Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program. Now today's
message is the tenth message in a series of messages that
are intended to accompany a new book that we're offering called,
What is a Christian? A Biblical Study of the One True
Faith. And this message is dealing with
how the Bible defines true Christians specifically in one particular
verse. That verse is Philippians chapter
3 and verse 3 if you'd like to follow along in your Bibles. This accompanies the chapter
in the book that's entitled True Christians Described in One Verse. Now there are many passages of
scripture from Genesis to Revelation that give us the reality of what
a true Christian is and what a true Christian is not defined. But there are certain verses
that just have stood out to me in my study of the Bible over
the last 30 some years. that really concisely and fully
describe and define true Christians. This verse of scripture is one
of them. In fact, as I mentioned last week in the message, the
whole idea for this book that we're offering, and by the way,
we offer this book and this DVD and CD series free of charge,
to anyone who wants it, and we hope that you'll use it as a
tool of self-examination. I hope it challenges your faith.
My study of this challenged my own faith, and what I want us
to understand is, can I prove, if I test my claim of being a
Christian by the doctrines, the teachings, the truths that are
set forth in the Bible, God's Word, will it stand the test?
If it will, then that's great. That's assurance of salvation
by the power of the Holy Spirit. If it doesn't, then you need
to abandon your faith and seek the Lord. So this is true Christians
described in one verse. This verse is Philippians 3.
Look at verse 3. The Apostle Paul writes, For
we are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit and
rejoicing Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh."
Now there are four phrases there that define a true Christian.
They all go together. Last week I dealt with the first
one, we are the circumcision, which refers to circumcision
of the heart, the new birth. I'm going to go on now. The second part of this has to
do with the phrase, which worshiped God in the spirit. And so we'll
start this way. True Christians worship God in
the Spirit. You see, one of the marks of
a true Christian, as shown in the Bible, is that he or she
is a true worshiper of God. And he worships God in truth. Over in the book of John chapter
4, the Lord Jesus Christ was dealing with the Samaritan woman,
the woman at the well, the adulterous woman. And he talked about true
worship. He says God, God's desire is
to have a people who worship Him in spirit and in truth. And
he said the true worshipers of God worship God in spirit and
in truth. And we're going to talk about
that. In other words, a true Christian worships God in spirit
and in truth. He worships God in heart and
in mind. He worships God sincerely. He
worships God in and by faith, according to God's revelation
of himself in his word. In other words, he sees the glory
of God in the person and the finished work of Jesus Christ. That's how a Christian worships
God, the person of Christ. The Bible tells us that Christ,
Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, Emmanuel, God with us, is the
revelation of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to His
people. And He says that His people are
complete in Christ. So that speaks of the person
of Christ, it speaks of the finished work of Christ, So a true Christian
worships God in Christ, and in true worship, a Christian acknowledges
all that God reveals of himself through the Lord Jesus Christ.
And as the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3.3, true Christians
worship God in the Spirit. Now, one of the debates about
the Bible as far as how you read or interpret the Bible has to
do with the letter S. And what I mean by that is in
passages like this, for we are the circumcision which worship
God in the Spirit. Should the word Spirit there
be capitalized in referring to the Holy Spirit Himself, the
person, the third person of the Trinity, Or should it be a small
letter, spirit, referring to spiritual life imparted to a
believer in the new birth? You see, before the new birth,
what are we? We're spiritually dead in trespasses
and sins. We fell in Adam, ruined by the
fall, and we're born spiritually dead. We have physical life. We have a mind, affections, and
will, but we have no spiritual life until we're quickened, regenerated
by the Holy Spirit. So before the new birth, which
is evidenced by faith in Christ and repentance of dead works
and things like true worship in spirit and in truth, before
the new birth, you say, what are we? We're the natural man,
the unregenerate man. The child of disobedience, that's
what the scripture says. The natural man receives not
the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them. They're
spiritually discerned, they're spiritually understood. Christ said you must be born
again or you cannot see the kingdom of heaven. If you cannot understand
the realities of the kingdom of God, it's because you haven't
been born again. You don't have spiritual life.
I mentioned last week in this We Are the Circumcision, here's
Stephen, the evangelist Stephen got up and he preached to the
Jews, many of them were Jews, in Jerusalem. and they rejected
the gospel and here's how he described them. You stiff neck
and uncircumcised in heart and ears. What he was saying is you've
not been born again. You don't have spiritual life.
You don't have eyes to see this and ears to hear this. Oh, you
can see me. You can hear what I'm saying,
but you have no desire for it. You have no love for it. You
have no understanding of it. You have no belief of it. So a Christian is one who has
a new spirit. He's been born again, he has
spiritual life. Well, going back to the issue,
this word, we worship God in the spirit. Should that be we
worship God in, and some translations say by the Holy Spirit, or does
that mean we worship God from the heart, the new heart, having
been given spiritual life? Well, most of the time, When
you read the Bible, the context will determine whether the writer
is talking about the Holy Spirit himself, who indwells believers,
or the spiritual life within a believer. But here, it could
go either way. We don't know for sure, but I'll
tell you what, we don't have to settle that issue to understand
this verse. We can use it both ways. We could
say true Christians worship God as they are empowered, energized,
motivated, and guided by the Holy Spirit. And what does the
Holy Spirit do? He drives them to Christ for
all salvation as Christ is identified and distinguished in this word.
I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. There are
people who call themselves Christian who deny the deity of Christ. Now I can tell you one thing
about their worship. Whatever their worship is or
however it goes down or however it feels. And you need to understand
this. I'm going to deal with this in
a minute. Worship is not necessarily how you feel. But those who claim
to be Christian and deny the deity of Christ, their worship
is not guided by the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit only
guides and motivates people to rest in the true Christ who is
identified and distinguished in this book. And this book,
which is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the God-breathed
Word, tells us that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. He's God-man. And so when you
encounter someone who denies the deity of Christ, you need
to understand, if you're a Christian now, he is not your Christian
brother. He denies your Christ. Now that
may sound hard and unloving to the world, but I'm going to tell
you something, love, just like worship, must be accompanied
with truth. Anyone who denies the deity of
my Savior is not my brother or my sister in Christ. I don't
care how kind they are. I hope they're kind. I hope they're
gentle. I hope they're charitable. But
they are not my Christian brother. On the same token, the Bible
teaches in true worship now that Jesus Christ has accomplished
the salvation of His people by shedding his blood to pay their
whole debt unto God's justice for their sin, and to work out
all the righteousness they need in order to be accepted, saved,
blessed, and glorified by God. You see, the Bible doesn't teach
that Christ made an attempt to save his people. The Bible doesn't
teach that Jesus Christ tried to save everybody if they would
let Him. That's not what the Bible teaches.
The Bible teaches that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believeth. In other words, the Bible teaches
that Christ's righteousness alone the merits of his obedience unto
death, the value, the power, the goodness of his obedience
unto death is my whole salvation and acceptance as to attaining
and maintaining salvation so that anyone who claims to be
a Christian who says that Christ died conditionally for you or
tried to save you or made it possible for you to be saved
if you do your part my friend they are not my Christian brother
and sister Not at all. The Holy Spirit does not guide
people to that. That's a lie. He guides people
to the truth. So we could say this could be
which worship God by the Holy Spirit. But we can also say that
true Christians worship God in the Spirit, that is, in their
spirit, in their heart, sincerely. Because worship, as well as true
faith, involves knowing God as He reveals Himself in His Word,
in and by Jesus Christ, as the Redeemer of His people. The Lord
Jesus Himself said, as thou hast given Him power over all flesh,
that He should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given
Him. Then He said this, and this is life eternal, that they might
know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast
sent. That's John 17, two through three. In other words, true Christians
worship God in the Spirit from their new heart, sincerely, from
what they know, not because they're intellectual giants or you have
to be smart to be saved or anything like that. Not because it is
knowledge that saves, it's Christ that saves, but God saves his
people by bringing them to a knowledge of Christ through the gospel.
Therein is the righteousness of God revealed. That's Christ
who is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that
believe it. So they worship him as they know him, as they are
taught of God in his word. They worship him sincerely. They
worship him fervently. In matters of faith and in worshiping
God, ignorance is equivalent to idolatry. Consider what the
prophet Isaiah said of idolatrous worship. Back over in Isaiah
45 and verse 20, he said, assemble yourselves and come, draw near
together, you that are escaped of the nations. They have no
knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image and pray
unto a God they cannot save. To worship God ignorantly is
idolatry. Now, somebody says, well, we
can't know everything about God. I didn't say we could, but we
can know what God reveals and teaches his people. He said in
John 6, 45, he said, they shall all be taught of God. He who
has heard and learned of the Father cometh unto Christ. So understand this now, what
we're saying. The Apostle Paul noted this when
he preached in Athens on Mars Hill, back in the book of Acts
chapter 17. He says in verse 20, I believe
it's verse 23, yeah, verse 23 there, he says, for as I passed
by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription,
to the unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare
I unto you. Now, I know people who say, well,
see, they were worshiped, but they were ignorant. No, he talks
to them as unbelievers. He calls on them later to repent
of their worship, their false worship. You see, true worship
is an act of God-given faith where a repentant sinner is brought
before God to seek salvation, blessings, and help from God,
based solely on the merits, the value, the goodness of the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who died was buried and rose
the third day. And without this understanding
of faith in Christ, there can be no true worship. Christ spoke
of this in Matthew chapter 15 and verse 9. He says, talking
about the Pharisees, He said, In vain do they worship me, teaching
for doctrines the commandments of men. You see, so many people
worship in traditions, in man-made ways, and it's not based on truth,
it's based on feeling. Somebody gets up in a worship
service and said, how do you all feel today? Well, let me
put this in proper perspective. My friend, in true worship, it
doesn't matter how you feel. All that matters is what you
know to be true. Now I hope, there's several things. I hope when you go to worship,
you're going to the right place. You're going where the gospel
is preached. The true gospel now, not a false gospel. There
are many false gospels. If you're going to a place to
worship where Christ is not lifted up and exalted from the word
of God now, not any, If you're going to a place where
Christ is not lifted up and preached and exalted in the truth of the
glory of His person and in the truth of the power and success
of His finished work, it doesn't matter how you feel. It doesn't
matter how sincere you are. My friend, it's false worship.
As I've explained previously, think about this. Go back all
the way to Genesis 4 and Abel. Abel approached God as one who
worshiped God in the Spirit. And how did he approach God?
He approached God on the basis of the shed blood of the Lamb
which pictured Jesus Christ and the righteousness which He would
bring in by His obedience unto death. Abel was a Christian who
worshiped God. He was circumcised in heart. Not physically, but in heart.
He was born again. How do you know? Because he believed
in the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn't believe that Christ
was part of his salvation. He didn't believe that Christ
did everything that he could do, now the rest was up to Abel.
No, that's a false gospel. He believed that Christ's righteousness,
the merits and the goodness and the power of his obedience unto
death as the surety and substitute of his people, that Christ's
righteousness imputed, charged, accounted to him, was the only
ground of his salvation, of receiving blessedness, of being accepted
and being blessed of God. A right relationship with God.
You see, worship is based upon a right relationship with God.
How is a right relationship with God attained and maintained for
a true Christian? Only as that Christian looks
to Jesus Christ, the author and the finisher of his faith. The
Bible says this, whosoever, this is Romans 10, 13, and it's quoted
in different places, whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved. Now, salvation is calling upon
the name of the Lord. Worship is calling upon the name
of the Lord. But what is his name? His name
is not just a label. It's not just saying Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus. We sing a chorus of Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus. There's something about that
name. Well, there is. But it's not just in saying the
word. What does the name Jesus mean?
Well, Matthew 121 tells us. It means he shall save his people
from their sins. His name is Emmanuel, which being
interpreted, God with us. His name is Jehovah Sidcanu,
the Lord our righteousness. He has many names, all for this
one glorious person. If I call upon Jesus, who tries
to save me, but can't unless I let him, my friend, that's
a false Jesus. That's not the name of the Lord
in this book. His name is Emmanuel. His name is Jesus. He shall save
His people. His name is salvation. That's
what Jesus means. Salvation. Jehovah, our Savior. The Lord, our righteousness.
Christ is the end of the law, the finishing, fulfillment, perfection
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe. So
that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved. God has a chosen people. The
Bible teaches that. He chose them before the foundation
of the world in Christ. Christ died for them. Not for
all without exception. He died for his sheep. And they
shall come to him. He said in John 6, 37, all that
the father giveth me shall come to me. and him that cometh to
me, I will know I was cast out. Now human reasoning, people trying
to play God, they'll look at that and they'll say, well, if
that's the case, it doesn't matter what I do. I don't have to seek
the Lord. If I'm not elect or if I'm not chosen, let me tell
you something. The only way you can know true
Christians, the elect of God, is those who call upon the name
of the Lord and they shall be saved. God never has and never
will turn away any sinner who comes to him seeking mercy, seeking
grace, seeking salvation, his way. You come his way, not your
way, not the preacher's way, not the denomination's way. Some
denominations say, well, you come by baptism, get in the pool,
get wet, get immersed and wash away your sins. Oh no, that's
not God's way now, that's man's way. That's a false way. Some say, come by your works.
Cain came that way. He came to worship the Lord on
the basis of the labor of his hands. And what happened? He
was rejected. Abraham, it was written back
in Genesis chapter 12. that Abraham, in verse eight,
he built an altar unto the Lord and he called upon the name of
the Lord. That's the first time that phrase is used in the Bible,
called upon the name of the Lord. It's not the first time anybody
called upon the name of the Lord, Abel did that. But that phrase
is used in Genesis 12. But before Abraham called upon
the name of the Lord, you know what he did? He built an altar
unto the Lord. What was the altar for? That
was the place of sacrifice, the place of blood shedding. Without
the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness, there's no righteousness. Abraham could only call upon
the name of the Lord as God reveals himself as the God who justifies
the ungodly based on the blood and the righteousness of the
Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible speaks of worship in
many ways. We worship God in prayer. We
worship God in singing. But it's not, listen, worship
is not entertainment. Worship is not in feeling. You
don't gauge it. Worship is not even in sincerity.
Worship is in heart and in truth. Hebrews chapter four and verse
14 says this, seeing them we have a great high priest. that
is passed into the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God, let us
hold fast our profession. We profess Him. For we have not
an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities, but was in all points tested like as we are yet without
sin. Let us therefore come boldly,
confidently unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy
and find grace to help in time of need. You see, that's what
worship and prayer and praise is all about. It's coming boldly,
confidently unto the throne of grace. Not because I deserve
to be there. Not because I've earned my way
there. Not because I feel good. Not
because I'm sincere. I ought to be sincere now. But
that's not the basis of my coming boldly. The basis of my coming
boldly is my great high priest who passed through into the heavens,
Jesus Christ the righteous. Verse 16, that we may obtain
mercy and find grace to help in time of need. In Hebrews chapter
10 verse 19, the writer writes, having therefore brethren boldness,
freedom, liberty, confidence to enter into the holiest, how? By the blood of Jesus, by his
finished work, by his righteousness imputed, a new and living way
which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is
to say his flesh, his human body in death, and having a high priest
over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart,
That is a sincere heart. In full assurance of faith, having
our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. And what is
that sprinkling? That's the blood of Christ and our bodies washed
with pure water. The blood of Jesus Christ. What
can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Now that's what it is to worship God by the Holy Spirit and to
worship God in the Spirit from the new heart, the heart that's
being cleansed by the blood, the contrite, the broken heart,
the penitent heart, the heart of faith, the heart that knows
and loves and is convinced of the glory of Jesus Christ in
His person and in His finished work. We come to God boldly in
every way for salvation, to praise Him, to thank Him, to pray to
Him, to worship Him, because Christ is our righteousness,
because Christ is our hope. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.
So as true Christians, think about that verse that I'm dealing
with, Philippians 3.3. Paul says, for we are the circumcision. We've been born again by the
Spirit. We've been circumcised in heart and ears. That's a true
Christian. Which worship God in the Spirit, from our new hearts,
from the life imparted by the Holy Spirit that comes from Christ
and based on his righteousness. This body is dead because of
sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness, that's Christ. And we rejoice in Christ, and
we worship by the Holy Spirit, we worship in the Spirit, we
rejoice in Christ Jesus, I'm gonna talk about that next week,
and we have no confidence in the flesh. Hope you'll join us
next week for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia, Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.