Now, I want to focus today on
the idea that Paul begins as he makes a sort of a spiritual,
I hate to use the term, but quote, spiritual resume for himself.
In verse four, which is the middle of that sentence, if you will,
he says, though I myself have confidence in the flesh also. I want to point to this place
because I want you to see the contrast that he's bringing.
I want you to see that these Judaizers who have come in, these
dogs, evildoers, mutilators of the flesh, have come in to most
every province, almost every city, almost every community,
and they've been preaching a different gospel as we see in the account
of the Galatians. And this different gospel, Paul
would say, is no gospel at all. Now, it's very easy to get focused
on the history of this. It's very easy to get focused
on understanding Israel and looking at Judaism and looking at the
history of Israel and focusing on all the precepts of the old
law and the old covenant. And I use those terms loosely
because they can mean a lot to everybody. But what Paul is now
arguing here is that there is that He Himself is an adherent
to all of these things, and that they're worthless. And you're
thinking, okay, now the sermon's over. But I want you to see that
He's contrasting this legalistic, obedient requirement that the
Judaizers, those who were Jews who then became Christians, who
brought with them their Judaism. the practices, the precepts,
the obedience, the law, all these things they brought with them
and Paul says it's of no account. They were bragging to the Christians,
you see how we are? We were the people of God for
millennia. And now you are grafted in, we're letting you come in.
You're sort of like, we've sewn you like a third leg to our body. And you're part of our body,
but you're not as much of our body as we are of our body. So
to be in the Jewish Messiah, you need to really be Jewish.
We're circumcised, you ought to be circumcised. We obey the
laws, you ought to obey the laws. We practice this, you ought to
practice this. And so when we're looking at
this, and I thought about really focusing in on verse 3 again
today, but I think it's just all-encompassing of what he's
arguing here. And so I will let that be sort of a fluid that
runs through the issue that Paul is arguing for today. But I guess
as we begin, I'm stuttering up here because I've got this little
headache thing going on. But I guess as we begin, I want
you to think about something. I want you to think about where
your hope lies. I want you to think about your
life and how you gauge your spiritual health. I want you to think about
all the times that you've looked at yourself in the mirror, in
the spiritual mirror, and you've said to yourself, I'm doing okay,
I'm walking with the Lord, everything's great. And I want you to think
about how you came to that conclusion. See, I've got a lot for you to
think about. But ultimately, it's just asking the question,
to what do I place my hope when I think I'm walking right with
Christ? To what am I gauging against what and with what am
I measuring myself in my daily walk with Christ? Because I'm
not a psychic, but I guarantee you that I could squirt out a
few phrases here and spew out a few thoughts and everybody
would be like, oh man, he's reading my mind. Because I think everybody
in the sound of my voice, myself included, has struggled with
their faith this week. If we haven't, then it's probably
not top of mind. And if it's not top of mind,
there's a bigger problem. We need to be guarded and we
need to be reminded. And that's one of the things
that will happen today. We need to be reminded that we ought
to be continually looking and seeing the face of Christ, and
then looking into our lives to see, are we transforming in the
likeness of Christ? Or is our flesh that has been
put to death in Christ ruling over us in certain areas? And
I guarantee you that most of us in the room would say, man,
there's some areas of my life that I really feel like I just
don't have power over. I feel like it's a hindrance
to me. Maybe it's an issue of sin. Maybe
there are sins that some of you may commit. And maybe they're
hidden, nobody else knows them but you. Maybe they're sins of
the mind, things that you think on, things that you focus your
time on. Or maybe they're the sins of
the attitude. As Paul said, have this mind among you which is
yours in Christ Jesus. The sins of the attitude where
we start to feel entitled. evidence by anger because things
don't go our way, or evidence by frustration because things
are just tearing up our plans, or evidence by pity because,
oh, woe is me because I've had to be dealing with this issue.
You see how that looks? And so all of us are guilty of
seeing the flesh work in some way in our lives. The question
is, are we going to heed the Word of the Lord? Are we going
to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ today, and then in turn preach
it to ourselves tonight, and preach it to ourselves tomorrow,
ask our brothers and sisters to pray for us, to continue to
labor for us as we petition the throne of God our Father for
them, they petition the throne of God our Father for us, and
we are working as a people who God has created and who is doing
and continuing the great work of redemption that is a certainty
for us as Christians. See, we have this, I don't know
if it's like this in other cultures because I cannot sympathize with
people of other cultures. But I wonder if other cultures
really fight this as we do as Americans. Because I don't know
that other cultures around the world are really so selfish or
really so self-centered. I'm not sure that most people
in third world countries get up and think, now what am I gonna
do for me today? I'm not so sure that people who even grow up
in other types of cultures that aren't third world, get up and
think, now when am I going to have me a day of rest? When am
I going to have me a vacation? Am I working to the end of satisfying
my own flesh? You see where I'm going? I really
don't have the answer to those things, but I know that if I
look at my heart, it's probably not too far from all of our hearts.
It's that our flesh really does continually battle sin. Whether it's the sins of actions,
the sins of attitude, the sins of lust, the sin of doubt, the
sin of hopelessness, the sin of unbelief. You say, well, unbelief? I didn't think Christians could
have unbelief. Yes, we could have unbelief. Unbelief is when
we put our joy in anything but Christ. That very moment, we
are not believing in the satisfactory condition, the satisfactory gospel,
the satisfactory grace of Jesus Christ. You think, man, if I
could just get this off my life, I'd have joy. That is an idol.
Oh Lord, if you could just take this burden away from me, then
my life would be okay. That is idolatry. That is unbelief. And if any of you have battled
that to the point where you have really prayed, pray for me because
I haven't completely overcome that. Even in the sense of ministry. Okay, I've got to do this and
I've got to do that and I've got to do this. And all of a
sudden I see that I'm putting provision for the flesh in all
my plans. It's not wrong to plan, but it's
wrong to consider that my plans are going to work to the end
that I feel the Lord has called me to, except by His grace and
will and purpose. But yet I find it that more like
Paul, the plans that are so well made by men are usually not the
plans that God will put into action. The same thing is true
for you in your life. And so when we start to hear
Paul talk right now in verse 4, we're going to have a tendency. Why are you saying all this?
We're going to have a tendency to take this and put it on a historical shelf.
This is where I started with this. We're going to want to
put it on a shelf and say, okay, that's sort of a Jewish thing
he's talking about, about these Judaizers. And so it's neat for
us to learn, but it has no real application. Well, let me tell
you something, church. If there's anything in the New Testament
that has no real application, we should just cut it out. If there's something in the New
Testament that is so confined to a specific culture in its
transcendent theological principle, that means that it just, it overcomes
all times, and all cultures, and all people groups, and all
ethnicities, and all races, and all genders, and all economic
barriers. If the Bible is teaching something,
especially in the New Testament, that doesn't transcend all that,
then we all just cut it out. And we ask the question, so what?
What difference does it make that I learn about Paul's Judaism?
What difference does it make that I learn about the Judaizers?
What difference does it make that there's no Judaizers bothering
us? I beg to differ. I beg to differ
that I think that there are Judaizers in our day, and we call them
Baptists. Because they've been on the rolls
of the Baptist church their entire life, or maybe they're Methodists.
or maybe they're Presbyterian, or maybe they're Calvinist, or
maybe they're Evangelical, or whatever label that they've taken.
But let me tell you something, we're all Judaizers to some degree
or another. And it's bad enough when our
Judaistic tendencies, when our traditional tendencies, when
our historical tendencies, when our genealogical tendencies begin
to push into our own lives, but when we start to impart those
as necessary in the lives of others, we've committed the same
sin as the Judaizers did in the first century. And in doing so,
if we're not careful, we might find ourselves with a hope that's
not Christ alone. And that's what Paul's about
to argue this morning. And it's something that I hold dear, and
it's something that I'm going to keep myself from commenting
on as it relates to my own life, because I don't want to impart
how I see this as how you should see it. Because if I did, then
I'd be guilty of doing the same thing that Paul's preaching against. I have a really big soapbox,
and it's very high when I talk about nationalism and how the
Christians should relate as Americans to the government and to politics
And we can theorize and pray and study and talk and preach.
And there are specific and explicit ways in which the Lord looks
at it. And I think these are one of the ways in which the
Lord looks at it in the life of Paul and what Paul's about
to say. But that it applies in certain ways in my life doesn't
mean that it should apply that way in your life. We have matters
of conscience. Some Christians that I know think
it's sinful to vote in an election. Some Christians I know think
it's sinful not to vote in an election. So who's right? I say
they're probably both right. If their conscience bears witness
to that, then do it. But don't tell me that because I vote I've
sinned. You see what I'm saying? And
so it's a difficult thing to try to piece together and place
in everyone's lap accordingly. But I want you to know that there's
a lot of things that are going to come up in this text that
I could easily begin to shove into nicely fit corners, nicely
fit holes and put the round peg in the round hole and say, there
you go, there's your peg. Avoid hearing me that way this
morning and also avoid doing that to yourself. Don't pigeonhole
yourself into something and call it a conviction, except that
the Lord, through his word and through prayerful consideration,
gives you that conviction. I'm not talking about everything.
I'm talking about in these areas where we as the people of God
have charity. We have unity in those things that have to be
unified on. And by the way, you'll hear this some in the near future,
there is no such thing as unity without intimacy. Just put that
in your wallet and think about it for a few days. And so, but
on those things that aren't necessary for us to have unity on, we need
to have the unity of the Spirit, which is in all things like Paul
would say to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 13, love. We
need to be loving. We need to bear with each other's
burdens. And we who are spiritually mature, or no, let's do it better.
You who are spiritually mature should bear with the spiritually
weak. You should put up sometimes with these crazy nuances that
we see amongst the body of Christ and think, alright, one day they'll
get it. But let's be patient and loving
as they do, as we not just make disciples of a lost world, but
we then disciple those who are in Christ as well. There's this
crazy idea that the Bible is for the lost, and the Gospel
is for the lost, and that discipleship is for the lost, and that when
somebody gets saved, that they're just, they got it, now they're
supposed to, look. The Bible, the New Testament is for the
church, the Gospel is for the sake of the church, and not just
unto salvation because they once were lost, now they are saved,
but then unto sanctification and security and preservation.
So the Bible and everything in it, the Gospel and its complete
power works together to keep the body intact, to keep the
body in faith, to keep the body pressing into holiness. So with
all that being said, let's remember what's happened here in Philippi. These Judaizers come in, and
as we saw last week, Paul's not necessarily talking about a specific
group of them, or that they had even come in and started trouble.
He's just saying, watch out for them. They're out there, and
they are coming. And these people are going to
try to tell you that, yes, you have believed by faith in Jesus,
though you are rewarded with eternal life, and that's all
good. There are some other things you
must do to really please the Lord and be counted as Israel,
to be counted as the people of God. Now keep in mind, it's hard
for me not to go and explain what I said when I said that
just then, to go in and just talk about Israel, why the Jews
call themselves Israel. It's a bloodline thing. It's
a covenant issue. And the pride that was there,
we'll get into a little bit. Oh well, here are the Judaizers
and Paul says watch out for them. They mutilate the body, they're
evil, they're wicked, they're dark, there is no light in them.
Be careful because they're coming. We are the true circumcision.
We are the bride of Christ. We are the body. We are the ones
that Christ has saved. It doesn't matter our nationality.
It doesn't matter our genealogy. It doesn't matter our historical
lineage or all of our heritage. It doesn't matter about these
things. What matters is Christ alone. And these Judaizers, he
would say, they're boasting. They're saying, look how we follow
the law. Look how we've lived. Look, we're circumcised. You
ought to do the same if you really want to honor the Lord. Yes,
you're Christians, but if you really want to be settled into
the people of God, you must follow these rules and regulations.
You must look like we look. You must think like we think.
You must be political like we're political. You must eat the way
we eat. We saw what happened in Luke's
account of Peter in going in and bringing back some Judaistic
tendencies of not wanting to eat certain meats. What does
Paul do to Peter? He puts him in his place publicly.
Rebukes him harshly because he was sinning. He was more concerned
with being Jewish than he was being Christian. And Paul tells
him that there's no place for that. And the Lord confirms those
things to Peter as well. Well, there's no difference here.
These Jews who are now saved in Christ by their profession,
keep that in mind. It wasn't that they truly were
born of God, but that they professed to be born of God in Christ. Because if they were truly born
of God, they would not be trying to purvey this traditional mindset
of being honorable to the Lord. They would not try to say to
new believers, OK, Christ has saved you, but now you must come
into the fold of Judaism as well to truly partner in grace, to
partner in God, to be the people of God. It's an incredible implication. but it's one that we should very,
very, very much pay attention to because it could be that our
own hearts and minds are bound in this same way. Paul says they have confidence
in the flesh, but we, the people of God, put no confidence in
the flesh. Then verse four, though, though,
He said, we are the circumcision. They are the mutilators. We are
the circumcision. And we put no confidence in the
flesh. Those Judaizers put confidence
in the flesh. We don't, though I have reason
for confidence in the flesh. You see what he's saying there?
So if somebody's got reason for the confidence in the flesh,
it's me, Paul says. And let me show you why. And
so I'm going to deal with the six things that Paul tells us
as to how he can, in his flesh, put confidence in the work of
his flesh, if there is such a thing. Because he's already said there's
not. But he's going to explain how he can say such a thing.
I want to call this Paul's perfect Judaism. Paul begins to argue
that he is the perfect Jew. He's the epitome. He's the poster
child for righteousness when it comes to the covenant of God
with Israel. So that if anybody else comes along and says, yo,
I got it made. Look at how we're doing. Do like
us. Paul says, no, no, no, no, no. They don't hold a candle
to me. I've got it made. I am perfect. Listen to this. He says, I was circumcised on
the eighth day. And because I was circumcised
on the eighth day, I have more confidence in my flesh than these
Judaizers have confidence in their flesh. Why is he saying
that? Well, Paul's circumcision, according
to the law, is that every good Jewish family would circumcise
their sons on the 8th day. Not the 1st day, not the 9th
day, not the 7th day, not the 7th day of the 11th hour, but
on the 8th day. And if you did not do it on the 8th day, though
circumcision was accepted, it wasn't pure. It wasn't righteous.
It wasn't in strict adherence to the law of God. And so therefore,
though you were in the covenant, you sort of just barely made
it. It's like when people teach the tithe. And they say 10% is
what you should teach. It's not necessarily true. According
to Malachi 3, the tithe of Israel was almost 30%. It was about
28. But you know how we do in America. You've got to preach
the tithe. It's a 10%. And you know, Paul says in 2 Corinthians
9, it's not the case for the New Testament church. But even
then, people like to preach the tithe. And when nobody can do
the tithe, then pastors will stand in the pulpit and say,
well, just give 2%. Give 3%. When the Bible says that as a Jew,
as an obedient person to adhere to the law, 10% is required,
so to give 10% means that you're giving the absolute minimum that's
required of you, that you're just getting by. And that anything
less than that, though you're giving, your heart's in the right
place, but you're just not getting it. And you're not going to receive
the great blessing that's due to those who do give a tithe.
That's the Old Testament. That's what the prophet Malachi
teaches. That's what Jesus reinforces
with the Pharisees when they start fussing about tithing.
He goes, oh no, y'all have to tithe. Y'all do, these don't.
These people over here, these Greeks don't have to tithe. But
you do, you better not forget that you gotta tithe and you
gotta wash and you gotta pray and you gotta sacrifice, you
gotta do all that stuff. All of it, all or none. He tells
the original ruler, you obey everything or you've broken all
of them. And so in the same way, Paul's
like, look, I was circumcised on the eighth day. These people,
who knows when they were circumcised? They could have been circumcised
last week. Now they're trying to tell you to get circumcised? You grown
adult men who have just come to Christ, who are not even Jews?
He's telling y'all, well, how's that if my circumcision is better
than yours, and I'm telling you that my circumcision is worthless,
he'll say in just a minute, then why in the world would you want
to do something that's worthless to no account? Mine's perfect,
yours isn't, and mine's worthless. So Paul's like, I'm pure, I'm
perfect. It was even out of the hands
of the will of Paul. He was eight days old. What does this look
like? This looks like the traditions of the Father. These are the
obedience of the parents of Saul. As a matter of fact, they named
him Saul, and we'll see why in a minute. And here is Paul saying
that nobody can brag as much as I can brag about obedience
to the law because my parents were obedient to the law. I come
from a good heritage of traditionally minded Jews who did everything
that was required of them in their faith. And they made sure
that I was circumcised on the eighth day. And that was not
an easy task. if you didn't live close to the
temple. If you didn't live close to where
you could go and find a rabbi to do the circumcision. Sometimes
it was a costly endeavor. Maybe you had to travel or maybe
you were out of town when your baby was born and then you had
to go and find someone within a week to circumcise your son
so that you could be obedient to the law. Paul is saying the
traditions of my parents make me a better Jew than these people.
But he'll go on to say, I count all of this as nothing. Whatever
gain I had, so Paul's saying whatever gain, I'll use that
in all six of these, whatever gain I had in my circumcision,
I count it as worthless. So why would someone who was
less than perfect in the circumcision come and tell you that it's worth
something? The traditions of my parents' faith, the actions
of what they did in obedience to the law of Moses, has no bearing
on my salvation for Jesus Christ. It has no bearing on your salvation
in Christ. It is about Christ alone, not
traditions. Now how would this play out in
our own application? Well, many people who would sit under the
teaching of preaching or preaching in the Protestant church today
would sit there with a, not smug, but with a sound feeling in their
heart. I know that I'm a child of God. I've been in church since
I was a baby. Most of us have grew up, especially in a Baptist
church, would say that we've been in the church while we were
in the womb. We can say that we've been in
Sunday school our whole lives. We've been under the teaching
of the Word. We've been in Bible studies. We've been part of this.
We've been part of that. We've been part of missions.
We've been doing it all. Our parents saw to it that we
were good Christian people. And so I know I'm in the faith.
Paul's saying I was like that and even better. But the circumcision
that these people have and the circumcision that they're trying
to get you to do It's not even worthy of being called circumcision.
It's mutilation of the flesh. It's worthless. Let it carry. He says, I was circumcised on
the eighth day. He says, I am of the people of Israel. Now,
why did they use the term Israel? Because Jacob changed his name
to Israel. And so Israel is the name that
the Jewish people took to show their lineage to their father,
Jacob. To show that they are the sons
of the covenant. The sons of the promise. The
promise was given to Abraham, but through Jacob, the promise
was fulfilled. According to the Jews. And so
they took the name Israel. to show that they are the people
of Israel. They became a nation who were not a nation. And Paul
is saying here, and the Greek word there is genos, is where
we get the idea of genealogy. It's not just people, but Paul
is saying, let me paraphrase, Paul is saying, I'm of the ancestral
stock of the original, pure, and holy people of God. They
want to talk about their worthiness? Let me tell you about my worthiness.
I'm of the greatest pedigree. I am Israel. Look at me. I am Israel. And if I want to
boast in the flesh of that, I can boast far greater than anybody
else can boast. I am of the Israel stock. I'm of good pedigree. In other
words, Paul is saying, I was of the right nation. I was of
God's people. So in a sense he would say, this
is God's land, these are God's people, and I am of the purest
pedigree of the people of God, so therefore my nation, my government,
and everything I stand for is righteous. But what does Paul
then tell the Romans in chapter 9 verse 6? Yes, I hate to go
there, but Paul says, not all who are descended of Israel are
Israel. What? That means that there are
billions of people who were born of Israel blood, but they're
not Israel. As a matter of fact, he goes
on to say that those who are in Christ are the true Israel. So Paul
is saying, hey, you want to boast? I can boast about my genealogy,
I can boast about my pedigree, I can boast about my ancestry,
but it's nothing. I'm not Israel because I was
born in the right Israel. I'm Israel because I was born
into Christ. And so this no longer carries at all. Now, I don't
know if any of you can relate to this, what I'm about to say
or not, but I can tell you this. I hear more than not Christians who
feel that they are God's people because they're Americans. That
America is God's nation. That the United States is the
Christian nation. Now I don't want to get into
it, but I'd like to give you a homework assignment. Go online to the
White House website or the Library of Congress website and look
at the Articles of Independence, the Declaration of Independence,
and look at the Constitution, and I want you to print it out
and underline every mention of Christ that you see. Let me give
you a tip. Just break your pencil point
off before you get started because there's nothing to underline. There's nothing there. Matter
of fact, there's a mention of a Creator, and that's about it. Panentheism, at best. Deism,
maybe. But it doesn't mean that we're
not a nation that at one time was predominantly Christ-like,
or Christian-focused, or churchy, or religious, just like Israel. What makes any nation Christian
is that it is comprised of God-fearing, God-believing, Holy Spirit-filled
people. And so Palestine in the same
turn then is a Christian nation. China is a Christian nation. Afghanistan is a Christian nation
by same comparison. And yet we see, oftentimes, especially
on the news, by religious people, they would say, well, you know,
this is God's, God's got to do, we've got to stand with God's
people, they're going to stand with us, anybody. I'm not saying
that there's not some merit to that discussion, but I'm saying
that according to what Paul's teaching here, it's of no consequence
and it has no value. It has no worth. So why do we
flaunt it? Even if it's true. Thirdly, Paul
says, I'm of the people of Israel, therefore I have more Confidence
in the flesh. I was circumcised on the eighth
day, therefore I have more confidence in the flesh. And thirdly, he
says, I am of the tribe of Benjamin. I'm not just Israel, I'm Benjamin. And you might think, well, so? Friends, in the Old Testament,
I could give you three dozen references to the tribe of Benjamin
being the most favored tribe. The favored tribe through which
the first king of Israel was born. And I don't go through
all the genealogy, but who is he? Saul. So much so that he's
from the greatest tribe of all of God's people and he's from
the greatest lineage of Israel and he's so excited, his parents
are so zealous about their relationship with their God that they give
their son the name of the first king, Saul. Now you know why
Paul changed his name? He no longer wanted to be recognized
as Saul, as Israel, as Benjamin. One of the best heritages. One of the best histories. And
Paul says it is worthless. Now, I don't know how this would
play out in your own life or in the life of those people around
you, but friends, there is a lot of trouble that comes here when
we begin to put stock in our heritage. In our national heritage. It's not that it's not important.
Please understand, history is important, even bad history.
We should know it. We should know it. We should
know where we come from. We should know our genealogies
as best we can. But they're not important in
the sense of our salvation and our Christian lives. It has no
consequence. It's worthless. They don't relate. We're not honoring to God because
we had a Christian father or a Christian grandfather. We're
not worthy to stand before Christ because we have 65 missionaries
in our family. We're not worthy because our
last name is Graham to be called a great preacher or write with
the Lord. It doesn't matter. It's the heritage
of our lives. What happens to those with no
heritage? We are the heritage from the Lord. We are Christ. We are those who are saved by
the grace of God. We are those who are in the covenant
of the Gospel of God, the Good News, which is Jesus Christ,
who came through the chosen people of God, who God chose, without
any merit of their own, to create a people, to preserve them, to
keep them, most of the time by keeping them in slavery. so they
would not so intertwine into another culture that He could
keep them separate, so that Jesus the Messiah would come through
the line of Judah, so that the Christ would be born, so that
the world, all nations, all tongues, all tribes, every nation, every
persons, people from every persons, from every group, could come
to faith in Jesus Christ. Not Jews. and not just Jews. As a matter
of fact, Paul argues when he gives the rhetorical question,
so has God lied? Has God forgotten His promise
to us, to the Jews? Absolutely not, because I'm a
Jew, and God saved me. To the road to Damascus, God
saved me. So God hasn't lied. God didn't
fail me. But it's not all who are born
of Israel who are Israel. It's those who are born of God
through Christ Jesus alone. Christ alone is not just a cool
pillar of our Reformed Protestant faith. Christ alone is the foundation
of the theology that's taught in the New Testament. Christ
alone is the prophetic anticipation of the Old Testament. Christ
alone is the answer to every human being in response to the
question, how can I be right with God? Christ alone. And there is no heritage. There is no tradition. There
is no action. There is no genealogy that can
put us right with God. Paul then says, fourthly, he
is a Hebrew of Hebrews. And because he is a Hebrew of
Hebrews, he has more confidence in the flesh. Now, you've got
to understand a little bit about what's happened here in the world
over a thousand year period. For the sake of time, I'll just
tell you this, is that the entire world at this time that we know
of was Hellenized. That means it was greatly influenced
by Greek culture. After the Maccabean Revolt, if
you don't know anything about that, you should read up on it.
After the Maccabean Revolt, Jews had the opportunity again to
actually go and begin to worship in the temple. Out of the group
of Jews who got the temple back rose a group of reformers who
said, OK, we got it back, but we don't want to be Greek like
Jews. We don't want to speak Greek
anymore. We don't want to read Greek anymore.
We don't want to be Hellenized. We don't want to be culturally
defective. And the group that came out of that were known as
the Reformers, and they were called Pharisees. If we're going
to be Israel, we want to be pure. So we're not going to do pagan
holidays. We're not going to have this and that and the other.
We're not going to see this stuff intertwined into our Judaism,
into our religion, into our worship of Yahweh. We're not going to
do it. So the Pharisees were the first
reformers of Israel and they began to push people back to
the strict adherence to the precepts of Moses. So that they would
be seen for the glory of the name of God as holy people. So that when we see the Pharisees
by the first century, we see them with that same type of zeal. What Paul is saying when he says,
I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews, is he is saying, I am not a Hellenized
Jew. Though I have jurisdictional
citizenship in Rome, I'm not Roman. No part of me is Roman. I live by the law of God and
the law of Israel, and I live as a Hebrew of Hebrew inasmuch
as I read and write in Hebrew, when the Bible of this day was
not in Hebrew. Do you realize that? The Old
Testament that Jesus read from in the synagogue was not Hebrew. It was Greek. The Bible that, matter of fact,
Paul refers several times to Old Testament scripture in the
New Testament epistles. And do you know he's referring to a
Syriac translation of the Old Testament? Not a Hebrew. And why did he do that? Because
he's talking to a Greek-speaking people. But he's saying, I read,
I wrote, I prayed. I bet he prayed in Hebrew. I
bet he's like, and it's not just the language, but it's the culture.
Paul wore phylacteries. He wore the Word of God in front
of his eyes, in front of his heart, wrapped up in little leather
boxes. He wore what was required of him. He cut his hair according
to the covenant. He dressed, he spoke, he walked,
he prayed, he did everything. So when people saw Paul, they're
like, oh, that's a Jew. They would hear his accent as
he did speak other languages, and they would hear that long,
rich, Semitic drawl, if you will. They would hear it. And they
would know this man has not given up the traditions of Israel.
He is a Hebrew of Hebrews. As a matter of fact, in 1 Maccabees
1.63 it says that we would rather die than be defiled in our worship. And it goes on to describe what
that looks like, the writings of the Maccabeans. Paul would
rather die than be defiled. He'd rather die than be counted
in the number of the way of Christ. He'd rather die than see someone
blaspheming God. He'd rather die by the hand of
Rome as he supervised the stoning of Stephen than to live knowing
he did nothing. Because he was a Hebrew of Hebrews.
You know what that says about Paul? He didn't love the world. It says about Paul he didn't
love culture, he didn't love new stuff, he didn't love new
traditions and discoveries. It says about Paul that Paul
loved the old faith and the old culture and the things of old
and the ways of old and he did not think there was any need
to update the music and update the clothes and update the stuff
that they did in worship because it was good enough for Jacob,
it was good enough for Israel, it was good enough for Moses,
it was good enough for all the patriarchs, it was good enough
for his parents and it's good enough for him. And he says it's
worthless. Give it up. Now that doesn't
mean anything goes. We as Baptists, we govern ourselves
according to the Word of God. What we see in the Word of God
in several places. We don't have the book of worship,
the book of liturgy. Thou shalt not use orange in
your curtains. Or thou shalt use only a drum
that is made of sheepskin. Or thou shalt never play trumpets
except on fifth Sundays. I mean, we don't see that stuff.
But what we do, see, is that in everything we do, we honor
Christ. We glorify God. And so that we
realize that the power, as Brother Paul prayed this morning, that
the power of God to work in His people rests in the sufficiency
of the Word of God. And so if we are going to worship
God, we must worship God in a way that is honoring to His name
and honoring to His Word, so that the songs we sing need to
be scriptural, The things that we do, if it might be offensive
to someone else, we throw them away because we give up our liberties
for the sake of the weaker or the sake of the more mature or
the sake of whoever it might be. If I started breakdancing
up here and it might offend you, I won't breakdance anymore. And
then some things we have to work out. Do you have to wear a tie
to preach? Well, I'll wear a tie, but I
might wear it around my head. You didn't say how. Put it on
my arm. But you know, if I went preaching
now, if I went preaching to church and they demanded I wear a suit,
then I'm going to put a suit on. Because I'd rather preach
the truth of Christ than fight that. And when they don't tell
you and you show up without a suit, and they embarrass you in front
of the whole church, well, you just take it. Take the lumps. It's happened. Or worse, when
you wear a suit to a really informal church who drives motorcycles
down there and people look at you like you're lost. You know
where you are? The point is, Paul says all that
adherence to all these things is nothing. Christ is everything. He says as to the law, a Pharisee. And I've already
told you where the Pharisees come from in a nutshell. But
that was their thing. Hey, if it's not written in the
Bible... You could call us somewhat of Pharisees, but see it's negative
now. It's not a positive thing. But
we're Pharisees in the same tradition that we want to go back to the
Reformation. We want to go back to the Bible.
We want to stick to that. And there's nothing wrong with
that. if we understand, if we understand what the Bible teaches
about what it teaches. If we say we adhere to what these
doctrines are and how they relate to us and how they apply to us,
then we can say, okay, we understand. But what are we not adhering
to? We don't adhere to the law. I'm not talking about the Ten
Commandments. I'm not talking about the law
of Christ or the law of faith. I'm talking about the law of
Judaism. Yeah, there's a great movement. Listen to me, church.
There's a great movement among Protestants to go back into the
celebrations, not as a way of enjoying the history, but as
in a way of honoring God going into the celebrations of Israel.
And they observe everything that can be observed. They begin to
change the way they pray. They begin to change their translation
of the Scripture they use because they feel like that it's better.
They just become Judaizers. Paul is saying as a Pharisee
to the law that he is the spiritual elite. I want you to hear this.
Because according to the Old Testament, according to the Mosaic
law, you had to obey all 614 or 619 laws. Did you know there was that many?
Yeah, there's that many. It's bumped over the hump toward
a thousand. If you're going to round up, there we are. Six hundred
plus laws that they had to obey and Paul is saying that he was
an elitist when it came to obeying the law. That he was the reformer
of the Jews, he kept the faith of Israel, he kept the faith
of his fathers, and he sinnered his entire life and was compelled
by obedience to the laws of Moses. So if anybody else comes and
talks about how good they are living their lives as Jews, step
up in line and get behind me, Paul's saying. Because I have
reason to boast in that. But I count it as nothing. I
count it as nothing. How does that apply to us? Well,
I don't know that it necessarily applies to us because we are
in more of a movement in our world, in our culture, to where
it doesn't matter what you do. The free grace, and it is free. The hyper grace, which we should
be hyper about it. But this extreme level of preaching
the grace of God, the grace of God comes and the grace of God
is given and the grace of God is effectual and the grace of
God is certain to transform the person who receives it into a
lover of obedience. And the scripture even shows
that when we see people among the church who don't live in
obedience to the principles of the gospel, they're saying that
the power of the gospel isn't in them and they either are corrected
and repent and correct, thus maintaining fellowship, or they're
ejected so that they may have their flesh destroyed by the
devil so that they can have their soul saved. That's Jesus' own
words in Paul's too, 1 Corinthians. 18. Paul would say to these, I have
more right to glory in my life because I followed the right
faith. I followed the right traditions. I followed the right theology.
Y'all listen to that. We should follow the right theology.
But if we sit around and say, you know what? We are okay because
we've got this down. We've got the doctrines of grace.
We've got the true gospel. It's the same thing. Not that
we throw that away like Paul was saying. He didn't throw the
Old Testament away. It had its purpose and it fulfilled its
purpose in Christ alone. Not for righteousness. The Old
Covenant was never unto righteousness. Ever. No one could ever. It was never intended that way.
God in His wisdom never set a covenant before man that he could obtain
his own righteousness. Ever. It's never been there. There's
nowhere in Scripture that teaches that. There is conditional obedience,
conditional blessing based on obedience, just like today. You
want to stay out of jail? Don't rob the bank. Keep your freedom. I heard a
man who had served 15, 20 years in prison. He went in when he
was in his mid-20s. And he got up and told a group
of young people about six months ago, he says, listen, if you
go to prison, it's because that's where you wanted to be. And Paul is saying that following
the right faith of Judaism was a prison. It wouldn't put you
in righteous standing with God. And if these people want to do
that, that's where they want to be. Don't let them drag you into
it. Two other things. He says, as
of zeal, I was a persecutor of the church. That means he was
a protector of purity. If you see something that's gross
or nasty or defiling or blasphemous, if you're in a kitchen and you
see a bug crawling around on the dough that you're kneading,
you're going to what? Flick it off and keep kneading? No, you're
probably going to throw the whole batch out. Or if you're going
in, you know, you're putting rice in a bowl and you've got
rice in your hand and you see something squirming in it, and
you realize, man, the lids weren't on there, you're going to just
keep cooking? Yeah, brown rice, just eat it. No, you're going to dump the
whole thing out. And I hope that you have to go ahead and put
your meat in your rice. I mean, you're going to throw it out.
Because we're not that hungry around here, are we? To eat whatever
those things are. Weevils or whatever they are.
I don't know what they are to get in rice. No. Paul was no different. When he
saw things coming against the traditions of his faith, He felt
it not an affront to him, but an affront to God. He felt it
was an attack on the holiness of God and the name of God. And
so when Jesus Christ, claimed to be God, came as Messiah, and
the whole of the nation of Israel, in a sense, just said, no, no,
no, that's not our Messiah. And all of a sudden this gospel
begins to go out into the world and people start to transform.
Paul took it personal, for the sake of God. And he's like, I
am not going to allow this. So at any cost, I would rather,
I've already said it, I would rather die than see this continue. I would rather lose my freedom
and my life knowing that I tried rather than just let it go. So
he persecuted the church of Jesus. He was a protector of righteousness.
He was a protector of the name of God. He was a defender of
the people of God and the nation of Israel at all costs. He is
saying to us and to the Philippians, my zealousness guarded the very
soul of my people. And my zeal protected the name
of the Lord. I have to say that I'm coming
to realize that a lot of that takes place in our culture today. If you want to know the history
of Grace Truth Church, young as we are, we've had great persecution. Great persecution, and it'd blow
your mind just how hateful two or three individuals can be.
Because they feel, one gentleman particularly two and a half years
ago said in a public meeting, I'm going to do all that I can
to stop churches like that from existing. Because they are destroying
the gospel. And all they're doing is just
moving fish from one bowl to another because they've got something
new. But what's new in here? I know y'all have a lot of room
and a lot of benefits and amenities this morning. The Word of God. But that's going to happen. That
person was angry, frustrated, blah, blah, blah, blah. But here's
the thing. They're no different than Paul. And we have things
in our own lives, too, about false teaching and false teachers
that are on the airwaves and stuff like that. And one thing
after another, we get flustered. We think, okay, it is our job
to fix the internet. It is our job to correct everything
on YouTube. The 400 billion videos that go
up. A billion of them are false teachers. Let's go on there and
comment. This is heresy on every one of them. Let's take two or
three days and not sleep. We see something come up on our
social media and all of a sudden we're fed up and we're done with
it. We're not tolerating it anymore. It's okay to defend the truth.
But we don't need to give our lives away trying to defend God's
name by overcoming the negative when what we should really do
is just preach the truth. And I find that much easier to
say, well, I understand what you're saying. I hear you. Let
me show you what the Bible says. And just teach it. And when they
want to argue, that's interesting. Let me show you what the Bible
says about that. And teach it. Why? Because God is greater than me.
And all the philosophy and theory And anything I can come up with
is not going to hold a candle to the power of the gospel. And by God's grace, Paul, as
he thought he was a persecutor of the church, became the church.
That which he hated, he began to love. He says he was blameless. The final thing that we see today,
he was blameless. And let me try to tell you that
Paul doesn't say, because we see in other places, he didn't
say he was sinless, but he said he was blameless. And I don't
really know how Paul would confine that term or define that term
in the confines of his own life, but I would say it this way. Paul was deeply satisfied, as
much as he could be, that he passionately desired to obey
all that he could in regards to the law. Therefore, he reflected,
here we go, on his moral compass. Paul began to look, and when
he's talking about this, he's saying, when I measured myself,
remember the question I asked us in the very beginning? When
I measured myself, and to the success of my faith, I found
myself blameless because of my zeal and my obedience and my
tradition and my genealogy and my parents and everything. I
found myself blameless because I strived and my moral compass
was in line with the law of God. So, therefore, my life was worthy
of its living in response to the law of God. Paul would say,
my obedience to God found in me a holiness that reflected
the nature of God." He would mimic in some sense the words
that Jesus uses in this parable about the Pharisee and the publican.
And the Pharisee stood proud with his hand on his chest and
said, thank you God that I am not like this publican. and to
begin to give a list of things that he did in obedience to the
law of God, and he gave God credit for it. Jesus said then in response,
the publican went far off, not even wanting to show his face,
would not even look his eyes to heaven, tore his clothes and
beat his chest, and said, Oh dear God, have mercy on me, a
sinner. And Jesus' own words, He says,
I say to you, this man, not the Pharisee, went home justified.
Righteous. And Paul says he's just like
that Pharisee, if he were to boast in his flesh. But he's
not going to boast in his flesh. If I have all of this, which
is greater than anybody else who could ever stand before me,
and I say that it's nothing, then anyone else that claims
to have something is a fool. There's a good summary statement
of what Paul is saying. And they're fool not in that
they're just foolish, but that they're blind and they speak
out of a deafness. They speak out of their dead
being that you must obey the way they have obeyed. And if
you do so, then your righteousness will shine in the eyes of God.
And as he's walking along and is blinded by your life, I go,
whoa, I didn't see that guy. Come on in. No, it's not that
at all. that while all of these, and
he as he was before Christ met him on the road to Damascus,
in his blindness he could see the world, but in his life he
was blind to the world, in Acts chapter 9. And immediately began
to preach the gospel of Jesus in the synagogue, where just
three days before he proclaimed that all the way was a heresy. There is no hope in the flesh. You want a summary of what it
means? Anything but Christ that we put our satisfaction or our
hope in is the flesh, even when it's sound doctrine. Well, I
know the right thing, but do you know the true Christ? And
you may know the right thing, but is it because you know the
true Christ or because you've got your head in the game? Maybe
you're walking today and you think, well, I'm not where I
need to be with the Lord. I used to be more zealous. And so you're measuring your
faith by the level of your zeal. Or maybe even worse, as we've
already looked in the weeks prior, maybe you measure your salvation
through the extent of your joy, not a bad problem. But when you're
joyful, you feel saved. When you're not, you say you're
not. How about your salvation be intermingled, intertwined,
created in the person of Jesus alone? So that as Paul would
say, but whatever gain I had, in other words, any type of gain
that I saw myself in, I counted as lost for the sake of Christ. Does something come to mind when
you hear those words? The marriage vows come to mind
to me. Forsaking all others till death
do us part. Do you know that I am part of
all others? Paul, in that sense, would say
that everything that I was, I forsake for the sake of Christ. Paul, in like manner of Christ,
Christ forsaked His glory for the sake of His bride. That's
where it comes from. He did not count equality with
God something to be grasped. He did not stand bold before
His trials and say, I am the God of heaven. He just kept silent. And He took the penalty of sin
so that all who believe by faith have been forgiven in the death
and resurrection of Jesus. Are you in Christ today? Are
you in Christ this very moment? Are you satisfied that faith
alone in Christ alone is the only hope you have? You know
what that looks like? when you're wondering about your
salvation, and you're measuring it out by how well you're living
in the Lord, that you don't put your confidence there, but you
say, in spite of all that, I am in Christ because Christ has
done the work on the cross. And Christ has given me faith. And Christ is my hope. And Christ
is my treasure. O God, have mercy on me, a sinner,
that I might see the glory of Your face in the person of Jesus,
and thus worship forever. That when I'm trying to measure
all that I am by all that I do and all that I hold to, that
I will flush that down the proverbial toilet of my life and I will
stand firm in the face of grace. And that there is no other hope
but Christ. We cannot put our hope in anything
but Christ. Because it is hopeless. Whether
it be our nation, our lineage, our genealogy, our parents, our
obedience, our zeal, our passion, our morality, all of it is no
worth when it comes to righteousness. Now, I will say too that we don't
throw away obedience. We don't throw away our affections
to the things that are holy. But we discern what they are
because Christ is in us and He has purchased us by His blood.
so that we become a people that He gets the praise for seeing.
When the world looks, they say, oh, there is Christ in these.
No, I so wish I could be like you. Or I so wish I could have
that kind of zeal. I'll work on that. That's a fool's
errand. You know what we need to work
on? Laying ourselves at the feet of the cross of Jesus every moment
of our lives. and standing up from that place
of mercy, knowing that it is by the mercy of our Savior that
we can stand in obedience to His commands. And that's it. Are you in Christ? Is He your
only hope? Let's pray and then sing praises
to our King. Lord, have mercy. Thank You for
Your mercy. As we stand here, as we sit here,
as we are gathered together as a people who have received grace
upon grace, I pray, Father, that among us, if there are those,
man, woman, or child, who have not come to faith in Christ,
that You would show them the beauty of Your Son this very
day. That they would see salvation
in Jesus alone. Father, help us to work these
things out. Help us to work them out and
see where we're putting burdens on ourselves and on people that
are not biblical. See where there are things in
our lives that we are hoping in instead of Your Gospel. Father, help us to live a life
of righteousness so that Your name is praised in the midst
of this world. Father, we pray, oh, so burdened
for so many who do not see this. Lord, keep us from temptation.
Keep us from sin so that our prayers would not be hindered
as we pray and labor in prayer for you to do a mighty work through
the sending of your gospel in the hearts of those who cannot
see. And Father, as your people, Help us to continue to covenant
together as the scripture teaches us to look out for each other's
needs, to pray for each other's burdens, to rejoice as we rejoice
together and to weep as we weep together. And we pray these things
in the name of Christ, our King. Amen.