Good evening. I wrote the title
of this message a while back and I think it could have a couple
of titles from it or for it. The title of this message is
Apprehension by Christ and I'll be reading to you out of Philippians
chapter 3. I made a mistake and called my
dad and asked him if he had any notes on it. And then I went
down a rabbit hole and this message was about 15 pages long and I
had to cut it back this afternoon. This is beautiful. Apprehension by Christ Philippians
chapter 3. I'm just going to read to you
out of verses 7 through 12. Before we go to that, We cannot know Christ through
someone else's experiences. We can know him through the word,
blessed by us, by his revelations. Christ's relationships to us
may be similar between us. We have the same background story,
or maybe the message of verse blessed us the same way. But
Christ's relationship to us is personal. And we can see this
in what Paul wrote in Philippians chapter 3, verse 7. But what things were gained to
me, those I counted lost for Christ. They doubtless and I
count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all
things and do count them but done that I may win Christ and
be found in him not having my own righteousness which is of
the law but that which is through the faith of Christ the righteousness
which is of God by faith, that I may know him, and the power
of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings,
being made comfortable unto his death, if by any means I might
attain unto the resurrection of death, not as though I had
already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow
after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended
of Christ Jesus. And again, the message title
is Apprehension by Christ. That's what arrested me on this
particular topic was apprehension by Christ. If you apprehend somebody,
you've got to go catch them. You go out and you find them,
you get them. And as many of you all here believe
in Christ Jesus, you know that's exactly what He does. He apprehends
His people. not by our own design, but He
will arrest them, He will take them, He will apprehend them,
He will keep them in full mercy and full love. Before the Lord
opens our hearts, the gains of this world are regarded by us
as just an advancement of our own status of being saved. The gains of this world we can
sell upon ourselves as an actual truth that we're going to make
our way in the heaven. Anything that we think, any of
our gains materialistically, any of our movements in this
community, any of our movements even sometimes when you're sitting
in a church, whether it be grace or not, your movements by your
design is just in your brain as a non-believer is an advancement
of your own status. Now many people see this status
as just on this earth, but a non-believer also sees it as a status that
you can make your way into heaven if you just work the right way.
This salvation we have created comes from our own merits. Paul points out those merits
are now, if you believe and the Lord has graced you on the belief
of his word, those merits that you have counted as a gain into
heaven are counted as absolutely worthless. They are nothing but
humanly created. Nothing in the Bible talks about
you, in context, about you taking your own salvation into your
own hands. It's never been in your own hands.
It never will be in your own hands. If that offends you, you
don't get the gospel. The Lord does not grace you.
The gospel can be offensive if you don't understand it. Paul
shows what a believer does when you understand. The diction,
the verbiage, it flips. It turns away from us. And you
can hear in his words, if you go back through, and we will
go back through those verses, he has nothing to do with him.
He is looking to be apprehended And then after that, he's looking
to apprehend Christ. He wants to know more. He wants
to grab hold of the love that's been bestowed upon him. Galatians
4, 8 reads, how be it then when you knew God, ye did service
unto them which by nature are no God. We did service to a false god
before we knew God. Even if you were not under a
false religion, we would follow the ideals and morals of ourselves. If you didn't know a false god,
if you didn't walk the aisle and you didn't go to a false
gospel, you could still find a false gospel in yourself. A
human will create something to balance himself out, to make
sure that they make it to an eternal life. Fortunately, at
this moment in time, or unfortunately, however you want to view it,
I've been teaching religions of the Middle East, and now we're
getting ready to go to Hinduism. Everything there has a backup
plan. If you look at all these religions, if you don't get it
right this first time, you've got a second chance. That's human. That's all that is. That is never
ever seeing Christ's mercy. That's a false god, even if it
is yourself. It's a false god. However, Christ
is life. And He, when revealed, is the
new purpose of our life. He is the new purpose. We now
account all of our successes, our old viewpoints and opinions,
in a humanly constructed religion to be the equivalent of dung.
So Paul said, of dung. The loss of those things, those
things, grabbing, you know, those things, is actually our greatest
gain ever. To lose all those, your old opinions,
your old gains, viewpoints, all those things, to lose those is
the greatest gain you could ever have because it was filled with
something else. that was far greater than what
we could concoct. Because I can dream big in reality.
If you think about what I would like to have, and I use the word
have, it's big. But to be replaced by something
that we can't even fathom, eternal salvation, it's our greatest
gain ever. If you look at verse 8, I'd like
you to read along. I'm going to read the amplified
version of verse 8. For His sake, I have lost everything,
and consider it all to be mere rubbish, in order that I may
win Christ." You win Christ. If He reveals
you, you win Christ. What does that mean? We win Christ
Jesus by losing our natural state, one of derision towards our Lord. We hated Him, crucified Him,
and killed Him in our own hearts. We also win our derision towards
our Lord and a promotion of our perceived abilities to now be
aware that our condition is that of the lowest of the low. That's
a win by a true believer, to be actually aware. And Paul talks
about that. Your eyes are opened and it changes
your perspective of not just you, but of Christ. If you want
this, I can share it to you. Spurgeon, morning and evening.
I'm sorry. Yeah. Morning and evening. The
morning, November 22nd, Philippians 3.10. I took a snippet out of
there. To know a crucified savior as
having crucified all my sins is a high degree of knowledge.
but to know a risen Savior as having justified me, and to realize
that He has bestowed upon me new life, having given to me
a new creature through His own newness of life." I don't see
us in there at all. This is a noble style of experience. Short of it. None ought to rest
satisfied. May you both know Him and the
power of His resurrection. Why should souls who are quickened
with Jesus wear the grave clothes of worldliness and unbelief?
Rise, for the Lord is risen. It's not just that you're knocked
down as a believer who finds their worldly nature. It's that you also see your new
nature as well. That's the mercy that Paul is
talking about. He now has a new plea in his
heart. He is now aware of his new condition,
not just as old, but as new. The new condition is Christ,
is your life. We hope for a genuine righteousness,
one of Christ's design and never of our own. The believer knows
now what is genuine. There is a change made in our
core nature. We can see it in our hearts,
the comparison of our old nature as opposed to our new one. We
can clearly see our nature as anything but good. Most importantly,
we see genuine, unadulterated, authentic, and undisputed righteousness. The true right standing with
God, which is given by the faith of God. Now that's the part I
struggled with originally. When I started hearing the Word,
I didn't understand. I thought faith was one way.
Faith was given to the believer and you believed and therefore
you're good to go. No, no, no, no, no. That's actually not the
faith that comes first. It's the faith of Christ. Before
the beginning of time, He knew with a promise that He was going
to deliver His people. There was a faithfulness from
Christ that knew that each one of his people would be saved.
Now when? It's not up to us. But it's going to happen. That's
a faithfulness. Now I teach history and time
is long. In reality it's long by human standards. You can talk
about rocks and how long it takes to make a sediment stone or whatever.
That's a long time by our standards. I teach 13 and 14 year olds.
Five years is long. The standard issue of long by
human standards are faulty because long and forever does not apply
to anything but the promise of God. That's the only thing that's
long and forever because that's permanent, even past time that
we can imagine. He saves by his faithfulness
to those he loves. Before time, the elect of Christ
was selected and then given at his will the ability to be apprehended. Ephesians 4.24 reads, "...and
that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness
and true holiness." Which after God is created in righteousness
and true holiness. "...all things become a loss
to the gain of the privilege..." I like that word. "...the privilege
to have received the knowledge of the truth." What a privilege! What a privilege, in reality,
that we get to sit here tonight and hopefully I speak to you
the truth. And that's a rarity. That is
such a rarity. It is a privilege. If I'm not
up here, I hope someone's up here that can speak to you the
truth because that's a privilege, whether it be me or somebody
else. Without the knowledge given to us by Christ, we would not
nor could not even be aware of our natural helpless state. Paul
reiterates that multiple times. That's what verses 8-11 are all
about. 8-11 again reads, And I count all things but loss,
but for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my
Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do
count them a dung, that I may win Christ and be found in him,
not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his
resurrection. and the fellowship of his sufferings
being made comfortable unto his death, if by any means I may
attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Paul speaks of
how there is a new desperate need to be one of Christ's. He
wants to hear the truth, so should we. We should want to have a
plea to know what we are. to know Christ's permanent saving
grace. To know we enter into heaven
with all debt of sin paid by the sacrifice of our Savior in
equality and also in equality of the image of Christ saved
from eternal damnation and instead blessed with eternal mercy. We
know all earthly gains are but done. This is a gracious and
priceless privilege that we've obtained. the knowledge of our
state becomes exceedingly precious to us. Paul is telling them,
I want more. I want more because I now know.
I want to be arrested and I want to be apprehended because I now
know what the truth is. That it's not of me, it's of
Christ. Hopefully we all know Paul's
previous antics. He's the exact opposite of a
believer, but a perfect example of a believer. That you go against
everything that is one of the Christ selects, and yet what
do you become? All the sin? Everything? How could it be me?
There's no way. There's no way. I'm pretty sure,
knowing my own nature, that Paul at one point in time, even after
probably writing something as beautiful as this, by the grace
of God that he was able to pin this, He probably at one point
in time sat back and said, there's no way I could be one. Even after
all that, he could say, there's no way. I would love God. I'm
excited about God. I'd like to know more. And yet,
I probably doubted it. What a precious point it is and
a precious privilege that he opens the eyes and opens the
heart. Because even in those doubts, he'll bring you back. He'll bring you back. He has
apprehended you. You're arrested in His mercy. You're not going anywhere. Alright, the rabbit hole that
my dad sent me down. 1 John 1 verse 9. You don't get the whole thing
because there's three more pages that are sitting on my drive.
I had to take off. We'd be here until 9. 1 John 1, verse 9. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from a little or all unrighteousness. Tim James, and I'm going to paraphrase
this, wrote, Be a sincere sinner. How? Believe on Him. He has put the proper faith within
a believer. Confess your sins. Why? The Lord is faithful in His promise
to save. The Lord will apprehend every
single one of His people. I'll turn you one more place
here. Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1. Verses
19 through 22. This is good. For it pleased
the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. And having
made peace through the blood of his cross by him to reconcile
all things unto himself, by him I say, whether they be things
in earth or things in heaven, and you that were sometimes alienated
and enemies in your own mind by wicked work, yet now hath
He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to present
you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight. And
I don't know how it escaped me, but in verse 19 at the end, for
it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell. Every bit of it, every bit of
mercy was there. Yet now hath He reconciled." Verse 21 at the end. Reconciled
means there is no more issues to address. See, even Stephen,
you've got a beef with somebody and you reconcile it, it's over.
It's over. By humanly standards, it's over.
Except for, can you forgive and forget? Well, I know that in
the way that Christ operates, it's forgiven and forgotten.
no conflict anymore, and no debt. None whatsoever. The debt of
sin is paid. In verse 22 at the end it reads,
unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. This is what Paul's talking about.
This is what I struggled with because The words get sometimes
tangled up in my brain and my heart because when a believer
finally understands the word, it's kind of unfathomable. We
can't put them into words. It's a sensation sometimes. We're
not trying to profess or anything of that nature of some emotional
status, but there is a point where a believer just flat out
understands. You're blameless on the subject
of sin. You don't have to go and do anything
to be forgiven of sin. It's already taken care of. The
sin is no more a stain on your soul. Why? It's been reconciled. It's already
paid for. You are aware of this if you
are graced to believe. Do you not look to find more
of this promise to be blameless from the condition of sin? that
promise in the form of Christ and His perfect and sinless sacrifice
that paid the price for all, not some, but all. Do you not
want to hear more about that? Do you not want to apprehend
Christ to obtain all of the promise, all of it? This is a promise
and not just any promise, and I'm going to be redundant with
what it looks like with the word promise. This is a promise, and not just
any promise, a promise from God. Now if you believe, you understand
the weight of such a promise. That's not a normal one, that's
a permanent one. God does not change. Since he
does not change, it is the only promise in existence that will
not break. The Lord will go and apprehend
all of his souls. They're saved. Paul is talking
about that, he wants to know more. He wants to know more about
the faith of the Word, the faith of Christ. He's understood. He's saved. After all he's done,
he's saved. After all we've done, you're
saved. The thoughts even, the ones we
keep deep down, the emotions, they're already taken care of.
You have been reconciled. He will miss not even a partial
soul to lay in wait in limbo only to slip away to sin. The
promise of Christ's salvation is an unbreakable promise in
every sense of the word. This promise not only becomes
aware to a believer, as in an earlier verses of the passage,
talking about Paul, but becomes a plea. That's what Paul was
doing, he was pleading. He knew what he had. He knew
what he had and we hope we know what we have as well, that we
plea and want more out of Christ. We want to see the mercies in
the book. We want to be blessed in the dark times of our humanly
speaking times. We want to be able to be aware
of the great times as well. We want to be sitting in a pew
and or a car and listening to a podcast of a believing preacher
or a hymn or something and be arrested and apprehended right
there. That's the plea because we want to grow and have mercy
of the Lord. Because we see what an undeserving
mercy that we would be plucked from hell and placed into everlasting
love without our interaction or even our decision. We have
no control over this and this is the part I have struggled
multiple times to put into words, you don't even have your own
decision and you're saved. That mercy is, I struggle with
that one. You have no decision to go to
heaven to be saved by Christ and be forgiven of all your sins.
You never had the decision and yet it was made for you. Now
you find me another mercy than that. You were designed by nature,
by God's nature, that we go to hell and interceded by Christ's
love that nah, you get the exact opposite. You forever go and
live in eternal mercy. So I probably did that pretty
terribly, but I think that's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. I close with the main passage,
Philippians chapter 3 verse 12. The one word that got me when
I first started reading this, in verse 13, you can continue
on if you want to, Not as though I had already attained, neither
were already perfect, but I follow after, that I may apprehend that
for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." We look to
grow in faith and knowledge and love of Christ. He has apprehended
us and now we look to apprehend Him, His everlasting love we
search for. The word we are blessed with. We see Him and His mercy. He
has provided and that arrested us to look for more. There is
a need to be kept by Christ. There is a need to keep Christ.
By His faith and by His mercy, we hope, and His love, we do
both. for this Word, pray that we be
encouraged. What we see here at Paul is faith's
response. Faith's response to the grace
and mercy placed in the heart. We're not content with the little
knowledge of Christ. We desire to grow in the grace
and the knowledge of Christ. We're not content to hear a little
of Him. We desire to hear more of Him. And Father, we desire to be made
more like Him. Father, may we remember this,
may we look back and trace to the privilege, the privilege
of free, unmerited, unsolicited, sovereign grace. What a wonder. What a glory. And as few folks
are here in this place, you're still here. And you promised
to be here for two or three years. Father, we don't look to numbers,
we look to you. And bless you and thank you for
all you've done. And we look for more blessings,
the salvation of our children, our friends, our family, our
neighbors. Father, we continue to look to
you and ask for the blessings.