It says, finally, my brothers,
rejoice in the Lord. To write the same thing to you
is no trouble to me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evildoers. Look
out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision
who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus
and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reason
for confidence in the flesh also, If anyone else thinks he has
reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised
on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin,
a Hebrew of Hebrews. As to the law, a Pharisee. As
to zeal, a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under
the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted
as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as
loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus
my Lord. For His sake I have suffered
the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that
I may gain Christ and be found in Him. not having a righteousness
of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through
faith in Christ, the righteousness of God that depends on faith,
that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may
share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by
any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but
I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made
me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that
I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies
behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on
toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature
think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will
reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what
we have attained. Brothers, join in imitating me
and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example
you have in us. For many of whom I have often
told you and now tell you, even with tears, walk as enemies of
the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their
God is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds
set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will
transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the
power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself."
Verse 1. Therefore, my brothers, whom
I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the
Lord, my beloved." Now, is it fresh? A lot of things should
pop into your mind as we hear those words. It makes you want
to go back and read the first two chapters too. Because what we've seen
over the last few weeks, and when we do exposition, it does
sometimes seem to not linger, but sort of stop. And then we
come and we pick back up, but we're not remembering that which
we heard prior. And I want you to have this fully
in your heart this morning because here we see some things that
Paul will point to even in this last few verses. We've seen Paul
be very clearly that the joy that comes supernaturally through
the gospel of Jesus is because of the fact that Jesus satisfies
in every way. Not only does Jesus satisfy the
longing of the soul, but Jesus Christ is the very one who redeems
those by faith who believe. Jesus is the one who's paid the
penalty of their sins. Jesus is the one who has started
and began the good work, as Paul would say in chapter 1, and He
is the one who is faithful to see it to its completion until
the day of Christ. Jesus is the one through whom
grace is given and through whom grace is continually sustained. Jesus is the very author, as
the writer of Hebrews would say, and the finisher or perfecter
of our faith. Jesus Christ, the righteous of
God, is the very person who gives us His mind, who gives us His
righteousness, who enables us with God the Holy Spirit, whom
He sent so that we would never be alone. Jesus Christ, the righteous,
is the one who gives absolute power for obedience to the commands
of Christ, for the commands of the holiness and the holy requirement
of God. Jesus gives joy. Jesus gives
endurance during suffering. Jesus is the one who provides
the power to stand in the midst of pain. Jesus is the one who
gave Paul the absolute picture that he was in the hand of God
and the will of God, though all the ministry plans that he had
fell to the ditch, never to be fulfilled. God's plans were greater. Jesus is the One. Jesus is the
One who came, not just as an example or to live life fully
in holiness, but He came as the Lamb to suffer and live as God
had commanded each of us to live, and He fulfilled that perfectly.
And then God took Him and struck Him down. that He might become
our propitiation, satisfying the judgment against us. That
as we believe by faith, we are set free from the penalty of
sin, and we are set free from the power of sin, so that we
might rejoice, so that we might live, so that we might preach,
so that we might pray, so that we would have a unity of mind,
so that we would have one spirit, so that we would have understanding
and wisdom, so that our hearts and lives would be transformed
to the praise of His glorious grace. And we could go on and
on and on as we see this letter unfold before us. And Paul is
reminding us to rejoice because these things are good for us
to be reminded of, and that we are those who are in Christ,
but there are others who claim to be in Christ who are not in
Christ. These are the ones who mutilate
their flesh. These are the ones who mutilate
the gospel. These are the ones who come into the fold of Christ
and try to damage the body, try to harm families, and try to
invest wrongly in the relationships of the church by stating that
there's more to the gospel than just faith alone in Christ. By
stating that there's something else that should be there except
for except for faith alone in Christ. That there must be some
other practice except faith alone in Christ. To which Paul would
say in other places, especially to the Galatians, that that is
a death sentence. As he'll say this morning, that
those who live that way, those who believe that way, those who
think that way, that their end is destruction and that their
belly is their God. And so we'll look at these things
this morning. And I want you to know that it's
not something that we ought to just lay on the table and say,
we've studied this text. I say this almost every week,
but I want to remind you of this church. We don't say, we've studied
Philippians, yeehaw, let's move on. Because the power of the
Gospel, the power of the Word of God through God the Holy Spirit
is not something that we just get to and get through, but it
gets inside of us in such a way that it transforms us from the
inside out. That it affects our relationships, that it affects
our attitudes, it affects the core of our affections. then
everything we do, whether we're raking yards or climbing Mount
Everest, we do it for the glory of God. We are no longer bound
by the selfish, intrinsic, worldly ideals that this body and flesh
so long for, but rather we are at war with those things that
have been put to death in Christ Jesus that we are now alive in
Christ so that our affections are alive, our hope is alive,
our focus is alive, our future is alive. And Paul will explain
the difference in those things this morning. Let's look at verse
16 through verse 1 of chapter 4. There's the thought there.
Paul says, only let us hold true to what we have attained. Brothers,
join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according
to the example you have in us. For many of whom I have often
told you, and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of
the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their
God is their belly, and they glory in their shame with minds
set on earthly things. But," you see the contrast, "...our
citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies to be like His
glorious body by the power that enables Him even to subject all
things to Himself. Therefore, my brothers, whom
I love and long for, my joy and my crown stand firm thus in the
Lord my Beloved." So here we see in verse 16 the word, only.
We see this and we have to go back and in our Bibles, in our
English Bibles, these verse numbers just can cause a lot of havoc.
I want you just to think about for a moment what's happening
here in the conversation. What argument is Paul now trying
to proceed with? Well, what he's done thus far,
and as we've looked at the last few weeks, is he's began to talk
about the fact that he has very strong confidence in the flesh.
He has strong confidence in the fact that had it been attainable,
righteousness would be his. But he says that in comparison
of everyone else who lives in the world, who's ever lived in
the world, there's never been anybody. This is the hyperbole
that Paul uses and I think it's not necessarily even hyperbole. I think he really believes this
based on his obedience to the tenets of Judaism. He's saying
that of all the people that he has known and that lives in the
earth at this time, that no one can make a claim that they are
perfect in the eyes of God through the law. but that if they could,
He would be the one. But they can't, so it's worthless.
And so He takes that exchange and throws it all away. Now when
we try to apply that to our own lives, I want you to hear this,
beloved. I want you to know, friend, that it's not just a
perfect parallel. Oh, I was in a false religion
and now God sent me. Friend, you can be in idolatry in the
Christian church. You can be in idolatry in your
doctrine. You can be in idolatry in your Bible and the version
you preach and read from. You can be in idolatry in the
ministry that you have. Listen, it is about faith in
Christ. It is about the righteousness
of God being given to us. It is about the glory of God
being revealed through us. And that is why we live. That
is why we exist today. That is why we're here this morning.
That we may eat the bread of life through the words of Christ
and thus be more intimate together, not just individually, so that
as a people we shine bright in a dark world. That God is glorified
through it all. Through us all. And so, if we're
looking and seeing Paul, what he says there is that he has
not obtained this righteousness on his own. As a matter of fact,
he hasn't even fully received the righteousness that comes
from Christ alone. Though he stands righteous before
God, he knows that his flesh is not fully righteous. It's
fully righteous in standing. It's fully righteous in that
He's justified. He is holy. He is set apart.
He is a precious instrument of glory and of grace. But He knows
that He's not perfect. He knows that the righteousness
that He even strives for, that we should strive for, is not
something that He is doing, but rather it is something that Christ
is doing in Him every day, every moment of His life. And so he
goes and says that his striving would be that he put off anything
that hinders him for striving in the obedience of faith so
that Christ would be glorified as we steal away from chapter
2. Whether he lives or dies, he wants to stay true to the
striving of righteousness in his life, in his mind, in his
heart. And one of the evidences of that
is that Paul's most important passion is the fact that others
would find the joy of the gospel even if it cost him his own life. Even when he needs ministry terribly,
as we've already seen, we'll see now in chapter 4 in the weeks
to come, he is willing to give it all up for the sake of the
joy of those who are in Christ Jesus. But he says that we've not obtained
that righteousness, we've not yet there, but we press. And
in verse 16, he says, only let us hold true to what we have
attained. I want you to hear that for a
minute. It's really out of place. Even in the English it's sort
of odd. Only hold true to what we have
attained. What is he saying? He's saying you're going to strive
for this? You're going to press to this?
You're going to run to this? You're going to run into righteousness?
try and strive for holiness. You're going to walk with Christ.
You're going to see the opportunity for sin. You're going to, and
you are empowered to say no and walk in righteousness. You're
going to do everything that you do for the glory of Christ because
Christ indwells you. You are filled with all, as Paul
prayed to the Ephesians in chapter 3, you are filled with all the
fullness of God. So therefore as you walk, John
3 would say that the light that you walk in is an of the works
of God, Ephesians chapter 2, that He prepared beforehand for
us to walk in. So that our righteous works and
our pressing into holiness and our striving for obedience is
not our own doing. We don't say, I'm proud of you,
son, for striving for righteousness. We say, praise be to God our
Father in heaven and Jesus Christ our Lord that He gave you a heart
to strive for righteousness and that your mind is pressed on
eternity and not worldliness. That's the answer. And so we
do all of these things and we find ourselves this morning as
we evaluate our hearts and go, wow, how far have we come? Well,
the Bible teaches us in Romans 3 that we've fallen completely
away from the grace of God. But God has embraced us. Jesus
has grabbed Paul. Jesus has grabbed you by the
gospel. And therefore you have been embraced
and held. Jesus says in John 6 that all
that come to Him, all that the Father gives Him, come to Him
and He will never let them go. No one will snatch them out of
His hands. Friends, when Jesus grabs you, your life is a testimony
of His power. When Jesus has you, and you have
eternal life by faith, you are a testimony of His power. That's
why it bothers me when people try to push to the side the commands
of Christ for the New Testament church. That's why it troubles
me when people forget that all these letters are written to
believers alone, and they are to evaluate those who live amongst
them in community, that those who do not live according to
the power of Christ do not have Christ. Or worse, Christ does
not have them. And that even sometimes through
the discipline of excommunication and the discipline of isolation,
that it hardens them, or better yet, it softens them to see sin. And God's Gospel comes more alive
in their lives. Paul would tell the Corinthians
church to turn that brother who continued in sexual sin over
to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his soul
might be saved. Because when your entire livelihood,
when your entire life, when every friend that you have is no longer
available to you because you live and sin, then all of a sudden
God then in that loneliness can speak to you. And He may bring
you to faith. He may bring that one brother
who seemingly has lost his way back. That one sister who has
given up her faith back. but the righteousness that we
have, the righteousness that we have attained, in verse 16
there, he says, hold true to what we have. You see how that
looks? It's all true. Just everything
that I've said this morning, this recap of Philippians, and
I've missed a bunch, but this is all I think of at the time.
All these things that we have in Christ, all these spiritual
blessings that Paul would say to the Ephesians, everything
we have in Christ, we have attained, we have been given, we have reached,
but we are yet still reaching. And it's okay that we're still
reaching because the promise of God is that He will put us
where we ought to be. And that one day, even after
a thousand years, we're still not going to be anywhere close
to the perfection of God's holiness, but God has established us so
that we would be when He brings us into His presence. So as we
hold to what we have attained, as we hold fast, as we hold true,
he says in verse 17, brothers, a reminder, and sisters you're
in that too, it's brotherhood, it doesn't necessarily have to
be gender specific, but beloved, you, need to hear the words that
Paul says. He says here, brothers, join
in imitating me. Now look at this. Join in entertainment. Hold fast to what we have attained
and join in imitating me. Live like I live. Act like I
live. Act like I act. Speak like I
speak. Just with coherency. And everything
else. Do that which I do. Pray in the
manner in which I pray. And people say, well look, you're
following Paul. Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ. Isn't
that the beauty of it? Isn't that the beauty of how
God has established the church to maintain a sense of accountability
that we are to forever Every day, as long as it is called
today, encourage each other to do good deeds. Encourage each
other to be pressing into love for one another. We are to be
encouraging. We are to be rebuking. We are
to be speaking the love, the truth in love. We are to be raising
up one another, making disciples of each other. We are supposed
to be about each other's business, about our own interests as Paul
said in this very letter but thinking more about the interests
of others and in context we ought to be thinking about the joy
of each other in the gospel and our spiritual well-being which
includes discernment and wisdom and living in the righteousness
of Christ. That's why we gather as a church.
We can get together ten times a week and have good fellowship
around food and family and fun games but what good is it? I
think it's the most boring thing we can engage in in the world
today, is when we take opportunity with the saints of Christ who
have the power of God in us, who are filled with the fullness
of God, the Holy Spirit, and we get around and we waste that
opportunity. Instead of making much of Christ, we make much
of our desires, of the flesh, of our belly, our own gods. You
see what he's getting to here. I don't want to see A Plato snake
when I can behold the beauty of God's creation. I don't want
to look at a picture of something that might be when the real is
standing before me. And I don't want to play games
with some temporal garbage. Paul says rubbish. John says
in 1 John 2, it's all dead. It's all rotted meat. It's passing
away. The whole world is... Let's not
be engaged in worldly things and call it ministry. Let's not
be engaged in worldly activities and call it truth. Let's not
be engaged in saying we're loving each other and we've not once
spoken life into each other's lives. We've not once preached
the gospel. Oh, that's just extraordinary,
just hyper-Christianity. Those are those single few that
we hear of. Friends, that's normal. And if
it's not you, something's wrong. Oh man, that's radical. Something's
wrong with me. It may just be you don't know
yet. It may just be you don't know
yet. It's like when I took my seatbelt off pulling out of a
coffee shop one time to get my wallet out and a block away I
still have my seatbelt up here on my shoulder. Cops go by and
wave at me. Three blocks down the road he
pulls me over. This is right when I moved to
California. I had a Virginia tag on the back and he says,
Sir, you just moving to town? Yeah, I've been here a couple
of weeks. He goes, Y'all don't have seatbelts in Virginia? I
said, excuse me? And I'd already buckled it. He
said, when you came by me earlier, did you have your seatbelt on?
I said, I probably didn't. I'd just taken it off to get
my wallet out. He said, is there a law in Virginia that you have
to wear a seatbelt at all times? I said, yes sir. He said, well
I was going to let you off if you were just ignorant, but since
you're not, here's your ticket. The difference is God doesn't let
us off in our ignorance, but when we are no longer ignorant,
we're even more accountable. I guess the question boils down
to what is it that we want to do? What is it that we want to
imitate? Who is it that we want to be seen in our lives? Us or
Christ? And when we're together, we ought
to look at each other. We ought to look at the apostles.
We ought to look and see what Christ has done. Holding true
to what Christ has done and it's visible in the lives of each
other. How do we know what Christ has done? We look at the apostles.
We look at the Word of God. We look at the New Testament
and we see the power of the cross. We see the power. We don't follow
Christ by going to the cross, though we could. And in some
metaphorical sense, in some literal sense, some of the apostles did.
In some metaphorical sense, Christ said we all must take up our
cross. But we don't look and say, okay, Jesus healed, so let's
heal. Jesus did miracles, so let's do miracles. Jesus turned
over tables in the church, so let's have a little party in
here. No. Paul says, imitate me as I imitate
Christ. Follow me as I follow Christ. Follow us, we the apostles
now. Follow us so that you may see
that we are walking with Christ and then you may have an opportunity
to compare what it means to walk in Christ with your own life
and the lives of those around you. So if we want to see how
we're supposed to deal with stress, then we look and see how the
apostles dealt with stress. If we want to see how we deal
with suffering, we look and see what the apostles did when they
dealt with suffering. Then we can look at each other
and see how we deal with suffering. And you know what? When the Word
of God is the absolute authority in our lives, and it is whether
we believe it or put it there or not, it still is. We're still
bound to it and bound by it and broken under it. we begin to see that it's not
about following each other because we've got a bad problem with
that in our culture anyway. We follow each other to the nth
degree of wrong. And so if I stand here and preach
to you and say, thus saith the Lord, and there is no context
to which that is there in the Bible, I am a liar, even if I
don't know it. And when we disagree with what
the Scripture teaches very clearly, it doesn't mean that we have
to like it, but it does mean we have to accept responsibility
to say, we're wrong. And now God, by your grace, would
you give me the ability and the heart and the mind to understand
and comprehend the implications of that which I just realized
I was wrong about. And if you've never found yourself wrong or
found an error in your thinking, in your application of the Scripture,
friends, you're not reading it. The Jesus that most people sitting
in churches this very hour know is not the God of the Bible,
but a Jesus of the world that has no salvation offered for
them, never died on the cross for them. Now they think it's
the same Jesus, but it's not. It's no different than the Jesus
of the cults, the God of the world who is Satan, who disguises
himself as an angel of light. Do you know that's the guise
of the devil? He came to the garden not with
powerful, evil, mystical, incredible authority. He came in the garden
as an agent of light trying to show Adam and Eve something that
God was withholding from them. And if you just listen to me,
He said, you'll know something that God doesn't want you to
know. And the error was thinking that God was maniacal and hiding
something that was worth them knowing when the hiding and keeping
from them evil was for their good and for their joy. This is the same temptation that
we have every single day. It's the same temptation that
rips from pulpits after pulpit after pulpit in Baptist churches.
And friends, God, please, if He would strike me dead if I
ever fall prey to such things as I have been before. Watch, he says. Follow me. Join in imitating me. Follow
me, Paul says, as I follow Christ's words. Paul, meaning himself. Then he says, and keep your eyes
on those who walk according to the example that you have in
us. The plural there, us, Paul then includes himself in the
full of the apostolic regime. I met with a gentleman a couple
of weeks ago who just could not ever in his mind receive the
writings of Paul as apostolic. He said, because Paul sort of
put himself in that position. We see what happens in Acts chapter
9, that Christ himself came to Paul and appointed him as an
apostle. Though he did not fit the worldly
requirements of an apostle, he fit the supernatural requirement
and he had to defend it everywhere he went. Now that would be different
if the apostles themselves then fought against Paul's apostleship,
but they embraced him. Matter of fact, they then began
to submit to his leadership. The irony of that just blows
my mind. The man that was trying to have you murdered and arrested
became your boss, in a sense. And then Paul brought the gospel
to us. And so we look at the apostleship
of Paul. Paul says, all of us, we as the apostles are walking
and you need to look at how we walk. You need to look at how
we walk. You need to look at how we teach.
You need to look at what we've said. And anybody, what he'd
say to the Galatians, even an angel from heaven comes back.
Or even one of us, if we come back with a different gospel,
forget it. There's no new revelation. There's
no new ideas. There's no new speaking. God's not going to
show you something that's not written in our letters. If it's not in
our letters, He tells the Corinthian church in the second letter,
He said, if you don't believe that our letters are authoritative,
you're not a believer. It's not relative. It's not within
the context of a particular cultural setting that now has died and
passed away. The Bible, the Word of God, as we have it sitting
right here, is authoritative and powerful and true. And if
evidence is needed by your heart to agree with that, then the
Bible in itself has not spoken to your heart in such a way that
you can see it. And that's a fallacy upon a fallacy when it comes
to argumentation, but that's what the Bible teaches about
itself. And so if the Bible is authoritative, those who follow
the Scripture, and most importantly, those who wrote the Scripture
are authoritative because they say that what they say is Christ's
words. So we look at others, we watch
each other, we look at the apostles, and as we're looking at each
other's lives, how do we compare? Don't compare your life to mine,
compare my life to Paul's. And then compare your life to
mine as you compare life to Paul's. And you go, okay, so if Tippins
is walking like Paul was walking, then I can walk like Tippins
is walking and we're in good shape. But guess what? You've
always got to keep your eye where? On Christ. You've always got
to keep your eye on who is the leader of the church, who is
the head of the church, who is Christ. You've got to keep your
eye on Him. How do you watch Him? You watch the apostles of
the New Testament. You watch the words that they wrote. And
you see, when Paul says, do all things without grumbling and
complaining, and we walk around complaining, we're not walking
with Christ. Well, it's easy for Paul. He
was an apostle. He was beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, left for
dead, put in prison, disowned, dishonored, hated, lied against. What about Stephen? Wasn't even
an apostle, just a little old deacon. And they asked him a question.
He preached the entire Old Testament, preached Christ, and they stoned
him to death, dragged him out on a false witness. And then
Saul was the one who did it. We look and we see what Christ
does in the lives of the church. Friends, there's no reason to
be the church if we're not going to be the church. Let me say that again. There's
no reason to be the church if we're not going to be the church.
If we're just going to be worldly things with Jesus stickers on
the back, let's just quit. That's not real life. Real life
isn't a conference. Real life isn't a weekend getaway.
Real life isn't a Wednesday night party. Real life is not. That's
not real life. You want to know what real life
is? Real life is going to bed at 3 o'clock in the morning because
your mind and heart is so burdened or your body is so broken that
you can't get to sleep and waking up out of responsibility the
next sun up. Wishing that you could just go
and be with Christ because it would be easier, but you know
that there is so much more for Him to do with and through you
in this life, if nothing else, that you can worship Him in the
midst of your pain. So that as the phone rings and
you don't even want to talk to yourself in the mirror, much
less hear the problems of someone else, and you pick it up and
you labor in prayer on your face for someone else's problems,
because that is what your heart is bent toward. And they don't
care about your Thursday night supper. They want you to labor
for them. They want you to come before
the throne of God and say, Our Father, please touch the life
of this brother. Touch the life of this sister.
Be powerful among them. That's what it's like in real
life. And day after day after day after day we don't work to
cookouts and work to television programs and work to leisure
and work to vacation. We don't labor in this world
as a church so we can have a time off. We labor in this world as
the church for the glory of God until we're labored out and there's
no more to give. And we can say like Paul said
to Timothy, I am done. I've finished the race. I'm over. I've been poured out like a drink
offering. I'm cold. I'm lonely. I'm worried. I'm burdened. But praise be to
God in heaven through Christ Jesus who appointed me the grace
of this suffering that I might be worthy of taking the gospel
to a loss of dying world, that I will die as they took his head
from his body. I guarantee you Paul was singing
praises to Christ. He wasn't working to get his
weekend home set up. That's garbage. It's baloney. And we're all guilty of focusing
on such trash that we dishonor the very gospel that saved us.
Follow me. Imitate me as I imitate Christ. Imitate me and keep your eyes
on those who walk as we walk. Because this is what Christ did,
though He was God. You want to be reminded? Somebody
said, that's really radical. No, this is absolutely simplistically
the gospel. This is simplistically the command
of Christ to those who have heard and received the gospel. This
is simply the power of God at work in the lives of the church.
Though he was God, he did not take equality with God something
to be grasped, but he became nothing. A slave, obedient unto
death, even death on a cross. I don't know how to compare that
in today's culture. I don't know how to compare it.
I don't know. I guess you'd just
have to be a baby murderer to be somewhere close to be a criminal
on a cross on that day. You were despised. You were hated. Most of them didn't even make
it to the cross. They died on the way. People would kill them
and beat them and pull their hair out and hit them with rocks. Because he hated them. And here's
the God of the universe, become humanity, came and born from
the womb that He created, lived a life as a man and was hated
by the very creation that He made. Imitate me. Because that's what
it means to be a follower of Christ. Our gathering together as often
as we can, for the sake of fellowship. And when I say fellowship, I
mean what the Bible says. The koinonia is fellowship. And
there's not a casserole. There ain't wrong to eat, y'all.
It's okay. Breaking bread together is a
good thing. But it's just the same old, same old. It's just
mundane now. And if somebody in this fellowship
right now just killed over debt of a heart attack, are we just
gonna go have lunch? Well, let's call Mellie. Let's
go next door and eat." Mellie's the coroner. No, we're going to grieve over
that. We're going to be shocked. We're probably going to skip
lunch that day. And if one of us had something to go, like
a family reunion to go to, we wouldn't be of good spirit and
of good company. No, let me play with your Rubik's
Cube. My friend just died. I mean, just don't do it. And so there's a gravity that
comes sometimes when we gather as God's people that we just
have to deal with the things of life. Paul was dealing with
the gravity of his circumstance by doing what? Dying to himself
and his needs so that he could worry about the joy of others.
Jesus, though He was God, did not take that as something to
be made much of. He could have easily come back,
floated down on a lightning bolt, burned about 20,000 people who
said they didn't believe, and everybody would have bowed down
to Him. Something like a sci-fi show. And I'm sure there would have been
some Kung Fu in there. If it was Americanized. But that's not what he did. He
became a servant. He became a slave and he died on a cross as a criminal,
though he was innocent. Have this mind among you which
is yours. Imitate me as I have this mind. Imitate us as we apostles
have this mind. You, Philippian Church, have
this mind. And the immutability of God respects and applies equally
in all transcendent times. So you, Grace Truth Church, have
this mind. What does it look like? What does it look like? Well,
we look at them and we see it. What does it not look like? Many have walked away. He says,
for many of whom I have often told you, and I'll tell you even
with tears, walk as enemies of the cross. Their end is their
destruction, their God is their belly, and they glory in their
shame with their minds set on earthly things. Let's start at
the bottom of that. What does Paul say? But we are
citizens. We are citizens. Our citizenship, verse 20, is
in heaven. But these people, what? Have
their minds set on earthly things. Look at this. That means that
they're at home. Listen what this is not. This
is not, I love sin, I love wickedness, I love to get drunk, I like adult
videos, I like all this evil stuff. That's obvious. He's talking
about people who are amongst the church who are walking in
a moral way. You hear me? He's talking about people that
if they were part of our fellowship, just sight unseen, just watching
them, not sight unseen, but just surface looking, these would
be people that would actually, in all of our minds, wow, they're
candidates, like Judas. They would be candidates for
hanging out with and fellowshipping with. Probably know the Bible
very, very well. Being at home in the world with
mindset on earthly things is not necessarily, and most of
the time when Paul is speaking here, does not have anything
to do with lucidiousness or wicked sinfulness. What he's talking
about is that people are at home in this world. What does that
look like? That means that they're comfortable.
They love it. They love the way. They love
their plans. They love their future. They love their retirement.
They love everything that they're doing. They're lost in the affections
of this life. They stand with their hands on
their hips and they look at what they've got and they breathe deeply and
think, wow, look at what I have. Thank you God. And their comfort
is there. And when something happens to
anything that they have, they want the saints to pray for that
material thing to come back together. And it's not about suffering
for the glory of God. It's about keeping the stuff
in this world intact. They're at home. They're fine
with the world. Not necessarily even driven to
want to be with Christ. Oh, when the time is good, it'll
be good. But not right now. I just like it down here. I don't
like it down here. I have fleeting moments of insanity
where I think I do. This is great. No, it's not.
It's not. Christ is great. versus being
a citizen of heaven, a citizen of glory. These people love this
world. They're at home. They're okay.
And they're not thinking about eternity. Their minds are earthly
focused versus focused on a future glory for the sake of the glory
of Christ. Secondly, we're going backwards.
It says that their minds, they glory in their shame. What did
we just hear there? That we are to glory what? In
Christ Jesus. We are to glory. That means that
all of our satisfaction, that everything we do is for the sake
of expressly showing Christ. That we are to be doing all that
we do so that Christ can be seen at work. So that we don't ever
get credit. So that we don't ever get accolades.
So that we don't ever get glory. that these who don't follow Christ
glory in their shame. What does that look like for
us? It doesn't look like us at all. We don't glory in our shame,
we glory in Christ. It says that their God is their belly. What does that mean? It doesn't
mean that they just walk around worshiping their stomach. What
it means is that their fleshly desires, what they hunger for
is their God, what they love. In 1 John 2.15, we've already
mentioned it once this morning, it says, "...do not love the
world or the things in the world." Power, position, prestige, authority. You go over to James. Don't hobnob
with people who are popular in town. Don't rub elbows with people
just because they've got a ranking position of authority. That's
wicked. Your friends are not supposed
to be those who are high-ranking. They're supposed to be the slaves
of Christ. We're the people who are high-ranking.
Point and laugh. I'm not hanging out with you,
you loser. But God is our belly when we
want everything but Christ to work out in our favor. And it's stressful. And Paul's
not talking to the church. He's talking about other people
who are not the church. Where do you get that? Because
he starts out there. What does he say? Their end is
what? Destruction. Their end is destruction. Friends,
there is no destruction for the saint of God. Beloved here, if
there's no other hope you find in this message today, there
is no destruction. If you start seeing your belly
as your God, there's no destruction for you because God will give
you repentance in your heart. We start finding things that
we glory in in this world, there's no destruction for you because
God's Holy Spirit through His Word and the fellowship of the
saints and all sorts of things and the prayers of your brothers
and sisters will bring you to repentance with joy. Oh, why
did I love that garden? Why did I love all that rotted,
passing away stuff? Look where my mind was. Look
where my heart was. Hallelujah! I don't want it anymore. And it may ebb and flow as our
lives move on. Hopefully the low points will be just a
few seconds or minutes, not seasons. But for some time, sometimes
they are. But our hope is not in us, is it? Because Paul just
got through arguing before this text that the righteousness that
is ours guaranteed is the work of Christ and Christ is working
in us. Friends, you know you are a child
of God because God Himself in His Spirit tells you you are
His child. Because He has promised that
you are not an object of destruction, but an object of mercy. That
you have life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And you have received by faith the gospel of Jesus. You have
received by faith this good news, which tells about the good work
of the good Savior. We have life in Christ, but those
who live their quote, best life now, have nothing but destruction.
That'd be a big picture of how a lot of people would fit into
this position. Big platforms, big pocketbooks, and a very,
very bad gospel that says that God wants you to have it all.
He does want you to have it all. But He doesn't want you to have
trash. And wealth in this world is trash. Does He give wealth? Yes. But it's rare. But even
wealth in this world is not to be used for us. Wealth in this
world is to be used for the glory of God. I'm not even talking about stewardship.
I'm just talking about, well, why do we get up every day? What
are we saving for? You know one of the greatest
things that God can do in our lives sometimes is to keep us
from great wealth. For Jesus Himself says that it's
impossible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
And this is not a metaphor for something else when he says it's
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. These higher
critics who are just dumb as a bag of rocks. I know that's
very polarizing. They're dumb as a bag of rocks.
The eye of a needle is the little thing you put the thread through
that you sew with. A camel is a two-ton animal. He says it's
easier for that camel to pass through the eye of that sewing
needle than it is for a rich man to get to heaven. Why? Because
we see it. The rich young ruler loved his wealth and his power
and his authority and the prestige that came with it, and he was
a very righteous man. But he would not trade it all
for Christ. But it's not our life, is it? We're not sitting in that cesspool
of destruction. We're sitting in the glory of
Christ. We sit here. And we are citizens
of heaven. Look at this. But our citizenship
is in heaven. Paul had the life of luxury.
Paul had the authority. Paul had the expertise. When Paul walked outside, people
saw him and went, there's Saul. That's Saul of Tarsus. His parents
named him after the first king of Israel. Now he's on the Sanhedrin. Look at him, he's so young. Oh
my gosh, if I could just be like that, I got chills. I wonder
if he'd give us his autograph. No, because he would probably
stone you for asking for it. Paul, Saul had it made. Saul
was so authoritative that he even, against the rule of Rome
and at the penalty of crucifixion himself, stoned Stephen. or approved of his stoning. But yet he says, I'm no longer
a citizen here. I'm no longer a citizen even
of Rome or of Israel. That's garbage. I'm a citizen
of heaven. I'm a citizen of where Christ
is. Our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it, from heaven, we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus
Christ. This is where Christ is, which
is where we want to be. Church, this is our hope. It
goes against every psychological training I've ever had, any kind
of counseling training I've ever had. This isn't good counsel.
You know, the gospel and the religion is one thing, but getting
people straightened out over here is another thing. Well,
for years, I self-counseled and counseled others in this way,
and then when I had no mind of my own anymore, God saved me
this way. And now it makes no sense to
people. How are you dealing with that? Because it's garbage. Yeah,
it causes some stress sometimes. Life is stressful. But you know
what? In the end, it's just garbage. It's just worthless. If our eyes
are not focused on eternity, we are drowning, even when we
don't see it. We are drowning. We are drowning
in selfishness. We're drowning in worrying about
things that are out of our control. We're building an economy of
trash. It's like going out and finding
cigarette butts in the parking lot and saying that's going to
be a new currency. Now we're going to start trading
cigarette butts. And we just build barns full of them. And
you want to buy a piece of land and the guy comes over and he's
got the lawyers, he's going to do the deed. He says, here, I'm
going to pay you. He says, well, it'll be 300,000. And he's thinking
dollars, you're thinking cigarette butts. And you open that bin
and there they come. And he's like, you've got to
be kidding me. Well, there's no difference when we build this
life without any focus on eternity. We should hold loosely. What
does that look like? Sometimes God calls people to
an extremely radical position to throw it all away and just
die. All over the world, in many countries,
people are dying as we speak for their faith. They've got
nothing but the air in their lungs. Even their children are
being taken from them and beheaded for the gospel. And then we've got Americans. who can say we'd be willing to,
but we've never had that call, have we? That opportunity's not
there. But friends, our hearts need
to be prepared. What is it like? We hold loosely the things of this
world. We hold loosely because it's nothing. It doesn't get
us there. You know what takes most of our time? Our hobbies
and interests. Our material things. How much
more focused could we be on the Word of God if we didn't have
all this stuff? How much more productive could we be in the
proclamation of the Gospel and the preaching of the Gospel if
we didn't have all these things to deal with? I had an epiphany
years and years ago when it came to cutting grass. What a waste
of time it is. But it's necessary. I'm going
to have a yard. And at that time, if I didn't
cut it, the city would cut it and fine me. I tried that a few months. I have a big pink ticket on my
door. Cut it or we will. Ah, okay. But it's all for nothing in comparison
to the eternal life that we have in Christ. Christ is waiting. He is coming. Our citizenship
is where He is. Verse 21, look at what Christ
will do and what Christ can do and what Christ is going to do.
Who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious
body. Why do we focus on eternity?
How are we standing firm in Christ by focusing on eternal life?
That the whole point of our living in this life is so that everything
that we are in this life becomes nothing, so that the work that
Christ does in us becomes everything. That's how we hold on. And the
body is going to die. We're all dying. Our body is
going to break, our body is going to die, our body is going to
get sick, and it's no respecter of persons, no respecter of age,
no respecter of gender, no respecter of money. But we who live in Christ never
die. And even when the body does die,
we will be raised to life in Christ. To live in a world without... I heard a man yesterday saying
how awful heaven seems. He said, I can imagine for the
first few months it'd be cool, but how boring would eternity
be? And that's what motivates a lot
of theologically hopeful, wishful men to write books about heaven.
To which one of them even said to a group of young teenagers
one time in my presence, if you need baseball to be happy in
heaven, God will let you play. To which I got up at the end
of that service and I said, if you need baseball to be happy in
heaven, you ain't gonna be there. If your poodle is going to have
to sit in your lap for you to have joy in heaven, listen, if
my dogs are in my way when I get to heaven, I'm going to kick
them. Because I want to be with Christ.
And I don't need some lab coming up in my face, getting me all
dirty before I go see Jesus. You know, I'm being funny now. We live for the future of Christ. And Christ has the power and
the authority. How can He do that? Because Paul reminds us
here, He has the power that enables Him to subject all things to
Himself. In Ephesians chapter 1 verse
10, it says this, that Christ will put all things under His
feet. You know what that means? He was ridiculed, He was made
nothing, He was called a fool, He was crucified, but God raised
Him from the dead. And the Scripture teaches that
He is the King of kings and He is the Lord of lords. And here
in this letter, it teaches us that every knee will bow and
every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Every. That's not a salvific claim of,
oh yeah, we worship. No, that's an authoritative position. And the majority of humanity
will worship They won't worship. They will cry that out from hell. But not for us. We stand with
Christ. We will be like Him in His death,
and we will be like Him in His resurrection. We will be like
Christ who has all power, and all glory, and all honor, and
nothing will stop Him. He began the work, He will finish
it. Nothing will stop Him. Friends, there's so much in that
little phrase. It talks about Christ as sovereign. It talks
about Christ and His supremacy. And as we learned on our Tuesday
night class months ago, that God's sovereignty is an exercise
of His supremacy. Christ is supreme. That means
He is the being above all being. He's the owner of all things.
He's the creator of everything that is. Every molecule that
we cannot see with our eyes. He spoke into being. He owns
it all. He lives by His word of power. It says in Colossians, He upholds
the universe. And He is supreme over it all.
And His sovereignty is an exercise of His supremacy in that He rules
perfectly with nothing happening outside His ability, outside
His power, outside His will, and outside His purpose. No matter how dark it is, no
matter how light it is, Christ is King. Therefore, verse 1, Therefore,
my brothers, listen to the heart of Paul, whom I love and whom
I long for, my brothers who are my joy and who are my crown. What does he command here? Stand
firm thus in the Lord. So what are we standing? How
do we stand? We stand firm thus. Christ is supremely sovereign
and we stand in Him. He affects our righteousness.
He affects our minds. He affects our hearts. He affects
the outcomes of our circumstances. So we stand firm in Him. And that's our job. Ephesians
6, Paul says the same thing, what? Stand firm against the
darts, the fiery darts of the enemy. Because in Ephesians chapter
3 verse 10, Paul says that the devil and all the powers of darkness
know they have lost because the church exists, when he says it
this way. That the church exists to display
the manifold wisdom of God to the powers and principalities
of the heavenly places. There is no enemy. There is no
weapon. There is no sickness. There is
no death that has authority over us, church. Because Christ has
won. Has won. Happy birthday. I guess now as we quit, as we
finish, as we move now, Pass this text into other things.
My prayer for you seriously, strongly, is that you would hold
to this. is that when that little point
in your life today or tomorrow, sometime in the very near future,
where you go, what am I going to do? How am I going to deal
with this? And it's hopeless. There's no answer to those questions.
There's no thing that you can do that you would say, it doesn't
matter, but I can't do it because Christ has it effectually considered,
worked out before the foundations of the world. I know Christ has
my life. He has it. And if you're in fellowship
with the saints, you can say, hey, pray for me, because I'm
doubting right now. And I can't get this right now. I need prayer. And we pray and
God will give you the peace. The Word of God will give you
the power to see the grace of God and apply it to your life. The brothers and sisters who
are going through the same thing that you are going through in
different circumstances can walk with you with joy, though the
world looks on like we're a bunch of fools. And when they say,
how can you have that joy? You can say very clearly, as
Peter says, to always be prepared to give a reason for the hope
that you have. You can say, because my Jesus, my Lord, is the King
of kings and is sovereign over all things. He's the God of my
circumstances. He's the God of my life. He's
the God who has given me life over sin and freedom from sin. And I've been saved. I've been
redeemed. I've been born again. I am Christ's
and He is mine. And as long as I am there, and
forever I shall be, my joy shall be full." That's it. That's it. So is Christ yours? Are you His? Is your faith in
the midst of these struggles strong in Christ? I pray that
it will be. Let's pray. Lord, there are so many things,
so many distractions in our lives, so many opportunities, Lord,
to just give up and whine and complain. But Father, help us to be like
Christ, to not complain during the trials that we have. to be empowered by Your grace,
to be filled with Your Spirit, to have a joy that is inexpressible. Lord, we know all the phrases
from Scripture. Father, help it to become true
in our lives. Help it to become active in our
lives that we might live it and then give it to each other. And we thank You for this letter.
We thank You for this truth. We thank You, Lord, that You
saved us by the power of Your grace, because of Your love for
us in Christ Jesus, we are alive. And we worship You for who You
are. Whether You saved us or not, You are worthy of worship.
But oh Lord, what glorious grace You've given through Jesus Christ
our Savior, Your Son, that we now can also worship You for
that grace. May Your name be high, exalted,
lifted, exposed, and revered to the ends of the earth forever
and ever. In Jesus' name, Amen.