Heaving the Gold in the Sea

We find ourselves once again
in our continuing consideration of chapter 3. Philippians 3. You know what? You know you’ve
got a good sermon title when you stump your wife. At least
my wife. Because it’s legendary. She doesn’t
check my hair. She doesn’t check my tie. I can
go halfway through the day with the most wild and crazy hairdo
Then suddenly I stumble across a mirror and I’m wondering, you
know, where is the help of a faithful wife in this regard? And so,
you know, when you stump your wife on a sermon title, she said,
are you sure you want to say heaving the gold into the sea? Yes, I’m sure. We started this
passage several weeks ago. We began by looking at Paul’s
response to what he knew was taking place in the Roman church
and what he feared would soon be taking place in the Philippian
church. Paul had already seen the Judaizers
come and bring their version of the Gospel into the Roman
church, insisting that those Christians in their midst who
were Greek, Gentiles, in their background, insisting that they
also now submit themselves to Jewish rituals, most specifically
circumcision. That’s why the passage opens
with those strong words. Beware of the dogs. Beware of
the evil workers. Beware of the false circumcision. Paul used, as we said, some of
the most strongest language in all of the New Testament to combat
this error. Because what they were seeking
to do was add to the simple gospel of salvation by faith in Christ
alone. Paul said, beware of the dogs,
beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision. They
are they are mangy. We said they are dogs using one
of the worst epithets that you could use at that point in time. And even to this day in the Middle
East, it is an absolute unequivocally the worst thing that you can
call someone else fighting words. Beware of the dogs. They are
mangy. They are malicious. He calls them evil workers. It’s
not just that they have a bad idea. It’s not just that what
you can do is remedy their thoughts with a little Bible study and
a little teaching. What they hold to is absolutely
pernicious. It is error. It is destructive. Beware of the dogs. Beware of
the evil workers. Beware of the mutilation, the
false circumcision, what they hold to is meaningless, utterly
meaningless. And to add that to Christ. Is
false teaching, that’s that’s how Paul starts this great passage. I want to take a running start
at the verses that we’ll be looking at those in verse four through
seven this morning, but let’s pick up where we’ve been. Pick
up this passage in its context and in its greater context through
verse 11. Beware of the dogs. Beware of
the evil workers. Beware of the false circumcision. For we are the true circumcision
who worship in the Spirit of God in glory in Christ Jesus
and put no confidence in the flesh. Although I myself might
have confidence even in the flesh, If anyone else has a mind to
put confidence in the flesh, I far more, circumcised the eighth
day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew
of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor
of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.
But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted
as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things
to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus,
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count
them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and may be
found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law,
but having that which is through faith in Christ. The righteousness
which comes from God on the basis of faith. that I may know him
and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings,
being conformed to his death, that I may attain to the resurrection
from the dead.” Having introduced the foes of the faith, the false
circumcision, Paul turned his attention in that following paragraph
to us, to the true children of God. And that’s where we spent
our time last week. And what Paul advanced there
was a mark of the true Christian, a mark of identification for
the true child of God that was not in the flesh. It was spiritual heart surgery,
as we saw. And what Paul identified there
was the true child of God known specifically in his devotional
service. He is one who worships in the
spirit of God. And we saw there that that word
includes not just physical worship in prayer, in church, in sitting
in the pews, but a devotional service that encompasses all
of the believer’s life. True child of God is one who
is known by his devotional service. They are also known by their
ground of boasting. In what do they boast? Do they
boast in their own works? No. Paul says they glory in Christ
Jesus. That’s their sphere. That’s their
ground of confidence. It is in that and in that alone
that the Christian boasts. Finally, They put no confidence
in the flesh. Their trust is divinely refocused. They have centered their minds
and their hearts on Christ and Christ alone, on God and what
God has done in and through Christ and not on anything that we bring. But Paul says almost sarcastically,
you know what? I might have cause or confidence
even in the flesh. And I think that in so doing,
he sets the hook. Because I think this was written
not just for the Philippian church. Paul knew that this would have
a broader reading. And people knew Paul to be a
thoroughgoing Jew. And people knew Paul that very
likely he did have confidence in some of those things. And
he sets the hook. He says, I myself might have
confidence even in the flesh. And see, Paul, we’ve got you.
Or do they? Verse 4 says, if anyone else
has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more. Paul wasn’t losing sight of Christ. Paul wasn’t losing sight of justification
by faith in Christ alone. Paul wasn’t thinking that somehow
he had added to what he had gained by Christ. from what he brought
to the table in his upbringing. It’s an interesting passage in
the book of Acts that uses this same word for vain. If you remember in the book of
Acts, in Acts chapter 27, Paul was on a… well, it wasn’t exactly
a cruise. He was on a boat, but he was
basically being transported from prison to prison. He was under
arrest. You remember, the ship ran into
a great storm and Paul himself suggested that they jettisoned
the cargo over. And they began to do so to lighten
the load for the ship. And no one on the ship would
have been saved had they not lightened the load, the ship
was literally preparing to break up. The passage tells us of an
impending danger, and unless the individual lighten the load
by jettisoning their own cargo, shipwreck and doom is inevitable.
It’s a very interesting parallel. Paul had already unmasked the
Judaizers in verse 2. And you find the Christians as
the true circumcision in verse 3. And what Paul does is look
down the road and try to anticipate what it is the Judaizers argument
might be. What would their response to
his words be? Perhaps they would even argue that the Philippians,
since they were Gentiles, didn’t understand how good Jews had
it, didn’t understand the rich heritage of the Jewish people. What Paul goes on to show is
that these Judaizers are so blinded, by the glittering of the so-called
rich heritage that they possessed, that they couldn’t fully appreciate
the infinite value of Jesus Christ. Paul enters into the same argument
in 2 Corinthians 11. In 2 Corinthians 11, he combats
some of these same thoughts. And in that passage, he says,
are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites?
So am I. He was battling with the same
people who thought that their Judaism was even superior to
Paul’s. Paul says, no, I’m a Jew just
like them. And if anyone has a mind to put
confidence in the flesh, I far more. I am the epitome of the
Jew. When Paul writes that he himself
has reason for confidence in the flesh, he doesn’t intend
to say that after everything, that some of those ceremonies
and those advantages that he gained by heredity, some of those
personal attainments that he had achieved in being a Jew,
he wasn’t saying that any of them had saving value. What he
says is that if this were actually the case, if salvation depended
on those things, then he himself, more than any other of these
Judaizers, would be entitled to a place in heaven. The apostle
could rightfully claim that those external privileges privileged
him to the full. More than anybody else, more
especially than the Judaizers, he could have trusted in the
flesh if trusting in the flesh meant heaven. One said it this
way, he boasts of being a true son of Israel, of untainted descent,
of the strictest sect, ardent in his profession, so that had
salvation been awarded to the fervent and punctual devotions
of the chamber or the sanctuary, he might have died in confidence
and peace. But that isn’t the case. To put
it in the modern vernacular, if trusting in those things would
have put us on the bus going to heaven. Paul would have been
driving the bus. But they weren’t grounds of confidence,
not for Paul, not for anyone else. And Paul would have his
Philippian believers, Paul would have us clarified. We said several weeks ago that
circumcision isn’t exactly something that we face every day as a challenge
to our Christian faith. It’s not like there are a lot
of people coming and suggesting that this practice be reinvigorated
in our day and age for the salvation of souls. But we face these arguments
every day, as you’ll see. In various forms, we face a works
righteousness argument every day. And that’s what Paul is
combating. Paul is combating the adding
of anything to Christ. And we’ll see there’s plenty
that gets glommed on, even in our own lives. Heaving the gold in the sea,
that’s what Paul calls us to do. That’s what he tells us he
did. And it wasn’t just stuff. That’s what happened in Acts
27. They started heaving cargo, wheat, I believe, into the sea. But I’m talking about the most
precious cargo, treasure beyond all that we could ever know. heaving that into the sea. That’s
what Paul calls us to do because of the infinite treasure, the
unnameable treasure, the infinite value of knowing Christ is so
far superior. That’s the context. The great
context of this passage is over and over again righteousness
by Christ in Christ alone. There are benefits that we as
a Christian must lose if we are truly to gain Christ. There are
benefits and blessings that we must let go of. I remember years
ago hearing the tale of, I believe it was in Madagascar, how they
catch monkeys. Not in the movie. How to catch a monkey and what
they essentially do is hollow out a gourd and place a small
hole in it and put fruits and berries in there. And the monkey
reaches in to grab the fruits and berries and then cannot and
will not let go. He will not let go. And so the gourd tied to a string
makes it a simple trap to capture the monkey. Paul says, if you
are holding on to anything, if there is anything in your hand
or in your heart to mix the metaphor. If there’s anything beside Christ,
you cannot grab hold of Christ. If we would have Christ, we must
first of all lose our hope in ritual. That’s what he says.
Circumcised the eighth day. Paul says, you know what? I did
it perfect. My parents did it perfectly. This is exactly what the law
prescribed and they did it. This alone proved that Paul was
a Jew by birth. He wasn’t a proselyte. He wasn’t
converted as a Gentile, even though he was born outside of
the nation. Genesis 17, 12 said, Every male
among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout
your generations. This was a perpetual observation. A servant who is born in the
house or who is bought with money from any foreigner who is not
one of your descendants. All of them. It wasn’t true for the Ishmaelites,
those that we would modern day called the Arabs. An Ishmaelite
was circumcised on his 13th birthday so as to make a distinction between
the true child of Israel Leviticus 12, 3 reiterated, on
the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. It was absolutely to the letter
of the law that Paul’s parents had honored God’s Word. Circumcision on the eighth day
was according to divine enactment. It was God’s command. And Paul
said, God commanded it and my parents honored it and I am because
of that fully a Jew. The apostle was born a Jew, and
on that appointed day, he received what was the seal of the Abrahamic
Covenant. We spent some time on this several
weeks ago. And in honoring that, that ritual,
that rite was deferred for no good reason. There was no way
out of it. No legitimate way out of it.
And so Paul says, if any merit was to be gained from a strict
compliance with the law, he had it. His parents had done it perfectly. And so do Christians. Christians will say that, you
know, in some cases they were baptized repeatedly. That’s the
pretty much near equivalent of this, a sign, an outward sign
of an inward reality. Some Christians will lay great
pride on their mode of baptism. Some would lay pride on having
been sprinkled, and you could make the argument whether that’s
even baptism at all, because baptism means to immerse. Some
are proud that they have been dunked. completely immersed. Some are proud that they had
been baptized by some great saint of the faith. Some are baptized
and proud of their baptism in certain in particular places.
I mentioned last week one particular lady our family knew every time
she ever mentioned baptism. It was the fact that she had
been baptized in the River Jordan. And that’s about how you began
to treat it. Some will mention that they had been triple dunked.
Some would go on and on and on about what mode of baptism they
have received. That’s the common one for the
Christian. But there are others. There are foot washing rituals
and other rituals. Some would lay claim to the fact
that, you know, the claim, at least, that they had been in
every Lord’s Day celebration that their church had ever had.
As if a mere adherence to the ritual is saving. Baptism isn’t
saving. Ritual isn’t saving. And Paul
says that if you are going to try to waltz into heaven, grabbing
hold of your pride in ritual, you’re dead. Heave the gold into the sea.
Paul doesn’t say that these things don’t have any value. Paul says that the value of Christ
is so much infinitely more that we must hold to Christ, even
if it means letting go of the other. It’s the second thing
that Paul urges us to loosen our grip upon and to heave into
the sea. benefits that we must lose if
we are truly to gain Christ. If we would have Christ, we must
lose not only our hope in ritual, but our faith in nationalism.
Now, the argument is somewhat diminished. It was big when I
was a kid and I began to see, you know, the hippies take care
of it and whatnot as they argued against our great country. I
can remember on many occasions walking into churches and having
the flag posted up front and having that great national feeling
as part of worship. Paul said that he had pride in
his nation as well. He was of the nation of Israel.
That word there that was the sacred name for the Jews, you
know it well. It was the nation of the great
theocracy, the people under God’s covenant. That was Israel. I know many, as I said, who really
still believe in their heart the argument that America is
a Christian nation. That’s essentially where Paul
was coming from, that inherently these were the people of God.
It didn’t matter how they lived. They were by birth, by God’s
own selection, the people of God. And you can imagine what
a great nationalistic feeling that that would engender. And
it did. The name implied that great covenant with God It was
the religious name by which they were known among all the nations.
The interesting thing is that Ishmaelites, they claimed descent
from Abraham, but Edomites also claimed descent from Abraham
and Isaac. But only the nation of Israel
claimed descent from Abraham, Isaac and Israel, Jacob. Paul
wasn’t a convert. Paul wasn’t a proselyte. He was
of direct Israelite descent all the way back to Abraham, Isaac,
and even Jacob himself. The Jews used this title of Israel
as a special title of honor. As I said, Paul wasn’t, not only
was he not a convert, neither were his parents. Paul was by birth a member of
God’s chosen people, of whom God Himself declared, you only have I chosen from among
all the families of the earth. Can you imagine what pride that
would stir up in the natural heart? That racial heritage is unable to save anyone. All kinds of people make an argument
that in and of itself, our birth in this particular nation, whether
white or black or whatever color, whatever nationality you have
had over the course of time, people make this argument. But this term Israel, too, also
expresses spiritual nobility. It just had a tendency to puff
up. It carried higher honor than either the term Jew or Hebrew
because it belonged to the special chosen people. Listen to how
it’s used in the Scriptures. Exodus 19, verse 5, “…Now then,
if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My commandment, then
you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all
the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom
of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you shall
speak to the sons of Israel.” Numbers 23. Actually, Psalm 147, jot that
one down, if you would. Psalm 147, verse 19. He declares
his words to Jacob, his statutes and ordinances to Israel. He
has not dealt this way with any nation. And as for his ordinances,
they are not known. Praise the Lord. In time, in the course of history,
we have heard, of course, that the Italian Catholics It was
as if that was the center of the universe on true spirituality. But couple that with the fact
that we’ve also heard in time of Scottish Presbyterians, as
if the two cannot possibly be separated, the very people of
God. And as such, we’ve heard of Anglicans
and German Lutherans and, of course, the Dutch Reformed. And
so what more natural argument can we make in our own day and
age than to speak of American Christians and to say that one
is to be equated with the other? Are we laying hold simply by
the fact that we were born in America? Laying claim to some
kind of salvation merely by birthright? If we don’t let go of that one,
it will take us to hell. Heave it overboard. If we would have Christ, thirdly,
we must lose not only our hope in ritual and our faith in nationalism,
but our pride of lineage. Our pride of lineage. Look at
what Paul says next. If anyone else has a mind to
put confidence in the flesh, I far more circumcise the eighth
day of the nation of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin. This is
an interesting one. Because of the great confusion
that there was because of the captivity, not even every Jew
knew. To what tribe he truly belonged. But there were those there were
those that had kept a family tree that had a genealogy that
was traceable. And to be traced back to the
tribe of Benjamin wasn’t a bad thing. The tribe of Benjamin
was well known as having within its very small borders the holy
city itself, Jerusalem. The head of the nation was Jacob’s
very beloved son, Benjamin. Benjamin was a favorite son by
a favorite wife, Rachel. And the tribe was once called
by Moses, the beloved of the Lord, this little nation. It
gave Israel its first lawful king, whose name the apostle
Paul once bore, Saul. This little nation proved to
be faithful among the faithless when, if you remember, under
King Rehoboam, after the kingdom divided, ten tribes forsook the
Davidic crown. But not Judah and not Benjamin. It’s even recorded in Ezra, chapter
four, that when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that
the people of the exile were building a temple, in other words,
they were linked together for history. Ehud, Mordecai, both were Benjamites,
kind of a claim to fame. This tribe was also recorded
in the book of Judges as having produced 700 men who were adept
with their left hand, who could sling a stone at a hairbreadth
and not miss. Judges chapter 20. But is what Paul’s saying here
when he lays claim to being of the tribe of Benjamin, the tribe
of Benjamin was far superior to all the other tribes. Is that
what Paul’s saying? I can’t hardly think so. Is it really necessary to conclude
from only those two passages that Judah always had the place
of honor in battle? On two occasions it says that
they marched in the forefront, but it doesn’t say that that
was always the case. If you’re going to lay claim
to a rich heritage, King Saul isn’t hardly one that you’d put
forward. You’d want to push him to the back. Judas’ loyalty to
David’s throne really was actually reluctantly shown. There were
such atrocities as I would even refrain from mentioning from
the pulpit. Judges 19, verses 22-26. Certainly, Benjamin wasn’t categorically
better than all the other tribes. But by good and by bad, Genuinely
Israel. They were genuinely Israel. For
all of their flaws and all of their goodness, they were truly
the people of Israel. So the conclusion was, if there
indeed was any saving value, any merit for eternity, the special
distinction of being an Israelite was proven when Paul laid title
to it by being a Benjamite. He had enough proof to say, look,
The bedrock is deep. My foundation of being a Jew
is deep. I know exactly what tribe I’m
from. And what do we place our own
pride in? Do we place our pride in having
been now a fourth generation Christian, having been raised
in a Christian home, having this great family lineage? I remember
cringing one time hearing a pastor, a well-known pastor, talk about
the pastors that he knew that were in this great succession,
as if those raised in a Christian home are necessarily cut out
of better stock. And being a first Christian,
the first generation Christian myself, I didn’t much care for
it. But I really don’t care for it because it’s not biblical. Are we really to put our pride
and genealogies in what our great-great-grandfather once was? There’s a picture that
hangs in my mother’s home of apparently my great-great-great-grandfather. My mom thinks that he has my
eyes or I have his. And apparently he was once some
well-known Methodist minister. Do I lay claim to his accomplishments
in Christ? Whatever they were? Paul warned Titus in chapter
3 verse 9, avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and
disputes about the law for they are profitable, pardon me, unprofitable
and worthless. Doesn’t matter if you’re raised
in a pastor’s home. It doesn’t matter if your cousin
is a missionary. It doesn’t matter how faithful
your parents were. It doesn’t matter if you’re the
10th generation of Christians. What matters is where is your
faith? And if you’re trusting in those
things, heave it overboard. Fourthly, If we would have Christ, we must
lose our hope in ritual, our faith in nationalism, our pride
of lineage, our reliance on heritage. You say, well, what’s the difference?
Not a lot. Paul is piling these things up
argument after argument to say that he was a thoroughgoing Jew
and it all went overboard. The Hebrew, when Paul uses this
word, He speaks of Hebrew speaking Jews in contrast with the Greek
speaking Jews. Not that Paul didn’t have the
language in his arsenal. He did. But by and large, Paul
was a thoroughgoing Jew who fully imbibed in the Hebrew culture,
including its tongue. It points to the Jew who cherished
that national language and the manners that came with it, as
opposed to the Hellenist, the Greek Jew, the Greek speaking
Jew, one who had imbibed not only the language, but also the
culture of the Greeks. And for us as Christians, this
one gets a little touchy, doesn’t it? Because there are many of
us that have imbibed a great deal, not only of the language,
but the lingo, the dress, the attire, the attitude and the
mentality of our own culture. But the more dangerous culture,
given the context, is Christian culture. How many Christians
do you know They’ve got to Christian speak. They go to the Christian
church. They hang out with other Christians. They, you know, they have a pride
sort of in that affiliation. And yet for all their affiliation, you struggle to find a real work,
a real mark of God’s grace at work in their life. They’re trusting.
They’re trusting in Christian culture. Paul was born in Tarsus, but
he was of pure Jewish descent. He maintained the Jewish language,
the customs, the manners of life. He was educated in the law and
morals of his forefathers. He maintained the love and the
utilage of his mother tongue, Hebrew. clung for a time to that Jewish
heritage. And he was committed to the language,
said one, the orthodox traditions, the customs of his ancestors.
So tightly did Paul cling to his Jewish heritage that he could
confidently declare in Acts 26, verse 4, So then all Jews know
my manner of life from my youth up, which from the beginning
was spent among my own nation and at Jerusalem.” He says, everybody
knew me and everybody knew how I lived. And to hold on to that, to that
enculturation that takes place merely by being in America and
merely by being around other Christians, the Christian East
that we were able to pick up, that doesn’t save us. And if
you hold on to it and that alone It will do you no good. There’s
a fifth. Benefits that we must lose if
we are to gain Christ. If we would have Christ, we must
lose our hope and ritual, faith and nationalism, pride of lineage,
reliance on heritage, confidence in conservatism. Uh oh. I’m not talking about politics,
not today at least. But when Paul says, as to the
law of Pharisee, he says, I was a right winger. The word literally meant to separate,
that’s what it originally referred to, and the background of the
Pharisaic party is going to ring true with a lot of us. The religious
party of the Pharisees basically originated during the intertestamental
period with no prophets bursting onto the scene to speak for God.
In other words, the people began to have to do things for themselves. And as a reaction to the excesses
that so much of the culture had begun to imbibe, the Jewish culture
I’m talking about, their carelessness, their indifference, They had
begun to imbibe the Greek culture in great quantity. And so the
Pharisees arose and they withdrew themselves from worldly persons. Does that sound familiar? Many
of us come from these particular backgrounds. Many of us could
very carefully be drawn in this particular camp. that, look,
I am reacting to what I see in Christianity in the world. I
don’t like what I see and I must repel. That’s what the Pharisees
were doing. And as such, they abstained from
politics and they put a great stress on religious purity. They
had a high regard for the law of God. And from that standpoint,
it deserves admiration. Now, we know it’s notorious that
the Pharisees went far beyond that into strict legalism and
holding to things that God’s Word didn’t say. That’s where
they went south. But to become a Pharisee. To become a Pharisee just meant
to have achieved the highest level in devout and legalistic
Judaism. You were basically adhering to
God’s standards. And then some. The Pharisees,
said one, were supremely devoted to the law, the whole rabbinic
system. And to be a Pharisee was to be
a member of an elite, influential, highly respected group of men
who fastidiously lived to know, interpret, guard and obey the
law. It’s not a bad thing. And I would
say that with a small p, many of us would find ourselves very
comfortable in a Christian Pharisee camp. Enthusiastic, heartfelt, strong
convictions, anti-this and anti-that. Paul says, look, I was just a
strict Pharisee. I was enthusiastic. When Paul wrote to the Sanhedrin,
he touted his Phariseeism. He said, but perceiving the one
group or Sadducees and the other Pharisees, Paul began crying
out in the council, Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial for the hope and
resurrection of the dead. And you know that with that he
parted the crowd that was attacking him when he was standing in front
of Agrippa. He also used this argument in
Acts 26.5. since they have known about me
for a long time, if they are willing to testify that I lived
as a Pharisee according to the strictest sect of our religion.”
He was a religious conservative. And it isn’t even a stretch to
say that we would all basically fit under that title. But are
we so audacious to think that merely being a strict religious
conservative is going to earn us a place in heaven? Is that
what we’re holding on to? The fact that we do this and
we don’t do that? The fact that we believe this
and we read these books and we go to these conferences, but
we don’t go to those? That’s our Christianity? That’s
our hope? We have to let go of a confidence
in conservatism Because that’s not Christ. We have to heave all of the gold
into the sea if the ship is to be saved at all. Looking at the benefits that
we must lose if we are to gain Christ, number six, if we would
have Christ, we must lose our assurance in enthusiasm. And
I don’t mean to say, I’ve called all of these gold. There is an
element of goodness to each of these. There’s an element of
value to each of them. That’s what made them so hard
to heave over the side. And enthusiasm? Is that a bad
thing? Not at all. Paul says it is such
as to zeal a persecutor of the church. This is how far my Christianity
went. Zeal for Israel was one of the
highest virtues. Numbers 25, Phinehas, the son
of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned away my
wrath from the sons of Israel, in that he was jealous with my
jealousy among them, so that I did not…” God looked at his
zeal and said, you know what? That’s enough. That’s enough
to assuage my anger. Psalm 69, for zeal your house
has consumed me, used of Christ. And the reproaches of those who
reproach you have fallen on me. Saul was a zealous adherent of
Judaism. Saul was a zealous Pharisee.
Acts 8.3 records of him that he began ravaging the church,
entering house to house, dragging off men and women. He would put
them in prison. That’s how much he believed his
Judaism. That’s how much he believed and
what he believed. He was zealous. Acts 9 records
of Paul. Now Saul, still breathing threats
and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high
priest, asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus,
so that if he found any belonging to the way, both men and women,
he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Paul said, the extent
of my zeal was to go at it full force against the church earnestly. And there’s no doubt
that Paul turned the corner having come to Christ. He looked back
on those zealous days and he regretted it. But here he’s saying
that, you know, look, if you want to talk about being a Jew,
if you want to talk about things that if you want to argue that
way, commend you to heaven. I was as zealous as it could
be, persecuting to the death. Paul would come to regret that.
1 Corinthians 15 9 says, I am the least of the apostles for
this very reason. I am not fit to be called an
apostle because I persecuted the church of God. His zeal was
real. Galatians 1.13, you’ve heard
of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute
the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. I was
advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my
countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. And there are many of us that
are almost as zealous. I don’t know anybody that really
comes close to what I see in the Apostle Paul. Not any Christians
anyway, but I do know some zealous, some hearty, some certainly some
strongly opinioned saints who want to push and press and wage
war at every turn. And that’s not necessarily a
bad thing. But is it Christ that you’re
holding to or is it your zeal? Do you think that you’ve got
to earn some spot, some seat on the bus, as it were, by your
zeal? Or is it Christ alone? Finally, there’s a seventh and
final. If we would have Christ, we must
lose our hope in ritual, faith in nationalism, pride of lineage,
reliance on heritage, confidence in conservatism, assurance in
enthusiasm, trust in virtuousness. That’s a hard one for us to let
go of. Paul said as to the righteousness
which is found in the law, found blameless. He wasn’t saying he
was perfect. He wasn’t saying that according
to God’s standards, that God couldn’t see anything in him
in need of reform. He’s saying that according to
the outward and legal observance of his life, He was blameless. There wasn’t anything that another
Jew could come and wag his finger in Paul’s face and say, you know,
you’ve left this off of your to do. He was constantly performing
with, as one said, scrupulous exactness, every right of fasting,
tithing and sacrifice. There wasn’t anything that Paul
left undone. There are many Christians just
like that. We look at Christianity as a list of to-dos. And though we leave off many
things, we want to tout what we have done and have accomplished,
and how many times we’ve gone to church, and where we’ve gone,
and the fact that we’re members here. Is that what we’re trusting
in for salvation? If you are, heave it overboard. Paul says in verse 7, whatever
things Whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted
as loss for the sake of Christ.” In other words, Paul says, there’s
no way. There’s no way that I can grasp
hold of any one of these things, certainly not all of them, and
lay hold of Christ as well. requires us to empty our hand.
Nothing in my hand I bring simply to the cross I cling.” Those
are not just words. We need to heave the gold into
the sea. Denominational pride. Your church
attendance. Your church membership. The fact
that you were raised in a Christian home. The fact that you’re an
American. As one said, when the truth and
the beauty of the Gospel were by God’s mercy brought before
Paul, He laid them down as a loss. It was plain to him that salvation
was to be found only in Christ and that anything which kept
a man back from Christ or weakened his hold of Christ was a positive
and spiritual detriment. Let’s pray. Our merciful God, Perhaps we had never even considered
this, that we could be holding to things just like Paul was. Our nationalism, our church membership,
all of these other elements mentioned. Either any of them individually
or collectively would be enough to take us down with the ship,
down to the very hell itself. Because it forbids us and precludes
us from grasping Christ. Father, we thank you for. Paul’s
heartfelt words to the Philippians and thereby his words to us grant
us grace as we examine our hearts. To see what we are holding to
as a hope of salvation. It’s in Jesus name that we pray.
Amen. Hey, Wes, go get him.