For Paul, knowing God is the only path to true joy. But it’s quite easy to think we are taking the path to knowing God when, in fact, we are simply piling up meaningless religious activity. How can we understand the grace of Jesus in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering so that we can truly rejoice in the Lord?
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: The “What Ifs” of Faith
November 10, 2013
What If We Abandoned Worthless Pursuits and Sought Significant Relationships?
Philippians 3:1-11
In the first line of our passage tonight from Philippians 3, Paul says, “Finally…rejoice in the Lord.” (Philippians 3:1) This is one of his big phrases. Philippians, as a book of the Bible, is pretty well known as a book about joy. If you’ve been around church and you’ve heard people talk about Philippians or you’ve gone to the spiritual section of the bookstore and looked up books on Philippians, you’ve found that it is one of those books that is a lot about joy.
If you would like to have it in your hands and you don’t have it in your hands currently, slip up your hand. We’ll give you a Bible. You can open it up. If you need some notes also, these guys can give you some notes to jot down while we go. Yeah, this powerful theme of joy running through the book of Philippians really begins to emerge as we’re getting here toward the second half of the letter.
I was sitting with a really good friend just this weekend. He has walked with the Lord for a long time, great believer, strong faith. He has really been challenged recently trying to think through his next steps and what is he is going to do in life. He feels like it’s going to be kind of a faith step wherever he goes with his career.
He was looking at me. He goes, “Do you think the life of faith for believers is really always this way? Is it always going to be so unknown? Is it always going to be so fraught with uncertainty and challenge? Is that just what it means to walk with God in faith?” I’ve been thinking about that question because for some of us, that’s our experience walking with God. It’s just one thing after another like, “Oh boy, another faith step. Oh man, this is tough.”
It’s true that God is continually pushing us and challenging us into areas where we may not be necessarily comfortable, but if we’re taking each of those steps without joy, then that’s not God’s heart for us. God’s heart for us is that every time we take those faith steps, even if they’re uncertain, even if they’re a little bit frightening, we would be full of joy in him on each step we take.
So if you go through the Psalms, this is one of the best places to find it. Psalm 16 talks about this joy in the Lord. Throughout the entire book of Psalms, all these different psalms repeat this phrase. I just want to highlight a couple of them for us. Psalm 16 talks at the very end in verse 11 and says, “You [God] make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11)
Flip forward a few pages to Psalm 32, verse 10. Again, this psalm is talking about knowing God, experiencing the grace of God. At the end of the psalm, it says, “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD. Be glad [be joyful] in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Psalm 32:10-11)
Go to the very next psalm, chapter 33, verse 20. Again, a psalm about knowing the love of God. “Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad [is joyful] in him, because we trust in his holy name.” (Psalm 33:20) Just a couple of chapters forward. Psalm 40, verse 16. It says, “But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, ‘Great is the LORD!'” (Psalm 40:16)
Then we go to Philippians 3, and Paul takes that same language of rejoicing in the Lord. He begins in the first verse. He says, “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.” (Philippians 3:1) What is going on here with these passages about joy? What is the Scripture teaching us about the nature of joy as humans?
Think about the last time in your life that you experienced real, unfettered joy. Was it a moment? Was it a season? Was it a week? Was it 10 golden minutes at sunset? When was the last time you really experienced that deep joy, without a hint of guilt, a hint of shame, no fear about what was to come, but just joy?
I was thinking about that. It’s kind of hard to think, for me personally. I’ve had some good experiences. We went to these weddings we just talked about. They were wonderful times, really fun, but that deep, abiding joy? There are a lot of reasons why joy is difficult to come by. You can have something happen that’s good. You’re excited. It’s a great moment, but just in a flash of an eye, your mind can shift from what is happening that is awesome to what is not awesome.
So for example, I remember this happening. I was probably 8 or 9 years old. When I was growing up in Milwaukee, we had a pond. It would freeze in the wintertime, and we would go play hockey. It was the best thing. We would wait and wait and wait for that pond to freeze. By the end of November in Milwaukee, usually it would be just frozen enough to skate on.
So we would go out, and we would start playing hockey. Saturdays were the best days. I could walk to the rink with all my buddies. We’d just play hockey from about 9:00 a.m. until they shut the lights off at 10:00. We’d order pizza to the warming house. It was amazing. I remember this one day I just was skating along. For me, it was a moment of such unfettered joy. I was just loving it. Maybe for some of you in the South, the idea of ice and snow is not joyful, but for me, it was amazing.
I was skating along, and I remembered as I was skating along that that Monday I had to turn in an assignment. I think it was like a two-page paper, but when you’re 8 or 9 or whatever and you have to write something out, it’s the end of the world. So I’m just skating along. I’m loving everything, and then all of a sudden it hits me. I was like, “[Gasp] I have to write the paper.” My joy disappeared. Gone.
Have you ever had that? These days, it’s more like, “This is really great! [Gasp] I have to pay a mortgage.” It’s bigger than a two-page paper, but just in a second, in a heartbeat, in the blink of an eye, what seems so wonderful can just dissipate. Even eating a great meal together with your family. In just a moment, all it takes is just to remember that even as we’re eating richly, there are people around the world who are starving. Suddenly, it’s just very difficult to have joy.
Joy is a challenging and elusive characteristic of our lives. Sometimes you’re having a great time, and the person next to you brings up something. You’re intentionally trying to forget you have to turn in the paper on Monday or pay the mortgage or whatever it is, and the person next to you is like, “Hey, have you worked on that paper?” You’re like, “Come on!”
You guys have probably heard this, but in my family, sometimes Amy and I will call each other a Debbie downer or a negative Nancy. If it’s a really terrible situation, it’s a Debbie Nancy. So don’t be a Debbie Nancy. That’s what we say in our marriage a lot. If you’re ever around us and you hear me say, “Hey Debbie Nancy,” or she says, “Debbie Nancy,” then you know we’re being kind of negative with each other.
Joy is tricky. It’s fleeting. It’s challenging to come by, particularly if we’re depending on anything in this world to be the source of our joy. As we read through the Scriptures, we look at these passages through the Psalms, and then we hear Paul… Again, this is the third major time in the book of Philippians he is writing about joy. He commands us to rejoice. He is going to do it again in chapter 4. We realize true joy is only possible in God, in really knowing God.
That’s why he says, “…rejoice in the Lord.” (Philippians 3:1) We’re not rejoicing in the situation. We don’t rejoice in the circumstance. Whether the circumstance is awesome or it’s rotten, we can be in the Lord and rejoicing fully. Paul has already given a couple of examples of this the previous two times he has talked about rejoicing.
One was in chapter 1. He was talking about how he is in prison, and the people out in the community have been trying to really get at him by preaching Christ for selfish gain. They’re kind of saying, “Oh yeah, Paul is all locked up. So we’re going to be over here preaching, and he is going to be so mad because we’re preaching without his permission and without his blessing.” It’s just a nasty thing. They’re trying to stab Paul in the back.
You think, “When people around me are trying to stab me in the back, that’s not the kind of circumstance where I could really discover joy.” Yet Paul says, “No, I am full of joy. I can rejoice because Christ is proclaimed. I know God. I’m linked in, and the source of my joy is not my circumstance.”
Then later at the end of chapter 2, we were talking about that Paul was saying, “Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering…” (Philippians 2:17) What he is talking about there is, “Even if I’m in jail and they decide to kill me and they kill me…” It seems like one of those situations that is not very joyful. “…still rejoice because in God we can rejoice. Not in circumstance, not in the situation, but rejoicing in the Lord.”
The key to being able to really rejoice in the Lord, as we’re going to see here in Philippians 3, is knowing God. Not knowing about God, not misknowing God. If we know God poorly or we misknow him, we don’t really know God, it’s the source of all kinds of misery. If we know about God, we’ll never really be satisfied. If we really know God, like know him personally, directly, then we can live in joy, rejoicing in the Lord.
So that’s what we’re going to talk about tonight. How do we really know God? How do we know him in such a way that we are linked in and constantly discovering that true joy? So we’re going to read the first three verses here again. We’re going to talk about Paul. He says, “There are kind of two ways you can go about this.” One of them is not a good way. The other is the way he does it, which is a great example to follow.
So again, in Philippians 3, verse 1, he says, “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.” (Philippians 3:1) I don’t mind repeating myself. Verse 2: “Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh…” (Philippians 3:2-3) There they are, the two approaches, the two different ways.
The first way obviously for Paul is very troublesome. He says, “Look out. Beware,” in the strongest language. “Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evildoers. Look out for the mutilators.” What he is talking about here are people who were going around in Philippi and meeting believers who were born again, who had put their faith in Jesus.
They said, “I’m really glad you’re trusting Jesus. That’s almost all you need to be part of the true people of God, but what else you really need is to be circumcised.” Because in the ancient world, the Jews were pretty much the only people who were circumcised. So these guys were going around. Whenever Gentiles, who were uncircumcised, came to faith, they would talk to them and say, “Hey, everything is great. I’m glad you trust Jesus. That’s everything you need except for that one other thing, which is to be circumcised.”
The language Paul uses is so strong here. When he says evildoers, he says, “These guys who are trying to say that it’s Jesus and something else are like workers of iniquity.” It echoes some of the Psalms, the worst of the worst in the Psalms. It talks about people who just do the most rotten things.
When he says mutilators, it’s a play on words with circumcision. Literally in Greek, circumcision means to cut around, and mutilate sounds just the same except it means chop to pieces. Don’t think about it much. That’s what he is saying. He says, “Look out for these guys. Look out, look out, look out.” Why? What’s their way? He says, “These are the people who put confidence in the flesh.”
In the other way, Paul says, “We are the true circumcision. This is what we do of the true circumcision.” Here he is not talking about the physical state of circumcision. He is using that to refer to the Old Testament when it says God’s people are the people who were circumcised. So he is saying, “We are like the spiritual people of God. Here’s what we do. We worship by the Spirit of God. We glory in Christ Jesus.”
He is quoting from that famous passage in Jeremiah 9, when the warning says, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his strength, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me…” (Jeremiah 9:23-24) That’s the calling of Jeremiah 9. Here, Paul is picking it up. He says, “We worship by the Spirit of God, and we boast in Christ Jesus. We glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.” So these are the two different ways.
At first glance, you read that and you kind of go, “Okay, great. I’m not really considering circumcision at the moment. So I won’t want to pursue the first option. Let’s talk about the second option.” As Paul begins to develop the passage more in verse 4, we realize this idea of confidence in the flesh or being drawn to that way of approaching to God, even though it’s not literally about some sort of physical procedure these days, is a thing we fall into all too often.
Listen to what Paul says. Verse 4: “…though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: [I was] circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
But whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…” (Philippians 3:4-8)
Paul starts listing off reasons why he could be confident in the flesh. “Yeah, I was circumcised. I was born into the people of Israel. Not just that, but the tribe of Benjamin, which was a pretty awesome tribe. A Hebrew of Hebrews.” In this first part of the list, he is talking about his status in society. He said, “Listen, if my status as part of this group of people was worth anything, I have a really good status. Listen to how awesome my status is.”
Then in the second half of his list, he is talking about his achievements. He is saying, “Okay, I was a Pharisee, which means I really knew the Old Testament Scripture,” probably had the whole thing memorized. “I was super zealous and passionate. I was so passionate I was persecuting the early believers. Before I met Jesus, remember, I was going after them, trying to arrest them, saw some of them killed, going house to house, ripping families out of their houses, throwing them in jail. I was zealous, man.
As for righteousness under the law, I was blameless. If you looked at my life from the outside, it would look like I was the godliest person you had ever met. Listen, I have everything. If knowing God is about the status I have with God or what I achieve before God, I was hitting home runs. I was the best of the best.”
We get sucked into this in our own lives. When we think about knowing God, we think about relating to God, we think about our place in the kingdom, or we think about our place in the people of God, we do the same thing. We sometimes think about our status in the kingdom. Do you ever find yourself saying a phrase like, “Yeah, God, it hasn’t been the greatest week, but at least I’m not…”? Then you fill in the blank with someone or some kind of person? “At least I’m not like them. At least I’m still married. At least I’m not an alcoholic. At least I’m not…”
We’re falling into the exact same trap Paul is talking about here, relying on our status, kind of identity in a certain place. We fall into the trap of achievement, probably even more in American culture because in American culture, we’re just raised on this stuff. You have to get A’s in school. You have to win in sports. You have to make lots of money when you graduate. You have to get the most beautiful wife and the most handsome husband. You have to have the most perfect home and everything else.
Our culture just has this immense pressure on us to achieve. We naturally bring that to our relationship with God and assume when we’re achieving well, God loves us more. When we’re achieving poorly or we’re messing up or we’re sinning, God is pretty mad with us. It’s not so much the comparison thing.
One of the phrases that helps us know if we’re falling into that world of relying on our own achievement is enough. I don’t know if I’m doing enough for God. I don’t know if I’m good enough for God, as if there is some sort of standard. If we could just peek our eyes over that standard, God would say, “Oh, there you are. Climb a little bit higher.” You’re like, “Okay, I’ll try.”
Here’s what Paul says about that approach to knowing God. He says, “It’s loss. It’s worthless. It’s nothing. I count that as loss for the sake of Christ.” What Paul is trying to say here is all of that stuff doesn’t matter for anything in knowing Christ. All that stuff I put my confidence in, all the things I’m bringing to the table, Jesus is like, “Yeah, that doesn’t matter.”
In fact, he goes even further, and he says, “I count it as rubbish.” That’s our translation there in verse 8. That word rubbish in the Greek is actually a profanity. It’s a very harsh word. If you read through that kind of Greek language and the way it was used back then, he is taking the strongest of strong words to describe all that stuff he was relying on, all that in that approach of the confidence in the flesh. He says, “Literally it is like rotting refuse compared to knowing Jesus.”
You say, “Well, I’m not very happy Paul would use such harsh language.” The truth is it’s a very serious issue, and the strength of his language reflects the seriousness of this issue. He is saying, “No, this confidence in the flesh, relying on Jesus and something else, is going to be miserable. It’s like rotting trash. It’s misery. It’s absolute appeasement.” In fact, some (I think it’s a fair statement) would say this approach to God, of what we can offer in terms of our status, our own achievement, earning our way, our place in the family of God, is really what defines religion.
I remember we were in Cambodia a few years ago. Cambodia is not a wealthy country. In fact, many families there struggle for food. We happened to be there around one of the times of the great holidays. It’s a Buddhist nation. What we saw was all of these families. They would ride these little motorbikes like scooters, you know? They would put sometimes six or seven people on a motor bike, which was certainly a health hazard or a safety problem, but none of the motor bikes would go very fast with seven people on them. So I guess if they had a crash, it would be more like just falling off a slow-moving tricycle.
Anyway, they’re putting along on the road. They have their whole family there, and they would have just plates stacked high full of food in their hands. So it would be like the husband driving, a little kid in front, maybe the wife right behind him, and then a couple of kids. The wife is just holding a huge stack of these plates full of food.
I remember asking the man we were with, who was a Cambodian guy, “What are they doing?” He said, “Oh, they’re going to the temples.”
“What are they doing at the temples?”
“Oh, they’re going to drop their food off for the idols.”
I said, “What?” He said, “Yes, yes, they go at the holiday time, and they put the food there. They expect that their ancestors will receive the food as an offering. They’ll eat it and they’ll protect them.” I said, “So does it work? Does anybody eat the food?” He was like, “No, no one ever eats the food.” Sure enough, when we visited some of the temples later on in the trip, there were just mounds of rotting food sitting in front of these stone statues.
It’s a pretty good picture of what religion is like: us trying to bring precious things. For these poor families, food is a precious commodity. They sacrifice and they slave and they work just to save a little bit of extra rice. Then they prepare a huge meal, and they put it on these fancy plates. They come and they leave it at the temples before the idols, hoping that will be good enough so their ancestors and everything else in the spirit world they see will bless them in the coming year.
You say, “Oh well, yeah, that is a crazy religion,” but man, we can fall into the same thing. We can fall into the same thing, thinking, “Okay, God, if I do enough or I give enough or I’m nice enough, then you’ll bless me this year.” Do you know what God is saying? “That is like a rotting pile of food to me. That is meaningless.” That’s what Paul is saying here. It’s rubbish. This is misery.
This is Martin Luther’s (one of the great writers about the faith) whole perspective. He said the sort of default mode of the human heart is that religious tendency. Almost anywhere we go, our default mode, particularly when we’re trying to relate to God, is to pile up good stuff we do so he will be good to us. If you look at the religions of the world, people who don’t know Jesus, most of them are approaching their concept of God through that perspective.
The difference is this. Charles Spurgeon, one of the great old preachers, a British preacher from the nineteenth century, told a story. It went something like this. “Once upon a time there was a gardener. This gardener grew an enormous carrot. He took it to his king, and he said, ‘My lord, this is the greatest carrot I’ve ever grown or I ever will grow. Therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my affection, my love and my respect for you.’
The king was really touched, and he discerned the farmer’s heart. He said, ‘Wait. You are clearly a good steward of the earth. I have a plot of land next to your farm. I’d like to give it to you so you can cultivate that also.’ The gardener was amazed and delighted. He went home rejoicing.” A great deal for a huge carrot.
“Then there was a nobleman who was at the king’s court, and he saw the whole thing happen. He said, ‘My! If that is what you get for a carrot, what if you gave the king something better?’ So the next day he came back, and he had with him a huge black stallion. He bowed low before the king. He said, ‘My lord, I breed horses. This is a present to you as a token of my love. It is the finest horse I have ever raised or ever will raise.’
The king discerned the nobleman’s heart, and he said to him, ‘Thank you.’ He took the horse, and then he dismissed the man. The nobleman was really perplexed. The king saw he was confused by what had happened. He said, ‘Let me explain. The gardener was giving me the carrot, but you were giving yourself the horse.'”
Do you understand? Achievement, confidence in the flesh, status, bringing these things to God so he will do whatever we want for us, is like giving ourselves the horse. On the other hand, there is a way to live where we cultivate the best of our lives, offer it freely to God, and he rewards us. He blesses us for that. This is the second way of living. This is the example Paul sets, and this is what he is calling us to do. “Stop with that way of achievement in the flesh, and let’s embrace a different way.” Listen to what he says.
Verse 8: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish…” There’s that word. “…in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness of God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:8-11)
A quick note there about verse 11. When he says, “…by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead,” (Philippians 3:11) he is not saying, “I’m trying to make sure I am part of eternity and the resurrection. What he is really saying is, “I don’t know if I’m going to die in prison or I’m going to get out of prison and keep going. I know when I die I will be resurrected. By any means, whether it’s death in prison or freedom or I live a long, healthy life, whatever it is from this point forward, being a part of that resurrection.”
Look what Paul says. “It’s not so much what I bring to the table. It’s not my status. It’s not my achievement. It’s knowing Jesus.” The word there for knowing Christ is that intimate, firsthand, personal knowledge of Jesus. How do you know Jesus? How do you relate to Jesus? How do you not just learn lots of things about Jesus, but actually know him?
We’ve talked about this before, but in Paul’s life, remember, he had heard some things about Jesus. He didn’t believe them to be true, but then one afternoon he was walking with a team of people to Damascus to arrest Christians and throw them in prison. Jesus appeared to him, or at least a bright, shining light. Somehow, something marvelous happened. It was like the light of Jesus that knocked Paul to the ground exposed all of the rubbish Paul had been relying on.
Even though he was physically blinded in that encounter (in Acts, chapter 9 you can read about it), in his spirit he knew he suddenly could see, “This is the truth. The things I had been relying on before are like nothing compared to the brightness of this one, the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.” It rocked his entire world. It set his entire system of values on its head and reversed everything for him. This is how Paul started to know Jesus.
I don’t know if you guys have had a Damascus road experience. Sometimes you hear people say, “Oh yeah, I was walking one way, and then all of a sudden I had a Damascus road experience. The Lord appeared to me.” Sometimes that’s what God needs to do to get our attention. Some of us are pretty intense people, and we run after the wrong source of things pretty intensely. So the Lord kind of has to show up pretty intensely. Paul was an intense person.
Some of us are just kind of working our way along, and the Lord is just gently calling us. “Hey, hey, let me shine light on your way of life so you can come to know me. Not just know me, but know the surpassing value of knowing me, just how wonderful it is to know me.” Paul says it’s coming through faith. It’s not something he’s done. It’s not his status, but it’s just his faith.
It’s like we talked about before in Philippians, chapter 2. It’s having the humility to recognize that all of that stuff doesn’t count for anything with the Lord. What does count is coming to him humbly, saying, “Lord, nothing I can do can really fix this. Nothing I can do can make you love me more.”
Buddy said this this morning. He was preaching on this passage. I think it’s worth repeating. He said, “Even if you never come to church on a Sunday again, God will still love you the same. You can’t make him love you more or you can’t make him love you less by showing up at church.
If you never tithe again (or for the first time), God won’t love you more or less. If you go out and make all kinds of terrible decisions, live a loose life pursuing the wrong stuff, it doesn’t make God love you more or less.” There is nothing we do or we bring to the table that makes God go, “Oh, now I really love you,” or, “You didn’t go to church last Sunday. I knew it.”
Now giving, worshiping together, avoiding loose living… Those are all wonderful things, but they’re things we do not to earn anything from God, but out of response to what God has done for us. He saw us. He loved us. Jesus came to the earth. He died on our behalf. He rose again. This is what Paul is saying.
He says, “Here’s how I want to know Jesus: through faith in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.” Those are the two phrases he talks about here. “I’m laying down status, and I’m laying down achievement. What I’m embracing is Jesus by faith in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.”
What is that talking about? What is the power of the resurrection? We mentioned what Paul experienced when he met Jesus and heard Jesus speaking to him. His heart was transformed. He is also talking about the power God exercised. When Jesus died on the cross, he went into the grave. You can imagine those disciples thought, “This is it. It’s over. There’s no hope. When people die, they stay dead. The only guy we ever saw raise someone from the dead is now dead, so this is not a good sign.”
Then on the third day, God exercised this amazing resurrection power that drew Jesus out of the grave. This is what Paul is saying. He is saying, “I want to be the kind of person who knows Jesus in the power of his resurrection. I want to be the kind of person who lives the sort of life as we encounter challenges or we come face to face with situations that seem so hopeless and dead and buried in the grave that no human thing could ever resurrect them, who walks up to those situations and sees God do the unthinkable, the greater than we could possibly ask or imagine.
I want to be the kind of person who walks through life and looks at a city or a school or a workplace or a group of people or a town or just a street in my neighborhood and recognizes, ‘Man, nobody here really knows God. I don’t think any of these people are going to want to know God.’ Yet I’m going to keep walking forward, living a life of faith. Out of that life of faith, God resurrects powerfully things we could never expect, transforming hearts, knowing Jesus in resurrection power.”
Just think about in your life the areas where you may have given up hope. In your family. Man, your crazy sister. Your parents. Your kids. Maybe your own heart. You have such deep-rooted hurt or bitterness in places of your own heart that you have kind of given up hope. That ship has sailed. That is dead and buried. Paul is saying, “I want to be the kind of guy who knows the resurrection power of Jesus in those places.”
It’s not just the resurrection power of Jesus and bringing that hope out of death, that expectation and life out of the grave. It’s also the resurrection power of Jesus that has him seated in the heavenly places over everything. We’ve talked about this. That gospel Paul talks about in Philippians is the announcement that Jesus is the true King. He is the one who is reigning over all, and he is the one who can bring life. He can bring restoration. He is the one who can give true joy. He is the one who is going to set things right.
Paul is saying, “I want to know Jesus that way. When I rejoice in the Lord, I want to be rejoicing in the resurrected King of the cosmos, the one who is over everything. Even if I am in jail right now, I can trust that through his resurrection power, he is on high and making sure everything is going to work out for my good, even if it looks rotten right now.” This is what Paul is saying about knowing Jesus and the power of the resurrection.
Also in the fellowship of suffering. It’s interesting because not only does Paul live a life of confidence in God’s miraculous, supernatural, powerful intervention, but he also lives a life of fellowship in Jesus’ sufferings. Have you ever heard that phrase, “You don’t really know someone until you’ve traveled with them”? You can hang out, see somebody at work, but then you go on a family vacation together. After about day four, you’re kind of thinking, “I might raise my kids differently.”
There are some things about knowing Jesus that we can’t learn unless we’re with him in certain circumstances. We can learn a lot about Jesus in a worship service, we can learn a lot about Jesus in our families, and we can learn a lot about Jesus reading the Word, but there are some things we can learn and get to know Jesus in that you can only do in suffering. I didn’t really understand this, and I don’t think I fully understand this now.
A few years ago, we started working with Muslim communities and sharing our faith among them. We experienced some of the rejection of the Muslim communities. They didn’t want to hear about Jesus, particularly the way we were talking about him. Still, even when we talk about Jesus in the most gracious way imaginable, still Muslims reject it.
Then also, we experienced opposition from Christians who didn’t understand what we were talking about. They said, “Why are you talking to those people? You shouldn’t be doing that. They’re our enemies,” and all that sort of stuff. A lot of deep criticism actually, just the sort of thing you read about in Matthew 5. People say all sorts of false things about you. It’s just nasty stuff.
At first, it really bothered me, and I felt like I wanted everyone to understand I’m actually a nice guy. I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. I’m not trying to offend you. I’m not trying to offend you. I just want everyone to love Jesus and be born again so we can hang out together in eternity. That was my heart, but that didn’t really work. I tried that conversation a couple of times, and then everyone thought I was a Universalist. I was like, “No, that’s not it either.”
That was one of the first times I’d experienced some small, tiny measure of suffering for Jesus. As I walked through that (and Amy and I walked through that together, and we dealt with rejection, criticism, slander, persecution, and everything else), we came to know Jesus in a way we had never known him before. We came to know him in a new situation.
There’s a great example of this over in Monroe. Some of you guys know Brian and Sadie Krawczyk. Wonderful family, some of our really close friends. This spring, we did Camp KidzLife with them. So we were out in SharpTop Cove, and some of their families from Monroe came out to Camp KidzLife also. They had their kids there at Camp KidzLife. It was wonderful.
Brian and Sadie were in charge of the skits, and so they both played characters. If you’ve ever been to a camp with us, it’s really fun. They had these just ludicrous costumes and hilarious characters and repeating lines and everything else. The Monroe families who had come out to Camp KidzLife saw Brian and Sadie, and they said, “You guys are so funny. We didn’t know you were that funny. This is crazy.” What was happening was because they were in a new situation they had never experienced before they came to know Brian and Sadie in an entirely new way.
It’s the same thing traveling with somebody. You have these new kinds of experiences with a person, and you get to know them really deeply. The same is true to an entirely profound level. When we suffer with Jesus, or for his sake, we have a fellowship with him we do not discover in any other place.
Sometimes I think we want the suffering to end as quickly as possible, but sometimes Jesus is saying, “No, I just want to get to know you here, and I want you to know me here in a way you’ve never known me before. I want you to learn how to discover joy in this place that you have never known before. Out of this place, you’re also going to meet the power of the resurrection.”
This is what Paul is talking about. It’s profound. He is saying, “Don’t put your confidence in the flesh, but turn to Jesus in faith and really know him.” So what I want to do is sort of just finish by reading a couple of slides. We can read these together. They’re going to compare and contrast the two different ways Paul has just laid out. I borrowed these from a Tim Keller book, Gospel In Life.
Essentially, the first side will be the religious response to God, the religious way of knowing God, the confidence in the flesh we’ve talked about. The second statement will be the sort of gospel way, the way of Paul, the way of really knowing Jesus. Not the way of bringing a bunch of things and hoping Jesus will receive us, but this second way of just simply knowing Jesus through faith.
As I read these, I want our hearts just to be open because it’s possible we may identify with some of the religious responses. Really what we need to do is move from that place of religious earning and bringing rotting piles of food before God to a place of faith and simple relationship where we fully know Jesus.
Now here’s the thing. If you, as we’re reading these, relate to one of these, the key is repentance, simple turning, confessing, “Yeah, I do that. I lay it down. I come over here, and I just want to know you, Jesus, and the power of your resurrection and the fellowship of your suffering.” Then when I finish reading, we’ll pray. We’ll have some response time in worship.
We have Communion like we always do here at the front. If there are any of those areas where you are really turning away from that sort of religious approach to life and toward that relationship in the gospel with Jesus, there’s no better place to do that than to come forward and just receive Communion. Remember Jesus broke his body. He presented his body for us. He poured out his blood for us. There is real grace available from Jesus even today that can minister to our souls and can bring life. We can meet with Jesus today.
Some of you may even have been going through life thinking, “Oh yeah, I don’t really want to know God. I don’t really like God at all. I came to church tonight for some reason, but the truth is I’m not really interested in God.” Part of the reason you may not be interested in God is because you think knowing God is all about what you can do for God. That’s not it. According to Paul, no, all it takes is humility, to turn your heart in faith toward him.
Some of you are in that place where you just want to know Jesus more. We’re going to have time to meet with the Lord too and just worship him, like Paul says, worshiping in the Spirit of God, glorying in Christ Jesus. That is the place where we want to live so we’re really rejoicing in the Lord. Let me read these slides, and then we’ll pray.
The way of religion says, “I obey; therefore I’m accepted.” The gospel says, “I’m accepted; therefore I obey.” In religion, our motivation is based on fear and insecurity; in the gospel, our motivation is based on grateful joy. In religion, we say, “I obey God in order to get things from God.” The gospel says, “I obey God to get God, to delight in and resemble him.”
In religion, when circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or myself since I believe anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life. The gospel says, “When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle, but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus. While God may allow this for my training, he will exercise his fatherly love within my trial.”
Religion says, “When I am criticized, I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person.’ Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs.” The gospel says, “When I am criticized, I struggle, but it is not essential for me to think of myself as a ‘good person.’ My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ.”
Religion says, “My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel humble but not confident—I feel like a failure.”
The gospel says, “My self-view is not based on my moral achievement. In Christ, I am simul iustus et peccator—simultaneously sinful and lost, yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad that he had to die for me, and I am so loved that he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deep humility and confidence at the same time.”
Religion says, “My prayer life consists largely of petition, asking God. It only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment.” The gospel says, “My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with God.”
Religion says, “My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work or how moral I am—and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral.” The gospel says, “My identity and self-worth are centered on the one who died for me. I am saved by sheer grace, so I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. Only by grace am I what I am.” Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for your Word to us through Paul. We invite your Holy Spirit now to come and work in our hearts. Lord, if we’re relying on anything of our own power, we know that is rubbish. So Lord, we turn from the way of religion, and we open our hearts to embrace the gospel. You loved us first. You died for us. You made a way for us to live fully in grace. Your desire and our desire are to be the same: to know one another fully and deeply and openly. Lord, we want to rejoice in you. So help us. Open our eyes and open our hearts. In Jesus’ name, amen.