good news is, as His
people did with Him, That's where our security, that's where our
rest, that's where our assurance is found. In the resurrection,
the power of His resurrection. It's found in the same place
that our salvation is found, in Christ. It's found in the
same place our righteousness is found, in Christ. There's
no security in religion. People get religion and they
lose it every day. I had someone say that about
me one time, said, David got religion. Oh, I hope not. I hope not. There's no security
in feelings. Feelings come, feelings go. Feelings
fluctuate. I can't trust my feelings. Can
you? The only real security, the only real rest that can be
found for any of us is in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the same
yesterday and today and forever. He's the Lord that changeth not.
Why, who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect when
it's God that justifies? Who is he that condemneth? Well,
it's Christ that died. Who can condemn me when Christ
died for me? It's Christ that died, yea, rather
that is risen again. The power of his resurrection. Who's even at the right hand
of God, who also maketh intercession for us. God is still the same
today. Who shall separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus? Nothing and no one. And Paul gives us a list of the
things. Friends, I'm not interested. I'm being as frank with you as
I know how to be. I'm not interested in a salvation
that can be lost. Paul said, I don't want to preach
to others and myself be a castaway, and neither do I. There's no
comfort, there's no peace, there's no rest, there's no security
there. I wanna know Christ and the power
of His resurrection. You know, Judas, you think about
this. Judas walked three and a half
years with the Lord Jesus, just the same as Peter, just the same
as James and John and the other disciples, only in the end to
betray the Lord Jesus. And then he went out and hung
himself. Judas was trusting in another
Jesus. How so, you might say. He was
trusting in one of his imagination. You see, Judas believed Christ
to be the king of an earthly kingdom. But the Lord said, my
kingdom is not of this world. You know, Brother Henry once
said, I'm not interested in a profession of faith. I'm interested in a
progression of faith. I'm interested in growing in
the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord, aren't you? I believe
you are, I believe that's why you're here. I'm interested in
enduring to the end, for they that endure to the end shall
be saved. And I'll endure to the end, you
know how I know? Because having loved his own,
which were in the world, he loved them to the end. And there again,
my hope and my confidence and my assurance is possessing Christ. and possessing His perfect righteousness
and having that security, that rest that's only found in Him. How about you? How about you? He's the Lord that changes not.
He's the Lord that is faithfully promised. There are many who
are trusting in a decision they made. There are many that are
hoping in an aisle that they walk. And there's some who find
security and rest in a sinner's prayer that they prayed, or in
a membership that they joined. But there's no security there.
None whatsoever. There's no true rest to be found
in those things. Christ is the only one who can
provide true security and rest. He said, come unto me and I'll
give you rest. Well, what are we waiting on?
And as I said in the first hour, I came to him and I'm still coming
to him. I was saved and I am saved and
I'm being saved. My security is found in being
born again. My rest is found in being a new
creature in the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that all old things are
passed away and that all things have become new in Him. My hope
is in being given a new heart. You know, men put security systems
in their home. Why? So they can rest at night.
What security there is found in Christ, what rest is found
in His finished work and what peace is found in His resurrected
life. It assures us that we are accepted
in Him, our beloved. And then the fourth thing, the
final thing that you and I who trust in Christ possess as a
child of God is the satisfaction of knowing that we're saved.
Boy, I tell you what, I wouldn't trade that for anything in the
world. I don't put any confidence in the flesh. I put all my confidence
in Him. All of it. Christ is the Lord,
our salvation. By God's grace, I've won Him.
I have forgiveness and I have pardon in Him. All my righteousness
is in Him. He was made to be sin for us
that we might be what? Made the righteousness of God
in Him. Jesus Christ has made unto us
wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. You know what? That's all I need. And it's found in Him. Four in
one. Four in one. He's all my security. All my comfort's in Him. I've
got perfect rest. I've got peace that passes understanding. Can you tell me about your peace?
Nope. I don't understand it. It goes
beyond my understanding, but I have it. I have it. And most of the time when I don't
have it, it's because I cast my care on him and then I take
it back. And I cast my care on him and
I take it back. Do you do that? We need to stop
it. Let's cast our care on him and
leave it there. Hear me when I say, I'm not satisfied
with myself. One day soon, I will be though.
Do you know when that'll be? David told us, he said, as for
me, I will behold thy face in righteousness and I shall be
satisfied when I awake with thy likeness. That's what we have
to look forward to. Danny, that's what we had to
look forward to. John the beloved said, behold, what manner of
love the father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God. And beloved, it doth not yet
appear what we shall be, but when he shall appear, we shall
see him and we'll be just like him. That's the best news this
sinner ever heard. And that's why we call it the
gospel. May God be pleased to make it
so for His glory, for our good, and for Christ's sake. Amen.