Philippians 3:2-9

Philippians 3:2‑9
Reading
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
156.
Nsnoise.
16 The words were found, and I did eat them, and thy word wasn't to me. The joy and rejoice of my heart. Only considered the first verse of Philippians chapter 3 yesterday, so I would suggest.
The mind of the brethren, that we read from verse one again, but then go on to the subsequent verses.
Philippians chapter 3, verse one.
Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord.
To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision, for we are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
00:05:07
Though I might also have confidence in the flesh, if any other man think it that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more circumcise the 8th day of the stock of Israel.
Of the tribe of Benjamin and Hebrew Of the Hebrews, as touching the law of Pharisee concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless. What things were gained to me? Those I counted loss for Christ a 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 to count them but dumb, 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, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection.
And the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain under the resurrection of the dead, 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.
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth under those things which are before I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore as many as be perfect, be thus minded, and if anything, you be otherwise minded. God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, where do we have attained already? Have already attained? Let us walk by the same rule. Let us mind the same thing.
Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as you have us for an example.
For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you, even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, will mind earthly things. For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working, whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself?
Today that the apostle in writing to the Philippians, he didn't find it an irksome or grievous thing to write and to remind them to rejoice in the Lord. And we spoke at some length on that subject, but now he's going to remind them of things that they are not, that they ought to be aware of and that ought not to characterize them. And so we are to be characterized as a people.
Who rejoice in the Lord, have the joy of the Lord in our souls, as we said yesterday, to show it on our faces and in our lives. But then He takes up these things that we are to be aware of or to see, to be aware of. Dogs beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. And then there's some exhortations that follow. And so these things are, I suppose, really that which characterized Judaism, and they were not to go back to that which had been.
Set aside in Christianity. And so, brethren, we need the positive, but we need the warnings too. First of all, he encourages them to rejoice in the Lord. Now we're going to find today, give them some warnings.
And some exhortations concerning those things that ought not to characterize them.
The Doctrine.
Particularly presented to us in this chapter, it's assumed, and this is the walk that, uh, we're to have consistent with the teaching that has been given to us. And in that connection, the basis of this particular set of exhortations, I think that we see the teaching of it a little easier. And I'd like to turn to it for a moment in Second Corinthians chapter 5.
00:10:00
Umm. These verses which follow are based upon, you might say, the truth. That's the teaching being presented to us. More here in 2nd Corinthians 5.
He says in verse 14, For the love of Christ constraineth us.
Because we thus judge that if one died for all, then we're all dead.
That they which that he which died for all try again, and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. Wherefore henceforth?
Know we no man after the flesh? Yeah, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now, henceforth.
No, we have no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.
Here there are several things presented to us that are, I will say, assumed in the chapter on which these our chapter where these exhortations are one is.
We once were children of Adam, as was presented in the last meeting, but we have died with Christ.
And we are a new creation in Christ Jesus before God.
The Lord Jesus Christ was once known.
As a man on earth, among men.
But our chapter in Philippians 3 and here says we don't know him that way anymore.
We are when we say Christ is our object and we want to get to know Him as we had him in the last meeting. It's really not the His object as a man here on earth. It is Jesus Christ as he is this afternoon.
A glorified man at God's right hand. And it's that in that way that we want in an everyday sense, to get to know Him. We will never leave going back and seeing His life here on earth and what he went through and learning from it and seeing lessons to be gained from it. But the way we want to know Him in an everyday, personal fellowship sense of the Word.
Is the living man who has passed through death and is alive forevermore and further than that, he is seated at God's right hand in the glory. That's the object. That's the person which is to be the object of our souls. And consequently, in our chapter, the exhortations beginning in verse two are don't go back to the old.
Don't go back to those things which were in Judaism.
That are now not God's way for us and we are going to get into a wrong path if we try to go back and please God in the manner in which the Jew tried to please God before the Lord Jesus died and rose again. And so he says beware, you can't please God according to that man in the flesh.
And it's not just you can't please God in the evil that's in the flesh, but the whole idea of trying to please God in Adam is past.
Audience is seeking for anything in Adam's race anymore. Adams race is a race that you were born into has been condemned.
There's nothing, there's no future to Adam's race. It's been condemned. It's facing certain judgment. As it says in Adam all dies. And if you live according to the pattern of Adam's rice, even if you live on the clean side of Adam's race, the end is death. But in contrast to that, we're a new creation in Christ Jesus, and in Christ Jesus all live. And so he's telling us.
00:15:01
Here and Christ is our object as a man in the glory, and don't go back to try to live the old life.
Well, I think it's help. Go back to the 56th of Isaiah to see what he says.
That connection, just go back there for a moment, at least part of the thought.
He's talking about the leaders in Israel, those that should have been having a care and a watch for the people of God. And let's see how he characterizes them. Verse 10 of the 56th of Isaiah, his Watchmen are all blind, they are all ignorant. They are all dumb dogs. They cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. They are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand.
They all look to their own way, everyone for his gain, his gain from his quarter. You know, they often talk about a dog in the Manger. That's an old expression. And a dog in the Manger is a is describes a person who wants some something for themselves in spite of whether anybody else gets what they need or or not. And so we find that the the prophet Isaiah, he describes those who should have had.
A care for the people of God as greedy dogs, only taking that position for themselves and for their own gain. And we see it when the Lord Jesus was here. We see the religious leaders in Israel and they only wanted a position for themselves. They were the ones that should have been standing for rectitude and righteousness and pointing the people to the Lord Jesus as the Messiah. But not only did they not want him themselves.
But as they said, they sought to hinder those who would enter in. That's a dog in the Manger, if I can use that expression. And I suppose what he's warning them about here in in the book of Philippians is those Judaizing teachers who would rise up and they want a following for themselves or a position for themselves without desiring the blessing of the people of God. So the the apostle warned he used a little different expression. He used the the.
Uh, analogy of wolves, the wolf comes to, to get something for itself, to, to kill and to steal and and so on. And Paul said after his departure, grievous men would, uh, there would be those who would come from without, but then there would be of the own, their own cells, men arising, speaking perverse things. Why? To draw disciples after themselves. Again, those are greedy dogs. And don't we see that so often?
In Christianity.
Those who rise up and take the position or place of being leaders in spiritual things and Christianity and religious circles, and in the end they only want something for themselves. That's why Peter warned the elders in his epistle that to take the oversight was not to get some position or something for themselves, but for the good and blessing of the people of God. So a dog only has its own interests at heart.
But we're to be aware of those who come along, put on a good front, but they only have their own interests at heart. Maybe you have another thought too, Bob. I just noticed that, uh, in Galatians it speaks of, Paul says, uh, those that bite and devour one another. And we can get that way if we're not careful. We can't wait. I mean, you and I might have some differences, Jim, but I don't think I'm gonna bite you about it. That's not.
The Christian way to do it is it.
But sometimes we get into that. We need to be do be aware of that.
Pray in the shame of another.
Sometimes you see, while I remember a dog we had on a farm and she had a litter of pups and they got nearly her size and they would romp and play and.
Tease back and forth, but it always ended with the mother's jaw wide open on the pup's neck on the ground. It was kind of interesting to see, but if you look at Second Corinthians.
Chapter.
00:20:03
11.
There were those who.
The question Paul's apostleship, but the one thing he says there.
Verse 18 Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also. For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise. For you suffer if a man bring you into ******* if a man devour you, if a man taketh you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face.
It's pretty serious, isn't it? Pretty heavy language, but here was really their spiritual father that had LED them to Christ and this thing of someone that.
Comes into.
You might say another man's territory where he's labored for Christ and seeks to exalt himself as a leader and bring them under *******. It's really quite a serious thing.
Beware of the dogs. Beware of evil workers.
Beware of the concision, you know, the idea of bringing under law and maybe shaming the Gentiles because they were Gentiles. We could see how easily Peter came under the influence of those that came down from Jerusalem. But it wasn't of God, wasn't Paul had to withstand that.
We also have the first two they set in contrast to verse 3.
And I think it's important to see that contrast to get a sense of verse 2. Verse three says we are the circumcision.
The world was a filthy place.
And God set apart a people for himself.
He sanctified them. He set them apart. The Jewish people, when they were established through Abraham, were done so by separating them from the nations which lived filthy lives.
Ungodly lives. And so God set apart a people for himself, and in part of that act of separation, they were circumcised.
And recognition of that place in which they had been set apart, and in the denial of the working of flesh.
They were put in a clean place.
But.
Man in the flesh, even if physically separated, even if given a law which was wholly and just and good, it didn't change the nature of man.
As, using the example that's often been made, you can, uh, take a pig out of the.
Mud and you can clean it up all you want, but if you let it go to have the its own nature, it loves the mud and it'll go back to it because that's what it loves. In other words, you don't change its heart by cleaning it up. And God separated a people to himself, a circumcised people that were in a clean place, but it didn't change the heart. He gave them a perfect law.
But the law only exposed what was in their hearts. They didn't change the heart, even though it was holy and just and good.
It needed what we had in 2nd Corinthians 5 to take place, That man, to be truly morally circumcised, morally separated from the filth, was to be a new creature in Christ Jesus with a new life and a new nature. And so he was separated to God not only externally, but internally, which was more important even than the external.
And in fact, God didn't separate Christians physically, as he separated the Jew from everything around them.
And so in chapter verse three, we are the circumcision, that is, we who have embraced Christianity and the change that has taken place.
In it, but the danger that they are being warned of here is to go back and try to please God in the old way. It's not. And so he says you be aware of that.
00:25:02
The dog's a filthy creature and you're not going to set up a set of religious activity like the Jew had. And that was the particular.
Danger for them that they would introduce, as Christianity has done, a whole kind of set of religious activities which are intended to help men draw near to God, but in fact they only hold man without a conscience being involved in the presence of a holy God.
And so you can go through a set of activities, religious activities that might make you feel good because they you can keep even though it doesn't change the heart, but they're outward things very often rituals that man can keep that makes them sort of feel good. And he's saying here you be aware of that. Don't go back to a kind of a modified Jewish.
Take your Christianity back to a kind of a modified Judaism. Uh, that's like the concision and imitation of circumcision, but not true circumcision of the heart and.
You be aware of it. The only life we have to live that is holy, and the only constraint on that life, the old man is in 2nd Corinthians 5. I'll go back there one more time. It says the love of Christ constraineth us.
It does not constrain the flesh. It does not constrain the atom life. The life of Christ does not constrain it. And that's important to recognize. If we live it, we will not be constrained by the love of Christ. But the new man, the new life in Christ is constrained by that love. It can't be otherwise. And that's the life to be lived, but to go back.
By the things that are mentioned in verse two is to go back to things to try to constrain it or gratify it or take pride demand and some of the examples given of the leaders was you go back there and man well I'll automatically go back to what he's governed by his gain his pride, his self-interest even in preaching and religious things. He's he's controlled by that.
If he tries to appeal to man in the flesh.
It's helpful to realize, too, that the Gentile was never under the law or the Jewish order of worship. That's why when the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, he marveled that they were putting themselves under something that was never intended for them in the beginning. Because as Dawn said in the Old Testament, there was a people that the Jewish people, and they were set apart and they were given the law and the Jewish order of things.
But it was not for the, for the Gentile. And that's why in the early church, when Peter, uh, went down to take care of the matter of the Judaizing teachers who were seeking to make Jews out of the Gentiles, he said it was something that neither we nor our fathers were able to keep. Now he said, do you want to put the Gentiles under that *******? We couldn't keep it as a people. The Jew was, if I can put it this way, a specimen of humanity placed in the best of circumstances.
To show what all humanity really was, let me say that again. It was a specimen of humanity.
Put in the best of circumstances to show what all humanity was.
And so Peter says neither we nor our fathers were able to keep it, but that again I say the the Jew, the Galatian brethren, we sometimes say they were going back under the law. Well, that's not quite accurate.
They were putting themselves under something that they'd never been under to begin with.
Christian Jews who were saved in the early days of Christianity and were going back to the old order of things. They were going back to something that had been for them in the beginning. And that's why you have a little contrast with Galatians and Hebrews. In Galatians he comes down pretty hard on them. He takes up the matter and calls them foolish and.
He's very concise and very abrupt with them when he writes to the Hebrew believers.
He's a little more patient with them. He goes takes 13 long chapters to go over every segment of the old order of things and to explain that now they have something better in Christianity. That those were types and shadows, foreshadows of what they now had in Christ, that which was better 13 times. He uses that. So again, I think it's important to understand.
00:30:22
That the Gentile was never under the Jewish order of things.
And so to put ourselves under that which was never intended for us is very, very serious. And it brings us into a place of ******* that I say is not, is not Christian liberty. We have liberty in Christ now in Christianity. And as he says here in these verses, we now worship God in spirit. I wanna just take a moment and go back to what Don said and add to it a comment earlier about what characterizes Christianity.
Because there are two great things that set Christianity apart. One is a risen, glorified head at the right hand of God, as Dawn has pointed out. You know, I remember the Bible conference just like this. Someone raised the question, what is Christianity? And someone said, well, Christianity can be summed up in one word, Christ. But that needs explanation because as Dawn said, it's not Christ the way the disciples knew him when he walked here in this world.
It's not Christ the way his earthly people will yet know Him in a coming day, when a shout of a king is amongst them, and so on. No, it's Christ that's true, but it's Christ in glory. But there's something else that could that is unique to Christianity, and that is we are linked. We are connected to a glorified Christ by the Spirit of God. Something, brethren, that never was true before the day of Pentecost.
So on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God came down to unite those believers, those about 120 believers who were gathered together in the upper room in obedience to the Word of the Lord. It united them together, formed the Church of God, came to indwell them individually as well, but also came to link them with the man in the glory. And so we have the Spirit of God now, something they didn't have under the old order of things.
And so there's not only the new life, we not only now are the possessors of eternal life, not only do we have our head in glory and link to Him, but now we have the power to live for God's glory. It's the power of the Spirit. The new man has no power of itself. The new man is the power, the the Spirit of God is the power for the new man. And so in the Old Testament it showed they had no power.
In under the in in the flesh to live up to God's standard. Man failed utterly. But now we have everything we need in a glorified Christ and in the power of the Spirit to live for God's glory here in this world.
Just like to mention.
Verse 2.
Circumcision verse three. Decision means cut.
Concision means to cut at.
Circumcision means to cut off, and I think that helps to understand what Judaism is, is cutting at the flesh. It was meant to control man in the flesh. The Christianity, we start with man in the flesh being cut off completely. It's all the way around. That's what circum means, cut off. And so then it goes on what you mentioned, Jim.
Uh, we wor which worship God.
In the spirit or worshipped by the Spirit of God and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. There it is. The flesh is cut off. How are we going to have any cut, any, uh, confidence in it if it's completely cut off? That's been a help to me to see concision is cutting at the flesh. It recognizes that the flesh still something to be controlled.
But circumcision is the flesh completely cut off and no more confidence in it at all. Quick question. Verse two speaks of dogs, evil workers and the concision is that three things describing one group of people or.
00:35:13
Something else?
Or three different groups of people or.
I think it's three different ways in which we can try to go on before God in flesh.
It's not so much groups of people, all the groups of people do it and may lead us astray or we may lead ourselves and other people astray by trying to do it, but it's the generally speaking, it's the effort of man to continue before God.
On the old ground and it's a bad teaching. So he says beware of evil workers. Anybody that tries to teach you to do that, reject it. It's only going to harm your Christian life because that's not the way of the new man and the old man will never submit himself to God. He's got he's before God been proven to be.
Unfixable.
And as has been said, the flesh in US never changes even after we're a believer. It stays the same as long as we've got it in US. And so he's saying beware not to try to go back and introduce any kind of principle of life or manner of seeking to come before God that was.
On the principle that was OK in Judaism.
But Judaism showed it was a teacher that God used. It was a method God used to teach us the true hopeless condition of flesh before God.
I'd like to refer in this connection of what's before us to, uh, one more verse in the book of Romans, chapter 8.
I think it's connected with our chapter and I think it's connected with what was brought out in the last meeting.
And it's already remarks been made in this meeting about it.
Romans chapter 8 and verse 2.
For the law, or it'll help if the thought here is the principle, it's not the law of Moses, but the principle of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Hath set me free from the law, or the principle of sin and death.
For what the law could not do, that is, the law of Moses could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh. God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in US who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The important words that I want to emphasize here that Jim already commented on.
Is the Spirit.
The eternal life that God has given to us is a perfect life, and it never once wants to sin has no desire to do anything but to please God.
But that life in itself is not the power of the Christian life. And the Lord Jesus lived the perfect life according to verse two of chapter 8, and we are being taught to live on the same pattern of life, and that is the lower principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, that life.
The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus it is.
A life lived, a new life lived according to the will, direction and power of the Spirit of God. That was the life of the Lord Jesus. And I'll remark something that helped me to see it a little bit as this, ah, I got now the power of the Christian life. I got the Spirit.
00:40:19
But we often get frustrated in that direction. In this way. We think the spirit's gonna work for us. Like I get a real powerful car and I get behind the steering wheel of a real powerful car, and I say, boy, I've got power. And I try to control. I do control that car by my own control.
And consequently, I can go real fast and I can do this and I can do the other, and I'm in control. The spirit of life in Christ Jesus doesn't work that way. You and I don't control the Spirit of God. We don't sit in the steering wheel of our Christian life and say, OK, Spirit, I'm going to do this and that and you're going to be my power. It doesn't work that way. And consequently, we're not.
Told to taught to focus on trying to run the Christian life by directing the power of the Spirit of God. Only God by His Spirit can direct our life.
And He directs it by teaching us to be obedient to His will, and gives us the power to fulfill that which He teaches us to do. But He doesn't put us in control if we try to live the Christian life as it should be lived in the power of the Spirit, as if we ran.
The matter We're doomed to frustration, and constantly.
Not being able to walk as we should.
Ways that man tries to run the show on his on his own and what happens to him the dogs that's The Dirty, unclean, greedy side the evil workers their intelligence and so on and then the concession those that SE pretend to get victory and in their own strength and they think they're they're walking wholly and good and.
And they often end up in disaster.
And we often see that in the.
Gospels with the Pharisees and scribes, don't we in the Sadducees.
They tried to control things in a natural way and what happened, there was a division amongst the Jews, there was a division amongst the Pharisees and that's the concision, isn't it? It's that mutilation. It's there was the one division after another and they were divided on different issues concerning the Lord Jesus and so on. But it was really the result of trying to control things that by the natural man and by the by the law and by rules and regulations.
But when we're LED of the Spirit, brethren, there's unity. You know, if you were taught of the Spirit on everything at all times, and I was taught of the Spirit on all of all on all things at all times, we'd be in perfect unity and harmony, practically speaking, because that's what what the Spirit of God does. But if you'll allow me, I'd like to go back to the illustration of the car for a moment, because I think it's very helpful. You know, you might have in your.
In the parking lot out here, the best engine in your vehicle that money can buy the best engine that Mercedes or the top uh, car dealers can put in your, in your vehicle and you go out after these meetings and you turn the key and there's no power.
What do you need? You need an unseen commodity in that vehicle. You need gasoline. There's something that gives that car vehicle spark. You say, well, I, I've got the best engine money can buy, but there's got to be gasoline put in that engine if you're going to have power. And so the Spirit of God is the power for the divine life. As John said, it's a perfect life. It's the very life of Christ, but the power for that life.
Is the Spirit of God. But then to go on with Dawn's illustration, it's not just to have power to go where we please. And so we're gonna suppose for the sake of illustration, you have a certain destination in mind. And so you're gonna go home tonight and you don't know the way, and it's a dark night. What do you do? Well, you turn the GPS on, and that GPS is going to guide you.
00:45:27
You know, we're told to be led by the spirit and that GPS is going to guide you if you are willing to avail yourself of the power and to follow the instructions on your GPS screen. But what happens if you don't? I was coming out of Gasport, New York some weeks ago, some months ago, and I know the area very well. I go down to Buffalo to do some shipping on and on a regular basis.
And I was coming out of the full wells home and I thought, well, just for interest take I'll turn the GPS on. Don't really need it, but I'll turn it on. Well, as most of you know who know me best, I'm directionally challenged and I got to AT in the road and the GPS told me to turn a certain direction. I was convinced it was wrong and I turned the other direction. And what did that GPS do? It kept telling me to turn around at the nearest possible opportunity and it told me for 10 miles.
For 10 miles and finally I realised the GPS is right. I'm the one that's wrong and.
But yes, indeed. But, but I finally had to turn around and I lost about 40 minutes of time getting home. I was headed home and all I wanted to do was get home. And brethren, we're headed home too. We're headed home to heaven. But we're gonna get frustrated if we're not led by the Spirit of God in accordance to the Word of God. And what happens? We get frustrated. We get off the the track. We're not walking in the spirit. We're not led by the Spirit.
It's just gonna frustrate us, as Dawn said, it's gonna cause us all kinds of problems and difficulties. Did I get home safe? Yes. I finally listened and I followed the directions that were given to me. So I just say that perhaps that helps us to understand what we're talking about. Brethren, we have everything we need. We have divine life, perfect life. We have the Spirit of God as the power for that life. We have the word of God as our direction.
But let's not take matters into our own hands. You know, how often do we hear those words recalculating? You know, we often have to recalculate in our Christian life. We have to turn around sometimes. I heard of a couple who went to Europe and they rented a car. When they came back, the sister did a scrapbook with photos and account of their trip. She named the trip recalculating. I thought that was pretty appropriate. And maybe sometimes our Christian life we have to put over recalculating.
But, brethren, if we would take heed to these exhortations, we wouldn't have to recalculate as much as we sometimes do.
This word, confidence in the flesh, is repeated twice. That's built into us, brethren, and I have to recognize it in my own life. But like you say, it's the Spirit of God that should be the guide now and to be sensitive, brethren, as to His presence with us.
Living within us, He's there to guide us. And if there was anybody that had confidence, reason to have confidence in the flesh, it was the apostle Paul. He lived an exemplar light in Judaism and he lists it out here. Circumcised the 8th day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. Hebrew of the Hebrews is touching. The law of Pharisee concerning zeal, persecuting the church touching.
He was blameless. Oh, brother. And that was quite, a, quite a list to glory in, to have confidence in. And and that's built into us and people in our American way of life, we say have confidence in yourself. You've got it in you.
That is not Christianity.
So he says that in verse seven. What things were gained to me? Those I counted lost for Christ. What a change, what a switch.
00:50:14
Bible. Well, maybe more than two, but I umm, in one in the Old Testament and one in the New. In the Old Testament, it's King Saul.
And in the New Testament, it's Saul who here we know is the apostle Paul, and both men are examples to us as to how far the flesh can go.
There are two prime examples in the whole of the Word of God as to the extent to which man in the flesh can go in a way that fellow men may admire.
This.
Man saw that describes his confidence here in the flesh by his fellow religious men was considered tremendous, fantastic. Wish we had more such zeal of young men as this man. That's man's view of them.
Saul stood head and shoulders above others. Saul was a man. If you read his life, he had a lot of.
Natural courage. He went into war as he went into war with a lot of courage and so on. But.
In Saul's case, we see what he did or what his against David, but you have to remember David, there is a picture of Christ and that man. Saul's enmity was enmity against what represented the Lord Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul, who in this way I'm speaking with Saul, he his enmity ultimately was against the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that's the ultimate of how far man can go.
And the farther he goes, the more he is against what is of God.
And Paul rightly calls himself the chief of sinners. We would never have said that about him.
Even the fact that he was putting people to death, but if you stop and say who was he putting to death? He was putting to death those people that were identified with the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the exposure to us of what man in the flesh really is.
So that we as believers don't try to introduce that manner of life even a little bit.
Into our Christian lives, recognizing that.
God says you do that and you're going to end up on a course of conflict with me and my son. And so Paul is saying all these things that we would to how many people in this room?
Would dare to stand up here and say I stand with the saw in that there wasn't one outward thing in the law that I could be condemned by.
Never lied have you or have you you ever cheated? You ever stolen?
Have you ever been a false witness in some matter? Paul could say, no, I haven't. He he went as far as the flesh could possibly go and what we would think was a positive way. And yet God says, I'm going to take the chief of sinners and show my grace in that life. Because the farther you go down that road of self, the more you will stand in enmity to God, that is.
In conflict with what God is. But in the Matriman will never say that you know you. You'll never look at it that way unless you have a life of Christ and can see it as God sees it and recognize that.
Man in the flesh has no place before God. And then as Paul did say, I looked at all that and I say that doesn't get me anywhere. It's worthless in my relationship to to God. So I treat it as loss, waste. I wasted my life up through all that point. It was worth nothing. And now I have something that's worth something.
So it wasn't hard for him to give up those things that he once counted dear and so on. You say why, because he found something better. He found Christ. You know, I was thinking of another young man in Scripture in in Mark 10. And he came to the Lord as well and he had reverence and so on. And the Lord quoted to him the man word part of the law. And after hearing it, the young man said all this have I kept from my youth up. And I don't think that was just an idle boast. I think if you had gone to his neighborhood, talk to his family.
00:55:37
Talked to his coworkers, they would have told you he was a good neighbor, a good husband, a good father. He was a good worker, always held up his part of the team at work, never cheated on his timesheet. I think outwardly things were impeccable as far as the men were part of the law. But the Lord said to him, one thing thou lockest, He locked the thing that he needed most. He needed Christ and salvation. And you know he never got it as far as we read.
He went away sad because he had great riches. He had things he counted dearer than coming to know the person of Christ. But when Paul was brought in contact with the person of Christ.
He found by a work of grace and the Spirit of God, he found something that was far, far greater.
Then all those things that he once counted dear. So we sometimes use the illustration when our children are little.
If they have something in their hand or they're playing with something that we feel is dangerous or we want them to give up, what do we do? Why we offer them something better. If a child is holding a sharp knife, you can try to pry that knife out of their hand and you may cut them and cut you. But if you offer them an ice cream cone or a candy, what are they gonna do? Why? They're gonna drop the knife and they're gonna take the ice cream cone or the candy because they recognize there's something better, something sweeter than hanging on to that which is going to hurt them, even though they may not realize that the knife is going to hurt them. And that's the way it is in Christianity. And I like to just make a practical comment in that regard for all of us, brethren, you know, the more.
We taste of the sweetness of the person of Christ, the more we too are going to be able to set aside without any regret or any difficulty to set aside those things that are not of Christ, those things that are of the world, those things that are a detriment to us in following the Lord Jesus in our Christian pathway. Why is it?
Sometimes those things seem so good and we want to hold on to them because we haven't in our own souls enjoyed more of the sweetness of Christ. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. And I say, the more we have the sweetness of Christ and what He's done for us and where He is now and what's ahead, the more that is a reality in our souls, the more we're going to not have place in our hearts.
For that which is not according to his mind, you fill a glass with water to the brim. There's no room for anything else.
Fill a cup of wheat of wheat to the brim. There's no room for the chaff, and that's the way I believe it is with us.
You mentioned confidence, the idea of confidence. You know, the world does push for that and that, that we have confidence and build confidence up to do it. And you, you know, in order to accomplish things, uh, whatever skill you might have in a job, uh, it's hard to do it right if you don't have some kind of confidence, uh, in the ability to do so. And you can see people who, who lack confidence, who are unsteady and approaching whatever task that they are and they, they don't accomplish very much. But I thought about it in this way when you become a Christian.
You can have Christ confidence and I use it like this. My wife has a tremendous ability and talent as an artist, but she recognizes that it, it was God who gave her the gift and that through hard work, she has developed her talent, but it still comes from God And the, the success she's had with it, she recognizes still comes from God that he has helped her along the way. So you can have a skill or develop a talent, uh, that has to do with your job or your career.
And you can say, if you recognize it, that God is behind that and has given you that and it has helped you along the way to develop it, you have a confidence that's based in Christ. And the interesting thing about that is, is that is unshakable.
01:00:09
Men can and a challenge to some ability. You have your job or whatever, you can have something happen that may have you question your confidence and men can take that away or affect it. But it's hard to affect the confidence we have.
If we recognize whatever talent ability that we have is being rooted and grounded in the fact that the Lord Jesus gave it to us, has helped us with it, has developed, then we can approach a task and say, I trust the Lord to help me to do this. Yes, I've gone to school. I've developed a home disability, but even that the Lord helped me with. That's a kind of confidence that a Christian can have. It's based in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I noticed here in Acts 9 where the Lord appeared to Saul on the way to Damascus. That says he saw light, but it's interesting what Ananias says to him in verse 17. Ananias went his way, This is Acts 917 and entered into the house.
And putting his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus that appeared unto thee in the way, What was it that caused such a remarkable conversion in this man? It was saying, the Lord Jesus, He appeared to him in the way. And really that is what does it, brethren.
It is replacement of that self-confidence with confidence in the Lord. Everything changed, all those things that were gained to him, he says now they're lost, not only lost in verse 7, but in verse eight he says they're done. Get them out of here. You don't keep that in the around in the house and some special place.
You get it out. And so, brother, those things don't have any place now in the Christian life.
Wonderful conversion of this man.
There were two things that the apostle Paul then had before him in connection with the Lord Jesus.
That he came to know as his Savior on the Damascus Rd. One is in verse eight and then not to skip over, but the other is in verse 10. I just want to point out a little difference here, a little progression because in verse eight he speaks of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Then notice in verse 10, he says that I may know not about him, but I may know him. Now both are important brethren, but you know, it's one thing to know a lot about a person.
It's another thing to know that person personally. I'll repeat an illustration I've often used, but growing up in Canada, we learned a great deal about the British royal family. And to this very day I'm interested, as many of my fellow Canadians are, in information concerning the British royal family. And when there's a new Prince or Princess born, we read up about it and we're interested and we could, I could probably to this very day tell you many things about.
Queen Elizabeth and her family. But I don't know Queen Elizabeth personally. I know a lot about her, but let's suppose it'll never happen. But let's suppose, for the sake of illustration, that I get an invitation in the mail and everything is provided to fly to London. A limousine will meet me and usher me through the gates of Buckingham Palace to spend a month with the Queen of England. And so for one month, we sit down to tea together.
We walk in the royal garden, we commune together. When I leave Buckingham Palace now, I don't just know about the Queen of England. I could honestly say I know the Queen of England personally. I know things concerning the Queen of England that nobody else knows. I have a sense of her personality that you don't get from reading about her on the pages of the British press.
And so, brethren, it's wonderful. And Paul had a desire to have a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, but he hadn't even far greater desire, and that was to know him. Just go back to a book, a verse that was read to us, I believe in the prayer meeting at the beginning of the conference in the book of Hosea that perhaps sums this up in a very wonderful way.
01:05:25
Back in the book of Hosea, I think it's the 6th chapter.
Yes, Hosea, chapter 6, I believe this verse was read to us at the beginning of these meetings. But verse three, and I know this is in connection with the revival of God's earthly people, the Jews in the coming day, but I think we can apply it to ourselves. Then shall we know? Verse 3, then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord? Again, it's one thing to know about the Lord, and if you're gonna know about the Lord, you've gotta read His word.
How are we going to know about his person? It's the Bible, it's all Christ.
How are we going to follow on to know the Lord personally? We've got to walk in his company.
You'll never know the Lord personally. You'll never be able to say that I may know Him.
If you don't walk in his company. I knew something about my wife before I married her. But after 30 years I know my wife because we've lived in company with one another for all those years. Brethren, there's nothing we ought to desire more than not just to know about him, but to know him. This summed up Paul's whole life. That I may know him. You say, didn't he get to know him on the Damascus Rd. Yes, he did. But his whole, the whole desire.
Of his life was to get to know him in a better acquaintance.
That's interesting and.
Sale, they teach you to if you're going to meet an executive or some important person to do a little research 1St and get to know about them. It makes the getting to know them easier when you finally get there. If you know the man that coaches Little League and he's involved with these children and activities and this and that club or this and that thing, it makes getting to know this person in in your area of the sales meeting or whatever.
Uh, to know about them first, you get to know them, uh, quicker, better. It gives you an egress in to know, getting to know them when you finally meet them and it makes the whole meeting go better and you get a lot further by doing that. So it's interesting that it puts it that way. We can know what we know about him and then we get to know him, but our journey and getting to know about him and getting to know him is ongoing.
It's the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Notice this little word, brethren, in verse eight. My Lord, you know when Saul of Tarsus was saved on the Damascus Rd. He said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? He didn't say Jesus. He didn't say Christ. Not interesting that immediately he recognizes him as Lord. And here he says, my Lord, and I know we spoke of this yesterday in connection.
With the will of God. But can we say My Lord? It's one thing to say Jesus Christ is Lord and He is Lord, but is he my Lord? Is he your Lord? Can you say that you desire to know more about my Lord? Brethren, that's going to make the difference, as we said yesterday.
He talks about counting in the past tense.
So we had a set of verses of what Paul could take pleasure in in his own life and how far he advanced in his zeal for God. Mistaken zeal, but zeal. And so he comes to that Damascus Rd. experience and at that point he might say verse seven comes along and he says I counted.
He looks back at all those things that his life had been up to that point and he said I counted that as lost for Christ, and he enters into his Christian life.
But when you get to verse eight, it's the present tense I count.
So just think about it a moment.
You might have had a little conversation with Paul now and it's up to this point in his present tense. And you say, uh, how things been with you lately. Paul haven't seen you for a while. And he says, well, last four years I've spent in prison and I'm waiting now to see whether, umm, Caesar takes my life or not.
01:10:12
Oh, sorry, brother, that's awful sad. I, I'll, I'll pray for you. Uh, you, you've got some problems in your life now. How, how do you, uh, is the Lord abandoned you or what's, what's the problem in your, your life that you've spent the last four years in prison and you were honoring the Lord Jesus and being a great evangelist and a teacher of God's people and so on. Well, he says what?
No, I count all things.
Didn't change the tiniest bit. In fact, I believe, brethren, it reinforced those years that he was going through of what we would call severe persecution for the name of Christ were reinforcing in Paul what he had. He probably could have said it this way all the last four years. I've got to know the Lord a lot better.
You know, I, I understand better now some of the things that the Lord Jesus went through because I've been going through in a tiny little way, some things of suffering for his namesake. And I know how he suffered. And he goes on farther in a verse or two and he says, you know, if getting to know him better by shared experience, I would die and experience resurrection, I'd be happy to do that too.
So it was not very many people would look forward to death in the sense of a shared experience of what the Lord Jesus went through so that he too could know the Lord Jesus better as one who went through resurrection, physical resurrection, as the Lord did. So he says, umm.
That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection in verse 11, by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. That is, if that helps me to know Him better, that's good. And I will say, brethren, I believe that very many of the difficult experiences of life that we may go through are those experiences that we will look back on and say it enabled me to know the Lord Jesus.
Better. And in that way, we'll say it was worth it.
100% And when we look back and and get to have said now we know even as we are known.
That word has the Excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. My Lord, brethren, Christianity, I should say eternal life is just that. John 17 verse three says it so wonderfully. This is life eternal that they might know the the only true God.
And Jesus Christ, whom thou hast said not an amazingly wonderful thing, you and I can say we know the true God, the Muslim people of this world. The Muslim doctrine says God is unknown.
And unknowable.
And you tell me you know God.
We know him because we have come to know the Lord Jesus, and so he calls it the Excellency of the Knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. That's what Christianity is, to get to know Him more and more.
And that I might win Christ. Interesting expression, isn't it? We so often mention how the Apostle Paul speaks of the Christian life as a race or an athletic event. People are out to win different things in this world. We're gearing up for an election next month in Canada and politicians are flooding the media trying to win votes. That's what a politician wants to win. He wants to win votes.
And a runner goes out and he's seeking to win the race and people are out to win. People are out to win popularity contests. As they, as they say, Paul was once trying to win a popularity contest too. He wanted to be great in this world and in the, under the Jewish order of things. And he was climbing up in, uh, as far as the, as the man, as man would this world would be concerned. That's what he was out to win, But he gave it all up. Why? Because he had a better prize.
01:15:24
He had a better goal. He had Christ and glory, and when he got a vision of that, like Bob said, when he got a vision.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ by that eclipsed everything else. Now there were and he's going to speak of it later on in the chapter pressing towards the mark the prize. The prize is Christ and that I say eclipsed everything else. Why would he want the things of this world. You know when Paul speaks spoke of departing to be with Christ and what was ahead. You know that's more than if anybody else had written about it. Why he'd been caught up there.
He knew what was ahead. He'd seen Christ as the glorified man. He'd been in paradise, he'd been in the 3rd heaven. He knew what the goal, he knew what the prize was. And so it eclipsed everything else that man would ever set his heart on, whether it was religious fame. And that's really what he's talking. It's really what it's talking about. It's religious fame. Uh, re re religious recognition in this world meant nothing to him. He had no, he didn't have religion now he had Christ.
But it can apply to anything we set our hearts on. What are we trying to win? You know, a young man tries to win a young lady's affection. Nothing wrong with that, certainly proper in its place. But overall, brethren, are we seeking to like Paul to win Christ?
Few things will.
Give up a lot for something they value.
There are people that spend years and years of self denial.
For 10 seconds on a track to be the fastest person in the world if they can, and the honor that will come if they are successful. But they deny themselves many, many things for the sake of what they're going to gain by it. And there is, if we can use this way, a price to be paid to gain Christ. It's not free.
In that sense. And so the apostle Paul evaluated what he was gaining and what it was costing him and what he suffered the loss of.
To mention a few moments ago he lost his freedom, spent four years in in prison at this point, and that's what it was costing him to have Christ for his gain. And he said I've evaluated it on the scales of value and he said I don't even treat what I'm losing as worth anything. I treated as dumb, as something worthless, useless, but nonetheless.
Umm.
Uh, just in a tiny practical way. I'm gonna use one, just one example of of of the principle of it.
And whatever it cost.
Are we willing to give a little time every day to the Lord Jesus to be in His presence alone, speaking to Him and listening to Him in His Word?
Is gaining him worth that much to us? We haven't suffered a lot. Nobody in this room suffered in the loss of all things to the same measure, the apostle Paul. But but even in a tiny little thing by comparison, are we willing?
To gain Christ, even though it involves time in His presence each day, these are the things that we need to be.
Faithful in or can I say value?
Versus Boy I there's the the world to rob us of that I forget like people that own cell phone, 60% of them.
Look at their cell phone before they ever get out of bed.
There always seems to be a moment for this or that or the other, which may be OK in its place, but we have to evaluate sometimes those things that.
To gain one thing, you're gonna have to give up another. You have only so many waking hours in the day, and they're gonna be spent one way or another. Does gaining Christ have a value or an importance in the evaluation of the choices which ultimately are going to mean?
01:20:18
Giving up something else in place of that which you're seeking to gain. And we may never go to where none of us were the Apostle Paul went, but he's an example to us of somebody that was willing to sacrifice, if you will, everything that didn't contribute to gaining Christ.
Was mentioned before about the judgment seat of Christ, uh, the reward that is waiting. You know, some of us were talking and uh, uh, we're talking about how we know the end of the story. We win, we know how it all ends. We know so much about it. If we'll, we're finding out things, uh, at meetings like this, I and, and we know what's there and what is to gain. I mean, we, we have the story, it all laid out before us. I remember, uh, in the Old West, there was a man who was put in prison wrongly.
And he had a ball and chain put on his ankles and he had no foreknowledge that he might get out someday. He was sentenced for life, but he did, it was discovered he was wrongly sentenced and he was relieved. And the governor that granted his pardon and said new evidence has come forth, said that for the years of trouble that you had, we're going to give you, uh, weight in gold equal to the ball that was around your ankles. When he discovered that he wished it had been bigger. But while he had it and going through it, he, he suffered with it and hated that thing.
But if he'd had foreknowledge that he was going to get out, maybe he would have said, well, this fall isn't too much of a deal. And looking back now, he wished it was bigger. Well, we get to look in. We see. And if we'll just look, we know what's coming.
And is it worth it? We've been given a peak. We didn't get a peak like Paul did, but we have his record and we have others that, uh, you know, we have foresight and insight that, uh, uh, you know, we wouldn't have otherwise. We have such a privilege with having this book in our hands. So no one will be disappointed, will they, if we give up anything for Christ here when we talk to Paul in the coming day and say, well, Paul, are you disappointed that you gave up worldly advantage and all that was at your feet, at your feet.
Oh, he'll say, not for one moment. And none of us, whatever we give, feel like we give up here. Why, when we stand there, we'll wish we'd given up more. Whether it was time or resources or whatever it was. There'll be no disappointments. An athlete may get a reward here. It may last for a little time and a little splash of glory, and he's forgotten. But we're strive. We're living rather not for a corruptible crown, but as Paul said in Corinthians, an incorruptible crown.
And it's that which will never fade away.
Which would divide my heart with ease.