Every child of God is a miracle
of grace. Everyone. It took no less power
to save a wretched sinner than it did to speak the universe
into existence. No less power. You see, nothing
but the rich, sovereign, distinguishing superabounding grace of God can
save a lost sinner's soul from the bottomless pit in which they
deserved. What but grace could save a notorious
thief hanging on the cross and at the same time save one of
the most zealous and falsely religious men in all the world? I think about that thief on the
cross that There were two, one on each side of the Lord, but
that one who had a change of heart. I look at that thief upon
the cross, and I see a hardened criminal. I see a picture of
me. It's almost as if I can trace
him through his life of violence and crime and see him grow worse
day by day. From an early age, the boy seemed
destined for trouble. He hung with the wrong crowd,
and most considered him to be the wrong crowd. All his life
he lived a life of crime and dishonesty. And it started out
with something petty like stealing and escalated into more serious
crime. Soon he grew into a man who did
bodily harm to others, maybe in robbing them. And then one
day this malfactor went too far and he murdered someone. The
day of his trial came and he was found guilty and he was judged
and he was sentenced to be executed. And the day of His execution
came, and as He hung on the cross, He continues to curse the Lord
God of heaven and earth with no sense of guilt whatsoever. Then an amazing thing happened. God did a work of grace in His
heart, and He heard some things, and He saw some things while
hanging there. And what a miracle of grace it
was. He looked to the man in the center,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and he said, Lord, Lord. A few minutes
earlier he was calling him everything but that. But he said, Lord,
when you come into your kingdom, will you please remember me? The Lord of heaven and earth
said, Today you will be with me in paradise. Now who made
the difference? What made the difference? A miracle
of God's sovereign grace. And then we turn and we see another
character. Here we view a man trained up
in the most strict form of religion known to man. He lived the most
stern, upright, unblemished life. I can see him repeating prayer
after prayer and making vow after vow. I see him sitting before
his eyes day after day the law of Moses and directing his life
and conduct by the law of God. Before the law of blameless we
read. Blameless. Couldn't find any
fault. I see him in the height of his
zeal, ravaging the church of God as a wolf devastates a fold
of sheep. I see him holding the garments
of those that stone the beloved Stephen. I see him expressed
with joy in his heart as each stone is hurled and falls with
crushing devastation on the martyr Stephen's head. Joy in his heart. thought that he was doing God
a service. But then comes a change. I see him now falling to the
earth at Damascus Gate under the power of that light from
heaven which is brighter than the sun that shone round about
him. And I hear him say with a trembling
fear, Lord, what would Thou have me to do? And once again we say,
oh what a miracle of grace. Who made the difference? Who
made the difference? God made the difference. It's
the same sovereign grace that touched the heart of the dying
thief. that touched the religious Saul,
the Pharisee. So if God has touched your heart,
I ask you this morning, dear friends, or mine, which both
needs the same grace to be saved and sanctified, we should be
able, at least in some measure, to enter into the text back in
Philippians chapter 3, if you would. Now, for sake of time,
I want to look just at verses 8 and 9. And the text reads,
"...Yea, 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 mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." You see,
first the believer's concern is found here in verse 8. We
count all things. A child of God counts all things
but loss. For what? the excellency, don't
miss that, the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. their Lord. Nothing compares
to knowing Christ, friends. Nothing compares to knowing Christ. Christ is salvation. Salvation
is in a person. Secondly, the believer rejoices
and says that I may win Christ and be found in Him. And thirdly,
he says that I might not be found clothed in my own righteousness.
No, we don't want to be found that way. Our righteousness is
as filthy rag. I don't want to be found in 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 the
righteousness of Christ perfect perfect righteousness the desire
of every child of God to know him and to win him, to be found
in him, not to be clothed in self-righteousness, but in the
perfect righteousness of God the Son by faith. You see, by nature. Now here's
our dilemma. By nature, we try to obtain salvation
the wrong way. In religion, we once thought
that we could gain heaven by our own righteousness. We strictly
attended to our religious duties and works and our so-called faithfulness. We sought by these things to
recommend ourselves somehow to the favor of God. That's what
those people over in the gospel said. They said, but Lord, haven't
we prophesied in Your name? And haven't we cast out devils?
And haven't we done many wonderful works? And he said, depart from
me, ye that do iniquity, I never knew you. That self-righteous
Pharisee that went up to the temple to pray, he stood up front. Boy, can you just see him? Eyes
lifted up to heaven, his chest all bowed out, and he said, Lord,
I thank you I'm not like other men, especially that publican
in the back. I do this, I tithe, I give, I
do this, I do that, but the publican. Publican wasn't there to brag
on his own righteousness. No, it said that his head hung
low and he beat upon his chest as if he was trying to pull his
own heart of flesh out and say, God, give me another. And he
said, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. Are you a sinner? Some people say, well, you know,
I'm not perfect, but I'm not a sinner. Then this message is
not for you. This is the same worthy of all
exception that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. What gospel news we have for
you. Religious men and women by nature
endeavor to obligate God to reward them with heaven for their sincere
attempts to obey His commandments. But by divine intervention, friends,
and sovereign grace, the sinner sees that the law of God was
never given for us to keep. Do you know that? Have you seen
that, that the law of God was never given for you to keep?
But it was given to show you your inability of keeping. It
was given to once again shut you up to Christ as your only
hope of righteousness and salvation. To show you that you were a sinner,
that you could not keep it. The law was our schoolmaster. To what? To bring us to Christ. to bring us to Christ. In other
words, the law of God was a constant reminder of our plague and disease
called sin. Turn with me to Romans 3. I want
you to see this in your own Bible. Romans chapter 3. Very briefly,
let me read you a couple verses 19 and 20. Romans 3 verse 19. Now we know what things soever
the law saith. It saith to them who are under
the law that every mouth may be stopped. You going to brag
about your righteousness before the law? No sir, your mouth going
to be stopped because it pronounces you guilty. that every mouth
be stopped, and all the world," do you see that? It doesn't say
some of the world, part of the world, but all the world, "...may
become guilty before God." David said, "...against thee and thee
only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." Friends,
our guilt is before God. We're guilty before God. It's
against Him and Him only that we've sinned and done this evil
in His sight. Now verse 20, here it is, "...therefore
by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh," none, there's
none that doeth good, no flesh, "...be justified in his sight."
None. For by the law is what? Read
it, it's right there in your Bible. The knowledge of sin.
It shows a man what he is. He is a sinner. And he's not
a sinner because he sins. He sins because of what he is. Now when the Apostle Paul says,
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, he had just
mentioned in the verses previous there in Philippians 3, that
if anyone had a right to brag about the flesh, he did. My,
he was an impeccable man as far as religion was concerned. But
he said, I've suffered the loss of all things. He speaks of his
religion. Suffered the loss of it. His
self-willed righteousness. It's all gone. And everything
else that comes into competition with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what it means to have suffered the loss of all things. Now let
me tell you, it must be so with us also. It must be so with us. We have to experience the same
loss for ourselves. If you are in a false religion,
you've got to renounce it. You've got to give it up. If
you think that there's something good in you that would merit
God's favor, You must perish the thought and put it away.
To win Christ, you must do away with your fleshly learning and
education and trust as a small child. The child of God never
puts any stock in his moral conduct. Well, you know, I'm not perfect,
but I'm not as bad as the next guy. Oh, you're worse. By thinking
you're not as bad makes you worse. Don't put any stock in your moral
conduct, knowing that if it's not by the grace of God, you'll
wind up trusting totally in your morality and you'll perish in
your sin. It happens to men day in and
day out. You've heard me tell a story
many times, knew a man, lived to be in his nineties, a good
man. I mean, as far as the flesh is concerned, I mean, he was
an honest man, paid his bills, nice to people. But his one claim
to salvation was, for 40 some years, I've never once missed
Sunday school. Let me tell you what, that's
not going to do it. That's not going to accomplish salvation.
You're putting trust in your works and not in what Christ
has done for you. The grace of God in Christ reveals
that a man's prosperity or poverty is by the sovereign will and
purpose of God. If a man is rich in prosperity
or if he's in total poverty, it's God who made the difference.
And there's no pride in the man with prosperity and there's no
shame of the man in poverty. Because you know, they know who
makes the difference. Who maketh the difference? God
does. God does. What do you have that
you haven't received? And if you've received it, why
do you glory in it as if you hadn't received it? Oh, I tell
you, we're messed up. We're messed up people. God have
mercy on us. Anything, dear friends, that
would come into competition for your love of Christ must go. It's got to go. It's got to go. I love my wife, but she cannot
come before Christ. She cannot. I remember a man
back years ago that, well, he didn't believe the Gospel. He
went to church. He was in religion, but he didn't
believe the Gospel as written in the Scriptures. And his wife
did. And he could not understand why
his wife would not go to church where
he went. And he'd say things like, she should come to church
with me, I'm the head of the household. Let me tell you something,
Ephesians 5.22 says this, wives submit yourselves unto your own
husbands. And they'd leave this part out,
as unto the Lord, as unto the Lord. If your husband wanted
you to rob a bank, would you do that to be submissive? No,
wives must submit to their husbands as unto the Lord. If your husband
would cause you to do anything that's not according to the will
of God, then you shouldn't do it, because it's not unto the
Lord. I love my children. I do. I love my children. But they cannot come before Christ.
You see, they were only gifts of God on loan to me and my wife
and to put them before Christ. Spiritual death. If you love wife, husband, son,
daughter more than me, you're not worthy of me, Christ said.
You see, it's revealed to the child of God that his property
and his possessions really belong to God. There's nothing that
we have that's ours. It's all just on loan to us.
So why do we take such pride in it? Why are we so puffed up
about what we have? We must take a back seat. to
these things for the glory and honor of God. We suffered the
loss of all things, Paul said, and do count them but done now
that we may win Christ, for Christ is all." You see, for the child
of God, Christ is really all we have. He's really all we want
and He is most definitely all we need. And one day when we
stand before God in judgment, it don't matter how much property
you have. It doesn't matter how much money
you have. It don't matter how good a boy
you were. What matters is, do you trust
in the beloved Son of God? That's all that matters. Are
you going to plead Him and say, He's all I have. He's all I need. That's your only hope. That's
your only plea before God Almighty. And friends, the loss of all
things are not merely outwardly things either. I'm talking about
the loss of people's fancy holiness. People just, to their boasted
strength, all your natural and acquired wisdom and proud knowledge,
all that makes the heart proud and causes it to take delight
in ourselves must fall and fail in comparison to our relationship
with Christ. It sounds to me like you're trying
to say that Christ needs to be all. That's exactly what I'm
saying. Christ must be all. Oh, I mean
everything must be counted lost for Christ's sake. Oh, I mean
all must be sacrificed to His infinite, eternal, dying love.
Our dearest joys, our fondest hopes, our most cherished idols
must all sink and give way to the grace, blood, and love of
our incarnate God. That's just how it works. And
friends, not only are they counted as lost, but they sink lower
still until they become and be counted as dung. That's what
Paul says. I didn't say that. And I don't
tend to be graphic, but you know what dung is, don't you? It's
manure. It's manure. I count all things
as dung. What a strong expression that
is by the Apostle Paul. But how great the grace! How
dedicated the affection that made him to so abhor himself
and love his Master. Everything that he held dear
became as dumb to him. That he might win Christ. That he might be found in Him.
Now for a few minutes longer, I want to spend the balance of
my time speaking of the reason that Paul counted the loss of
all things but done. You know what it was? It was
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. Well,
it sounds like to me you're putting an awful high emphasis on that. Let me tell you something. To
know Christ is salvation. It will do you no good. There's
a lot of people that know things about Christ. Oh, they can tell
you how long he lived, where he was born, that he was a carpenter
in his father's carpenter shop, that he did this, that he did
that. He fed the multitudes with a few fishes and loaves of bread. Do you know Him? Salvation is
not known about Him. Salvation is knowing Him. Do you know Christ? It's the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ. Paul said, everything
else is done. Everything else is loss of no
profit. And to know Him is everything. Everything. And friends, it can
only be given by a special revelation to our heart by God Himself.
I had a young man the other day. Say, I heard you pastor the church
down there. He said, sovereign grace. He said, do you believe in sovereign
grace? I said, it's the only kind of grace there is. There
is no other kind of grace. Is there? No sirree. No other kind of grace. And it
can only be revealed by special revelation of God to our hearts. Oh, what grace must be shed abroad
in our hearts to enable us to renounce what the world so madly
pursues after and what our own nature so fondly loves. What
a deep and urgent sense we are given by God of and in the excellency
of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Oh, what a view by faith we are
given of His beauty and His glory to bring us to that place that
we count all that the earth has to offer and contribute is dung
and grass. That takes a work of grace. That
takes a work of grace. Has God made it this way for
you? I'm sincerely asking you, has God made Christ your everything? Are you still holding on to the
things of the world? For Christ to be all, our real
affection must be on Christ alone. Now listen, I'm not saying that
you're not to enjoy other things in this life. I am not saying
that at all. Of course not. God made things
for us to enjoy. But according to Colossians 1.18
it says, And He is the head of the body, the church, who is
the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things
He must have the preeminence. Now don't let that word throw
you. Preeminence simply means that He is superior, that He
is supreme, and He has a predominance to everything else in our lives.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and our Lord said, and all
these other things will be added unto you. That doesn't mean that
you've got to sell your TV, your house, and live like a pauper,
and move into a woodshed and go, oh, I know God. Well, that's
ridiculous. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God. All these other things will be added. Let me tell you this.
If you're a child of God, Christ is number one. He is superior. He is supreme. He has the preeminence. And we can't ever know Him except
by a divine spiritual revelation of Him to our soul. You know
the words. You've heard them. They're on
the front of our bulletin. They are His who cannot lie.
He said this is life eternal. What is? that they may know Thee."
The only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. That's eternal
life. Salvation is in a person. Now,
how am I to know the only true God? Does He not dwell in the
light which no man can approach unto, whom no man has seen nor
can see? Must He not then shine into my
soul that I may see Him by faith? That's the only way. That's the
only way. Does the Lord Himself say, No
man knoweth the Son, but the Father neither knoweth any man.
The Father saved the Son, and to whomsoever the Son will reveal
Him. You see, this is by divine revelation. God has to show it to you. You
can't work it up. You can't merit it. You don't
deserve it. You can't buy it. I can't reveal
it to you. I can tell you the truth, but
only God can make it real to your heart. To whomsoever the
Son will reveal Him. How then can I know either the
Father or the Son but by the revelation of God Almighty? Do
you see how simple this is? Why do men fight and fuss about
this? Well, I have decided to follow
Jesus. You did because God enabled you
to. I made a decision. Yeah, you
decided to go to hell and God intervened and kept you from
going. I made a free will choice. I
see man's free will when they hollered at the top of their
lungs, crucifying, crucifying. Release unto us Barabbas, but
crucify this man. You want to see something of
your free will, look there. It's a free gift, not free will. Faith is not something that originates
with us. Grace is not something that we
conjure up or somehow work out for ourselves and deserve. We
definitely don't deserve it. It wouldn't be grace if we did.
It's unmerited favor. That's what grace means. And
mercy is not giving us what we deserve. Oh, people use those
words quite frequently and don't have a clue what they mean. Grace
and mercy. Grace and mercy. Don't have a
clue what they mean. Now how can I know Him as the
God-man and see His pure, spotless humanity unless the eyes of my
understanding are enlightened by God's heavenly anointing?
There's no way I can. God revealed it to me. God made
it real to me. And everything else is done. No wonder the Apostle Paul said
in 2 Corinthians 10, 17, but he that gloryeth, let him glory
in the Lord. The only one worthy to glory
in. All things are delivered to me
of my Father, and no man knoweth who the Son is but the Father,
and who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will
reveal Him. Now that sounds to me like salvations
of the Lord. Does it to you? Or am I just
reading more into it than what should be? I don't think so.
Friends, therefore to see Him, therefore to know Him, therefore
to believe in Him, therefore to love Him, therefore to cleave
to Him with purpose of heart is due to the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. And oh, what an excellent
knowledge it is. Those of you that have it know
it. You say, oh, how excellent. How excellent it is to know Christ. It's so excellent that it itself
is eternal life. And this is life eternal, that
they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
Thou hast sent." You see, as I said, life eternal is not simply
knowing some things about Him. Life eternal is knowing Him. Now I want to leave you with
this. So with all that I've said, what does it mean to win Christ? Paul said that I might win Christ. How do we win Christ? Well, it
doesn't mean that we can win His favor. That would be worse,
wouldn't it? It doesn't mean we can win His
blessings by some act that we do. Again, that would be worse. It doesn't mean that we can win
His special attention and get Him to do something special for
us because we've done something special to receive special treatment
from Him. That puts salvation back in our
court. But that's earning, not winning.
That's earning, not winning, Crockett. You may say, well preacher,
if it doesn't mean these things, what does it mean? When the Apostle
Paul talked about his desire to win Christ. Now listen, I'm
almost done. I believe he meant mainly one
thing. One thing. It was that Christ
Himself was the prize. That's all it can mean. Christ
Himself is the prize. Christ Himself is our goal. Christ
became all and in all to Him and He must to us also. In the light of our Lord's glorious
person and His accomplished redemption, Paul counted everything else
but dung and rubbish, willing to lose all his own ambition,
opportunities, attainments in this world. Do you realize that
he was somebody? And he counted it all, but loss
undone, that he might know and win Christ. And God caused it
to be so. And if it's to happen for you
and I, God, I have to cause it to be so. Paul counted anything
that would detract from Christ's glory, that would hinder his
conformity to his Lord, as loss. Be rid of it. Be gone with it.
And our Lord Jesus Himself said it like this, For whosoever shall
save his life, shall lose it. But whosoever shall lose his
life for my sake, and the Gospels, the same shall save him." And
then he asks this question, and a pertinent question it is, for
what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world
and lose his own soul? What profit would that be? What
profit would it be, friends? So do you count all things but
loss in exchange for the excellent and divine knowledge of Christ
given to you by God's sovereign grace? Do you see that the loss
of all else is done compared to knowing and trusting Him as
your only way of salvation? Do you see that to win Christ
is to be found in Him? Not having your own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. The very
righteousness of Christ. Friends, when God now looks down
upon you, the sinner, those in Christ, He says, there's my beloved
Son. I see perfect righteousness.
Been washed by the blood of my dearly beloved Son. Get a hold
of this by the grace of God. This is the righteousness that
you must have to be saved. And it's in the Lord Jesus Christ
alone. Why would you tarry to come to
Him? Why would you tarry in trusting in Him as your all in all? Remember,
salvation is in a person. You can memorize this book from
beginning to end, and if you don't see that salvation is in
Him, you'll die in your sin. What do you think of Him? That's
my question to you. You ponder it. You consider it.
What think ye of Christ? Is he everything? Or is he nothing
at all? The answer to that question is
the difference between life and death.